Eik takes a roundabout path, but eventually it leads him to the library. It gives him a chance to get to know the night court on a deeper level. He imagines the shape of the court, the materials and layout, all of these silent things have gently shaped the people who live and die within these walls. There are so many corridors he wants to walk down, so many untold stories that lie just around the next corner, always close but out of sight.
Solterra is built on secrets and Denocte on mysteries. The two are undeniably different, but also strangely similar. Eik does not quite feel at home, but he feels... something close to it.
As he walks, he learns about this place by looking and imagining, and when he is ready he slowly opens his mind and reaches out with his magic. Well, it is not really reaching out so much as staying still and waiting for thoughts to come to him. A merchant nervously counts and recounts the day's sales. A sad-eyed mare is thinking of Terrastella and what state it might be in. He looks into the images her imagination creates, great sinkholes swallowing home. The fields I learned to run in, gone. The kingdom I raised my children in, gone, the-- He withdraws as the imagery becomes hard to bear, blinking his eyes heavily. He is not sure if the tears on his cheek are his or the stranger's until a few moments later when he is fully untangled from her.
Not for the first time, his heart is heavy but his eyes are dry. He does not use his magic for a while after that.
All this to say he is tired-- mentally, physically, magically-- by the time he makes it to the library. And Moira Tonnerre is nowhere to be found. It is disappointing but not terribly surprising... after all, she could not always be here.
He inhales and can just barely smell her among the paper and candle wax. There are others, too (-- Isra?) and a happy-bird smell (crow friend?) and the ocean through the open windows. He turns his attention to the books, and pours himself into selecting one to read while he waits for Moira to return.
Candle after candle burns to its wick, a mere flicker by the time she lights the next one, turning to solemn faces once more with a tender, inquisitive gleam to those honey eyes that assess and seek to sooth all at once. She is a healer. Patient after patient she sees, so many faces that they blur together from young to old to new mothers and those expecting. Others come with tears to tell of those they lost in hopes she's seen them, treated them, fixed them so that they can find their way home. Moira cannot tell them of their family, all she can do is offer comfort in the makeshift medical room she's made. They stay there with warm tea that does not sooth them, they listen to the way her voice flows through the room as she sings, as melodies as ancient and churning as the sea fill the air, as her bandages flow unending onto sprained ankles and cut arms. Some are worse than others, some she fears infection will find, some still are more grim and she must take them to another room to help them. All the while though that song continues as steady as a war-drum, as steady as the beating of her phoenix heart.
When once more Isra pulls her from the sick bay and forces food upon her again, when the Queen holds her close until her hands stop shaking, when the numbness returns and the darkness brightens just a little, she is forced away to take a break. For your health the storyteller whispers, ushering her down hallway after hallway until she's near to her library once more.
The smell of books on shelves calls to her, pulls her in until the doors are open and his scent hits her. The portrait left unfinished comes to mind - the painting of the man in white and silver crowned by the sun and mountains behind him that she's yet to put fully on canvas. A smile lights on her face, however weary, as the bright-hearted woman sees him bent over a tome as she often is when in these many walls. Moonlight glints through the high, arched windows, spilling on him like a lover pressed against his skin. So close, Moira had been so closely pressed against Asterion not too long ago - relief in the curve of her spine to see and old friend. Once more the feeling sweeps through her and she moves forward. The picture of grace as feet glide almost silently upon the floor.
"No more birds nor correspondences then, Eik?" How sweet it is to say his name, to feel it roll off of her tongue like honey, like home. "I can't believe you're here," the phoenix says at last, settling in on the bench beside him while bringing over a book from the shelves she'd intended to pick up again. "You've seen Denocte then, is it everything you hoped it would be?" A careful question posed, inquiry and curiosity twining together until she cannot tell if she hopes for him to like Denocte or not. As the silence stretches, she cannot help but to think it is more tedious than the death bell that tolls in the sick bay where she should have been, but this... To have left to find him will be a welcome reprieve for at least a few hours.
@Eik ;u; precious boy oml. thank you for this thread friend
11-02-2018, 11:18 PM - This post was last modified: 11-02-2018, 11:18 PM by Moira
He wonders if she realizes how special she is, this woman who floats instead of walking, who could command or console a crowd with the twist of the lips. Moira moves with a grace that is hard to wrap your mind around, made harder by sleep deprivation. She is quickly close enough that her smell (floral, medicinal, death turned sweet) collides with his (smoke, salt, questions) and the ancient taste of all the words surrounding them. Suddenly the library feels very small. Smaller still when her warm voice fills the space that sits between them. "No more birds nor correspondences then, Eik?"
He wishes he could speak like that, like a song. In comparison, his response is plain. Bare-boned.
(There is something to be said for baring your bones, we just don't know what it is right now. Ask again later.)
"I had to see you for myself." Moira's presence makes him feel a little more daring, Isra's love makes him feel a little more open. Most of all he feels time changing, and it presses upon him a sense of urgent honesty. Solterra covered in snow, Delumine in ash, Terrastella sinking into the mud and Denocte a tattered safehaven for the injured and homeless. This might well be the end of the world, and he'd rather not spend it sitting behind sandstone walls waiting for something to happen.
Whatever it was that drew him to Denocte, it was bigger than himself. He wanted to see the court, and Moira, and Asterion for himself, and he wanted to be sure that Isra was real. Still he wonders at the truth or illusion of her, and maybe he always will, at least a little bit-- belief never suited him. "You have a beautiful home," he says, and instantly he remembers saying this to her queen the night before. His cheeks grow warm in a pleasantly uncomfortable way.
"I wish..." His voice drops even quieter as he prepares to confess something terrible, and even the sunlight seems to lean closer to listen. "I wish I could stay a while." The breath shakes in his chest as he feels, he feels, he feels so sad and so happy at the same time, and he hasn't the slightest idea how else to express it, except to sigh.
(Then again- you're used to feeling two different things at the same time. What is that thing they say, the more things change...)
A change in conversation is in order, and quickly. He grabs at the first thing that comes to mind. "You look tired, my friend." he had never been tactful with the truth. It was this way the first time they met, that brilliant morning when sleep fogged both their minds. Is this the way it will always be now-- always tired?
Ah, but this day his fatigue is of a different nature than hers. His is a gleeful sort-- the sort where the body and mind persist, ever stubbornly, in fear that sleep will wash away the magic of the previous day. The dreamy blur at the edge of his eyes has nothing to do with a lack of sleep. He leans over to Moira, and gently places his muzzle to her poll before drawing away. The meaning is clear- I'm here. I care.
"Is there anything I can do to help?"
E I K the biggest ache was mine
@Moira Forgive me as I remember how to write! Having your words to reply to definitely made remembering easier <3
Time makes fools of us all
12-04-2018, 11:07 PM - This post was last modified: 12-04-2018, 11:09 PM by Eik
There is a weightlessness and a weight, a push and a pull, a changing of the tides in the room when he speaks. No, she cannot put her finger on it, cannot quite figure out what is so alluring about Eik, what is so comforting, and why they seem unable to meet at times when they've had a decent night's sleep. Is fatigue so evident on her face? Is at least half the world of death so easily seen upon her slim shoulders, shimmering along red and white veins like stars streaming through the night sky, telling a tale of something lost, something fallen? But she listens, she lets the world spin, spin, spin around her as the stars lean in and the light flutters in dancing dust motes that draw her golden eyes up and then back down. Down into a face of conflict and happiness before he asks to help.
But she has so many questions first. After all, he is not a dream from a sleepless night in the desert. The brush of skin against skin, the scent of a sin, sends a shock skittering down her spine. Cool is her face, schooled and calm as it should always have been, should remain, as he withdraws.
She is grateful at least for such a wonderful friend.
"Why can't you stay, Eik? You're welcome here anytime. With the world in an uproar, why rush into the arms of an awaiting flame, why not let yourself relax? You deserve as much." The words are nearly a hum, an order from a doctor to a patient, bordering on the edge of concern for a friend. She does not let her brow draw together when he looks into her darkened visage, she does not let that crispness of the world fade with each breath even when sleep beckons. The night is young. There's too much yet to be said, to pass.
At last she sighs, drawing herself inward, spooling in the thread until only the tail remains at the top, ready to be unraveled at the ends once more. Shining eyes turn from the man who feels like secrets now rather than the open book before, turn to the towers of books on the shelves and another one is brought to their tables. Absently she flips through the pages, looking at gardens and towering mountains and foggy caves beside the beech. Pouring over descriptions in the dim light as the silence grows longer, as her thoughts twirl faster. The dance is too fast, too fleeting, for her to keep up and keep it all straight. Everything is fraying, slipping apart, like rain through her fingers.
Finally she stops, staring at a large house and smiling faces, staring at the drawing she'd put in there, staring at the woman who is a mirror of herself and the man who stares adoringly at his wife. Staring... And her head falls to Eik's shoulder, ebony hair absently mixing along the white of Eik's, breath soft on his neck. Friends. "You feel heavier than before, but your shoulder is healed. I'm glad, and I'm fine, Eik. You saw Denocte and must have tasted the sea. Much happened, I've just been busy. Just...stay with me a while, won't you?"
For it is good to feel the sun peek out when he is near for even the length of a breath, to know the world still has good and bright things in it despite all that happens... And Eik, her friend, her desert dream... He is well and at last he is here. Maybe her mind will calm, maybe she would make a sleeping tonic once all of this was over.
@Eik ;o; you are breathtaking as always with your words, my friend !
12-07-2018, 10:28 PM - This post was last modified: 12-07-2018, 10:28 PM by Moira
There is a mournful look in his eyes. He tries to find the words to explain how staying too long would be like a betrayal. Maybe it wouldn't have before he made friends here, before he fell in love, but now things have become personal instead of political. And it might just be part of the game you play when you are Emissary, but Eik never put much value into games. He values duty and a job done well, and so he holds himself to a level of professionalism that does not leave room for his own desires.
The problem is that at the start of all this, he thought he didn't have a heart. At least, not one so bloody and so loud.
There is something of a demand in her tone, something he does not want to mess with. So he does not say what he's thinking out loud- "I do not deserve anything"- but the sentiment is so strong that he can't keep his magic from rudely announcing it to Moira Tonnerre and the rest of the library, all those books and scrolls and scraps of paper crammed into whatever space will take them. "I will stay as long as I can," he says at the same time that his thoughts silently fill the air, and the two sentiments (one a protest, the other a resignation) weave around each other messily.
The quiet then that saddles them, it is full of words unspoken. He's looking at the book before him but not seeing, instead he is feeling the undercurrent of her twirling thoughts. He senses her mind shifting and swaying but not the sentiment driving it. It is akin to standing on the bow of a ship and feeling the bobbing of the water, but not knowing how deep it is, or where it comes from, or which way it goes next. Of course, at any point he could pull the thoughts directly from her mind, and she would never even know, but he would never do such an intrusive thing to a friend.
It seems like a great weight off his shoulders when she suddenly leans against him. Her breath is warm and intimate on his neck and no small part of him is in awe at how easy it is to be here like this, at how right it feels. Her voice is a lullaby- "Just... stay with me a while, won't you?" to which he simply nods, and hums a soft "mmm" in agreement.
Eik does not want to speak of how he is torn between love and duty, because it is not in his nature to confide... but oh, love has made him weak, and duty has worn him thin, and he does not much feel like himself these days anyway. "Moira?" There is a question that sits in his chest, a question that he wants to ask everyone and anyone but he does not. It is a private question, or at least it feels private to him. It is something he would only ever ask a very close friend. "What do you think about love?"
Eik is an eddying current that constantly changes, once he was a dream, now he is a reality beside her screaming his thoughts into the darkness, into the echoing caverns of her ribcage. What he will not - cannot - say resonates around them like a funeral bell, bringing forth those who mourn and thoughts that seek to ease and sooth such unease. She does not comment on his emotions that hollow out a hole in her heart, only listens to the resignation in those glad and sad tones that draw her from the world she slips into so easily when her mind wonders down pathways long forgotten and covered in cobwebs.
The torrent shifts, a leaf twisting in the breeze, a butterfly starting tsunamis, and world spinning, spinning, spinning... Hesitance curls around his heart, curiosity bubbles restlessly in hers. "Mmm?" her only reply, eyes still closed as she leans in closer, a wing carefully extending to curl about him, to cover him in a warmth and comfort him in the only way she knows how. Skin to skin, heart to heart. He can be bare here, just as she can be reckless and curious and damned.
Ah, but love. Love. The phoenix does not expect the spark in her heart to ignite, the eye of a sleeping beast to open - one that has slumbered so long. Long enough that it forgot how to breathe, how to whisper into her ear, how to tell her what irresponsible things would make Estelle love her, how to gain the affections of a court and then throw it in their face, how to be a monster of skin and bone and fire and pain. Love… "It brought me here," she offers at last, glancing up at him beneath those long, dark lashes to trace a scalding path along the curve of Eik's cheek, down the length of his face until it brushes over his lips and onto his throat.
Her wing snaps back against her ribs, stifles the beast that purrs and pounds on locks and doors, begging to be set free again. "It's a rotten thing when left unchecked. Disaster follows in its wake. Horrors creep in its shadow. Oh, but it makes you feel alive... It makes you want to set the world on fire to see how it will burn and smile when you're the only one left. I think it's a terrible thing...to be in love. It makes fools of great beings and monsters or the purest. It makes you stupid... Are you in love, Eik?"
Now she's moving away, distance between them grows with every step, with every thought. They are not violent, merely sharp with cutting edges. If he reaches out he will feel her attention probing against his skin, digging into the weariness of him to find the source, to root it out. There is not a smile in his voice, and she wonders if she gave him the wrong response. But it is not a time to reflect on her words, Moira Tonnerre has seen nothing good come of those she loved and who should have loved her. So she gives him the only truth she knows and hopes... What she hopes for, she's yet to know.
With her wing draped like a blanket over him, the world seems for a while very soft and very warm. He forgets, or at least finds it easy to not think about, how fragile everything is outside this room. It is temporary, of course it is temporary. The word love is suspended for a moment, as though it might fly-- but it falls instead, heavy as a stone. He feels the violent shifting of her heart as thought it were a physical thing.
Eik is not sure what response he expected from Moira Tonnerre, but it was not this. Would that he could take his words back,
(he wonders, abruptly, if he might be able to do that one day- not just read minds but re-write them. But this is something to ponder later--)
for when she looks at him through those long lashes, he feels like a damned thing. Then she steps away and the world again feels a little colder, a little harsher around the edges, and uncertainty creeps across his features.
"I think it's a terrible thing... to be in love..."
Her words wound him more than any physical blow could have, and at first his only reaction is the barest turn of his lips in a small, confused frown. He knows, too well, how similar love and violence can be. How he would slay an army to protect Isra. How he would set fire to himself too, if that's what it took. He feels the truth of her words in his heart. Destruction lies in his chest, waiting for the opportunity to spring forward. But there is peace too, where for so long there has been torment, and he is not sure how to describe this without starting at the beginning-- which he does not want to do.
He straightens, almost as if in defiance. "Yes, I am." Despite the abundance of words that fight to be said, he finds himself speechless. There are millions of things he could say about Isra, or himself, or his stained-glass ideas of what love is, but he does not. "She makes me better--" it seems as though he means to say more, but he doesn't. Words could not do this feeling justice, even if he were better at choosing the right ones.
He tries again anyway.
"In Solterra, they say there are flowers that will wait hundreds of years to bloom. The conditions must be perfect- the moisture, the temperature, the sunlight, everything. You would never know they're there, until one day you wake up and the desert is full of color." He finds himself looking at the dust in the corner, the books stacked on the table, anything but Moira's burning eyes. His next words are spoken telepathically, and as he speaks he paints her an image of the desert bursting into color. "I didn't think there was still anything pure inside of me, until I found Isra. She's what the bloom was waiting for."
Eik meets her eyes once more, and he tries to see how much of a fool she thinks he is. "Do you think I making a terrible mistake?"
E I K the biggest ache was mine
@Moira eeek sorry for the wait, I love this thread but I forgot how to write for a hot minute x_x
In every dip of his shoulders and curve of his cheeks, the shifting of even his mouth, it lets her know she did not say what he wanted to hear. The phoenix does not regret her words, does not shy away from the damnation set upon his head, upon Isra's. Oh, how the woman burns because she cares for them both, how bitter the taste in her mouth of ash and pure lemon and acid eating at her tongue when her eyes can only smolder and darken at him.
Every word is a curse, an ill wish, an omen upon her heart. Every syllable is a knife, a dagger, a sword plunging through burnt wings, through her spine, into her gut. And every time he does not meet her gaze she cannot help but feel the anger that pulses, a panther beneath her skin, waiting to pounce and devour and destroy.
Barking out a laugh, a scoffing sound more choked than the soft, sultry purrs usually humming through the air, she cannot help but turn away. Angrily the Tonnerre child paces to and from the bookshelves, listening to his words hit the walls and splatter like paint, like falling dreams, like destruction. He cannot know then. The destructive power, the pain that comes with, the rending of one's very soul and heart from their body - to be in love, to love another so wholly that it destroys everything you are. Snorting, Moira paces right up to him. Eye to eye, toe to toe, she breathes heavily and snarls.
"Then you are a fool and may Caligo and whatever heathen god may listen have mercy on your souls. When it tears you to pieces, when it shreds who you are like the insatiable, ravenous, awful beast that it is, when everyone you love does not know how to look at you and even you become a stranger in your skin..." Panting, she hisses.
Teeth snap as she turns away, stalks towards the shelves once more with a horrifying snap of her wings against her sides. Ears bury themselves among braids and curls, her tail flicks from side to side as irritation oozes from her pores. "Tell me then what it is to love and watch everything slip away. Tell me then how it makes you better." The word is spit like a sin, like a curse, like something wicked and acrid and foul that she cannot stand to deal with any longer. When she cannot see him, when her flames have burned down and Moira is but a pile of ashes awaiting rebirth, only then does she sigh and let her shoulders fall. Let the rage roll out and down as cascading droplets of a waterfall.
Defeat almost hangs as heavily in the air as her unending rage, rage at something that was not Eik and was not Isra. But it is gone just as quick, as quickly as her head raises once more and hollow gaze at last looks to the candles too far gone. "I'll stand by you in your joy and hers and the multitude of mistakes you will carve along these walls. And when you crumble, when the earth shatters beneath your feet... There are salves and tonics to help that, too, Eik." At last it is a whisper, a hush of words too tired to be anything more than that last offering. Her own heart is run ragged with such emotions running rampant, unleashed from their collars, unearthed from their cages, unsatisfied with how little they've been allowed to play. For now... For now she awaits the damage of her un-tethered words with a final statement so quiet it's nearly unheard: "Your mistakes are for you to decide and bare, no other can don them for you."
She turns and walks away, pacing like a tiger, and when she returns to stare him in the eye, still so much like a tiger, she seems a complete stranger. Maybe he had been wrong to ever think he knew her, even a little bit.
"Then you are a fool..."
He stands there and lets her speak words that should ruin him. " When it tears you to pieces, when it shreds who you are..." His lungs struggle for breath beneath the weight of her words.
"And even you become a stranger in your own skin... Tell me then what it is to love and watch everything slip away. Tell me then how it makes you better."
She is so angry he thinks the parchment around them might catch fire, and he wants to ask why are you so angry except it's in his blood, too, and the only words that long to escape him are you are wrong.
You are wrong, you are wrong, his blood chants. It wants to tear the books from the shelves, upend the tables, rip the tapestries from the walls. He knows no point would be proven by violence--
but violence has never been about proving anything. Violence is about expression, and when words aren't getting through... he listens to his heart race and wonders at the difference between now and yesterday. Yesterday how it hammered with love's trepidation! What a marvel that the same frenzied rhythm, the exact same pulse, should ring with anger and confusion where it once chimed wedding bells.
(what else beats the same as anger and love? Sorrow and fear and hate and joy? Are they all just different sides of the same strange thing? Is that what we call soul?
you are wrong, his blood still chants.)
The heat leaves her almost as suddenly as it has come, although there is a haggard look in her eyes as she continues to warn him. He's heard enough.
"You're wrong, Moira Tonnerre. Good night." He dips his head cordially and leaves on light feet, despite the heaviness of his heart.
Later, his only misgiving would be that he left on the note that he did, instead of asking the question that begged to be asked-- why are you so angry? This conversation would open wounds that would fester without closure. He knows this. He knows this, but he leaves anyway.
Rarely is a man ever angry and wise at the same time.
the wine we really drink is our own blood. our bodies ferment in these barrels.
F
or a moment, just a moment, Moira thinks she can hear his heart pounding; the defiance of it screaming through his blood like a jet plane crashing, falling down to the ground in a heaping pile of flames and fury, fighting with its last breath to save everything - everyone - vying for life inside. If you look within them, you might ask who would be the phoenix, and who a pile of ash, a memory floating away on the winds of war? Amber eyes are not cresting with tears, lashes do not glimmer as though a million diamonds vie for the attention of any who look her way. Her lips do not tremble while she watches him fight every word he wants to utter.
Instead, he is a menagerie of emotions all kept hidden within. Hidden as her own heart, her own voice, should have been moments ago. The phoenix cannot bring herself to regret what she's said, but the cutting look, the feeling of loss and hurt and chasms opening when he snaps goodnight, it is a slap across the face.
No amount of isolation and solitude could prepare her for the pang that echoes through the caverns of her body, races to the stars to be free, to feel what it is to live before it knows what it's like to die, to be forgotten. In his chest another dreamer lives as the one in hers does, yet they are too blind to see. Now, with only the disappearing of his ghostly tail, with only her books and thoughts to whisper around her, does she realize the error she may have made. Brows draw together as a soft "Goodbye, my friend," floats into the air like the cracking of her heart.
Some abysses are meant to be made. Some darkness is meant to make you strong. Others force the realization of mortality down her throat. Moira feels as though she's drowning, as though some hope as small as a sparrow has just fallen, frozen from a bough. Perhaps, were she less horrified of her own actions and his revelations, she would have chased after him. Instead, wings tuck tight and chin tips higher, eyes harden, darken, and she turns to the scrolls to pull out a book. Absently the pages drift open to that drawing, a single drawing, of a girl with wings and her family who will never know what it is to fly.
@Eik | "speaks" | fini <3 thank you for such a wonderful encounter my friend !
