She is shivering in a pit dug by the weight and heft of her body, the grit turned to mud around her, cold night water stinging at her eyes and filling her ears with bubbling. She had dunked her head to clear her thoughts but still the nightmares gripped her, the visions of fire and metal bending outwards from within, bursting with the horrific smell of sulfur. She sees rain in the night but it is blood and severed limbs, organs, ash, and pulverized bone-- it looks so like snow, but it is summer. It is summer?
it is summer, Oculos confirms, sitting nearby. She had been speaking aloud without realizing it. The hound keeps a careful watch on his companion, as he always has; from long nights spent dodging thrashing hooves on silverite silk sheets to snapping at her heels to propel her through the hot death clutch of the desert. Kassandra collapsed in the humid blanket of a summer night on a beach is nothing to him. She seems to be coming out of it, anyway, because her eyes have righted themselves in their sockets and she has unconsciously wiped the spittle from her jaw.
Kassandra swallows hard. Some distance at her back the bonfires burn into the dark, clawing white-hot scrapes at the sky and at the back of her eyelids, but she cannot bring herself to turn and look at them, let alone go to them. Her visions are terrors of the past, the weight of her crimes, all set against the backdrop of the stars spinning in the atmosphere above. These scenes sunder her and leave her with acrid smoke at the back of her throat, but by now, they are familiar-- ghosts with talons raking deep lines across her brain. The truly horrific ones are the unknown, the mysteries; jumbles messages with no sender or a return address that leave her heaving and petrified because somewhere at the edges of her mind there is a pulse, a beat, a liturgy pleading with her to understand and deliver, but she can’t, she can’t, she can’t, and somewhere, someone with a higher power than she can do nothing but bow their head in disappointment and prepare another sequence of images to drop into the muddied puddle of her consciousness and try again.
Kassandra’s psyche is a fragile and crystalline pool and these visions plop in and fall deep; the ripples are cutting shards of glass.
A sigh shakes her midnight form and sets the galaxies stitched into her pelt to dancing. The heat of the moment has passed and now a chill is setting in, despite the warm seasonal temperatures.
stand up out of the wet sand, Oculos says, a suggestion hidden under a command, move around. You’ll come back to yourself faster.
Kassandra lays her tired head down, neck long against the beach. “I suppose I must look rather silly,” she says, quiet, hoarse, and shaky, “sitting out here by myself in the muck.”
Oculos’ long face splits in a wry smile. when have we ever cared?
Humming a note in agreement, Kas pushes herself to stand. The sand lining her underbelly and legs chafes a bit but it feels good to be present. “I’m older now, Ocky,” she states, matter-of-fact and half sorrowful. “I’m supposed to be dignified, not the same, screaming babe locked in the tower.”
don’t you dare say it’s like you never left, Oculos growls. His voice is a mocking imitation of hers. none of this shit is a metaphor, Kas. Stand up and move on, like always.
“Hm. Like always.” There is fear there, the idea that these abhorrent hallucinations will be her forever. It makes her stomach ache, the black pit in her gut mirroring the spaces between the stars. She turns her eyes there, seeking, pleading.
Her Borzoi’s galaxy mottled fur is rustled by a gentle night breeze as he sits silently beside her.
The stars had called him to this place, to the wetness and the dark, a place which is quiet and eerie on the summer’s night. There is a stillness here, as if the world took pause and stood frozen in time, so different from the bonfires which burned just beyond the shadow of the trees. Here, along the dark water, his thoughts quiet as peace washes over him. Azrael stands beside the sea, dragging the salty scent of seawater and kelp into his lungs, while a cool breeze washes over him, caressing every curve of him and tossing in his hair. Upon his shoulder, Noctua sits still and quiet, looking more like a statue than a real creature in the moment, if not for the blinking of her astute turquoise eyes.
They are still and quiet, the two of them, staring out to sea. Azrael imagines a different place, a different time, a simpler time. For long in his life, the man had been a simple creature, happy left to his stars and his wandering. He had not belonged to a court, not understood the complexity of relationships – of love and of jealousy. He had simply been, existing as one with nature and with the stars, content to be Caligo’s vassal and belong to her alone.
“Azrael” The owl’s voice breaks through his peace, and he turns to her, blinking quietly in response. “We aren’t alone…”
She turns to gaze along the beach, toward a wet and shivering creature some distance away. Kassandra is not close enough to see clearly, but Azrael follows his curiosity and the impulse to know more. His pace is calm and steady, and as he walks, the stallion casts a glow upon the golden sand, shining as a beacon in the darkness. Noctua shivers on his back, seeing the Borzoi before the mare, unsure about the canine as she bristles with caution, whispering a warning to her master as she rises to the sky and her freedom. But the shed-star is not afraid.
He stops beside the mare, his voice a whisper of concern as he notes the wild look in her eyes – the way she seems to look at him, but also beyond him, staring into the darkness as if she were lost to somewhere else. It was a look he understood, for Azrael often found himself caught in a daydream (or a nightmare), unable to escape the grasp of memories which beg for release. “Are you alright?” his voice is quiet and concerned, gentle as if he spoke to a child – but it is not a condescending voice. Instead, it is like seeking like, empathetic and warm, as he waits to hear what ailed the lost mare on the beach.
She spends untold amounts of time staring up at the stars.
She thinks it’s because she’s naturally dreamy; her body may have been captured and caged, but her mind is free to wander. Why not, she thinks, find the night atmosphere fascinating? What little girl did not look up at the sky and wish to be somewhere, anywhere else? The stars were a bit like her, she figured, and from far away they looked close and clustered, friendly, just like from far away she looked… fine. But up close their distances were so grand, immeasurable, there was no closeness or compassion. Cold, blue stars.
The chilly water laps at her legs and her stomach aches-- she must have accidentally swallowed some while she was drowning herself a bit to clear her head. Her eyes sting from the salt. At first, she thinks the light at the corner of her vision is some hallucination, a figment, a leftover from the curse which rocked her so before; it’s only when Oculos drops his head and hunches that she realizes they are not alone.
She startles, internally, but outwards she is too exhausted; her body sways a bit but nothing else. He is curious, and she can discern this even in-- perhaps especially in-- the dark. He’s bioluminescent at his tips and ridges and he turns the sand beneath him a shade of teal. She thinks he looks like magic.
In any case, he doesn’t seem threatening, and she hasn’t the energy to run even if he was. He pauses beside her, his tone a low electrical current of concern. Oculos shimmies up a bit to place himself between them. Kassandra brushes the canine with a haphazard but comforting sweep of her tail, brown eyes meeting her companion’s in a look of tired confirmation. “Are we ever?” she queries, somber and bizarre. Her body lifts and falls with a heavy sigh.
She feels a bit bad for being so… weird, and when she speaks next her voice is a soft rush. “Pardon, ser. I needn’t trouble you with my strangeties. I will be all right, now. Thank you for your concern.” Forces a slight smile. “It is a beautiful night, is it not?”
Azrael takes a bit of caution, looking at the canine who positioned himself between the mare and he, nodding to the creature as if to suggest that he meant no harm. It was good though, he decided, to have a protector. Noctua was certainly not a protector for him, but he feels her nearby, swooping to chase mice across the sand as her turquoise gaze pierces the night to find them. Through her, he hears the world so much more clearly, picking up sounds which he would have otherwise missed. And she opens the world to him through her eyes, ever watching and astute as they gaze upon the world.
Are we ever?, she responds to his question, and Azrael cocks a brow, considering. For the stranger had a point. Their lives were seldom easy and uncomplicated. So he settles beside the mare, staring out to sea and letting the peace of the night wash over them. It’s a beautiful night… he nods in agreement, turning to regard his companion and noting the way the stardust licked at her curves as if it were called to her. There is a look to her which is reminiscent of the People, with starflecked markings across her. Feeling an immediate kinship with this thought, he murmurs quietly into the darkness between them.
“It’s always a beautiful night.” for even on nights where clouds hung heavy over Denocte, he could sense Caligo’s stars shining far above them. On nights like this one, they were even closer. They glittered like tiny diamonds in the midnight sky, bright and warm as the winked to life while the world turned darker with every passing minute.
When the question became too pressing, Azrael clears his throat to ask the mare more of her past, too curious to let his curiosity lie. “Forgive me for being so forward, but where are you from? You remind me of somewhere else.” Of home, he thinks but does not say, wondering if his definition of home had changed now. Once, he thought of home as the mountains, as close to the stars as a breath or a reach. But now, home was something different. Home was Elena, the place she’d taken in his heart. Home was waking up beside her in the morning, falling asleep in her embrace. Home was their daughter and their love…
But oh, how he longed for the stars on nights like tonight. For though they shined on Terrestella too, there was nothing quite like the stars above the sea, wild and open as they stretched onward to infinite reaches.
Six years of being companions felt like eons at times.
Once just as cursed and unwanted as she, Oculos had been the only thing connecting Kassandra to the outside of her tower. She remembered when her uncle, looming over her with his terrible face and his terrible power, forced her to stare down into the wide moon-eyes of his heavily pregnant bitch, her stomach a massive weight on her long spine, lips pulled back against the hard length of her mouth as she panted her unease and licked at the air. Both dog and mare, trembling, uncomfortable with the space and proximity. Syroc had forced her head closer to those sharp teeth and demanded a telling, a vision, a future.
Oculos had been that future and the truth of it had been for Kassandra only to know. And ever since he had been all things for her-- an informant, a story-teller, a protector, a reminder that she had a life to live.
The stranger nodded to the hound who did not remove himself from his place as a physical barrier between the two; he did, however, let his hackles fall, and his ears relaxed and raised to an interested, listening perk.
There was that word again-- always. Its presence made Kassandra swallow audibly. It seemed such a foreboding thing, but in the mouth of this stranger it was… lighter, more reverent. And it invited thought, for just like the concept of always, the stars were a constant. They were ever-present, even in the swirls of her nightmarish visions, even when she woke from tossed and troubled sleep to the bright blare of day, the stars were there. “Yes, I suppose it is. No matter how… difficult it is to see.”
The stallion cleared his throat and the sound of it made Kas jump slightly. In her head, Oculos chuckled; the laughter died away with the stranger’s question. Where was she from? She was from nowhere, any longer; she was from a black, sulfuric hole in the ground where the upended and skeletal remains of palace and people lay half-buried in hardened ash and soot. Like some portal to the hells. Like a demon. “I am… not from here,” she allowed, trying to keep her voice from wavering. “I came here much by happenstance. Then, I almost died in the desert. Got trapped on a magical island. And I suppose I’ve not left.” It was not so much an answer as a diversion, but her head began to hurt with the scent of smoke and the distant sound of explosions, so it would have to do.
Azrael nodded at her words, understanding all too well the wandering which brought her here. He hadn’t wandered by desire, but out of necessity. Death and destruction had come for the shed-stars, leaving nothing but a hollow shell of a city, burned to the ground by dragonfire. A piece of him longed to go back, to search among the rubble… and so he had. When the air had cooled and the stars grew soft with sadness once more, the astrologer had made his way back through the treacherous mountain passes, fighting through snow and wind to make his way back to the place he’d once called a homeland… but all he had found was shambles and broken dreams.
He had pieced through the rubble, fishing out broken bits of glass which once had formed the great telescope, and finding twisted bits of metal which resembled the once relics of their people. Still too, the shed-star had found bones, charred and stained white from the sun, and it had all been too much… there were too many memories, still raw and flayed open for the world to see. Even now, as he thinks back on the horrors of that day, Azrael has to swallow a lump and still the heart which races in his chest. He simply cannot forget it, no matter how far he tried to run.
Clearing his throat, he shakes away the memories by drawing a steady breath of sea air into his lungs. “Hopefully you can build a home here, in Denocte. Constant friction and movement are a tiresome sort of life… and I am sorry that Tempus’ magic has been unkind. I’ve heard too many stories like your own, of those who came to this world by a series of circumstance… but there is good in this world, and hopefully you will find your peace.”
He gestures toward the bonfires, licking in the distance against the darkness. “The summer is a beautiful time in Novus – with its warm breezes and clear skies. I came to this place in the summer, though it seems like so long ago now. The place where I am from is no more, so in that regard, I can understand the feeling of new-ness.” He offers her an encouraging smile, noting the way she shivered in the moonlight, as if she were just a hair’s breadth away from breaking. But he does not mention it, making quiet and easy conversation with the mare, aiming to help her feel at peace.
“What have you seen, or do you wish to see in these lands?”
Kassandra did not know or understand this, but Furae’s destruction had not been her fault;
nor its preservation, her responsibility. Stolen from her true family as a babe, she had been forcibly woven into the fate of the doomed kingdom. But, her choice or no, it still weighed on her like a yoke of penance. Perhaps even more poignant was her total acceptance of the fact that she would not go back, even if she could go back. Furae’s demise haunted her, and had done so since her very first vision, nigh on her whole lifetime ago. Maybe, if she’d had any understanding of where her visions came from, she would be able to… accept them, instead of fighting against them. But every nightmare was a war within herself that left her mind tired and her body bruised and shaken; her eyes burned from rolling in their sockets and her head and neck ached from the uncontrollable thrashing.
Her hallucination-induced tremors and the strange settling of her persona following them could be off-putting to most; this stranger, with his ambient glow that reminded her of bioluminescence in the deep sea-- or the hottest blue of a very distant star-- didn’t seem entirely too rattled. It was a pleasant company to behold, and one she did not often get to experience. “I think I already have,” she murmured, a coolness settling into her bones as she thought of the spread of stars above her-- Denoctian air around her. “Though I may not know it. A home is like a pleasant dream; when you reach and long for it, it eludes you. It’s only when you have no expectations that you find it.”
The Folly Tower had been her home, once. The people of Furae had been her people, even if most of them did not know she existed. She’d watched them like a caged spectre, high above the goings on of their little lives, unable to interact with, to share in, or to speak of their experiences.
The stranger spoke of Tempus and Kassandra hummed a note, something caught between acceptance and denial. “To be honest, I don’t think Tempus had much to do with it. My misfortune.” Her head swung languidly around with the air of someone coming to some sort of tired acknowledgment of an unavoidable fate, gradual and unhurried. She fixed Azrael with silverite eyes, the bags underneath them heavy and blue. “I think it was mostly mortals, grasping at things they should not understand.”
There is good in this world. She thinks of tall antlers and two sets of purple-fuzzed ears; white rats, gold jewelry, the scent of earth and leather. “There is good in the world,” she agrees. “I think the world is inherently good. I don’t think it has a choice. Don’t you?”
He is good company and comfortable, though his words are sad despite the tone in which she speaks. He talks about his past as though it is truly in the past; how she wishes she could shake her own cobwebs so easily.
They sit together in silence for a while, watching the waves and the lights twinkling far across the sea, until Kassandra shakes the sand from her pelt a final time-- golden grains scattering to the earth like falling stars-- and nods her goodbyes. Together, she and her star-painted hound disappear into the dark, and gradually, the glow of Azrael's bio-luminescence fades behind them.
@AZRAEL | "kass speech" | oculos speech | hi, so i edited this to wrap it up with this post since it's been inactive a while.
