It is the middle of the day but you wouldn’t know it for the thick cover that the canopy provides in Viride, blocking out the sunlight and creating a dim, indirect glow. It is spring, and the forest is alive with noise and new growth. Shrubs sprout their soft green leaves and new grass shoots up underhoof as I walk along a well-worn path. The trees have already soaked up the sun’s newfound warmth and are thriving high above my head.
Viride is a different sort of wilderness to the mountains I have grown used to. In the mountains I feel as a phantom—nothing better than a wandering, soulless wraith. But here, among the forest, I could almost convince myself of being something less incorporeal. Here with my stripes, as I weave between the wide trunks of the trees, I can almost believe that I am still the tigress I once was when I first stepped off a boat and onto the docks of this land.
Do not be fooled; I am still feral and fighting the violence that hibernates in the empty spaces between my bones. There is still a storm-sea darkness in my sapphire eyes that I cannot be rid of no matter how hard I have tried. They are as quick and sharp as a blade, and my tongue as untameable a beast as the lustfulness of my magic. I am coming to find that I will never be anything but what the gods made me to be, even when I try to hide her behind court laws and civil conversation and righteous politics.
I do not know where I am going, only that the walls of the Night Court were suffocating and damning after being away for so long. I could not continue to wander the streets being stared at like I have returned from the dead. I would rather be elsewhere, in the unfamiliar, surrounded by the unknown. There is not much of that left in Novus for me, unfortunately, but there are less watchful eyes outside Denocte. Less watchful eyes in this forest.
I could almost convince myself that I am home, here. If it were a little more humid, if the plant-life were a little more exotic. I could almost expect to round the trunk of a particularly wide tree and find myself standing at the entrance to a familiar small village, looking into the eyes of a familiar people. A people I too let down, at one point. I am always walking away, and finding new places to destroy.
While her venture to Denocte over the winter months had not proved as fruitful as she had hoped, it had led the mare to some interesting places. It had forced her to realize that she knew very little about the other courts, about how her heritage spread to these places. This void in her knowledge needed to be rectified.
Towards the end of her stay she, like many others, had received an invitation to the lands of Delumine for a festival. Though the date of the event was still further into the future, the Solterran mare had decided to take the opportunity to familiarize herself with the land of Dawn, curious as to what well kept secrets the land held for her.
When she had looked upon map after map the woman came to the conclusion that the Viride was the best place to start, in no small part due to its proximity to the chain of mountains she would need to cross regardless. She had been grateful when the trees had begun to thicken, guarding against the remnants of winter chill.
The mare had heard stories of the forest, of souls that wandered forever lost in their depths. The canopy scattered the light into a pleasant glow above her while fostering soft shadows in the surrounding foliage. Each tree looked more like the last, and as she followed the worn trails left by the many animals before her, the woman realized just how true those stories could be. If the Sovereign had any need to rid herself of someone, banishment to the Viride would have been rather effective.
Nefertari melded with ambience, a balance of light and dark, her flaxen waves collecting bits of the forest as she brushed past. The peculiar gold markings on her knees and trailing down the bridge of her nose glinted in the bits of sun that managed to make their way between the trees. The mare wondered briefly if there were predators within the Viride, and if her presence would be known.
I know that I am not alone before I see whoever it is that has chosen to walk the forest with me. I know, because my magic hungers lustfully for their life energy, and I know it is no bird in its nest nor a squirrel upon a branch. The energy is too big, too large. The lioness in my bones wants to consume and I am almost tempted to let her.
I follow the source like a blind dog following a scent, my steps carrying me off my set path and elsewhere into Viride. My striped body slides in and out of the soft shadow of trees and past the reaching tendrils of unfurling ferns. I am more at home here in the woods than anywhere else in Novus, I realize. It is easier to slip back into the predator I was made to be here, to remember the tigress I had once been, the killer I’d had to unbecome.
Rounding a wide tree trunk brings me almost face to face with the other woman. We are but a few feet apart, now. I am watching her walk, watching the way the wan light reflects off the gold on her skin and the pale ivory of her hair. The lioness in my veins licks her lips and prowls and prowls and prowls. I try very hard to push her away, clearing my throat as I step out of the shadows.
They peel away from me like a second skin, revealing marble white splashes cracked and broken by the earthen tiger stripes covering me. My sapphire eyes are darker in the shade, the bright red of my paints and ribbons violent and feral like blood. “Headed west?” I am trying to remember my pleasantries; trying to remember who I was before the mountains and forget who I was after the temple.
Bloodlust is an unmistakable energy. It permeates the atmosphere like lightning and growls like a rabid dog. One does not need a sixth sense to understand they are in danger when a predator is near. But it does help.
She felt the ravenous presence only moments before she saw the source, her spine prickling uneasily. As if summoned by her thoughts of hell hounds and wild beasts, there she was, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a sleek tigress made to appear as a regal dame. The two women were similar in stature, both with delicate Arabian features, each moving like liquid through the underbrush. The air in the sparse distance between them felt thick with unspoken confrontation.
Nefertari nodded, golden orbs taking in the huntress before her. The earthy stripes along her pelt were broken up by splashes of cream, coloured a golden-green from the ambient light of the forest canopy, the stark contrast of ruby red drawing the eye to her various adornments. By all accounts the mare was a stunning creature, but in her years, the clairvoyant had found that often the most beautiful were also the most deadly.
“Yes,” she said cautiously, indicating the path she had been traveling. “I hear there is some festival taking place in Delumine. I thought I might indulge myself in a visit.” The smoke-hued mare chose her words deliberately, keeping herself guarded and a safe distance. The restraint the tigress showed seemed favourable, more an act of someone fighting instinct rather than a ruse to hunt a prey-thing.
The smaller woman did feel like a prey-thing, though. It was an uncomfortable position to be in, but she was determined not to let it show. If she was destined to die in these strange woods, she’d an inkling her visions would have been cruel enough to give her a taste of it long before now, and she did not feel the sickening dejavu that came with remembering events foretold. For now, she would be polite, but wary, as should any stranger when they come across another in secluded lands. The tigress could not fault her for that, after all. Self preservation was a universal sense.
It comes as a genuine surprise to hear that Delumine is hosting a festival. Of course, my time in the mountains will have kept me closed off from any and all communication from the courts, and my short visit in Denocte had not yielded any such information. And a short visit it had been. I can still feel the eyes of once-familiar faces lingering on my back as I walked, attempting and failing to conceal my face fully beneath my blue scarf. They had not known what to say to their once-queen, and I had not known how to look them in the eye.
“I was only planning on traveling through Delumine, but I was not aware of any festival,” I am trying so hard to not look like a rabid animal in a cage. I am trying so hard to not look like the kind of feral thing that one needs to be afraid of. “If you won’t mind the company, I would be in your debt if you would let me travel with you, only as far as the festival.” My tongue feels heavy, and words of civility are strange and foreign. I have forgotten how to be something other than a creature of the wild.
To be truthful, I am hoping that if the other woman allows me to accompany her it will give me time to practice how to be a mortal thing again. How to keep the divinity of my magic and my otherness at bay. I am trying to remember my benevolence, and I hope that she can help. I attempt to smile, and wait; anticipation thick in my throat. The forest is attempting to swallow me, and I am struggling to stay afloat.
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