[AW] Consideration For Calmer Seas

[Raglan]

He had never been much for worship, never much for gods that weren't of his own making. No, the Silvertongue lad with ruises limning his knuckles, with blood seeping from clenched teeth and eyes darkened with experience had never had the privilege of religion. Faith was something that a soul craved when all other needs had been met, when the belly was full and the mind wasn't full of desperation and doubt in the humanity of the world. Faith was something that was foreign to a street rat with thieving fingers and a quick grin. 

He was a Crow and that was all the religion he needed. 

Yet, the Veneror Peak and the temple that sat upon it was still a place of wonder for the youth, a point untouched by the filth and stench of moral decay. He could be Raglan, just Raglan, here. He didn't have to be a Page to the Crown, a trainee healer to the Regent, he didn't have to be his successes and he didn't have to live up to the expectations of the persona that he had knitted together from circumstance and necessity. He could leave all of that behind, could shed the skin that he kept in such good condition that even his fellow Crows didn't know that there was something else that lurked there at the Silvertongue's molten core. 

Just Raglan. 

Truthfully, the lad hadn't had much time to spend with Just Raglan - the boy that he was, but the boy he knew nothing about. That boy got left behind in the alley where he had been tossed after birth, he supposed. What the Silvertongue understood about Just Raglan is that he was leagues more kind and empathetic than the Crow could ever fathom, that he loved and mourned and had nothing of the fierce desperation, none of the blood and grit caking his skin that the winged youth had grown accustomed to. Just Raglan wasn't morally ambiguous, wasn't dangerous, didn't crave fortune and violence in retribution for what had been done to him. 

Raglan scoffed at such a notion and murmured into the dark doorway of the temple in which he stood, "Just Raglan has no drive. He'd have gotten us killed long ago."

@Rhoswen  BABEHH

[Rhoswen]

She didn't know why she was here; here of all fucking places. This godforsaken chapel set on high, looking down upon them all with those sanctimonious stained-glass eyes, casting judgment upon them as though they were heathens condemned to eternal doom. As the auburn woman ascended the summit of this towering peak, she took a moment to pause and look back upon Novus herself. The earth sprawled far and wide before her, as though it were a toy model to observe and tinker with. From here on the mountainside the great jagged crests of the Arma were visible; Denocte's formidable gateaway, and deep within her chest bloomed a spasmic wrench of rue. Rhoswen found herself caught between a rock and a hard place, although perhaps caught was not the right word. Raum, with lips made of mercury and eyes carved from the sea, had railroaded her into this. 

Onward she surged, higher and higher until at last the cathedral laid tall before Rhos' stormborne gaze. Without pausing, Solis' daughter clattered noisily into the shadowy depths, throwing caution to the wind in her ire; silken sanguine curls dancing violently about her fine swanlike neck. There was arsenic in her veins, cyanide on her tongue. Why was nothing ever simple? 

It was as she moved through the darkness with heedless speed, lost in the hot magma of her thoughts, that she collided quite suddenly with the hard flesh and bone of another. Rhoswen's breath hitched forcibly, stuck in her lungs as electric waves of shock heaved and billowed throughout her body. Brought to an abrupt halt and swung to the right upon impact against the stranger who was, by far, a great deal taller than herself, the red-haired woman reeled back her neck and shook her head as though trying to rid herself of the surprise numbing her mind. She was quick to react, ashen eyes narrowing through the dim light so that the candlefire might illuminate this stranger to her. It did not take long for the siren to realise, however, that this was no stranger at all. 

His scent was saturated with moonlight and woodsmoke, an everlong hallmark of Denocte, accompanied by those curved horns, driedblood skin and the distinctive green garnet on his high head - Rhoswen instantly relaxed. "Raglan," she breathed, "my apologies." Rarely was Rhos bashful, but in this instance she felt a swarming cloud of frustration at how she had let anger and angst blind her so; she might have not have been as lucky to bump into someone so familiar. 

@Raglan this took 5ever sowwy 
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