She carries no man nor woman’s colours, having thrown loose from herself the ornamentation of allegiance the moment she boarded the merchant vessel fleeing Edana.
It is not because she has a pariah’s heart – though it grows in isolation, like petals shifting genuflections to the sun, becoming vibrant and wild – it is because she cannot bear the toothed cruelty of more loss. Any more razing, piece by piece, the stone and mortar of her walls. Her cities. Her kingdoms. Her soul, free or pried from nation and land, is set adrift on the purl of wayward winds. She always had a wanderer’s mind, a rambler’s spirit – but always, always, she had a place called Home. A hearth; stone and dirt and ice, carved chambers of welcome and warmth; the beautiful bones of everything that had come before, that would come after.
After. Except, of course, there would be no After. There is only Never when she looks behind. Stark, distilled Never. Like Never-Again, and Never-Was, and Never-Will-Be. Lost to darkest-darkness – the sort of rayless, muted consumption that sloughs whole continents from the earth – she has seen the impermanence of man’s monuments. Of their cathedrals, palaces and citadels; has seen with wide, fearful eyes, the way blood can, indeed, be squeezed from stone.
So much blood.
So she is free. But freedom is barbed. Beautiful and savage Quiet, but often loudest at night, when the stars unfurl above snow-peaked mountains or endless, golden dunes, and yawn wide their ancient mouths to hum requiems for a thousand Never-Mores. She cannot say what brings her here. What inspired that peregrination across the ridged range of mountains crowning Denocte, from whose high valleys on a clear day, she glances with bated breath the raw, distant desert; that vast, cruel wilderness that reminds her so of Dirtharest.
From the scant, protected margins, she watches the distant sky fill with sand, blotting out the stars. She knows not what she sees, but observes with strange trepidation a land in shift. By inchoate dawn, she is summitting the giving, slipping swirls of sand-hummocks, weaving around red-stone formations, arching against and piercing the burgeoning mauves and tangerines of the sky. She skirts the stone retaining walls of an unknown capital, eyeing it with cautious relief.
Except for her freedom, she does not know what brings her here. But it is their faint, cosmic light that draws her, silent-footed, after their wake, now, tracing paw- and hoofprints through monster’s bones and desert’s clutch. She watches them with bright curiosity; with sickening certainty as they descend into the eidolic opening, knowing she will go after them.
This place is not for her, seems intent on dispelling her at every careful footfall. She knows, deep in her heart, that this charnel abyss is their Never, come to be, steeped in a history she does not understand. Populated by the mummified remains (around which she carefully tiptoes, stifling gasps at their queer, eyeless observance) of a desert-past. She never lets their light fade and keeps a keen ear on the low, reverential thrum of their voices; two, and then many as they pass into vast, echoing antechambers.
‘It’s a sarcophagus.’
She peeks from behind vaulted, engraved walls, head tilting, heart pounding, breath hitching. She should not be here, but the funereal darkness and cadaverous ache that settles into her lovely skin are too familiar, almost comforting in that way. She inches forward, a slender, sable knee brushing against some tarnished artefact – urn or vase; jar to collect tithes for the ferryman – and with that gentle kiss it tilts, rattling with a loathsome song of bronze and stone. Her eye squeeze shut against the darkness, lips parting to hiss a frustrated, “faex.”
The lion calls out, demanding her resignation, and she duly obliges. Frozen in place without his solar glow, she swallows hard, finds her tongue bloated and thick, throat dry. “I… I am sorry,” oppressive blackness presses in around her. She can feel it moving. Feel it stirring. (Oh gods, what have I done.) “I did not mean to startle, only... It is rather dark...” Her plaintive voice, too big and too small at once, trails off as she squints uselessly.
It is not because she has a pariah’s heart – though it grows in isolation, like petals shifting genuflections to the sun, becoming vibrant and wild – it is because she cannot bear the toothed cruelty of more loss. Any more razing, piece by piece, the stone and mortar of her walls. Her cities. Her kingdoms. Her soul, free or pried from nation and land, is set adrift on the purl of wayward winds. She always had a wanderer’s mind, a rambler’s spirit – but always, always, she had a place called Home. A hearth; stone and dirt and ice, carved chambers of welcome and warmth; the beautiful bones of everything that had come before, that would come after.
After. Except, of course, there would be no After. There is only Never when she looks behind. Stark, distilled Never. Like Never-Again, and Never-Was, and Never-Will-Be. Lost to darkest-darkness – the sort of rayless, muted consumption that sloughs whole continents from the earth – she has seen the impermanence of man’s monuments. Of their cathedrals, palaces and citadels; has seen with wide, fearful eyes, the way blood can, indeed, be squeezed from stone.
So much blood.
So she is free. But freedom is barbed. Beautiful and savage Quiet, but often loudest at night, when the stars unfurl above snow-peaked mountains or endless, golden dunes, and yawn wide their ancient mouths to hum requiems for a thousand Never-Mores. She cannot say what brings her here. What inspired that peregrination across the ridged range of mountains crowning Denocte, from whose high valleys on a clear day, she glances with bated breath the raw, distant desert; that vast, cruel wilderness that reminds her so of Dirtharest.
From the scant, protected margins, she watches the distant sky fill with sand, blotting out the stars. She knows not what she sees, but observes with strange trepidation a land in shift. By inchoate dawn, she is summitting the giving, slipping swirls of sand-hummocks, weaving around red-stone formations, arching against and piercing the burgeoning mauves and tangerines of the sky. She skirts the stone retaining walls of an unknown capital, eyeing it with cautious relief.
Except for her freedom, she does not know what brings her here. But it is their faint, cosmic light that draws her, silent-footed, after their wake, now, tracing paw- and hoofprints through monster’s bones and desert’s clutch. She watches them with bright curiosity; with sickening certainty as they descend into the eidolic opening, knowing she will go after them.
This place is not for her, seems intent on dispelling her at every careful footfall. She knows, deep in her heart, that this charnel abyss is their Never, come to be, steeped in a history she does not understand. Populated by the mummified remains (around which she carefully tiptoes, stifling gasps at their queer, eyeless observance) of a desert-past. She never lets their light fade and keeps a keen ear on the low, reverential thrum of their voices; two, and then many as they pass into vast, echoing antechambers.
‘It’s a sarcophagus.’
She peeks from behind vaulted, engraved walls, head tilting, heart pounding, breath hitching. She should not be here, but the funereal darkness and cadaverous ache that settles into her lovely skin are too familiar, almost comforting in that way. She inches forward, a slender, sable knee brushing against some tarnished artefact – urn or vase; jar to collect tithes for the ferryman – and with that gentle kiss it tilts, rattling with a loathsome song of bronze and stone. Her eye squeeze shut against the darkness, lips parting to hiss a frustrated, “faex.”
The lion calls out, demanding her resignation, and she duly obliges. Frozen in place without his solar glow, she swallows hard, finds her tongue bloated and thick, throat dry. “I… I am sorry,” oppressive blackness presses in around her. She can feel it moving. Feel it stirring. (Oh gods, what have I done.) “I did not mean to startle, only... It is rather dark...” Her plaintive voice, too big and too small at once, trails off as she squints uselessly.
Hover for translation!
@Orestes
@Orestes
☽
