TORIELLE
It's only me who wants to wrap around your dreams
Breathe… I have to concentrate on the thought, letting it fill my very being and become nothing but the breath in my lungs. I close my eyes, dazzled by the setting sun, the hues of pink struck through with tendrils of lilac as it dips below the gentle slope of the horizon. I focus on the breath as the heat of the day is gently blown away by the evening breeze, cooling my pelt. It fills my bodice near to bursting and I hold it there, counting to myself slowly before I deliberately let go just as slowly. I’ve been caught in a whirlwind of thoughts lately and the allure of a warm twilight has always had a pleasant effect on me. I breathe again with the same deliberateness, the afterglow of the sun slowly fading from behind my lids to be replaced with a welcoming darkness. I branch out my thoughts beyond the breath, stretching out to my limbs and into the earth, feeling the heat of the long grass against my pistons and how they sway with each subtle breath of the wind. I listen intently to the sounds of the night creatures slowly waking from their daytime slumber, stretching the sleep from their weary limbs and going about their night business.
I open my eyes and lift them to the darkening sky, the lavish blue colour not so unlike the colour of my own deep pools. Stars begin to twinkle, first a few here, then a few there, slowly cutting a path across the clear evening like a congregation of fireflies. They blink and giggle and whisper their secrets to each other. A smile finds its way to my lips and contentedness wraps itself around me like a well loved cloak. This land may be still yet new to me, and its denizens may be as varied and colourful as those who made their living outside of the temple walls, but there was still this constant thing. The rising and falling of the sun and his loving partner and opposite in the moon. The changes of the days and season were, thankfully, something I could rely on to be as simple and natural as they were in every other way of my former life.
Former… The thought brings with it a deep ache, the realization that I would never return to those that I love. That I may never hear the voice of my Goddess as I once knew her- or worse, that she has abandoned me completely. It has been these creeping feelings that have plagued me the last several months. I had finally come to terms with the reality of Novus. The scar on my neck had proven that to me firmly, as did the encounter with the sea mare that had put it there. Still, I could not be troubled to hold anger against her, or the incident. It had woken me to the truth of the situation. Before I had been lost, still wondering when I would return to my study halls. When I might see my masters and my students. When I might tell of the strangeness that had occurred to me, of the in-between place I had traveled in for so long. But after her words to me, spoken in an earnestness that I could not see as false, I had come to understand that none of those things would occur, no matter how much I may have wanted them.
I was comfortable for a time, delighted with the idea of creating a life in a new place, but there was still an ache in me that longed for home. For the loves and friendships and connections I had made there.
The souls I had so far met had all done a great deal for my growth, but none had done anything to comfort me. And I realized, staring into the starry sky that comfort is what I needed more than anything. But how to find it?
art by the-day-of-shadow character by scapeh table by sunny
