he prairie is expansive, stretching over rolling hills and grasses whipping in the wind and disappearing just past her line of sight. Antiope thinks, perhaps, that she can see the sun glinting off Vitreus Lake in the distance, but it could be a trick of the light. The girl of shadows and stripes stands with her back to the court, her draping mass of hair tied into heavy buns. A few stray strands dance with the air as it brushes along her sides.
The prairie is expansive, and spring is the first that Antiope has seen it unoccupied by equines and events and excitement. Now, she intends to cross it. Which doesn’t sound like such a feat, but she isn’t planning for it to take more than a few minutes. That is the real trick here.
Ever since arriving to this place, her magic has been strangled. Weak.
Antiope intends to challenge it.
She takes in a deep breath, filling her lungs as if it were the first time, when she was released from the marble she had been carved of. The blue of her eyes become slits in the mask of darkness across her face. She waits. One heartbeat, two heartbeats. Three. And then she begins to run. Even unaided, her speed is impressive. She is lithe and agile and predatory, and her muscles ripple beneath the white and earth of her skin. Her hooves kick up dirt and grass and soil. But this, this is nothing.
The lioness in her bones roars to life, prowling through her veins, claiming all the space for herself. Antiope’s eyes begin to glow, soon no longer blue as the sky and the sea but as gold and as bright as the sun. Soon, she begins to look more and more like a goddess in mortal skin.
And now with each stretch of her legs she is devouring the earth beneath her, gliding, practically flying, across the ground. Every knoll she crests is a milestone. Every second, every foot she takes is a feat. The lake rises up in the distance, a shining crescent cutting through the swath of green. Already Antiope can feel her magic draining her, and oh how hungry it is. How it feeds off of everything inside her, endlessly.
Mere minutes have gone by, but Antiope is no more than a short sprint to the lake. She has long forgotten the court that she left behind on the other side of the prairie, in favor of greater distances, of better control. But her glorious race slows, until she is trotting and then walking. There is a sheen to her coat that there wasn’t before, and her legs quiver with every step she takes. Her lips curl into a snarl, even as the lioness inside her seems to purr with content.
Damn this place and its way of taking from her what she has had her whole life.
Antiope does not make it to the edge of the lake, shining and sparkling under the sun, but instead she stops beneath the shade of a tree. She presses her shoulder into the rough bark in an effort to keep herself on her feet, closing her blue-again eyes. Oh, if she could find a way to make this world give her magic back to her in its entirety, she would do it in a moment.
He sees her from above.
Like a hawk, Septimus is circling high above the sprawling expanse of the Siderealis Prairie; he is flying so high that it is almost, just almost difficult to breathe, and it is disappointing. Before he was afflicted with his own mortality, such a height never bothered him. He could fly as high as he wanted – even far above the clouds, if he were struck with the desire -, and he never felt winded or lightheaded, much less nauseas. (It was the nausea, really, that suggested he should drop in altitude. Every time he beats his wings, his stomach lurches in unison.) Now, he is only mortal, and his strength and stamina reflect it.
He resents it. He doesn’t feel like himself at all.
As he begins to drop in altitude, with sweeping beats of his gargantuan wings, he catches sight of a streak of chocolate-brown splitting through the bobbing tan waves of the prairie. He freezes, for a moment, wings snapping out to allow him to hover in place. The figure is – equine? – and moving almost impossibly fast, the details of their form blurred by a mixture of proximity and speed; he catches a flash of white on an otherwise brown canvas, and he wonders, for a moment, if that coloration isn’t familiar…
Either way, this is an obvious use of magic, and, in his search for his own, Septimus can’t turn down the opportunity to investigate its bearer. He curves his wings and outstretches his pinions as far as they will go, shifting his body into a slow, swooping dive; though the figure is moving far faster than he, he has the benefit of height, and so he is not particularly worried about losing them.
When he is almost halfway to the ground, the figure slows – first to a canter, then to a trot, and then to a walk. He wonders if they are already drained; they didn’t seem to have been running for that long, though he supposes that it likely takes quite a bit of energy to close such a distance so quickly. Either way, with the figure slowed, he steepens his dive, picking up speed. It will be far easier to catch them now.
The figure disappears beneath the branches of a tree, obscuring them from view; he circles above it, for a moment, and then, stretching out his wings, drifts easily to the ground. Once his hooves touch down in the grass, which rises high enough to brush the curve of his stomach, he turns his green-eyed gaze on the figure, who is leaned up against the base of the tree, sides heaving. Even from here, even in the shadows, her body gleams with sweat, and her hair – tied up in buns – is beginning to fall. He watches her, for a moment. She is still striking. Predatory. The tiger-lady - had he expected anyone else, when he saw her dancing across the prairie?
He didn’t know it then, but now he is sure that it could only ever have been her. Septimus tilts his head, stepping forward – though not close enough to stand beneath the tree; he quite likes the warmth of the sun on his back – and calling out to her. (Hopefully, he thinks, she won’t mind the intrusion…or his observation.) “Was that your magic?” He inquires, green eyes flitting the length of her sweat-slick, muscular form. (It’s not exactly a greeting, but his scientific interest is getting the better of his politeness. He doesn’t want pleasantries, he wants information.) He doesn’t know what else it could have been, drained as she looks; there’s no way that she could have cleared such an expansive distance so quickly without some sort of magical influence involved. (She’d said that this land had weakened her magic anyways – much as she absolutely does not seem weak to him. He shudders to think of the destructive potential her powers might hold, if they were present in their entirety…whatever her powers might be.)
I gave my promise to the world
and the world followed me here.
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
08-07-2019, 09:09 PM - This post was last modified: 08-07-2019, 09:10 PM by Septimus
he doesn’t immediately open her eyes when he speaks, although even in her exhaustion she hears him approach. Even in her exhaustion, she never gives up her alertness, all the things she is built with. Her ears are twisted toward him starting from the moment he lands, until the time he stops a few feet away and poses his question into the air between them.
Antiope can feel the grain of the bark pressing itself into her skin like a memory, but she doesn’t move away from the tree. Her blue eyes slip open, slicing through the strands of white and mahogany hair that have fallen free from their binds and across her face. He is as she remembers, and she had said she would never overlook him again.
He is keen, she notes.
The tigress wonders how much he had seen, and decides that no matter what amount it is enough to answer the question for him. “Yes,” Antiope lifts her head and regrets it, grinding her teeth and fighting back the wave of nausea that swells up within her. She will sleep, long and hard later, she knows. If she did not stop when she had, worse thing would have happened. It is the price she pays for her magic, here, in this world. She hates it.
When the sick feeling passes, Antiope pushes slowly away from the tree. Her legs are steadier, though her steps are noticeably careful and there is a shiver to her skin as if she feels a chill. Her expression is composed but inside she roils.
Oh, the lioness in her bones is pleased. It cannot feast on the sacrifice of others so it must feast on her own sanctuary, but the lioness is not picky.
She brushes past him, shortening the distance between herself and the lake until she is close enough to dip her muzzle in and take of its refreshing, cool, water. In her reflection Antiope sees how her hair has begun to come undone from her bun and how there is a sheen to her coat and she looks into her own jewel blue eyes and wonders how is that she got here.
She knows, of course. But why had it needed to be her?
“Energy,” she says, when she has finished and is upright once again, glancing over her shoulder toward Septimus. No doubt he will ask, what it is. “My magic. I can draw on energy, to make myself more powerful,” her eyes darken, like a storm passing over a sea. Like waves, tossing, rising, rising, crashing, “But I have never had such limitations, it is as though my body no longer remember how to use it.”
![[Image: 13716916_Rc8f5hGvZkB3cYP.png]](https://file.toyhou.se/images/13716916_Rc8f5hGvZkB3cYP.png)
