Isra of the bonfires
'and we danced like pagans while the world around us crumbled and died'
The night is as lovely as it has ever been, glittering and dark enough to take from the world every scar and stain and thing that dares to be brightly hideous. The sky is dusted with a rainbow of colors, the aurora borealis weavs like a snake back and forth across the darkness. Green and yellow and golds shine bright enough to make her think (make her wish and wish and wish) that the entire world could be as lovely as that sky above her heard.
But while the night is perfect the markets are nothing more than a pale star, flicking out the last of its life behind brighter stars than it. The stones glitter in wrong patterns beneath her hooves-- a brick where a ruby should be, an emerald where once a diamond reflected the moon-glow. Once the paths about the market looked like the stars. Once if she closed her eyes hard enough that they stung the world could look upside down when she opened them again.
Once this was a place of dreams, of wishes, of wild things that pretended to be civilized if only for one single night in century of full moons.
Now only the bonfire's blaze where laughter once did, crackling in the silence and popping where sighs once broke the silent parts of the dark. Even the whisper of tiny dragon wings seem quiet and hushed as if they too know just how heavy and still the night feels now.
Isra, as she walks between the bonfires and gives what little hope and promises she can to the merchants, feels as if she walks through a swamp of sadness with snakes of sorrow swirling about her legs. Here and there she nudges stones back into place in the pathways and holds straight a silken canopy for a merchant.
Tonight she is nothing more than another face in the crowd, easy to miss with all the darkness and strewn about stones at her hooves. She's another broken soul that looks up the beauty of the sky that hopes and hopes for something more than destruction and sadness and dreams dashed on violent waves.
The merchants add another batch of driftwood to the fires. They cheer and start to dance as it burns and smoke rises from the pyres of the past. And when they start to dance in dizzying circles of wishes, jasmine and silk she joins them.
It feels like freedom to be just another dark body in the thin masses. Tonight she's just a unicorn that dances on doe hooves and smiles at the not-quite stranger that comes close enough to the fire to look as bright as the glowing lights above her head (above them all).
There was something off. Back before this lake, he stared aimlessly at the night sky. Curled close to his chest was his companion sleeping away the time. The stallion needed a breath, the peace in which came with solitude.
Crickets serenaded what company tuned into their notes, and the rush of cold danced above withering grasses. Did... he want to abandon this? He didn’t have to—he didn’t have to forget. This loneliness after loss. Perhaps he was afraid of moving on, of betraying the one he lived his last days with. But this drowning of himself, it tied him down to a life spent in denial. And as he refused himself, the further away he was from the man his lover once loved.
Once the soothing presence of nature satisfied him enough, Kauri staggered back onto his legs. Of course, Naiosé was less than happy by his sudden awakening. With just a few nibbles on the fennec’s coat to calm his irritation, the two were on their way back to the castle.
Although he knew he was no bother to the people here, the stallion still kept his steps light and quiet after entering this structure. No longer did curious eyes distract his mind, and so intruding thoughts began to flood in large waves. The low clicking of his hooves grew louder in the silence as minutes went on which merely fed his anxiety. For a time, he could only feel out of place from what surrounded him here.
As he wandered about the castle, a warm glow caught his attention. His steps followed the direction his gaze locked onto, and his head immediately ducked down to lessen his presence. Naiosé scurried beneath him and gently nipped his companion’s heels to let him onto his back. Kauri hushed the canine’s action with a snort and stopped once all that could be seen of this bonfire was in his view.
Barely did the light of the fire touch his form. Much of himself remained in the dark, save the fiendish look of his avian mask. Violet eyes bore through each soul then hid away under the shadow of his mask’s sockets. His hooves ached after witnessing the mass of beings that danced. Long has he retired from the art of motion. So his body grieved, the faint aches returning upon him. However, his mind took what it could of those days long ago—dusting off the old vinyls within the corners of his mind.
His legs tucked under him as he laid down, and his companion snuggled close to his chest once more. Although he seemed to watch the little jubilation before him, Kauri was off in a different world. Everything began to blur—the figures that moved now appearing like ghost. Though despite the fading of his vision, he noticed one of the figures seemed to give a “ghastly” smile at him—a stranger he hadn’t realized he’d seen before.
Within his mind, the record player stopped playing, and his memories crumbled back into nothingness.
He dismisses the smile with a snort and turns his head so the light no longer graced his face. Kauri lain there nearly in the darkness with his nose against the stone floor. He didn’t want to disturb nor distract anyone away from their needed moment of happiness. One eye peered back over to the crowd as he simply looked on in wonder.
"Speaks" | Thinks @Isra Tried to work with this scenario as best as I could <3
Isra of the red-light
'I only could see your eyes as the world fell down, down, down'
There is no music tonight but the crack and pop of the fire as sap in the wood boils and bursts. There is only the victory chants of the merchants, rage muted by joy and hope. The night is a tempest of sound, waves of things that are not quite melodic clashing together to fill the night with a soft kind of violence that is close enough to the sound of living to be elegant enough to move her hooves again and again in dance.
Isra feels like a star has exploded in her, a super-nova of need, of hope, of stories that need more and more than the blood in her veins to live. The world flashes around in her flares of light, gold and red, silver and black. And in the corner of her eyes that glimpse of violet and bone-white seems brighter than all the rest, bright in the dark solitude that surrounds it.
He blazes like the sliver of the moon before it's made new again, quiet and silver and nothing more than a scythe of bone between the constellations far lovelier than that half-dead moon. It feels like an dream when she lets her hooves carry her further and further away from the fire. Isra feels like a star, drawn to that dying moon just to linger in the sickle curve of it and make it part of a new constellation.
Oh! Oh how she wonders what secrets live in his solitude, what stain his soul might bear. What he carries to make her recognize his sadness as a mate to her own as easily as she blinks.
Isra leaves the fire, the song of the furious living, and almost forgets to wonder why it's so easy to leave all the glittering parts of life behind for the dark without hesitation. She beds down easily beside him, light as a feather drifting down on the winter winds. Her chain is the only thing to break the softness of her movement and it clangs and sounds like shattering glass in the muted silence of their dark corner.
There is enough space between them for the winter to creep in with tendrils of frost and snow. She shivers so far from the fires and the sweat on her skin from dancing so close to the flames turns to ice where rests on the stone. Idly she wonders if it looks like salt where it collects on her lips when she drops them to the ground and pushes a ruby into the fire-light just to watch it shine like blood.
“Their hope is beautiful.” Isra offers the words like a story and she wonders if ink pours from between her teeth when the night slips between her smile. “But sometimes I feel that it might burn as much as the fire does.” Tonight feels like a revelation when she looks at him, sorrow to a sorrow that's just starting to shed from her skin like flesh from the bone of antlers as the seasons change.
She wonders what he sees when he looks at the fire and the dancers that move not like horses but like beasts in the red-light.
His gaze glided away from the flame to the stones beneath him that his lips lightly kissed. A being drew closer to where he rested; his nostrils flaring as he took in a heavy breath. The weight of his body piled onto one side and in a measly second he has plopped down onto his side. Naiosé nestled himself against the throat of his now sprawled companion, and his little brown eyes stared up at the unicorn that has now appeared within their space.
Creamy locks covered most of his face, and the amber chain of his earring lie stuck upon his cheek. A small flick of an ear disturbed the jewelry as he hears the mare lay next to him. He took in any scent—whatever energy he could read into. Everything mixed into a horrid mess to the senses. His ears could hear the static, eyes saw the creeping darkness, and nose smelt a potent poison. What moved deep within him hardly took the outside world with content.
The hunger of a soul starved of hope. It devoured the feeling before taking the chance to savor it. However, as it ate and relished, the hole it sought to fill swallowed such delight into a void. This craving seem not to go away but grow into the monster that was anguish. His mind no longer wore its fear for this demon; however, its will rotted as it fell tired of this endless battle.
Kauri peeked past his hair and set his eye onto his company. His thoughts trailed behind her words as each syllable stirred smoothly into his mind. "Their hope is frightening," he corrected. The stallion tucked away his face and embraced his fluffy friend. For as long as he traveled within the dark, the small speck of light offered before him shone of absolution. A star he wasn’t sure would continue to gleam or die once his heart surrendered to it.
“As its brilliance is enough to blind the angels. It may burn but Mother forbid it become ash once more.” This mere sight, how it would have brought his deities to tears. He himself would break down but lifeless eyes had nothing left to pour out; their ducts were filled with dust as mind has long accepted an earth bleak and worthless. He tried, but he didn’t try hard enough for the people back home, for the deity he vowed his life to. Yet here before him was what every single soul there desired, this hope dancing freely amongst this crowd that cheered on.
His heart rued, and his soul wailed.
He brought his attention back to the gathering and carefully studied each individual in the crowd. His lips would let go a sigh; the stallion’s head returning to a position where he could see the dame again. The honeyed charm of his voice became gravel as soon as words spilled from his mouth. “Why are you here beside me? Out of all the faces with joyous and warm smiles, you’ve come to rest by a skeleton in the shadows,” he questioned and doubted.
Isra the falling star
'I'm going to live forever and learn how to fly'
For a moment Isra watches not the stallion, not the way his eyes are full of darkness and rusted glitz that's long forgot how to shine. Isra watches only the fire, only the horses bolder than the two of them resting in the shadows on stones shot through with quartz and gold and amethyst. Her soul cries for the hope, that dreaming thing that feels so dark and endless as much as it feels like a lit fire before a worn and cracked mirror.
Her skin shivers were it's against the stone and her side closet to him still burns and her eyes blink away the sight of the bonfire like it's dust and soot. She feels like the branch of a river, bits of her floating down the waters like pieces of wood and leaves, torn apart where the currents intersect in a whirlpool of a hundred small streams of force.
The dancers seem at home by the fire, dancing like pagans in the smoke that makes them look two headed. The stallion seems easy in the darkness and the winter chill with his fox tucked between his legs with more trust than she knew the world could hold. And Isra feels at home at neither place and her heart strains and quivers like a bow with no direction to go but out, out to the fire and out to the darkness and out past both these things into the greatness beyond.
Out to the sea.
But she feels something other than 'out' when she looks back at him and smiles when he corrects her. “I think if anything this might turn to cinders but never ash, never soot to blow away on the breeze.” Her voice is as smooth and sometimes sharp at the embedded stones at their bellies and along the jutting joints of their legs. There are a million small, smoldering bits of cinder in her voice, young fires that float upon a endless sea of storms.
He turns from honey to stone, molasses to amber and she wants to smile through the hard sorrow of his voice, the winter-chill of his tundra. Isra wants to break the silence with laughter and look out past his back and out to the stars and say 'What skeleton? What corpse?. She wants to touch his cheek with her lips and smile knowingly to feel flesh and not bone beneath her touch.
Isra wants and wants and wants but in the end she only echoes the stone of his voice (but it sounds like stardust from her lungs). “You are no more just bones than I and there are no shadows but the spots between the stars too thick with mystery for the light to shine. Is it so very hard to believe that you don't have to be alone?” And when she lets her voice fade into the soft whisper of their breathes and the crackle of the distant fire it falls not like silence should. It falls like a shooting start that just might carry....
Once his mind had enough of this gathering, he twists his body around to have his rump face the fire. Naiosé, annoyed by his friend's restlessness, moves over to sit next to the mare that relaxes beside them—the little fennec never taking his eyes off Kauri. The former warden looks at his companion with a certain sadness but he pricks his ears forward at the question the dame poses. He'd shake his head first; his tongue wanting to say it was simply impossible. This solitude, a state of life he has embraced for too long.
No words would come forward as he let silence spread between him and her. To be alone was the issue, this problem of seeing society as something to be afraid of. At the time he brimmed with the eternal youth seekers thirsted for, he sacrificed his need to belong for the promise of purpose and to do what Mother wished for her people. And while he fell miserable and tired, he never knew his spirit needed the seclusion. To rest away until the time came where it could become bright and rosy and spill its dreams to the one that broke the shell it hid in. The husk has cracked, now if only it opened.
"It certainly is. Fate had it that my life rot far away from any remnants of society. My death was the steps to an eternal life of solitude," he told. Of course, his fennec friend has been with him since he started his journey as a yearling. But as those years were turned into eternity, the bond became empty and meaningless. Though within this new region, it renewed what has dusted away. It seemed to bring back life to all he has lost. That was worrying.
"But fate has me baffled now. It gives back what it had taken and I'm afraid to accept it. That no longer I have to be alone," he sighed. As he remembered a thought from a different time and place, he hesitated in investing his energy into this world when possibly there stood the chance to go back home. However, he knew not if he could ever return there. And so, there’s conflict. The concept of moving on yet being able to still remember his roots, why was it difficult to grasp?
He shook his head once more to rid of this overthought. Kauri peers at the mare and his companion that remains by her side. He wouldn’t ignore her status any longer nor where he has first seen her. "How have you fared with the crown so far, your majesty? What you spoke at that meeting was quite the promise," he inquired as he diverts his rummaging thoughts toward her. While he awaits her words, he listens to the laughs and songs of those that danced about the bonfire—his gaze looking the opposite way toward the market's stalls that rest under the dark of night.
Isra the moonlight magic
'I want to be a God of a girl'
He turns from the flames and Isra watches him, watches the way his colors fold in the night like dreams into dream-catchers. For moment she's jealous of how easily his edges turn to shadows and she wonders if the light of the fire still leaves a blazing sun in the center of his gaze. Part of her wants to dissolve into the darkness with him, to live as a star (telling stories in pulses with the blanket of night pulls over the world).
But then the merchants toss more driftwood onto the bonfire and she's caught like a star in a cloud, watching that soot and fire and smoke rise up to swallow up the moon. A pygmy dragon dips in the sky and his wings bring from the smoke grand patterns that to Isra look like a million, glittering snakes that circle the world. The dragon swoops and dances and soon a few others join him and they dance and twine their necks together in arrangements of wonder.
Isra's eyes feel dry from watching them. She never blinks as she remembers that she doesn't want to dissolve into the night, she wants to burn and smolder and devour all the heartbreak in the world. Her skin starts to itch where it touches the ground and the rubies glitter like treasure in the corner of her gaze when she turns it back to the shadows and him.
She blinks for his words, for the spell of his sorrow and his sadness and they way his tongue moves over the sound of 'rot'. Isra is captured in the web of his sorrow, eager to feel the pinch and sting of his melancholy like teeth on a veins. “Be brave.” She whispers as she might to an old book and she's tender enough in her command to not crack him like an old leather binding.
And the silence between them feels a little like the empty space between chapters, thick with potential and ink stains.
“Isra.” She corrects, blinking away the stab of the sound so formal a title makes in her black, stained slave-soul. “I will die to keep all my promises if the fates require it of me.” Like a true unicorn of legend she makes her bond and it shivers down her body in shards of ice and moonlit-magic.
“I still worry though that Caligo was wrong to choose me that night.” The last she offers like a gift, the blackness of her uncertainty for the darkness of his own.
And in the silence between her last word and the next inhale of her lungs a child comes before them. He asks Isra to dance, egged on by the taunts of his friends. She smiles turning back to stallion with something close to amusement in her ocean-eyes before leaving him to head back towards the fires and smoke and joy.
There was something off. Back before this lake, he stared aimlessly at the night sky. Curled close to his chest was his companion sleeping away the time. The stallion needed a breath, the peace in which came with solitude. 