I HAVE LATE NIGHT CONVERSATIONS WITH THE MOON; HE TELLS ME ABOUT THE SUN & I TELL HIM ABOUT YOU
She swims in a sea of silent screams all echoing around inside her head, they bleat and yell and beg and plead; over and over an endless melody of anguish. Emotions, Moira decided long ago, are a weakness. Now, she remembers why. She remembers how they can hinder logic and thought, can push back reason in favor of reckless impulses.
Emotions make the world awful.
So the girl with glass eyes and a frozen heart lets storms rage and burn so cold it freezes her, feels frost nipping at her bones, her intestines twisting into immovable glaciers, her heart splintering and sealed with the icy breath left behind on the island. Thoughts of a woman on fire are cast aside, thoughts of a woman of community flee before winter's kiss, thoughts of even her beloved Isra fall short as a shell of ice encases the phoenix. She had burned, and she had burned so brightly for those who needed it, and in the end the phoenix burned herself to a crisp. Fledgling wings are bare, no feathers of flame to be seen yet, only the newness of the world once more.
For everything has changed with the ringing in her head only growing louder day by day.
Somewhere, a tiger rumbles, soft and low, keening cries aching to reach through the snow-kissed barrio. To no avail, Neerja cannot pull Moira from her swan dive into an eternity of frost and starlight. Were Caligo here, perhaps she would kiss her Emissary's eyelids, breathe darkness out of her soul and wrap her in it so completely that it would bleed warmth back into every part that is going cold.
She is a sea, swelling, swelling, swelling with waves of frosted froth and snowflake foam. Everything falls to its devastating affects when it hits ivory towers and walls so carefully crafted to keep everything safe and compartmentalized. And when the waters flow out, when they go as he did, crystal statues are left of the horrors she's seen, the people she's met, the things which are the making and unmaking of Moira Tonnerre.
At last, with the press of sharp tooth into tender flesh of supple hip, curving down and leading to long, thin legs that seem too skinny to carry all of her, golden eyes focus on Neerja. There is no smile, only ghosts that are alive within the creases of her face and the hollows of her eyes. Together, they go into the maze to remember and to forget.
e-cho & tibet-lama | "speaking" | @ open | this is after the debacle at the shrines ^-^
I swear to god
I wasn't born to fight.
Maybe just a little bit.
Enough to make me sick of it.
Here is the story repeated ad nauseam, the one where everyone gets what they want, brief as it is. It is not their story, not tonight, but it is on the horizon, some wobbling mirage in the distance. They have only to look.
At some point, Michael is watching the citizens of Denocte hang scarves for the festival, draped on hooks at every corner. He is watching carts of straw bales come up from the prairie, yellow and thick. The city is letting out a breath it hadn't meant to hold, through the long winter and even longer spring. Now, on the heels of summer, Denocte sighs and drops its shoulders to clear the rubble.
In his hundreds of years, Michael has never paused to celebrate the dead. It seems so simple, now - light a candle for those that have gone, or hang a picture. If he is a walking cathedral than surely he can spare a toll or two of his ancient old bells for the friends he has left behind. Surely the sting of immortality has not gone from him in only a year. Surely, the fist around his heart as the crowd starts to gather around him, as the sun downs itself, is some bitter memory of that pain.
At the very least, she deserves to be remembered, wherever she is.
Perhaps it would be easier to believe she is dead, anyway.
Now, hours later, the crowd has become swollen and their voice is a din, a constant humming that sinks into him and sets his heart racing. He does see Moira in the throngs, cornered with her painting - the devil rendered in pigment, they think, something that has become rotten and hated and synonymous with death, and starvation, and Isra's black rage. When she leaves, Michael turns to follow - he is running from the crowd, from the color and light, and he is running to Moira though he does not know why.
Michael had not seen Raum. Michael had gone to find Isra when she left and then run when he had returned her to her city on the hill, wreathed in flame.
The same black rage does not stir in Michael. It had not stirred while his own kingdom burned to the ground. He simply does not have it in him to hate.
They meet, finally, at the entrance to the maze, and Michael matches pace with Moira - a phoenix drowned - and her tiger. The three of them are so full of things they cannot forget. The three of them remember things very quietly. Michael does not smile at her or block his path, but he is gold and soft even in the light of the sickle moon. "Hold on," he says - because he must. "I'm coming with you."
@Moira SPIRAL SQUAD
Anyone else is still welcome to jump in!
aking his way through the kingdom of Night was an odd yet beautiful experience. This was his court’s opposite, the dark to the light, the night to his day. A smirk formed on his lips at the thought, his crimson eyes wandering to the heavens, admiring the vastness of the sky. It seemed closer here, amplified, not as warm as the sun but pretty, nonetheless.
Returning to earth, Ramses continued walking but it wasn’t long before something odd appeared before him. Eyes widening, his lips turning downwards, Ramses stared at the monstrous corn field -- confusion evident on his red face. As he was nearing the towering city of stalks, his eyes landed upon a pair of strangers who were making their way to the entrance. A sly smile appeared on those predatory lips as the coyote called out, his voice carrying across the crisp autumn air.
"Allow me to join you?" he asked as the man broke into a trot, his legs carrying him easily across the earth. The stallion was elegant, floating, when he was in motion. That feral, predator was released and was allowed to show its face. Analyzing the unknown equines before him, he allowed himself to admire the beauty of them both. Ramses towered over both of them and yet, there was something about them that seemed different? Were they from this kingdom? Were they from another court? What were they, entertainers or politicians, perhaps?
Slowing, he followed them into the darkness of the maze, a twisted grin appearing upon his mottled lips.
Did they not know of the dangers hidden in the dark?
"Speaking"
Tag: @Moira @Michael
OOC: Sorry this isn't the best, didn't wanna scare them too quickly!
people are people and sometimes we change our minds
Even in the murky sea, there are lights that bob below the surface. Silver eyes that watch, golden scales that gleam, and siren's song that whispers over misty waters into the ears of sailors just waiting to drown.
The man is a siren to her, his voice heard above the crashing of her mind, above the frigid temperatures still dropping like the blood upon her hip from claws that bit and teeth that tore. It all blends anyway, and so the phoenix does not bother to wipe away the red that bleeds into red when the musician, the magical man, the mysterious man who comes and goes finally finds his way to her side. Once before he'd been there, and then he'd helped to bring Isra home.
Only this memory - for there is no flicker inside, no spark in her darkening heart - halts the woman dressed more for war that merriment. Moira tilts her head, raking those dark and bright eyes over the curving form, shot like an arrow from Isra's bow, now in step beside her. Even in stillness his body hums with life, with the quietude and pulchritudinous sense of peace he seemed to know and possess intimately. Moments ago, perhaps the immortal girl, the crying girl, would have wondered if she would know that peace again.
Briefly, an island tries to rise in her mind.
Fingers of frost and foam wash it down, drown it into the glistening remembrance of a strange leaf, of bleeding flowers and hearts, of pearly walks on even stranger paths. Nothing survives the frost.
"Michael," the Tonnerre girl says at last, inclining her head toward the entrance.
Too soon, too soon, too soon another voice breaks the roaring in her head, the silence in her head. It is soft and whimsical, music on the wind. Moira always loved and hated music so fervently. It made her mother dance, it made her mother cry, it was an art she had mastered at a young age and been forced to perform like a monkey in the circus over and over and over. Recitals until it was perfect, punishments if it was not.
The coyote moves in the moonlight, in her eyesight, like a flame upon her lands. Once, she, too, had been a candle to draw towards. It seems she still is as the men close in.
"You smell of Day," is all the phoenix says with a delicate sniff. With that, golden eyes glance over him in all his glory. These are not companions, these are wolves waiting to shred her skin and make ribbons from the strips. With pursed lips and a warning glance toward Neerja, the phoenix at last walks forward. "A maze in Denocte has become a terrible thing. Tonight, I feel rather a terrible thing inside, too." Nothing more is said, but her words float around them as a corpse upon the sea. Blank eyes staring into a void below, water-logged skin going grey, losing all sense of self.
She is a lost girl out at sea and her lighthouse is gone. Sunk. Blown to smithereens. Destroyed in a hurricane. It didn't matter how it went, only that it was not there. So she, too, would assimilate, would know the Darkness and its innermost workings. She would be a lost thing too.
Come, she breathes to Neerja, letting the faintest of streams pass between them. It is too small for warmth to leak in, but there is a purr, there is a whine, and it sits in the back of her head. A guillotine blade is still waiting to fall.
@Michael @Ramses | "Speech" | notes: those are both so beautiful and inspiring ! please don't mind me while i try out my ten million new mo tables.
I swear to god
I wasn't born to fight.
Maybe just a little bit.
Enough to make me sick of it.
One moment: He smiles. It's soft. Warm. "Moira."
The next: Something feral headed their way, a toothy, wolfish grin. Moira wheels to face him and Michael only tilts his head back to see them. Ahead, the corn yawns open, black stalks on either side of a black, muddy trail. Behind, a phoenix turned cold, and a predator. He thinks, he could just go. He thinks, he cannot help anyway.
If Michael had hands to hold her, he would. If he had hands to hold Isra, he would. All of Denocte. He would. But Michael's hands are made of sand and when he reaches for hers, they crumble and drop in heavy lumps. He feels them land in his stomach, wet and cold. She is looking at Ramses but Michael is looking at her, her clenched teeth, and goosebumps raise along his back.
This is a litany: this gold thing, bowed back by the weight of all that holds down everyone else. He has never been his own. He never can be. It is a tiresome existence.
Allow me to join you, Ramses asks. Insists?
You smell of day, Moira answers.
The look that Michael gives the stallion is disdainful.
"Maybe you shouldn't. But I'm sure you will." says Michael. As if he were the kind to say 'maybe you shouldn't.' As if he were any kind at all.
He is still breathing so they cannot hear him - his nostrils tremble with the effort. An audible wind blows through the corn field. It is asking. Begging. The emissary and her tiger breeze past Michael in a flurry of cold air. She has sucked everything out of the space and still he dances on this razor's edge, between a tiger and a coyote, before he sees that he is the deer, small and meek.
So be it. Michael follows Moira, as Michael always would. "Another maze."
Another maze.
He is used to feeling lost.
rimson eyes never move from the pair before him, he watches quietly, their words almost hateful as they speak of him.
“You smell of day.”
The orange canary sings, her voice not entirely friendly but not angry, not quite accusatory. She had every right to question him, to question his intentions and his hunger. Ramses smirks at her as she continues on, rambling of something philosophical and of course, hilarious. "A maze in Denocte has become a terrible thing. Tonight, I feel rather a terrible thing inside, too."
The woman says, her voice a muddle of feelings as she heads towards the maze, the large cat following close behind.
Turning his attention to the golden child once more, he cannot help the smiles that crawls so easily across his mottled lips. "Maybe you shouldn't. But I'm sure you will."
They do not wish for his company but the coyote can practically feel the growl itching up his throat.
Who were they? Why did they feel they needed to treat him as if he carried a disease? Ramses was not responsible for the actions of Raum and it was unfair to place it on his shoulders. Baring his teeth, the coyote stalks behind them into the darkness, his anger coiling inside him.
“Do not give me that look again,” he warns the other stallion, his words laced in malice. He was a predator and one of the Davke, he would not allow this asshole to tread on him.
With that, he moves to push past the creature called Michael, clacking his teeth, a dangerous glint appearing in those blood red eyes.
"Speaking"
OOC: I'm sorry this is so short!
Tag: @Michael @Moira
her voice is as a thousand tongues
of silver fountains, gurgling clear
There is a warmth in Michael's voice that she longs to feel from another. It sings and it calls, a swan song on the waters, beckoning. Come, come. His words are soothing, calming. But they do not calm the storm of a girl, the raging inferno of a woman. They do not calm her, nor stay her hand.
Peace, tranquility and welcome is interrupted with the coming of another, and her gentle companion stiffens as she had mere moments ago. Together they look upon Ramses, together they find distaste for separate reasons coating their tongue. Perhaps she should have been more careful of her words. Too late. Too late. Why was she always too late? Annoyance grows like a tumor; insidious, slow, a rot spreading in her veins, poisoning her mind.
At last the phoenix' breath rushes out In a sigh, "We are not here to make enemies, not when all borders are blown open and bellies exposed." And at last there is humanity around the edges of her voice, a tempering of the steel born of anger, born of abandonment. Honeyed eyes look back to the men that follow, almost curious of their being here, almost willing to ask.
If only almosts were enough.
Ramses and Michael trade words, and Moira trades with them both a stern frown, but it is the bi-colored man to which she looks. "Still your tongue, Solterran. If we are cautious I ask your patience in these times." The Emissary rises, head high, words soft, pushing comments out of the way.
If all of their people are on edge, who could blame them when it was her people who suffered so heavily? The loss of the queen and the loss of life on their soil. Perhaps that is why the old tomes in the library spoke of the secrecy old Denoctians carried so heavily upon their skin. The less the world knows, the less it can take from you. In the end, everything and everyone demands their pound of flesh.
Slowing so that Neerja can stalk just ahead, she moves beside Michael. Shoulder against shoulder, she brushes his side, asking him to wait. When Ramses comes upon her other side, the clacking of his teeth and feral glint in his eyes paramount in her view, Moira Tonnerre begins their walk again. With a man on each side, she looks to the grinning moon and asks "What does a son of the desert think of our Night-crowned home and fields of corn where only the touch of another reminds you that you are real, that you are tangible in this dying world?" For theirs is a fruitful home of splendor and magic, but she has since forgotten what it was to be an outsider among Denocte. The Emissary finds a friend on every street she walks, especially those with sweets and treats.
"Speaking." @Ramses @Michael <3 thank you for your patience ! Love you guys lots
"I think we deserve
a soft epilogue, my love.
we are good people
and we've suffered enough."
We are not here to make enemies.
Michael turns that same, withering gaze on Moira (even if it is softer, rimmed by flowers that bloom in tones of why? and please just let me help you before wilting away just as quickly) and breathes out what is either a long sigh or the end of a deep breath - he isn't sure. Ramses is all gnashing teeth and equally dark looks and perhaps Michael doesn't realize what he's teetering on the edge of, doesn't know that this is a cliff and in one more step he's over the edge, falling into the ocean or breaking himself on the rocks below.
But Moira asks it of him, and he trades his withering look for one full of placid disinterest, and says to her, "Of course we aren't," before turning an apologetic smile on Ramses and settling in at Moira's side.
The corn is dark and it blots out the thin moonlight, letting it through in only shivering pools here and there, except on the carved paths that wash them in the distant orange glow of the city and the white dust of the stars. Overhead the night sky is cast out like a map, bright and singing, dark blue and darker black freckled with light.
Michael has only ever seen Denocte as an outsider. He has only ever seen anything as an outsider. And suddenly Michael feels the wind blowing up the side of his cliff, feels the spray of the sea and knows that if he looks down he will find nothing but a break in the crust and the ocean rising up to meet him - but he doesn't step off, doesn't plunge like he wants.
Because Moira asks it of him.
Instead Michael waits, walking beside them. He may look embarrassed, watching his feet fall as he walks, aware that they're close only because the sway of Moira's body keeps bumping them together - but he doesn't think that he is. He thinks only that he is tired of festivals, and of men with feral, toothy grins, and of ghosts in the corn.
