aghavni
—
in which the Sun, having frozen, spurs a Hunt to its end—
I
f Father asked, Aghavni would insist to him that she'd tried to stay away. A half-truth; she was good at spinning those. She had insisted for herself to keep away from the island when the sun had lodged in the sky like a rusted key in a salted lock. To keep mercilessly busy with blowing the ink of her signatures dry as she worked through her horrendous stack of paperwork.
The half-lie to her half-truth was that she hadn't tried as hard as she could have. The emerald island had dug its shark-toothed barbs into her skin and she'd let it. Why should everyone else have all the fun? she'd asked herself. The answer she'd arrived at had left her wanting.
Her brow furrowed when she recalled how her voice had echoed—echoed—through the cobblestoned alleys of Denocte when she'd left for the markets that morning. An echo required emptiness. An empty cavern, an empty ballroom.
Denocte's streets, even dulled with sleep, had never before been empty enough to birth echoes. "Hello?" (hello?) (hello?)
Aghavni's frown soured as she tore off a vine from around her ankle and threw it into the shadowy underbrush. They kept doing that, lately. Plants—or parts of them, like flower petals and thin vines and leaves as sharp as needles—lodged into her fur, tangled in her hair, or snaked around her ankles like she were a magnet and they cast-off pieces of blacksmith's metal.
She could walk past a rose bush and a thorn would inevitably embed itself into her skin like a starving mosquito. It was infuriating, and eerie, and she wished dearly that they were all mere coincidences. She hadn't told anyone about it, thinking that doing so would lend her wish some merit.
Shaking her head (thinking about such oddities made her spine stiffen), Aghavni nudged her nose through a light-glazed break in the foliage. Held her breath as she listened for the whispering rumble of distant hooves.
The rumble of a crowd with a singular purpose.
They were following something. Mysterious hoof prints, a boy had told her, when she'd cornered him earlier on the beach. "Left by a—an unseen presence, or something. Magic, you know, like this entire bloody island." He hadn't sounded exactly convinced, but she'd stepped aside with a wry smile and allowed him his escape back to his ogling gaggle of friends.
Father had returned to Solterra even amidst the rumors of Tempus' long lost Relic materializing on the island. She had thought he would stay, search for the legendary Relic perhaps not himself but at least send Kite, his latest advisor, to do so—but then, he'd never been fond of doing what others expected of him, she supposed. She'd inherited it from someone.
Aghavni's eyes watered as she stepped into an onslaught of piercing sunlight and bumbling voices. She'd pushed her way out of the strangling underbrush, a trail of severed vines in her wake, straight into the heart of a waking frenzy.
Relic hunters, as far as her eyes could gape.
She hadn't expected the sheer size of the crowd. Eager bodies jostled against her from all sides, making towards the center of the clearing. She couldn't see a thing save for a bright glint reflecting outwards like a lighthouse beacon.
Gods. She ground her teeth when an elbow clipped her in the cheek. How she wished she could order them all to cease pushing her to and fro like a fisher boat on storm-tossed waters. Instead, Aghavni sucked in a heated breath as she dodged limbs and skirted tails. Her eyes gleamed when she spotted a space a few feet in front of her wide enough to breathe in; she only had to get there first—
A wince knocked free of her lips when she ran headfirst into a pair of dark, sturdy legs. "Pardon—" Her voice cut off midstream when she glanced up into a pair of familiar golden eyes.
"Erasmus?" she breathed, lips pulling into a crescent moon grin. She straightened herself up and pushed her forelock from her eyes, before appraising him with a lifted brow. "Fancy seeing you here." Though perhaps she shouldn't have been surprised.
A Relic hunt on a magic island seemed to lie right in his area of interests, as it did hers. A thought crossed Aghavni's mind. She jerked her nose towards the center of the commotion and asked him, voice expectant: "Can you see it? The Relic?"
@Erasmus // hope eras doesn't mind aghavni quite literally bumping into him ;D
STAFF EDIT***
@aghavni has rolled a 5! She has been awarded +300 signos.
