[P] divinity in our bones

[Caine]

c a i n e

take my hand. feel my heart.
tell me what's wrong with it.

H

e closes his eyes as a storm of magnolia petals swirls in a crescendo across his skin. They drift and settle like fragrant snowfall along his spine, and he stares at them for a moment too long, his silver eyes darkening a shade too much, before they tremble and fall from him like raindrops. 

His steps are painstakingly precise as he winds through the maze of fallen petals, not one disturbed from its summer slumber.

The festival is a maelstrom of tumbling flowers and sparkling wine, and Caine is utterly, utterly out of place amongst the revelry. Not that he hasn’t tried  — obsidian locks cascade down his neck like black silk, his mane and forelock freed from the braids that normally weave across his crown in knots and swirls. For him, it is a drastic change. 

But he is a boy made corporeal from shadows, and the shadows do not let him forget. For — how did Agenor put it? The brighter the light, the deeper the dark; and Caine’s trailing hair bleeds like freshly spilled ink across the glade.

The stink of smoke still surrounds him like a bad perfume, and he is half tempted to pluck a flower crown from a passing festival-goer just to drive off the smell. The moment Isorath had left the podium after the Regime's ill-received declaration (furious — Caine had not needed the blood bond to tell him so), the Harbinger had been one of the first to depart the kingdom in a rush of black feathers. 

Nothing would keep him willingly behind a wall. He had been locked, isolated, caged, for his entire, bleak existence — and now that he had finally tasted freedom (however conditional it was) Caine would sooner burn at the stake for his sins than loose it so soon. And instead of turning towards the sands of Solterra, he had headed for the forests of Delumine after deciding that he’d had enough of unrest for a bloody century. Until the Denoctian Regime realized the extent of their foolishness, he would carry out his Garde tasks elsewhere — he doubted the Prince would miss his company, anyhow. 

A daisy drifts languidly towards where he stands, far away from the crowds. Silver eyes lift to determine where it had come from, and widen when they settle on caramel curls and rose-tinted skin as she passes. A girl — a child. For a moment, Caine does not breathe. His telekinesis plucks the flower from the air and holds it there, fluttering like a captive butterfly. 

A girl. A child. It is too late for him to stem the memory that is summoned. 

It was the only time he wept for a life he had taken, tears mixed with blood dripping from his cheeks as her small body slipped to the ground like a mangled doll. Vacant blue eyes, rimmed with tears that never had the chance to fall, stared up at him from the ground. It was the first time he had wanted to turn the blade he held with a trembling limb, and plunge it into his broken, broken heart. Barely out of childhood himself, Caine had not been fully conditioned, fully corrupted — it was the reason why he could never bring himself near a child, even now. A part of him had died when he had killed her.

The little girl’s eyes, when she turns to stare at her daisy and then at him, are the same shade of winter blue as the girl he had stabbed in the heart, so many years ago. 

“I believe,” he says at last, his tongue turned to lead, “that this belongs to you.” The flower hovers between them, frozen in space, frozen in time. He remains as motionless as a marble statue, and his smile does not touch his eyes. 

But it never has, and it never will. 

@Sabine | "speaks" | notes: excuse the rust, but super excited for this thread! <3

rallidae

[Sabine]

sad birds still sing

 
Ethereal, she drifted. The plush red-lavender hue of her skin shifted into a labyrinth of colour as she swam through a sea of emerald grass, floating beneath lanterns that sang their own hidden song - bumping and brushing against the oaken leaves overhead. Could you tell she was touching the earth? So gentle were her steps, so doused in grace - she might have been a roseate cloud set to sail the skies. Innocence was a gossamer gown; its fabric draped over her glass hips and marble ribs, caressing her avian frame with a mother's touch - softer than Rhoswen's own.

Here, the earth spun a second slower, the birds sang a little longer into the burnished twilight and when she called, the flowers answered. What was loneliness to Delumine? A whisper on a forgotten summer evening or the soft down of nightingale setting in to roost. It was there, it was present, but it was eclipsed by the dawn chorus and the celestial beat of a sacred drum: a new beginning just for you. 

And yet, with all things, there was a price to pay. For her quietude was drowned out by the loud silence of her parent's rift. It grew - knotted and bruised - with each passing day, and in her heart she feared a repeat of what had happened on the steppe. Acton had seen it too; she knew that look in his lupine eyes, for she felt it stir in her own. What would become of their oh-so-fragile future? Even the Gods could not say: not Solis, not Calligo, Sabine felt their impotence like a cross nailed into her bones.

But as the evening drew on, the girl felt her mind riding away from the fissure between Rhoswen and Raum. It is easy to think of simpler things when you are surrounded by beauty. And, then, it was as she skimmed in and out of the ancient soaring trees (whom she now considered to be old friends) that the sight of him was born. At first he might have been but a shadow in the corner of her eye: a thick, nebulous black that lingered on and on, but with a fleeting glance, Sabine realised this was no shadow, but instead a spectre. 

Behind glacier-blue eyes she peered up, tracing the strong sure lines of his dark legs, wondering perhaps if they might ever end, cascading across a chest that she was sure concealed a thousand secrets, until at last reaching his gaze. Molten silver, permeated by touches of graphite, and they hold her like a steel clasp, stealing her breath for a second too long. Sabine, too young to see the darkness writhing like a living beast beneath his cobalt skin, offered the only thing she knew to be her own: her smile. It was tempered by the shyness in her throat, and was gone before it could stain her expression; but he could not have missed its light, its honesty. 

What was an enigma like he doing in a world of fairytales and blue-eyed children?

Sabine's gaze broke from the stranger's to glance down at the grass, before flitting back up again to watch as he outstretched the swaying daisy she had used to replace Acton's illusion. She had not even noticed it had fallen from her mellow-blond curls. 

"Oh," Sabine breathed, catching his leaden stare and tight smile, "yes" and quickly she pulled the flower to her chest, feeling hot beneath the weight of this man's caliginous attention. She did not smooth the daisy into her hair but instead twisted it anxiously round and round against her skin, suddenly unsure of herself. "Thank you, sir."



@caine <33