T H A L E I A
SEAWATER LIKE SUGAR ON HER LIPS -
She swore, that even at the top of the lonely mountain, deep in the heart of the temple, that the sounds of crashing waves reached her ears. The lull of the sea a sun-sweet song, but instead of open water, only the stars glimmer to her. Silent and beautiful and leaving all of her hopes and dreams unanswered. After all, she was not a daughter of the Night.. but of the great blue Sea.
What are you?
The stranger's question shifts her reality, her focus, as she blinks away the sorrow lining her eyes in silver. Her eyes only look downcast, heavy lids falling over her gaze. I am — I am... Oxygen choked her. The mountain air robbed her of breath. She was ocean fae. A hailed Blue princess in a kingdom in another world. A Takarian pirate queen. But who was she without her crew? Her ship? Her empire? Her mate? Their fates decaying on the ocean floor of the Unknown Sea surrounding this new continent. Every breath that touched her lips tasting of rot and ash and dust.
She was nothing. Not anymore.
I am no god.
"Perhaps not," she replies, soft and wilting underneath the weight of the ache on her shoulders. The night breeze tickling her mane, her forelock, brushing it to the side of her face in a lover's caress. She failed to keep her sorrow at bay, a single drop of silver falling from her eyes. Her eyelids fluttering close, blinking the tears away. Perhaps this man was not a god, and she was not so many things anymore, but together they stood at the highest peak in this land. Separately they had climbed the stone stairway to the heavens, the stars around them their only company. But now they stood in the shadows; two strangers with each their own agony and triumphs and questions and answers. If the gods would not listen to them, then who? Who will answer to their prayers?
I can listen. For what it's worth.
A ghost of a smile brushes her lips, just enough, as she raises her eyes to his. Pupil-less pools of silver boring into his own of richest obsidian. How the shadows of the night dare not pierce his eyes, despite the starlight that glows along the edges of his frame. She is curious, and grateful, despite how the world suddenly feels to rest on her delicate shoulders. How every part of her burns for death, for release, for answers that might never come. "Have you ever wished for Death?" she asks, not entirely expecting a reply in return. Her eyes glaze over, flickering to take in the piles of trinkets at each pillar's base. Wondering their names, the gods and goddesses of this realm.. and who might be able to grant her a shred of her greatest wish.
"I mourn for those I believe to have passed to the Heavenly Seas," she explains, the memory of that night flashing before her eyes. The heavy smoke of emerald fire still scorching the thin paper of her lungs, licking the dapples of her skin, drowning her until there is nothing left. With a sharp inhale, it fades, but lingers at the edge of her reality, threatening to overwhelm her into oblivion. "I wish to know if finding them is a fool's dream. How do I know if they are still alive?"
Her heart cracks, her entire body shifting to take in the stars glimmering through the open mouth of the temple. Leia simply shakes her crown, her horn falling to brush a vial of pink sand at the foot of one of the swirling pillars. "I'm nothing. Not anymore, not without them."
@
"Thaleia speech."
