The seasons shifted more quickly than he could grasp. If he could sink his enamels into the flesh of time and haul it backwards, he would. He would change his destiny with that one simple move. He would not have been born to the noble house in Denocte. Reinhart allowed his hardened stare to remain on the swelling crowds. He studied the ebb and flow of the streams of bodies shifting in the streets that served as canals from beneath the proud stone walls of Solterra. His mind swirled with thoughts about the time he was wasting. Reinhart had not meant to be here for so many months. He had treated his time here as something of an extended vacation, out from beneath the watchful eye of his father. He did not doubt the eyes of Solis had replaced those of his father. He would much prefer to deal with the ire of a god than to listen to his father spout one more lecture at him about how his orientation was the single worst, an all-consuming horrible trait he held. He scoffed at the thought and disappeared into the shadows. He joined the flow of bodies from the shores that the shadows had made.
Reinhart was still a citizen of Denocte, although he had half a mind to spend his days in Solterra. He traipsed to the makeshift-markets of traveling salesmen that had set their wares up in various booths decorating the proud city of Day. His tongue itched, and his heart ached for the love from his father he could never have. For the recognition as a son, he would never earn. The taste was bitter and dripped like toxic mercury down his throat. The silver tongue melts into the streams of equines chattering and ogling the wares of the merchants. Reinhart spotted a booth with a brilliant red and purple scarf, with golden fringes. There was an intricate inlaid gold pattern strewn across the scarf as if it were trying to mimic the stars of the night sky. Reinhart approached the booth, a woman stood enclosed within the station. She had many scarves and wonderful items and trinkets, but he had eyes only for the scarf. Reinhart was short on money, he always was. That didn't stop him from making a life here and running among the other ruffians who claimed the streets. The thief allowed his charismatic smile to make an appearance as he came to a halt beyond the borders of her shop. He gave a silent nod toward the scarf to let her know that he wanted to see it.
"Are you the weaver of this? It looks as though it could be sunset at the Day Court, or the streams of stardust in the night sky." Reinhart complimented the intricacy of the scarf. He had never been interested in fabrics, but this had captured his attention. The buzzing of his tongue began as his smile widened. He wondered if he could earn a free gift for himself before his departure from Solterra. The woman denied being the weaver but said that she was connected to them. Reinhart's eyes began to swirl as his lips parted to spin seas and serenades. "I don't suppose you would reveal your connections. Smart business. I suspect you've traveled through many courts and world to collect all these wares you have to trade. Is it just you? Impressive feat. I wouldn't have the patience. It looks like you're popular too. Is the Festival treating you well?" Reinhart wove words, as though he were crafting an expert story. He was. Urged in the right direction by the magic he did not know he possessed. When the woman turned around to speak about her favourite item, Reinhart disappeared into the crowd.
You wrap your name tight around my ribs
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
Such a severed soul.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she picks up the pieces of herself. Sews them back together; knocks torment, like cobwebs, from her soul. One day, perhaps, she will be free, completely, from the dirty, linen wraps that bound her to an eyeless, lifeless abeyance. Until then, she seeks distraction in whatever she can find, wherever she can find. Once, it might have been the easy curves of her scimitar, feeling the weight of the sharpened blade and the balance of the gilt, jewelled hilt and handle; cutting wide arches in the air with it. The feeling of give and take as it collides with a sparring dummy, splitting open the woven faux-skin and spilling stuffing, like entrails, on the golden sand.
Once, it might have been with her brothers and sisters, sharing war stories, politics, hymnals to the sun-god and inside jokes.
It might have been Zayir, passing the time in nostalgia, picking at the different ways they each remembered the same childhood experience.
But she is a loose ray of a dead order, buried and made obsolete with time. Forgotten, by the world and by Soleterra, and by each other. And the curved weapon that had served as her protector and kin, it too has been lost to the charnel house, laid somewhere in a dusty corner of that stygian crypt, wasting away without the nourishment of blood and battle.
Losing its glint.
So, she preoccupies herself with the crawling streets, though it goes against the distant and arrogant nature of her bones. The company, the many skins and breaths that press against her as she shifts into the crowd, scowling and unapproachable, is welcome. Welcome in as much as she surrounds herself with it for the noise it makes and the smells it has, so different from the sepulchral quiet and stagnant redolence of stone. Used for the liveliness that serves only a reminder that she is no longer buried, but surfaced.
She drinks from a small bottle of fruity wine, sharp, acid and lightly sweet at the end. She stands, leaning against a sandstone wall, watching the bustle of the market-streets with hard, warning eyes.
The busyness means everything becomes as one to her. One big, moving mass of flesh. Like a filthy, ignoble monster with a hundred pairs of eyes and legs; a hundred voices, none of which win over the other, so it is an incoherent cacophony. Sound. Simply sound. Until he approaches the merchant to her left and her languid, venomous gaze falls on him, a distraction among many. She watches him revel in his own finesse. The lulling, golden song of his tongue that turns the woman’s attention long enough to find herself strangely bemused. Cyrra’s brow raises, as she watches him slip away.
Taking the last drink of her bottle, she leaves it on the step.
She does not mean to find him again, but as she weaves along the margins of the crowd, ducking in and out to look at something, or avoid something else, they find each other somewhere in the middle. She tucks her ecru wings tight against her body and comes to walk beside him, eyeing him with iron curiosity, the tight, straight line in her lips revealing nothing behind the stony exterior. “Silver-tongued,” she grunts, “given enough time, she might have just given it to you, you know?” Cyrra possess nothing like that. Her charisma and charm are all martial, pride and dry humour.
Warmth. It was the first thing he noticed when the space was abruptly filled by anoteher body joining the marching crowd. Reinhart almost ignored her, almost. She had to speak to him. She had to cause his panic to spike. Silver-tongued. She hissed like a poised cobra, or perhaps he was identifying monsters where there were spaces available to be occupied. given enough time, she might have just given it to you, you know? She presses him, and Reinhart casts a sidelong glance toward her. His golden eyes were beginning to swirl with the rising panic he began to feel. She had seen him steal the scarf from the vendor. "There's not an ounce of me that is made of silver, I don't know what you're talking about." Reinhart denied her claim that he had a silver-tongue. He would acknowledge he might be slightly more charismatic than the average individual, but he had always attributed that to his noble upbringing. An upbringing he could only escape by disappearing into the depths of another court.
He did not feel the pull of his magic, he was oblivious to it. A magician who was at the whim of his power as it threatened to consume him. He cast a glance at her again before he broke from the crowd. Reinhart narrowed his eyes at her, silently he challenged her to follow him. He noticed the sudden aversion from the crowd, as they bowed around him as though he were a great boulder in their stream. His magic encouraged them to avoid him. Reinhart felt only the turbulence of his emotional currents as they got swept away. He did not move from the place he stood, where he had pulled himself out of the swathes of bodies. The woman had a cage wrapped around her throat, and cream wings tucked to her sides. He leered at her, and the magic swirled in his eyes as he stared at her. Reinhart could not convince her that she had not seen him make away with a finely crafted scarf. He could not let her get away with her claims of being a silver-tongue. He was quick on his feet, and nothing more. Before they became islands in a sea of moving bodies, before he disengaged the crowd completely he turned to her. "I think you've made grand assumptions about someone you know nothing about." He allowed his venom to seep out toward her.
Reinhart was not used to a confrontation that he could not avoid. He turned away from her, and the crowd and dove into the shadows along the wall. He did not stray too far from the sea of bodies. Reinhart waited and watched from his new position to see if she dared follow him.
Notes: I love Cyrra so much a;lfjd. Your writing is so lovely. | Tags: @Cyrra
... try to breathe words out, But I’ve got nothing to say
06-27-2020, 04:04 PM
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Berb [PM] Posts: 20 — Threads: 6 Signos: 0
You wrap your name tight around my ribs
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
She watches him through narrowed, slightly swimming, eyes.
Lamplight and the blur of the crowd slash at her vision, whirl around her, but it is him, large, gunmetal-grey and swathed in filched merchandise, that centres her. She can feel his panic, perhaps because she’s known panic so well. The panic of others, as they brandish their weapons to hers, and they both know that it’s them or her. Panic in herself, like a fluttering bird, turned to more fruitful ventures than petulant squabbles. Turned to war and turned to fight, rebuffing the urge of flight.
She almost smiles. Almost, but the stony exterior resists crackling, instead, her sharp, straight lips belie nothing of the frank amusement. They tell a story or militant hardness. Of a taut string—a tightly held spring ready to be sprung.
It’s just her.
And this, perhaps, is just him.
In truth, where once she might have felt more obliged to police the streets of Solterra—not that that had ever been her vocation—now she feels only a tenuous bond to the kingdom, like friends that have not seen each other in a decade, one of whom having spent those ten, estranged years in a crypt underground.
In truth, she doesn’t care that he had stolen from the merchant.
But something about his squirming out from under it irked her.
“Quicksilver, then,” she shoots back, brows knitting together in abject irritation and confusion. For, as she watches him swerve through the crowd—undeniably large and perhaps it is only her pursuit, but it seems to her all the more conspicuous in his beautiful, vibrant plunder—the masses of bodies part around him, flowing like a river, interrupted. She understands it, of course, no more or less than he does, but it quirks her brow as she presses onwards after him. “It wasn’t sleight of hand,” she begins again, dogged in her pressure, “I’ve seen beggars pick coin purses before—”
He shifts into the shadows and so too does she, looming close, head tilting ever so slightly to the side. She opens her mouth again, perhaps to tell him she does not care, just cannot puzzle out how he did it; perhaps to tell him she’d sooner fetch a guard than let him weasel his way out of this as well. But her lips fall to silence, eyebrows coming together again—though, for the life of her, she is not sure what primal disorder compels them. What rebellious nature of her mind, rejecting the anodyne effects of his warning magic.
“I… might have,” each word is a labour, hard and forced, not wholly believed, but held as objective truth in the moment their eyes lock. It is not that she doesn’t think he’s stolen the shawl—she knows blood well what she saw with her own eyes—but she feels with distinct certainty that he has crossed a threshold of displeasure that goes beyond the barbed tone of his voice.
She chews the insides of her cheeks, staring at him with hot, heavy disdain, but she follows him all the same, posture softened somewhat. But not because she has loosened her grip on her faculties, but because she obeys a thin thread of his unknown arcane, that thing the urges her to be wary. “You’re lucky,” she mutters, as they shift around the perimeter of the bustle, her sidestepping or shouldering inebriate break-aways from her path, those that do not willing part. “It could have been a good samaritan that saw you not talk your way into a new shawl.”
Prying eyes, snapping teeth. Shadows coil, eager to cloak the street child in their solace. She follows him like the sun, wearing that gilded cage around her throat. It warns him that she cannot be trusted. Not because she has caught him making off with a valuable trinket, but because her persistence gnaws on the conscience he works hard to bury. He does not miss the way her brows knit with irritation. A fleeting glimpse inside the gilded cage. Reinhart takes this glimpse for granted, he has been thrown to many wolves before. She is no different from the first, and she will not be the last wolf at his door. Quicksilver then The words slip past her ashen lips sharpen the blade of his magic. The magician does not feel the swell in the tides of his magic, it snarls at her. The message escalates from a simple warning. She is too close. The man who is made from marble does not back down. His panic soon turns into irritation. He stops. He knows she will stop with him. It wasn't sleight of hand, she pauses; hesitant. I've seen beggars pick coin purses before.
The magician rounds himself to face her abruptly, a smooth smile is now etched into his slate and rose mottled features. She has mistaken him for a beggar. His golden eyes lock on hers, they ache to hold her attention hostage. She should only have eyes for him. The warning snarl of his magic wanes, it soon becomes inviting. It works to lure her closer to him. If only he could snatch the gilded bars from her throat. Reinhart drifts towards her, the shadows raking their invisible claws across his flesh. Lamplight flickers across his flesh at precise intervals. He moves like fluid, a creature that lives in the liquid ink that constructs the shadows. "No. Mercury is the blood of the gods. I do not weave their blood into words." The words flow from his lips in dulcet tones. There is a sultry lilt to his voice as it drips from his maw. A flash of teeth emerges from beneath his pale lips. His golden eyes begin to swirl in a mesmerizing pattern. The magic commands the magician. I might have-. She hesitates again. He feels a surge of triumph when he detects what he believes is the seeds of doubt he has sowed beginning to sprout.
The magician doesn't miss the disdain that clouds her features. It is obscured by uncertainty. These are assumptions he makes about the waning of her persistence. You're lucky. she mutters like a sullen child. "It has nothing to do with luck. Luck is a lie, just like magic. Chalk it up to a good education, and intuition." Reinhart refutes her once more. The disdain has vanished from his tones, they have lowered to a rumble of interest. He circles her, and thinks that it is too bad he cannot steal her. She is a masterpiece that he will never have. The magician is quick to fall in love with the aesthetics of the golden-throated bird. It could have been a good samaritan that saw you not talk your way into a new shawl. She counters back to him. Lids fall over golden orbs. The warning returns. It surges like the tides upon the shore. She is the shore. A smile resurfaces from the depths of his slate facade. Lids part, locking upon her pale orbs. "If you are not a good samaritan, what is it you want from me?"
Reinhart asks. The daggers in his tones have readied themselves once more. "And if you are not good, then what are you? You must not be trustworthy if you keep that throat of yours locked up like that." He challenges her, the warning in his magic swells unbeknownst to him.
Notes: I'm in love with Cyrra and your writing ;__; | Tags: @Cyrra
... try to breathe words out, But I’ve got nothing to say
