[AW] close the door, confess your sins

[Antiope]

i have a hunger deep within me i can't shake

I have been many things in this long, endless life of mine. A warrior, a killer, a lover, a mother—a leader. I have been all of these things but beyond that something else, something other. Never quite mortal, always on the cusp of divinity. A little predatory.

I come down from the mountains now like a wraith; like I am finally following some invisible thread that has been pulling me since I disappeared into them all that time ago. I am not alone. When I pass beneath the Arch, there is more than one set of new prints in the well-worn snow-covered path. There is a beast beside me, white as marble, as tall as I am. Fylax does not say much, but observes everything.

I come down from the mountains like a wraith, but there is no old home here for me to return to. I may know Denocte as well as I know each bead woven into my hair but the world is foreign now. The mountains have been home for too long, the quiet, the isolation. I am still growing used to the feeling of Fylax always being at the end of that strange, magical tether between us. I am always expecting them to simply disappear.

It is early, and cold, and the court is barely awake. I am always awake—I have always been awake. I draw the blue fabric scarf of my armor over my head, twist it about my neck. The ends flutter in a sharp, biting wind. A few faces pass. Most pay me no mind, but a few, oh a few glance once, and then twice, and their eyes widen and their mouths gape open.

Some begin to whisper. I pretend not to hear them, as I continue to weave through the streets. I have been many things in my infernally eternal life. Once-fighter, once-savior, once-executioner, once-caregiver. Once-queen. I have not forgotten, and neither have they.

"Speaking."

∞ | Open!