moira
I am fire - if you want something salty and sweet, with no opinion, I am not the woman for you. I spit flames, often.
Of all the seasons, winter is the most like home. It is cold. It is frigid. It is entirely soft to look at with a biting edge underneath that shreds her like ribbons if exposed too long. Moira doesn't mind the way the winds howl like wolves at her door, scratching and scratching, tumbling around the eaves, knocking on the walls to find its way in. She doesn't even mind when her breath curls out white, like a moon-moth's wing, to frost the panes of glass separating the rest of the world from her.
Sometimes, she thinks she cages herself up to protect the people of Denocte. Other times, she thinks it's to protect herself from them. Out, where hearts beat and there is a constant stomp of another's feet, where hopes are as pungent on the air as flowers, where smoke never leaves because there's always another story to tell, is a dangerous place full of emotions, aspirations, disappointment and pain. While she's accustomed to it more now than when she arrived some odd years ago, it still never loses its novelty, the sheer newness and freshness of it, of being caught and so entwined in another's life, she's left breathless and aching again. And again. And again.
Lately, since Michael's return and their talk, then their trip to the orchard, and so on, he's scarcely left her side. Wherever she turns, his pale face is there with its soft, sad eyes and sweet smile, another sweet in hand in hopes that she'll eat it. Sometimes, Moira does. Other times, it grows dusty with his hopes that her appetite has fully returned. It hasn't.
Since her trip to the Night Order, Moira seems different, both more and less herself, more assured, less dependent, perhaps. She hasn't quite returned to eating as many sweets as before, still has her sullen, thoughtful silences as she ghosts around the palace and finds respite in the walls of the library, but she's slowly coming to. Like waking from a foggy dream, her eyes clear week by week, her skin a little less drawn, her stars twinkling a little more. They always seem to flicker and glow no matter what she does.
It's a side effect of Weaving, she tells herself. It's part of her immortality now, too.
Somewhere, Neerja lays beside a fire down in the kitchens, watching the bustle of the world, enjoying the scraps tossed her way by their cook and her many helpers. She's taken up lurking there when Moira is in the library. They don't mind not being crushed against one another's side as long as Neerja can still hear Moira's heart beating. When she leaves, the tiger grows restless if her cub is unaccompanied.
Today, the Emissary turns to the Armas. There's always another body out there waiting to be found. She knows so many would choose to walk them even at their most perilous of times. And she knows that she cannot leave them out to freeze.
The phoenix blows a breath against her window, brushes a small star into it white space, and at last turns away from the view of the snow. Grabbing a scarf from precariously stacked shelves full of paints, books and cloths both large and small, she leaves her chambers to head into the night. Outside her own four walls, there are many who say hello, who greet her with warmth or caution. Some still don't know what to say to her, how to treat her since she's returned. It's all the same and she nods her head like a good daughter of Denocte, offering warm greetings, offering praise. At last, she's through the front doors and feels the cold pierce her heart as it once did Estelle's.
Moira doesn't let it slow her, doesn't let it stop her. Instead, she builds a wall of light, a sphere to stave off the snow that would fall and tangle in her hair that's braided back today and draped with the starry charms she carries in her hair and strung through her wings on a normal day. The chains tinkle lightly, laughing as faeries do. She does not walk as mortals walk, she walks as a goddess and eats up the miles between herself and the mountains. By the time she reaches them, the sun's first rays are beginning to turn the sky pink and pale blue, fingers streaming light and mystery into the world. Eyes narrow against it, for she is not one of his children to see despite its brightness or dimness.
And there, just along a ridge with pine to the left and slightly below, a body rises like a waifish bear. If she were not so accustomed to her kind despite their colors, perhaps she would think it an injured animal. Instead, Moira's jaw tightens and she goes further yet, dancing over the slippery slopes as a ballerina on stage. She reaches Luvena dry with red cheeks from the cold, her golden eyes devour her softly.
