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Novus closed 10/31/2022, after The Gentle Exodus

Private  - ten billion decibels shattering // vigil

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Aghavni
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#1

I
t had seemed like a better idea, in the moss-drowned bacchanalia of the ballroom. When wine had flowed like blood on a battlefield and names had lost their faces; when looking out into the crowd again, after two or ten swigs, had struck Aghavni with such vertigo she had dropped her wineglass, not entirely on accident, and watched numbly as it painted the floor in a shattering of scarlet. 

With practiced nonchalance, she had excused herself with a curtsy and vanished down a hallway before nameless faces could begin to titter. 

Solis' dogs. Aghavni grit her teeth as the vine-lashed stairway jutting from the trunk of the Hospital's massive cypresses rocked like a boat at sea; grimly, she resisted the urge to be sick over the railing and forced herself onwards, hoof over hoof. 

It was a discomfiting feeling, discovering her acute distress—she refused to say fear—of rickety, sky-reaching staircases. Had the Terrastellans lacked the sense to build a Hospital safe and anchored on, perhaps, the ground? The cypress answered her with a groaning shudder; she pressed her shoulder into bark and smiled wanly at the pleats of a passing skirt. 

The ember glow of a thousand candles greeted Aghavni like an old friend when she reached the landing at last. Flowers covered the floor in a bright, fragrant carpet, interspersed throughout with various offerings and sputtering paper lanterns. One lantern lifted up from the floor and bobbed towards her; as she picked her way across the cluttered space, it hovered shyly by her shoulder and glowed like a distant star. 

She felt like a child, peeking dubiously down each candle-lit room as she came upon them. It reminded Aghavni of the time a much younger her had poked her nose into a room she'd believed abandoned, only to gasp when she had found her uncle in the canopied bed with one of his 'pets'. She had fled, terrified; but that evening, after Mother had passed her to Nurse to bathe, she had heard vases shattering in the hallway and the high-pitched snarl of her uncle.

Father had been gone, sent on one of his much-begrudged diplomatic outings. She still remembered how Mother had come to her in the middle of the night, believing her asleep, to kiss her head and whisper that soon, they would be free. Father would take them away, she said, and they would be free. 

Tucked in the darkness between rooms, Aghavni touched her muzzle to a wilting bouquet of desert lilies and watched as softened stems straightened and greened; as satiny white petals shook out their wrinkles; as a closed bud unfurled into a tiny bloom, egg yolk yellow at its center. 

She still couldn't quite believe it herself, what she could make plants do. Her uncle would've called it witchcraft; magic had been banned in the castle. If she'd had this power then, she thought with malice, she would've made all the flowers shrivel into dust in his presence. Mother would reprimand her in front of the maids, but Aghavni knew she would be secretly pleased.

Plucking one of the lilies free, she placed it inside the lantern and sank down with it to the floor. "Isn't it strange, Mother?" she whispered. "This magic of mine. Solis has yet to forgive us, I suspect, to give me such a useless one." 

From where she sat, she could just make out a square of starry sky through the Hospital's canopy. As she stared up at it, for a single moment, Aghavni felt as if she had transcended the vastness; as if everything was as it should be, and she was exactly where she belonged.


@Orestes

aghavni

« the sound of the silence is deafening »










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Orestes
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#2

please, let him be soft. i know you made him a warrior a soldier a hero. but even gunmetal can warp and even wolf's teeth can dull and i do not want to see him break the way old and overused things do. i do not want to see him go up in flames the way all heroes end up martyrs. i know that you will tell me the world needs him, the world needs his heart and his faith and his courage and his strength and his bones and his teeth and his blood and his voice and his. the world needs anything he will give them.

Beauty has a strange effect on him.

For most men, it is simply inspiring; it is resonant, impactful, the meaning of art, poetry, music. For most men, it means many things. 

For him, it means everything.

It is an elixir; an ambrosia. He is drunk on it and half in love with a kingdom that is not his own. With the feeling comes a sordid guilt. He should not be here. But Terrastella already holds many things that call to him, like a half-remembered dream, one he spends his waking hours trying to rediscover… 

There are the tall cliffs, the ocean crashing below. The secrecy, not so different from the feeling of quiet prayer. He feels like a boy here, as he ventures far from the other winter celebrations, deeper and deeper into the sacred territory. Orestes has never seen cypresses; and now they stretch overhead in a dark, suffocating canopy. The wind whispers through their ancient branches, and it is not so difficult to imagine them say, stay, stay, rest awhile. Orestes does not. He pushes further ahead, toward the Hospital and the vigil over the dead and lost. He sees the lights that commemorate them; the candles that flicker and some lanterns that rise; and he wonders how many he could light for a life he no longer lives. 

(Orestes can’t help but think of a ship out at sea somewhere, beneath the waves. He cannot help but think of the sound of a song he cannot remember and wish the words would come to him. He cannot help but wonder how many are left with tattoos burned into their skins like ornate gold, beautiful and foreign—)

First, he hears her voice and then sees her. 

Orestes remembers the first time he met his Emissary, then, in Denocte. He had been a newly crowned Sovereign then, fresh from the fire. She had just been a girl with eyes like polished jade, not lost royalty. There is a moment where he considers passing by; and then rejects the idea, going to her with the suppleness of a cat. Ariel beats him to it, slinking from the cypresses soft-footed to settle beside the Emissary. 

Ariel does not favour many; because of that, Orestes is nearly embarrassed when the lion begins to purr, a rumbling sort of sound that threatens to shake him apart. 

“Good evening, Lady Aghavni.” Orestes announces his presence. There is a shy huskiness to his voice; he fears he will disturb the atmosphere of the place if he speaks too loudly. "May I join you?" 

DAMN THE WORLD AND DAMN YOU TOO, DAMN ANYONE THAT EVER ASKED ANYTHING OF HIM, DAMN ANYONE THAT EVER TOOK ANYTHING FROM HIM, DAMN ANYONE THAT EVER PRAYED TO HIS NAME. YOU KNOW THAT HE WILL GIVE THEM EVERYTHING UNTIL THERE IS NOTHING LEFT OF HIM BUT THE IMPRINT OF DUST WHERE HIS FEET ONCE TROD. DEAR GOD, YOU HAVE ALREADY MADE AN ATLAS, YOU HAVE ALREADY MADE AN ACHILLES AND AN ICARUS AND A HERCULES. YOU HAVE ALREADY MADE A SACRIFICIAL LAMB. SO PLEASE, I BEG YOU, LET HIM BE SOFT, AND LET HIM BE MINE. 

@Aghavni || Speaking.










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