[P] wish i had a wish

[Samaira]

my spirit's veering flight
like swallows under evening skies.

The bonfire reaches high into the sky, stretching and stretching towards the stars that are twinkling so far above them. Samaira stands with the heat of the fire on her skin and looks at the stars that she wishes she could touch. She can fly so many places now that her wing is healed, and still so much is beyond her reach.

There is a deep yearning inside her that Samaira is not sure can ever be filled now. She’s not sure where it came from, when it yawned open, or what it is that she’s missing. Here in Terrastella she has more than she ever had before. Doesn’t she?

A gentle touch to her shoulder reminds her that she is not alone. The bay pegasus looks at Alaunus where he stands faithfully by her side, leaning just slightly against her to ward off the winter chill in the air. The young heron is, perhaps, the most wonderful gift Samaira has ever recieved, even as he mindlessly chatters in the back of her thoughts.

“...I hope they are keeping an eye on this fire, how do you think they got it so big? How long do you think it will burn for? Are you just going to stand here all night or are you going to go mingle? You could go see what all those equines are doing on the edge of the cliff. Hopefully they aren’t thinking about jumping…” Samaira laughs to herself, and a smile turns up the corners of her lips.

“Are you listening to me?” he says suddenly, a little indignantly. Alaunus straightens out and narrow his sky blue eyes at Samaira. “Yes, yes of course. You’re wondering if a handful of horses are going to leap to their deaths. My goodness, Alaunus, I highly doubt that is what they’re doing.” He ruffles his feathers and glances toward the cliff.

“Well, then why don’t you go find out…?” the heron says suggestively, and if he had brows she knows he’d be raising them.

@Moira c:

[Moira]

Moira - - i am your lion girl, i am your crying girl I've come for you, she thinks as she kisses Florentine's cheek, sending the Dusk girl off to her home where her people can see her merry and bright once more. For who could avoid a sun when it walks among them? Who would dare turn away from the girl that would give everything for her people and has returned as a wish on the wind coming true? None. Moira knows that her new friend needs time among her people, so she watches as that golden smile slips away and with it the light of a thousand dying stars. It is okay, she reminds herself, wishing instead to be pressed against Neerja. At least with her companion she would not feel so bare, so alone. Somewhere, there is a deep rumbling of a tigress answering the call of her winged cub, a humming between them even over the many miles they are apart. It is a minor comfort as the phoenix steps once more onto the soil that seems born of his blood, that ties him to these people and these lands. Oh, she is not yet bold enough to ruin the revelry, she is not yet strong enough to step into the crowds smiling and laughing and dancing. There are memories that flash and barbaric grins and wild grins that flash when she closes her eyes. Frosting lines her lips and cheek and smile when she blinks, and for a moment Moira Tonnerre wishes she could turn back time. Back to when things were simpler. Back to when she understood so much more and so much less. But she cannot. So instead honeyed eyes travel over the horizon, over heads bobbing and weaving with a destination in sight, until they land on brown so rich it oozes with life. Brown so bright it screams for attention. Brown so warm plants could grow and grow and grow from it and never die. Moira sees the Pegasus girl and her companion and feels a twitching in her heart - the absence of her own beloved Neerja. On the sighing of the wind she hears the words, knows they must be talking to one another as only bondeds can do. Curiosity pulls the healer closer, draws the Emissary in until she is two lengths, then a single length, then nearly upon them both. "If they jumped, I think they would fly. Those of Dusk seem made of light and fantasy; something so lovely would never plummet and fall." A smile, a peace offering, a shy grin passes from one to the other. She is not ready for names and new friends. She is not ready to smash the broken glass inside of her into crystalline dust that would blow away like dandelions in a puff of air. So she does not offer it, but she offers that grin with a spark of the phoenix within bleeding bright into her skin, her smile, her eyes. "Speaking."

credits @Samaira <3 eeeh so excited !

[Samaira]

my spirit's veering flight
like swallows under evening skies.

The other woman's voice causes Samaira to turn, her moon-bright eyes regarding the pegasus who is made of ash and fire. She glows, perhaps from the fire light, but perhaps she just glows. Maybe there is fire light inside her, as well. She considers the words, and stretches her left wing before nestling it back against her side.

She had flown, and then plummeted and fell.

There is a faux spark in her eyes, made from the flickering of the towering flames. She remembers falling, and falling. And then nothing, until she woke here. In the swamp, whose trees cannot be seen from the cliffs. Especially not in the dark. "And if they are wanting to fall?"

Samaira remembers a different kind of falling. The kind that felt like flying, like drifting along on a cloud. The kind that Cassius had used to draw her in. The weight sits heavier upon her shoulders than her wings ever could have, even when they were useless. Even when they were her curse, to be the cause of her death.

She resists the urge to turn back to the equines on the cliffs to get them to neither fly nor fall. Not to condemn themselves in that way. Her heart, it sings a haunting song of the melancholy that has claimed her bones.

Alaunus, so young but so acutely aware of her feelings, ruffles his feathers. "Don't scare off your company now. You really need to make friends. Not that I don't like what we have but you should probably get some horse friends." The heron, iridescent and bright bright, turns his blue eyes on the woman of sunrise and smoke and begins to speak.

Not in a language any of them could hope to understand, but his strange croaking barks fill the air. About them, a few patrons turn and stare, their conversations halted. Samaira is used to it, Alaunus speaks more than enough for the two of them whether or not anyone knows what he is saying.

"Alaunus, please," Samaira thinks, perhaps, he might be asking their new companion something like 'please make her friendless existence less boring'. She might be exaggerating, a little bit, but she certain wouldn't put it past the young heron. "You know we don't speak 'honk'", she says, though she's teasing.

"Maybe someday I'll get lucky," he says, turning toward her, "I'll never know if I don't try." And then, if he could smirk she knows he would because she can feel the knowing that passes between them. "Now… doesn't that sound familiar?"

It is indeed something he has told her before. Samaira sighs in something like resignment. It would be nice if this was one of those times he chose to be blessedly quiet. "Why don't you go fishing?" Alaunus ruffles his feathers again, this time in indignation, but eventually bows his head to their company, gives Samaira as stern a look as a heron can manage and then opens his great wings and takes off into the sky.

"He's… well he's quite special, but I wouldn't trade him for a thing," the earth woman says, finally settling her gaze back on the other pegasus, the barest touch of a smile curling at the corners of her lips.

@Moira not really sure how to explain this post...