[AW] Brunch

[Willfur]

Willfur


Standing beneath an enormous sugar pine with one hind leg resting on its tip-toe, staring up into the tree's crosshatched branches is the almost-as-impressively sturdy, clay colored mule. He's stopped just inside the first line of trees, initially musing about how flowery narratives always describe forests as 'slowly closing in on you,' while many, like this one, do no such thing. There's no gradual transition from grassland to timber here. For whatever reason, maybe decreasing soil fertility, maybe desiccation from the Eluetherian winds, the trees had decided that this bit of earth was habitable and that one,  even a few inches farther, was not.

Among primordial giants like these, who is he to second guess?

"Well! He calls up to the softwood. "You're impressive, aren't you!" Truthfully, he's grateful for the shade, having spent the better part of the morning skittering wildly across crossing the wide tanning bed of the northeastern plains. As much as he'd enjoyed it - and he truly had - he had to admit, now, that he probably wasn't  personally meant to be airborne quite so much as that.

But you only live once, right? Why not enjoy it?

"The air must be very clean here, for you to grow so prodigiously. And if you're here-" Slowly circling the sugar pine's massive trunk, he scans the nearby underbrush, eyes and ears swiveling for a moment before exclaiming, "Ah!" Wedged between two more conifers is a tangle of bushes with plump maroon berries weighing the ends of their vines down. Some of the fruits are so dark they look almost purple, deeply ripe and unquestionably sweet.

[Thana]

“Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion."

Ever since the cosmic darkness and the rushing return of her longing (her searching, her rage, her need to tear the world asunder), Thana has been dreaming. They are dreams that come the dawn she cannot recall. There is only the flush of brine and sweat below her eyes and the racing of her heart to whisper to her memories of running, and running, and running.

The feeling follows her outside the castle, her heart racing like a thing gone to war even as she walks. It follows her though the gardens and the flowers that wilt towards her shadow and the vines that fall to the ground in the tracks of her tail. And it follows her into the forest, where the willows whisper a lament into their rotting roots and the grass bows away, away, away before the fall of her form in the dappled sunlight. At the sight her heart gallops onward and her lungs stutter back to life beneath her skin.

She starts to feel the ache of it, of the forest pressing in sharply, of her magic rising to meet the feel of life, and ancient wisdom. And she's still aching with that hunger, that gnawing feeling of needing to dive into the roots, and clouds, and veins of magic in the dirt, when she hears him talking to the trees. Her heart, her racing heart, trembles over itself at the memory of hearing another voice talking to the trees.

A low branch brushing at her hip starts to frost and turn black. Eligos brushes underneath it as he joins her. His teeth are still stained with the fruits of his morning hunt.

Moss grows in her wake as together they step closer. Each of them watches the stallion, noses lifted like wolves tasting a herd on the wind. Behind their lips their teeth ache. “Do the trees answer you?” Beneath her skin her heart is still racing and her magic with it.

And when she steps closer still, the fruits beneath the pine start to grow overripe.




@Willfur

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[Willfur]

Willfur


He’s already plucking a first few mouthfuls of sour-sweet vittles when a voice rises to meet those comical, towering ears. He doesn’t startle, still chewing as his head lifts above the hedge and traces the sound to its source. A quizzical look brightens the coarse features of wide brow and square jaw when he identifies an auburn shape among the green and brown of the forest; Equine! Someone new!

Company!

“Mm!” He tries to acknowledge, swallows. "No, but that doesn’t mean my words go unappreciated. Plants are known to grow more quickly when spoken or sung to, though it’s uncertain if they actually like the prose or just so happen to inhale what we exhale. I think it's a happy enough exchange either way, though. And-“ One mahogany eye winks closed, the other glittering conspiratorially. "You never know who might be listening.”

A hundred questions crowd his mind, conservatively estimating, but he'd learned in his youth not to overwhelm or offend with an onslaught of attention, especially those he's not yet familiar with. This red mare doesn't appear outwardly aggressive or unwelcoming, but the way she stands feels... poised. Expectant? Ready, maybe, but for what? So he reins in his interest with practiced calm, settling on something gentle and leading to begin. "Are you hungry?"

The mare's shadow moves, snatching his attention because she did not move, which shouldn't be possible. "Oh, or your-" He hesitates, stalled by the rare realization that he doesn't know what that is.

"-companion?" The creature is long bodied and athletic looking, a mish-mash of textures and pieces, and while he might recognize one part as similar to something he's seen before - a rams horn, a dragons scale - this particular combination is novel. Not griffin, not manticore, not chimera, nor any traditional version of any hybrid he knows.

How fascinating!

He's too distracted to notice the berries darkening at his side, their juices going tart and evaporating into nothing, slowly wrinkling the skin that just seconds before was taut and gleaming. 

@Thana

[Thana]

“Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion."

There are times, like this one, where Thana wonders how strange and violent she must seem to the citizens of this place. Perhaps the thoughts are always there. Perhaps they are only muted by the steady low rumble of her hunger and the roar of her black magic. But perhaps, there are times where she loses herself to the core of her making. And always, like now, there are these thoughts below the wondering--

She starts to count his bones and the hairs curling up his too long ears. When he speaks she counts his teeth and listens to the snap of his jaw as it works around so many words. She wonders how he doesn't choke on them with a mouthful of berries. Eligos whispers please to her and she answers back, no.

He does not ask again.

A breeze whistles through her horn as she lets the silence go on too long. Moss and rot starts to grow around her hooves as the earth reaches up with weary loam for the death that's whispering to the roots. A hundred thoughts and a hundred ways to tear him apart run though her mind. Perhaps it's better that she wears no regent's crown upon her head. Perhaps it's better that there is only the hollow spiral of bone between her flashing, too wild eyes.

“We are not.” She offers the answer into the silence that has long since grown heavy. An itch whispers down her spine as her magic starts to trace map like patterns across her bones. Thana tries to trap it down, down, down so that the branches overhead do nothing more than bend towards her as they grow soft with water, mold and the creeping disease of death. Eligos steps closer to press his nose against her hock, hard enough that she might feel the ache of his teeth behind his lips.

Around her the grass starts to fold and wither. She drags her tail across the brown stalks, as if it might be possible to wipe clean the stain of death rippling out from the blackness of her shadow.  “Who are you?” The scratch of magic down her spine makes the words rough as stone in a thunderclap. But it's enough, she hopes, to pull his eyes from the rot spreading outwards in jagged lines of black. She can feel the roots trembling beneath her hooves.

And when she steps closer to the stallion, Thana can almost imagine the forest screaming at her in rage. All the prose in the world will not, cannot, save it from her.


@Willfur

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[Willfur]

Willfur


The forest feels suddenly still, quiet. Everything is quiet. His interest is met by silence and it hangs tensely, anticipatory, between them. His ignorance of what the anticipation might be for makes him uneasy and begins to raise his guard, the unknown having been the agent of death for many an ancestor. Hesitantly, he answers, "I'm Willfur... who are you?"

Watching now, he notices the wilting grass, the leaves curling back on their branches. The withering creeps around them in a wash of brown and black, seeping like water pouring from the red mares hooves, but there is no water, and water should nurture the forest, not scorch it.

One ear tips back uncertainly as his mind begins to run through questions, scenarios. Has he wandered somewhere he shouldn't have? Has he offended somehow? Would he be expected to know who she is, what her significance might be, if he were a local? But she must know that he's not, if her eyes and ears and nose work, and they sure look like they're working, with how intently they're all focusing on him.

"I've had my fill, I think." The blocky head tilts so that only one eye and ear are facing the mare, his intuition advising, admittedly a little late, that this is not someone he wants to perceive him as threatening or possessive in any way. Equally, he doesn't think it would bring anything good to show weakness or fear either, so he takes just one step back, a deliberate yield, showing that if she says go, he will happily go, but he is not fleeing in terror.

"I'm just passing through - on my way to the Dawn Court. I've heard they have an extensive library." The clay colored features brighten, excitement shining through his caution like sunlight through a canopy, only marginally curbed and showing clear gaps in coverage. He just can't help himself where these things are concerned. "Perhaps you've seen it?"


@Thana

[Thana]

“Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion."

For the first time Thana wishes for something like softness. Her mantle sits uneasy on her shoulder because of it, her prowling of the forest more like a fire-squad than a welcoming. Eligos settles down at her feet, remembering perhaps the cruelty of her warnings when he starts to feel the monstrous call of the grotesque.

She is not he first unicorn that had try to kill him. But she is perhaps the only one who would have succeeded if not for the bond springing between them like barbed wire instead of roots.

Thana leans back in a way that her rot does not (it's still reaching, and killing, as she takes a step back as the stallion does). Beneath her skin the magic roars a denial at the action. The violence of it sends a ache though her bones and has each hair along her spine rising. In another life she might have smiled at the discovery that it's almost easy to muzzle the wrath. In another life she might have laughed.

But in this one she only has the flare in her lilac gaze to hint that her hunger is a deep thing not yet ready to feast. And she only has the tap, tap, tap of Eligos's tail to remind her that's it's better to rest like a lion instead of pace like a wildcat. “I'm Thana.” She let's the tap make her voice steady, a thing full of distant thunder instead of winter-frost.

There is still no smile on her lips, not even when his personality blooms through the somber silence that moves with her like a shadow. Perhaps it's there though, in the way she tilts her head like he has suddenly become a bird rather than a hose itching at the magic below her skin. It is a there and gone expression.

“I know the library well” Somewhere a bird starts to sing in a tree, and a rodent rustles into the grass. The forest starts to slowly move back into life around her, adjusted perhaps to the extra weight around her hooves (or perhaps only settled into a false safety by the stillness of her form). “It's deep inside the forest.” Of course she's only wandered close one (just long enough to blaze in and out like a furious storm).

And perhaps that's why it surprises her to hear, “I will take you there.”, rolling off her lips instead of more black silence. Another bird joins the song of the forest and it settles something in her bones she did not realize had shaken loose.


@Willfur

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[Willfur]

Willfur


The long, long ears cup forward, excitement blooming full and unrestrained across his features. Pleasant surprise sets his hooves drumming lightly in place with sudden energy, his scrub-brush tail wagging happily across his hocks and breaking the silence between them with a tinkling strain from the bell tied there. “You do? You will?! Thank you!” And then, only a little more calmly, his earlier apprehension forgiven and all but forgotten, “That’s very kind of you, Thana. I would be most grateful.”

He smiles, consciously pairing the name and face in his mind. He wants to remember her correctly and it helps make the mare seem that much less intimidating, almost friendly now, with his own emotion coloring the view. She does seem more at ease at least, despite her restive eyes, her companion settling quietly behind her and the sounds of the forest beginning to swell again throughout the forest, seemingly unperturbed by the brief interruption.

"I’m no stranger to travel.” He confides, lifting one narrow forehoof to show its short, worn toe ground smooth by untold miles, many of them rough and far from flat. “And I’ve come this far already. And without the generous promise of an escort.” He might have winked then, had he been talking to anyone else, but something feels... impertinent about the notion now, with those too intense eyes on him, so he tips an ear and nods his head appreciatively instead. Better to err on the side of propriety.

"Do you live there? The Dawn Court, I mean. I've heard it's like a castle of old - all stone and walls and towers." He pictures an airy, gothic structure at first, with tall windows and long hallways, then wonders if the interior might be renovated, filled with elaborate baroque works of art in marble, silk, and oils. Ah, the possibilities!


@Thana

[Thana]

“Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion."

He settles her hunger and pours it out across the dirt until there is only a cup full of it at the bottom of her heart. It almost makes her bones feel full of marrow instead of rot, and magic, and black-ore. Eligos turns to go, his own hunger only fed instead of filled, and his footsteps are near-silent on the grass as he dissolves into the shadows.

Thana wonders what it would feel like, to twist and mold her form into a hundred different emotions besides this coldness on her lips. She wonders if her heart would learn to sing and hum instead of scream. And she wonders what it might feel like to take a seed between her teeth and taste something other than sulfur.

Death pours out from her now in a wave of wilting grass and lichen as she turns to lead the stallion deeper into the forest. She wishes it was light, silver and sweet instead of this black bitterness. Perhaps the waters that made her own poured sorrow and hunger in and kept the happiness (and kindness, and love) for themselves. “Someday you will have to tell me about your travels.” She says the words and her eyes beg him, not today, not today, not today. Not now with this almost settled thing in her still counting the hard vertebrae beneath his skin as she moves to lead him into the dark, wanting forest.

“I do live here.” But she does not clarify if it's castle or thicket that holds her tight each time she dreams when her gaze snags on a golden sapling as they walk. And she does not offer that she stays because the king asked it of her (still she doesn't understand why, not when his flowers die each time she kisses them). But something in the way her steps quicken to a trot, suggests that shes racing now towards whatever it is that she calls home.

Ahead the library breaks up the pathway, the door gleaming as brightly as the trees woven together above it. The sight of it sets her cup of hunger to over-flowing. She does not reach for the door as she stops and gestures Willfur to keep going. She's already discovered that any book, or table, she touches starts to mold and disintegrate into dust.

Something like a smile (one full of teeth instead of joy) creases her lips at the corners. “You will like the gardens more than the castle.” Thana does not say that he reminds her of Ipomoea who talks to his flowers, or that she can picture him in a bed of foliage just as easy as she can picture the bones slumbering in woven patterns below the first. She only lets her smile flicker and fade like the quick-death of a star, and she only lets her hooves carry her away from the library that will not welcome her inside.

But what she does say over her shoulder is, “find me in the city when you turn from the books to the flowers,” because it has been too long since her hunger poured out on the ground instead of flooding her soul.


@Willfur

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[Willfur]

Willfur


Thana leads and he follows, peering around her deep red shoulders to memorize landmarks, turns, small changes in footing or plant life that might help him learn the way. As she picks up speed the stallion hangs back a moment, lowering his head to sniff at their overlapping hoofprints, curious, as always.

His is familiar and ordinary in every way, just a nondescript, shallow crescent in the soft soil, but hers is like an artists perfect rendering of hoof anatomy. Every detail is visible, as if the very particles of the earth gave way beneath her, shrinking back from even that brief span of contact. There's the curve of her toe, the twin bulbs of her heels, the triangular 'frog' that helps to circulate blood throughout the hooves when she walks. Even the small imperfections in her soles are clearly visible. Inhaling, it smells of dry, dead grass and dehydrated dirt.

A crease spreads across the mules wide brow as he hurries to catch up, ears splitting one to either side in thought. He's encountered magic before, but it's a subject with such undefinable terms. There are no set-in-stone rules, no absolute truths or provable anything. It does what it wants and often laughs in the face of science and logic, so he knows better than to try parsing it out, but still, he can observe and maybe get lucky once in a while in noticing a small detail or correlation.

He wonders if this - draining, aging, killing - magic is hers in form and function, hers by choice, or if it's something that's been put upon her. Can she control it? Or does its effect control her? It would be so easy to let something like that isolate her and he doesn't think she deserves to be isolated. He doesn't think anyone does, but before he's decided whether or not to broach the subject at all, she halts, turning to him with the barest suggestion of a smile pulling at the corners of her lips.

They're here!

Glancing past, he's a little taken aback. He'd expected some huge, stone structure and the library hidden somewhere within, secret and shielded from the elements, but the trees themselves huddle close, swelling and leaning in until they create walls and a roof and rooms as organized and structurally sound as any he's ever seen consciously created. It's an amazing marriage of nature and intelligent design.

Even the enormous door looks entirely organic, its front intricately woven with branches and vines that curl, twist, and braid into vibrant motifs. He's already examining the jambs, trying to see what the hinge mechanisms are made of and how they work, when he realizes that the mare is leaving. "Thana!" He calls, startled by the sudden parting and genuinely sad to see her go. "Thank you."

Maybe it says more about his inner workings than it does hers, but he'd seen her brighten since they first met, she'd smiled, and he can't help feeling that once she slips away into the dark she'll stop smiling. "I'll do that."


@Thana