It furls and unfurls – as lithesome fingers of an in-between-land – that cinereous, unformed nimbus. It beacons, drives her not from the sightless morass of fog, but into it – an ill-begotten balefire, minding the shores of a fathomless black.
It purls and moves, spitting motes of soft mist from its mass that caress the base of her lavender throat, soft as a lover’s touch on bruised skin. Her eyelashes flutter closed, lips parting, an invitation. A surrender, for if she should be lost, perhaps she should be lost forever.
What had called her here, from the mainland of this new territory, is Universal. Cosmic. Constellation windroses and galactic navigators. Ushered forth to provenance, as a ship through still, sable oceans, Stellanor had followed.
Moored, now, on the margins of something unknown – unknowable, but for the primordial, elemental way in which it is kin and kith – she lingers. Suspended, feeling the susurrations, like plaintive prayers, murmured through soft, ashen lips against her skin. Neck, chest, knees. She takes a tentative step forward, feels it welcome her. Want her. Mark her as its own. As prey or as long-lost bairn, she cedes herself to it, subsumed inch by inch by the pallid weight of that concealing outskirt.
How long does she wander through that eidolic fog?
Alone.
Apart.
Severed from the world entire, held abeyant in the hands of a godless, shapeless purgatory. How long? As she is made and unmade a thousand times over in that crucible-fog, preparing for her visitation. Forever. Timelessness. Unwound clocks; clocks ticking backwards. She walks, never sure if she is retracing her own muffled footfalls, swirling, circling, displacing only the fog that makes way for her passing. “Hello,” she whispers, but it goes nowhere, dying instead in the thick air.
Finally, the fog thins out, becomes sparse, spectral throngs dancing against a revealing plain of black. Black, not like the charcoal clouds that clutter the night sky, hiding behind them bounties of stars. Black, not like His body. Not like the trembling darkness that takes shape as dreamless sleep. Black, in its essence. Black, distilled, in unfathomable quantity, containing a trillion pin-pricks of blinding light and wide, splaying, colourful gaseous bodies.
Breath catches in her throat, her heart hitches, as she stands on the sill of the universe, dizzy as a woman come to meet her god. “Hello…” she whispers, but it goes nowhere, dying instead in the endless void. There is no fear, nor hesitation, though her stomach holds itself tight as she steps forward, silvery hoof breaching the cosmic dark. Gossamer-thin strands of fog trail after her elegant strides as she finds the queer firmness of oblivion beneath her, holding her as upon some unseen, extent plateau.
She wanders.
How long does she wander through the mimic-universe? Through star nurseries, dust clouds, planetary rings? It matters not, for she feels timeless here. Ageless. Reverential and small. Contained beautifully in a realm of no decay, but great, fiery star-deaths and bright, vivid births. Shed most mercifully from the moorings of the left-behind, earthly realm. And so, she wanders, humming trapper’s songs to galaxies and moons, consumed wholly by the solitude of this pilgrimage.
When she spies her, pallid and shining against the dark, many lightyears away, Stellanor becomes still, curious of whom she shares the cosmos with. And, perhaps, she remains still for a million years. Or mere moments, but by the time she is close enough to the ethereal woman to hear her voice in the vacuum, she has caught small, radiant suns and pale, placid moons in her orbit. Her thin, fluted ears perk, dully moved by the familiar tongue – creeping down her spine, fingers of a bygone time and bygone world.
“Salve,” she intones, with a serene smile on her sable mouth, long, snow-white hair floating and settling about her. “Vos es vultus parumper responsa...” she bites her lip, brows furrowing, eyes casting down where blackness meets nothing. Nothing at all.
Something unwelcome blooms by her breastbone, a tight, knowing feeling – feeling where she wishes for none at all. “Do they answer?” she wonders, “...do they know?” But she knows the truth. That they are eyeless, mouthless beings, the inchoate denizens of a careless distance.
“It is beautiful, all the same,” the stargazer admits, after a small silence shared. “I am Stellanor.”
It purls and moves, spitting motes of soft mist from its mass that caress the base of her lavender throat, soft as a lover’s touch on bruised skin. Her eyelashes flutter closed, lips parting, an invitation. A surrender, for if she should be lost, perhaps she should be lost forever.
What had called her here, from the mainland of this new territory, is Universal. Cosmic. Constellation windroses and galactic navigators. Ushered forth to provenance, as a ship through still, sable oceans, Stellanor had followed.
Moored, now, on the margins of something unknown – unknowable, but for the primordial, elemental way in which it is kin and kith – she lingers. Suspended, feeling the susurrations, like plaintive prayers, murmured through soft, ashen lips against her skin. Neck, chest, knees. She takes a tentative step forward, feels it welcome her. Want her. Mark her as its own. As prey or as long-lost bairn, she cedes herself to it, subsumed inch by inch by the pallid weight of that concealing outskirt.
How long does she wander through that eidolic fog?
Alone.
Apart.
Severed from the world entire, held abeyant in the hands of a godless, shapeless purgatory. How long? As she is made and unmade a thousand times over in that crucible-fog, preparing for her visitation. Forever. Timelessness. Unwound clocks; clocks ticking backwards. She walks, never sure if she is retracing her own muffled footfalls, swirling, circling, displacing only the fog that makes way for her passing. “Hello,” she whispers, but it goes nowhere, dying instead in the thick air.
Finally, the fog thins out, becomes sparse, spectral throngs dancing against a revealing plain of black. Black, not like the charcoal clouds that clutter the night sky, hiding behind them bounties of stars. Black, not like His body. Not like the trembling darkness that takes shape as dreamless sleep. Black, in its essence. Black, distilled, in unfathomable quantity, containing a trillion pin-pricks of blinding light and wide, splaying, colourful gaseous bodies.
Breath catches in her throat, her heart hitches, as she stands on the sill of the universe, dizzy as a woman come to meet her god. “Hello…” she whispers, but it goes nowhere, dying instead in the endless void. There is no fear, nor hesitation, though her stomach holds itself tight as she steps forward, silvery hoof breaching the cosmic dark. Gossamer-thin strands of fog trail after her elegant strides as she finds the queer firmness of oblivion beneath her, holding her as upon some unseen, extent plateau.
She wanders.
How long does she wander through the mimic-universe? Through star nurseries, dust clouds, planetary rings? It matters not, for she feels timeless here. Ageless. Reverential and small. Contained beautifully in a realm of no decay, but great, fiery star-deaths and bright, vivid births. Shed most mercifully from the moorings of the left-behind, earthly realm. And so, she wanders, humming trapper’s songs to galaxies and moons, consumed wholly by the solitude of this pilgrimage.
When she spies her, pallid and shining against the dark, many lightyears away, Stellanor becomes still, curious of whom she shares the cosmos with. And, perhaps, she remains still for a million years. Or mere moments, but by the time she is close enough to the ethereal woman to hear her voice in the vacuum, she has caught small, radiant suns and pale, placid moons in her orbit. Her thin, fluted ears perk, dully moved by the familiar tongue – creeping down her spine, fingers of a bygone time and bygone world.
“Salve,” she intones, with a serene smile on her sable mouth, long, snow-white hair floating and settling about her. “Vos es vultus parumper responsa...” she bites her lip, brows furrowing, eyes casting down where blackness meets nothing. Nothing at all.
Something unwelcome blooms by her breastbone, a tight, knowing feeling – feeling where she wishes for none at all. “Do they answer?” she wonders, “...do they know?” But she knows the truth. That they are eyeless, mouthless beings, the inchoate denizens of a careless distance.
“It is beautiful, all the same,” the stargazer admits, after a small silence shared. “I am Stellanor.”
Hover for translation
@Aelin @Drune
@Aelin @Drune
☽
