moira
we're all just stars with people names
'I'm coming with,' is the soft purr in her head, a rumble like thunder that brushes lovingly along the edges of her crystal clear thoughts. Golden eyes flash, falling sideways to meet the startling blue that she always drowns in so easily when Neerja looks at her. Moira shakes her head. "No," she murmurs almost sadly, but mostly it's determination in the soft sweep of her voice, "this is for diplomacy into Solterra, I can't very well have a tiger, as beloved and gentle as I'm sure you would make yourself towards the guests, frightening them all away. They'd probably think you a pet or entertainment and step on your tail." There is a yowl of protest. "I said no, Neerja, and that's that."
Moira is loath to tell her bonded no, to deny her anything, really, now that they're talking again, but it's hard to say yes when she doesn't quite know the situation they'd be walking into. Of course, the Ieshan name was spoken of in Denocte, but so were many other families. Ieshan was as common as Foster or de Clare or so many other old houses of this land. They were simply another family chalked full of money looking for a quick thrill and a laugh at the expense of those they thought lesser than them. Oh, but Moira tries not to be disgusted before she even shows up. She tries and tries as she paints kohl over her waterlines, as she dons the golden jewels that drape over her brow and across her naked back, places another in the curl of her tail that falls like rushing water behind her. The makeup, of course, would be redone and her hair tidied once she reaches Solterra - it wouldn't survive the journey northward. Artfully, she'd already drawn up her hair into a waterfall braid, a new favorite, and tucked strands back so that they looped as art upon her sparkling skin.
The Ieshan's were renowned for their collection of art and beautiful old things, and although this might be a diplomatic mission, the Emissary wants nothing more than to see their galleries both stone and painted. A yearning in her heart reaches towards paintbrushes abandoned for months in the corner of her room.
How long has it been since she's picked them up?
She doesn't know.
It doesn't matter, not as she walks out the door, letting her irascible companion stalk ahead of her, tail swishing angrily from side to side. More often than not, it seems that Moira only upset Neerja now more than ever.
Maybe that's how healing works.
The escort leaves her, a man from Denocte assigned to accompany the emissary who shows the invitation at the door. They both enter, and quickly her guide is lost. It doesn't bother her, he'd made for a lousy traveling companion after all. What does bother her is the chance that he could make a mess of Denocte's image, she only hopes that he behaves himself as well as could be expected. After Raum, things, for a time, had been so terribly tense in her little corner of the world. Shoulders were still tight with tension, many wondered when the other shoe would fall, and Isra never truly returned to them.
Antiope filled the void that needed filling. Moira Tonnerre would continue on as her court's Emissary as long as she was needed. It does not bother her now nearly so much as it had when she'd first begun. Those were the days when Raymond had been present, when his beloved Ruth towered like a mountain in the city. Those were the days when a girl with storms in her skin screamed at strange birds the gods sent to punish them all and won.
Those were the days that are gone.
Quietly, she shutters those memories, pulls the blinds down and latches the shades so that she can't peek into them, not now when so much is before her. Already, her senses are on fire. This is so unlike the flower festival where she'd danced with Asterion and shared cake with Bexley Briar. This is much, much different and much, much larger.
Faces from all of Novus are here, many she does not know, and none of them seem to care who the others are. Of course, being raised at the Estate, Moira knows that someone always cares who shows their face here and just how they act. She's careful to smile, careful to nod when someone passes her by. Then, she's on a balcony looking down and over the rest of the people coming, away, for a moment, from the crowds that threatened to pull her under. They were tall and boisterous and everything she is not.
It is in the oncoming people that she finds him. The phoenix would know the crow anywhere. He is dark, like the gaps between the stars (they are gaps she knows well because they are Tenebrae's shadows, they are the light she cannot pull, they are something she can hardly begin to touch and still she tries) and he is moving like a tidal wave in her direction. Moira wonders if she should forget how to breathe because he's so damn beautiful her heart could stop if she stared too long. But she doesn't, stare long that is, and instead turns from her vantage point on high. The girl sweeps through the little door she'd found, disregarding whoever's room it had been or still was, and glides over the steps beneath her feet. They're hardly there with the way she walks - more like a skater on ice, she's graceful in only the way a ballerina on ice could be: stunning, beautiful, wholly the same and different than the girl he'd known.
Already, she imagines, he's through the doors and following the flow of people. They both hated people, yet they find themselves forced around them no matter what they do. So she, too, turns right from the stairs instead of left, entering from the opposite side as the crow, and weaves expertly through the crowds. Moira is an enchantress with how she moves - so slowly, so swiftly, like water pooling beneath another's feet and gone before they ever know how wet it is.
She's just barely at the edge of his vision, watching as he watches out for her.
Perhaps she would be laughing if she weren't so thrilled to see him. Instead, the Tonnerre girl turns, turns away from the second man she's ever known here, and skitters into the crown behind him. Vanishing like a flame snuffed out. Before he can press the glass to his lips, light curls around its stem, pulled from the blazing lanterns and many chandeliers above them, to draw it slowly, sweetly to her mouth. With a gentle pull, she swirls the red liquid, then slowly, so slowly, Moira swallows it down in one gulp.
"I thought I'd never see you again."
