[P] there's a moon in me

[Seraphina]

IT'S IN THE CURVE OF MY RIBCAGE

When she was a child, Seraphina did not know what a forest was.

She was nearly – she thinks – a year and a half old before she’d ever left Solterra. Before that, forests were the stuff of stories, the kind of thing that her mother would tell her about at night when she was trying to convince her daughter to go to sleep. (The roof was broken, in their makeshift home; she wasn’t even sure that her mother earned it, looking back. She didn’t remember where her childhood home was, but she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to go back. She could see the stars, through that hole in the roof.) Viceroy didn’t talk about forests. There wasn’t a point to it; her world began and ended with the merciless expanse of desert heat, with the monsters that lurked in the sand and in the city. She had no time for make-believe horrors, strange beings that lurked between trees in vast swathes of green that she could hardly imagine. (Occasionally, she struggled to imagine the color, in that sea of dull browns and golds – it was like eyes, sometimes, she’d tell herself. Like Teiran’s eyes.) If she’d had more choices, Seraphina thinks that she might have liked to explore the world. Novus, at least. Perhaps she’d even have travelled beyond the borders, to distant lands that she’d heard about from sailors and travelers. That was one thing she liked about being a guard; all the stories she’d hear from foreigners.

Now, that was a distant, nearly-forgotten dream. She was bound up with that desert, whether she liked it or not, and, even if she left it, she doubted her soul ever would.

When she was a child, Seraphina did not know what a forest was. Now, standing amidst a swarm of countless pines, she wishes she’d spent more time in forests – even with Ereshkigal circling above, a blot of darkness against a cloudless, robins-egg blue sky that she can make out in the patches through the branches, she feels disoriented. The trees are tall, taller than any she’s ever seen, and they seem ancient. It felt like only moments ago that she was walking through growth that must have been new, saplings -

But, if she turned to look at the world behind her, she saw nothing but those ancient trees, extending endlessly towards the beach.

There was no point in going back anyways, even if the landscape seemed to be changing behind her – she tells herself that it is no more unusual than the maze, and, at the very least, it seems less overtly threatening. She is trying to reach the more central parts of the island, to see what lies beyond the treeline. Seraphina doesn’t expect to find Raum there, or Caine, but she suspects that it is as good a place as any to start looking for Tempus. Hadn’t she found him near the center of the maze, last time?

(Really, she had no way of knowing where the center was, because she’d never understood the layout of the maze, but it had felt as though she’d gone deep, and surely that meant moving towards the middle.)

Abruptly, Ereshkigal’s voice rakes at the edges of her mind. “I see a clearing ahead – if you just keep walking.” She sounds like she is taunting her, and Seraphina feels a sharp prick of jealousy for wings. (But Viceroy would likely have cut them off, if she’d had a pair. He did that often, to the pegasi. They were burdens in direct combat.) “It looks strange. Full of spines.” The demon’s voice shudders with glee, and Seraphina frowns. Full of spines?

When she passes through another sheet of pines, however, Seraphina discovers what Ereshkigal meant. To her, the “spines” look more like teeth; the clearing surrounds a pool of still water, surrounded on all sides by long, sharp spires of stone that are three or four feet high and prevent easy access to the pool, like a gaping mouth. She isn’t sure that she’d want to approach it even if the spires weren’t in place. The water is milky, coated in a thick layer of something off-white and slick, and a cloud of mist hangs over the surface, barely spilling over the stone barrier and into the rest of the clearing.

Biting back a grimace, Seraphina takes a step forward, drawing out of the trees. The plants around the water are browned and withering, their flowers drooping; she wonders if there is something off about the fog and elects to keep her distance for the moment.

The beat of wings above her reminds her of Ereshkigal, who, with a swish of feathers, comes to perch on her shoulders. She leans forward, eyeing the pool, and licks her lips.

Near the center of the water, Seraphina thinks that she sees something stir.

---

@Charlotte || so excited to thread with the bby <3 || "distillery," maggie woodward

"Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"

@

[Charlotte]

Charlie is disappointed to leave behind the ship. It is the greatest thing she has seen in her life (and she has seen a surprising amount of things, considering her taste for adventure), and the filly knows she will dream of ships that grand when she goes to sleep at night.

”Be careful!” comes the shocked sound of Indy’s voice, reminding Charlie of their new mission and bringing her focus back to the now. She narrowly avoids missing the strangely shaped tree, which looks like it has been sat upon by some great beast and bent at an awkward angle. Her vermillion eyes widen as she teeters around it, throwing open her wings to keep her balance. “Woah…” her voice is hushed in awe.

“Do ya think it grew like that, Indy?” Charlie wonders aloud, glancing upwards toward where her bonded rests on her poll. Not that she can see her, with her wild mess of forelock in the way. ”I dunno, maybe. Maybe it’s cursed,” the fledgling osprey’s voice is almost conspiratorial, but Charlie only scoffs. “Curses don’ scare me, and none of the weird things on this island neither.”

She puffs out her chest and scrunches her face into what she believes is some sort of brave, serious expression. “Come on, let’s go,” if there is anything exciting at all to be found, Charlie is determined to be the one to discover it. As a Pirate in training, this is exactly the kind of thing she loves to be doing. Forget staying home with all the other foals, doing dumb boring things like playing tag or coloring.

Nope, the great big wide world is where Charlie wants to be.

Nothing could be better than this: Charlie, her best mate Indy and someplace new to explore. She picks up her pace until her and Indy are weaving through the trees, the weird ones with not-leaves on them that she’s seen pictures of. There’s a coating of the things on the ground, and it makes her steps very quiet as she trots along, eyes darting every which way.

”If we can’t hear you move, does that mean we can’t hear the beasts move either?” Indy says, golden eyes wide. “I’m not afraid of no beast, Indy. I'm smarter than anything we’ll see out here,” Charlie says, ruffling the feathers of her wings, “‘sides, why do you think something’s hunting us anyway?”

”Maybe because of the shadow that keeps going by.”

Charlie stops, tipping her head back to look upwards. It’s hard to see through the trees consider she is so much smaller than all of them, but then she sees it: some shape passing way high up above them, over the trees. Her curiousity gets the better of her, of course, and she begins to follow it. ”Charlie, don’ follow it!” Indy scrabbles more tightly to her bondmate as she begins to charge through the trees. “Shh, I’ll be careful.”

”You always say that.”

“And I always mean it, okay?” Charlie says all hushed-like. Ahead, she can just barely see a break in the trees and begins to slow. The filly creeps closer, hugging the trunks of the trees until she is standing barely at the edge of the clearing. The first thing she sees is the big sharp rocks sticking up out of the ground, surrounding a small pool of water with some sort of smoke or fog coming out of it. “Cool,” she mutters, emerging from the shadow of the trees.

The unmistakable sound of beating wings draws her attention away from the pool and her excitement cranks up a few notches at the sight of the silvery woman with the white-white hair. She bounds forward, “Hey! How did you get here faster than I did…?” her eyes brighten, “Did you bring your ship, can I see it again? Please?”

But once Charlie gets close enough to see the details she can tell they are not quite right. The stripes aren’t quite the same, and the biggest is the lack of pointy spines on her back. Those had been cool, it made Charlie wish she had sharp pointy bits on her, too. Then nobody would ever dare mess with her.

“Wait you're not who I thought... sorry 'bout that,” she shrugs a little bit and sort of cocks one wing. “My name is Charlie, and this is my best mate Indy,” the filly says, flicking her eyes upward to indicate the young osprey nestled in her mane. Indy, however, isn’t quite as keen to make new friends of these strangers. She narrows her eyes, especially at the big freaky bird. ”I dunno about this, Charlie,” Indy says slowly.

"Speaking."

@Seraphina Charlie is here to confuse half-siblings and fight some beasts

credits

[Random Events]

A Random Event Has Occurred!

Seraphina’s eyes do not mislead her. There is something waiting below the mouth of the pool with the jagged stone teeth. Perhaps the pool is a doorway to another part of the island (to something beyond the island) and something is knocking, waiting, preparing to come in.

Maybe it was only waiting for an audience; they are the first of their kind to arrive here, at this clearing in the forest. Now the water begins to bubble and churn and the mist coils like a hurricane.

A shape converges out of the water and mist. It is more form than substance; the impression is like a body pressed against the back of a waterfall, fluid and moving. It looks something like a horse, but a vague approximation: the legs and neck are too long, the head too angular. Whatever magic has made it provides no detail but a dimple where its eyes would be, but nevertheless it is clear it sees them, and it pins its gaze upon them.

Then it steps forward without so much as a ripple of the water, its edges forming and unforming like the surface of the sun. Water-bugs and minnows dart away from its shadow but its attention is not on them; it does not waver from the woman and the girl, who themselves look as though they might be made of mist.

When it is only a breath away, when it stands at the very edge of the shore, it opens its mouth (or where a mouth might be, if it were something more than a vision made of water and light). Whatever it says, its expression suggests it out to be words the horses understand; the shapes are clearly intentional, though no sound emerges. Even the forest around them is mute. There is only this message —



And then the creature dissolves into mist and the mist dissolves into nothing and all the insects commence at once.

 

---

@Seraphina was right to think she saw something in the water, but it is not a thing content to be seen by only one pair of eyes. So it waits until @Charlotte joins her. Only then does it become something more (but it is more?). The form the mist makes lasts only a moment, but maybe it is a moment just long enough for them to discover a fresh mystery.

Each participant will be awarded +300 signos for encountering a Random Event! How you reply is up to you; feel free to NPC the mist, and whatever message they think they might have heard/seen (or nothing at all).

Enjoy!

[Seraphina]

I LIGHT A MATCH TO A STICK OF GRAPHITE--

The silence is interrupted by the sound of hooves, which is soon followed by a voice.

A child’s voice, to be exact – asking about how she got here before her, and some kind of a ship. Seraphina turns in the direction of the voice, her gaze falling upon a small pegasus, accompanied by some kind of water bird. (She doesn’t know much about creatures who don’t occupy the desert, but she feels like she’s seen something like it around rivers in her travels. Of course, she’s never had good reason to pay much attention.) The girl can’t be older than a few months; she is small and delicate, and she radiates a childlike naivete and boisterousness that Seraphina has sorely missed in Solterra.

(Their children are starving, orphaned, broken, exposed to every cruelty the world has to offer – she wishes they were so unburdened, so fearless.)

Her coat is a soft blue roan, and, in the place of a tail, she has a set of tail feathers. Her mane is cropped short and dark; she is almost boyish in physique, and certainly in bearing.

“Ship?” Seraphina tilts her head at the child, blinking; seems that she’s mistaken her for someone else. She is certainly no seafaring creature; in fact, she spent most of her time in the desert, which was practically the opposite of the sea. The little girl seems to realize that she has the wrong person, once she bridges some of the distance between them, and apologizes for it. She introduces herself as Charlie, and the bird as Indy, her best mate.

“Charlie, and Indy,” she repeats, “Hello there. My name is Fia, and this is Ereshkigal.” The lie slips off her tongue more and more easily each time she speaks it, it seems; she isn’t sure that she likes the sensation of disappearing into someone else’s skin, of slowly scraping away more and more of Seraphina to accommodate her wraithlike alias. But that doesn’t matter now. She stares the child and her companion down, a look of concern flickering to life in her multi-colored eyes. Is she on her own? On this island? Seraphina knows as well as she knows the lay of the Mors that this place is dangerous, and certainly no place for a child to be wandering alone. (Really, no place for a child at all. When had the gods ever had pity on a creature simply because of its youth? Never, never, never - but she tries to suppress her melancholy, for the sake of interacting with the girl.) She inclines her head instead, her odd eyes coming to a rest on the bright vermilion eyes of the girl. “Are you and Indy exploring on your own?” Perhaps her parents were around somewhere, and she’d just gotten separated from them; if that were the case, she could help her reunite with them.

At least Ereshkigal was staying quiet, for the moment – the demon isn’t exactly child-friendly. She simply remains at her perch on Seraphina’s shoulder, her blood-red eyes flickering between Charlie and Indy, lingering for a moment on the bird (and perhaps smiling a bit at the sight of a real one) and then on the child. “We don’t have time to play with little girls,” came her voice, after a moment – though, thankfully, she spoke through their connection, rather than aloud.

“Quiet. The girl might be in danger, out here on her own,” her own response snaps through their link.

As if to prove her point, the water in the pool comes alive.

It looks like it could almost be a horse, if a horse were carved of a rippling flow of water, which pulsates and bobs as if with waves; there are faint indentations where its eyes should be, but it is too long in the legs and in the neck, and the face is the wrong shape. (Somehow, the creature is elfin, practically fae. Some sort of water spirit? She has heard of desert spirits, creatures formed from the sands…) It draws forward, outline wavering like a distant mirage, and stares them down. Seraphina’s mind reaches for Alshamtueur and her arrow, just in case. (But what use would either of them be against a creature made of water? She is not even sure that her magic could grasp it if she tried.) Small creatures scatter in its wake, flashes of silver and dots of black that dart in her peripheral vision. Her eyes remain trained on the creature.

It opens its mouth, but no words come out.

Seraphina squints, attempting to read the creature’s lips. She thinks that she catches an end and a time, but she can’t piece together enough to guess at the sentence. (Ereshkigal, on her shoulder, feels unbearably smug – Seraphina suspects that she knows exactly what the creature said.)

Its message delivered, or something like it, the creature fades away – first to mist, and then to nothing at all, leaving in its absence only the sound of insects.

---

@Charlotte || <3 || "distillery," maggie woodward

"Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"

@