[EVENT] Each One a Treasure

[Manon]

the girl with a dagger heart

The Steppe was one of her least favorite places. The vast spaces called to those who stood unabashed in the open, beneath the wild elements of nature and ready to face an opponent in battle; even in the night without the sun to illuminate their world in golden light, the moon was equally unobstructed and offered no secrecy beneath its watchful, waiting gaze. Shadows clung to the far-off outskirts in the arms of sparse trees and divots in mountain-sides, and it was only there that she could find herself at comfort. She was a creature of midnight darkness, closed off alleyways and chipped cobblestone--she didn't belong on a war field where others played by the rules. She followed none; she only ever listen to her own whims.

And that day, those whims told her to stop by the Steppe. A hum filled the air, rose the hairs on her copper-stained body, kissed the path down her spine and told her to go.

Her multi-colored eyes were set on Solterra as it was. Perhaps a slight detour would do her no harm...

What once were languid grasses were suddenly turned glistening crystals. They rivaled the beauty of her own upon her twig crown as the thin stalks bent in the hushed breeze of winter's breath. The sun smiled down on them and they turned face-up to welcome the warmth of the rays (for even though they became inanimate, solid things they still acted as any would), while her sharp-cut gaze soaked the scene in. It stretched the lengths of the territory and she moved amidst them as a gem among gems, rivaling the elegance they emanated.

But the atmosphere felt heavy there--while she hid in dark places and shielded herself from being found, whispers of the ex-Day Queen's body was said to have lain torn apart between all the dried blood from battles past. Her own silver-touched blood was spilled and as it sat to sink into the earth she was never seen again. Manon might have been a woman of rough edges and knives that cut through steel, but her heart still beat for the forsaken (a child version of her, lost in threatening marketplace streets, not allowed to return home without a prize for her efforts).

So she stood there with crystal-cut flowers brushing against slender legs, mind drawn taunt with some sense of loss for someone she didn't even know save by name, by biography.

The slight thrum in the atmosphere--magic, she knew--cradled her in the clearing, and she began to hum a somber, lamenting song she learned from one of the tavern-keepers as a girl.

Nights are numb, days are dead
Tried to fix you, broke myself instead

CREDITS

***STAFF EDIT
@Manon has rolled a 5! She has been awarded +1EXP point for interacting with the flowers.