So this was Dusk. The word, the time, and the place. She had found herself in the swamps of the Dusk nation, and every step sucked at mud beneath her hooves. Latently, she wondered if she had wandered too far. But who cared, it wasn’t like she had anything waiting for her back home. No purpose, no lover, no one who cared about her. Maybe Galileo, but the truth was that it was lonely, Solterra. The whole of Novus was a lonely world that had no want for her in it. Sometimes she felt like she was an entree, something to digest while the world waited for the action to start.
This place was not the most beautiful that she had seen, but the time of day managed to turn it slightly elegant; the sunset shoved itself through the haze of fog and condensation. Jane felt it like sweat on her skin, climbing to her joints. It smelt of rain and musk, and in the faint corners of her eyes she imagined figments.
I should head home, I shouldn’t be here, Jane thought, stopping under a tree that looked remarkably akin to a crow’s foot in the way its black bark cracked and splintered as it curled. Yet there was peace in this place, and she managed to blend in. Dark coat was marred only by the rivers of gold that streaked her body.
Jane, came a voice, and she turned around suddenly, as it sounded like her mother. Her gaze fell upon a bird, a heron creeping through the undergrowth. It made eye contact with her for a moment, but clearly didn’t register her as a threat. A golden leg sank deep into muddy water, its feathers white yet speckled with mud. “You and me both, buddy,” Jane found herself saying, although she didn’t know what she meant. The heron regarded her lazily, its stance proud and arrogant. It cared for nothing, she thought, nothing beyond the next bug or fish that would keep it alive.
Jane glanced at the sky. She should have left hours ago, but yet she stayed. The moment of elegance had passed, and it was suddenly apparent that she may well be spending the next innumerable hours in a patch of mud. Oh well, whose loss was it really? Jane looked back to the heron and decided to stay near it. But as she decided that, a crack in the woods sounded and the bird took to flight.
Moonlight hissed through the trees like a rumour. One ear tipped back, and she remembered the last time she had been caught by a creature in the wild. At least now she was full bellied and slightly more toned, although starvation had certainly left its mark. She could at least try to trample a sand viper, but who knew what lived in these woods. Who knew what lay in wait, beneath the waters and the mud, watching her…
RUIN and RAVAGE
make me your priestess
rip me to pieces
♛
T
he muck was a warm ooze that pulled in the things around it - sucked them beneath the surface, trapped and squirming, until the breath left its lungs. For smaller things, it was certainly a sentence of death - for the larger ones, usually not so much. But that did not stop the Tinea swamps from trying, grabbing lazily at passing hooves. Pieces of it left with its visitors - clinging to the fur of their legs, shoulders, and sides. The more its visitors took, the more the swamp wanted to take back — so its mud became stickier, less liquid and more ooze. Now, it irritated the skin - like an unpleasant reminder that those it once claimed were still here, hidden just beneath the surface of the rot.
And so was she, rising only after the swamps spit her out. Her golden bones too foul, too rich, too powerful to be contained in the muck and grime among the rest of its dead. She had spent the days as the one hidden among the trees as her body composed itself. As she laid at the base of a tree, the golden crown above her head had spilled over and poured golden ichor over her eyes and skin. It burned, and she knew she was alive.
Once she knew, she steadied herself on gilded hooves and moved through the swamp like something akin to a wraith. Her steps were silent and her breath just as warm as the humid, sticky air around her. Golden eyes drank in the landscape as far as they could see — which, admittedly, wasn't particularly far in this fog. It all seems so familiar yet so different. (How long has it been?)
Here the near-ghost was, almost lost in her thoughts as she wandered the swamp. It pushed her towards civilization, as if she was now wholly unwelcome and it was ushering her out of its home. She did not care, so her pace remained at a lazy amble. The muck did not suck in around her hooves; it did not want her.
Eventually, she stopped and her gaze fell upon the bay and gold-streaked back of Maiden @Jane. The young mare was preoccupied by a swamp-bird — those things might as well be the rats of the swamps, second behind only catfish: the cockroach of the swamp.
Ophelia (is that what I am called now?) must have spent minutes staring at her from the half-guise of one of those tall, arching trees. She was not particularly hidden — she didn't try to be, at least — but Jane didn't seem to be particularly observant right now, either. The two weren't far away from each other to begin with but, eventually, Ophelia lifted a leg and stepped forward... snapping a twig unexpectedly beneath a cloven hoof.
The bird immediately took flight; it knew better than to stay, but did Jane? One ear flicked lazily at the sound and vivid eyes regarded Jane as the mare stiffened; Ophelia's head tilted curiously as a mess of ivory mane fell into and also away from her gaze. The crown atop her head glinted dully in the drab moonlight... her skin's translucency as hazy as the mingling Tinean fog.
The ivory and gold wraith closed the gap and came upon the young mare from behind, her semi-prehensile tail curling itself along the backs of Jane's hocks. Not a grab — just a light brushing against — but it may surely spook the bay maiden nonetheless as the kirin stepped out from behind and stood alongside her.
"The Tinea Swamp is not friendly at night, you know," golden eyes meeting Jane's similarly colored ones. She did not break her gaze, even as the two drifted into temporary silence.
Jane had been taught that beauty was the be all and all of her life. Her golden coat gleaming beneath the sun, she had been readied as a spouse. Then she would become a mother, and then, like the countless mothers before her, she would die beneath the weight of her wrecked and obliterated body. Ruined by the failure of her parenting, ruined by her uselessness. Once that spouse had selected her as His, she would be a beautiful newlywed before she finally faded away beneath knowledge and education she would never use again.
So there was a grudging respect whenever she found something that wasn’t beautiful. The dale where she’d spent every Spring, was beautiful in the way of mint grass and skies like the outside of a seashell. Winter had been biting, but yet beautiful in its own way.
The swamp, the Tinean swamp, was not beautiful. No matter how one tried to twist it, this place was not beautiful. There would be no wonders here, no grass glinting as an omen of survival. Only the dark mud, darker even than she was. But a lack of beauty did not mean the lack of beauty’s feeling. There was a type of awe that lingered in the pit of her stomach. She regretted the sensation of the swamp trying to pull her into it.
A form rested beneath the murk, one she did not dare interrogate. Join us, the swamp seemed to say; the trees appearing like skeletons, Join us and be ghastly. It was not a request. But Jane was blessed with the very equine invention of ‘luck’. By all accounts, she should have been dead long ago. But she had survived starvation and serpents in the desert. Her limbs were strong enough to avoid the suck of mud on her hocks.
A bird caught her attention. Standing in the ooze- yes, ooze, like a massive wound on the face of the earth-, she watched the bird. Its body was an attempt at light, but ultimately a failure. When it moved, she could see that its feet were large and splayed. They would have been yellow if not for the fact that they were completely obscured by the mud.
But the burst of a twig, and the bird took flight; mud dripping from his feet. Jane froze; gauging danger. She would run if she had to, but she did not know this place. She was also 19 hands, a considerable height that was possible to cause damage. The suck of the mud would pull her in, if she ran, and she would be slowed.
Something brushed her back legs and Jane’s soul nearly left her body. She jumped and spun, mud being forced to let her go. The gold of her coat that would usually have been marvellous was rendered drab and dark under the mixture of swamp and dusk. Before her stood a near cadaver of a horse. Bleached the colour of bone, before her stood a wraith. A spirit. An omen. Jane took a cautious step backward. Of course, Jane knew that a spirit would never be bested. Still, she’d try to run if she had to.
The Tinea swamp is not friendly at night, you know.
Jane sucked in her breath; her stomach sucking and gripping at life like the swamp also did. A spirit would not give warning, she told herself. “Very few places are,” she finally managed to say. “Sorry, you frightened me.”
@[Ophelia] / speaks / this took a decade omg im so sorry
