I t was officially winter, but it didn’t feel like it. In the tiny alley by her home, she lingered and sipped at the coffee that had been bestowed upon her by a waitress who may as well have been a saviour. It was the early hours of the morning, but no sleep had graced Jane’s eyes the night before, and that didn’t seem to change.
At home, the fields would be covered in snow. Many of the mares would be close to their due dates, round with foal and limping on legs like sticks. The stallions would be discussing plans for the kingdom. Jane had lived through 3 Avalonian winters, and none of them had been particularly comfortable. It had been near the end of Winter that she had finally left; the snow starting to melt beneath her hooves with every day that had passed. Life had slid like sleet behind her, and she had faced the Solterran summer.
Her ear tweaked, and she turned her head to see one of the former maids of her aunt’s and uncle’s. Her name was… Ampiphane. Jane tilted her head and called, so the mare turned her head. They were around the same age, and although their social rank was not breachable back then, there was an affinity spawned by their characters.
“My lady, how wonderful it is to see you here.” “Don’t bother with those titles, I am no lady now,” Jane snorted and tipped her nose toward the other side of the table where she currently sat. “Drink with me, I’ll pay for you.”
“No, you don’t need to-”
“Of course! It’s only right, and for an old friend too.” The definition was a liberal one, considering she had only spent over two months in that house. But time moved strangely in Solterra, both faster and slower. “At least spend some time with me, before you do what you were planning.”
A slight reluctance slipped over the palomino filly, but she sat down before the table. Her ear twitched. Something appeared to be weighing on her mind, judging by the apparent desire to run. “Your mother has had a son!” came a sudden rush of words, and Jane paused in the middle of sipping her coffee.
“Please repeat yourself,” she said before the other could run. “Word has reached us from Avalon that your mother has had a colt. Named Evox.” Regret and pain were knitted upon her brow. “Please don’t tell the mistress that I told you.”
Would Jane have ever learned otherwise? Regardless of her suspicions, she nodded at what the mare said. Finally, the other left to do duties, and Jane was left with her thoughts in the swirling, empty alleyway.
She paid for her coffee and stood, shaking a little bit. Without thinking, she began to walk, making her way along the main street with no direction in mind. Her mother and father had the colt that they had wanted. The prodigal son, the sacred child. No doubt he would be doted over, free from all sins that a female could commit. Not him, not an heir.
Jane was unwanted now. An extra limb to the Vogelstein family, and what more? No skills existed in her to give her meaning, and the money would soon run out, although she would never tell Veil that. There was no need to worry her. Jane slipped around the city, wraith-like. What would it matter to any of them, if she disappeared? If she died? What good did she cause anyone?
Pain stung her eyes and she blamed the dust, settled as it was in the winter weather. No snow reached her here, and rain was rare, but the dust had been weighed down against the cobblestones. She did nothing but slide her body around the different horses that came her way; the strange underbelly of folks who woke at this hour. The merchants, the carpenters, people of use to society. Not like her.
Finally, Jane found herself at the wall. She climbed up the stones until she was facing the desert. Miles of sand, an ocean of sand. Just as much an ocean as the Terminus Sea was, so far away. “Freedom,” she sighed to herself, “How I hate the word.” She closed her eyes and wished for imprisonment, wished for servitude. She wished for the chapped hooves of labourers and people who knew crafts beyond that of idleness and making tea. Salvation was out there, she hoped, but what form could it possibly take to a mare who had not learned to see.
i've never felt more alone it feels so scary getting old
Warbird remembered the way the villages in her homeland changed in the winter. It was never truly warm in the land beneath the Valkyr’s wings, but when enough time would go by for her to get bored, great Skadi would spread her snowy blanket over the world so she may move freely on her great skis. This was the season to hunt great beasts with bow and arrow, as Skadi’s chosen weapon. The people would darn great, heavy and go up into the mountain-homes. And when night came and the cold was deadly they’d dance into their shelters for fire and drink and love, all warming things.
She was a creature of limitless challenges who always sought to reach that outer edge, the fine line between what was survivable and what, beyond it, would mean death. Nothing in this land could compare to the harshness of her homeland’s winters, so Warbird sought the worse extreme: Solterran summers were brutal and deadly, and so this was the land she associated herself with.
She spent the better part of the day buffering through chilly winds above the Solterran city proper. It was her version of light training, as well as a way to keep an eye on things beneath her; she’d only been in Solterra a short time, but like her mothers, Warbird was a protective spirit. That was part of the driving force of the Valkyr, to protect the noble dead and their promise of an afterlife-- and so, unconsciously, Warbird had gathered her adopted home beneath her great and powerful wings and had taken it upon herself to keep vigil over it. She’d not yet had the chance to approach Adonai and tell him of this (tell, not offer, but tell. A valkyrie did not ask, they told) but she felt the time was coming soon.
Coiled around her back like some horrible cloak, Stykkislange nestled deep in her mistress’ powerful shoulders. A serpent of the deep sea, she had more tolerance for the chill than your everyday garden variety snake-- but Stykki was a horrible, persnickety creature, always looking for a chance to vocalize her discomfort. And so it was with great pleasure that she squeezed the middle third of her body tighter around Warbird’s stomach and forced a false shiver.
Warbird rolled her eyes and couched her wings, falling into a shallow dive; she flared them and looped round a large, domed spire, before landing at a trot on the Solterran outskirts She kicked up a cloud of bone white dust in her wake. Nippy winter wind turned desert sand into a lash and bit at her skin, but she paid it no mind; weather conditions were negligible, and not snow nor rain nor horrific storms of dust brought her to heel. She was Valkyr. She had a job to do. Unbothered, Warbird set herself upon patrol.
She came a third of the way along her route when she espied a young creature clambering to the top of the wall; and she was just within earshot when Jane lamented her curse of sovereignty. It struck Bird as quite unconscionable; she pulled up alongside the earth-hued doe (a tall girl, a strong girl, but not as tall or as strong as Warbird) and fixed her in a curious, red-gloam look.
“You would prefer chains and orders, then?” she queried, unapologetically blunt. “Curfew and imprisonment?” It was an asinine thought, to blaspheme the concept of freedom.
Warbird thought of the eternal call of the people of her mothers in the far-away sky, the aurora map constantly dragging her onward, and how sweet the freedom from the perpetual ache in the deep of her bones would feel.
The serpent on her back lolled her head upside down, fangs flashing. Stykki knew firsthand what a Warbird lecture was like; she considered sliding away into the desert to look for something to eat.
@Jane | "Speech."
this is most assuredly NOT what you asked for
The cool rankled at Jane’s consciousness, ever there underneath the resistant, stubborn heat of Solterra. The sun never cooled its viciousness, and she imagined she could feel it burning at her skin. Burning her up, like hell. Where would she go, when it happened? When she died, would something happen to her body or would she linger; deathless among all this chaos. There were those in Novus who gained immortality. How dreadful, Jane thought, to remain aimless among this land.
She looked out over the sands. In the winter they were white, and Jane imagined they could pass for snow if their texture had only been different. It had been white when she arrived here too, under cover of moonlight. Her body half-rotten by the snake bite, her mind wasted by the wave of trauma she had never before experienced.
Now she was just bored. And she knew, she did, how lucky she was to be bored. But it hurt like a genuine ache. The lack of direction, it strangled her. Oh, to be of use. So deep in her mind was she that when she spoke, the response of another nearly sent her leaping over the precipice.
But Jane monitored the other, carefully, cautiously. Her eyes went to the snake wrapped around the pegasus’ frame. The other was striking, clearly an authority. Not that Jane had heard anything about her.
“I might,” Jane said, tipping her chin defiantly. She knew how ridiculous she sounded, but at least it would mean her uselessness was not by choice. The waste of her life would be out of her control.
ooc: im so excited for this omg
i've never felt more alone it feels so scary getting old
