She does not look like a monster, here. Not to Stella. Even as deep shadow falls across her flame-bright face in slashes between shafts of bloomed, faded moonlight and her own spun luminance. Even as darkness enfolds them both, like an embrace or like a flanking, and all around the sill of this high-up place—this ivory tower of granite and star-shed—is unknown and terrifying. Stella stopped seeing monsters in the dark long ago—choose, instead, to see omens and altars. To find comfort in the way it meant only to hold her like a purloined jewel; like a secretive and shameful lover. Only for a moment. Only until they—night and her—were caught in their trysts and it would drop her back to earth with a start, still bruised by its touches.
Still breathy and ever-unsatisfied.
It hadn’t always been that way, but she had let darkness into her marrow and she had found it made her whole and abyssal at once. Hungry, always, and perhaps that was better than nothing. Better than passing like some ghost, consigned to an in-between, earth and sky. Better than feeling adrift. It had grounded her, but not in the way Kyrr had grounded her—by pine-roots and birch-limbs. It had anchored her to Him. To the Cimmerian depths of his teased affections; to the way he so easily became all-encompassing, like deepest, immortal night.
She always did need something. Someone.
Without that, she is patterned, orderly ink on sheepskin.
Here, she tries to forget all of it. To set it aside, giving herself wholly to the labour of charting the stars. It has always been where she found her peace. Where she felt stripped down. Naked and without all of the fetters and moorings—without all of the things that made her feel safe or protected, small or unseen—she can be her.
Whatever that shapeless, shifting thing might be.
Tonight, it is moon-made and shadow-forged. In the stillness and quiet that subsumes the light-shrouded stranger and her feline, she is tangled in a web of bright-burning constellations, lashed lavender and black by their formations. She is without and beyond, and from here she can see the world as it heaves and lurches at her feet. She can see everything and still sees nothing at all.
They are announced in the soft language of stone—hoof-fall and paw-padding. She turns her serene, calculating gaze from the paper mottled with new continents of stars to the radiant, red woman, tigress slipping around her thighs. Her voice is smoke and furtive glances, intriguing and lulling. Gift. Perhaps, though it had always felt a little more like an unrequited love affair. “I have the instruments ‒ that’s really half the battle.” Her gaze does not waver, following her as she follows shooting stars on their errant trajectories.
A loosed sun, come to settle on earth.
Stella smiles, brow cocking slightly. “I always find them very cagey with their secrets.” No. Not always. But this sky is new. Its arrangements are vastly different. “They are tight-lipped, even with their names,” the heavy bead of ink that has gathered at the end of her quill drops, splattering at her silver hooves. “Stella,” she inclines her head, and then it comes to her. Turning her attention back to the hovering parchment she reinks her pen. Biting her lip between her teeth, she pens, in clear, looping handwriting,Tigris Cauda .
Still breathy and ever-unsatisfied.
It hadn’t always been that way, but she had let darkness into her marrow and she had found it made her whole and abyssal at once. Hungry, always, and perhaps that was better than nothing. Better than passing like some ghost, consigned to an in-between, earth and sky. Better than feeling adrift. It had grounded her, but not in the way Kyrr had grounded her—by pine-roots and birch-limbs. It had anchored her to Him. To the Cimmerian depths of his teased affections; to the way he so easily became all-encompassing, like deepest, immortal night.
She always did need something. Someone.
Without that, she is patterned, orderly ink on sheepskin.
Here, she tries to forget all of it. To set it aside, giving herself wholly to the labour of charting the stars. It has always been where she found her peace. Where she felt stripped down. Naked and without all of the fetters and moorings—without all of the things that made her feel safe or protected, small or unseen—she can be her.
Whatever that shapeless, shifting thing might be.
Tonight, it is moon-made and shadow-forged. In the stillness and quiet that subsumes the light-shrouded stranger and her feline, she is tangled in a web of bright-burning constellations, lashed lavender and black by their formations. She is without and beyond, and from here she can see the world as it heaves and lurches at her feet. She can see everything and still sees nothing at all.
They are announced in the soft language of stone—hoof-fall and paw-padding. She turns her serene, calculating gaze from the paper mottled with new continents of stars to the radiant, red woman, tigress slipping around her thighs. Her voice is smoke and furtive glances, intriguing and lulling. Gift. Perhaps, though it had always felt a little more like an unrequited love affair. “I have the instruments ‒ that’s really half the battle.” Her gaze does not waver, following her as she follows shooting stars on their errant trajectories.
A loosed sun, come to settle on earth.
Stella smiles, brow cocking slightly. “I always find them very cagey with their secrets.” No. Not always. But this sky is new. Its arrangements are vastly different. “They are tight-lipped, even with their names,” the heavy bead of ink that has gathered at the end of her quill drops, splattering at her silver hooves. “Stella,” she inclines her head, and then it comes to her. Turning her attention back to the hovering parchment she reinks her pen. Biting her lip between her teeth, she pens, in clear, looping handwriting,
☽
MINOR POWERPLAYING IS PERMITTED
