Twilight fell like dew upon the summer grass, still and silver with a hazy sort of mist. It drew forth all manners of night creatures, blinking against the dying sunlight as they took to the darkness. Bats chirruped as they dove for lightning bugs in the cobalt sky, mice scurried through the dense underbrush, and even the dreamwalker descended from the heavens to follow the swirling fog, leading him far from his mountain home. He walked with an unharried step, turquoise eyes peering seamlessly through the darkness, watching his surrounding as he pressed onward as if summoned by a beckoning song.
He did not know where he was going, only that the whispers lingered in his mind – whispers from the dreamscape which had plagued him for several days now. There is an urgency to the undertones, a quiet plea for help. It is enough to drive the magician to wonder, curiosity piqued as he leaves Denocte in search of answers.
Across the Bellum Steppe he crept, skirting the arenas and striving to ignore the cries of those who labored and lay wounded on the bloody ground. He shivered quietly, noting not for the first time that his talents lie far from the battlefields, and whispering a prayer to Caligo for those who fought for Denocte to prevail. Onward he continued, southward to the crashing sea and tumbling waves. Deep in the heart of Terrestella, his mind began to wander and his dreamscape began to play out once more – now in real time.
A voice cried out in the darkness, afraid and alone. It is a cry of pain and loss, a cry which beckoned him to help… That voice had haunted him in recent days, whispering in his mind even through his wakefulness. Please… please…
Azrael is shaken by the plea as concern creases his brow and he turns to the heavens for guidance. Stilling his racing heart, Azrael counts the constellations to quiet himself. Cygnus. Sagitta. Lyra. The stars seemed as close here as they did in his mountains, peeking through a hazy layer of clouds to shine upon Vespera’s cliffs. Before him, the sea stretched as vastly as the sky, dark and shadowed save the white foam which crashed against rock. For a moment, there is only the magician and the sea… but then, there is another.
The shed-star senses her beside him before she speaks. He turns and blinks slowly, afraid to shatter the dream – for it would be too much of a coincidence to find Elena on another star-flecked night. Still, he can almost touch her golden warmth, the illusion too real as he breathes in the scent of her – sunshine and summer breeze. If he were caught in a dream, it was one so real, he had to marvel at the complexity of it all. Azrael cannot help himself, reaching to Elena, caressing her withers in a gentle touch as sea breezes whip in his mane.
“Did you hear her?” He asks quietly… “The voice?”
He didn’t question the foolishness of asking aloud to a figment of his dreamscape, lost in the fantasy but seeking – always seeking – answers to the unknown.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
They looked at her, all of them did, like she was some spiritual being who had descended from the heavens above. And she hated all the questions that hung of their lips as if they were autumn leaves ready to fly away at the slightest breeze. She had been too young to confused, too grief stricken. She had been a little girl that just wanted her mom and dad back and to be back home. Only the legacy name remained conversant to her. So she held on tightly, as tight as she could to that thought as she attempted to acquaint herself with the fact that all these faces were her family. It was in the way Marcelo carried himself with such pride, and then the blue of Lilli’s eyes, Ori’s smile.
And Elena had grown to love them, to love Murmuring Rivers. Just as she does with Terrastella.
It is this reason, and this reason alone she feels content enough to explore her grounds at night. Here, in the land of Dusk, the shadows do not grab her, the darkness does not smother her. It is here with the ocean and its beautiful vastness that Elena finds solace, even as she cannot allow for sleep to find her. The waves crash. The gulls cry. The tall grass whispers. The tumbling stones growl. The darkness of the warm summer night blankets the land. It was here on this cliff that he had found her the first time. (Her chest quivers with the memory no matter how she tries to staunch it.)
And it is here that another finds her. Her starlight has not forgotten her, he shines just as bright beside the sea as he ever did on top of the mountain. It eases her heart just to know he is here now, his presence surrounds her. He is starlight that chases away the shadows before it can dampen her sunlight. The corners of her mouth quirk up into a smile. She comes to stand closely beside him, there is ocean mist that comes to find them as she turns to look up at him with eyes of blue. He reaches out to touch her, and Elena remembers how much she longs for physical connection, and she follows him like an echo, reaching out to touch his starry skin, planting something in the crease of his shoulder. “You’re here,” she breathes because it is almost unbelievable and she wants to bury herself within him.
(Like a dream?)
She has to wonder, has to ask herself.
But no one can feel that real, that solid, and no dreamscape can make any man shine as he does. She knows it is real. And oh god if it isnt, she prays that this is the end of sleeping and waking and that she may slumber for the rest of eternity.
She pulls away with his words, those frosted eyes coming to search the planes of his face. “What voice?” She asks him, concerned. “Did you hear something?” She asks him, Elena watches for any expression he may offer her. She pauses, looking out across the water. “Do we need to find them?” She asks, because Elena would never doubt him, would never question anything he says, she doesn't know his name, but she already trusts him. “I will follow you.”
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
It couldn’t be a dream, he decided, the way the sea wind tossed his mane and the salt stung at his lips. The way the moonlight gilded off the ocean waves and fell like a silver curtain along the cliff’s edges. If this were a dream, then Azrael could simply dive into the heavens, swim beside the stars – but it was not. His feet were firmly planted on the earth, even as his mind dizzied at the touch of the sunkissed mare, very real beside him. His touch lingers too long against her skin, wanting more than just a fleeting brush as she turns into him, warmth meeting warmth. And just as fleeting as her lips touched his skin, they retreated once more.
He draws a steadying breath once more, concern edging in the depths of his turquoise stare, lost in his mind as the cries play out once more. But this time, he focuses on their source… for if Elena hadn’t heard the voice, it had to be meant for him alone. Just like Caligo and the child with her shadow demons, he mused. The plea-maker was meant for him to find, he decided. And time was already working against them.
“We must go quickly.” he offers in a rushed voice with an apologetic stare. “She is hurt – dying perhaps… I cannot heal her, but I trust the stars have an answer.” He turns from the sea cliffs, not sure where to begin, the voice trembling with a faint and weaker pulse.
Past the treeline, follow the mist.
Azrael shakes his head incredulously, unsure who’s dream led him here now, even as he nods to Elena’s suggestion that she would follow. Though he didn’t know where to lead, his feet seemed to know the way, picking through brambles as they trekked through thicker underbrush and far from the tumbling sea. Above the ground, a haunted sort of fog crept along the dark earth, and he instinctively pressed closer to Elena, throwing his light upon them as a cloak while the world around them grew darker and thick with foliage. “The stars cannot shine in a place like this.” he murmured as the canopy stretched to blot his view of the sky. Despite it, the stallion seems unruffled and comfortable in the night.
Silence fell easily between them as the invisible thread continued to pull him onward. “What is this place?” he asks after a pause, his voice the only sound to breach the quiet of the night. “It suits you – starlight off the wild sea…” It wasn’t the first time the stars had put her in his path, he mused – and Azrael hoped their chance meeting wouldn’t be the last. Perhaps she was meant to find him on the cliffs, and together, they would find the one who cried out to the night.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
He says his touch lingers too long, and Elena believes it is not long enough. If she could curl into him, to let her body rest against his own, she would still say they were not close enough, that there still existed too much space between them. It is selfish of her to want him, when another day (with a sun instead of the moon) she longed to touch another boy (a boy made of shadows, but still a by, a different boy) upon this cliff. Yes, it is selfish to want him, but she wants him all the same.
Why is he so much easier to touch than Tenebrae? He is warm beneath her touch instead of cold, he feels like comfort, like compassion, like trust. She wants to pull him apart and study him. She wants to understand the threads that compose him, the threads that draw him up. So that she can give him whatever he is made of, and so that she might learn to be a little bit like him. There is a smile on her lips now, a lightness she feels now that he is near her again, and she reaches for him, to press her mouth of his cool neck, a smile he will feel by the curve of her lips.
They cant stay like this forever, there is urgency and Elena pulls away all too soon. Too soon, it is always too soon, with every boy that has touched her, it has never been enough. Why should it be any different now?
“Where do we need to go?” She asks him. “Do you know who it is?” She asks. Elena could not hear the voice herself, it was a mystery, and she can only look to the man for answers he may not have. The stars have an answer. Did not Orani tell Elena that very same thing, that they always had an answer, but whether or not they were willing to tell you it was another matter entirely. Her gaze follows his own. She would go anywhere he would lead her, because she knows it would never be astray.
Tenebrae had led her into shadows.
Azrael leads her into starlight.
(Perhaps, at the heart of it all, they were one in the name. For was the sun not a star itself? How easily we forget.)
Elena remains close to him. It all felt too familiar, but with the ocean beside them instead of mountains. She doesn't know where the go, for all her exploring of this seaside home, Elena is still so unsure of where her feet are placed. As a fog rolls in, the star man moves closer to her and Elena welcomes his nearness, his presence an eternal source of calm for the sunshine girl.
The stars cannot shine here.
What sort of place must it be if starlight cannot touch it?
He questions what this place is and Elena has no answer to give to him. His next words make heat burn in her face as those silver blue eyes turn away from him. “Not the way it does you,” she offers him. The man made of stars and space and beauty. She could only dream to be as bright as him when the sun sets, but Elena was made of sunshine and sunflowers. A girl of the summer. She moves to his side then. “Now, where do we go next? Do you still hear her?”
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
She asks him where to go, and Azrael does not know. The dark forest is unfamiliar, just as the sea cliffs and Terrestella were… but there is a voice that sounds within his mind – pleading, begging, for them to find her. It drives him onward into the thick underbrush, and his body seems to know the way without his mind needing to see. The two travel nimbly over obstacles, driven onward by the dream figure with an urgency as her voice cries out once more in his mind with pain.
Now, that pain cuts him too – and Azrael stops suddenly, letting out a roaring cry into the silent night. The sound is otherworldly, ragged and raw, tears stinging his eyes as his shoulder burns and a shock trembles down his leg. His turquoise eyes are blind from the hurt, turning upon Elena as he leans heavily against her, breath catching in his throat as he fights to still his breathing.
It’s only a dream… it’s only a dream…
He wills away the searing pain, shuddering as a thin sheen of sweat mixes in his stardust and he gasps to draw the chill of midnight air into his lungs. In that moment, he knew Elena would see his weakness – but it wasn’t his, not really. It was hers – this voice, begging him for help as she whispers to him alone, her voice weak with brokenness.
It hurts… make it stop…
He hisses through the pain, pushing it down as concern rises for the injured creature, his lips quivering against Elena’s mane as he draws in her scent once more – bringing him back from the brink of the dream.
“I can hear her in my mind – not only her, but others too… he offers to his companion with a tortured whisper, “They come to me in dreams.”
They.
It was always someone different – some in need of salvation, some a simple distraction. But this specter was unlike all the others. This dream nagged at him during wakeful times too, breaking through his resolve to find his own well of weakness, projecting the pain through his barrier. If only the dreams could all be of Elena – the sun to his stars, and a pleasant distraction in his dreams of late.
She is beside him now, he mused – real and warm, unwavering in her faith in his lead. How must it be, to trust so fully and exist with such warmth to offer to the world? It was a wonder which Azrael could never understand, but it was also what made Elena such an intriguing and endearing creature. He couldn’t imagine being so nakedly exposed to anyone else, knowing she would not hold his vulnerabilities against him.
They stop together in a shadowed glade, still and sick with a strange and broken magic. For that moment, there is an eerie calm which gives him pause, and Azrael instinctively steps in front of Elena in a protective manner, unsure of what waited in the gathering mist. It is quiet – too quiet…
Until she screams, the sound ripping with an echo through the clearing, as her wide and wounded turquoise eyes flash open in the black night.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
The golden girl has always been so sensitive to those that hurt, to those that ache. Having felt her own pain, physically, mentally, deep in her soul where it carves lines into fissures that will never get filled, she does not wish to see it in others. Elena has always had her compassion, it is what has separated her from all those monsters that had tried to find her, to stop her, to change her. But she turned from them all. Elena has let her heart guide her far too often, and maybe that is her downfall, but it is also the very thing that allows her to rise and rise again. Tell her she is wrong and she will only fold you into an embrace and plant a loving kiss upon your cheek.
She moves with grace she had not been born with. No, Elena had been clumsy, always due to her impulsive personality, ready to burst forward on unsteady limbs, eager for strong muscles and the same pose her mother had. But watching her now, floating from rock to rock, over the obstacles set out before them, she is as enchanting as her mother with all her finesse and beauty.
Her cries and she wants to cry with him. Her body shudders. In an instant she is beside him, without even thinking she is at his side, it is instinctual. And should he ever cry again, she would be there. His large body leans towards her and Elena wraps her own golden body around him as much as she can, desiring nothing more than to be close to him in this moment. “Shhh, shhhh,” she soothes, as she used to do to those she was healing. She tries to quiet him, to steady him. Blue eyes cannot see what wound ails him, and she knows it is buried underneath his skin, a lesion that is so much more difficult to treat.
Heat roves off his body and she can feel it sink into her own. She hums gently, anything to bring him back to here, to where they are now, to ground his mind. And she sees not weakness here, but she sees his strength and just how glorious of a man he was. Only those with the greatest of souls could feel the soul of another. Elena, as she holds him, prays for the pain to ease, but cannot help but be in awe.
His lips are against her, and she doesn't want him to pull away. She can almost feel when he returns to her, and still she wraps around him tighter still. He would not let go of her so easily. “Who is she?” Elena asks him, closing her eyes as she presses herself closer, if she could bury herself under his skin, no doubt she would. And she would heal every piece of him from the inside out.
They.
He says, and she cannot imagine the heavy burden he must shoulder. “I want to help you,” she says to him, pulling away only to look into his eyes. If she could dream for him—she would. Maybe then she would see herself and how he dreams of her, and Elena would realize how much she did not deserve him. Elena had no right to Azrael, but still, she follows him.
She can trust him, she finds, far more easily than she could ever trust herself.
The darkness seems heavier than usual here. The stars aren't even pinpricks of light, and there is no wedge of silver from the moon in the endless black. There are clouds, clouds that never look like themselves at night. Never soft and white and fluffy. They are submissive to the dark, flowing together like a deep bruise of black and blue and purple. Darkness where shadows bleed together, length and grow and take on lives of their own. He steps in front of her and Elena huddles behind him. “What’s going on?” She asks him only when the mists come. The mists, the same that had taken Paraiso out of this world, that had attacked her home. There is nothing here—
But screaming.
And then—pieces of agonizing light in the dark.
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
Elena is his safe harbor in a storm, reeling in his boat as it tosses in a sea of confusion. It is her voice which pulls him back, her whispered shushing quieting his mind as he pinches his turquoise eyes closed. He tucks her beneath his chin, grateful for the closeness, holding her tightly against him as she soothes him with her words muffled against his chest. Who is she? “I don’t know,” he responds honestly… “but she needs me. She needs us both.” For Elena had a power of healing which the magician did not possess.
He is steadier now as they continue into the unknown, pressing toward the haunting voice as the itching in his mind grows stronger. Azrael had been here before, in a dream, but it had looked different… clearer, as if he saw through the eyes of something which was built for the night. He had heard sounds which he didn’t think possible, down to the quiver of a mouse upon a fallen leaf, as clearly as he heard Elena’s voice now. It was strange, but then, dreams didn’t always make sense.
Azrael does not know who waits for them as they stop in the mist filled glade, only that she waited for them here. Fog grows thick, magic thicker, and Elena’s voice sounds much too far away when she asks him what was happening. But before he can reply, the gut-wrenching screech takes his breath away. And those eyes – so like his own – find his.
In her eyes, he knows her pain… but Azrael also sees something else. Mine. something in him seems to say, even as he steps toward the strange eyes, brushing aside the limbs which shelter her. In that moment, the two stare at one another, everything else falling away… but the union is short lived, pain clouding her eyes once more as she cries to the star-shed, the sound a bit quieter from the reassurance that he had come.
“Elena?”, Azrael whispers, moving aside so she could see. In the brush, the eyes become a bird, tawny grey with a heart-shaped face. Unlike her gaze on Azrael, she seems wary of Elena, blinking slowly as she looks to the stallion for reassurance. “It’s okay…” his voice is gentle and soothing as he reaches forward to tenderly stroke her feathered cheek. “No one will harm you.”
She chirps quietly, as if reassured by the star-shed’s promise, seeming to make the decision to trust his companion as she fights through the pain to step into Azrael’s light. At her side, a wing hangs lifelessly limp at a strange angle, crusted blood staining the delicate feathers. “Can it be mended?” He hopes it is not asking too much of the healer, knowing that bird bones were frail and hollow, sometimes difficult to repair.
But if he could put his faith in anyone, it was Elena. Even if she could not heal the bird, he knew she would do her best, and that she would offer soothing comfort – for he had seen it before. No one had more heart than the golden girl, so the owl would be in the best hands possible.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
She had no claim over the man with shadows on his skin, and, in the dimly glowing light of Azrael, she is not sure if she even wants one. The prickle of jealousy (that had first reared its ugly head in the dim light of the hospital) can’t help but find footing and spread. After a brief moment however, she pushes whatever grudge down deep within her, blaming it on the fear that starts to tickle her skin.
He comes back to her.
Elena sees it in the way his eyes look at her and the way she holds him, she knows he has come back to her, back from wherever he may been, lost in a sea of pain and emotions. She needs me, he says, and Elena wants nothing more than to selfishly hold him closer and tell her how much she needs him too. “Then we will go,” she says to him as she releases her hold. (She can still feel his warmth pressed against her and it feels like something she hasn't felt in a long time, but she doesn't say.)
She stays close to him, ready to comfort, ready to wrap him inside her embrace once more. Elena would hold him as close as he needed her, for as long as he needed her. She would stand in his arms if it was until eternity fell, because the golden girl knew she could not survive in this world without knowing the touch of his skin against hers. He was the gentleness of starlight, with all the magic of dreams.
Elena follows Azrael’s own eyes to the ones that match his. Even with pain drenched over them like glasses, she can see the beauty of the creature. There is something else reaching out to her: magic. Azrael is moving towards her and the sunshine girl is unsure of what she witnesses in the beauty of their connection, just that it is there, like bridges being built, like mountains sweeping to valleys, and rivers flowing into oceans.
The medic comes to his side when he calls upon her. She closes her blue eyes and breathes the starlight in deep, taking it into her chest and letting the star fire fill her lungs to bursting. It feels like hope and possibility, cauterizing the edges of wounds that have been long left, until she can almost pretend that they no longer exist, until she can pretend like she is whole again. It is so easy with Azrael here. She takes a steadying breath and drops her chin, slanting her head downwards to stare at the creature and its injuries. “I think so,” she says, looking to Azrael before back down at the owl. She leans her golden head down, “Shhhh, its alright,” she says to the feathered creature much like she had to Azrael.
There are long grasses, long enough to tie until they would be able to proper bandages. A sturdy stick is found next to them. Elena goes to work examining the wings and mending the broken bone, being careful not to move the creature unnecessarily. Setting the bone in place with the stick, she wraps the wings tightly to her body. “She wont be able to fly while she heals,” she says turning to Azrael once she is bandaged temporarily with the long grass, around her wing and body. “You’ll have to carry her,” she says, she smiles. “But she will be okay, she will be great in fact,” she says brightly. “You will need to bring her by…or I can come to Denocte, to continue to monitor her,” she says and there is something shy almost in the way she tilts her head up at him. Blue eyes glance down towards the mending creature. “If you want to see me again.”<
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
@Azrael <3
let's light this house on fire
we'll dance in the warmth of its blaze
pixel made by the amazing star
06-12-2020, 02:52 PM - This post was last modified: 08-10-2020, 08:21 PM by Elena
The glade is quiet while Elena works, a lump forming in his throat as he watches her at her craft. Her touch is gentle, even as the labor draws concentration to her face, the owl settling at Elena’s soothing voice. In this moment, Azrael ceases to exist – there is only the healer and the patient, a delicate task at hand. He watches them in silence, wincing along with the owl as her pain sears in him once more, the two inexplicably bonded by a strange and beautiful magic. But at the same time, he knows that the owl feels something else now – safety, trust (albeit a cautious trust), and comfort.
When the golden mare turns away, she leaves the bandaged bird much more comfortable and stabilized. The owl shivers and ruffles her feathers, pained cries now a demure coo as she butts her head against Elena in gratitude before tenderly walking toward Azrael and settling at his feet.
“Noctua,” he whispers. “There is an owl in the night sky – a small bird on the tail of the Hydra.” So he would call the feathered creature, who seemed to consent to the christening with a quiet hoot. “Thank you.” Azrael’s gratitude is sincere as he steps closer to Elena once more, wonder and appreciation in his warm gaze, his lips lifting to her face to tuck a strand of her mane behind her ear. His touch becomes a caress, his voice a whisper for only her to hear, affectionate and teasing.
“If I want to see you again?” He chuckles incredulously, touching his temple to hers as their eyes lock and hold. “We will return, to this place where the stars meet the sea…” His promise lingers as he turns to gather up the bird, tenderly tucking her into a hastily fashioned sling of leaves and twine. “But you are always welcome to my mountains. Come when you will – and together, we can weave tales long into the night.”
With that, he reluctantly pulls away with a final glance, before turning toward Denocte as the misty fog dissipates and the stars begin to shine on Terrestella once more.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
Elena laughs (it might sound like sunshine or a summer breeze through an emerald carpet). Gently, her head presses against the feathered creature. “Of course, little one,” she says with a smile.
It is only when Azrael speaks that Elena turns her blue eyes back to him. She cannot help the way her eyes drift across his face, soft and unnoticeable like snowflakes caught in the wind. He has a quiet way about him, a stillness and a depth that feels as impenetrable as the dark that settles around them. She wonders about it, wonders why and where it comes from – wonders, too, if she has only imagined it. But she thinks she cant have, because she has caught glimpses of this weight before, in the smile shared between her parents when she had been a child, when they had thought she wasn't looking.
There is no need to respond to his gratitude, and she is silenced for a moment anyway as he tucks a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. She wants to hold him in this easy touch, and she breathes into something like serenity. She looks up at him when he pulls away, and her smile shines as if the stars had kissed her. “I’ve seen you in your world, under the stars,” she says. “I think perhaps you should see me in mine, under the sun.”
Sun.
Stars.
Isn’t it all the same really?
“You can tell me your stories of the stars, and I will tell you mine of summer days,” she says, because summer days have always been her favorite. Summer days were her parents walking with her down to the lake, they were raising through fields of lavender, playing in a tree fort, and sitting around a fire.
And he goes, but he does not leave her empty like so many have when they turn away from her, when she watches them walk to a different horizon than the one she stands upon. Azrael has given her so much since she met him, that it is impossible to stand there with palms empty, and so she pulls what she has left of him a little closer, before walking home and into her bed. And it is not the sound of waves that sends her to sleep, but the sound of his heart beat.
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
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