i felt the touch of the kings and the breath of the wind
He tired so quickly these days -- age was nobody's friend -- and he found himself overwhelmed by the crowds, who had begun to laugh and dance and be far too merry for so early in the day. Even one who enjoyed alcohol as much as himself wanted out. He was yet to see the king, and he thought him rather sanctimonious for not being in the centre of a festival held just for him. Galileo thought the idea that Adonai was, as he had nicknamed him, the sun-kissed king, was quite fitting. The stallion no doubt burned bright in the centre whilst the rest of the universe orbited him.
Still, the alcohol provided at the king's leisure had been nice enough, though it had left an interesting tingle on Galileo's tongue and he had decided to pause before having any more. He had once been told never to mix his drinks or else be subject to a deep drunken state, but alas, Galileo did not pay heed to such advice, and had been sipping on whatever had passed under his nose.
Unlike many, alcohol did not make him open up and become more talkative. If it were even possible, it made him retreat in on himself and brood over events long since past. That is why he now sought his solace, far from the madding crowd.
Standing on top of a parapet of stone, the pillars entwined with forest green ivy, he peered downwards at the desert that swarmed beneath the stronghold. It moved in its own way, with waves like the ocean itself, and it was something else entirely. Merchants carrying their wares arrived in the front gate, parading one after the other.
He allowed the fresh air to wash over him, and relaxed slightly, stretching his legs out in turn to stop them from getting stiff.
"Never allow yourself to get old," he spoke aloud but to nobody in particular, shaking his head as he did so.
Jane moved among the civilians, warm and aloof. Warm because of the sun, that made her entire body feel like it was melting. Aloof because she knew nobody. Sebastien was still in Denocte for his own transfer of power, and her aunt and uncle had no particular care for her. She was one of a dozen Vogelstein foals spread through the lands that occasionally coalesced for parties and socialising, and her face held as little nostalgia to them as a stone they had passed on a daytrip. She wasn’t hurt by it, of course, Jane understood well enough that they had taken her in out of courtesy and politics. They hadn’t known she was coming, but to have kicked her out would have never worked.
The city pushed her out often. It seemed to reject her, like she was a transplanted heart gone wrong. She felt nauseous often.
Jane was also aware that she should probably have died in that desert. The fact that Hardison- aged, wise, knowledgeable Hardison would be brought down while Jane herself survived was a distortion of truth. She wondered how long it would have taken for her mother to hear the news.
She wondered if her mother would have mourned her. On those nights in the desert alongside Galileo, Jane had dreamt of her own funeral as her hunger pangs had grown. She imagined her mother’s wet tears, the queen’s soft eulogy. Castor, too, would cry for his guilt.
But despite her age, despite her occasional fickleness and brattiness, she was not foolish. She knew that Castor would move onto the next pretty filly. There was no shortage of her kind in the world.
Jane’s observances of the feast only led to an increased loneliness, seeing the bonds of people who knew something she didn’t. That she might never know.
After a while, Jane travelled. She couldn’t handle it anymore; the loneliness was a constant ache in her chest. She wondered if she had ever had anything real at all. Home no longer brought up images, what with her nomadic life, but Solterra was nothing to her at all.
As she traced the outside of the castle, she caught a glimpse of a parapet. She glanced up toward the sun and felt herself stop- a familiar face. Although he was far up, there were not many with a set of antlers such as he, nor the particular stillness and firmness his air portrayed. Jane ascended the parapet and walked up behind him, her hooves as quiet as a heron.
Never let yourself get old, he, Galileo, said into the wind. Jane did not know if she was welcome, but loneliness stopped her from caring.
“I don’t know if one is able to stop that,” Jane said, and stepped up beside him. “Hello there, Galileo. It’s been a while.”
i felt the touch of the kings and the breath of the wind
Noon danced around him, brightening the rosy-orange stone of the impressive Solterran fortress. A sky so sparkling blue dipped in vibrant sunlight created an awe-inspiring backdrop, almost enough to make one believe in gods and goddesses as pure, benevolent creatures once again. It was these things that Galileo noted in the gilded city. As much as he enjoyed the view (and the peaceful solace away from the bustling crowds), the horizon called to him, as it always did. It asked him whether he would stay in this place long enough to call it home.
The only answer he could give was that he simply did not know.
His head snapped in the direction of the voice that seemingly knew who he was. The Solterrans were good people, but he had not introduced himself to many. He was fearful that someone from his past had finally caught up with him, had finally come to drag his sorry state back to his father, and for them all to demand he pay for his so-called war crimes when all he had ever done was give mind, body and soul to the Creygaulian cause.
"Do I... know you?"
Golden eyes peered at her face, delicate and chocolate in colour. He is a little surprised not to see a hulking great beast of a man who could perhaps cart him home, but instead, the lithe legs of a young woman, brushing the edge of adulthood.
And he recognises her.
"Jane, yes?" He speaks more prim and proper now, trying to hide the fact he has been drinking. He raises his head, towering above the girl. "I'm glad you are safe. Not been attacking anymore desert serpents, I hope?"
Pausing, he considers offering her a drink, but he is unsure what the proper etiquette is towards someone so young. It pains him to say it, but say it he must, for his honour rests on him being a protector of those who needed protection. "You are, uh, welcome to join me. I can't guarantee I'll be much fun, however." He states simply, relaxing a little in her company as he awaits her decision -- and of course, for the inevitable questions that come with someone of such a young age.
What is beauty? As a child, it had been the colour of her mother’s hide turned in direction of her mouth. As a weanling, it had been the coming of Spring to her childhood meadows. Now? Now, it had no definition. This fact could often lead Jane astray, if she thought too much about it. What was pretty was dresses and balls and drinks, but were any of these beautiful.
The day wasn’t ugly, though. Some of the excitement of the crowd had managed to brush off on her, but for the most part she was repulsed, pushed away by a turning of power that meant nothing to her. Back in her home, kings and queens passed by birthright, and power had not passed in the time that she had been alive. Celebrations had been generous enough at the queen’s secondborn, but in all honesty, Jane didn’t have any expectations.
The antlered individual heard Jane’s words and snapped towards her. His body was rigid, wary, and almost guilty. Not of a guilty action, but the act of being caught. It reminded Jane of how Castor had looked in the meadow on that night everything changed. For a moment, Jane wondered if she had been wrong and it had been some other horned creature who had rescued her. Heat and exhaustion did that to a person.
“I hope you’d know me, you saved my life,” she snorted, trying to pull at that childish infusion of joy that had once made her so ripe. It seemed to flee from her in every moment, every hour.
But then he did know her. So it must be Galileo. She saw him adjust his stature, firm up his body. “I’m sure it will be more fun than what I was having before, she admitted, “I don’t know anybody at all in this godforsaken city.” There was no heat in those words, no real feeling at all in the adjective. She spoke them like an onlooker, a bystander to a national action. She sniffed, flicking her tail.
@[Galileo] / speaks / finally! thank you for your patience
01-29-2021, 11:56 AM - This post was last modified: 01-29-2021, 11:59 AM by Jane
i felt the touch of the kings and the breath of the wind
He pauses, his next sip one of thought and consideration, which is very unlike him. This young horse who had so joined him reminded him of his sister, and he couldn't quite shake the feeling. Jane owed him nothing, he had not saved her for glory nor the gifts. But perhaps, what she could offer, was some solace to the stallion, for he was unsure if he would ever see his sister again.
For a moment he allows himself to imagine her now. She would be at the sweet age of seven now, and though she'd always been the wisest of his family, he can only picture her more sage as time had flown by. It was difficult to cast aside the image of the kind filly, young and carefree and full of hope and life. There had never been a moment that he had felt alone with his sister by his side, and she had always done so much for him. How he wished she knew how often she'd saved his soul.
But, she is not here. In her place stands Jane.
He isn't disappointed by that fact. In all honesty, he is quite relieved that it isn't some guard come to pester him about his behaviour in the Solterran courtyards. No, it is good that it is the young mare, so eager to please and yet so subtle in her presence.
When she speaks, he realises something: just like he, she is alone here.
You saved my life. Well, yes, he supposes he did. But he didn't do it for the recognition, and he shakes his head slowly. "Maybe I helped, but I don't claim to be any sort of hero." He doesn't look at her, only at his drink, as he muses over the words she speaks.
"I don't know anyone either," he speaks, offering her a slightly less intimidating glance. "It can be scary, being alone, but you'll get used to it. Well, I did."
He feels for the maiden -- he has never been heartless -- and shuffles over a bit to make space for her at the bar. He knows how difficult it can be, in a new world of politics and intrigue, and he doesn't wish to see her corrupted. "What do you aim to do here, Jane? Will you be aiming high, or just seeing what the world has in store for you?"
What he is really asking is who are you? What makes you, you? What do you dream of? But he has never been a poet and words do not come easily to him.
Galileo was quiet while Jane made her presence known, and she was aware of him analysing her. She wondered why; she certainly couldn’t resemble anyone he knew. Not with his head of horns, with a positively leonine tail curling between his hind hooves. She analysed him back, not for any real purpose.
But that time on the sands had gone so fast that she had hardly had a chance to gain her bearings. If she had interpreted anything, it had been promptly lost among hallucinations of dehydration and trauma. Like an oasis in the sands, memory crumbled and fell apart; lost to the ache of huger.
It hadn’t been terribly long that she had gone with Galileo, barely a night and a day, but for Jane it was so much more than that. While she had been at the Terminus Sea, she had known herself. She had been Jane of Angora, lady-in-waiting. She had been somebody, and here she was nobody at all. At most, she is the stranger girl, the one with the funny accent, the one with the archaic words who tried too hard.
She thanked him, and of course he rejected it. What soldier wouldn’t? “Of course you don’t,” Jane mused, flicking her tail. “I’m fairly used to being alone, but at least before I could recognise an accent, or speak my mother tongue, or-” She didn’t really know what it was she missed. She could barely say what home was, so sheltered was she. “It was so much easier at home.” Jane sighed, for she knew that she would never be home again. She belonged nowhere, and that was the most painful knowledge of them all.
What do you aim to do here?, he asked, but she could hear the meaning beneath it. Jane glanced over the bar, to where the sand roiled and broiled, the colour of copper beneath the sun. She thought to herself that she had never felt the sun like this in Angora. It was so much more violent here. “I have no idea,” Jane confessed, “I honestly don’t know what there is to do here. I got sent here because they didn’t want me at home anymore, and then I found out that my aunt and uncle had no idea I was coming at all,” she laughed a little, bitterly, spit it out between notes of childish humour. “So right now, I’m just coasting on charity. I suppose I’d like to do something with my life, but what would I know? I’m just a silly mare, anyway.”
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