Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.
I
n her dreams he stands, tall and dark and beautiful. As distant as the skies she loves so dearly, has come to cherish, to almost worship. Oh, but to bring her to her knees would take more than the might of the gods, more than sinning lips and serpentine smiles. Yet he stands there, a god, a mortal, a lover, an enemy, a friend. Distant and near, just out of reach and meant to be sought after, a longing cry upon lips sewn shut. Moira cannot reach him here, not when she dreams, not when those dreams let monsters loose upon her mind. They prowl and plunder and ravage the holy temples built to pray in, to sing in, to praise in, to sin in. Claw marks are left on doors where blood does not coat the entrance.
Through it all he is distant. Through it all the starry-eyed man, the unsure, wavering child, stares and stares and stares.
There is not a light in those eyes that shine so brightly down upon her. It bathes the streets in colors of red. Red, for love and anger; red, for blood and birth; red, for redemption and pain. She walks down corridors where beasts prowl, feels their skin brush against her skin, lets them paint her in their black and blue and purple. Here, terror still dwells, a merry warm bed for its head every day and horrors awaiting it at night. In these forsaken halls, she hears screams and sees ghosts. There are no fires to burn the nightmares away. No gods will descend and strike those sins from her past.
In these halls, Moira is her own god.
Sweat stripes her skin, drips down her neck like it would in jungles where Neerja once moved so freely. Iron and metal coat her tongue (is it hers or another's?), and it never really goes away. Maybe her childhood will never leave her, for there in those once-empty rooms she sees feathers fall in piles of flame. She sees chains upon the walls and a sea of tears that others have forgotten. But she remembers.
She can never forget.
There, in a courtyard as she travels out into another winding way, by a pond they hold her under. Did it really ever happen? Or was it something else horrible and cruel that she's painted over to make it more bearable? It doesn't matter as she passes like a reaper, shredded soul dripping behind her as the only cloak she wears. Under this starlight, under that distant star's downward gaze, she might as well be naked, laid bare with her sins and transgressions. For a healer's hands are never clean. Constellations light the way to doors and rooms that are not there when she is awake. Lanterns with willo' the wisps trapped light rooms and she watches as a young girl - a small reflection of who she once was: scared, alone, so very eager to please and so distant from life - takes the life of some unknown aunt or uncle or cousin without batting an eye. Just a bit of nightshade mixed into a broth, just a bit of poison masked so sweetly that they smile as she says goodbye. The girl does not look back as she leaves, but Moira does now. Her own family's wailing is a ghost among the maze.
There were so many lost then that she did not care to know.
How many more will be lost, she wonders, before all of Denocte and all of Novus is covered in blood? In her maze of horrors, in her corridors of pain, she cannot find it within herself to wince, to back away from the fountains that spring up about her, that rain not water but fat, sanguine drops. Like the bruises left by beasts of her own imagination, this streaks her and stains her, too. And it blends so easily into her sunset skin as though her ancestors knew she would be born a sinner and colored in in hubris and suffering.
She does not mind the way it lines her face, it's only a new lipstick on her lips after all.
Gates loom, larger than before, opening slowly into a world of darkness. The phoenix cannot fly, but she goes into the unknown, into the void. And when she opens her eyes, she finds stone streets beneath her feet, she finds a beast of orange and black and white and stripes stalking her, and she finds her court - broken and bleeding and putting itself back together with everything they have - in their beds as she last was.
Golden eyes merely blink, and blink, and blink again for good measure. "So we rise again from ashes and dust," she murmurs up to the midnight sky. And still, that star who can only watch as she turns to stone beneath his light, beneath his touch, is nowhere to be found. The Tonnerre girl can feel the fractures splinter just a fraction more within. Shuttering eyes turn to the mountains where her own wild heart found Neerja's, and it is there her feet begin to take her, it is there her shattering heart demands to go again to find a temple of moonlight and dreams.
tagging | "speaks" | notes: open for any ! a strange dream, and a visit to discover our mountain temple
The sun had set so many hours ago, it seemed. Katniss had stood outside the humble home that she had created with Metaphor. She watched as the sun finally set, the last rays of the day gone forever. It was a vision of beauty the way the sky turned shades of pink, purple, red, and orange. Katniss had never been one to truly stand and admire the environment, but she cannot help but do so tonight.
So many things have happened over the last few weeks. She has been reunited with Metaphor, the one who knew all of her secrets. She had been matched with Finnick, the harpy eagle happy and content to watch over his new friend. Isra had been taken and Raum had turned traitor and taken over a court that was never meant to be his. So many feels were swirling within the trapped confines of her mind, so many feelings that Katniss felt as though she could not talk about.
Eyes look to the small bed of hay to find Metaphor’s chest rising and falling in a rhythm that indicated sleep. He looked so peaceful and it made her heart content. But ever restless, the mare did not want to wake her beloved and so, she stepped from the modest home and headed on a walk - a walk that she did not know the ending point to.
Finnick hears her stir and he awakes from his own slumber, leaving his perch within the home to settle on her back. Katniss looks to him with a soft smile and silently, she shares her appreciation that he has chosen to join her. The walk is silent, neither one making a peep, only listening to the sounds of the night: the crickets chirp, the brushing of cougars against the plants in the forest, and the soft squeaking of bats as they fly overhead.
Her leg hurts her, a reminder of what happens when she goes against a king. While it had been a spar, Katniss cannot help but wonder if Asterion took it too personally. She makes a mental note to go and see him when the drama dies down…when Isra is found. But the pain in her leg would last a few more weeks, yet, a constant reminder of the warrior she wants to be. She is older and her body more achy. In her youth, she had been a fierce warrior and queen. But now, now Katniss feels insignificant here. She might not say those words out loud, but she says them in her heart.
Her path heads towards the mountains, the place where she had found Finnick. The bird seems to recognize this place, and takes flight from the back of his bonded to do some hunting. He stays ever close, though, always looking out for Katniss.
The is a rustle of the earth and the warrior stops. Ears flick back as her neck turns slowly. It is there that they rest on the red mare, Moira. She recognizes the mare from the meeting, but she does not know the woman on a personal level. “Has sleep betrayed you too?” Her voice is soft as her pace halts so the mare can catch up with her should she desire.
Ianthe sleeps fitfully, snatching it in fits and starts, restless. There is no wind beneath her wings, no beat to maintain to keep her aloft, and no shuffle of friendly feathers. The ground beneath her hooves taunts her, and she paces it. Lays down, gets up, back and forth and up and down until sweat gleams upon her shivering skin and her stomach tries to tie itself in knots.
When last did she sleep with stone or grass or dirt solid beneath her? Foggy are her memories of days spent wild and reckless, roaming that plateau in some misplaced territory. She thinks she remembers a chase, beating wings and slamming bulk, ending in what was nearly a pile of bodies and tangled limbs. She thinks she remembers sleeping there, sprawled sideways, head pillowed in mud that would dry there and stay until the next rain. She thinks she remembers the peace of it.
There is no peace now, not here, not alone, and Ianthe is almost desperate to flee. But no, she has given her word, has been granted life by a god and assisted by his chosen and called by a mouthpiece of another to war. She can not leave, can not run, and even if she could, how far could she get? On wings she could traverse continents, but on foot?
Movement. Hyperaware in her state of agitation, Ianthe swings towards the sound before she can think, follows it before she knows what she’s doing. The General moves slowly through the court, heading, Ianthe thinks, for the outdoors, and she can’t help but chase after her. Haste makes her clumsy and every breath is pulled from the deepest parts of her. If she follows the General she is not abandoning her duty, is not disobeying a god. If she is following the General then at least she will be under the open sky again, if not in it.
Stone streets are a poor substitute for wisps of clouds, but the air moves here, breathes unrestricted by walls. She breathes with it, strains less, until her gasps fade into the night and the sweat soaking her skin begins to cool. Still she follows the General who, for all appearances, appears to be sleeping. Sleepwalking? Maybe this is something Ianthe ought to try for herself, maybe the action of walking could replace the action of flying and maybe at last she could find rest.
But that is not the point, not at this juncture. The General is sleepwalking alone, excepting the striped beast at her side, and sleep-flight is not a thing a Swift has ever done alone. The ground holds so many more threats than the air as well, and Ianthe has sworn herself to the General, she can not leave her unguarded in sleep, can not leave her to wander into walls and danger.
And the longer she follows the General, the longer she does not need to remain in stale, still aired buildings.
The General wakes, or maybe she simply murmurs in her sleep, Ianthe is not so close as to hear the words she speaks. Ianthe does not bring attention to herself, though she does cautiously move a little closer, unsure of her welcome, and sighs in relief when the General does not move to return. The mountains grow steadily closer, and Ianthe finds herself hoping that they will scale them, longs to reach for the sky beyond her reach and breathe thin air again.
Another appears on the path before them, and Ianthe’s lip begins to curl. Another heretic, awake and waiting, but there’s not enough energy left in her to rail against her presence, not tonight, and her face smooths back into placidity. Has sleep betrayed you too? The woman asks, not of her, but Ianthe can’t help but bob her head at the truth of it anyway and quickens her step slightly at the silent invitation to catch up without quite understanding why.
@Moira @Katniss Ianthe still doesn't know anyone's name, and she doesn't care enough to ask, so there are nicknames and titles everywhere, lol. She hasn't decided on one for Katniss yet.
03-25-2019, 10:21 PM
Played by
e-cho [PM] Posts: 243 — Threads: 27 Signos: 0
as you start to walk out on the way, the way appears
T
his world she wakes to, it seems a distant thing, a foreign thing. All at once it is too large and too small and too sad. The tragedy of everything crashes upon her as tides rise and fall with the changing of the moon. But the healer girl is too detached, too lost, to feel anything more than her own breaking again and again. Her tiger rumbles and growls, her protector looming ever closer, sweeping in with a warmth to fill the coldness left from the stars. And how that space above takes too much, how those stars chip away, harder and faster and more fiercely than before, until the phoenix is a screaming, burning thing without the sense to know who she is anymore.
She is a smoldering amalgamation of skin and thoughts put back together all wrong.
The white upon her shoulder tells her she is wrong. The purring of Neerja tells her she will survive.
Moira does not expect another, not so soon, to cross her path. Katniss walks before her, turning and asking of Morpheus, of Asteria, of Erebus and Hypnos. Of those distant things and forgotten history lessons that plague her, tormenting her, shattering her when she wakes and sleeps. The wicked do not rest, yet she has never thought herself Evil.
Golden eyes take but a moment to focus, to come back down from the skies tugging her into oblivion. A shiver snakes down her spine as she realizes the sweat upon her coat, the iron taste still clinging to her tongue. What monster will these times make of her? Like their follower, the sparrow-boned girl still spiraling from her descent in the sky, Moira nods. "We're not alone," she says instead, soft voice rougher tonight as though parched or smoke-stained or dying.
She doesn't know which is the most truthful of the three.
Beside them, the tiger moves, circling back behind the other Pegasus until she is at their side. Only then does she look at the ragtag bunch, the women of Denocte who hold their heads high and claim this as their home, their battleground, their future. And she wonders, ever so briefly as only a flickering star can, do they ever look up and dream?
Moira never did before Denocte.
"It is a good night to not be alone," is all she says at last, offering the ghost of a smile, a haunted thing, to the two that have found her. "We haven't met you, not really. Welcome to the Night Court, I am Moira Tonnerre." For what more can she say when still pulling herself from halls full of horrors, from courtyards of carnage? Her string has been clipped, and how she sores through the clouds as a hot air balloon, unable to land and oh so willing to crash - almost.
@Ianthe @Katniss | "speaks" | notes: I'm so sorry this took way too long; these lovely ladies delight me and I really look forward to their discovery !
Loneliness is something that Katniss had never enjoyed. She had always preferred to be in the company of others, but she also understood that there were times when they should be off to oneself in order to think and reflect. She knows all too well the stresses that queendom requires of an individual, so it is no surprising that Moira seems a little stressed. It’s only an observation, but one she’s seen before…she’s felt before. She’s been the queen who had no answers. It’s not a fun place to be in, but perhaps she could be of assistance to her. After all, it was in the middle of the night and they had managed to find each other along a beaten path. Something had pulled them to this moment. Perhaps they should take advantage of it.
She looks to Moira and then to the young mare that joins them as well. She can tell the other is young, the way her skin is flawless and her height still maturing. She feels out of place amongst these women who have been born with wings. What would come if her life if she had been given the same blessing? Would her defeats in battle have been predicted? Would she have been better able to sneak up on her enemies? The possibilities were endless and yet, she was happy with what she had been born with. It had taken many years for her to mature to the mare she was today, but she did not regret the genetics that made up her rather plain appearance.
Moira addresses the newcomer, and Katniss nods to the other as her steps bring her closer to the others. “Indeed, welcome.” She offers a friendly smile to the other, a smile that is welcoming and open. She is a kind mare, showering the other with kindness and love, even if she did not know her personally. “…and I am Katniss.” She supposes the other will forget her name as she will forget the plainness of her appearance. But it does not bother her.
Eyes look around her, wondering if Finnick will awake form his sleep and realizes his bonded is not at home. Perhaps it was for the better that he was home protecting Metaphor. After all, that stallion meant so much to her. She could never forgive herself should something happen to him.
Thoughts turn back to the others. “It must be fate that we were all drawn here when we should all be sleeping and dreaming of peace.” She doesn’t yet understand why she had been drawn to this very place, or why they had been drawn here as well. All she knew was that they were all here. Even if they didn’t understand either, perhaps they could work through it together. If anything, it would offer them a moment to get to know one another. After all, they were practically family now.
Outsiders and their names. She thinks, exasperated and wondering. She doesn’t understand the attachment they have to their personal titles, to the labels that have been gifted to them by others and they have claimed with all the desperate grasping of a dying man. But still she bobs her head and allows these heretics the completion of their exchange, “I am Ianthe.”
And before she was Ianthe, she was child, was ‘you’, was ‘hey, come look!’, was any number of descriptors. She is who she is, and who she is just so happens to also be Ianthe. Perhaps these heretics cling so tightly to their designations because they are not Swift enough: are not part of one whole to the exclusion of all else. Perhaps they are named creatures first because they are their own first.
Ianthe still does not understand.
“It is good to walk with you.” Not necessarily to meet, for this meeting has only happened because of her fall, because of the gods, and Ianthe has not seen the end of that yet, hasn’t decided what she thinks of it. But she is not an ungrateful creature, especially not when a god can smite her as easily as they preserved her life, and these two mares seem… nice. For heretics. And it is indeed good to walk, to not be surrounded by still air and walls, to not be alone.
Still, she’d rather fly, and she wonders how Moira stands to stand, how she is content to trundle along beside all the others. She wonders how Katniss, so massive that even if she had wings she would surely never take off, endures the ever-present shackles of the earth. It’s a terrible thing, Ianthe thinks, but neither mare seems broken by it. Moira is stressed, true, but the General is lunging head first into war and running a kingdom without claiming it. And Katniss…
Katniss is exotic. Not like Moira is exotic, with her fever bright plumage and a coat shaded like the inside of a star, being instead a faintly silvered black that is just as unfamiliar for all that it is tamer. No Katniss is exotic in other ways: her lacking wings, her height, her strength, her scars. Her baring: proud, steady, kind. Ianthe has not met anyone who held themselves like Katniss does. She's reluctantly intimidated.
And the mare speaks of fate. Despite herself, Ianthe perks up. It is unlikely that Katniss speaks of fate the same way Ianthe knows it, but she is looking for any reason for her being here. Yes, she is here for war, to follow the General-Prophet-Moira, but war is not just bloody battles, it is smaller things too, like her shadowing of the General, like following vague signs from the gods. Perhaps Katniss knew something of fate after all.
“Should we continue on then?” She asks when Katniss fails to. The two mares are some years older than her, both fully grown and settled in their bodies, and there’s a chance that they are like some of the elders: unwilling to listen to suggestions from those younger than themselves. Ianthe decides to be careful just in case, so as not to drive them from any path the gods may be trying to set them on. “If it’s as you said, we might just find something useful, or at least interesting, somewhere ahead.” Besides, she does not say, she does not wish to return.
