The world is made of water. Large puddles, small puddles, pound upon pound of water. It is endless and it is blue.
Juniper is made of water, too. Her heart is red and beating, heated when it should be cold and frigid. She stands in a field of blue that is not water but made of stalk and bud. Forget-me-not flowers, like every reminder that flashes in the night, wink up to her with their bright, shining eyes. They are pearls between her teeth when she pulls one, and then another and another from its stem.
They fall, crushed, to the ground. Their water seeps from their skin. Her water cannot join the earth so easily.
Juniper tries not to look to the couples that laugh. El Rey makes her laugh and he has been gone for months. Run. Leave. Flee. He’d forced her hand, losing himself in a bloodthirsty crowd before she could wrap herself about him and plant herself as a thorn in his side so that they might not part so quickly.
It infuriated her.
And yet...Juniper does not know how to stay angry. She only knows how to love and love and love as a cup brimming over. It spills into the world as rain from the clouds. And in her field of blue as day fades to dusk, she sighs and pulls another petal, praying Vespera will grant her mercy soon.
"He loves me, he loves me not…” She whispers into the bustling field of laughter and life and all that is not hers.
Nightwish walks through the sea of blue flowers, letting them brush against him as the sea might meet the sky, with a hushed whisper as they stroked against his pelt. The bard is unnoticed in this land of lovers, his observant gaze drawing everything in, remembering for another story another day, his lips twisting into a sigh of a smile. For there was something poetic about love and spring, which longed to be written or sang in a song. Nostalgia tore at his memories as the sweet scents of nectar and sunshine reminded him of another time – a time where he had been a child at his grandmother’s knee, eyes wide as she spun a tale of season goddesses and their whims.
He watches the children who laugh and dance through the neat rows of petals, picking a few and weaving them into their manes. Girls blinked suggestibly at boys with bright eyes, their suitors selecting the most beautiful of blooms to profess their attractions. Mothers walked beside their daughters, fathers led their boys in rousing games of chase. And through it all, the noontime sun shone brightly upon them, warm and bright with the hope that only spring could bring.
A sigh of contentment escapes Nightwish’s lips as he stops for a bit on the outskirts of this place, wanting to take everything in, even as he draws out a journal and begins to write bits of observation in its weathered pages. He glances up from time to time, ears flicking to catch whispers of conversation around him, shivering as a playful breeze toys with his mane. And as he watches, he wonders what those who walked alone (not unlike himself) in this festival for lovers were dreaming of. Did they seek companionship? Beauty? Touch? Perhaps a combination?
The Pegasus captures his attention, with her gilded adornments which blink in the sun. He watches her quietly, thoughtfully, even as her gaze turns toward him and he catches the momentary surprise in her eyes. For a moment, the stallion simply nods in greeting, before curiosity gets the better of him and he edges closer, catching her whispered rhyme as she picks through the periwinkle blooms.
“Waiting for someone?” he asks with a soft smile, settling easily beside her in the blossoms with a brightness in his gaze, intrigued to hear what stories the mare had to share.
efore petals pressed between her hands and back into the earth, before her words came soft as a winter sun and left even more swiftly, Juniper looked to the world to find a place to settle back into it. In those moments, she saw the eyes of another that dared to stare right back. Purple. Blue. Black. Handsome.
She smiles, and she does not know how to blush, nodding, looking through her lashes, then falling to the earth with that other-worldly gaze meant only to praise and to love and to smite in equal measure.
Juniper is still hoping El Rey will come home today, waitin for him, and still she pushes herself away from those thoughts. In time, she knows, he will come back. All things that love do. They cannot stay away as some distant story that never quite makes it back to her the same way. No.
He will come just as Nightwish does. The stallion who looked at her from across the field. Now, he moves like water in the blue, their smiling faces reflecting along the edges of his skin. Close enough to kiss, he settles into the blossoms nearest her, and she doesn’t know if his question is meant to be suggestive or simply a question.
There’s a smile again, half soft, half heat, and her eyes are living green flames, and her hunger is unsated for what feels like eons. “I could wait for a many someones, but I think I’d like to wait for you, too,” she says, offering up a flower from beside his shoulder.
With her doe-eyes she implores if she could press it to his hair, a gift, a smile, a suggestion gone unsaid. “Does this someone have a name?” she asks as she settles beside him, all too ready to learn another story, to feel another’s heart beating just as hers beats so fiercely in her breast.
{ @Nightwish "speaks" notes: <3 i am so excited to meet Nightwish! }
He settles in the flowers, accepting the one she tips toward him with a delicate touch, before he too starts to pluck the petals one-by-one. Nightwish has no rhyme to sing, no love to wait for. He watches only her, meeting her smile as her lips turn coy and coquettish with the question. “Interesting things are always worth the wait… and strangers are always interesting.” The artist in him takes in each aspect of her, filing them away to memory. He watches the way the sun glints from her gold, the way her eyes follow his movements, but also how they look beyond, as if searching for someone else. And it is the searching in her gaze which draws him in all-the-more.
“I am Nightwish. And you are?” He nods his head in greeting, stretching his legs further as the sunlight bathed them in golden light. All around them, there are sounds which draw him in. His ears flick back and forth, catching bits of conversation, strains of song. He hears a child with glee as she races from her friends, calling out behind her for them to “catch them if they could”, a sentiment which draws a chuckle from the bard.
“Is this your home? It’s lovely…” He gestures to the flowers, speaking more broadly of the land which held them. Ever the wanderer, Nightwish had gravitated toward the Night Court for its lively entertainment and the endless wonder of their nights… but each of the courts had held appeal. He’d followed the festivals, first with bonfires in the Dawn Court, then with flowers in Terrestella and with beach combing and crafts in Denocte. More than the festivals, he followed the crowds, eager to learn what stories they might share and what faces he might find, always seeking something more.
“And who are you looking for? Perhaps I might have seen them in my wandering?” He grins boyishly, hurriedly adding, “Not that I would mind, if someone waited for me. It’s quite a lovely thought, that somewhere out there, someone’s heart might beat for yours…”
