Breathe... I thought, and simultaneously came to the realization that I could think again. Although it came more like a slow unwinding, images and memories creeping in like shadows from the corners. Cannot breathe, came the thought once more, except this time I could feel it, constricting against my throat with the force that a boa might its prey. I could not breathe. My eyelids snapped open, body convulsing in a panic. A bizarre sensation had its grip upon me. I could feel my limbs, the rise and fall of my lungs as I drew in air [fresh air] and still I could not breathe. Yet, I was breathing. Confusion rocked the already tentative frame of my mind and the only thing that made sense was to escape. It was the one thing I could fathom clearly in that moment and the one thing that the whole of me seemed to agree upon.
I did not suffocate, even as I scrambled weakly to my feet, tottering like a newborn. Whereas the rest of my senses returned with gusto, my sense of balance was taking its sweet time. It was so bright, the sun was blinding and I blinked rapidly in an attempt to assuage the burning. When I was confident I could see without being blind-sided, I opened my eyes slowly, and gasped. The lay of the land before me was unlike anything I had ever seen before. Only between the pages of a book had I read about the bone-white sands of the Clementine beaches, its fabled beauty even more so than mere words could describe. It was bordered by a wall of impenetrable rock, dark and unforgiving as it stood guard over the vast Artegrade Sea.
"Illu". The sound of my name on strange lips nearly sent me flying over the edge. That one syllable, I felt, did more damage just then than the entirety of my experiences up to this moment. For it was the truth. It confirmed that all of the chaos, blood, and gore was real, had been real. Not merely a figment of my imagination, a bad dream that had a particularly hard grip. It told me that this place, this stunning beach and lovely cerulean waves could not possibly be those of Clementine beach, because nobody entered The Storm, and came home. "Illu come, I do not have much time so I need you to listen." The Runamere, the pegasus who brought me to this place, this world? Spoke with such a gentleness that it was hard to believe it was his own voice. For such a monstrously huge creature. No... not a creature, Racthan. I remembered then as I turned frightened eyes upon him. Racthan, the emissary sent to retrieve me by my Mother. It was not uncommon for ranked Houses to have their own Runamere employed, however I think I would have noticed if ours did. It did not. There was no time to question him though as he came to me, carrying in his jaws what looked like a slip of leather.
I could hardly believe it as he lowered his massive head to my level to drape what could only be my Birthsake across my slim shoulders. A small, yet sturdy satchel hand crafted by my Mother to be given to me upon the day of my birth. The creamy leather nearly glowed beneath this worlds sun, recently cleaned and waxed from the looks of it. However I specifically recall this particular item being shoved into a cupboard somewhere, covered in dust and dirt from a lifetime of use. Yet here it was, tangible and weirdly weighted down. With a curious glance at the pegasus I flipped open the top to discover- a flashlight? No, not a flashlight, I determined as I brought it from the velvety insides of the satchel. Without a ruler I could hardly say exactly how long it was, but I would guess it was roughly seven inches, and fairly thick in diameter. The metal-or so I assume it is metal-was startlingly cold to the touch, making me wrinkle my nose. Strange inscriptions had been engraved into its entire body, but they were unlike anything I had ever read, a foreign language that meant nothing to me. But it was beautiful all the same. Veins of blue could be seen as the sunlight glinted off the surface, highlighted like hidden secrets within the dark broam grey. I rose my head to speak, to ask if he knew what it was, but a sound caught my attention. It sounded suspiciously like footsteps, clattering against stone and sinking into sand. Yet Racthan or I had yet to move. Quickly I secreted the object back into my satchel, roping the flap shut, and turning to see what it was that came to us.
The ocean water feels like the waters of rebirth lapping at her hooves. Each crash of salt-water against her bones feels colder than she remembers it feeling. Her skin feels as dry as desert sand and she thinks that maybe every inch of her might feel the water as the strangely as the canyons feel the snow. This should feel like home. The salt should feel like a mountain wind in her lungs. Each tangle of seaweed clinging to her should feel like a caress of a sea-beast that's always been waiting to take her back down to the deep, dark bottom of the ocean.
But nothing feels like home anymore.
Isra misses the soot and spice arcing above her in trellises of smoke. She misses her castle with spires of moonlight striking through the windows like swords swinging against the darkness. She misses her shining city on the hill. Even the fury running in hot-water waves through her has never been able to chase away the way her dreams always run back to constellations and bonfires.
Even Fable, who is swimming through the waves, misses his towers looking out over the sea (or towards the mountains if he only turns his gaze a little to the right). The fish in this part of the sea are not as sweet and their bones feel sharper against his teeth when he chews them. He's far out to sea but his heart is wandering back home with his unicorn's and they both turn their gazes (one in the deep and one in the sunlight) back towards the mountains looming too far in the distance to cool their sorrow like the water cools their fury.
Isra's steps carry on her aimlessly, through the sand and dunes. She leaves a wake of pearls and ore in the crevices her hooves make in the sand. Each pit glints like a bit of space fallen to earth in the sunlight, a black that shines even as it swallows all the sunlight like a monster. Dune grass turns to pillars of gold and silver where it grabs greedily at her tail as she passes. All the sea and shore seems to bend towards her, this unicorn who changes the world below her shadow into dream stuff and nightmare-stuff.
She notices nothing but the sorrow lingering like a sickness in her heart and the steady beat of a dragon heart echoing in the place behind her eyes. She almost misses the towering stallion and the young foal at his side. She definitely misses the shine of metal that catches the sunlight in a way that metal should not (like something she's dreamed up with magic).
Isra looks up just as she walks her shadow into their own, each stretching out over the sea until the white-washed waves swallow up the shape of them all. She smiles even though her horn sighs out into the space between them like a warning that says in wind and bone, I am always ready, always full of fury. But today with the sea a sting in her nose and an ache in her soul she does not want to be like her horn-- not today, but maybe tomorrow.
“Hello,” Isra says with a glint in blue eyes that doesn't look totally kind (she's forgotten how to be all kindness and empathy). But it tries, that shimmer of sorrow in her eyes, it tries so very hard to be kind. “Are you lost?” This she asks because they look as strange as the places where the shoreline met her magic.
Isra has always had a weakness for strange things, for strangeness has always belonged to the dreamers.
The sound of weighted footfalls materialized into the shape of a horse. They were alone from the looks of it and very much engrossed with their own business. So much so that they-who was actually a she I noted once she came within range-very nearly ran right over us. Or into us rather, there was very little that would have been able to run over the stallion beside me. Upon coming to her senses the first thing to catch my attention was the utter lack of surprise in her gaze, eyes as blue as the very sea that brought me to this shore glittered instead with a cautious curiosity. Or so that is what I chose to call it. Ignoring the tension in her muscles, the quiet threat which permeated the air, while at the same time was not entirely devoid of empathy.
Suddenly I could breathe.
And a dreadful cascade of grief and otherworldly terror came alongside it. It flooded every vein, nerve, and limb within reach and I found with a soundless cry that I could not move, as if my very body had become encased in ice. Racthan reacted with mild surprise, which quickly translated into a stoic mask. He turned back to the mare as she completed her question. Perhaps it was meant as a small gesture of kindness, for as abruptly as my sanity split, he moved in just the right way that it might be harder to get a look at me from the angle the stranger stood. Ultimately, this meant nothing to the chaotic tangle of agony and memories that warred relentlessly in my head. Where is my Mother? I thought feebly, eyes cast down upon the sands as the adults maneuvered ahead.
"Only somewhat. I am Racthan of Terra and I come bearing grave tidings." The Runamere spoke, his voice deep and hoarse like tumbling stones. "The kind of which gives me great responsibility and little time to bestow it. Stranger of these lands, what is your name and from where do you come?" There was no threat in his insistence, no, if one truly had to put a name to it, I would have called it desperation.
Isra wants to be surprised. She wants to look at the pegasus who speaks with stone and rust words and think that these are things that do not belong near the sea. Her eyes wants to sang on the smile child hiding, slack jawed and lost in the shadows and feel something other than acceptance. She does not want to think that this world will always be full of dark things, tidings and omens that each tell her that all the soft things are dead.
But her world is full of horror and blood. Her world lives on the chant of a war-drum song now, everything that rises and falls is stuck in the notes of that brassy beat.
There is something in her lips that tingles and promises that there is a smile hiding in the darkness of her features. She wants to look at him and say that the world is full of grave tidings and there is no place safe anymore. Instead she digs up what tenderness is left in her when his voice waivers into broken stones of desperation.
The words sorry, sorry, sorry die on her tongue when he looks him in the eye, guardian of a child to self-appointed guardian of the suffering. “I am Isra of Denocte.” The word queen falls out silently without sound. It's died that that place between the war-drum beats. Now it lives only in the point of her horn spiraling out from her brow in lieu of a crown and in the pearls blooming like flowers in the sand around her hooves.
Out in the surf, Fable is making his way back to shore. First his head is peaking above a wave that's crashing over his wings. He's watching the stallion and the child and his first thoughts are of curiosity humming low over that fresh rage that refuses to dissipate like a storm in the wind. The dragon is asking Isra if he should hurry back to the sand or if he can eat a few more fish.
She tells him to linger in the waves. There is nothing she cannot kill, not anymore.
“Tell me what your tidings are, Racthan, and if I can help you I will.” This she says with her eyes lingering on the small shadow of the child that is almost hidden behind a shield of wings. In her voice there isn't desperation but determination and that low beat of a drum always heard.
The Runamere listened and watched. Blue eyes always thoughtful, always seeking those small nuances that could separate one horse from another. They were fixed now upon the seal-brown mare before them, admittedly judging, criticizing the creature that called herself Isra of Denocte. Isra, Denocte, the words rolled on his tongue like a fine wine, aged to perfection and beyond description. If there was a word for it, it would be Foreign. They were Foreign words, but as he saw it, held no active animosity. Only a barely veiled curiosity behind eyes as blue as the sea.
There was one more thing he noted, though he dared not speak it aloud. It remained hidden beneath his skin, an itch that begged to be scratched, yet could not be. He dared not draw attention to the movement at Isra's feet, the strange way that things seemed to tinkle to the sandy floor from around her horn. A brief glance at Illu assured him that she had not noticed and he hoped it would stay that way. At least until he was gone. Racthan exhaled a pregnant groan, for the duty impugned upon him demanded an answer, a duty that for once in his life he wished he did not have to do. How did the other Runamere fare? He wondered momentarily, thinking back to his Brothers and Sisters that bore identical tasks. Would they succeed in the Storm? Would they save the bloodlines of Aldrae? Racthan stared at the mare with a hard, unreadable look. If time allowed it you would stand trial for your intentions, be they ill or of good, with that being said; by the power invested in me as the Guardian of the Queen, Isra of Denocte, do you accept responsibility and honor of raising Illu, Daughter of Billiruben, Daughter of House Solfir, Rightful heir of Aldrae-Terra?"
He delivered this statement with a strained calm. There was a huge decision to be made and no time to think about it and he had no choice in the matter. It was now or never. There was no right answer, only yes, or death for the last hope of their World.
The moment the stallion's eyes turn hard that small beast swirling idle in her starts to rise. It eddies against her bones like a caught current. Her eyes start to blaze not like a calm sea but a furious one on which a storm is starting to gather, and gather, and gather. It pulls her down, down, down to the place where she isn't a single unicorn on the beach but a queen marching into war. Isra smiles and it looks like a blade of white slicing through the darkness of her muzzle.
It's almost easy now, to picture that blade of bone upon her head as a crown.
Fable swims closer to shore now, drawn forth by swirling storm building in his unicorn. His wings make all the waves froth white when he cuts through the tide. “Whether time allowed it or not, I would stand no trial before you.” Her voice is softer than the sound of Fable moving through the waves, but it cuts sharp as the edge of a dune-grass blade. Something in her eyes flashes, like electric rain across a dark sea. It says, in glances of brightness and darkness, do not test me stallion, you will not win.
The shoreline turns to black diamonds, hard and glittering. Each gem shines in the sunlight like shrunken moons and fallen stars. It almost looks as if she has pulled down the night sky sleeping behind the sun to the shore and coated the world in black. “But,” She says, stepping to move around the stallion to see the child, Illu, hiding in his shadow. Her smile looks less like a blade then and more like a sickle moon, soft and silver, full of all the things dreams are made off. For the first time she feels something blooming in her that doesn't feel like vengeance and magic.
It feels like hope, a soft bloom with silk edges that makes her wonder what it was she loved about metal flowers. Half of the black diamonds turn to opals and the rest turn to pink quartz. The shore is bright with her remembered softness.
“I accept.” The hollow curls of her horn start singing at the ocean breeze rushes over them in a torrent. “No harm will come to Illu while there is air inside my lungs.” Her gaze turns hard when she looks back at him, challenging him to talk of trials again. Isra drops all the foal's titles, they mean nothing to her.
Fable finally joins her, towering over them all like a sentry. When he brushes his nose gently across her hip it's not the touch of a dragon to unicorn. Fable touches her like a orphan touches a mother.
Even as the Earth around them changed and Mother Nature seemed to spark within the mare's eyes, he cared not. Racthan was easily three of her molded into one and he was more than capable of handling her magick. But that was a story for another time, all that mattered was her acquiescence and the fluttering sense of relief that blossomed in his chest. The Runamere exhaled a deep, pregnant sigh, completely ignoring her veiled threats. "Thank you. He whispered, blue eyes gazing down at the sands as they changed haphazardly to mirror Isra's emotions. What a volatile thing. With training she might have been useful. He dared not look at the filly, at the product of his Mistresses unholy union, and the one creature in the World he would gladly give his life for. For if he did he knew that he would not be able to leave. He would turn back and try to stay instead of lifting his wings, and shifting his hooves in preparation for take-off. The Dragon's presence was noted and yet again Racthan was forced to feel surprise. This land had Dragon's as well? What a bizarre turn of events indeed.
He did not bother to bid farewell's nor attempt further communication. His duty was complete, the soft smile upon her lips the confirmation he needed. The Runamere closed his eyes and leaped for the sky, wings thrusting gracefully in a manner utterly birdlike. There was no pomp and circumstance, he turned back toward the Storm, hoping for the first time since arriving that it would place him where he needed to go.
She was only vaguely aware that the protective barrier between she and the rest of the world was gone. Eyes glazed over with shock, body trembling, mind dangerously blank. Perhaps a coping mechanism? Or the beginning spiral into true insanity? Her body seemed to thrum in time with her heartbeat, a hard, angry throbbing from deep within her chest. She wanted to go home.
ooc; @Isra I'm so sorry this is horrible, my muse is low and I wanted Racthan out of there... sorry
“I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.”
There is nothing Isra understands now more than she understands how the glaze of shock and suffering turn the eyes to dull, dirty mirrors. When she looks into Illu's eyes all she can see are traces of all the things sitting like heavy stones in her heart. There is a story there, a tale of horror, and she knows enough not to ask for it.
She barely turns to watch Racthan leave.
Instead she steps closer and brushes her nose across the child's brow. Deep in the place where she is still a wistful story-teller she imagines that she can act like a catcher of dreams, feathered and full of spider-beads to drink gore and leave wonder. Closer to the surface of her, Isra knows that there is no forgetting for either dull glaze across their eyes.
Isra knows there is only surviving, and so it is to that she turns. The entire beach turns with her, quartz and pearls turn back to stone (as if the beach laments her decision to leave it). But Isra knows that each soft, magic sign she leaves is a trail back to everything she loves. And so she vows to herself that she will leave only warnings behind. Small spires of metal that will each say, with a jagged point, to a Raum and all his soldiers, there is only death for you at the end of this trail.
To Illu she says, with another kiss upon that fragile cheek, “Come. You must be hungry.” Isra remembers another time, when she was lost on the shore and the sun given flesh brought her food and the first kindness she has ever know. A tear glints like a diamond in the corner of her eyes, but she does not let it fall. She refuses.
Today is for beginnings.
Fable hums a soft agreement and he too lowers his nose towards the child. I will protect her as well. His eyes swirl, and blink, and look almost happy. Something in the awkward way he hangs his wings at his sides suggests a puppy looking at a litter-mate instead of a dragon looking at a foal.
“Follow me and I will tell you about our world.” Isra swallows down the urge to touch her again. She understands that shock takes both softness and hardness. Lately she has plenty of both. But still, she cannot help the way her eyes say all the secrets her lips do not give away. Her hooves turn away, leading back towards the shoreline and her hideaway in the canyons, yet her eyes never leave Illu.
She wants more than anything to take the girl back to Denocte and her castle on the hill.
Soon. Isra promises herself silently. Very soon. Her eyes promise Illu with the glazed and tormented gaze.
