Novus
an equine & cervidae rpg
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Novus closed 10/31/2022, after The Gentle Exodus

Private  - I go to the ocean and ask her why

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Played by Offline Jeanne [PM] Posts: 49 — Threads: 12
Signos: 5
Inactive Character
#1








☼  RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN  ☼
רות

"I CAME TO KNOW what your absence always means. Cliff. Every day knived sharper and doused in electricity."


I have always felt closer to the ocean than any Solterran should.

If anyone asks – I’ll politely cite the alleged rumors that Mother crafted my siblings and I from things, not bore of us of blood and sinew. If anyone asks – I won’t say a word, but I’ll turn my head towards the rocks that compose the seaside cliffs, and perhaps you will see them, too, in the arc of my neck, in the rugged dark-and-light of my skin. Let them think what they will. I, unfortunately, know the truth, but I have very little interest in telling it to anyone else.

There is a storm over the sea today. I have come looking for kelp – or seaweed, or both. Most of my patients don’t much like the taste of them (claim that it is “fishy,” although most of them are neither carnivores nor omnivores), but they are nutritionally dense, and I sneak bits of them into their food when they aren’t looking. During the winter, when food is scarcer regardless, I always have to find a bit more.

Today, I am alone. I don’t know where Ishak is, exactly – he said something about urgent business before he left this morning, but he didn’t elaborate on what the business was. It makes me assume that it is related to his previous occupation, but I didn’t ask. (He didn’t give me time to; he was out the door nearly as soon as I awoke.) Today, I am alone, with nothing but the screech of gulls and wind for company, and I almost feel strange about it.

Ishak does not like for me to go much of anywhere alone. He is a near-omnipresent figure in my life; I don’t mind, but I won’t let myself be kept in some birdcage, either. (After all, I am no bird – like all the rest of my family, I am a serpent, though unlike most of them, I do not often bare my teeth.) I have work to do, whether he is present or not, so I left some time after he did and made for the coast, picked my way past the docks and the bustle of the capitol until I found a stretch of unoccupied shore. It is easier to find things, further out, and quieter.

(That only means that no one will hear you if you scream, a voice distinctly reminiscent of Ishak insists, in the back of my head. That only means that no one will be here to help you, if something goes wrong.)

It’s paranoia. I worked alone for years, before he tried to kill me, and I was fine.

I lean close to the cliffs on a narrow stretch of shore, my hooves slipping on the thin bank of rock between the cliffs and the sea; the waves plunge up, covering their dark surface with a fine skim of saltwater and foam. I keep walking. If I just make it through this narrow corridor, I can see a stretch of beach ahead.

The rocks and barnacles dig into my skin. They draw shallow cuts; not even deep enough to bleed. I press forward, gritting my teeth, and I don’t think of falling into the water and drowning. Instead, I think of the press of stone at my shoulder and the bone-pale strip of shoreline ahead, just out of reach.

I cascade – finally – from the outcropping of rock and down onto wet shore, shaking my saltwater-slick hair out of my eyes. I am sure, with an ugly mingling of tide and cold sweat caught in my fur, that I do not look much like the daughter of a noble house. That suits me fine.

My hooves dig moons into the shoreline, and I look out towards the waves – long enough to note the way that they are growing larger and hungrier, long enough to catch my breath.






@Leto || >D || shira erlichman, "ode to lithium #107"

















HE FEEDS ME RED MEAT / HE WATCHES THE BLOOD POOL IN MY MOUTH
laughs at my red teeth


please tag Ruth! contact is encouraged, short of violence






Played by Offline Obsidian [PM] Posts: 70 — Threads: 5
Signos: 25
Dusk Court Outcast
Female [She/Her/Hers]  |  14 [Year 496 Winter]  |  16 hh  |  Hth: 10 — Atk: 10 — Exp: 22  |    Active Magic: Starfire  |    Bonded: N/A
#2



This keening soul;

She follows her, from the deep. Looking up below the surf, she sees the girl as she steps over rocks and plucks from the basket of the sea all sorts of things to take back home with her. The girl looks for plants, Leto knows this. She recognises the actions. As an Ilati she spent many years scavenging for plants and and animals for scyring and healing and painting her skin.


The kelpie can name every species of kelp the girl pulls out of the sea, she knows the properties of each one. At her back the storm grumbles, loud and low and booming. The cliffs grow bleak and dark as eyebrows pulled low. Leto does not fear the storm that gathers out to sea and pushes in toward them, floating angry and ominous high above, stirring the sea below. Rain is a swirling smoke above the sea, reaching up to the cloud above. Oh, it is so bleak.


The scavenger has turned, she makes for the thicker shore where sand replaces stone and rock pools disappear. As the girl jumps down from the thin strip of cliff, landing light upon the beach, Leto rises black as ink from the white frothing waves. The slate gray water laps at her skin, it pours off her sides. Above the sky is grey a steel. None can see how the stars tremble, none can see how Leto’s blood is warming without the sea. But she steams, hot, hot, hot. Lightning strikes the sea behind her, she does not flinch, not even when the salts turn to crystals and the air fills with electricity. 


“The tide is coming in,” Leto breathes as she reaches the girl and curls round toward her, feline, hungry. “And the storm is making landfall. If you wish to survive, you should leave the beach.” Her galaxy eyes draw across the girl’s skin, stars searing, planets turning. Across let’s body runes gleam in the light, some painted, unlifted by seawater, others engraved traceable, echoing, whispering magic. “Or you could stay and learn the force of the sea.”

@Ruth
Anyone! | "speaks" | notes:
rallidae | art










Played by Offline Jeanne [PM] Posts: 49 — Threads: 12
Signos: 5
Inactive Character
#3








☼  RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN  ☼
רות

"I CAME TO KNOW what your absence always means. Cliff. Every day knived sharper and doused in electricity."


I cannot remember a time when I was not – like a dull knife. Lacking a property that was somehow fundamental. You would think that you couldn’t notice the absence of something you’ve never felt, but I knew that it wasn’t there. I knew that it was wrong, and I was wrong, because I could see things in other people that I never felt myself, and I-

If I were more prone to metaphor, I would say that I have always possessed a certain hunger. A ravenous one. It grows by the year.

(I am not more prone to metaphor.)

At sea, the storm is growing. I can see the black crest of the tide rushing up further and further on the shoreline, a dark blemish against the bone-white sand; lightning cracks against the waves in crooked bolts of white and violet, and I can see dark sheets of rain coming in towards the shore. I pause in my collecting, mottled seastone of my coat blemished with salt and dirty water and sand, and I take inventory of the kelp that I’ve collected. I have more than enough, and, with the storm fast approaching, I know that I should make my way home as quickly as I can.

Still. I find myself standing on the rocky shore a bit longer, tangled colors of my hair whipping around my face. My hooves sink into the sand as shallow touch of the tide rushes back and forth around them, and it almost feels like I am moving as each passing wave pulls sand out to sea. I do not know why I remain there a moment too long – I only know that I feel more kinship with the stones and the merciless water than any desert-born girl ever should.

(Not born, if you believe the stories, but I will never tell you the truth. Not born – carved, created, even crafted, but never born.)

When a black head splits the surface of the waves, I know that I have made a mistake.

I’ve heard stories of kelpies, but I have never met one. My life has been mostly-sheltered; I have kept the company of murderers and thieves and cruel noblemen, but they are only ever horrible in ordinary ways. I think that she is beautiful, in a certain way, as she steps clear of the sea. She would not belong in my family’s art gallery, but she is beautiful in the way that any predator is beautiful, from the cold fire of her eyes to the glint of her teeth. It is the beauty of pure efficiency, of something built and crafted to be exactly what it is-

And, although she creeps closer to me, curls her body around mine like a snake, the wet press of her skin on mine, I do not move. I do not flinch away. I am suddenly reminded of myself, year’s ago, when I met Ishak; I am reminded of how it felt to stand in the face of a blade without moving. I do not move.

She tells me that I should run – that I should leave before the tide comes in or the storm hits. Unless, she says, I want to learn the force of the sea. I do not tell her how I have never wanted for anything, not like I should, how there is something hollow inside of me where want should be, and I do not run.

(If you run from a sandwyrm, it will chase you until you die.)

“What do you mean,” I breathe, and the slow turn of my head is like the cock of a hunting mantis, “learn the force of the sea?”

I have inherited several of my family’s flaws – but I think that the worst of mine is my curiosity.




@Leto || >D || shira erlichman, "ode to lithium #107"

















HE FEEDS ME RED MEAT / HE WATCHES THE BLOOD POOL IN MY MOUTH
laughs at my red teeth


please tag Ruth! contact is encouraged, short of violence






Played by Offline Obsidian [PM] Posts: 70 — Threads: 5
Signos: 25
Dusk Court Outcast
Female [She/Her/Hers]  |  14 [Year 496 Winter]  |  16 hh  |  Hth: 10 — Atk: 10 — Exp: 22  |    Active Magic: Starfire  |    Bonded: N/A
#4



This keening soul;

The girl stops, she does not run and all the stars and the moon and the planets cry out fool


The sea just laughs. 


Leto gazes out at it, listening to its endless hiss and song. Then, slowly, she returns her gaze to the girl whose skin is so warm, so sweet and devoid of salt and brine. 


What do you mean? She asks Leto and the kelpie smiles turning her nebulous gaze into the girl’s. There is nothing innocent or weak behind those dark eyes. This strange girl is like a predatory lying in wait. Ah, it brings a smile to Leto’s lips. It is a grin that the sea trembles for. It is a smile that the sea made. It dusts her lips with salt, turning them paler than they should be but they look in that moment, like the dust of galaxies. Leto’s smile is the dark, the light, the chaos of the universe. It reminds them both that she is not just a creature of the crushing blue sea, but of sky and earth too. In her Making she became triune, complete, whole. 


What do you mean?


“Only a fool would look to the sea and not recoignise the force of it. Any step into the sea is a step into danger. You step into the path of the creatures who lurk in its depths. You are not made for the sea but the creatures within are. They can hunt you and kill you, as surely as the waves can crush you and the water fill your lungs.” Leto’s head tilts as she studies the girl. “Have you no imagination?” 


Her smile has not left her lips. The sea still pushes itself up the beach, faster and faster, cantering towards the girls. “You stand here and you will die. Soon.” But Leto does not say how.


@Ruth
Anyone! | "speaks" | notes:
rallidae | art










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