only one will stand at the end of it all
It is the middle of the day but you wouldn’t know it for the thick cover that the canopy provides in Viride, blocking out the sunlight and creating a dim, indirect glow. It is spring, and the forest is alive with noise and new growth. Shrubs sprout their soft green leaves and new grass shoots up underhoof as I walk along a well-worn path. The trees have already soaked up the sun’s newfound warmth and are thriving high above my head.
Viride is a different sort of wilderness to the mountains I have grown used to. In the mountains I feel as a phantom—nothing better than a wandering, soulless wraith. But here, among the forest, I could almost convince myself of being something less incorporeal. Here with my stripes, as I weave between the wide trunks of the trees, I can almost believe that I am still the tigress I once was when I first stepped off a boat and onto the docks of this land.
Do not be fooled; I am still feral and fighting the violence that hibernates in the empty spaces between my bones. There is still a storm-sea darkness in my sapphire eyes that I cannot be rid of no matter how hard I have tried. They are as quick and sharp as a blade, and my tongue as untameable a beast as the lustfulness of my magic. I am coming to find that I will never be anything but what the gods made me to be, even when I try to hide her behind court laws and civil conversation and righteous politics.
I do not know where I am going, only that the walls of the Night Court were suffocating and damning after being away for so long. I could not continue to wander the streets being stared at like I have returned from the dead. I would rather be elsewhere, in the unfamiliar, surrounded by the unknown. There is not much of that left in Novus for me, unfortunately, but there are less watchful eyes outside Denocte. Less watchful eyes in this forest.
I could almost convince myself that I am home, here. If it were a little more humid, if the plant-life were a little more exotic. I could almost expect to round the trunk of a particularly wide tree and find myself standing at the entrance to a familiar small village, looking into the eyes of a familiar people. A people I too let down, at one point. I am always walking away, and finding new places to destroy.
"Speaking."
Viride is a different sort of wilderness to the mountains I have grown used to. In the mountains I feel as a phantom—nothing better than a wandering, soulless wraith. But here, among the forest, I could almost convince myself of being something less incorporeal. Here with my stripes, as I weave between the wide trunks of the trees, I can almost believe that I am still the tigress I once was when I first stepped off a boat and onto the docks of this land.
Do not be fooled; I am still feral and fighting the violence that hibernates in the empty spaces between my bones. There is still a storm-sea darkness in my sapphire eyes that I cannot be rid of no matter how hard I have tried. They are as quick and sharp as a blade, and my tongue as untameable a beast as the lustfulness of my magic. I am coming to find that I will never be anything but what the gods made me to be, even when I try to hide her behind court laws and civil conversation and righteous politics.
I do not know where I am going, only that the walls of the Night Court were suffocating and damning after being away for so long. I could not continue to wander the streets being stared at like I have returned from the dead. I would rather be elsewhere, in the unfamiliar, surrounded by the unknown. There is not much of that left in Novus for me, unfortunately, but there are less watchful eyes outside Denocte. Less watchful eyes in this forest.
I could almost convince myself that I am home, here. If it were a little more humid, if the plant-life were a little more exotic. I could almost expect to round the trunk of a particularly wide tree and find myself standing at the entrance to a familiar small village, looking into the eyes of a familiar people. A people I too let down, at one point. I am always walking away, and finding new places to destroy.
![[Image: 13716916_Rc8f5hGvZkB3cYP.png]](https://file.toyhou.se/images/13716916_Rc8f5hGvZkB3cYP.png)
a war is calling
the tides are turned
the tides are turned
