[Quest] a humid, jungle melody--

[Random Events]

in a numberless dream they learned to sing a song

A tiger does not belong in the mountains. The thought circles through Neerja's mind like a vulture around a dead snake. She should not be here. She doesn't want to be here, where the trees are dying around her hand the stone is hard and sharp beneath her paws. Each steps she takes makes her wonder why she's still walking through the cool shadows instead of turning home to her heavy, humid jungle heat. 

But there is that nagging feeling pulling at her soul and it nips at her like a cub. She dreams of it, that feeling, and it takes on words that dance against her like fronds in a rainstorm. Every night, beneath the moonlight that filters into her jungle, dappled like water ripples, she flies. She's still golden and black but bits of wealth twinkle and sing on her like the song-birds in her forest. The night-sky unfolds beneath her wings and she thinks that this is what she has been missing. 

And when she would wake sadness would linger in her shadow like sickness. Each night she would dream and each morning her heart would feel heavier and heavier. The day it started to feel like a stone in her body she left she jungle, following a path that she did not know she knew. 

This is how a lion finds herself in the mountains. How foolish was I? I should have stayed in the jungle where the world around me was bright instead gray and cold. All the questions danced her the darkness in the corner of her gaze. Neerja wanted to turn back, she wanted to continue onward until that ache in her heart was nothing but sweetness. 

Still, she walked onward until the moon settled to sleep and the sun rose, dewy and still cool over the mountains. Part of her almost wonders why she didn't feel the need to dream and why when this morning came her heart trembled in her chest like a newborn. There is wonder in her to discover that with each step, when the path starts to slope down, the ache in her bones hurts a little less. 

Like all great cats she knows she's getting closer and closer to whatever it is that she needs to find.

The air has on a sweetness when she lifts her head to the wind, sweetness and metal and moonlight. It quickens her steps and soon she's running through the trees as if it's a meal she's chasing instead of fate. The trees become nothing more than obscure shadows as she runs. Deer and song-birds pause and watch her, knowing that something dangerous has passed. But they have never seen a tiger and so none of them know enough to turn and run back to their thickets and their nests. 

Neerja's stride slows just as the forest starts to thin out and the sunlight stars to filter through bright enough to sting her eyes. Ahead there is a form, all gold and white. There is something heavy in the air around her and when the tiger licks the breeze she finds a name for it. Sorrow and Worry. 

Suddenly she knows why she was in the mountains. The jungle seems further and further away, like another life, when she draws out of the shadows and into the sunlight. All she can look at is the pegasus, Moira Her mind doesn't remember recalling the name but her heart does. Oh her heart knows that name in the song that it sings. 

It has always known that song. 

She waits, as patiently as she can, for the mare to start singing that song back to her. 

---

@Moira, might feel a tugging on her heart as the night starts to die. It could be an ache in her bones, it could feel like something besides just Isra is missing from her life. Whatever it is, she finds herself drawn out to the base of the mountains. There a tiger will walk out the shadows towards her. There is a silent song playing in the air (or is it in her heart) and Moira might wonder where it came from. Has she been dreaming of the tiger too? When she sleeps does she walk through the heavy jungle? Neerja knows why she has come, does Moira?

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It was a ton of fun writing a cranky tiger. <3

Enjoy! -nestle

[Moira]

m o i r a

i long to be with you, and by the sea,
where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air

T

here are times, in the stillness of the night just before the sun rises, when she draws, when she paints, thinks she finds jungles in the shadows of her tablets. Great vines sweep out, covering the Tonnerre Estate - oh, it had happened before even Novus stumbled upon the phoenix. Snippets of deep green and bright purples and pinks and fuchsia staining canvas after canvas until a messy, tropical, beautiful scene is dripping with sweat and heat and creatures so beautiful and foreign to her that her hear taches to reach out and simply brush a hand over wings and fur and fronds alike.

There are moments when the phoenix will bolt upright in bed, covered in a cold sweat panting, heart thundering, eyes wild and narrow and blood still on the tip of her tongue (is it hers or another's? Moira never really can tell in the end). These moments when she's still somewhere in a misty jungle, still tangled in silken sheets about her feet and unkempt hair, it's hard to tell what she is more: a beast or a healer; a girl or an animal? Most nights, she could lull it away, drink a cup of tea and let herself fall back into the blackness, dipping into an abyss so wide and full of splendor that she does not always wish to leave it.

Today, the phoenix cannot. As she rises from her bed, discarding her sheets and blankets in favor of her anklets and bangles that are carefully threaded between feathers of sunlight and dreams, her head is not where it should be. Within her breast, a caged bird sings and screams and yells. There are songs hammering on her ribs, thundering against her heart as it beats louder and louder and louder until it is a wild, roaring call that she cannot resist.

So, the girl of sunsets and dreams and healing and mystery and so many more innumerable things, she listens.

Quickly, before the sun has a chance to raise his head over the mountains and pull those late-night lover to their beds once more, she slips from the castle as a phantom fleeing in the night. There is that jungle music, the humming and thrumming that sound like home as though she's never known the word before in this way, where it simply sounds right and feels as though keys are turning in locks and at last - at last ! - they fit. Tumblers turn and move, grinding open one by one as she draws nearer to the mountains. To that unavoidable song that fills the very woods that surround her.

Carefully, so carefully, wings extend to brush against the trees, pine needles finding feathers where fronds do in her sleep. They are only glimpses, and she does not always remember them, but how Moira sees that distant empire now. There, inhibitions run free; there, only the strong survive; there, it is your wit against the world; there...There her heart beats in another chest. As she turns down a labyrinthine pathway (if you ask her to follow her steps back she could not tell you the way), there is a coalescing within. Birdsong crescendos, rising higher and higher, nearly a battle cry and gentle welcome.

She does not expect the tiger atop the mountain to stare down at her when she looks up. Oh - but Neerja takes her breath away. A gasp, a strangled sob slips past her carmine lips as she feels the whisper in her mind as though the tigress were there, curling against her side in a heap of legs and fur and love. No time allows for her to stop and question when she began running, when her feet betrayed her patience and calmness in favor for one who speaks the same as she, for one who loves the same as she, for one who is her other half in every sense where Estelle had not completely and always been. They are two sides of the same coin, Neerja and the phoenix woman who halts just as quickly as her harried race began. How she pants now, almost gasping for breath. How she lowers her head, gentle phantom hands grasping the cat's face in a warm embrace, stroking down her neck as their foreheads touch.

"Neerja" she croons at last, a sigh, a lover's whisper as the sun peeks over the mountain (is he too embarrassed to watch something as touching as the reunion of two souls broken and not quite whole find each other?). There are tears on her face, tears she lets the tigress lick away with a rough tongue that is gentle only for the Pegasus. And at last she settles then, listens as their hearts beat together as one, their breathing synced up, echoes the resounding song that crests in joy and love and something so pure and unbreakable that to touch that sacred bond would sear and burn any who try, and looks over the great masses of fur and stripes and beauty. Looks at the friend she's yearned for from before she can remember. And, with another phantom stroke down the tigress' face, spine, she smiles.

"Let's go home, my friend."

@Random Events | "speaks" | thank you so much, this is absolutely beautiful and perfect !

rallidae