He lowers his lips. The water is warm as flesh. He drinks, and his mouth is full of song.
He looks to the other pegasus as she swallows. When he stretches his wings (a good song will rip right through your body, demanding movement, and the song rolling down his throat is a fine one indeed)
-- When he stretches his wings he marvels at the heat that radiates from the golden water below. He looks to the sky, and thinks to himself that there must be an incredible updraft here. A wild grin (too large for his face) cracks across his features. It glows even when he tears his eyes away, back to the mare at the water. Flight in his eyes and song in his mouth and god all around; he feels unbreakable.
Another marvel, there would be many today: He's never seen eyes quite like hers before. The closest would be those of his own reflection, caught from time to time in the huge glass windows of the great hall. "Mischief eyes," his mother chided when she could tell he had been up to no good. Which was often. Looking at the bay mare before him now, he would maybe call them "cutting eyes."
God hums on his tongue, and a wordless song rises to his lips. "You have..." No, cutting eyes was not quite right. "You have summer eyes." His voice sounds a little older than he feels, a little fever-raw. "Were they always like that? Or is it the water?" Mateo is not often so cryptic, but right now he feels like an unwritten melody, like bright sun and hot black feathers, and maybe she will understand.
She waits for the water to change her, to better her, to make her like the little phoenixes that trailed their bright sparks.
Elif should have expected that the water would be warm, with all that heat and color, but she is still surprised when it coats her throat like tea. And yet other than a warmer belly and a ticklish sort of feeling she notices no changes, though she waits and waits.
But Elif is nothing if not impatient and at last she shakes herself and looks up - and there down the bank is a stallion, a stranger watching her.
The girl opens her mouth and closes it again, and then she huffs a snort. At once she is suspicious (even as the water pools golden in her belly, warming her, changing her at last?), because even with the gold of the water thrown back on him he looks black black black to her and she is hunting a black pegasus still.
Yet her mistrust cannot last long. Despite the forward way he stares at her, the unbidden interest, he cannot be the one she seeks. He is too…too…
Happy? Short? Complimentary?
Elif smiles back at him. She settles her wings along her lean ribs and narrow hips and steps toward him, and the alajah around her throat does not feel so choking-tight as it sometimes does but only like a comfort, familiar. “I have what?” she asks him, because she is unused to open compliments and anyway when she thinks of summer she thinks of gold. But she is intrigued, and a little flattered (maybe it is the water, maybe it is like mead), and she closes the distance between them without taking her gaze from him. It roves him, his coat and his feathers and his long long tail, but keeps coming back to his crinkling eyes (green, too) and his mouth and his wings that tilt as though already riding a breeze.
“I don’t know,” she says, and for once the mystery doesn’t bother her. “Did it change you?”
Now she is curious, spreading her wings to examine them, glancing at her feet as though a sock might have vanished, snapping her sparse dark tail to see if it trails sparks, too.
When it does not she is disappointed - but not as much as she might have been, if she were alone.
Mateo does not feel as creepy as he probably should, watching the stranger and the thoughts that waltz across her face. When she stares back and snorts he simply lowers his head a little, as if it really took effort for a man of his stature to look less imposing. Eventually she smiles, and uncertainty releases the clenched fist in his stomach.
"I have what?" He tilts his head uncertainly. (is she hard of hearing?) "You have sum-mer eyes." He says it a little louder this time, and a little slower too, just in case she had a bird's brain to accompany those wings. The sentence doesn't sound as poetic the second time around, and he ruffles his feathers in disappointment.
She's moving closer now and her eyes once again are less summer and more cutting as they look him up and down and inside as though she were studying. As though there were answers in him and not just questions, questions, questions. She seems to have made up her mind about something but he isn't sure what it is. He hopes it's something good, he hopes it so fiercely his eyes hurts a little.
"Maybe... maybe I feel a little closer to knowing something... like maybe god, you know?" He looks to her, realizes she probably doesn't know (how could anyone know the song on my tongue if I don't sing it) and quickly continues to speak. "But probably not. I don't know." No use hiding the disappointment in his voice-- he had wanted to experience something holy here, but there are some things for which all the wanting in the world will not change a thing. He wants to change the subject. "I know I don't like this heat." He laughs a little, as though if he could get her to laugh she would forget the childish things he just said.
Then he almost says do you think our pee will glow but he can't tell yet if she would find that crass or not. (change the subject, change the subject, why am I so nervous?) For a long moment he is at a loss for words. The mare is looking at herself for any physical change and all he can think is that she is about as handsome as he is pretty. It makes him strangely jealous, and the jealousy confuses him, and the heat of the ground is starting to make him sweat.
"What's, uh, that thing on your neck?"
The black doesn't leave Delumine much, and none of the dawn court ladies and gentlemen wore cloth around their neck as this mare does. The closest thing would be the thin, loose silver and gold neck chains that have come and gone in fashion. "A mockery of Solterran slavery," he heard someone indignantly spit in the tavern one night, shortly before tables were upended. He's never seen a Solterran slave collar before, although he's read all about them. In the sketches and descriptions they were never made of cloth, so he suspects this is no collar. Anyway, last he heard there are no slaves in Solterra any more. At least not officially.
"Is it comfortable?" He squints at it, then takes a polite step forward to take a closer look. It's... beautiful, really, but not in the way he's used to and there's something unsettling about that. He doesn't understand the meaning of it (is it a symbol? or a form of jewelry?) and that too is unsettling. Or maybe it's just the smell of elsewhere (Solterra?) on her, reminding him that there are so, so many places and things he does not know.
Elif doesn’t laugh when he repeats the words so slowly, though she wants to; she wants also to tell him that she’s not at all stupid, just surprised. “Thank you,” is all she says instead, and it only sounds a little like she’s not certain that it’s the proper response. Summer eyes - he is clearly not from the desert, and she feels a little bit better knowing that.
When he talks of god and knowing, the first thing that rises up to her tongue is disagreement (like always), but for once Elif hesitates. She considers the man, and then she turns her head and considers the pool, and tries to remember how the golden water had slid down her throat. She doesn’t know what ichor should taste like, or holy water, or anything. But she has met god, in a way (not that he ever took note of her,) and it doesn’t seem like an improbability, suddenly.
“You’re right,” she announces, and when she considers him again it is less like a cat and more like a girl. “I bet Solis left it. Maybe it will bless us -” but Elif has no idea what that would feel like, and anyway none of the gods (save maybe Oriens) seemed like the blessing type, and so she lets the question of it go just like he had, the second half of her sentence drifting away like sparks.
Now that she has agreed once, she finds it is easier to do it again, and harder to do the opposite; so when he speaks of the heat instead of saying what heat she nods and sidles a little closer and casts another (wise, she hopes) glance over the pool and the birds and the way it shimmers a little, like a mirage. “It’s a wet heat,” she says, which to her makes it infinitely more unbearable than the dry desert heat, which weeds out the weak and doesn’t suffocate your lungs and makes flying easier than anything.
She finds no differences in herself - red dapples on her shoulders and hips, red belly, dark legs and back and tail, every feather well in place, and she is both a little relieved and a little disappointed when his question makes her look up to find him staring. For a wild second she thinks that something has changed from the water, and then she remembers her band of wool, as much a part of her as her flight feathers or her summer eyes.
“It’s my alaja,” she says, and could never disguise the pride in her voice. Elif tilts her chin for him, showing the collar off, the patterns woven into the scarlet strip. “Its color and design means I am from the Erdogan family, and it’s sewn with prayers and omens for protection and bravery.”
How to tell him more? - that it makes her feel like an eagle to wear, that it makes her feel ancient and wise and loved, like all her ancestors are watching her. Never mind that her own parents have fled, that her brother is dead (is he watching her, too?) - she has never felt silly for that little band of wool, never felt childish for her superstitions. “I never take it off,” Elif tells him, but she isn’t sure if that answers his question or not.
Now it is her turn to take a few steps closer, and her gaze searches him again, curious, touching briefly on his tail-feathers. She nods, approving of them, and all at once folds her wings up and meets his eyes again. She decides she likes the way they crinkle.
“Are you going to stay? Or - ” and Elif tilts her gaze to the sky, where the heat is not so humid and where the wind leaps and laughs and where her golden blood is urging her up and up.
@Mateo this had no business being as long as it is
His memory is an incredibly precise thing, especially when it comes to spoken word. So he knows with confidence he has never heard these words before, alaja and Erdogan, but he will never forget them now. Neither will he forget the precise way she says them, the tightening of her throat in pride and the certain green of her eyes and the water, the water!, dancing nymphlike at the edges of his vision.
His eyes linger at her throat. Mateo would like something like that, something with symbolism and meaning. Something to remind him where he's from. The closest thing he has is what he's told are his father's eyes and his mother's laugh. And all he has to be proud of are his feathers, which are good feathers, and his voice, which is a good voice. But these things are not the same, they were not thoughtfully given or made just for him-- they are just the result of dumb luck and good genetics. He is not ungrateful for the gifts god has given to him, not in the slightest... but it would be nice to have something like that, something full of prayer and beauty and belonging. "It's very beautiful," he says eventually, once he can contain his jealous longing, and words could not be more genuine.
Just then a subtle motion catches Mateo's attention. There!- A fox approaches the water cautiously and lower its head to drink. They meet eyes for a moment, the boy and the dog, and both creatures look away at the same time-- the fox to his reflection, and Mateo to Elif. All with the same water in them, water so bright it burns.
(A note on those summer eyes- It's true, he knows nothing of the natural world beyond Delumine... but why would he want to know summers so hot the earth cringes? So hot the air itself undulates in pain, into mirage? He wouldn't, because no one told him that the dunes sing. They sing! It is not at all like the whistle of the wind in the grass, it is a huge, ominous sound, and if he had ever heard it maybe-- certainly-- he could learn to love the desert even in the crippling heat of summer.)
Is he staying? Well whatever it was that drew him here, the urgency of the pull vanished after he drank. It leaves him with the sense of waking from a dream that was important but could not be remembered.He does remember that he shouldn't be here. And there is work to do at home, there is always work to do. "I guess I should get home. I really shouldn't have left in the first place, the borders are closed..." but it was worth it, goes unspoken by his tongue, and as he flexes his wings they seem to laugh- and the wind has no borders.
Even if he leaves no closer to god than he was when he arrived, and no wiser, it was good to have come to see this place for himself. But it seems a shame to leave this pretty-handsome-plain stranger behind so soon.
"Where are you headed?" He unfurls his large black wings (showoff) and flashes a cheeky, coltish grin. That expression has no business on his adult face, and yet it seems so at home. "Can I join you?" His eyes seem more silver than green as they look up to the twilight sky. Surely his return to Delumine can wait for just a little longer.
---
@Elif I hope you don't mind me skipping his response to some of her dialogue! If I didn't this post would probably be twice the length and it seemed long enough already <3
She decides that it would feel silly, to tell him thank you again so soon after the first time - Elif isn’t sure she’s been paid so so many compliments in such rapid succession in her life. The ragtag band of children she had grown up with weren’t the kind to flatter one another, and the only others to pay her much mind were her parents and their tangled tree of cousins, who mostly told her things like Stop that, you’ll get dirty and Really, Elif, why would you say something so rude?
For a moment she wonders if all non-Solterrans were this friendly and kind, and if she’d been missing out her whole life - and more than that, if all the adults had been just lying about Day Court being superior in all ways except, perhaps, availability of water.
Oh, but that must be nonsense.
Better to decide it is the influence of the pool, the effect of the water they drank. Is it making her softer, she wonders, more approachable? Certainly she feels the urge to compliment him in turn, sitting on her tongue like the remembered taste of a rare spice.
Normally Elif is not the distractible sort, but she is glad for the movement of the little fox.
He is a strange cousin to the ones she knows from the desert, who are much smaller and sandy-colored and have huge ears like bats. This one is red as the flaming tails of the birds that still linger around the pool, only the light from the water turns his fur to bronze. She wonders if he is as shy as the ones she knows, and what he eats, and if he thinks the water has been put here by a god, too. It is a good thing the conversation moves on as it does - wondering about a fox’s gods could lead to a whole host of uncomfortable questions.
But they are each forgotten before they have had a chance to unfold when he speaks again, and Elif looks at him with real surprise in her green eyes. “Which borders?” she asks, wary again. Not wanting to leave Solterra is a much different feeling than not being able to. “Why are they closed?” (Of course, she has the same thought as he does, as the sun presses warm on her wings - there were no borders at all to their kind.)
It is so easy to answer him, then, even if not in the right order. “Of course you can.” She smiles, and it looks both easy and conspiratory. She hadn’t had a destination in mind until he asked; now she looks again at the pool, and lays her ears back and then forward again, considering. “I was thinking about seeing if Solis is on his mountain…” Her voice is hushed, half in reverence and half in dare - for that is of course what it is, now.
Because if He had left this pool (and of course he had, water warm and lazy as a bath and as golden as the dunes at daybreak), then He could be anywhere, even where they looked for him. And the thought makes her thrill as much as the idea of testing her speed against this complimentary stranger’s.
@Mateo idk what this is other than different but I hope it's ok <3
"You didn't know?" This puzzles him, for he has not yet realized how most of the world lives in their own little bubble, only paying attention to the going-ons of the elsewhere as far as it pertains to them. Likewise he does not know the extent of the turmoil in Solterra and Denocte-- only rumors, or truths he has discarded as rumors for how gruesome they were. "Delumine. There's been a murder. Two murders!" He hesitates, unsure whether to divulge more or not. "The killer still hasn't been found." It makes him uncomfortable to think of a murderer wandering the streets of the court, or the forest, or wherever murderers go when they're not murdering. But the girl must be used to killers running wild, if he's right in suspecting she's Solterran. He watches her carefully to see how she'll react to the news.
(It does not seem like a strength, to him, to be accustomed to murder-- he would not hesitate to verbally and figuratively fight anyone who thought otherwise)
Mateo's thoughts move on quickly, jumping easily from topic to topic as the young and attention-deficit do. He blames the heat, the wet heat, that makes him long for the cool breeze dancing above them. When he asks to join her, he expects her to say of course you can, but he does not expect to feel so pleased when she does. He doesn't have many flying companions-- most of the wingers in Delumine are too serious and stuffy and afraid of taking pleasure from their great gift, as though enjoyment was a sort of sin and not a prayer.
But... looking for Solis? He frowns, and on his young face it looks (quite unbecomingly) like a pout. If he were to meet any of the gods, really meet them instead of just feeling their presence in the wind beneath his wings or the breath in his lungs, Solis would be his last pick. Of the Novian pantheon, the sun god was the only one Mateo ever found himself at odds with. It most likely stems from the uncomfortable truth that the traits we dislike most in others are those we despise in ourselves. Solis is known to be proud, vain, and boyish: three traits as uncomfortable to him as grit between feathers.
True, Solis is not here-- but neither is Oriens (although this place did not have the subtlety of his patron god, and so his absence does not come as a surprise) so it seems logical that either god could be up on the mountain. "Maybe Oriens will be there too." his voice, too, curls with the hint of a dare.
He takes a few steps back, crouches down, waggles his tail feathers a little (a reflexive habit that might look a little strange, but just feels right), unfolds his great black wings... and grins at the girl with the alaja. He springs into the air, pushing his wings down at the height of his jump to propel further upward. It's always a little awkward, getting into the air and flying from a stationary position, and his body drops almost as much as it rises with the next few flaps of his wings. Only when he is well above the ground does the motion get smoother, easier. "I'm Mateo!" he calls to her through the breezy twilight, his voice electric with that certain joy only known to those with wings.
---
@Elif it was beautiful, that's what it was, and this thread makes me so happy :) would you like to wrap it up here and we can start a new one in the veneror board?
“No,” she answers at once, and there are twin feelings rising up in her then like two cobras in a basket, unsure if they will strike at one another or whoever is unlucky enough to open the lid.
The first is something like indignation, for why should a daughter of the desert concern herself with the politics of Dawn? It means little to her (or would have, before) what their softer neighbors to the west do. But the second feeling - oh, that is the worse of the two, for it is very nearly shame and it settles in her stomach like a stone. Is she so proud, so closed off, to give no thought to murders in a place so near? It is small comfort when she tells herself she likely would have known, where she not slipping from court all the time to watch the sailors come in from the sea, or to join the hawks riding the updrafts that wind like rivers above the canyon.
So her green eyes widen with all of these things, and with sorrow, too, for the two unnamed victims. (Yet it would be a lie to contribute the uptick of her heartrate to anything but the thought of a killer on the loose, and the thought of hunting him.)
Why close the borders then - if the killer was already within them? She wants to ask, for it is foolishness to her, but she does not wish to insult the home of her new friend, and risk vanishing the pleasing crinkle of his eyes.
Instead she settles back, shakes her head, forgets for a moment that they stand surrounded by magic. “That is ill news,” she says, a little lamely; but he is not wrong, for Solterra is no stranger to questionable deaths. There is, for instance, the murder of her own brother -
another tangent best avoided.
She misses his brief pout; not that she might have recognized it at all (goodness knows she was worn the same expression enough times), but she is busy testing the wind, a thing she knows loves her even here in this strange, warm, wavering light. When he speaks of Oriens she glances back, a brow raised. “Maybe,” she agrees, though what anyone so young with sunlight in their veins would want with that boring old god she doesn’t know.
There is no more time to ask; grinning like a well-pleased cat she watches him tilt his feathers, test the air, and leap. Her laugh rises with him on the breeze, and Elif tosses her head, gods and murders forgotten both in favor of this.
For her takeoff, she begins with a gallop, bursting from stillness to speed with the practice of a desert hare; she cannot resist running through just the barest edge of that golden, god-touched pool and when the water splashes up around her she may as well be Moses parting the sea.
And like Moses blessed, when she asks for the wind to help her it obeys, lifting under her wings as she raises them, carrying her up and up until she is running on air, until she is not running at all but flying.
With an extra little push of her magic she glides below him, twists her wings to cut up toward him on a breeze, darts her summer-eyes to his and finds they wear the same grin. “And I am Elif,” she says, and laughs again when the wind (her wind!) snatches her name away.
