[P] keep it three hundred like the romans

[Pilate]

three hundred bitches
where the trojans?

It is early morning, not yet hot, the sky not yet blue; above the white curve of our villa’s roof the sunrise is still a foamy yellow-pink. But I am already awake. Fully awake. Too awake. 
I have not been able to sleep enough lately, if at all. I don’t know what it is. The knowledge that that shithead warden is in my country, maybe, with his cutting smile and the bolts of electricity that could set the city on fire—maybe the knowledge that Adonai has not been able to sleep much, either, and that makes me nervous. 

Sometimes when I peek into his room, when we all should be asleep, he is instead staring blankly at the wall like someone scrying tea leaves. I don’t know what he could possibly be investigating; after the incident, we had to take down all his paintings. There is nothing to look at. When I sit in to listen to him practicing his instruments, he looks at me suspiciously, as if he is afraid of me, as if he does not recognize that I am his own brother. We sit across the room from each other and still manage to turn the air frosty. 

Maybe he is right to be scared. But it doesn’t make me feel any better.

(Something I think but won’t say is I can’t sleep, in part, because I am too afraid of what he might do to me.)

The streets are rousing now, coming to life at last, and looking down at the movement from the balcony I feel relieved, and less alone. At least I would die in public; at least they would see me fall, and my blood might paint the streets like a martyr’s, a piece of artwork. Merchants are setting up their stalls. Pounds of spice are being poured into tall cones, jewelry laid out in piles. There is the music of movement, the clatter of coins, the sleepy stirring of a whole city shuffling to its feet as the sun also rises.

I don my cloak and pull the gold clasp closed tight against my chest. The servants are beginning to make breakfast, boiling water for tea, peeling mangoes, unwrapping steaming leaves of sticky rice. I pass through the kitchen, the courtyard, the clattering din of pots and pans and glass and into the slightly softer noise of the street, where I do not know I am walking toward a girl with a silver collar.

@teiran <3

[Teiran]

I've made an art of
digging shallow holes

I drop the darkness in and watch it grow

T

here goes the soldier girl, horses say in the street, See that collar around her neck? Pity, the poor thing. Their whispers are like snakes latching onto her skin, digging their fangs deep into her flesh. I heard the lot of them are monsters, trained, more dangerous than even the most skilled guard, still say others, Better watch your back.

Have they always talked this much, and she just has never listened? Everything in Teiran is sifting through the cracks in her like sand, flowing out into the streets like blood. Every word strikes her proudly like an arrow.

Thunk, thunk, thunk.

The cracks spread faster than she can fill them, faster than she can try to mend them. The soldier straightens her face and turns her sage green eyes forward and walks like she is not listening. But she is, now. Now, she cannot stop herself from listening. Shame… so strong… must be lonely… an aberration…”

When did her skin become glass, fine and fragile and gossamer thin? Teiran feels so out of place in this court she has always only been loyal to, only pledged her entire life to. Again she wonders, is it Solterra that has changed, or just her?

The rose-hued woman pulls her hood further down her head, shadowing her eyes until they are nothing but jade stones glinting in the dim light. Her steps have lost their rigid purpose; her uncertainty more obvious to her than to others, most likely, but Teiran shoulders it uncomfortably—like a heavy armor on a summer day. She’s never known what it’s like to long for company, but some part of her is wishing for a friendly face.

"Speaking."

@Pilate <3

⚔

[Pilate]

three hundred bitches
where the trojans?

I was not around to see Zolin’s rise or fall. I missed, unfortunately, the exciting fire-and-brimstone of a regime cut short of its proper vicious end. But I do listen to the voices of the peasants (when I have time), and I do walk the common streets, and I know: while the girl-queen Seraphina may have shed her collar with as little fuss as she would peel a scab, there are others who still wear theirs.

But I know this like I know that the gods have at one time or another come down to earth, which is to say vaguely, and without real evidence; it’s possible I’ve never even seen a real child soldier in the streets. I certainly don’t remember taking note of any. And though I know it isn’t true, I can’t help imagining them as kinds of monsters. 

Head dragged down by the silver chain. Roughened from infinite bruises and scars. Probably with dark, sunken eyes, transparent, unfocused eyes that you can see to the bottom of as if they were puddles, whose banks—the deepest part, the stones that line the bottom of the river—are nothing but hungry and hungry and hungry.

And so when I see her, walking down the street toward me, the thought that she is (was?) one of them does not even cross my mind. She does not look like a monster. Sad, certainly. Walking with the kind of stiff trudge you see in urchins raised on the street. Her head is cast in cool shadow from the hood that falls above it, but I still catch the glint of eyes bright and blue.

I think nothing of the glint around her neck but that it might be a fine necklace.

“G’morning,” I drawl, loud enough to let it carry. The streets are quiet, the air cold and still; I don’t think she’ll have any trouble hearing me, especially as I draw closer

and closer

and closer.

@teiran <3

[Teiran]

I've made an art of
digging shallow holes

I drop the darkness in and watch it grow

T

eiran isn’t sure what she is even doing here, in these streets. Since her time in the desert, her patrols have all been filled by soldiers she doesn’t recognize. Again and again she finds herself wondering where all the equines she knew are. Gone. Everyone is gone, gone, gone.

Perhaps, the woman relents, it is not only her or the court that has changed. Perhaps both have, irrevocably.

“G’morning,” comes the familiar Solterran hum. Not the voice that’s familiar, mind you, but the accent tells her whoever is speaking has clearly lived here their entire life. Teiran lifts her head from the sand-covered street, sage green eyes landing upon the dark-skinned man with eyes of amber and a head of snakes instead of hair.

The act of raising her head as loosed her hood from around the soldier’s ears, and it begins to slip down her neck, guided by a still-chill morning breeze. The now exposed collar, high upon Teiran’s throat, glints in the wan spring light, as she tries to determine what exactly he could want from talking to her.

“Hello?” her mouth forms the word but she has never been very good at greetings. It comes out more like a question, more like she is asking are you really talking to me? He is adorned in ivory and gold, and she wonders if he is of one of Solterra’s many noble houses. Then again, she too wears the same colors but not for the purposes of finery. Only to protect her from the heat.

She doesn’t realize at first that she has stopped walking, that she is too busy watching the way the early light reflects off what appears to be scales scattered over his skin. Some part of Teiran reaches reflexively for one of the daggers strapped to her sides, but she is still uncertain and unsure.

"Speaking."

@Pilate <3

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