Sleep does not elude her.
She casts it off. Ousts it from the weary borders of her bones, the sore territories of her body. It is an army at her shores – invasive and gathering as a great, toothed, angry mass on the softened, drowsy edges of brow and lash. It bears grim arms of barbed memory, this Sleep – dream-spears, splitting open the soft underbelly of her girlhood, revealing, like spilt innards, the nightmarish revelries of that darkness which has dogged her since. Darkness, by any other name; by shapeless, fathomless cruelty that gnaws and consumes flesh from bones and continents from existence…
(Be gone.)
She shakes herself. The metal fixtures and chains of her harness chime; in its leather loop, her bronze telescope shifts and thumps gently against her ribs. Long, silver-white strands of hair catch on clasps and buckles and the perk of her fluted ears; that one, ever-wayward piece of forelock falls down in front of her blue eyes. She purses her lips and blows it away, letting it settle to the side across her cheek. The balm of late-summer parts itself, allows space for a gentle night-chill to pass over her hip and throat, down the pale-lavender curve of spine.
She sighs, casting her gaze across the mimic-sky that sits like an earthbound miniature of itself upon the pitch water. Shifting sable-black and charcoal-grey furl and unfurl. In one arrested, rapturous breath the vast obscurity rends, revealing clutches of soft starlight, before knitting back together again. (Shame.) She blinks upwards at the formlessness of that coy night, throwing across its naked, bright form mantles of dusky cloud.
“Tomorrow. perhaps,” she whispers. To herself. To the bronze telescope that settles, disappointed, against her warm skin, its burnished curves blooming in the argent moonlight. To her own restlessness that fends off Sleep, that holds it at a bay with a single, sliver-thin determination to make sense of this new sky. These new stars and their new formations. That fossilized light, ancient and solemn, arranged like uncharted countries above.
Stella shifts, pressing her silver hooves into the soft, giving earth, and moves on. She carves her slow, elegant protestation across a land equally as enigmatic, tracing the softly lapping edges of the lakeshore. In the distance, broad oaks glower in silent stands; clutches of white lilies repose on the mirror-like darkness. These earthly things remind her of Kyrr, of gathering in woven baskets and lilting giggles. It hurts, clasps her heart like a vice and squeezes, finds anger and resentment and sadness nestled as a pit of snakes in her gut. With a quick, jolting movement she jerks her gaze to the side, finding there a soft, turquoise glow.
Her brows come together, head tilting curiously. Cautious, quiet, Stellanor inches towards the blue-green as it forms and takes shapes and makes from disembodied brightness a man.
Good evening.
She stops, her white lashes lifting as she takes in the sidereal make of him – night writ across his body, as ice and snow and boreal northness seems to be on her own. She releases a reverential breath, “Aurōrae,” the romantic, whispered tones of her native tongue. Her navy-blue eyes fixing on his own, I know your light, she thinks, with a sad hitch in her heartbeat, but instead, she nods her head, that wayward piece of forelock falling across her face – blown away hastily – “shy,” she agrees, “they are want to keep their secrets tonight.” She does not blame them.
Motionless, like a doll made of ivory and the soft blush of purplish shade, enveloped in night and his strange sky-glow, she finds her voice once more, her name, below leagues of stilled tongue and months, perhaps, of fearful solitude. “I’m Stellanor.”
She casts it off. Ousts it from the weary borders of her bones, the sore territories of her body. It is an army at her shores – invasive and gathering as a great, toothed, angry mass on the softened, drowsy edges of brow and lash. It bears grim arms of barbed memory, this Sleep – dream-spears, splitting open the soft underbelly of her girlhood, revealing, like spilt innards, the nightmarish revelries of that darkness which has dogged her since. Darkness, by any other name; by shapeless, fathomless cruelty that gnaws and consumes flesh from bones and continents from existence…
(Be gone.)
She shakes herself. The metal fixtures and chains of her harness chime; in its leather loop, her bronze telescope shifts and thumps gently against her ribs. Long, silver-white strands of hair catch on clasps and buckles and the perk of her fluted ears; that one, ever-wayward piece of forelock falls down in front of her blue eyes. She purses her lips and blows it away, letting it settle to the side across her cheek. The balm of late-summer parts itself, allows space for a gentle night-chill to pass over her hip and throat, down the pale-lavender curve of spine.
She sighs, casting her gaze across the mimic-sky that sits like an earthbound miniature of itself upon the pitch water. Shifting sable-black and charcoal-grey furl and unfurl. In one arrested, rapturous breath the vast obscurity rends, revealing clutches of soft starlight, before knitting back together again. (Shame.) She blinks upwards at the formlessness of that coy night, throwing across its naked, bright form mantles of dusky cloud.
“Tomorrow. perhaps,” she whispers. To herself. To the bronze telescope that settles, disappointed, against her warm skin, its burnished curves blooming in the argent moonlight. To her own restlessness that fends off Sleep, that holds it at a bay with a single, sliver-thin determination to make sense of this new sky. These new stars and their new formations. That fossilized light, ancient and solemn, arranged like uncharted countries above.
Stella shifts, pressing her silver hooves into the soft, giving earth, and moves on. She carves her slow, elegant protestation across a land equally as enigmatic, tracing the softly lapping edges of the lakeshore. In the distance, broad oaks glower in silent stands; clutches of white lilies repose on the mirror-like darkness. These earthly things remind her of Kyrr, of gathering in woven baskets and lilting giggles. It hurts, clasps her heart like a vice and squeezes, finds anger and resentment and sadness nestled as a pit of snakes in her gut. With a quick, jolting movement she jerks her gaze to the side, finding there a soft, turquoise glow.
Her brows come together, head tilting curiously. Cautious, quiet, Stellanor inches towards the blue-green as it forms and takes shapes and makes from disembodied brightness a man.
Good evening.
She stops, her white lashes lifting as she takes in the sidereal make of him – night writ across his body, as ice and snow and boreal northness seems to be on her own. She releases a reverential breath, “Aurōrae,” the romantic, whispered tones of her native tongue. Her navy-blue eyes fixing on his own, I know your light, she thinks, with a sad hitch in her heartbeat, but instead, she nods her head, that wayward piece of forelock falling across her face – blown away hastily – “shy,” she agrees, “they are want to keep their secrets tonight.” She does not blame them.
Motionless, like a doll made of ivory and the soft blush of purplish shade, enveloped in night and his strange sky-glow, she finds her voice once more, her name, below leagues of stilled tongue and months, perhaps, of fearful solitude. “I’m Stellanor.”
@Azrael
☽
