[P] without you i am a lie

[Sabine]

sad birds still sing

She was a roseate shadow against the splendour of Delumine's festivities - decorated by those window-wide eyes to drink in the laughter and the floral perfume of happiness. Here, in these wild meadows and everlong forests, the world felt brighter, clearer. The sky overhead seemed to sing; harmonised by marshmallow clouds that drifted leisurely across the great wilderness of blue - a hymn to beckon the flowers closer to the sun - flowers that she had caressed with tiny, soft hands. Colours danced across the canvas of the Deluminian earth: scarlet, ultramarine, emerald - all pieces of a memory she would never forget: the first time she realised she was home. 

Denocte had been a chasm, filled with dark faces and darker secrets, and in the perpetual darkness she had wept. Her anguish had been the colour of nightshade - bruised and wicked - and though her tears fell only when she knew the world was sleeping, the pain of smiling at her father when within she felt she might drown was an anchor a child could only bear for so long. Because Sabi would never have let him down - not Raum, not her Papa, not her wraith, and so she had borne the weight of her sorrow alone; condemned to the night like a match set to burn.

And so, too, she had heard the tales of Solterra. Her mother's stories had hung around her neck like an aureate noose; dragging her down into a coffin tattooed upon her nightmares. For what hope could she glean from the legends of endless heat and cracked, hungry deserts? Her heart had shrank at the sight of Rhoswen's fervor, fearing what might loom out of the volcanic mire in those glittering grey eyes; how could she ever hope to rival her mother's faith in the sun? Little earthy Sabine - child of nothing, daughter of a void born from two tortured souls. Would she dare to challenge Solis for her mother's love? No - not Sabine, not she.

For Sabine was the gentle lilt of an autumn breeze; the first glimpse of pale coral light upon a brilliant blue sky; the rustle of dying leaves as they fall from majesty on high. She was the earth underfoot, silent and perennial.

And so it was, that the sparrow-boned girl watched the festival from afar; gazing at white grins and dancing eyes with a fascination that seemed to spread through her blood like a shot of some weak foreign wine. She felt warmth, only warmth, and then - the parting of her blush-tipped lips to stretch into a smile of her own; a private moment, one that she would cherish for years to come. Finally, there was peace in her little beating heart.

@acton <3 

[Acton]

 
Acton found Delumine pretty the way a painting was pretty: lovely, colorful, a little soft, too perfect once you really stepped up to study it. The shadows here were not for hiding, and no eye he met carried the kind of glint that promised a brawl.

It should have been peaceful, a good place for healing. Instead it made the buckskin restive, his skin itching with the need to do something. Anything. To fight, to fuck, to practice the more…disruptive of his tricks. He could be himself no better here than he could from behind the Raven Gate, and it ate and ate at him. Acton was a bomb and the wick was burning fast.

It was in his interest, or maybe the interests of the greater good, for him to step away for a moment and collect himself.

He wasn't surprised to find he was not the only one seeking a little solitude, but he did not expect his companion to be Sabine. He was so used to seeing her as a shadow at Raum’s side, or Rhos’s - he was not used to seeing her expression so unguarded. For a moment he only watched her, wondering at how at peace she looked, there in the slanting sunlight and the wildflowers that nodded in the breeze.

Almost he slipped away in silence, but Acton was a selfish creature: he wanted a piece of that rare smile for himself.  

“You have your father’s reluctance to join a party, I see,” he said wryly, but he wore a grin that was almost soft as he stepped over to lip at her forelock. When he straightened again it was with a sigh, and the sun rolled warm across his burnished skin as he cast his gaze across the festival.

Unlike Sabine, it did not make him want to smile, but he kept his in place anyway. It was a good forgery, but it only touched his amber eyes when he looked back at her.  

“You look radiant,” he told her, and then pursed his lips in mock-seriousness. “Except…” Acton cocked his head as if considering, and then with a flourish he conjured a daisy, pale as new sunlight, from the air. It was only an illusion, and wouldn’t last for long – but what flowers ever did, anyway? “Here,” he said, and tucked the bloom just behind her ear. “I won’t be the only boy to offer you a flower today, but I can at least be the first.”




@Sabine <3

these violent delights have violent ends

[Sabine]

sad birds still sing

 
The artistry of Delumine was tangible between her thimble-like fingers, for she could feel the running blood of beauty and craft in the earth beneath her feet and with a sweeping close of her electric eyes, Sabine found herself imagining all the ways it might twist and twirl like roots amongst the soil. Her head swam with the allure of the festival that sang and bubbled all around; it called to her, asking her to join, to revel. But of course, she could not. 

Too shy, too reluctant; too much wallflower in her own blood. 

“You have your father’s reluctance to join a party, I see,”

Sabine jolted - her pale rosy skin twitching over small muscles that moved in a flurry of surprise and big blue eyes. She had not noticed the golden silhouette easing into her sphere, not heard the rhythmic sound of his hooves against the grass, nor the heady cologne that clung to his skin (reminding her of sunsets and fire and the way his eyes glittered above a gasoline grin). Air flushed from her lungs as the little bird gazed up at Acton, finding herself caught like a robin in winter snow: frozen, resilient. 

"But I am here, and he is not," she mused softly, noting that it was the fourth day she had not seen her father. His absence was a knife to her little heart.

Her attention, however, was brought easily back to Acton. What was it about this man that made her feel golden inside, as though he had opened her up and poured summer into her veins. Eyes of glaciers and morning skies traced the movement of his frame as he leaned closer to lip at the gossamer strands of her hair. Her gaze revealed little, hid everything. Sabi had learnt, quickly, how to conceal her secrets; tucking them away like forgotten mistakes, burying them deep within cupboards lining the walls of her mind. 

A compliment formed upon Acton's lips - the most enchanting spell he could ever have conjured - and Sabine bit her lip, glancing away from him if only to quell the butterflies beating at her chest. And so she peered up at him as he summoned a flower from thin air, placing it into her tawny locks as she bloomed like the very daisy he had created. 

"You must be bored if you're using your magic on me, Acton," the girl offered a playful tilt of her head, moving slightly away from him now to wander beneath the coloured lanterns adorning the forest's edge, "are you missing home as much as Papa?"



@acton sorry for the lateness!

[Acton]

 
There was something about her, set apart from the rest of the day, that made his heart ache. Maybe he thought she was lonely; Acton’s idea of a good time, even as a colt, had always been in the midst of things, swept up in a current of chaos, urging it on. Life was a rich thing, to be tasted and savored even if you were born a street rat, not a king.

He did not know her heart beat more freely here, away from the storm of feelings of those that loved her.

Acton felt a little sorry when she startled (a rare thing, coming from him), but at her recovery and answer he smiled. “Too true. I’m glad you’re not as allergic to fun.” He said it in jest, but as he spoke he did wonder – when was the last time he’d seen Raum smile? Had it been Veneror Peak, long before all the blood and trouble? Gods.

But another look at Sabine’s blue eyes and he pushed the Ghost to the back of his mind. Where Raum’s were ice chips, cool and hard, Sabine’s eyes were the bright promising blue of a spring morning, a touch of light on a jay’s wing. How strange that such similar coloring could convey such different things.

Satisfied with his blossom’s placement, he shifted his weight into a lean and felt a wry smile grow as she spoke. Acton did not follow her as she meandered beneath the lanterns, casting stained-glass colors on her skin, but his gaze did.

“And your mother’s ability to see through bull…crap,” he muttered, censoring himself just in time, but nothing about him looked irritated. Rhoswen was whip-smart and put up with very little nonsense, and Acton had always admired her for it – even the parts of him that found it endlessly frustrating.

What a dangerous, wonderful mixture little Sabine was.

“I am,” he said, and allowed himself a sigh. “Dawn does not quite suit us.” Delumine was an ill-fitting suit, too tight, too short, a constant tension across his shoulders. Here he felt like a crow among doves. And how easy it was to lump them in with him, their little band of exiles – he knew as well as his own heartbeat that Raum thought much of home, and Rhoswen’s blood ran hot as the memory of summer sun on sand.

He did not think to wonder about Sabine’s.

“Worry not, though, Sabine,” he said, and looked back toward the festival. The sounds drifted toward them like the ghost of music, the memory of voices. Faint and peaceful and pale in comparison to the rich nightly hymn of Denocte. “This won’t last forever.”





@Sabine sorry her uncle is horribly obtuse D:

these violent delights have violent ends

[Sabine]

sad birds still sing

She could see he felt out of place in this patchwork kingdom of creeping vines and bonewhite walls. Acton belonged in the wolves' den, choked dizzyingly by shadow and the broken promise of a forsaken goddess - his heart was cracked kindling and coal, it did not sit well against the quiet opalescence of Delumine. 

Still, that was why she cherished him. All that glitters isn't gold - but Sabine did not want gold, she wanted grit and life and a smile that would break the sun: Acton was all of that and more. Not that she wanted him for herself. The blissful innocence of youth sheltered her heart from lust and passion, filling her thoughts instead with something more tender, more soft and pale. 

The Denoctian politics they had left behind had been harboured from her keen ears, and so she knew only two things: that a dragon had perched on the mountainside to set bluefire upon Caligo's sacred earth, and that the ancient Raven Gates had closed once more. What else lay in the darkness of Acton's mind that troubled him so? Sabine pondered on whether it was her place to ask.

Meanwhile, he laid name to her mother and instantly it snared her attention. Sabi paused from her steady wandering to turn back toward her companion, an unreadable expression glazing over her porcelain features. It was the first time anyone had likened her to Rhoswen, and the notion felt like a foreign lie on the walls of her mind. Her mother was a cyclone, a forest fire - so unlike little musing Sabine, that it seemed almost frightening to consider the fact that Acton, of all people, recognised a part of Rhoswen in she.

She said nothing, her crystalline eyes shifting back to the lanterns overhead as the dark-haired man spoke once more. "This won't last forever." Sabine's heart recoiled like a hand burnt by a naked flame, regretful and dazed. She knew he did not understand - knew he could not see the way she fused into the wildflowers and newborn light, but that was okay, Sabi had always been happy with invisibility. "Forever..." a bleached whisper on the singing air.

Something was stuck, here and now, she couldn't bear it. There was no way to shake the metallic taste of blood as she bit down harder and harder on her tongue as a flood of feeling burst up through her gullet and onto the roof of her mouth until - 

"But I bet forever in Delumine looks beautiful."

@acton <3

[Acton]

 
Normally Acton was an observant man – you had to be, when your livelihood depended on fooling others, on misdirecting attention, on studying marks. But he had dropped all pieces of the illusionist as they fled Denocte like refugees or criminals, a flight that drew up foul memories like brackish water from a well he’d hoped to never visit again.

Here he was angry, and so he was blunt and blind. No lively fire but smoldering cinders, charred ash that illuminated nothing but got others dirty, too.

It was an ugly look on anyone.

So he ought to have caught the shifts in Sabine’s face before now; she was too good, too honest to hide well, and he hadn’t been watching, anyway, as she wandered beneath the lantern light that spilled rainbows onto her skin. His gaze had still been on those gathered across a field, indistinct shapes, pieces that did not fit into his life.

But then: Forever, she said, and there was something like heartbreak in it, startling to hear from such a young tongue. It drew Acton’s attention, and more than a little of his shame.

“Oh, I bet you’re right about that,” he said, and looked at her, his gaze a little sharper, a little more comprehending. He remembered that she was only a little girl, and her own person besides – not a summation of Rhoswen and Raum. That was too much to put on anyone, and it wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right. “No prettier forever than a Delumine sunrise, perfect rose to perfect blue.”

He didn’t want a beautiful forever – that sounded awfully boring, and stifling besides – but this moment was not about him. What an ass he was, to have to remind himself of it.

The buckskin stepped nearer, and huffed a ticklish breath just behind her ear, stirring the petals of the daisy. It was only an illusion, but it moved real enough, and it was a prettier color than any true one, anyway.

“Aw, don’t mind me, Sabi. I’m just a grumpy old man. Tell me – do you plan on joining in the festivities, or only spying on them? There’s a couple games I spotted that I could use a partner for.” Gently he bumped her shoulder with his own before stepping away, glancing back at those heartbreaker-blue eyes with his own brows raised, half-question and half-dare.





@Sabine <3 your writing is always so gorgeous

these violent delights have violent ends

[Sabine]

sad birds still sing

The prickling sensation of his gaze upon her skin sent skeletal shivers down her ribs, for it felt as though he were truly seeing her this time. Sabine shimmered silently beneath the prismatic severance of light overhead, her horns refracting the arcing colours over and over again - back and forth in the chasm between man and girl. She had never wanted much; never hungered long into the night for a dream that wouldn't come, or a light that had never shined, but that was before she knew what Acton's friendship felt like - and so, then, she felt that planted seed begin to grow. And who was she to stunt it. Beauty came in many and forms, and to this little summer-eyed child, it was born in the hot gravel of a magician's jest - gilded in the knowledge that, in such a virginal moment, he had meant it just for her. Wasn't that the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen?

The sound of his hooves against the glowing meadowgrass kissed her ears, gently enough to wake her once more from the eternal musings of an artist; for Sabine was yet to realise her own gifts, her purpose and idiosyncrasies - she was a painter without a brush.The petals of her imagined-daisy spun beneath Acton's balmy breath, and she bounced happily (albeit awkwardly) away from his strong coursing shoulder, a breeze travelling through spiralling caramel locks. Partner. Her sparrow-heart sailed; somersaulting into golden orbit. "If you're game, so am I," she breathed, feeling the start of a candycane smile on her lips, "last one there is a rotten Teyr egg."

@acton fin!

[Acton]

 
What a lucky day this was, he thought, to have someone like Sabine in it.

Someday, long on down the road, he would surely wonder how such a creature as she came from the union of fire and the kind of blackness no flickering flame-light could help to reach – but Acton had never been the kind of guy to take the long view. Today he only knew he was glad for the girl beside him, too new, too sweet, to be tainted by the smoke-and-ash of her circumstances.

And besides, those wouldn’t last forever.

Acton laughed as she bounded away from him, a young butterfly whose wings were still wet. At her dare of a race, he arched a dark brow – and thought about how oddly grateful he was that a real flower could no more survive a headlong sprint through a summer-sweet meadow than his illusion would.

“I’m always game,” he said, and gave her his very best devil-take-me grin, and it was nice, for once, to know it wouldn’t get him into trouble.

And then they were off together, led by the light that arced from her horn like a spirit-guide, and Acton thought that maybe this time it wouldn't bother him a bit to let someone else win.





@Sabine <3

these violent delights have violent ends