DO YOU HEAR THE WORDS OF THE CONQUERORS OR DO YOU HEAR THE VOICES OF DEER? --
In the pines, each grasping branch – thin and sharp, with rugged bark and sweet-scented needles that lay sticky with sap – that brushed Septimus’s side felt like an embrace.
Strange birdsong echoes from the highest reaches of the canopy, but he cannot see the birds from the ground; he would like to get a better look at them, but they are flighty, wild things, and he can respect that. (Besides, the trees are far too densely-spaced for him to spread his wings.) The light that filters through the pine trees is hazy and unfocused, dappled with little patches of shadow and bright light; in some spaces, it is so brilliant that it seems like sunbeams have filtered right through the trees, but, in most, it is the dull gold of late evening, and you can make out all the little things – dust and leaf and small, strange, glittering beetle – floating down to the forest floor.
Septimus runs, graceful and deerlike, through the brush.
The forest is kinder to him than the shore; the sand shifts beneath his hooves in a way that makes his stomach turn, and the sticky tangle of salt-slick moisture in his fur, mingled with sweat, makes his skin crawl. The world around him smells of mud and leaf, of stripped-cedar and decaying log – he clears one in a single, graceful bound, landing on the slick mass of mud, wet leaf, and just-sprouted weed that covers the ground in front of him with practiced ease. His antlers catch in the brambles and branches, on occasion, but he knocks the obstacles aside without much of a struggle. He hears the forest. He hears it in the soft heave of his breath and the low buzz of passing insects – sweat bees and flies, the occasional gnat. He hears it in the dull thud of his hooves, the shifting of foliage beneath his every step. He hears it in the distant hum of birdsong, distorted by his movement, and the occasional rustle that suggested there were other things about, watching him from the trees. He even hears it in the clink of the gemstones that adorn his antlers and his ears, that harsh sound that two stones make when they scrape against each other. The tamed parts of him have been pushed aside; his glasses are tucked into his satchel, which is, in turn, hidden beneath the feathered mass of his wing. This is Septimus as he was in his home, half-feral and all teeth.
Septimus spills out of the dense forest to stand in front of a small pool, colored murky green with a sheen of algae. Small shrubs, the wrong kind for a coniferous forest, hang over the edges, and, near the center, the algae twitches with the occasional suggestion of movement; frogs, maybe, or a snake. Night is falling fast, and the dusky golden remnants of the light are fading away to stretches of dull green and navy. However, with the disappearance of the sunlight comes another kind of luminance -
Tiny lights spring from the brush, floating up towards the treetops. Fireflies, he realizes, as they blink in-and-out of sight, dancing lazily across the clearing. He is reminded of himself as a boy, creeping away from his mother at night to watch the lightning bugs rise up from the undergrowth when darkness began to fall, during hot, sticky summer nights; some were sprites, and some were will-o’-wisps, but some were simple bugs, little traces of normalcy amongst the eldritch angles of his childhood.
He watches them from the shore of that strange pool, momentarily enthralled; there are many beautiful, terrifying, wonderful sights on this strange island. This might be the loveliest he has seen so far, simple though it may be.
AND RARELY, IF THE WOOD ACCEPTS THE BLADE WITHOUT CONDITIONSthe two pieces keep their balance in spite of the blow❃please tag Septimus! contact is encouraged, short of violence
The island is washing over her in broken waves of thick heat and predator song. Humidity is clinging to that swift pulse beating in the hollow of her cheeks and painting dark streaks of salt above her eyes like war paint. Thana is wearing the island like the skinned fur of a wolf and it's hung on her by the sharp, gray teeth in a mouth grown rigid and cold.
And oh! Oh wearing all the weight of dead time (it's not broken, she knows it's dead) feels like home. Each step she takes is lighter than the last, until she's moving like a blood-red lion through the jungle. Death, as always, is walking with her. Roots are dying all around her in black moons of rot, and leaves are drying up and blowing away in the weighted wind. When the canopy thickens and swallows up the last light of the sky, she only tells herself that she's walking with the night instead of rot.
Ahead a bird calls and she can hear the teeth in the sound of it. The leaves this deep in are growing sharper, like thorns blooming from branches and calling themselves flowers. When they get too thick to run through she loops her blade above her head and cuts them all down with one viper-quick slash of her tail. Thana almost wonders if the jungle can her the teeth in the sound of her too, or if it can only hear the way each cell of her body is turning thin and sickle weak.
Where is not for the white constellations of fireflies in the darkness she would have run right by the stallion at the water. She might not have looked at his tines of bone, or the wings at his side, and thought of a hundred ways to fight against them. Nor would she have paused, one hoof in the air like a lion who has just been startled by a doe.
But she can see him in the light of the insects and so she lowers her hoof and walks through the cloud of brightness. Each firefly dies the moment it touches her skin, until she's ringed with blackness and the rest of the world is lined with starlight. Some buried part of Thana laments the loss of the light and the sweet hum of frail wings dancing in the air. The larger part of her, that is still lined with humidity and wildness, knows that there is nothing to do for those withering, lovely insects.
And she knows when she tilts her head towards him the air still sounds like teeth moving through her carved out horn. It is the only sound she makes when she watches him and stays as still as a stone at the bottom of the deep, dark sea.
Like everything on the island the water with its coat of fireflies had been waiting too. But now it's done waiting and it's waking up. The water shakes like a bear and great ripples start to rise out from the center of it. The sheen of fireflies ripples out too, until it's crests of fireflies swooping out over the dark thicket and making clear other things that had been waiting, and sleeping, too.
A rabbit is looking out from a bed of leaves and five horns are spiraling out from his head in a halo made of bones instead of light. Fireflies perch on his altars of bone and they start to flicker to the slow blinking of his wide, sleep crusted eyes. And if the horses move closer they might notice that his eyes seems to be made of caught fireflies swirling behind a cage of glass.
Upon a wide frond a macaw is watching them. His head is spinning around like an owl. Each feather on his wings, when he lifts them in a message to the horses below, shines in the flickering insect light like caught fire. He is the reddest thing in the black jungle that is only now just waking up to revel in the light. When he opens his beak no sound comes out.
But beyond them, out where the light is only just beginning to touch in those great rippling waves, a garden is starting to bloom. Petals of red, and orange, and pearl are starting to open up their lotus faces towards the light. They are growing towards it-- up, up, up-- until they are as tall as the trees. Their stems do not grow bark only thorns.
When the fireflies finally settle themselves back down it's at the base of those massive, awake flowers. And when the water stops shaking like a wild animal each flower turns its featureless face towards the two horned horses waiting by the pool.
@Septimus and @Thana, are not the only things waiting silent in the darkness broken up by fireflies. When the water starts to ripple and the insects start to spread out like small, caught rays on sunlight, animals start to wake up in the jungle hot forest. They are all watching the two horses. And beyond them flowers are starting to grow, and grow, and grow.
Each participant will be awarded +300 signos for encountering a Random Event! How you reply is up to you; feel free to NPC flowers or any of the animals revealed by the light.
Enjoy!
To tag this account: @*'Random Events' without the asterisk.
Please be advised, tagging the Random Event account does not guarantee a response!
LADY OF THE MOUNTAINS, EMERGES FROM MY RIGHT SIDE AND ALL THE LACY SCARS THERE, WHY IS SHE A DEER? --
There is a darkness among the fireflies.
When she emerges from the leaves like the blossom of a spider-lily, he does not notice her, but for a prickle on his spine – for Septimus has spent enough time in the woods to know when he is being watched. (What he wonders, then, is if the creature who approaches is predator or prey.) There is a sound, but he is not sure that he can put a name to it, which accompanies her appearance, and it is that sound which makes him turn, the jewels which dangle from his antlers clinking a soft melody to accompany the sudden movement.
The unicorn is haloed by dying fireflies, which go dark and twitch once they are in the radius of her frame. A strange girl, practically patchwork – deep chestnut, like blood, with a lithe frame but feathered hooves, a gnarled spiral of a horn, eyes like amethyst chips to match the stone on her forehead, a lion’s tail which bears a scythe. Predator, he decides, because she can kill, or because she does kill; predator, but she stands still before him, silent and dark, and he wonders if she, like the strange birds and cats and jungle plants, has been born from the wild magic of this island. It suits her like a second skin. “Hello,” Septimus says, his voice a soft, low thing – because he does not know what matter of creature he is looking at, but he knows that she is a wild thing, and he does not want her to leave. “Who are you?”
But before the unicorn can answer, if she intends to answer at all, the forest shifts again. The fireflies seem to shudder, and then they expand, like ripples; he barely notices the movement of the water, for the darkness, but he knows that it is unnatural, as though it is a living thing, shaking itself off. As the fireflies spread out, the glade seems to brighten, and what it reveals is unusual, but in a way that soothes Septimus far more than it unnerves him, for it reminds him of his home.
(The thought, while he is so far from it, with no way back, would be enough to bring tears to his eyes, were he not so fascinated by the scene before him.)
First the rabbit, with his bony crown; he blinks at them tiredly, and Septimus steps forward to examine him, tilting his head like a curious dog. (He has seen stranger things, but he has never seen this strange thing before, so it warrants investigation.) Its dark eyes catch his attention – they are illuminated in flecks, as though there are fireflies trapped inside of their rims.
The sound of feathers from somewhere above him draws his attention upward, and he finds himself staring at a strange macaw, which twists his head like an owl and is such an unnaturally bright shade of red that, though it looks like a macaw, he knows it cannot be one. He opens his beak, as if to speak, his outstretched wings like twin flames in the unnaturally brilliant light from the fireflies, but no sound escapes his throat.
As the light reaches the furthest edges of the glade, it reveals something that, though he should have walked through it, Septimus is sure was not there before. A garden, full of flowers. (Lotus? No – like everything here, he is sure that the flowers are not what they seem.) Reds and whites and oranges, spectacularly vivid in the light – and growing. He watches, spellbound, as the flowers grow and grow, until they rival the trees for sides, mess of thorns adorning their trunk-stems.
The fireflies settle at the base of the flowers, and, somewhere behind him, the water quiets; he does not look to see if it stills. Instead, his eyes remain trained on those blossoms-
Even as they, like the faces of sunflowers, turn to stare at him. He almost swears that their dark centers could be eyes, but he tells himself that it is a trick of the light.
The garden is like a little forest, and, though he knows that he will have to mind the thorns, he thinks that he can fit in the space between the stems. He throws a look over his shoulder at the strange unicorn-girl, such a mystery herself, and he allows himself a warm smile, though he does not think that she is a creature hunting warmth. “Would you like to explore the flowers?” he inquires, searching for her jewel-like eyes in the shadows; better, he thinks, to search them in a group. He doesn’t know what secrets (or dangers) they might hide.
@Thana || I adore her (and the scene in that RE!) "Speech!"
AND RARELY, IF THE WOOD ACCEPTS THE BLADE WITHOUT CONDITIONSthe two pieces keep their balance in spite of the blow❃please tag Septimus! contact is encouraged, short of violence
Thana is still waiting when the light comes rippling out from the lake like a sea that has forgotten where its edges are supposed to end. There is too much brightness for her skin, and her weak rotten magic, to kill. Fireflies start to cling to her skin like dewdrops and gather in the hollow of her horn like water made of sunlight. Thana swallows a few living dewdrops down before the insects settle and all the things hiding in the dark of the humidity are revealed.
She does not answer the stallion with anything more than the strange weight in her eyes that skims over him to the hare, and the macaw, and the thorny plants rising like trees. Even her steps are silent as she moves between all the things revealed. Like a queen she walks between the monsters, and the stallion and into the thicket of thorns and bright petals. Not once does to pause to listen to the silent macaw or look at the way the hare has emotionless glass lamps for eyes.
In her dreams she'll see these creatures, over and over again, and in each dream they will open up their magic, hollow bones to welcome her home.
And it is not until she's almost to the thorns she turns back towards the stallion. with gems on his antlers and a heat she'll never understand on his lip. Thana lifts her nose like a shield between them. Her scythe whistles through the air when she cuts the thorns from the plant-stalks like it's nothing more than silk blooming from their roots instead of weaponry. There is no plant (she thinks) that grows and does not already know how it will feel to fade away in the fall.
Everything knows how to die. Everything knows the masterpiece and the history of it.
So she opens up and mouth and says, “I am Thana.”, because the plants already know what she is and what she brings. A petal catches in the crease of her spine when it falls. The shine of it turns to black and rot and sludge running down her sides.
“And you-- she inhales him, and the sharp stone tang of his jewels. He does not taste like the wings of fireflies still caught on the back of her throat. Nor does he taste like the dewdrops making pools beneath the valleys left by her tongue. “are you something I am looking for?” He does not taste like anything she should ask the question of. But she does anyway.
AND RARELY, IF THE WOOD ACCEPTS THE BLADE WITHOUT CONDITIONSthe two pieces keep their balance in spite of the blow❃please tag Septimus! contact is encouraged, short of violence
