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

All Welcome  - stars dancing across my skin

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Played by Offline e-cho [PM] Posts: 15 — Threads: 5
Signos: 300
Dawn Court Entertainer
Male [He/Him]  |  9 [Year 501 Summer]  |  15.3 hh  |  Hth: 10 — Atk: 10 — Exp: 10  |    Active Magic: N/A  |    Bonded: N/A
#1


 
I want to be happy but something inside me screams that I do not deserve it.
 
   Some people, he knows, are made to be Cathedrals - holy, towering into the sky, indomitable and pure. Some people, he knows, are made to be a Palace - somewhere only lovely and wicked things go, somewhere meant for magic as much as it is meant for lies. Ceylon thinks, fleetingly, that he was made to be only a tomb. 

He is the grave of his father's memory. "You have his eyes," his mother tells him over and over every night in his sleep. Perhaps she repeats this endlessly because that is the most common thing she ever said before she left. His mother loved him, at least that's what his sister says. Truly, Ceylon has so little to go on - vague memories from boyhood held like autumn on his tongue (they go too soon, so soon, into nothing); some forgotten scent that makes him think of the way she used to cook with spices (but never love, not really, that isn't a flavor) and make them gather around the dinner table to eat; and then there is the laughter of the wind, this reminds him the most of his mother before she left. 

Wherever she went, he hopes the buildings are beautiful. 

His mother never liked anything too simple, she had an eye for something beautiful. Is that why she loved his father? 

Ceylon was punished for being his father's son. Stored away in a monastery with layer upon layer of dust from monks that couldn't quite keep up with the size of it. Their monks, he recalls, are a dying breed. Fewer come each year, fewer devote themselves to whatever god his father tried to destroy. It is these same men that Ceylon was entrusted to as a boy; they raised him as best they could, overseeing his studies, guiding him where they could and finding instructors who could push him further, past a breaking point he's never discovered. 

If you ask him now, he won't tell you why he left. He won't tell you of the journey into this land. 

If you ask, he'll just walk away and stare at another stone, another possibility written in the rocks. 

Thank god no one has asked. 

They've looked, but they never came near, and, were he more inclined to socialize and be concerned about the on-goings and welfare of others, he would have wondered why they never approach. Perhaps it was because he is a shadowed figure under the stars, glinting gold as he goes and nothing more. There is nothing precious on him, no valuables to be seen. He is, by definition, just a man and nothing more. If you look, you'll find nothing special to him - no astounding strength nor beauty, certainly nothing to compare to the roaring of the river that flows proudly next to him. He is blue, but not that crystal clear blue. He is gold, but not like the bellies of fish that wink from below the surface. He is alone, but not as lonely as the wishing stones swept away in the undercurrents. 

It is night again (he prefers this, nights are always cooler at home where he can be left alone to work, to focus) and Ceylon walks like a man surrendered to the savage wiles that nature has to offer. Eyes follow the patterns of stone, looking at cracks and crevices as though they are priceless. Perhaps, to him, they are. 

There is a world of possibilities just beneath his feet, but he wouldn't tell you about them, not really, not at all. 
 
 Ceylon






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Played by Offline Syndicate [PM] Posts: 175 — Threads: 35
Signos: 125
Inactive Character
#2




when all the ships have turned to ash
I will be left unharmed, alone
these boundless flames will come to pass
and with the waves I will go home


“I’ll never be enough for you, will I?” His voice is in my ear, too-soft. It could almost be a dream. 

When I open my eyes, I know it isn’t. 

It is one of those mornings where the sun comes through the window slanted; it catches dust motes like small planets, and warms the skin and sheets. I do not open my eyes, but I know he is already up. The night before had been a mistake. I had hurt Bondike before, but this, this was different—

“I see how you look at him, you know? We all see, how you look at him. You come to me, and I still haven’t figured out why. My guess is that you come to me when it becomes too much, you loving him, when you feel like you can’t. But what I don’t understand is why you can’t.”

He is up. I know he is standing up. I can hear him sliding the cloak of his uniform back around his shoulders. He is fastening the leather of his baldric. He adjusts the sheath of his sword with a metallic rustle. 

“Dagda—wait.” I turn to look at him, over my shoulder. The sunlight is catching on him just like the dust motes. “Come back to bed, please?”

His smile is terse, almost polite. “No, I can’t. I won’t let you use me.” 

He leaves and when he leaves, I am alone.


These days, I am more regrets than thoughts. Perhaps it is because I am the walking epitome of hunger; more likely, it is because I am the loneliest I have ever been. Before, there had always been someone else. There had been a salve for the loneliness, or if not a person, then an action. Here, there is nothing. I have not seen Adonai in weeks; and perhaps the fault is mine, for having grown distant… 

But that is also because I had been dragged into the sea and changed forever.

I do not know what has me reminiscing Dagda; thoughts of him are thoughts that I try not to visit, if only due to the fact the sentiments within them are too tangled. 

They are the thoughts that have me restless tonight. I have wandered up from the sea, along the edge of the Rapax. Damascus soars above me. With monstrous thrusts of his wings, the forest stirs. Along the bank, I watch the current of the water; the trout that flit like flashes of light instead of fish beneath the surface. They are enchanting and remind me, inexplicably, of hunting trips with my father when I had been a boy. 

I know I am not alone, however, when I hear the steady beat of hooves against the stones by the river. Damascus careens above and lands with deceptive softness for a beast of his size, beside me. I cannot see further; there is a sharp bend of the river that is then lost to the trees. But then he walks around it. 

What strikes me first is that he is handsome. 

And that, in the moment, is all that matters. 

I do not smile. My mouth is too full of teeth for that. But I say, more warmly than is typical, “You aren’t lost, are you?” 

It is the beginning of a story, I think; a man kissed by stars turns a bend in the river and finds a water horse with a dragon of sins. 

What, then, could go wrong? 

I'll never be enough for you, he said. 

I did not have the courage to tell him nothing--no one--ever is. 



@Ceylon | speaks








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Played by Offline e-cho [PM] Posts: 15 — Threads: 5
Signos: 300
Dawn Court Entertainer
Male [He/Him]  |  9 [Year 501 Summer]  |  15.3 hh  |  Hth: 10 — Atk: 10 — Exp: 10  |    Active Magic: N/A  |    Bonded: N/A
#3

beneath the stars i laid you to rest, beneath the sun you came back again



Waters become a graveyard, corpses dotting their surface with only fronds and cattails along the shore to stand in as headstones. No names are carved into the dirt, those who did not survive the strength of the current of the bite of another left to be forgotten. Everything that is mortal, that is made of carbon linked with something more, is so easy to forget and wash away.

This mausoleum of memory yawns, tired of the past, closing it out already.

Even the breeze sighs with forgetfulness.

Ceylon enjoys the chill for a moment, knowing there are no pages to be destroyed or tapping feet to interrupt his thoughts. Private moments are treasures, cherished, beautiful. Only in the silence with his breath caught in the wind does he cast himself into the past and future. An age before destruction. An age of enlightenment, of creativity, of people made of stone and towers more ornate and coveted than that which they housed.

Yes.

Yes.

The past is wonderful. And it will live again in the future. Ceylon will build something to be remembered even when he is not.

Something akin to a smile might have been curving along his gold-lined lips, soft blue eyes lost in a daze. He might have seemed a dream, some scholar or storyteller caught on the lip of the river, cobblestone and dust beneath his feet, lost to even time itself.

Then, his reprieve shatters. Glass tumbles in great painted windows, everything churning into a disgusting shade of brown and bile and black until only the present remains. In that hell of existence, Vercingtorix rises like a beast, like his dragon that looms behind him as some megalith cursed with life itself, and speaks. It is his voice that is warm where his face is not.

Ceylon does not care for that warmth.

“It seems I am found,” he states plainly. If he is perturbed by the disruption or more than agitated, it does not show. Before Torix, Ceylon is the glass surface of the Vitreus at night. Only the world is reflected from him, his own world hidden beneath.

“You’ve taken the whole pathway,” he notes with the barest flicker of his lips downward. Eyes trace the outline of both man and dragon, thinking of stone sentinels and gargoyles who are silent protectors, too.

"Speaking."
@Vercingtorix we have no manners :c






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Played by Offline Syndicate [PM] Posts: 175 — Threads: 35
Signos: 125
Inactive Character
#4

 
i don't pay attention to the world ending. it has ended for me many times, and began again in the morning.


I
t seems I am found

I recognize the lost, more often than not, only seek solitude. He was alone, and now he is not—I wonder if that sits uncomfortably with him, if he would rather I had not turned the bend and we collided. “Do you want to be?” I ask, thinking I already know the answer. 

I study his still-glass face. The placidity of his expression frightens me; it frightens me, because I am accustomed to stoicism belying innumerable, complicated intentions beneath. You’ve taken the whole pathway, the stranger says, with a note of dissatisfaction. 

“I’m sorry.” I do not sound sorry. “In that case—would you like to join us?” If we are stone gargoyles, this stranger is the stars made flesh, soft galaxies and nebulas. If I were someone else, I might apologize—I might direct Damascus from the path. But I do neither of these things. 

(Perhaps because, in some essence, his quiet disposition and lack of expression inspire me in an urge to break, to provoke, to cause. I have always been attracted to the stoics and the softly spoken, the men who make me believe they have secrets I could learn, or a heart I could break). 

And yes, I think, I am attracted to him. 

(I am attracted to him like a fire to tinder). 

I want to burn, burn, burn. 

« r » | @Vercingtorix






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Played by Offline e-cho [PM] Posts: 15 — Threads: 5
Signos: 300
Dawn Court Entertainer
Male [He/Him]  |  9 [Year 501 Summer]  |  15.3 hh  |  Hth: 10 — Atk: 10 — Exp: 10  |    Active Magic: N/A  |    Bonded: N/A
#5




c e y l o n



T
he way the world works, it seems, is that there is always someone to watch, to come a-calling, and to settle into the same space and breathe the same air as another. Pack animals. Plaintive. Small. In need of help, protection. In some way, incomplete, begging for another to make them whole.

Ceylon knows, as he knows a great deal of things, that he is not lonely. This affliction of the mind has never so much as darkened his doorstep, nor begged entrance into the coveted corner of the world he greedily calls his own. Oh it would try, someday, perhaps, but today he is content in his own company, at ease with the bubbling brooks that wash away even the worse crimes every stone bleeds into its waters. The Rapax is a cruel and demanding mistress, and Ceylon longs to know her secrets and possess her skills for a fraction of the time it takes her.

He does not. Of course he does not.

She is a giant, and he mere mortal made into something less human than the next.

A question posed, unblinking eyes seem pensive, darkened, as he chews it over. Although brows pull down, his golden lips never flinch from their tight line. At last, at last he seems to breathe and with it take all the oxygen of the world. On an exhale, Ceylon simply shrugs. ”Things are clearer that way,” as though that is all the explanation necessary for being alone and wanting it that way.

Things are clearer. The press of bodies does not distract from the works of a mental giant. He can stand upon the spines of books, not men, and exist in harmony with himself. Does that make him a monster, does that make him strange, for pushing away the company of another in favor of his own? Perhaps he is simply egotistic.

What he is and is not matters little to Ceylon. Not when these megaliths of flesh and bone stand before him, instead asking for him to accompany them as some instrument would another’s song.

If he is an instrument, then he is gentle and he is stringed. Plucked cords on his skin and on his mind pull him another step closer to the duo, sizing up Damascus with little more than a scientist’s interest in some new bacteria, a painter’s fresh brush. A nod. Barely a rustling of his hair, golden and playful with the breeze, wrathful when upset. ”Where is it you go?” And he does not decline, he does not say no, closing his doors as some great oaken door slamming shut as a mournful tolling of the funeral bells. Because knowledge of places keeps him grounded, keeps him sane.

Without a map, a path to walk down when he is still in the night, Ceylon is as wretched as his father, as gluttonous as him, too.




and when the time comes that i am reduced to fragile bones,
know that my soul will always search
« r » | @Vercingtorix






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