The days pass one after the other in ceaseless repetition: at morning the waves recede, revealing the ocean’s floor and all the treasures it hides. The thunderbirds swarm angrily overhead, lightning flashing between their talons as their massive wings create wind and storms with every beat. Occasionally two will face off against one another, and the colliding winds set off a hurricane of swirling rain and fury. By evening the waves come crashing back in to reclaim the shores, sweeping into the Court like a thief in the night.
It is when the sky grows dark, and the waters finally begin abate after the recent tsunami, that she arrives.
She emerges from the sea, seaweed and seashells and pearls tangled in her hair, so that it appears even more a chaotic and untameable mess than it already is. The miniature stars painted across her skin sparkle brilliantly, seeming to glow with intensity with each step that brings her closer to her Court.
But it is her eyes that shine the brightest, as brilliant as identical moons set in the galaxy of her body.
Caligo wanders the streets of Denocte, leaving no street or pathway untraveled. Every face she sees she beckons to her with a smile and a gesture. “Come, follow me,” becomes her mantra - and soon enough, half the Court is following the demigoddess. She says little else, trusting in them to keep faith.
When a sufficient number of followers have answered her call, she heads back to the ocean. The sand gives way beneath her hooves, water from the earth pooling in her hoofprints. Soon enough she climbs an outcrop of rock that looks out over the ocean and comes to a stop, letting the horses of Denocte crowd around her.
Overhead, the thunderbirds circle - but past them, the stars begin to wink into existence one by one.
“Look,” she tells the children of the Night Court. “Look above, and tell me what you see.”
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Night Court's patron goddess is in Denocte on a mission: but what is that mission? You'll have to follow her to find out!
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When one consciously chooses to walk the path of a deity, at what point must one ask oneself questions about religiosity, and about the difference between pragmatism and piety? Is the prudent choice to take note of a powerful being's actions itself a form of worship, tacitly falling in line through mere acknowledgement of the deity's influence? Perhaps it was difficult to say how Raymond felt on the issue.
What he knew, at least, was that in the shadow of murderous wings and under the threat of the sea's depthless wrath, he - the mortal - had perishingly few options, and survival served him better than ideological purity.
So when the night mother came a-calling, the red stallion answered with silent intrigue rather than awed enthusiasm, teeth set on edge by the lingering presence of thunderbirds overhead and the seeming nonchalance with which she moved about in spite of them. Her perspective of the natural and biological disasters that had done their best to bring her kingdom low was wholly alien. Yet more proof, then, that gods could never fully be trusted where the affairs of mortals were concerned, even in times they tried to be inspiring.
I guess that kind of answers his previous line of thinking.
Raymond looked up as he was bidden, watching the occasional occlusion of twinkling starlight by the circling thunderbirds, and for a moment he said nothing. An optimist's heart might have grasped in the exchange some assurance of Denocte's indomitable spirit, how even amongst the stormy threat of death and dismemberment a glimmer of hope persisted in the heavens. Raymond could imagine such an outlook, but his view was far less poetic. He hadn't come this far by virtue of fine poetry.
"Targets," he replied blandly, unconcerned with how unimaginative such an answer might make him seem. Until the thunderbirds were dead or gone, their destruction and the defense of Denocte were his primary concerns, and unless Caligo intended to turn them all into turtledoves now that she had an audience he intended to keep his preoccupations.
***
Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.
Isra of the broken world
“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
“The belly of the sea looked almost like a desert that had forgotten how the sweet the rain tasted. It looked as if it was a land of dreaming things. Shells void of their masters were turned up towards the sun as if all the mollusks had decided to grow wings and fly in the sky instead of die in the sea. Weeds swayed in the breeze instead of the ocean currents they their leaves looked both brighter and happier to drink of light instead of darkness.” Isra is nothing more than other story teller before the bonfires and all her listeners are nothing more than a wave of dreamers who almost flicker in and out of reality in the red-light glare of the flames. Their wounds are memories and their hope turns to embers as they look up and see bits of moonlight and lighting and nothing of the black devouring sea.
And when Caligo comes like a whisper of starlight that looks brighter than the blue-white core of the fire they all forget their wishes and their hope and they only stare in both wonder and a touch a fear. The air still tastes more of salt than moonlight and Isra remembers that when the walls trembled and some of them died that there was not enough star-shine in any universe to make the ocean look lovely as it consumed all they held dear.
Isra is the first to leave the fires and her body trembles with a cautious sort of hope and her eyes feel almost heavy with dreaming when she blinks and blinks and the body of their goddess never waivers. Some part of her, the one that remember the lash and burning and the cruelty of power, had hoped that when she blinked she would have seen only firelight and nothing of immortals.
Still she follows even though the open skies that seem almost alive with potential violence make her tremble with the need to run instead of walk. The strange birds (she has no name for them but strange) swoop low enough over head for her to remember she is no warrior and her people are so weary from the sea and all the other betrayals of their world.
Isra instinctively swings her horn in warning as a bolt of lightning flashes between clouds. Her body knows how to be a unicorn even if her soul is still a slave between cages of bone and strange skin.
The group of them stops before the sea and the words of her story rise up like a tide against the tightness of her lips. “And all the sands for the first time looked not like wet mud but like gold when the sun touched the places where ripples of coral jutted out from the earth.” Isra for a moment laments the darkness of the night and the way the winter seems closer to death than spring in the blackness.
Caligo is the only obvious light at all and Raymond when he steps forward looks once more like blood and victory before the silver-glow of their deity. Isra smiles then for the boldness of him and the way he sees the world in bits of black and white, things that are and things that are not. He's the balance to the way Isra sees patterns in the bits of light when she is brave enough to look up.
She can see winged horses in the lines of the stars, universes in the bits of blackness that seem to promises fullness instead of empty darkness. There are words written in the openings of the clouds and between the moons and constellations of Caligo's skin. The world is alive with a religion of dreamers, of things older than this world beneath them.
Isra looks up at the goddess with an echo of all that light across the ocean-blue of her eyes. “They have not fallen even though it felt as if every star tore away from the sky and there were no wishes left to dream of.” Her words feel thick with sorrow, dark enough that there are not enough stars in the sky and upon the goddess's skin to do more than crack through it with tiny bolts of light.
She is not a sea of churning hope in her bloody rags and war-torn hair, not a beacon of firelight which Isra so graciously told stories by until her voice is raw and hoarse just to ease the fears of the many, and not the experienced warrior that Calliope and Raymond seem to be on the battlefield... Yet she is alive, breath humming through her breast with every fluttering of her valiant heart, eyes weary and bright with the world before them, hope a flag so tattered yet waving, unable to be destroyed under the onslought of terror and imminent death. The phoenix comes from within the buildings, comes when feet shuffle and bodies rustle in the night. Under a starlit sky they follow their goddess to the edge of the sea where she stands tall above them all. On a self-anointed pedestal, the abysmal woman reigns over them all with only a simple request.
But, Moira wonders, what answer is it she wishes to hear ? Does she beg for the future, for days when the birds will be gone ? Perhaps she will tame the birds and anchor them as guardians of Denocte so that all who dare do it harm will think twice... Such inquiries spark her imagination, as simple as it is at times, but she is silent.
Raymond answers first, painting the war before them clearly, the damage they've taken and the lives they will defend before her eyes. Crowds are silent now, as moonlight begins to sparkle on sand, as hidden treasures buried by the sea resurface for them to feast their eyes upon. Is she the only one who looks out to the receded waters instead to watch the eyes twinkle there instead of the heavens above ? So many faces are heavenward, galaxies in their eyes, fear and hope radiating on their skin like a fresh layer of paint to hide the monsters that lurk within. Moira mourns, for she has become a monster for them. Willed herself to strike down beasts and birds, spilled blood of those only striving to survive just as they were. When she'd first returned to the walls of the city, she'd puked and puked in the alleyways that were not well trod. A healer's heart is not armored for battle.
Isra's voice chimes brightly, twinkling for all to gather round and flock to as they do their goddess. Prayer is something new Moira vowed to learn... She is still learning the hymns and praises that do not come to her tongue. "Do you wish us to divine our future, Caligo ? If we look hard enough will the birds retreat and our home be safe ? I see the light of a thousand eyes and ancestors shining upon us, I see their spirit there... Do you wish to put our home in the stars to be immortalized forever, frozen in a void to be only a remnant of memory ? What stories do you see with your cloak of night and breath of light, what do you ask of us now so near to danger ?"
Calliope 'The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red '
Calliope at the shore when Caligo rises from the waves like some monster cloaked in stardust and bits of weed. They rain from her in droplets of wealth while Calliope drips only blood and remnants of war. She's nothing more than another shadow along the ocean, cased in darkness, brine and blood.
When she watches the goddess move up the path from the sea she can only help but wonder if Caligo's insides would drip and glow like the light of the moon or if she would bleed as red as the rest of them. Calliope makes no move to follow the goddess. Only her eyes follow that bit of flesh and night-sky as it leaves the shoreline for the court. The horn upon her brow trembles for each step the goddess takes and it chants a song in vibrations she hasn't heard for so very long.
She remembers the Summit and all her fury. She remembers the birds who seems strange enough to be god-made. The battle wasn't enough to take all the violence from her blood and bits of it rise up as the sands rise up her hooves and the sea rises up against the moonlight.
It rises, rises, rises until the Goddess comes back with all the faithful in tow. Bits of lightning dance along her spine, weak and wild and nothing more than the faintest echo of all the things that rage and crack and boil inside her. Only Calliope could make lightning seem like a weak, foolish thing.
They are bleeding and broken and a goddess wants them to look at the night sky.
Her hooves carry her towards Raymond as he breaks the darkness with a glare of red and the taint of sweat and rage. Part of her wants to lean against him, to make their crusted wounds drip again like waterfalls. Calliope wants to many things in that moment but instead she only says, “What would it take to tear them all from the sky?”
And perhaps her horn lowers just a little and it's not the sky that she looks at but something that looks just like flesh and bone.
09-22-2018, 07:02 PM
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Their answers are as diverse as they are, as numerous as the stars in the sky. Caligo had expected nothing else; their differences were what made them Denocte, the Court of Dreams and Dreamers alike. The demi-goddess would have it no other way.
So she lets them speak and voice their opinions and observations, taking it all in with grace and silence. There was no such thing as a wrong answer - how could they be wrong, in something so subjective? Raymond might see only the targets that Calliope wished to fell from the skies, and Isra may be star-struck with the galaxies above, Caligo would let them see what they would, and she would not judge them for it.
She smiles and nods her head with each admission, grateful for their presence.
When @Moira steps forward, the demi-goddess has eyes only for her. It is after they have all said their piece that she finally stirs and breaks her silence.
“I will not lie to you - wishing the birds away will not make it so. They may look like good targets up there, but attack one and you bring the fury of the whole host down upon you. They are strong when they are together.” There’s more she leaves unsaid, attesting to the thunderbird’s importance and worth. It would not do to harm them, any more than they already have been. But words are wind, and the Court must find another way to be rid of them.
“The stars are a pretty thing to look upon, but they cannot help you now. They are too far, too removed from Novus to be of any use. No, you must be your own stars, and write your own destinies.”
She looks upon them all, Raymond and Calliope with their warrior hearts, Moira and Isra with their gentleness. She would need them all, and they would need each other.
“I ask of you to stand together, and with me. Denocte may have enemies, but these birds do not have to become one of them. If we can befriend them, we must. That is how we stop this madness.”
Caligo beseeches the Court to find its inner strength - these thunderbirds do not need to stay enemies of Denocte. Are her dreams feasible, or is it too late to calm the tempest?
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***STAFF EDIT: extended to midnight on October 6th!
Isra of the pieces
“And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you.”
Isra turns to watch the sea as the others come and whisper what they make of the stars. She tracks the waves, each one further up than the last and soon bits of kelp twist about her hooves, caught and left behind whenthe waves crash back out to the deep again. Parts of her feel like the moon and parts of her feel like the sea and she ebbs and flows and crashes in waves against both the night-sky and the horizon.
When she watches her goddess look over her like a shadow she feels as if she knows that she is Isra of the pieces. The queen is not only of the night, could never be only of the constellations and bonfires and silken sheets.
The world shifts around them and a bird flashes in the starlight and his wings sound like a distant storm that hasn't decided to go towards the sea or mountains. Parts of her story come back to her and she tucks her nose to her chest and whispers like those mighty wings overhead (in her voice is a storm churning miles and miles away). “And soon we ran and ran, the devils nipping at out heels as the world trembled and we thought the waves were soon to devour us.” Isra shudders with the memories of all the dead things and the bones.
Caligo speaks and she can still see the bleached bones and she can still smell the salt and iron of the places where Moira, Raymond and Calliope still wear the crusted echoes of war. Now when the shards of her sift like the tide she wonders partly why it feels like bitterness and betrayal. And Isra when she lifts her head from the darkness of her own shadow wonders if it's the birds, the ocean or the goddess that makes her feel that way.
“I will go.” Isra says and wonders why it feels to strange to feel the fire in her belly between all that dark betrayal (and she's unsure what sort of fire it is that blazes). “And if we becomes stars and they decide that stars do not make very good friends for a storm, then what?” Her words ring like a bell-- tolling, tolling, tolling over the horizon. Isra rings like a church-bell and a funeral-bell and her lips still taste like salt and blood when she chews at her lower lip.
No part of her is afraid of death, of the darkness and the pain and bolts of electricity coursing through her blood. But it doesn't mean she wants to die, not now that her eyes dance with dreams like a heroine's might.
Calliope 'I was born with lightning inside my bones and violence flowing in my veins '
There are few things in the world that Calliope trusts. She trusts her violence, that lion of fury sprawling in wait deep inside the marrow of her bones. The horn upon her brow is a loyal, thirsty weapon and it has ever drank deep of blood, torn though skin like satin and it's never dulled or worn to anything other than dangerous. She trust herself and the others like her that live by a dark sort of justice.
Calliope does not trust gods. She trusts 'monsters' that could have flown high enough to avoid war and chose not too even less. And she trusts gods that have power weak enough that they can do nothing for war and claim peace when the world is bleeding like a sore even less than both birds and all the corrupt gods she's known before.
Mistrust lights across her back and leaps from bone to muscle when she quivers with her rage and fury. Electricity runs down her wounds and while it's weak her horn is not when she moves close enough to count the stars on Caligo's flesh. “Strange.” Calliope says and it comes out like the growl of a storm, distant enough that the promise of thunder is still a promise and not a gravestone.
She doesn't elaborate. She only looks at those stars and starts to count them one by one until there are no more that she can see through the shadows of the darkness when a cloud passes over the moon like a curtain over a stage.
Until there are no more left.....
And in the silence, between the space where Calliope inhales and Caligo exhales, she whets her horn on the stone at the goddess's feet. Sparks of lighting flash along the sharp tip of her horn as if that point of contact isn't bone on rock but metal upon metal.
Calliope lifts her eyes to the queen's, to Raymond's and then back to Caligo and there is no mistaking the violence ebbing in that sea of silver lightning. “If they turn I will be there to convince them that even the stars are not without the ability to destroy when shaken loose.” This time it's more like a roar in the distance made by a lion instead of a storm, that pours from her lips like a volcano of vengeance.
10-04-2018, 08:27 PM
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For a fleeting second, the demigoddess was afraid she would find herself alone. Her heartbeat is a stutter inside of her chest, fluttering uncertainly as she waits for their response. Will they stand as one with her, like she asks? Or does their hurt and anger burn too strongly inside of them? Caligo cannot predict their answers; the Night Court has always been and will always be the black sheep of Novus, unpredictability is in their nature, and in her’s.
”I will go,” @Isra says, and Caligo breathes a sigh of relief - but it is short-lived. “And if we becomes stars and they decide that stars do not make very good friends for a storm, then what?” @Calliope whets her horn at Caligo’s feet, and for a moment she is entranced by the sparks that leap hungrily into the air.
“Then we will show them that our home is not their’s to ruin.” Her eyes meet Calliope’s, and the unicorn’s words create a stirring deep inside of her.
“I do not doubt you will. And if it comes down to that, I will be there with you-”
She takes a breath, filling her lungs with the salty air of the sea, her eyes returning to the thunderbirds circling high overhead.
“-But first we will try friendship. And if that fails, then we will drive them from our skies by whatever means necessary.”
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She inhales the night-sky and fury that rise like steam from Caligo and Calliope's words. Isra inhales and she exhales and each spark of lighting and each flash of meteors above their head is made of ink sculpted into words and then the words are twisted into shape and form and feeling.
Isra feels like dried kelp dragged along the sand behind the vibrancy of the two black creatures who seem so 'other', so wild and eternal.
She feels nothing like a moon and nothing like a unicorn. She feels like a page, blank and brittle and worthless but for the words scripted across the endless emptiness of her. Perhaps this is why she steps away from them as lightly as a doe and her eyes turn as wild as the sea under a dark and stormy sky. Perhaps that emptiness is calling, calling, calling to her to do something, to be as grand and lovely as they.
Her horn when she tosses it sighs like a butterfly wing instead of a storm and she knows that he thunderbirds will come for her first if they turn. She will be the first star to smoke and smolder in their translucent throats. Only briefly does she wonder what it is in her to cause her to look back to the lake and tremble for 'something'.
Is it the slave or the unicorn that rules her bones now? The story-teller or the queen?
“Shall we go now then?” Isra says, imagining the words dripping like ink and dreams (and barb-wire flowers) and ending in nothing that suggests a question.
