somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit
is the answer to the mystery of why
T
he pigeon arrives for him the first night he sleeps in Denocte’s castle. He does not think much of the arrival; the bird itself seems nondescript enough, with the gray plumage and iridescent feathers at the throat. The letter, tied snuggly with red ribbon, bares no seal that Ira recognizes. He considers it the first night on the job; why would he? When he unravels the parchment tenderly, delicately, as if pulling the petals off a flower—Ira is taken aback.
Meet at Veneror Peak tomorrow.
The handwriting seems effeminate and elegant; no calligraphy that Ira has seen before. The seal only resembles an intricate knot, with no semblance to any of the Sovereign’s sigils. He closes his eyes to rest, but does not sleep; the night passes restlessly until Ira awakes far too early to begin his journey. He sets off well before daybreak, into the night, traverse a forest he knows well.
Ira tells the story within his own mind: No one knows who sent the first letter; if it came from the north-eastern kingdom of Solterra, the northwesternDelumine. They do not know if the pigeons, with the letters sealed with each Sovereign’s wax melt, were sent from the southern countries—Denocte and Terrastella. The rumors on the wind vary with each retelling, with each utterance, until the fantastical meeting on the summit will go down inscribed in myth. Perhaps, they will say, the pigeons came from each deity.
Hours later, Ira knows his own thoughts are fantastical as he ascends the steep pathway to Veneror. And yet—in a land where all but one Court had recently experienced mysterious turmoil, perhaps the tale does not read so strangely. And besides—the truth does not seem far from the aforementioned myth. The facts are not there. The message Ira received had been vague at best; merely a summoning of Sovereigns to the summit of Veneror.
He still has so many questions about his ascension to the throne. Where had the other Sovereigns gone? What entity had taken them? Or, more seriously, had they simply vacated their respective thrones? He wonders, as his muscles begin to burn for the climb, if any of the other recently crowned would know.
Recently crowned. Ira has heard the names. He has attempted to familiarize himself with the going-ons of the other nations. Adonai, in Solterra. Elena, in Terrastella. Andras, in Delumine. Me, he thinks, in Denocte.
Ira, when he reaches the summit, discovers he is the first there. This late in the summer, the air is downright frigid. He feels the end of the season, the early needling of autumn. He has felt it well before the peak and now, when he exhales, a long billow of semi-opaque breath escapes his lips. To his eyes, the peak looks nearly like a wasteland. Barren rock protrudes from the earth, jaggedly, as if a wound. He has long-since abandoned any shelter of trees, instead progressing into a bald face. However, he knows he is not all alone. He has come to Verenor often to understand the peak needs adornment aside from the statues of the gods cutting up, prominent, against the sky. They all measure the same height; and, at their pinnacle, stretch far beyond any rock or mountain feature.
The new Sovereign steps froward until he stands besides Caligo’s statue. He turns his back to it, waiting—waiting.
He holds his breath.
Ira does not know yet for what.
He casts a glance away from the statues, the rocks, the summit; he glances back toward the earth so far below. He wonders, exactly, how far that pigeon had to fly to summon the Kings of Day, Dawn, Night and the Queen of Dusk.
It's always a matter, isn't it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled? When things hold together, it's always only temporary
Y
ou look like my dad, did you know that? His name was Royal Legacy.’ Her grandmother, Aesop, told her. ‘He had skin as brilliant and golden as the sun and locks white as snow.’ Elena looks down at her own leg, golden, like sunlight. ‘He was a great king,’ she tells her granddaughter. “Maybe I could be a king one day!” The little girl had said in that high soprano voice. ‘My dear,’ Aesop said, ticking her behind her ear. ‘Why be a king when you can be a queen?’
It is not a pigeon that comes to her—but a dove.
Meet at Veneror Peak tomorrow.
She thinks the other rulers must have received the same, it could not just be her, could it? King Andras of Dawn. Elena herself had once strewn lights within his mane, had once bantered with him. She knows too, he is no Po, and though she has met the new Dawn King, she is unsure of where they sit with one another, and therefore, how their courts align with one another. King Adonai of Day. Another king she had met, once she had gone to treat him. She had found him to be strange, different, and frankly unstable. Day and Dusk once held an alliance, through that of Orestes and Marisol, but Elena does not know if it will hold as the torches are passed and crowns are placed atop different heads. King Ira of Night. Now him, Elena knows nothing. She has consulted her advisor, Rhone, but aside from him having been raised in Night Court from an early age, he is relatively foreign to her.
And then there is Queen Elena of Dusk. Do they know her? What do they actually know about her? Just that she is Dusk’s golden girl, a new leader. The girl that smiles like sunshine with eyes of summer skies. She stands as the only queen of the realm, though she is certainly not the first by any means, her predecessor being one of the most formidable female leaders that Novus has ever seen. Everyone knows of Marisol’s military mind, stone-like stoicness, and her beauty, especially the elegance she harbors when she takes to the skies. But Elena, what do they know of the previous Champion of Community?
What relationships does she hold with all of them? What would this mean for Dusk? Though Elena loves all the landscapes Novus has to offer her, it is her Court and her Court alone she will fight for. But she would not be so mad with power to extend the fight beyond what is hers. It is unfortunate when borders and power blind so many from what truly matters. Valerio’s voice rings true inside her head.
She practices her words s during her travels in the hopes that repeating it enough will allow her to speak with both confidence and strength.
She feels him before she sees him and something stirred in her. Curiosity, much like she was feeling inside her own heart. He is slightly taller than her, and she is suddenly all too aware of her sex as she comes to stand by the statue of her own goddess. Perhaps, when she was a younger girl, she would have grown fearful, would have shattered in the presence of the kings that would come.
Maybe she would have dissolved before them, meek and humble and shy. She would have grown quiet, averted their eyes, unable to hold their gaze or stopped the tendrils of nervous energy that raced through her stomach. But she is not a younger girl now. She is not even who she was. So she doesn’t shatter or bend or even crumple before him; she stands, quiet, thoughtful, proud—strong.
She angles her lovely head, her calm eyes studying him. “Did you also receive a letter?” Elena asks in place of a greeting before remembering her own decorum. “I am Elena—of Dusk, as you might have guessed,” she speaks calmly, elegantly. “You must be Ira, for you are the only face I do not recognize,” she openly admits. He is a stranger to her, more than the others. She blinks her blue gaze away from him and glances to the two statues that remain with no one beside them, just waiting to be filled.
you're the dawn that rises bloody
and wrecks ships in its wake,
but you're a siren, too, somewhere
deep in the aching heart of you.
H
is is an owl: black discs for eyes, the heart-shaped dish of its face, nothing but the quiet tap of its claws on the sill to announce its arrival. It watches him for a little short of an hour, holding his breath in the doorway, facing out into the hall as he tries to wrestle with-- something. Whatever it is, the owl doesn't know, and the owl doesn't care; it does not wait for him to open the envelope before turning its moon face back to the woods and disappearing into the dark.
Meet at Veneror Peak tomorrow.
Try as he might, Andras has not blinded himself to the rest of the world seemingly turning upside-down overnight. The whole thing leaves a sour taste in his mouth, certainly. There has been too much tragedy for one lifetime, let alone one year, and in spite of himself, he is struggling to cope, though he'd never say so. Three new kings and a queen to sit at the head of each Court. Surely one letter has gone to each of them. He cannot imagine being called to the holy mountain alone.
When the reports started coming in, and the wax-sealed letters, and the notes of congratulations, Andras had accepted them graciously and stacked them on his desk, unopened. It was a trouble for another time, he told himself. There was much to do before he worried about mingling. The castle is so quiet and so empty he can hear his thoughts bounce off of each side of his skull on repeat until he has gone mad. He wanted to just one or two nights of rest before the proverbial ground dropped out beneath him. He thought it only fair.
Life, and politics, as they are eternally wont to do, had other ideas. Now, on the eve of the summit, after the owl has flown back into the woods, Andras scrubs his face with his wings and sits down to read, opening enveloped at the crease instead of the seal:
Adonai, his friend in most cases, Pilate's brother, taking a throne that had stood empty, crowned by Solis himself as he stood in the light of the sun. (He wonders, briefly, what the brother must think about that, or the rest of their family-- the whole thing seems so tense at the best of times, though he can't imagine why.)
A stranger, Ira, come from somewhere to Denocte now that its previous queen has-- disappeared? Died? The letter is understandably vague and Andras doesn't read it closely, in the first place. Ira is a mystery, he supposes, for the lot of them. Maybe even his own country. He wonders what that's like.
Of course, Elena, taking Marisol's place after-- something that the letter is, again, skirting with the grace that he comes to expect from the people in Elena's company. He reads her name twice, then a third time, and levels a long look out the window. He hasn't seen her since the previous fall, and their meeting was strained, to say the least... though I suppose that should come as no surprise.
Andras doesn't sleep that night. A page brings him water, just before dawn, and he sets it, still full, on the corner of his desk, next to the shrinking pile of unopened envelopes, mouths his thanks, and half-heartedly lobs the letter-opener across the room. The sun starts reaching toward the caps of Viride's trees, silhouettes in the distance. At the tips of their branches, the cold blue of the night has started turning a warm purple. Time to go.
He flies until the treeline breaks and he is grounded by great gusts of wind vaulting off sheer rock faces and glacial ice. The thin air is a dizzying sort of comfort, something to think about that is not the meeting ahead, or the faces of his fellow sovereigns, or his empty castle and the knot full of anger that sits, untouched, in his stomach until he can bear to look at it. By the time he crests the peak, and there is nowhere for the steep path to turn except to the clearing, where two of them already stand in the shade of their gods' shoulders, Andras has almost settled himself into a pleasant hum that starts in the back of his head and runs straight toward his nose. He is thankful that his magic is quiet in Oriens' presence, for now.
Elena is one of them, already speaking politely with the man he assumes to be Ira because he is unfamiliar. Andras doesn't turn their direction except to duck his head in greeting, and to introduce himself-- "Andras."--to Ira as he passes. It's easier, to take his place in silence, and to tick his wings tight against the green wool of his coat, and listen. So he does.
he House's retainers have begun the irritating business of minding my health.
At first, I am a little touched. I spend most of the early morning entertaining their various concerns with solemn nods, until the sun limps into the throne of high noon, and my patience gives way to something sharper. They tell me it is unwise to go to the Peak alone, which I take to mean they wish me not to go at all.
For a moment I forget that I am now their king. The student's docility is ingrained in me, you see. Everyone admits to at least one great weakness suffered in their lives and this is mine: I cannot look disapproval in the face. It is a stunning weakness yet I often convince myself that I have slain it, until some passing comment is made by an unrelated tongue and my ability to think it into conspiracy astonishes me.
A palace maid curtsies into the hostile room. I am standing by an open window, a row of robed officials held back by the table—and the letter, wax seal blood-red—between us. Draped over her shoulder is a bolt of watery white silk, sent in by the tailor for a fitting; I'd requested it last night yet had forgotten this by the morning. In any case, the timing is impeccable.
By the time the retainers are let back into the room to renew their case, I am a phoenix sailing low over the blue waters of the Oasis.
§
Andras knew me as a prince, as Pilate's eldest brother. His ascension from Deluminian Warden to King had cheered me, and the letter of congratulations I'd sent over by nightfall had—hopefully—conveyed my feelings well.
Terrastella's newest queen I recall in scattered pieces of memory. A heart pressed into her brow; eyes like sky in summer; a bedside manner markedly rosier than Ruth's. In truth, though, I remember not nearly enough about her visit except for the nagging notion that I had let something slip—or that, in the way some healers seem to be able to see straight into the heart, that Elena had glimpsed something—unsavory.
(The end of my tail snags on the boughs of a pine as I descend to black cliffs and moss; I pull it free but a few flames escape, dancing for bright seconds before extinguishing into a curl of smoke. It seems I am not yet powerful enough to be much of a danger—truthfully, I don't think I know how to be one.)
And finally, as one Solterran hymn goes: Denocte is the mistress to watch. Except for the matter of Ira's age, which had made Solterran headlines by the morning edition, I know only that he had come from—nothing. Nothing of note, anyway; the report had been disarmingly short.
If my siblings have taught me anything, however, it is that tenderness of age rarely says anything about anyone.
§
I change back in a shaded clearing, beneath the needles of a towering redwood. There is a faint smell of burning that always clings to my skin for hours after each transformation; I pick a few sprigs of pine and rub them along my neck, yet in the end they do nothing but sting. I give it up after my breaths settle into an even rhythm.
The bright head of Solis is the first to greet me when I step into the ring of waiting sovereigns. I stare back, unblinking, a whispered blessing paid out before passing.
"I apologize if I kept everyone waiting. I am Adonai." From Andras to Elena to the one who must be Ira, I offer each a bow, before tugging quietly at the lyre strapped at my side. I'd forgotten I'd brought it along; under moonlight, it is struck silver.
I take my place besides Delumine, bending towards him to whisper, "That is a very nice coat, King Andras," before turning back towards Dusk and Night.
and the night smells like snow. walking home for a moment you almost believe you could start again.
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way,
and the only way, it does not exist.
I
ra does not remain alone for long. The first of the other Sovereign’s to appear belongs to Dusk. He knows this only because of her gender; and Ira smiles a shifting smile in response to her calm demeanor, the way she measures him politely with her eyes, like light on water. “Indeed, Lady Elena; and you?” Even in the asking, Ira knows the answer; of course she had. The letter, although ambiguous, carried an aura of authority he recognized as belong to—
Not royalty, though that word rises first to his mind. No, Ira thinks. They do not belong to royalty these Sovereigns. They belong to something much heavier.
“I am glad to change that,” Ira answers. “Perhaps after this summit, I might visit your Court? I have never been much to Terrastella.” That same smile—light, flashing on water. Smooth, serene—gone so quickly it seems as if, perhaps, it were a sleight of hand.
Ira might have spent more time on the matter, if the other Sovereigns did not arrive so quickly after; first Andras, with an incredibly curt greeting. Ira says nothing; but he flashes his teeth, mirthful and wolflike. In that moment, Ira recollects the old wives’ tale; red skies at night, sailors' delight. Red skies in morning, sailors' take warning.
Dawn—serene, knowledgeable, soft-spoken. Or, more accurately, were they the coming of the storm? Ira’s own thoughts take on a fantastical enormity; perhaps he finds himself wearied by his father’s recollections of political strife.
(Or, perhaps, he remembers what it had been like to hear his mother collapse heavily on the ground, or the way her blood pooled out as opaque as a lake as he hid entangled in her dresses and silks. He had watched the pool widen and grow; and then stagnate; and all along he thought of how he could not step out of the closet, he could not check on her, because to do so he would have to step foot in that lake of blood. Yes, perhaps Ira remembers exactly what political strife can bring; that it begins with words and ends in flesh).
Then: Adonai. The arrival of Solterra’s chosen Sovereign and crowned prince breaks Ira from his reminiscing he will not admit to, even to himself. Even as the memory fills his mind’s eye it vanishes, forgotten, folded conveniently into a story that belongs to someone else, surely.
(To someone who reminds him, again and again, to be weary of power).
It strikes Ira how much they compliment one another; how they act as strange foils. Adonai and Elena, golden and soft. He and Andras, black with white splashed upon them like wounds.
Ira does not smile now, as Adonai introduces himself and compliments Andras’ coat. Ira does not smile now, as the clearing grows quiet and the gods above them ever austere. Ira does not smile now, as it occurs to him all those gathered know one another in some manner whereas he is the stranger, unknown.
A weakness, and a strength.
He steps forward from beneath Caligo’s shadow, breaking the silence. “It seems,” Ira begins. “We’ve been summoned here for some reason or another. My letter certainly didn’t have a seal on it that I recognized; did any of yours?” His eyes flit, briefly, from one Sovereign to the next. He adds, with a rather expressionless tone: “There seems to have been many strange coincidences regarding our collective shifts in power.”
He has been an avid reader since becoming Sovereign; not a careless man, he has sent a number of spies and informants to report back going-ons of the surrounding Courts. Orestes had abandoned Solterra some time ago; after far too long a lapse of time, Adonai had been chosen by the God himself, after the previous Delumine Sovereign made a grab for the Solterran throne and then vanished. Then there were the rather democratic demonstrations in Delumine and Denocte; meanwhile, Marisol had experienced an “accident” of some sort, instructing Elena to take the throne. Everywhere in Novus power vacuums opened and demanded to be filled.
“Unsettling, if you ask me." Ira adds with a laugh that is a thorn in the throat of true joy. And yet; for the mysteries that surround them, there are few explanations, and Ira wonders if any of them had less than noble intentions. Or, if perhaps, appearances were true for once.
It's always a matter, isn't it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled? When things hold together, it's always only temporary
A
cool spring breeze whirls its was through the trees of their home, causing branches overhead to rattle against one another as emerald leaves rustle subtly with the moving currents that carried it with the exciting variety of scents that filled the little riverside valley they called home in such a way that it was neither overwhelming or so faint that it was nonexistent. She could smell the fresh water that constantly changes and flows as it makes its way through the valley where her grandmother had been born. Where Royal Legacy, her great grandfather had ruled with a gentle, but firm hand. And then there was that calming, pure scent that Elaina so associated to Murmuring Rivers that even now when she smelled it the golden girl was immediately transported back. That scent could only be identified as the sweet lavender that grew rampant in the fields. The sights, sounds, and smells that could only be associated with Murmuring Rivers.
She moves along at a brisk trot along one of the many trails that her own grandmother once frolicked along that wound and weaved through the tall grasses and aspen trees that encircled the open field of the ancient realm that her blood ran deep within. She catches the sweet and enticing smell of wild raspberries that grew along the water’s edge that sometimes she snack on when Marcelo and Ori were not looking (but, lets be honest, Ori typically joined her in this snacking endeavor.) She pauses a time or two, nose lowered to the ground as lanky golden limbs adorned with a touch of a white sock on each carry her off the trail for a moment only for her to reappear and continue on her own pleasant way. Some would think maybe she was looking for the honeysuckle Marcelo had told her about, but the task at hand was certainly not flower searching.
She was hunting. Golden ears twitch and flitter about the top of her head amidst growing locks of cumulus, sunlight warming her sunflower skin in light as it cascaded down, enlighten the ancient lands. Eyes of amber, so much like her father’s, look around every tree, in every shadow cast, and when she spots a bush nearby that seems to be rustling, there is a pause in her forward stride and a silly little grin tugs at the corner of her ash dusted lips. She stands there on the path for a moment, watching the bush with an intensity as though if she stared long enough it might just wave at her. Suddenly, it moves and this time she can just barely make out the smallest, faintest note of laughter. She is hardly able to restrain a chiming giggle yet somehow manages, and suddenly she lunges forward. “Gotcha!” She squeals in a high pitched, girlish voice. She laughs as she collides with a crimson form, playfully reaching out to nip at red strands of her hair.
Quickly, she untangles herself from her cousin before pivoting on her heels and playfully taunting her. “Last one to the river has to kiss a fish!” She yells before leaping forward into a wild gallop. The afternoon of the youngest residents of Murmuring Rivers far from over. Their joyous laughter, a sign of their already deep friendship, the afternoon Frostbane had cornered them only plaguing the back of their minds, fills the valley.
The day is beautiful.
Lilli and Elaina need only each other to keep it so.
She wishes Lilli were here now.
Instead she is surrounded by kings.
Ira is the first. And he smiles, and it settle Elena, even as she picks at his emotions, but she can hardly read any ill will. She nods in response to his question. “I found it strangely vague,” she says honestly, narrowing her blue eyes slightly in concentration. It is only the mention of her home that manages to snap Elena’s attention away from such strange questions floating in her mind. “I would love nothing more than to have you as my guest. Terrastella is stunning,” she says, in a way that is clearly biased.
Andras. He announces with his arrival with the single word, his name. “Long time,” Elena says, even if it has not been, not for an immortal anyway. She wonders how much they know, about the transfer of power in Dusk. Elena has kept Marisol’s injury as secret as possible, as should be for Elena is still her doctor (in truth, she does not think she could ever view herself as Marisol’s sovereign).
Then, it is Adonai. Something like distrust strikes at the back of her throat. So it was true, the frail, golden man had risen to power in the land of sands once held by Orestes, once an ally of Terrastella. Elena cannot help but wonder if that alliance still holds true. Though, the more she looks upon Adonai, the less certain she feels. He was so ill the last time she had seen him. Yet here he is, with a crown upon his head no less. “No apology needed, we only have just arrived,” she says, at least in her case and Andras’s. She is unsure how long Ira has been here.
Silence barely has a moment to settle before Ira steps forward, uncloaked from shadows as he speaks. Elena simply shakes her head in response, stealing glances as the the kings surrounding her. “Perhaps from your view or within your own court,” Elena comments, desperate to keep Marisol’s condition hidden. She would not let the other lands be so informed that their commander’s condition was…compromised. “Dusk merely experienced a simple transfer of power,” she says, blue eyes shifting towards them all. “Though, regardless, we are all new leaders,” she concludes. “And whatever circumstances brought us to now are in the past, lets think to the future of our Courts,” she says with a smile, even if behind it, she aches for the kings and queens of old that she once knew. “There is nothing to be done about it now but press onwards.”
@Ira @Andras @Adonai
hey, boys <3
Code by rallidae
picture by cannon
![[Image: ddvotwe-59302ba6-6a81-47bf-9846-30c5a5db...0iFb4PvyXE]](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/8026a53b-dc57-41ab-b574-9f8a8fe57ce4/ddvotwe-59302ba6-6a81-47bf-9846-30c5a5db0780.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzgwMjZhNTNiLWRjNTctNDFhYi1iNTc0LTlmOGE4ZmU1N2NlNFwvZGR2b3R3ZS01OTMwMmJhNi02YTgxLTQ3YmYtOTg0Ni0zMGM1YTVkYjA3ODAucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.ujCJH7FAbsQhfZlQniMmEd_vw-VmvaTDn0iFb4PvyXE)
