Morrighan isn't really sure why she's set foot on the island again. The last time she was here, everything was collapsing. Horses around her were screaming and running for their lives. The land was crumbling into the sea until it was gone. All swallowed up by the waves and the creatures that surrounded it. But that only lasted for a season. She's heard rumors that the island has returned and keeps shifting.
Is it the relic? For something so important, it really seemed to disappear quickly. Either that or the owner is good at staying hidden. She's heard nothing of the thing since the island first disappeared. Given all the strange events that happened before, maybe it never left this place.
She's not sure if it's the curiosity of the old relic or something else that brings her here. There are rumors too of poachers in Delumine, but that feels far enough away not to be her Court's problem. Morrighan always keeps a watchful eye though, so even leaving Denocte's borders like this seems wrong.
But the island's landscape seems even more wrong.
There's not even much to look out at besides grass. Or at least, it seems to be grass, except it's as tall as trees are supposed to be. Instead of woods, it's thick tall grass that towers over her head. In a way it reminds her of the looming corn stalks of the maze from seasons ago, but somehow this is even more ominous. A small part of her wonders if Isra is to blame for this, but it wouldn't make any sense since she left on a boat. Unless… they crashed here?
"Isra?" Morrighan calls out with panic setting in. She tries to ignite her fire, but for some reason she can't get it to work. Something is blocking her magic.
The howling ghosts have not fallen to silence since the dawn. Ahead of her, beside her, above her, Thana can see the strange beasts running through the rainbow grass. Their smiles are full of teeth and their trails full of pollen. There are moonlit flowers, and petals shaped like rays of the sun, blooming in their wake. Since the dawn neither Eligos, her, or the half-bear half-doe creatures have paused in their flight through the grass forest.
And not once has Thana paused to wonder where it is they are running too. It is enough that they are running like a river through the island, like wolves hunting a stag, like monsters bonded by being monsters and nothing else. Eilgos, understands where it is they are running too, he can feel it in the violence beneath his claws and in the weight of the air pressing in around them, bloated with the roar of a far off waterfall.
He has not told Thana the destination.
The pack is still running, Thana at the center of it, when she hears a mortal calling out beyond the tall-grass. She can hear something in the sound, like sorrow and fury all at once. It awakens something in her, some part that clings to Ipomoea and his castle. It's the part pretending to be mortal. The part pretending that she is not here to tear this world down to white rivers fat with magic and nothing else. Like she's not the only end Novus will ever understand.
That name, Isra, is still caught on the magic wind when Thana emerges out from the pack of howling ghosts. And it's still echoing when she tosses her head towards the mare and Eilgos emerges from the grass beside her. “No.” She answers the question not asked mostly to drown out the please of Eligos as he presses his nose against her hip in a touch that has nothing to do with fondness and everything to do with mercy.
Thana steps closer, ignoring the pack as it runs by without pausing. And when a thorn branch grows out of the island dirt to wrap itself around her leg, Thana does not look down at the root. She knows, that if she looks down the pack will circle back and Eligos will do more than touch his nose against her hip.
This island is full of monstrous things and this girl, with her fiery eyes and whispered word is not one of them. Not like Thana is, not like she's always been.
There is a mixture of relief and disappointment when the woman that appears out of the grass is not Isra. Part of her had hoped to find the former Queen. Morrighan now isn't sure what she would do if it had been Isra, but it'd at least be nice to see another familiar face. But it's not. She's never seen this woman before or her strange dragon-cat-like creature by her side.
She feels a bit foolish and frustrated now. Normally she would be accompanied by her fire, but something is wrong. Usually she can feel it churning inside her until it's finally let free. That feeling is gone. Morrighan can't exactly tell if it's been replaced or if it's disappeared altogether. Whatever it is, she doesn't like it and it only makes her more frustrated.
"Oh, well," she finally says, feeling uncertain. "Who are you then?" Her eyes narrow at the creature, half-wishing Bram had come with her to face it off. Only when he's absent does she realize how comforting it is to have a carnivore by her side. Of course, it's not something she'd mention to him since she's too stubborn.
Morr notices a thorn branch suddenly appear out of the ground and wrap itself around the woman's leg. Her magic ability, perhaps? But then, how can she conjure magic when Morr can't? She stamps her foot down on the ground as if it might help. She looks down as it seems the ground she stepped on has become damp. Almost like it had downpoured and saturated the earth, but there had been no rainfall above them. She stamps one of her back legs this time and the same thing happens. It starts to spread as if a stream is flowing underneath and bringing the water up to the surface.
"What the hell is wrong with this place?" Morrighan grumbles. She just wants her fire back. She looks over at the woman and the creature and wonders if they possibly have any idea what's going on.
Like this one, there are moments in which Thana feels fully 'other', fully something else that has perhaps forgotten all the rules of this world. There are moments in which she feels like a wild thing in the black center of a forest, or a stone in the middle of a battlefield. It has always felt like looking down, watching the horses of this world work their tongues in a language she can understand and know nothing of at the same time. “I am Thana.” She answers with a scrape of that same language, but the blaze in her violet eyes is different, darker, brighter, more.
She watches the mare stamp her hoof into the ground and she watches the soil turn swampy at the show of temper. There is still a bit of thorn winding its way up her leg, creeping closer and closer to the skin covering her heart. Lines of blood bloom where the thorns scrape, tiny marks that look almost like teeth in the places were they circle out in soft half-wounded suns.
Eligos watches too, with his cheek pressed to Thana's rib-cage, in a way that is no less 'other'. It's more hungry, that look of focus on his face, desperate almost.
He has been too long from the desert, too long from the rage sands that still remember the wars of the gods.
Part of her wants to step forward and lay her lips against the water pooling around them. The violet waters have done litter to slake her thirst. They only fuel the wrath without end and the aching of her sharp-shard soul. But Eligos is still saying please like a prayer, and somewhere the pack is howling at the moon as it runs onward without her. Somewhere there are other wild things that would understand all the broken parts of her are the same parts of the island that are sick. Of course this mare doesn't understand. So few do.
“The magic is different here. Changed.” The purple of her eyes deepens even as she drags her tail across the moss growing at her feet. It carves a long line in the earth (the same line Thana wants to carve across the mare's side for calling this place wrong in the same way something would be called a dead thing). There is a threat in every inch of her unnatural stillness.
It's harder to control it here, the violence in her form that has nothing to do with magic and everything do it with blood. Sometimes, in moments like this, it seems an impossible thing.
As Morrighan tries to figure out the strangeness of the ground beneath her, the woman introduces herself as Thana. There is something about her voice that seems off, but Morr doesn't put much focus on it. Instead, she's channeling more of her anger at the ground and its inability to just be set on fire. Everything could be set on fire, what is making this be any different? It's as if her magic has been…
Reversed.
Or, as Thana puts it, 'changed'. It's nothing like the way the island used to be. All she knew from before has apparently been left in the sea. What they're left with now is an almost upside-down or backwards version. Where the rules are different and things are much harder to control. She hates it.
"Morrighan," she replies, giving her own name since the woman shared hers. Usually she gives her title, but it didn't seem to do her much good out here and so far from the Court. "It's definitely changed. Nothing like before…" she trails off. None of this really made any sense.
The Warden watches as moss grows quickly around Thana. Although Morr doesn't know her at all, her demeanor and her companion do not seem to fit the aesthetic of the plant life growing around them.
"Do you live here or something?" the grullo mare asks, wondering just how much the woman knows about what goes on here. She can't imagine living in a place like this, especially with how tall and thick the grass is. It would be nearly impossible to find your way through it all. Already she's unsure about exploring any further or else she might get permanently lost. It only makes her lack of fire even more frustrating.
The ground beneath her only becomes more damp and swampy as the minutes pass. Morrighan makes a lot of noises to express her frustration. She picks up her feet to try and lessen the feel of it under her hooves, but it seems like there's no way to avoid it.
Watching the emotions flicker like barely alive embers across the mare's face seems like watching a seed on the cusp of metamorphosis. There is fury in the crack of her bones as she lifts them away from the marsh spreading out between them. Thana can see something else, something lost, something mortal as the grass flowering against her hip. It is that mortality, that hint of something lost, in the planes of the mare's face that makes Thana step closer.
Between them her horn glimmers in the dappled sunlight, and casts sword shadows on the pooling water and mud.
Perhaps it's peotic, that blade of darkness trapped half in moss and half in swamp. Perhaps it's only a foretelling, a remnant of Thana's memory of the way the mare scoffs at the strange magic (the same sort of unholy magic rushing through her veins like white lightning). Perhaps it's a threat, a tossing of a gauntlet, a whisper in the wind--
A whisper saying, run, run, run. Run because Thana is starting to wonder the ways in which she can pull the magic from Morrighan's body, leech it fromm her like rain leeched from a cloud.
Run.
“If you know how to look there are things that are the same.” Her voice is a whisper of judgment, a promise of that shadow blade, a thing softer than the fresh growl of Eligos. There is magic here, and there is also death here. Thana does not need to wonder which the mare will find if she walks so blindly through the grass forest and the violet waterfalls. The pack, the specter herd, they devour the blind.
Thana steps closer, too close, wolf to a lamb close, teeth around the throat close. The wet grass clings to her knees, moving closer with her (and maybe it's through her too, all this broken magic seeking a solid form). “Perhaps if you lingered here you could see it too. But I fear the island might devour you whole.” She smiles around the words with herbivore teeth, shadows and seed. Somewhere the distant pack starts to howl, and scream, and the sound sends a shiver down Thana's spine.
Whatever it is that they had been running too, or whoever--
How could a place so different be the same? There is nothing here that's familiar other than that the magic is still just as crazy as before. It's as if there are no rules in this land and that's what unsettles her. That and the fact she no longer has control over her magic. She feels useless (and vulnerable- this is the part that angers her the most).
Then Thana steps closer and Morrighan watches her with suspicion. She says that the island could devour her. It's as if Morr's suddenly become Thana's prey and is being hunted. Her eyes narrow. What game is she playing?
"Is that a threat?" she asks, voice low but keeping the growl out of her tone. Unfortunately, she's at an incredible disadvantage against the two. She knows if she instigated a fight, she would lose miserably. Between not having her fire magic handy but also not having Bram to cover her against whatever creature her companion is, she'd be screwed.
Beneath her, it seems the water can feel her emotions. The earth starts to disappear as the water rises and reaches out towards Thana. A small creek appears and flows between them. It reaches over the moss and fauna from Thana's reversed magic. Morrighan huffs; what good is that supposed to do? By now, she'd have torched them both if her fire had still been here.
At the same time, she can hear the howling of a pack in the distance. It reminds her of wolf howls, but something about them is different, more ominous. "The fuck..." she says under her breath as she quickly looks out in the direction of the noise. Then her eyes go back to Thana, then to the creature. Is he from here too? Is that his pack of whatever they were?
She's already grown tired of this place, but to leave so quickly would make her look like a coward in their eyes.
Her expression turns feral as the water starts to reach up her legs. The magic in her veins answers back with water-snakes, lily-pads, and will-o-the-wisps. It's the first time since she's been on the island that she has missed her own magic. Her skin feels too alive with the rising water. It feels like an electric cage, a storm over the ocean, a beast rousing from hibernation. “Perhaps.” She says to the furious look in Morrighan's face that rests so, so easily on the other mare's face.
It's telling, that ease of violence, on her painted skin. Thana can read it as well as a poem, a bit of bone beneath skin, a fire banked, a wolf leaping off a cliff. It is something she's heard before, that roaring of wrath, in the place between sleeping and dreaming. The shadows of her horn fade as the sun dips behind an island floating across the sky like a cloud.
The howling of the packs turns to song, to cacophony, to a melody Thana can hear drops of blood and tattered flesh in. Eligos answers them back, his own braying more sand-beast than wolf. Every inch of Thana's skin starts to itch. Every organ in her form starts to hunger for things that have nothing to do with mares unable to step beyond the dregs of the mortal coil and look.
Eligos dissolves back into the grass-forest, his running form nothing more than a whisper of sand far below the roaring of the violet waters and the braying pack. Thana moves to follow him, surrendering to the siren call of the wild magic and it's monsters. She pauses, only once, with the water and the water-snakes clinging to her legs. “Go home Morrighan.” Sunlight catches on her teeth in drops of almost-golden. “The island is not for you.” Thana lifts her head to the sun, the islands, the grass reaching out like bark around them. She bellows to the hunting things, the magic things, the things living in her skin.
And when she starts to run the blades of grass scrapping along her sides starts to soothe that furious itch rising with the sound of the pack.
Morrighan so badly wants to lunge at her. To let her fire singe the woman's skin and show her the price of threatening someone like her, but she doesn't. She hates that she doesn't. Every fiber of her being is screaming at her and she clenches her teeth. She wants to follow her instincts and fight, but she's outmatched. The mare sighs.
There are more noises in the distance from whatever creatures are lurking out there. It seems they hear it too because her companion answers with its own call, then disappears into the grass forest. Thana is about to follow, but speaks to Morrighan one last time.
While she wants to spit back at her, the woman isn't entirely wrong. This place is too strange for her and the longer she spends time in the land, the more she wishes she just stayed home. Any time she sets foot outside Denocte's borders, something usually doesn't sit right.
With one last narrow-eyed gaze at the unicorn, she leaves. Not because she's a coward, but because she had better things to do than try to figure this place out.
