The lake, she had always loved. For where still water settled, tranquility - indifferent and unburdened - followed. Here, no narrowed eyes could latch along the lines of her sharp, sinful body; only, of course, her own to gaze back up at features filled with a labyrinthic angst that haunted her long and low into Calligo's archaic shadows. The loss of herself, of any sense of self, buried furtively under her skin with the vigour of a parasite long bereft of sustenance, only to find it deep within this red ravaged woman. Many times Rhoswen had felt absent - a ship adrift upon an ocean with no name - but, she had come to accept this feeling with the knowledge that everything passed, and that Solis would guide her home. This time, there was no home to return to. And more troubling, perhaps no God to seek solace from. As a child, Rhoswen had been proud of her contempt and defiance in the face of all religion, but age and pain had brought belief to her doorstep where it was determined to stay. Solis had blessed her dreams, banishing nightmares of a dark, distorted goddess from the recesses of her mind and he had given the girl a purpose that she had promised to follow.
Until Raum.
A slow flood of pale aureate light spilled over Vitreus to hail the deluge of dawn, hues of amber and violet turned to watercolour upon the lake and as the burnished beauty of Solis drowned out the dark, Rhoswen released a sigh into the air: exhaling all the spent oxygen she had harboured in small, bruised lungs. Every hallowed morning she had come, casting a nameless glance at her daughter as she slept, before slipping out into the final hours of Caligo's reign to watch such a beautiful demise. To hail the day. It was a ritual Rhoswen had performed for every night spent in Denocte as an adolescent, until the very moment she had left, and never again had the Solterran believed she would find herself a citizen of this forsaken land again. Now she was back, the ritual had started once more. Swallows soared overhead, exalting the sun God with high-pitched hymns over and over again as they circled Vitreus' painted surface, the reflection emblazoned with Solis' house colour of gold. Rhoswen did not know what the future would bring; she did not know if her faux pas would be forgiven nor whether her guilt would ever abide, but she did know this:
The lake always seemed to attract souls. Those who were lost, those who looked for answers, and those who simply came to watch the sky paint it's mirror-like face in all the colors of the Gods. The ebb and flow of Calligo's realm often weaved around Vitreus, and like many, Renwick's soul hadn't resisted the indescrible pull in his soul toward the place. It too had stood at the edges of that mirror, what seemed like a lifetime ago, bleeding and wounded. It's ichor had bled down his chest and dripped into those crystal waters, tainting the waters as it frothed and bubbled in his grief and anger. Those stars had seen his tears, the Dusk had parted to give him the Night and it's solitude, Calligo's cold but comforting embrace.
The sun had seen his grin, too, when he'd pulled himself closed, and worn his scars with pride. Dawn had greeted him like an old friend, and had lifted him upward until he had thundered across those shoreline beneath the gaze of the Sun.
But there is no sorrow or joy which brought him down to the Lake today. He'd simply allowed that tether in his soul to pull him forward. With flowers wrapped around the messy curls of his hair, the scent of vanilla and lavender rolling off his skin in gentle waves as the wind whipped around his frame. The gilded night glinted in the light of dawn, illuminated in the soft warmth of his colors, dapples winking in and out of existence beneath the shadows of branches until they could not reach him.
Maybe there had been a reason, and she is silver. The color of the mountain's precious ore, the silken mist off of the ocean, the ardent fog which rolled from the tallest peak. Blessed with white flames for hair, illuminating those piercing sapphire gemstones of hers. Oh his soul has been struck, kicked with a blow made to splinter shields and wind the unprepared. A vision that had lingered, even after they had parted ways. His mind turned this way and that, but it always came back to her.
But his thoughts are interrupted with the presence of another. Renwick isn't surprised to find another soul here, as the Lake carefully revealed her treasures to him the closer he drew. The lost and the found who she collected and listened to with eager ears and offered silent comfort in return. This one is silver too, but her curls are the color of canyons scorched beneath Solis' magnificence. Beaten copper and polished bronze. Her eyes remind him much of his own, a fathomless silver. There are depths there in those shades many cannot discern from one glance alone.
"A pleasant morning, isn't it?" He greeted, his britone warm and charmismatic and he stilled at the water's edge. Silver eyes cast themselves over the lake, as it displayed Oriens' pastel banners and vivid declarations as Calligo withdrew her own for another day. "I always like visiting here when I'm nearby, the Lake always seems to clear the mind, helps you find answers you seek." Renwick commented idly, thoughtfully as his head tilted once more to regard the mare.
For Rhoswen, the break of dawn was an interval cast to divide two halves of a ruinous play. The meridian of both night and day brought the woman great malaise; her rhythmic adulation for Solis fell on, seemingly, deaf ears: He was not listening, He was not watching, and so come the fall of darkness she was left once again to thrash under the noxious gaze of Caligo's and her shadow. It was with relief that she stood upon the bank of Vitreus, drinking in a sight she had never once forgotten no matter how far her body and mind might stray from Denocte. A pair of swans swept over the kaleidoscope of watercolour, their necks arched high above strapping wings tucked neatly into a plethora of ivory down; beautiful creatures, beautiful but fierce.
It was as Rhos studied the pair that a floral, albeit musky, lilt accompanied the eastern breeze; bringing her knowledge of an imminent arrival. Her sanguine-silver skin glittered beneath a flush of apricot and violet light as her neck arced toward the man who approached from her left flank, and eyes the colour of hard winter rain ran briskly over his silhouette. That same crepuscular gaze revealed a flicker of faint recognition: burnished dappled skin, starlit eyes, sinewy shoulders to rival that of her brother's -- yes, she had seen this stranger before. His name escaped her, but a memory of old came cracking through the floodgates. Colours and faces rippled like ribbons in the wind, the ominous sound of trumpets accompanied the sight of war banners towered overhead: yes, she remembered the day Denocte had waved farewell to their troops. She had been so young - a child still in mind if not body, and yet so many of those conscripted had been her own age themselves. The recollection of this passing memoir was so clearly entwined with the face of this silver-haired individual that Rhoswen could only conclude she had glimpsed his face among the throng of soldiers: a survivor, a hero.
Such a recollection however, Rhos kept to herself. It had no purpose to serve this morning; not here, not now. They were simply two souls stood before a lake, relishing an hour of quiet before the world flared into cacophony and commotion. And relish it she would. It was with a steady unassuming gaze that she watched the man address her, listening as his voice swung and oscillated into the cool dawn air, filling the low sky with its cordiality. The last person Rhoswen had stood beside Vitreus lake had been Raum - years ago and the thought caused the pale woman to break her smoke-filled stare to search out across the water. Guilt: fervent and infernal.
"Yes, it is beautiful," soft words to conceal hard emotion, "though I come here every morning, I can't say I have any answers to show for it." It was with a cynical smile upon her features that Rhoswen turned back to the stranger, the knot in her stomach tightening still. "You are?"
It would of been a pleasant, if not a solemn surprise to know that someone out there, in the vast ocean of time — remembered him as he'd been. A boy marching to War, naive and eager, innocent with so much to learn. Filled with notions of Glory and the Gallantry of the Brotherhood he'd sworn to serve. Seen off by citizens whose voices reached higher than the tallest peaks, and whose grins had eclipsed the sun in their brightness — those sunbeam smiles and thunderous roars had lingered with him to the Arma Mountains and beyond. His heart grasped around them firm, his own personal War Song.
Such a boy had died upon the scorching sands of Solterra, speared through the heart and left to rot there, carrion for the vultures. Forged from those bones was a man, forged in the harsh realities of the Games of Kings and unfair odds. The realities of War, baptized in blood and grit, sand and spit and a hundred different curses invoking Calligo to give him her wrath and ruin, her luck and her strength. All those embroidered banners had been entrancing, the brave soldiers who held them had swept them all up in the heroic image of defenders and protectors. Each scar which lined lips and nicked their muscles a story worthy for a page in the tomes the Sages carefully inked.
Oh, the Man wrapped himself tight in his banners now, braided flowers in his hair and ran with the wind and exalted because he could. But he never forgot the boy who died in those dunes, that young foolish boy who everyone else forgot in the wake of something bigger, better, grander and oh so more charismatic. Everyone loved the roguish hero, the gallant but fearsome knight. The wolf with the rose. They didn't like the parts of the story where the boy became the man, faced with the truth of what such a man cost.
Ah, but the man didn't know the woman remembered a boy. This was just a story of two strangers stood at the lake for two different reasons. A chance encounter. Two souls who ebbed and flowed, and crossed at a point.
A flick sent long ombre strands against the breeze, momentarily adrift in the brisk morning air before they settled, plentiful and messily, around his hind hooves. His front ones touched idly at the water, daring to disturb it's mirror visage.
Yes, it is beautiful, though I come here every morning, I can't say I have any answers to show for it.
"Then, perhaps you are asking the lake the wrong questions?" Renwick countered, his tone still thoughtful. Whimsical in it's huskier notes and oh so distinctly denoctian. Her inquiry to his name prompted him to straighten and a familiar smile to appear on his lips. The one he used to charm the masses, the gallant smile of a knight at the faire. "Ah, where are my manners. I'm Renwick Theron." The knight introduced with a sweep of his head into a bow, low enough that the ample curls of hair fell forward in a curtain of pale cream as a leg extended out in front of him. "Lord Commander of the Brotherhood."
He straightened after a prolonged moment, all precision and practiced grace. His hair remained wild, if not a little more tousled than usual, as it fell back against his neck and scraped against it's knees in messy waves . Silver eyes, the color of the moon on a cloudless night, returned to glancing into storm greys. He's reminded of clouds which threatened to roar thunder and spit lightning, the foam of hurricane whipped waves which rolled into port. The glint of the dagger illuminated in Calligo's gaze. A cream dipped ear flicked in mild interest. Those were eyes of a dangerous woman, the unforgiving thorns of a rose not respectfully handled.
"And you are?" Her question is returned easily, with the tilt of a head and a ghost of a smirk.
Ash circled in the caverns of her gaze as she glanced up at the flowers entwined between the the ombre ribbons of his hair, considering them with an unreadable expression; a sharp, angular face that revealed very little. Within, however, Rhoswen's thoughts soared: she had once worn flowers in her own hair -- efflorescent daises set against the copper of her ribbonlike mane -- but the thought now brought only low mirth, almost embittered. Her life had sprawled and warped beneath the great pressure of her troubled mind, and upon a winter noon she had torn the string from her curls and smacked the adornments down upon hard broiled earth. She remembered the petals (white as moonlight, yellow as the sun) as they danced mournfully upon the sand before catching a desert breeze up and away, never to be seen again. What use were flowers when your world was falling apart?
"Then, perhaps you are asking the lake the wrong questions?"
The red fae's dark eyes were brought back to the man's face as she chuffed at his words, a sound caught between amusement and irony; perhaps he was right. Maybe she should not be inquiring into why recent events had occurred, but instead asking just how she could move on from them -- but that was a bleakness unknown, that was the noose around her pretty little neck. With Sabine's future to deliberate as well as her own, the new mother felt herself floundering in a mire of obscure ambiguity; what was the right choice? What would a good person do? Rip her daughter away from a father who clearly adored their child if only to sate the guilt and the desire in her blood, or dwell forever in this nest of crepuscular gloom -- fated to shrivel and die without the gift of her beloved sun. Surely a good person would pick the former; but if Rhoswen was anything - it was not particularly honourable. "Maybe," she offered little in the way of disclosure; who was this man, anyway, to pick at the scabs concealing her secrets.
Renwick Theron. Lord Commander of the Brotherhood.
Ah, yes. It made sense now: the visions of infantry marching, the cheers of a feverish crowd to push them on toward their muddied graves. The Brotherhood was an ancient armed committee that Rhoswen, of course, had heard of growing up in the hills and streets of Denocte, and here she was now, meeting their very Commander. The wind toyed with her girlish auburn curls, casting them about those ruby-glass cheekbones and across that elegant nape. It was not that she was unimpressed with Renwick's title more than she was unfazed, and I suppose a little guarded: this was a man who had slit perhaps hundreds of Solterran throats -- a warboy, a bannerman for Denocte's malevolence. There was nothing romantic about war; nothing respectable about the pursuit of victory. But, who was she to judge? What had she done to stop the bloodshed and the conflict? If anything, at such a raw age, Rhoswen had dreamed of marrying a handsome lieutenant with all the glittering medals to match. How her dreams had changed.
"Rhoswen Levoire," her cool voice melted into the glory that was their morning, "a pleasure to meet you, Sir." She had followed the suit of his politeness, and though her tone was tinged with the slightest trace of satire, it was light-hearted in comparison to her usual disposition. It was not often, either, that the red woman gave her second name - it seemed heavy on her tongue now, like a steel chain she had worked hard to forget.
"The Brotherhood is still alive and kicking, then?"
Sometimes there was a need to use something to cover up the cracks, to cover up the scars and to detract from the way the earth warped beneath hooves. To chase away the thoughts of dark clouds overhead, a bitter warning for worse days and terrible nights. Renwick braided flowers in his hair as a distraction, to remind himself that there were great and good things in the world worth fighting for. A handful had lovingly been braided at the eager insistence of an admirer, with a velvet muzzle pressed against his cheek. Others had been hastily braided by orphans, who looked at him as if he was the stuff of legends, and other foals who had soon joined in. The flowers covered up the grooves and cracks, brought a little bit of sunshine when the clouds got a little too heavy to stand beneath.
They also detracted from the wolf's teeth, a sharp and jagged maw foolishly overlooked in favor of believing the Knight one of Flowers and merry jousts. Rather than a Knight who had stood triumphant on a field of blood, a spear lodged in the throat of his enemy. Those moon colored eyes devoid of the life and mirth which often burned within them.
But that was such a minor part of it these days. Now that the banners had been stowed away, waiting patiently, eagerly, for the day that they might be called upon again.
Renwick responded to her chuff with a quirk of his lips, not quite a grin but more than a smile. It would be easy to assume a hundred different reasons why the red mare had come to Calligo's mirror, after all, there are stories buried here lost to time. They too, will become a story lost to time, when they're not only gone from this place — but entirely. Connected to the ones that came before by the singular knowledge that the Lake offered a sense of peace when the World became weighted with questions and difficult decisions. Ah, to hear them from the mouths of the departed, how many ghosts wandered here without their stories of woe and ruin spoken, and unanswered. How many whose visits were far happier?
There was nothing romantic about war, that was true. But then not many had seen it, they had not seen the blood and the terror in the eyes of their bannermen and their enemies.They had not set their naive eyes upon the battlefield in the aftermath. When souls raged and whirled, separated from their mortal bodies and loved ones, all for foolish and selfish reasons. Reasons they never understood. He had gone to war like that, so naive, so foolish. So gallant the bards in the inns had made it sound, even when he had squired, he could not have known the true reality until he was in the thick of it. Renwick had received glory, but it had been a shallow feeling. Ash in his mouth as Rhen congratulated them, even if his eyes never matched the smile plastered on his dark maw. The cheers did not bring the warmth he had remembered, medals did not bring the dead back. Time did not make the scars fade.
Renwick did not use his title lightly, but honor demanded he announce it, regardless of the weight it carried.
Rhoswen Levoire.
Silver pools glittered and glimmered in the light as he inked that name into his mental home, committed the image of her beside it. Halo'd by Dawn's light. "Please, the pleasure is mine, Lady Rhoswen. But, Renwick is fine. I despise titles." The knight muttered, a grimance upon his features. "Makes me seem older than I am." He added as an afterthought, a low chuckle sounding in the back of his throat.
"We never left, really." Renwick answered easily enough, his gaze flicked back over the waters momentarily, before they returned to Rhoswen's. They had faded, it was true, away from the image of Denocte's army to an image which brought joy. The feeling of protection. "The World is changing once again, and we would not sit idly by as it does, for better or worse."
