"I suppose until we see this through," Theodosia says, lightning in her smile, but for Senna her concession is enough. He turns away, eyes thoughtful, and nods. "Fair." And it is.
The scruffy sliver of the abandoned isle sits upon the brightening horizon like a scab. A curtain of opaque mist slicks their coats and feathers as they fly through a gathering raincloud, and when they emerge on the other side, it is not really like emerging at all.
The Ager's island is slathered in clouds of heavy, drizzling grey. The beach is little more than a narrow, pale stripe segmenting ocean and treetop, its sand wave-churned and littered with dark bodies of driftwood. Cautiously, they land where the beach seems widest—fifteen meters across compared to a scant five—and droplets of water condense down their bodies like dew off a dragonfly's wings.
Little white crabs no bigger than woodlice skitter away in droves from their hooves, and Senna's jaw clenches in momentary disgust. Never has he missed Solterra's lifeless dunes with such sudden ferocity. Besides the insect-like crabs, however, (who swiftly bury themselves back into their sandy graves) Senna soon realizes that there seems to be no other life—at all—left upon the receding shore.
They seem to be the first ones to arrive. The first hunters, he corrects, when his eyes narrow upon the hoofprints left purposefully in a trail leading to the edge of the beach.
The passage of time becomes less like fact and more like illusion the deeper they press into the silent forest. Bird-less, lizard-less, mosquito-less. He surveys the ruins they pass with cultivated impassivity; they are the only sights that unnerve him the least, if only because abandoned things are about as common as cacti in Raum's Solterra.
His right wing flares out to press against Theodosia's chest in warning when a shadow separates itself from the trees and steps nimbly in their way. "It seems we have reached the end of this hunt." His wing withdraws. He does not seem altogether aware of the action (both the flaring and the withdrawing), absorbed as he is in narrowing his eyes critically at the stallion made of shadows.
Eyes almost as green as his daughter's stare unblinkingly back at him. (Pupilless, however; the Weaver, for his credit, had kept her pupils.) It is not until the stallion smiles, like he is unfamiliar with the action, that Senna notices the fangs peeping menacingly out from his muzzle. Thicker and more wolf-like than his own—they remind him of his mother's.
He speaks, and Senna listens, before—without warning—the man goes utterly still, expression slackening. Like a corpse. Haltingly, Senna roves his gaze across his black coat and searches for smudges of dirt. The words he'd whispered over Santiago's empty grave cling like cobwebs to the edges of his mind: "If only the dead can speak."
Words he'd made in jest; now, he wonders if he shouldn't have been so flippant.
With a spasming shudder, the man reanimates. His pupilless eyes begin to shake like loose marbles in their sockets. Electricity—magic, Senna realizes—crackles through the air as the man speaks a riddle, pauses thoughtfully, and then, like scratching an itch, clones himself once and once again.
Three men with coats of pitch, six eyes (almost) as green as Sol's, three mouths curling into madness. Each one claiming the name of Seneca. "I'm Seneca," they babble, back and forth, like seagulls fighting over a mackerel. No. I'm Seneca, he thinks, drily.
"You have two questions," the middle one cackles. "Each one of us will answer, but only in 'yes' or 'no'." Frowning, Senna thinks back to the specifications given earlier. Messengers, fighters, and healers. "Who—is who?"
Who is who, Sokar? whispers a silken voice in his mind he has not heard in a long, long time. His mouth ghosts into a smile.
"A moment, if you gentlemen will." He picks up a stick laying on the ground and strides to a part of the clearing covered with a layer of undisturbed dirt.
And begins to scratch a series of symbols into the soft ground.
Solovey, the only totem prince who'd shown any interest in Senna's existence, and therefore the brother he was the most fond of, had been the one to teach him the language of logic. Not patiently—Senna remembered with sourness how the trickster prince had once locked him in a crypt and vowed to let him out only if he could solve the riddle.
A nightingale had flown in through the bars of the vault come morning to find his little falcon brother huddled in a ball in the farthest corner, the floor and walls covered in frost and lines of symbols. The bird transformed right before the parchment hurled at him smacked him in the face, laughed uproariously at Seneca's blue-lipped snarl, and unfurled the parchment to find his answer waiting for him.
Two questions. A fighter whose answer is always opposite of what's true, a messenger who's always honest, and a healer who can do both. The key was to force the fighter to tell the truth, along with the messenger; from then on, all his second question had to do was ask either messenger or fighter—whichever one revealed themselves first—who the healer was.
The stick snaps in half just as the last symbol scores deeply into the ground. Senna tosses the broken halves into the underbrush, surveys his work once more, and turns back to the waiting Senecas.
"If I were to ask you if you were the messenger," he says, moving his gaze from Seneca to Seneca, "would you say yes?" He thought back to his symbols. The fighter, when asked if he was the messenger, would lie and answer yes. But when asked if he would say yes to that question, he would lie again and say no, unwittingly telling the truth—that he was not, in fact, the messenger.
Solovey's melodic laughter rang like bells in his mind.
The scruffy sliver of the abandoned isle sits upon the brightening horizon like a scab. A curtain of opaque mist slicks their coats and feathers as they fly through a gathering raincloud, and when they emerge on the other side, it is not really like emerging at all.
The Ager's island is slathered in clouds of heavy, drizzling grey. The beach is little more than a narrow, pale stripe segmenting ocean and treetop, its sand wave-churned and littered with dark bodies of driftwood. Cautiously, they land where the beach seems widest—fifteen meters across compared to a scant five—and droplets of water condense down their bodies like dew off a dragonfly's wings.
Little white crabs no bigger than woodlice skitter away in droves from their hooves, and Senna's jaw clenches in momentary disgust. Never has he missed Solterra's lifeless dunes with such sudden ferocity. Besides the insect-like crabs, however, (who swiftly bury themselves back into their sandy graves) Senna soon realizes that there seems to be no other life—at all—left upon the receding shore.
They seem to be the first ones to arrive. The first hunters, he corrects, when his eyes narrow upon the hoofprints left purposefully in a trail leading to the edge of the beach.
The passage of time becomes less like fact and more like illusion the deeper they press into the silent forest. Bird-less, lizard-less, mosquito-less. He surveys the ruins they pass with cultivated impassivity; they are the only sights that unnerve him the least, if only because abandoned things are about as common as cacti in Raum's Solterra.
His right wing flares out to press against Theodosia's chest in warning when a shadow separates itself from the trees and steps nimbly in their way. "It seems we have reached the end of this hunt." His wing withdraws. He does not seem altogether aware of the action (both the flaring and the withdrawing), absorbed as he is in narrowing his eyes critically at the stallion made of shadows.
Eyes almost as green as his daughter's stare unblinkingly back at him. (Pupilless, however; the Weaver, for his credit, had kept her pupils.) It is not until the stallion smiles, like he is unfamiliar with the action, that Senna notices the fangs peeping menacingly out from his muzzle. Thicker and more wolf-like than his own—they remind him of his mother's.
He speaks, and Senna listens, before—without warning—the man goes utterly still, expression slackening. Like a corpse. Haltingly, Senna roves his gaze across his black coat and searches for smudges of dirt. The words he'd whispered over Santiago's empty grave cling like cobwebs to the edges of his mind: "If only the dead can speak."
Words he'd made in jest; now, he wonders if he shouldn't have been so flippant.
With a spasming shudder, the man reanimates. His pupilless eyes begin to shake like loose marbles in their sockets. Electricity—magic, Senna realizes—crackles through the air as the man speaks a riddle, pauses thoughtfully, and then, like scratching an itch, clones himself once and once again.
Three men with coats of pitch, six eyes (almost) as green as Sol's, three mouths curling into madness. Each one claiming the name of Seneca. "I'm Seneca," they babble, back and forth, like seagulls fighting over a mackerel. No. I'm Seneca, he thinks, drily.
"You have two questions," the middle one cackles. "Each one of us will answer, but only in 'yes' or 'no'." Frowning, Senna thinks back to the specifications given earlier. Messengers, fighters, and healers. "Who—is who?"
Who is who, Sokar? whispers a silken voice in his mind he has not heard in a long, long time. His mouth ghosts into a smile.
"A moment, if you gentlemen will." He picks up a stick laying on the ground and strides to a part of the clearing covered with a layer of undisturbed dirt.
And begins to scratch a series of symbols into the soft ground.
Solovey, the only totem prince who'd shown any interest in Senna's existence, and therefore the brother he was the most fond of, had been the one to teach him the language of logic. Not patiently—Senna remembered with sourness how the trickster prince had once locked him in a crypt and vowed to let him out only if he could solve the riddle.
A nightingale had flown in through the bars of the vault come morning to find his little falcon brother huddled in a ball in the farthest corner, the floor and walls covered in frost and lines of symbols. The bird transformed right before the parchment hurled at him smacked him in the face, laughed uproariously at Seneca's blue-lipped snarl, and unfurled the parchment to find his answer waiting for him.
Two questions. A fighter whose answer is always opposite of what's true, a messenger who's always honest, and a healer who can do both. The key was to force the fighter to tell the truth, along with the messenger; from then on, all his second question had to do was ask either messenger or fighter—whichever one revealed themselves first—who the healer was.
The stick snaps in half just as the last symbol scores deeply into the ground. Senna tosses the broken halves into the underbrush, surveys his work once more, and turns back to the waiting Senecas.
"If I were to ask you if you were the messenger," he says, moving his gaze from Seneca to Seneca, "would you say yes?" He thought back to his symbols. The fighter, when asked if he was the messenger, would lie and answer yes. But when asked if he would say yes to that question, he would lie again and say no, unwittingly telling the truth—that he was not, in fact, the messenger.
Solovey's melodic laughter rang like bells in his mind.
@redandblack @Theodosia | "senna" nestor | notes: posting one question at a time!
