 I S O R A T H THE LONE WOLF DIES // THE PACK SURVIVES
The fields were always beautiful, a sea of emeralds carefully tendered to by gentle wind, forever glistening with the dew as the sun began his glorious ascent. He visited the rolling veridian every morning, as per routined demanded, leathery wings outstretched to ride the morning winds. These moments allowed him clarity, one glorious moment of seeing the World through eyes that did not find grey and lies, free to experience it as he had before the World saw to rend it to nothing more than ash. Before he'd left Sunysia, before he'd won that wretched tournament and set himself upon a path that lead to ruin. Ruin had made him beautiful, opened his eyes to the reality of mistakes and experience, but it had cursed him too. Made him bitter, even if he smiled and laughed, there had been a terrible strain in his chest as each lilted breath of laughter left his lips. A painful rattle in his ribcage for each time he allowed himself to experience something good. A constant careful reminder that for every bit of light he let smooth over the wounds, something dark and terrible would come clawing out of the abyss, ready to tear the cut open once more. So he found solace in nature, the one thing which had not betrayed him in one form or another. Let the wind tousel his silver strands and ripple across his wings and allowed his mind to be free. Here there was no one, not in the morning, save for a few who too, had their morning rituals. The Dusk Court had proven to be understanding, and those of the Night Court too. Everyone had their demons, and not everyone had learned to dance with them. He had climbed through the mountains, explored the vast halls of the Court and watched the storms with strangers who he might someday call friends. He had whispered promises to be better than their forebearers with them, the rain and thunder their witness. Would they have let him whisper it too, if they had known his story? The King without a Crown, a stallion who had had everything and then nothing in the next breath. The Crownless whose legacy was ash, embers and the bitter taste of betrayal? Novus was not like Vectaeryn though, neither had the other lands been, with the glorious pillars of Sunsyia reaching toward the sky, the howling blizzard gales of the wailing mountains whose visage was alight with blue flame, or the smoking coast with it's red sands and brightly coloured ships. He missed it dearly, and he knew if he had never left he might have had something good. There were no dragons greet him as he took his morning flight, his mother's great leviathans swirling and dancing upon the smoking sea or his sibling's own mighty creatures lazily roosting on the cliffs. Instead, there was a ghost. A ghost of rose petals and green eyes, painted in the pastel hues of dawn. For one fleeting moment he believed he might have let his own grief swallow him this morning, lost to the abyss finally after so long fighting against it. “I want to see him..” It was his voice which felled him, brought to him on swift winds, snapped him from the wandering of his own mental state. His wing's lost their momentum and he nearly dropped from the sky to the ground in a crumpled heap, a star pierced by a goddess' arrow. An arrow made to save him, or to finish off what had been started all those years ago? He remembered that petite frame. A vision really, a fond if slightly faded memory. The last wisp of fire on a candle wick, or dragon flame upon a pyre. Isorath had never clung to something so desperately in his life. A piece of himself, a piece of his past. A piece of home. Something good. A barely smouldering ember in the cage of his heart sparked, flooding his icy veins with warmth. The Prince landed with all the grace of a newborn deer, something he would chide himself for as the hour grew late, long legs suddenly shaky as he worked himself into a canter with his wings outstretched; the flowing train of his cloak more of a hindrance than a help. "Jude?" His name is choked off his tongue, hardly coherent and legible to even the most sensitive ears. But he forced it to carry above the sound of the ocean and the bird song, desperately hopeful the petite Kirin would hear him. Hear him and respond, and not turn into a spectre, a maddening figment of his worn imagination. "Jude is that you?" |
@Jude
