Isra of the rising
'broken off from a piece of clay, cast beside things greater than me'
Faint echoes of the sea still lick at hungrily at her hooves as she walks through the silent, destroyed streets of the court. Everywhere she looks there are stains left by the ocean. Silks leeched of their colors flutter like butterflies in the corners of her vision. Ahead pieces of wood drift through the low waters like toy ships set to sail by innocent children. Horses move like lost ghosts around her, eyes as glossy as the morning fog and steps as slow and aimless as seaweed caught in the rip currents.
Everywhere she turns there is a mockery of survival to meet her, sorrow to thicken her weary tongue and turn it to stone. All she can see is gray and blue and death that drown out the purples and pinks of dusk.
But when she turns a corner there is a flash of red, devil-red, blood-red. It's a red that makes her think of hope and the way blood shines on charred armor when the war is fought and the freedom starts to burn like low, weak embers. Once the red made her quiver but now it feels like comfort when she looks upon it and lets her hooves turn their path towards that spot of brightness in all the darkness around her.
Isra tries not to think that her dark bay coat is as dull and dark as her surroundings, she tries not to think that she surely doesn't shine at all. She's all dark and blood-crusted and each blink of her eyes feels gritty and raw.
“Raymond.” Her own voice is startling and it feels as if she's forgotten what it sounds like when it's not glittering and incandescent with a story. Isra's legs feel like iron when she gets closer to him, rusty and weary and brittle at the joints. She feels as if she's a rusty sword before the glory of his steel, barely sharp enough to land the killing blow when all the better warriors have fought most of the battle.
They are both covered in blood, weary from the war against the sea. Yet they are so very different and she's half afraid to reach out in greeting to him when he's so fresh from the disaster.
“Thank you.” The words don't feel like enough. They feel too weak to cross the waters between them, salted and drifting back out to the lower places of Denocte. So, she steps closer and finally offers her nose to him and even that gesture doesn't feel grand enough. “For everything.”
Isra wonders in the quiet between their words what she might be able to give the devil who bled so much for the night. And when her eyes linger on his skin she wonders then, what scars he might have as payment for all that he's given.
There is no story in her soul that feels like enough, not before Raymond the Red.
I'll be a stone, I'll be the hunter,
The tower that casts a shade
***
There is a pervasive sort of honesty in the aftermath of battle that Raymond both appreciated and disliked. There is no place in life-or-death struggles for masks or comfortable lies; even those who fancied themselves inscrutable came into a new, sharper focus.
Everyone learns from a battle, and about themselves most of all.
Raymond was whetting his tail blade when Isra found him. His body was a constellation of wounds both great and small, many accumulated from the deceptive dangers of flotsam shaken loose in town, some more unsightly gashes opened like black grins across his chest and back from his dances of death with the hellish birds. All told, they were a small price to pay for survival.
His head tilted toward the sound of his name long enough to pick out the bay mare from the background noise before falling back to his work. One, two more strokes, a glance over his work; the scythe was the only clean thing left of him. Putting his work behind him, he straightened, flashing her a harried yet winsome smile that he hoped would satisfy any concern for his wellbeing. "You made it. Good." But, as it goes, she had not come merely to count her chickens after the fray.
Thank you, she continued as she drew close. For everything.
It was enough to make him pause, and his smile became no more real for her gratitude. Instead it faded, leaving only the hard eyes of one that had wallowed in the dark underbellies of cities and souls alike, one who had taken that darkness into himself and weaponized it - to survive, to win.
"Anyone could have done what I did," he replied without any illusions of false modesty. Anyone should have done what he did.
***
Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.
Isra of the winter
'all the flakes of me fell not like snow but like ash and they drifted through the breeze like stones'
“Not anyone.” She says and looks behind him to a tattered banner cracking in the winter winds that no walls could keep out. It flutters like a page half torn out of some legend, soaked with tears and worn enough from empty wishes that the words have long since run and faded and tangled into nothing more than a black pool of what could be oil.
The banner reminds her of all the wounds she's stitched together through the past nights. She thinks of all the children who dreamed the drugged dreams of flowers and worlds made of moonlight where nothing knew how to die and only lived, lived, lived.
And when she looks back at him her sadness feels like an ocean of misunderstanding between the two of them. She draws her nose back to her chest when he offers nothing more than a smile that turns dark. Isra wonders if it might feel like touching an electric eel who only wants to guard all the coral reefs from hunting, hungry sharks. “And there are fewer still who would have done all that you have, who could have.”She thinks that her words or her smiles have never had the power to burn and inspire the way that dark, fearsome look of his might.
“Oh Raymond,” The words sound like a sigh, old and ancient and darker than any sound a unicorn should know how to make. “don't you know that you are so very, very far from being anyone?” Surely he knows, she thinks, no one can carry a fire and a fury quite like the devil can.
Isra know she's too full of salt and sorrow and sea-water to ever burn and smolder in quite the right way. She's made for misting beneath the sun and washing away the soot and bone littered on the shoreline. Her bones are made from dreaming and hoping, healing and drowning.
It feels like the horizon when she steps closer to him-- fire to sea, solar flare to falling star, blood to brine. She feels hot in that space around him and the winter feels so very, very far away when she can taste both the ocean and the iron of his battle wounds.
“Will you help me?” And despite the heat of him and the coldness of all her sadness the words bloom between them like an impossible full moon that even the sun cannot dream of drowning in the horizon.
Raymond met the bay unicorn's eye with a carefully blank expression, its vagueness lent perfectly toward either self-reflection or disbelief based on the whims of the observer's heart. He knew he wasn't simply anyone - anyone would never have sipped the sweet nectar of retribution. Anyone would have died and been remembered no less fondly, for how does anyone brace for the slow withering destruction from beneath?
But what anyone would do had nothing to do with what they were capable of. A hundred people on a given street all had the power to prevent evil being done, but statistics tell us that almost none of them actually would.
Perhaps that is why he had been alone for so long.
He didn't hold it against Isra. They were different people bound for very different paths, and one could hardly blame a victim for the actions of her oppressors or the inaction of those that should have defended her and everyone else against the sins of the corrupt regime.
Raymond quirked the corner of his lip upward in dubious acknowledgement of her words before she continued.
Will you help me?
These words actually played across the red stallion's face. He tilted his head, brow creasing with bemusement. "Forgive me if I sound harsh" he riposted in that way that suggested he cared relatively little about harshness given the circumstances, "but your jailors have fled in disgrace. Your enemies lie broken before the walls of your court and their blood paints the faces of the victorious living. What more can I do to help you?"
Unfolding along the sordid story of his life were a procession of broken chains and power vacuums. In his work, he lingered only long enough to dismantle the rot so often allowed to fester in mortal souls. From there, their lives had been their own responsibility to enrich or destroy as they saw fit. What more could be asked of him now?
Raymond. "he's an outlaw loose and runnin'," came the whisper from each lip
"and he's here to do some business with the big iron on his hip."
Isra of the false fire
'all the flakes of me fell not like snow but like ash and they drifted through the breeze like stones'
Isra watches his expression play out like the rotations of a moon. A crescent of his brow rises across the dark sweep of his face. A full moon of disbelief and a very devilish sort of harshness spreads out like a long, dark shadow across the horizon of his smile. He's a story of the night, of changes. His is a darkness that rises and rises again just so the stars have a place to glitter and shine in to tell stories to those brave enough to draw lines between the specks of light.
And as she watches him she wonders that she no longer trembles to see the cruelty in his skin that looks like blood under a golden sun. She wonders that he seems no more than a knight, dressed in black and blood and iron but still a knight.
Oh, how the mountains and the dead changed her that night!
“Ours.” She corrects him, smiling a look that she takes from a story living in her soul. It's the look of a queen and a dreamer, edged in ivory teeth sharp enough to cut. It feels like false fire against her lips but she lets it burn and burn instead of smolder. “Our enemies paint the loam with blood. Our jailers are gone and their 'fear' with it. Our world has broken.” Isra wonders at this fire, wonders that she feels as if another tidal wave lives and crests and crashes against her bone and pushes her on and on and on over the mountains risen from the ground with the harshness of his look.
She steps closer and her horn flashes like a sword made of steel and silk and wishes in the soft-light. Isra is a tangle of things, a hundred different stories. But none settle over her skin quite right, nothing fits the dark and stained and living soul inside this lie of flesh she wears. “This is your story as much as it is mine.” That voice doesn't sound quite right, it's a character's voice more than a book's voice of ink and pages thin enough to tear and burn like kindling.
Isra takes that voice anyway. She makes it her own even though it feels like salt and sun and nothing like a moon on her tongue.
“And your story is no more finished than mine is.” Behind them that banner still waves in the winter wind, heavy now with frost and enough blood that she thinks all the waters in the sea could not wash it clean. Perhaps nothing will ever wash Denocte clean, nothing will wash away the stains and the silt and the sin.
But they could try.
“You will be my Regent.” It's not a question as much as it's a whisper of her horn through the cold air (a touch of stardust that dares to brave the day). Isra's afraid to make the words a question, to show anything but strength and this new false fury of fire to demand that he never leave.
Every story needs a devil just as much as every story needs a hero.
If anyone ever wanted to fully understand the strength with which Raymond resisted everything surrounding the concept of patriotism - the inclusive language, the inspiring songs, the kitschy trappings and customs - it would have taken quite a marathon conversation. He was a chill wind of retribution inexorably rolling up the miles beneath him, always one jump short of satisfied. What becomes of the wind that settles?
He stood without remark as she advanced upon him with soft admonishments. The grey of his eyes was as sharp as any blade in piercing the veneer of her queenly poise; it hung about her like an untailored dress, sufficient to the unpracticed eye, but through its wrinkles the red stallion caught glimpses of the mare who had not wanted to remember him, of the mare who had planted a forest of the dead. Raymond preferred that Isra - but then he would. He had little patience for monarchs.
You will be my Regent.
That drew a reaction.
Raymond's eyes widened just a bit, chin drifting upward. One could not quite call it shock, for he was frankly too tired to invest quite that much energy into his emotions, but her words certainly gave him pause where otherwise he might have offered some choice words about the contents and completion of his story.
After a split second's hesitation, he shook his head with a soft chuckle that relaxed the knotted sinews of his entire body. It was laughter earned by a bad joke sold flawlessly, wholesome and appreciative and most welcome, given the circumstances. He needed a good laugh.
When he met her eye again, it was with a genuine smile on his face. "The last time a sovereign offered me a job, I ran off to chase dragons and as far as I'm aware she's currently still being treated at Terrastella's fancy new hospital." Whoops. You know, things happen, boys will be boys and tarrasques will be sixty-foot-tall murder machines, and so on. "Some might say I have, ah, issues with authority -" topple enough kingdoms and scoff at enough gods and that particular accusation becomes very difficult to shake - "and I'm not very good at blowing smoke up people's asses to make them feel better."
But then Isra wasn't asking, which meant providing disuasive arguments wasn't likely to have any effect. Raymond knew the tactic well: he himself never asked yes or no questions unless he could afford the consequences of a no, a fact that made him appreciate the mare's guts far more than equipping a hastily-fashioned queen suit had done. She knew a few things about him - not all of them good - and had approached him anyway.
"Why me?"
Raymond. and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around
Isra of the forever sea
'like flotsam and silt I rise and fall upon the tides pulled by the moon'
Raymond's laughter sends her into a story and she dreams between the vibration of his ribs and bones and lungs. She thinks of kings laughing when their doom comes to call, of princess that smile coldly at the glittering code of love. Isra thinks of a hundred beasts in the stories living inside her that have laughed like that as they glittered like blood under the twilight.
What his laughter doesn't do is surprise her. Isra has never thought that a devil might be a normal man or that there wouldn't be a ring of fire around his head instead of a crown. She goes down into the fire of his laugh willing, confident now in the memories of the mountains to know that she has crawled through darkness thicker than all the black-blood that might be in his veins.
“I have little need of you to soothe me nor do I expect you to bow or bend.” A bit of that dark stain slips though, sad and bitter but darker than all the spaces in the starlight above the earth. Isra has tasted of fire and blood and she bares the scars of both in deeper places than her skin. “I imagine you would break your own knees before you would bow. A stone is not made to swim or a bird to fly higher than the atmosphere.” Upon her brown that horn whispers and sighs and almost feels like it belong there (like it's finally hers).
Above them the sky turns as dark as a bruise and she looks up, up, up to remind herself that the stars still shine in that darkness. Perhaps they even shine to in all the black remnants of her slave-soul. Her eyes reflect that brightness when she looks back at him. Isra's gaze is as honest as a star, beautiful and soft and full of a million different stories. “I know what you are and you know what I am. There are things I cannot do for this court that you might do.” She doesn't add, if it suits you but the words are in the tilt of her lips that belong to her old skin, her old hate and helpless fury.
That tilt of her lips turns brighter as her chain rings like a bell when she starts to turn away from him. She feels a burst of hope that this time she's neither running nor watching him fade into the night while she lays down on a a bed of bones and churned dirt. To turn away feels like a start and despite the night and the destruction about them she feels like the sun, glowing bright enough to blind behind an eclipsing moon.
“They are waiting for us, waiting for hope and a fury of inspiration to live when the night feels starless and darker than black.” Isra pauses once, her hoof poised in the air as if she's forgotten it's mortal ground she walks upon and not the crevices of the moon and the soft clouds of a dream. “Tonight is for choices, Raymond. What will yours be?” Her hoof falls and it's muffled by the dark puddles of the sea.
And it's salted water and eels of seaweed that spread out under her hooves as she walks away to the center of the court. It's upon the sea that her story begins.
Oh, there were certainly many things that Raymond might do with a regency that Isra could not. Was that not why part of him wanted to reject her command, to slink back into the shadows and the porous halls through which the very lifeblood of the kingdom flowed? He had eaten enough sins to understand the seductive nature of power, had only just finished rattling his saber at the withered husk of a regime consumed by it. But had he eaten so many sins now that he doubted his ability to control the deeper demons of his nature?
Well, no.
The red stallion never doubted his own fortitude. That was why he was still alive.
Isra, too, had been forged in the red-hot crucibles of adversity and come out something that perhaps she'd never meant to be. She was a yielding soul, but she yielded like water: the more forceful the push, the harder she became. Water was the ultimate essence of adaptation, filling perfectly whatever space into which it flowed, but water was nothing to the wind and iron of a rendari lancer.
While she spoke, the little smile left on his face by his brief laughter had not wavered. If her words stirred him, they did so in waters of his psyche too deep to reflect upon his angular features.
Tonight is for choices, Raymond. What will yours be?
"Unicorns," he huffed amusedly, his guttural murmur loud enough to be heard but still soft enough not to be mistaken for a disparaging mark. While it paled in comparison to the raging fires of Calliope, Isra had a bit of the spark in her too - the spark of old ones, wild ones. Of survivors. "Good." Raymond straightened animatedly to his full stature and grimaced at the protestations of his wounded body. "I'm glad we understand each other. I will be your Regent, then," he echoed, only a little wryly. "You supply the hope, I'll supply the fury."
Tilting his hip, the red stallion patted the night queen companionably on the shoulder with the flat of his freshly-tended blade, flashing a fatigued but winning smile before turning to join the mass of gathering Denocteans. "Oh - and Isra," He paused after several steps, snaking his head around to fix her with a strangely mirthless look.
"Your running days are over," Raymond continued, his vocal fry invoking the roar of dragonflame and splitting timber she had once recounted to him in the empty streets. "You're in the fire now. As your regent I suggest you own it - like you know you can - or it will burn you to ash."
His piece said, the red stallion turned back and proceeded on his way, stepping stiffly but still proudly around his injuries as he went to join the others. His words carried a subtle warning, a warning against obsequious smiles and wandering eyes, against the scheming chatter of courtiers and the flash of a palmed knife. Apart from the far wilderness, there was no lonelier place in the world than a throne, shadowed as it was by the invisible sword of Damocles and lit by a thousand prying, hungry eyes. There was no slower poison than a crown resting upon the brow.
And there was no judge more watchful than Raymond the Red.
***
Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.
