Isra of the night court
'hope is the thing with feathers that perches inside the soul and sings a tune without words'
The night is just rising above the day when she moves towards the castle steps. The moon looks ice cold where it shines on the blood that still covers her skin in lingering memories of the violent sea waters and the collapse of all her fresh-faced dreams. Isra's hooves are heavy as she walks and the chain about her leg sounds not like bells of freedom but the heavy sighs of sorrow, cased in rust and ringing with dread sharp echoes.
Each step brings a memory; stories dripped in blood and tears, laments of loss and fragile spider webs of hope (silken and dusted with dewdrops of sadness). Isra walks on, slow through the sludge of her fear and suffering, hoping that her chain-song might, like a pied piper, draw those left through the wreckage of the tsunami to her side.
And when she alights the topmost steps of the castle she turns to them all, crusted in blood and tears and stars to speak with all the white-hot sorrow of a falling star-- glittering and fleeting and waiting for a wish. “I have no grand words to offer you. There is nothing to soothe away the corpses of those we lost, nothing for the destruction we are left to live in. I have nothing to offer you but a story.” Oh, she feels as if she should smile as a queen might or like a princess who braved the darkness to look up at the constellations and draw legends between the flickering stars.
Isra only has tight, chapped lips and a voice made raspy from days of healing and story-telling to offer them. So she offers what she can, headless of the dry fire that burns and burns in her throat. “This is not my skin although perhaps it now belongs more to me than it might belong to the gods or the sea.” It's feels like a cruelty to herself to offer those words, to tear open the black stain of her soul for all the night to drink of. “I was born a slave, a vessel for the joy and violence of others. I was raised in suffering and sorrow and ate only of darkness and loathing when I ate what life had to offer me at all. I ate and ate and ate of the darkest darkness and I learned to hate. I hated myself and life and everything that was bright and lovely and so far from my reach. I hated so much that I tried to drown...” She licks her lips and tastes only salt and the sweet, lingering iron of blood. There's wondering too in the way she pauses, wondering if they see the stain of her, laid bare like violence between a torn open rib-cage.
“But the sea wouldn't let me drown, although it felt like hours that my lungs quivered, full of salt and brine and flotsam. Because I did not drown I rose again, cast upon some distant shore in a body I did not know. The sea or whatever was hidden in the deep, dark places of the ocean floor took from me my body but not my memories” There's a tear lingering in in the shadow cast upon her face by her horn and in the moonlight it looks like a crystal (valuable and fragile all at once). It runs slowly down her face as she continues, making tracks in the dust and blood and memories covering her skin.
“When I came to Novus I stole so that I might live. I was afraid to drown again, to feel that dark of nothingness. I wanted to feel the moonlight, to sing to the stars, to walk and feels the gazes of horses who had no idea who I was, what I was. I didn't want to burn but I burned with you. I felt walls and fear and hopelessness with all of you.” Isra's skin still shivers when she talks of fire.
Her steps when she walks back down the steps are heavy with that endless chain-song, and it peels like a broken freedom chant now, slow and sad with a lonely sort of hopefulness. “And now I stand before you as a once-slave, made a leader by a moment that felt more like a dream than something real. I see destruction and suffering and crumbled wishes that were washed away in the dread sea.” Isra spots that flash of devil-red in the crowd and smiles, a soft hopeful thing. She hopes he knows what to do, what to ask.
And--
When she carries on that gentle smile remains, making it so easy to forget her voice feels like briars crawling up her soul, up her throat until they embed themselves into words upon her salted lips. “I also see something bright in the darkness, something brighter than the north-star. I see stories I hope you will all share with me. I see dreams I hope to dream of beside all of you.”
Isra pauses until she's at the bottom of the castle stairs, in the midst of them all and the last lingering puddles of the sea that rise up to her fetlocks. “All I have to offer you is a promise that I will always give you freedom--- freedom to dream, to love, to explore, to learn, to change. I give you freedom and the truth of me. I am nothing more than a dreamer who has lived a hundred different lives in words and thoughts and wondering.”
In the brightness that grows upon that wistful smile on her face that crystal of a tear turns to star-dust, faint enough to not be seen unless one looks close enough. “Please tell me how to lead you. Tell me who you are or who you want to become. Tell me your dreams...” How heavy her hooves feel now, like molten glass beneath her body. They feel as if they are barely strong enough to hold the fury of hope blooming and growing like a jungle where that black stain of her soul lives.
Silently she prays that they are strong enough to hold up more than just her. Isra prays that they are as strong as the moon, that they might be able to hold up the cloak of night against the fire of the day.
NOTE: This takes place after all the events of the SWP. The timeline I'm currently working with it that the SWP happened so soon after the night of auditions that there was almost no time to get anything done. That way we can keep things going without making it to hard to figure out what to write about.
Please come say hi and let her know what everyone hopes the court might become or how they want to help. <3
08-14-2018, 09:28 PM
Played by
e-cho [PM] Posts: 243 — Threads: 27 Signos: 0
she looks into her mirror,
wishing someone could hear her, so loud
Sorrow is a cloak worn heavily upon thin shoulders, but there is no tremor in her spine, no fear in her eyes. An endless sadness that could swallow the stars, but a fierce pride burns in her heart, lines every sharp angle of her face, crests in those amber eyes that look to the castle. Chains that sing a song of loss, of heartache, of such profound despair it could make the heavens cry ring upon stone steps that are sodden with heavy waters still. Salt is left on cobbled streets where the sun weakly shines from storms now past. Clouds in the distance rumble like the children's stomachs. There is still a briny scent to the city, sea fish upon their streets, crabs scuttling down where the market was. Worse yet are the horrors of the mighty thunderbirds that once were. Corpses of such beautiful beasts strewn on buildings, littering the lower levels of the city they managed to breach, bent at unusual angles that cause her stomach to turn. Necks bent and cruelly twisted, wings tattered with flames and heartache. Such precious life lost. And for what? For bringing a storm to destroy their home?
She feels the pang of each loss as though it were her own kin, knowing fully that she contributed to the taking of life. Turning to an alleyway the winged woman stumbles in, the phoenix' head dips down as the meager meal she'd had for breakfast is emptied onto the ground. There she cries. There her heart breaks. There her soul is rent and shattered like the spider webbing of a broken window. The center seems so small a hole, so insignificant an injury, yet its reach grows wider and wider until soon it is all shattered.
Moira Tonnerre is not a creature meant to take life unless it is a mercy, unless there are no means left to save her patients. There should not have been a creature harmed by her gentle, calloused hands. Yet the blood runs thick on her body - both hers, the creatures', and her companions who fought so bravely beside her. Tears track down her cheeks, valleys are left where they travel. Warm, sanguine color runs freely down her shoulder to obscure starlight in the sunset on her skin. White becomes crimson like the dawn, and blood drips slowly from her nose.
How she gasps for air like a fish out of water, like a man dying; how she prays for forgiveness and that she may be stronger in the future. As time slows, she finds herself missing the library and the brooding figure there; she finds herself missing the festival with flowers and a starlit man who brought color into her gray world; she finds herself missing the flaming blond woman that was as sleek as a viper and just as deadly, but showed warmth for Moira alone. So many faces - are they alright? What will they do when they learn of the monster she has been? How can forgiveness be found in the world when she is as terrible as the worst of them?
But the music continues, and Isra calls them all.
Upper lip stiffens as she dries her tears. Carefully she wipes her bloodied nose upon her arm, ridding herself of the terrible smear that blends both with her skin and her forearm so that none may tell the wounds there. Every footstep around her sends a shiver down her spine, every terrified whisper and heart-rending sob shake her to her core. This land was not meant to be a bloodied wasteland. It was not made to be a place of sorrow. The shadows are heavy today upon them all, but Caligo has chosen their queen who steps forward to throw her voice to the winds and hope to the gods that her people hear it.
So few come forth. So few left to be brave.
Sadness drips like a leaky faucet, a constant noise to remind them all of what they have lost. Story after story was ripped from their monarch's cracked throat during the long hours of the storm, the days of the battle. Little clean water was there to help her face those fearful faces and keep them calm, keep them merry. But it does not matter as another story is sung, another history unraveled. Darkness and sorrow. Cages that left her burning more fiercely than the sun in the sky. She inspires those around with her words, lifts her chin proudly as a part of the court, and shows that they all can be brave once more.
It does not matter that she is hoarse and should shatter like a vase when instead she smiles and asks them what they are, who they will become. It only matters that she is there.
Hope is such a fragile thing, a feathered thing, a living thing. Expanding and contracting with each breath they take, in the breast of them all. Hope is a contagious thing that crawls into their blood and makes its nest. Tendrils flare and expand, like petals of the lotus flower opening to the moon, and Moira steps forward at last.
Smiling with bloodied teeth and darkened eyes, she dips her head. Hair falls forward into her eyes having long since come undone from braids and battle born kinks; it is snarled and tangled like their hearts, but when it is moved aside it reveals the anticipation of a future. Looking over the woman of starlight and dusk, she is reminded so much of Asterion and her heart is heavy. A pause, a heartbeat, then two... And then, "Sweet Isra, my Queen. You have given so much, let us help give back to you, grow with you as you grow with us. There is a future for our court and with you at the helm we will find the path in the stars again. I wish only to heal our people and will mend them as you mend our hearts. Please, let me know of any assistance you need and I will be at your beck and call." Carefully the bloodied woman touches her lips to Isra's cheek, thanking her for all she has given, all she has done, and the many months she will yet give to them all. Cradling her wing, she turns once more to descend the steps back into the crowds below.
@Isra
<3 please accept this humble trashpost after not writing for like a month and a half TnT
Rhoswen had guided him through the canyon, Rhoswen and her fire, as the snow fell thick and fast around them, heaping walls of white far above their heads. It was a strange and solemn echo of his first journey through Elatus, and he did not try to find any caves in the cliffs, not even for brief shelter.
Even knowing the strange weather (a plague, a punishment) that had befallen Solterra, he did not expect the wreckage that was Denocte when first he reached the city of starlight.
Acton might have wept, but all his tears had long ago been burned to ash, and were dust only in his throat. So it was, dry-eyed, that he walked through the streets of his home, dread and silt dragging at each step.
It was a bombardment to the senses. His eyes did not know what to make of it, his nose was overwhelmed by brine and blood, and horror grew in his heart – and that was when he heard her voice like a mourning bell, a drawing bell. So Isra lived – how grateful he found himself, for that mercy. What could he do but follow her voice to the steps of the castle, site of so many sharp-edged memories?
It took him until the end of her speech to realize what she meant, by lead. It was not until Moira called her Queen that he understood that Caligo had at last made her choice among the wreckage of a city of dreams.
Acton could not disagree with the goddess’s choice. It was something else that made his stomach clench, his thoughts churn dark.
Anyone who touches you will pay in blood. Isn’t that what he’d told the unicorn, there in the markets so long ago, when she was nothing but a slat-ribbed stranger thieving to eat? But Acton had let his words become a lie. When the regime promised punishment and burned the pass, what had he done but flee like a rat off a ship?
He did not like the way shame felt, heavy in his breast as a rockslide. He did not like how he still felt pulled in a dozen directions and none of them seemed quite right. He did not like the way his heart beat against his ribs, fierce and fine as ever, but he did not know who it beat for.
And he looked at them now – so few, so few – covered in blood and dust. Only a remnant of what had been, with the weary-wide eyes of refugees, and Acton’s rage then for the king that had abandoned them ran white-hot through every last capillary beneath his burnished skin.
Still he said nothing, but he stood solid among them, and when his gaze met the tender ocean-blue of Isra’s he smiled.
I know the good die young
so let's let it pass, let's grow old and wither
Kauri the treachery of demons is nothing compared to the betrayal of an angel
Two little paws paddled away at the water before them, and the innocent eyes behind the motion searched deeply into the ripples. A squeak sounded from the canine’s mouth, obviously disgruntled. While scanning the area around him, Kauri eyed his noisy companion. He knew what the fennec was looking for; sadly, it would never be found. No hint of the afterlife touched these waters, though certainly did sorrow.
Devastation had found its power. The land meters before him reeking of grief. Violets gleamed through mask’s sockets as his gaze fell onto the building resting southward of this lake. A cesspool—that is what he saw of the castle. Despaired souls overseen by fools with crowns. He always kept his distance from these "hearts" of claimed lands. Those folks back upon his homeworld that endured negligence and abandonment from the monarchs. Overcrowded streets piled with diseased corpses, and yet they breathe in the filth, consume the rubbish fed to them—it sickened him. His blood began to boil as memories reminded him of the corruption.
However, as he stared at this castle, the bitterness and sickness started to subside.
The past seeped into the present, but this was not the earth he once walked—the one in which died beneath greedy sands, depraved rulers, and despondent divinities. No, all this is different... worthy. Nose pressed into Naiosé’s scrawny body as he pulls the fennec’s attention away from the lake. Kauri lifted his companion onto his back, and quickly did he feel him wiggle into the locks of his mane.
Winter has now taken the winds and blew its chilling kiss. His body wept for warmth, but nature here seemed willing to reap even the desert of that. Only was that blizzard proof he could not fill in this hole within his heart and replace what he had known with something that would simply mock it. And so, he was gone. Gone from the demons that brought agony and pain, yet guilt remains with its fangs bared.
Nostrils flared as he took a deep breath and stepped into the castle. Blood assaulted his nose, and his eyes greeted by the sight of destruction. While he surveyed the damage, he gave a sigh of disappointment. Not toward the people of this court but to the gods. What trust could he have for them as they seem to care not for the disasters that have struck? If only, if only.
He picked through the debris and peered into every opening as he searched for any souls. Embracing the silence that lingered the streets, his attention snapped toward the sound of a voice. He paused and listened. His head tilted from uncertainty. The words he hears... his mind considered them hollow. It did not want to believe; he was in disbelief. Kauri crept forward once hearing what he thought to be illusive within his life. Were the pieces still there?
Coming close to a crowd, he ceased his inspection and slowed his steps. Ears were pricked, but his head was low as to not be seen. Naiosé played along as he blanketed himself more with the stallion’s hair. Kauri listened and observed more of what has come from the meeting so far. The slight honeyed taste of hope he has long since forgotten. Nearly did he choke on the sweetness.
The soot within his chest plastered his throat and then his mouth. He would not open his mouth; he could not. This mention of freedom, dreams, purpose. What could be done of his chains from guilt, and this desire for death and reconnection? Without Mother, could he become more than just a ghoul behind tired eyes? What could he give to these people that were wronged by devastation?
Show me what I refuse to see.
An outsider looking in, Kauri mused within the shadows far behind the crowd. He would remain silent as he appraised the thoughts that ran through his mind. His senses taking in the energy flowing through the atmosphere.
It's a heavy silent in the remnants of the people that had once held such a populace within the walls of Denocte. Many could not show today, wounded as they were, but could hear from the walls of the castle, the opened windows in the rooms they rested in, and potentially felt hope once more. Araxes had tended to many, and she knew the new Sovereign had as well. After all, Isra had been within the walls with the Champion when the storm had hit, when the tsunami had battered their walls.
Scraped as she was, Araxes stood in all her pride within the crowd, before her head pushed forward, and she stepped up. She pulled herself from the others, taking careful steps to make sure she was coming up to Isra, ears twitching slightly as she did, and wings flickering, folding against her head with only a feather or two drifting off, swept away on a gentle breeze. "Dear Isra... I am Araxes, and have been with Denocte for a long time now, serving as the Champion of Wisdom to the people," she began, and she felt the flicker of warmth, the bloom of hope in her chest.
Despite all that they had gone through, they are still alive. They had still survived all of this.
"Many will think of leadership differently, each one with their own idea of how to be led. Allow me to help you with this.. I offer my services to continue as Champion, or if you wish, more. I dream perhaps one day the ranks of the council will be full once more, and our people will thrive again, that we will be whole once again. We are battered, but we are alive."
Her gaze shifted a moment, seeing Moira, the winged one who had also stepped forward, and she turned her head once more to Isra, offering a warm and soft smile. "Denocte is strong, and you will be a strong leader. If you need anything, I too, am only a call away." Her head ducked only slightly, wings still pressing against her skull and jawline, tickling through the fur with long feathers.
Tucked away in a tower far from the masses, she had stolen herself away and wallowed in her pain. She had felt as though she'd been dealt a blow to her for coming to feel a fondness for the former Sovereign. Then the torrential fury of Novus rained down upon Denocte and sent the nightwalkers scattering. Flesh, bone, and bodies had been the outcome of the disaster, and Denocte stood as a shadow of its former self. Noctii had hardly known anyone here, and that was her own fault. All she wanted was stillness, for something or someone to quiet her soul. Yet she felt useless and empty as the throne of Denocte stood as a stark reminder of yet another loss. She could see the pain and drifted through the familiarity of it. The former daughter of Reth could feel tears stream down her face as she moved toward the gathering bodies of the equines left. There would be much work ahead, and she could not succumb to the tides of her darkness. If not for her own sake, then for her fellow nightwalkers. The moon hung in the sky, reflecting the sorrows of those that found comfort beneath its pale gaze.
Noctiilucent saw one face she thought she recognized, but upon drawing closer realized her mistake. She drifted in a sea of strangers flocking to their new queen. The new sovereign spoke as though she was the voice of sadness, and she carried the weight of many worlds upon her shoulders. Beneath her belly stars splashed themselves closely at first, and then they spread upwards. Their queen seemed to be made of sadness and stardust, and each set of words she spoke resonated deeply within gold and ivory maiden. Ther was no absence of emotion as they stood together, as though they could build a wall to support one another. Noctiilucent did not feel hopeful, not yet. Isra captivated her though, each mournful phrase she strung together was like dying stars. It was both beautiful and tragic, it was not something Noctii could describe properly. She had no words for it. Isra was the opposite of her, and where she had come from impressed the former daughter of Reth. She also was hopeful, despite the tides of darkness that seemed to be crashing around Denocte.
Many voices greeted her, and yet none spilled their dreams for their new Sovereign. "Isra." Noctii began to speak but felt the lump in her throat stifle her voice. She took a few moments to recover, and it gave her a few more moments to consider what her fellow nightwalkers had said. "You have already trekked for so long, but the peak is not yet in sight. I wish I could spill for you my soul the very way you have done for us, but I do not believe this the time nor place. Each of your struggles has resonated with me, though I cannot same we are cut from the same cloth. The sorrow that falls upon Denocte does not fall upon deaf ears, and I am here to serve you as best I can. To serve Denocte. And despite your great trials and sorrow, I believe that you are the flame of hope that will reignite the hope of Denocte." Noctiilucent was forced to stop once more, as she had been so overcome with emotion. It was perhaps from the moving tales of Isra, as well as her own pain and losses that seemed to have gotten to her. Noctii had never been so openly emotional, though she had never shied away from the deep sorrows she felt before.
Araxes had said what she had wanted to say, but she would never be able to speak as eloquently as Araxes had. "I believe Araxes is right. Leadership does not have any one set of rules, and I believe Denocte will lead you as much as you lead Denocte." She allowed another pause to saturate the atmosphere, for she feared of taking up more space than necessary. Even if it was only vocally. "As for dreams , I fear that mine have all vanished. They are fleeting like the many I first met when I arrived. I dream only of the recovery and unification of Denocte now."
Actions "Speech"Thoughts
"Speech"
Notes: Ugh this is so awful I'm sorry guys.
Tags: @Isra @Araxes
Words: 714
Is it Deliverance
If you hurt me in exchange
08-17-2018, 08:27 PM
Played by
Odeen [PM] Posts: 175 — Threads: 29 Signos: 1,315
I'll be a stone, I'll be the hunter,
The tower that casts a shade
***
How are you feeling? Raymond reached out to the tarrasque waiting patiently outside the walls of the capitol, well out of sight of the gathered masses. Her mind throbbed against his like a burning wound, tense and trembling with the aftershocks of bloodwrath still working their way through her system. Ruth had come through the melee in relatively good repair, by his reckoning: the thunderbirds' storms did little more than scorch her carapace, and their talons had only found their way through her thick skin in a few choice spots. She was a true juggernaut, a perfect instrument of destruction; her agitation set his teeth on edge.
She did not answer immediately, and in the gap between question and response the red stallion redoubled his attention upon the Denocteans gathered to hear their new queen. His face betrayed nothing but a sort of post-combat blankness, as though it was satisfaction enough to take in a world that was not all slashing talons and crashing lightning without fully engaging it. His wounds burned but there was no time to address them until the business of the day was done.
Isra had offered (see: assigned) him a place and a purpose, and he would fill it if that was what had to be done.
Tired, came the delayed reply. Even this long after the battle, she seemed distant, almost feral - but honest, too. He did not need a description to sense the weariness fraying the edges of their connection, and not for the first time he wondered how titanic creatures such as she lived in their natural habitat.
Horse after horse stepped forward in response to Isra's announcement and open-hearted confession, each offering their own speech, adding their light to hers, showering her with their sugared words in that time-honored tradition of overly-romantic fantasy storytelling. He measured their words against the stories written in their eyes and their bodies, betraying nothing of what he saw there.
For now, he said nothing. The contents of his dreams were not meant for civilized society, though Isra's soliloquy about freedom shook one of them loose from its moorings. He thought of the raven gate, of the long and oppressive shadow it cast across the mountain pass, of the forest of ghosts that lay at its feet.
Can we go?
When this is finished, my dear.
Raymond glanced to a striped horse lingering along the outskirts of the gathering, to the spotted Araxes whom he recognized, and to others whom he did not. Their spirits, it seemed, had not quite been brought low by hardship. Good; they would need their hope in the days to come, for the climb now lay before them all. Patiently, respectfully, the red stallion listened, breathing in the songs of hope coloring the air around him.
***
Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.
Isra of the soul-fire
'let us go now into the night-- together'
Pride lights a fire in her belly. Each of them is a spark, their hopes a flame and their eyes when they all meet her own are embers and kindling tossed upon that fire crackling between her ribs. All of her drips with flames, white as stars and hotter than the core of a comet and she wonders if they might see bits of her leaking out in the cracks and scrapes and blood that coats her like war-torn silk.
Oh! Oh how she wishes she wore a skin of starlight and dripped silver instead of blood. If only she were anything but bay and dark and tainted only slightly with color. If only she looked like their hope, consuming as the night sky and just as lovely.
But she is plain and her horn is nothing more than a slip of sword as it sighs through the air when she bows before each of them that comes to greet her.
Isra lifts her cheek for Moira's kiss and she sighs for how it feels so warm against the ocean and winter-chill of her skin. “Let us heal you too. None of this is made to be borne on a single one of us but it's for all of us to carry.” And as she watches the girl retreat with her bloody teeth and fresh scars she says, loud enough to rise above the clatter of all their hooves on the broken stones. “Come find me soon. I have a story to tell you.”
The stallions stay further back, silent but for the things raging like wildfires and almost frozen seas in their eyes. One is a sun and when Isra smiles at Acton she lets a little of that fire flash between her lips and a little of the sadness leak from her ocean eyes. She buries all the bitterness of his broken promises and dragon-fire and looks up to the sky to remember that there is only the future now. The other stallion is nothing more than a darkening of the shadows. Isra looks harder at the darkness and wishes, wishes, wishes that he'll come close.
Araxes comes forward and she breaks her gaze from the shadows and easily reflects back a smile. “Araxes,” She says on a sigh, a memory of wounds tended together with screams that could swallow up the thunder around them. “Thank you for all that you've done already and all that you will do. I look forward to working together to recreate Denocte.” Isra reaches forward towards Araxes in just a whisper of a touch and the movement is made of both gratitude and hope. “Perhaps we might talk on leadership later as we rebuild.”
The next mare comes, ablaze with her own fire and Isra's eyes echo that fire and look more like hurricane seas than winter seas. Hope and pride lick at her heat and her soul boils with all the things rising in the tides of her. “Our dreams are the same.” She says and when she blinks it feels as if sparks of white race like live-wires across the blackness of her eyelids. “Shall we be flames of hope together as well?” Her lips feel like fire when she reaches them out to Noctiilucen (phoenix hot).
Then Raymond breaks through the crowd and her eyes burn brighter still when they land on him. “Regent.” She says and it's the first time that her voice carries loud enough to echo and her teeth flash like falling stars between her black lips. There's no doubting that her gaze now is only on the red devil with blood that's redder still coating bits of pieces of him.
“I do not think all this hope of ours can be contained by gates of stone and steel anymore. Do you?” Her smile is almost feral when she walks towards him, almost wicked, almost like a unicorn's. The scar on her hip tingles like a shock-wave and her soul fire starts to roar.
Raymond. and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around
Raymond met Isra's eye with equal brightness, the angles of his battle-hardened body as clean and purposeful as fire-forged steel. The brief moment that passed them contained a tiny eternity, encapsulated entirely in that spark of shared understanding, of a test presented and passed.
Her words brought a smile of muted satisfaction to his dark lips in turn - the smile, perhaps, was commonplace, but the approval perhaps less so. Raymond did not pass judgment lightly, and it was a rare thing indeed to truly please him. This, though...an iron-clad statement, a bell rung for liberty at tradition's expense that could not be un-rung...it carried with it a weight and courage far greater than any blueblood could hope to shoulder.
"It never could," the red stallion replied, conviction written in the swell of his breast and the arch of his proud neck, "nor should it ever be again." Ruth's consciousness stirred against his in response to his sudden intensity. A distant growl echoed in from outside the castle walls.
Raymond raised his voice for the benefit of the gathered Denocteans. It was a commander's voice, its tone an echo of the one that had guided some of them into battle against the thunderbirds. "Long ago, someone built a gate in the mountains to keep the rest of Novus at bay. More recently, those gates were closed again, and it was Denocte that paid the price for its leaders' fear. We must not give history the opportunity to repeat itself ever again. Walls are cages for the fearful, and we..." He paused, ruminating on his words, then, "All we've ever had to fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."
Without bravado, the red stallion offered Isra a lingering look and added, more quietly this time, "Meet us outside the Court if you want to come along."
He swept away from the meeting without waiting for a reply.
