He waits throughout the night, his eyes turned ever towards the horizon. The beach is quiet, save for the rumbling of that distant land and the crashing of the waves against the shore. Occasionally whispers break out in the darkness, rumors flying back and forth like wildfire in the night, sparking anew with each explosion across the ocean.
Through it all Po is silent.
He hardly dares to breathe, let alone speak; only the beating of his heart and the roaring of his blood adds to the fray. He waits and he watches, with both dread and expectation.
When the sun finally breaks forth through the darkness, he isn’t sure if he was to sing or sob. He lets out his breath in a shuddering sigh, and for the first time since his watch began, he moves. The waves are cool and welcoming as he steps into the sea, fish surging between his legs and sandpipers circling overhead. His wings are submerged, the water lapping at his knees like a hungry beast, like it wants to pull him down into its depths.
But to protect, or to drown him? He can see fins in the waves, bony spines protruding like hardened rainbows each time the water breaks, massive creatures who disturb the water as they swim past. Ipomoea is not afraid of them, although he knows he should be; his magic is a sweet lullaby in his veins, promising him he’s safe (as if safety were anything more than a fallacy), promising him…
He wonders then what he would find, if the waves succeeded and he let them take him.
Was there a hidden castle, where something other than equines reigned supreme over all the other sea creatures? Or would he find only kelp forests and coral reefs, endless mazes to lose himself in? Would he find wonders beyond compare, or only death? He imagined the shoal surrounding him even now would come to his aid, were he in need, but he supposed there was only one way to find out.
It’s not kelp his hooves find, but a bridge of blackened stone. It leads him out of the water, his hooves clacking and ringing. Up and up and up, the mystery stretches onward, beckoning him forward. The sea crashes below, and again he glimpses something green and scaled hiding beneath the water, a glittering eye that blinks and watches.
He blinks back.
The sun rises to his left, feeble rays struggling to break through the clouds as the child of dawn walks across a bridge blacker than the night before. On and on and on, he walks until his legs beg for relief, until his hooves tender and sore and he has to force each step. He walks until he nearly loses hope, until he’s all but ready to give up and return to Denocte.
But before he does, the path ends as suddenly as it had started.
Another test? Odet questions, his voice quiet in the back of his mind as he hiddles into the Appaloosa’s neck.
A wall of ivy blocks their path, swallowing the sky and gleaming in the early morning light with a hundred captured dew drops. Bright white berries, as white as pearls, break up the dark green expanse. It’s only when he looks closer, when he leans in so close he can nearly taste the salty of the vines, that he sees the way they swell and pulse, the way tiny beads of light seem to dwell within each fruit belly.
He lets out a sigh, his breath and body shaking in the wind.
Another test, he whispers back.
But he stands there a minute longer, unsure if he should be waiting or fleeing.
But waiting for what, and fleeing from whom? His mind is begging to know the answer, inching ever closer to the wall.
He is still not entirely certain his magic has not somehow caused this. It sits in his chest like a wounded animal, bloated with its own importance, lashing out whenever he tries to control it -- why wouldn’t it decide to somehow create this disaster of burning ash and flowing lava, why wouldn’t it engineer a volcano rising hungrily towards the sky?
It is, as Septimus had told him, complete nonsense -- and yet.
He paces along the bridge with his tail tucked tightly along his haunches, the only sound his lightly-labored breathing and the movement of the chain that dangled along the side of his face, , and he cannot help but still blame himself for everything that had happened and everything that would happen yet. With every step his hooves click against the hardened lava beneath them and his gaze is turned out towards the horizon, where the bridge stretched until he could no longer see it through the fog -- what was lurking out there past the horizon?
He will be brave today.
One step, then two -- and then he takes off into a nervous trot towards the end of the world, his hooves beating a staccato rhythm against the stone.
I KNOW BY HEART THE SALT AND SMOKE ELIXIR OF YOUR NECK AND FINGERS
The end of the world does not scare her.
Angharad is not allowed to be afraid because she is not allowed to be her own. Her own anything. All of her is formed from perfect clay, her eyes sweet jewels, her heart a tough stone, and Una would frown upon her if that clay or jewel or stone were to feel anything but duty. Even the thought of it makes Angharad tense. She cannot afford to be afraid — to be anything but obedient — and so when the first tongue of smoke fills the sky, black lapping up the blue like a dog, she is not perturbed. Only confused.
It reminds her a little of her birth. When she crawled from the carcass, a maggot from a piece of overripe fruit, the sky was filled with smoke like this. Smoke so thick it lay across the ground like a blanket, twisted its thick fingers around the bodies and the tree trunks, choked and ran like watery silt into her lungs. But it had not burned. Angharad was made in fire and almost certainly will die in it. She wonders, as she watches the plumes of black smog rise like spires into the bright-red day, if this particular explosion is nothing more than Una calling her to the grave.
Then she realizes how selfish that thought is, and briefly admonishes herself for it before starting toward the sea.
There is already a crowd forming on the cliffs; she can see it, a writhing dark blob against the sea as more and more filter in toward the volcano. Angharad is not sure what they expect to find except for a mirror to the end of the world, but that is not her problem. She is only here to gather information. To watch closely. To look, with sharp bright eyes, for aureate skin, for pure-white hair, for a wreath of perfect gold around a neck that begs to be snapped — Bexley.
Angharad is too new to know anything of Acton, of Raum, of the war that brews between Solterra and its god, live there though she might. She is too young to imagine what it might feel like to die. She does not fear the way the air has grown dark around her, nor the way it tugs at her hair with a hard, hot breath; it only makes her feel a little more alive, stirs the pulse in her chest to a more rapid song.
Up ahead the ocean starts to tangle with a wall of ivy, and Angharad strides toward it as if she is sure it will bend down before here. Under her feet, where her hair brushes the ground and shimmers with bare gold, the ground seems to curl into an even darker black, as if rotting away under her magic weight.
He is not there when the smoke finally clears. He is far, far away, in a shady corner of the library where the morning light for days has been stained orange by the curtain of volcanic discharge. On the table before him is a small mountain of books, carefully balanced next to a much smaller mountain of scrolls. He had been reading (with almost no break for food, water, or sleep) everything he could get his hooves on related to historical volcanic activity in Novus. Not by some misguided idea that he could stop whatever was going on, or make any difference in it whatsoever, but because research was simply what he did when he did not know what else to do.
So he read, and he learned, and after a few days he knew more about volcanoes than he ever expected he would. Also after a few days the air cleared, not just in Delumine but on the southern horizon as well.
Mateo had not meant to travel to the site of the eruption (he had been doing too much traveling recently, despite the borders still being closed) but he awoke early one morning, earlier than the birds, and the sky was calling to him. He took to the sky and followed the wind-- or at least he thought he was following the wind. Maybe, and in hindsight this seems more likely, his heart had decided its destination and his wings simply followed.
He flies south until dawn creeps across the land and the smell of the ocean fills his nose. Below him, illuminated in pale shades of orange and yellow and blue, a strange bridge rises from the water, a long and twisted hand reaching out and away from Novus, farther than the eye can see, even an eye airbound. In the growing light he sees strange shapes in the water. The morning grows brighter and the shapes take form-- tentacles, fins, clouds of ink-- and without second thought he turns around.
He turns sharply and flies and flies and does not stop until he's home again, miles away from the death that lies waiting at sea.
Something brought her back to the shore by morning. Perhaps it was concern, but mostly curiosity. It sounded like the world had stopped cracking and creaking out there, so it was time to see what the hell it had all been about.
Oddly enough, you could no longer see the island or the volcano. In its place was a long stretch of bridge made from lava that seemed to go off to nowhere. It gave Morrighan more questions than answers, but she felt drawn to it. There was a small bit of hope that maybe, somehow, this bridge would lead her back to Ourania, but she knew that thinking was way too far fetched. In reality, if she chose to walk down this path, she could very well be walking to her death.
And yet, she walked on anyway.
This was probably the stupidest thing she had done yet, but the further she walked, the more determined she was. Maybe she could come back and say that she braved the weird ass bridge and lived to tell the tale. Or she really was going to die and she'd be a complete idiot. Well, only one way to find out.
As she walked, she caught glimpses of creatures swimming around in the sea. Her eyes narrowed and she could feel her hooves getting hotter with each step in warning. Although she was ready to attack, part of her felt the nerves creeping in. There was no telling what those creatures were or if simply heat would be enough to deter them from eating her alive. Thankfully, it seemed they were not breaking the surface so at least they didn't seem too interested in her (yet).
After what felt like hours, Morrighan finally arrived at what she would assume was the end. It still didn't seem like an island, but it was hard to tell exactly what it is. One thing was for sure, it was no Ourania. All that could be seen was ivy- all the way to the horizon and it seemed all the way to the sea as well. It made no sense how there could be so much, but then it was no ordinary ivy. Upon closer look, the plant was glowing and the leaves themselves were dark, almost black rather than green. There were berries also, but there was something off about them. Morrighan could've sworn she saw them pulsing and it made her stomach turn.
I'M FINDING, WITH MY FINDER, THE ANTLERS PATHS LEADING FROM MY HEAD
Septimus certainly finds this development intriguing.
Novus was certainly unlike his homeland, or at least it had been; where the woods he was raised in were ever-changing, prone to shift this way or that or grow in the most bizarre and fascinating ways as soon as you turned your eyes, where paths and hedges and vast swathes of vines were apt to grow and wither in the space of moments, where the tree would branch and twist without any sense of reason, most of the lands he had visited afterwards were simpler, more contained. Particularly when it thought to steal his magic from him, he had assumed that Novus was like the rest of them – dry and methodical.
However, as he strides out onto the shiny, black-lava bridge, Septimus feels strangely at home. His strides are fluid and eager, unhindered by the weight of the air on his wings; he’d tried, before walking, to fly, but the strange, watery quality of the wind against his feathers had kept him grounded.
This was clearly dangerous. (If he fell into the sea, his water-logged wings would be quick to drag him down, and there was no telling what sort of creature could have created this spectacle besides.) Septimus does not care.
He starts down the bridge, marveling at all the strange – and wonderful – things that he sees. Jutting ridges of pearl, bizarrely linear spires of marble, serpentine curls of seaweed, spirals of shells and oysters, indented into the ink-black lava as though they were fossilized…and the bridge itself was a mystery, changing with each stretch, endless fathom after endless fathom. In some places, it felt too thin and glass-like to walk, as though it might shatter beneath the weight of his hooves, but he kept walking; the sea frothed and bit beneath his hooves, and, within it, he saw flashes of writhing tentacles and sharp, sharp teeth, hundreds of them. He saw them in flashes – bloody red, like flame, or amethyst, or-
(Perhaps he smiled at the sea monsters, as they beat and begged at the bridge; perhaps he smiled.)
One passage seemed to have grow scales, which were nebulous and glittering in coloration; they reminded Septimus of the night sky. The next…the next was like home, and it seemed to stretch on forever. Flowers grew from stone, and great cogs ticked furiously, all out of tune and out of time. (But whose were they attuned to? He didn’t know.) Things split and shifted and were reborn anew, from the wrongness of blooming feathers that seemed to sprout from no-where to stretches of swirling sand that didn’t seem to be bobbed by any wind that he could feel. But for Septimus, this was horribly right, to look away and see the world altered entirely when he looked back.
He would have remained in place to sketch a while (for he’d naturally taken his supplies, seawater be damned), but Septimus was eager to reach the end of the bridge.
And there it is. Interesting.
An endless wall of ivy (perhaps) that stretched out in all directions. It beckons to him, so he goes to it – hooves clacking against the smooth lava. He passes by others, heedless of their caution, and darts right up to the vines, eager as a dashing minnow; up close, the vines are even more fascinating, sprouting little berries that pulsed and beat like hearts. He’s tempted to eat one, but he isn’t quite that foolhardy, but he does stare at them longingly for a moment, green eyes narrowing to slits. He had the faint impression of a breeze, warm and soothing (or unnerving), from beyond the ivy.
But, considering that he can only reach the vines, he decides to focus on them instead.
Perhaps he should take a sample.
septimus, encountering obviously-suspicious berries: I want to eat them and it is only my 1% survival instinct that is stopping me from doing so posthaste || alice notley, [woman with antlers] "Speech!"
STAFF EDIT***
@Septimus has rolled a 3! He has been awarded +80 signos.
AND RARELY, IF THE WOOD ACCEPTS THE BLADE WITHOUT CONDITIONSthe two pieces keep their balance in spite of the blow❃please tag Septimus! contact is encouraged, short of violence
let's make gods out of these hollow corpses. i'm tired of the weight of mortality, i want
What was catastrophe?
That was the word, on the lips of Denocte’s residents, screamed and whispered and shared with the feverish, possessed nature of the afraid. There’s been a catastrophe. A disaster. A calamity. The synonyms streamed in, torrid in a way unique to fear; heavy, and heated, and ardent in the way only the doomed are ardent. Her reactions were subpar, in comparison. The fear and eyes, white at the rims, was met with Boudika’s polite dispassion. That is horrible, she would repeat, again and again, to those who told her, to those dancers in her guild that fluttered like peacocks and birds of paradise, chattering the hot gossip and their hot despair. She heard the rumours in the streets, in the guild, everywhere she went—and each story was different.
But Boudika was not a peacock. Boudika was not a bird of paradise. And so, on the third day, she ventured toward the coastline. She had refused to visit the shore after her encounter with the water horse, not trusting herself to the beautiful, and horrendous, melody of the waves. But Boudika could shun the sea no longer; she had to feast her eyes upon it, she had to know what this catastrophe was.
Some days ago, upon the beach, her eyes had feasted upon it. At first, it appeared an affront to nature; but simultaneously, it was nature. The volcano had existed upon the horizon, billowing ash, made bright only where the flesh of the beast ran with magma. Dark with ash, the sky seemed more like the land, as though two parallel worlds were stacked one on top of the other. What few creatures remained, days after the eruption, continued to scramble toward higher ground.
Now, the volcano was absent. Nothing was left of it, she heard, except for a pathway of hardened lava—made strange. It was marked by arcane symbols, the threat of deep sea-creatures, bizarre fruits, and more—or so she heard. The oddity of the story peaked her curiosity more than the volcano had and so, Boudika’s second odyssey to the sea had begun, to witness for herself the strange tales of the Night Courts residents.
The sight of the pathway dropped her stomach, as though she were falling from some great height. Her heart was in her throat, not with fear, no—but with the primordial sense of wrongness the sight evoked, which was borderline disgust. Her father had once showed her one of the small, dark vipers that existed on her island—but it had been malformed, hatched with two heads. What should have made it twice as deadly, instead, made it cumbersome and sad. Where one head would pull, the other would pull harder in the other direction, until it gave way. Although the of the path was drastically different, it evoked the same sensation—and she could not look away.
Boudika did not dare venture out to sea; she stood there for a day, and listened to the stories of others as they reemerged from their journey. But she could not trust this strange magic; even more, she could not trust herself.
That was the more terrifying of the two, certainly.
Once, she stepped a few yards out along the cracked lava path and froze. What if she heard the call somewhere near the alleged ivy wall? What if the sea sensed her trepid, wanting heart and pulled her down beneath the waves? What if somewhere the calls of ghostly water horses sounded? There were too many dangers, and staring out a the vastness of the ocean with something foreign and magical staring back, Boudika no longer knew what to believe. Within her existed a high keening, the song of a lonely and desolate species; it was a cry she could not dare utter, knowing with the whole of herself it would go unanswered.
Or maybe, it won't. And that why she retreated back to the relative safety of the sand, where she stood as the sun ran it's normal track across the sky.
The wind whipped at her face, the tide came in and out, and the beach remained a strange animation of its former self. The birds had returned, and fish splashed in the shallow waves--but there was something inherently wrong in the shadow of the pathway. The wrongness returned her mind to the question that had been haunting her since the volcano: what was catastrophe? Her thoughts filled with the fire in Denocte, with a herd of water horses charging down a village street, teeth gnashing at a young girl’s face. Boudika saw blood on cobblestones; trident tips gleaming in sunlight; her father burning on a pyre. Boudika saw a scar, twisted bright and pink around a flank and a limp that would last forever; she saw Orestes before she knew him as Orestes, only the Prince of a Thousand Tides, standing alone when she overcame him. Boudika saw him in a prison cell; she saw him burning in iron chains; she saw his head sinking below the waves.
Perhaps catastrophe was being the last of something.
Perhaps catastrophe was extinction.
She had asked Orestes once, what weighed on him most, during their shared days of prison. What did it mean, she had wondered, to be one of the last of his kind? “There was only so much I could do to fix it, to repair the damage; when I was born, I was the last of the Reincarnates. I was the last Prince of my people, and I am not only their Prince, but their Memory. So I knew. I already knew, our fate. I already hold the memories and fears of those of us who have been enslaved or destroyed. And there were so few of us. I was the last hope, which will always be the greatest privilege of my life… but being the last hope also means you are charged with the greatest despair.”
The sun was setting, now. And the sky horizon looked like a smiling throat, cut by sharp teeth, bleeding across the waters.
It was only then that Boudika turned from the beach, her mind a chaotic jumble of images, of violence, of shadows.
This was not a catastrophe, she had decided. Whatever it was. An apocalypse was systematic, genocidal--or if not that, then anarchic and absolute. An apocalypse may come for some of them; for most of them; but she had resolved herself, it would not come for her. And how are you so certain? She asked herself, in a dark and bitter voice.
Somewhere along the way, she had a debt to pay. And perhaps the only way to pay it was to suffer.
It was only then, when the sky had gone dark, that Boudika left the beach and the bridge. She knew taking it would lead her no where. she knew taking it would mean she would never return.
TO TEAR IT FROM MY VEINS UNTIL I BLEED SILVER AND GOLD, UNTIL I CAN FEEL SOMETHING AGAIN, LET'S CARVE OUR NAMES IN A HEART ON THE IVORY PILLARS OF HISTORY. MAYBE ONE DAY THEY'LL CHANT OUR NAMES. MAYBE ONE DAY THEY'LL PAINT US INTO CONSTELLATIONS AND NAME GALAXIES AFTER US. MAYBE WE TOO SHALL BE ETERNAL.
Much to Hāsta's disapproval, the pair had returned to the shore the next day.
The crow wanted nothing to do with it given how dangerous it was when the volcano was erupting. Corr insisted since something big was happening and she wanted to know what it was. She had already gone back and told some of the Dusk Court, but now she needed to see what came of it. The earth didn't crack and come apart for nothing. She didn't receive a message from The Tower card for nothing either.
So when they arrived to see no island but a strange bridge shrouded in clouds that stretched for miles, Corr felt confused. All the smoke and ash had cleared to reveal this unstable looking bridge of lava and who knew where it led to. Before she could lift up into the air again, Hāsta spoke through their telepathy, her voice frantic.
"Please tell me you're not actually going to go out there? We have no idea where this bridge goes to. We could die."
The mare rolled her eyes and turned to the crow now perched on her shoulder. "Maybe, but this bridge appeared for a reason. Do you not remember the card I drew back at the festival? I don't get these visions often but when I do, I can't ignore them."
"Sure, there might be a message in that, but that doesn't mean you have to go out there yourself. It just means someone else can and we can find out if they ever come back…"
"Are you sure you're a crow because you sure are a scaredy cat. We can fly ahead and scout the area from above. If it looks too dangerous, we can circle back around. Does that sound good? Or, of course, you can stay here and wait." She smiled at the thought. As much as Hāsta complained about Corr's choice of adventures, she never stayed behind even though she was never forced to come along.
This was why the crow didn't respond back and so the mare took to the sky again, kicking up some sand as she took flight. Hāsta took to the air again too, sticking close to Corr's side and looking extremely nervous. There wasn't much to be scared of since they were capable of flying and didn't have to use the bridge. However, the further they flew, the more danger she saw. Below them were creatures circling in the ocean. They came close to the bridge, but never completely broke the surface. You could see just enough of their fins and tentacles going through the water and it sent a chill down Corr's spine.
"See? Danger! It's luring us to our deaths!"
"Well, just don't fall down!"
But the longer they flew, the more their wings grew tired. It seemed all there was to see was clouds, bridge and ocean, but no actual end. Now Corr was starting to get worried.
"Let's go back, this is pointless."
"We've come this far though, now I'm just determined." "Will you stop being stubborn for once and just think? This was a stupid idea and we're going to get killed. You call me a scaredy cat, but haven't you also heard of the term 'curiosity killed the cat?'"
Hāsta had a point, but the mare still wanted to make it to the end. She wanted to say she did it and also learn about the mysteries that were out here. There was so much of Novus she had yet to explore and this would be more interesting than just climbing over the mountains. It truly was an adventure and possibly one that few would muster up the courage to do.
"We'll just have to land on the bridge and walk the rest of the way. Unless you want to tire your wings and fall into the jaws of the sea monsters?"
But as Corr did so, the more worried she got. The bridge was narrow and, although it was made of lava, she wasn't entirely convinced that it would stay in one piece. Thankfully, it didn't seem to crumble once all of her weight was on it, so she walked forward cautiously. Hāsta took her usual spot on Corr's shoulder, making an audible sigh.
When they finally reached the end, both of them were in awe. It wasn't clear what exactly they had come upon, maybe an island? But it was covered in ivy, although it wasn't any ordinary ivy. Instead of the pale green she was used to, it seemed dark, almost black. It beckoned them forward in a mischievous way and Corr couldn't help but listen to its call. There were strange berries here too that looked both delicious and menacing at the same time. Poisonous possibly, as they always looked enticing to take their next victim.
"Okay, these are definitely moving. What the hell is this place?" the crow asked with disgust in her voice. Corr turned to see what she was talking about and she was right, the berries were… pulsing. Perhaps they were not berries at all, but some kind of living creature.
"I hope this wasn't a trap…"
"Oh if it is, I am not refraining from saying 'I told you so!' Maybe if we don't die here, you'll finally listen to me for once."
And for once, her companion was not wrong. She was likely right about this whole thing and that certainly meant that the two were in trouble. Corr felt a lump in her throat form and she gulped. Her eyes darted around as she attempted to find a way out, but it seemed the ivy was closing in on them.
STAFF EDIT***
@corrdelia has rolled a 6! She has been awarded a mollusk shell that, when crushed ICly, will allow for an extra RE roll (but only for RE threads during the SWP). Please see the initial RE post on this thread for more info!
05-27-2019, 09:46 PM
Played by
Dingo [PM] Posts: 34 — Threads: 6 Signos: 530
No, I won’t be afraid
Just as long as you stand by me
Regis was unsteady as he approached the bridge spanning out across the sea, standing closer to his mother’s side than he realized or would like to admit. The ocean itself had always been a fascination of his, and there were few things that matched the joy of running across Delumine’s shoreline and feeling the cool water splash up against his belly and cause his already curly hair to go even crazier, bouncing and slapping against his neck with each stride as he laughed the whole way. But this was different, foreign and honestly terrifying, but Regis tried to maintain a facade of bravery despite it all.
He had been given the privilege to accompany his mother and the rest of the warriors, along with a number of other citizens whose curiosity couldn’t keep them at bay. Whenever he caught himself in one of their sights, he would always smile and hurriedly keep going forward, unwilling to let fear crack his focused look and rat him out.
Milo trailed ahead of them by a few yards, fleet footed and cautious with every step he took further down the bridge. Strange, fluctuating smells wafted on the breeze that didn’t just belong to the sea, putting he and his young bonded on edge. As they went, Regis looked here and there, to and fro, up and down and side to side, vigilant as he could possibly be. This was so far out of his element that he feared sending himself into hysterics if he let his gaze wander in one place for too long.
“Mom?” The boy spoke up as they continued their trek, having ventured a few more inches away from her in an effort to prove that he wasn’t quite the coward that he actually was. Beneath their feet the ground seemed to slowly be growing thinner, and up ahead, Regis swore he could see the ocean water through it. He looked to her with worrisome eyes of verdant green and cyan blue, his voice tinged with the fear which plagued him as he dropped the confident front he’d clung so desperately to. “What do we do if it breaks?”
He could fly over it easily enough, he was sure, but his worry lay with that of his mother.
i'm a pretty flower girl check out my pretty flower curls
All falls to silence and Florentine is there, hanging upon the bated breath of volcano and sea. The waves are still. No longer do they pound the Cliffside. All the creatures of the waters are gone and nothing upon the beach stirs. All of Novus’ populous stand as statues upon the cliffs and beaches. What do they watch when the volano that roared and split herself open is gone?
They watch the bridge she spawned. The bridge that Florentine looks upon with eager eyes and an exultant heart. Its lava cools and it glows slick as ink, black as pitch. It beckons all of them down to step upon its glass walkway.
Come!. Come! It calls the rift-born girl.
And she does not wait. Her wings flare and the girl descends in gold and swirling petals. The sea pulls back from her, it hisses warnings in her ears, but the air is beneath her wings and dutifully it carries her down and over to the waiting bridge.
Pearls glimmer as if from the deep. They are beautiful and terribly stark, they are bones that rise as fingers pointing up into the sky. Do they stand in warning spires? Do they rise to make her stop and block her path? If they do, she does not heed them. No, Florentine is as reckless as she always had been. Oh this girl was born to wild mysteries such as this!
The flick of a tentacle tip, the hiss of flames in water, oh each have her breath stalling in her lungs. Each have her startling and laughing. The girl is trembling, with delight, with fear but boldly each step goes before the other. Her eyes look for her brother, for where he walks amidst the crowds that dare to step upon this bridge to nowhere.
Then comes her mile. This is where Florentine stops at last, this is where time counts and counts and counts. What does it count? Does it matter? She has seen worlds where time runs fast. She has seen worlds where time runs slow. She has left one world a babe and returned to it moments later, old and ready for death. She has fallen to death in Time’s rift, swallowed up by its endless power.
Her lips press upon each time piece. Her breath fogs metal and glass and to each she whispers. Secrets only she and Time understand, and secrets too that she cannot yet fathom. This might be her temple. This might be the closest thing in Novus that she has to a site of worship – if this girl could ever bend her knee before a god…
But soon the bridge is moving her on, soon the beasts have gathered, hungering for a girl who lingers too long upon the bridge. They sing as sirens might, they coo, imploring her down into the water. Hunger parts their jaws and opens their fins and tentacles. They gleam as soft as flowers and promise her only sweet, soft oblivion…
She turns and runs as the child in her gut leans toward the sea, presses against her stomach and fills her with the taste of sweet-salt water. She runs until it feels as if time has slowed, as if it means nothing here and only then does she stop when the wall towers before her. Her heart stutters in her chest. It rattles her bones and her wings flare, each tip touching, brushing, feeling the wall that reaches from end to end. The girl steps forward, caught by the wind, caught by the ivy whispers and throbbing hearts.
Come. Come! That voice sings to her, again.
florentine rocking your pretty flower world
STAFF EDIT***
@Florentine has rolled a 6! She has been awarded a mollusk shell that, when crushed ICly, will allow for an extra RE roll (but only for RE threads during the SWP). Please see the first post on this thread for more info!
