arricaded by books, Nico had spent the last several hours attempting to decipher a long forgotten text ladened with thick sheets of dust and grime. The foreign words had appeared to allude to some sort of potion that could potentially promote longevity, a long standing goal in the mule's hidden eyes. Or could potentially be a poison, but the scripture's near illegible scrawl made it that much more difficult, considering the words were already eerily close in nature. The young equine flipped his attention back and forth between the initial book and another which he hoped to use in transcribing such a problematic piece.
Huddled in his towering mess of books that walled him into such a tiny space of the large room, he managed to find an area of which he could dab his feathered pen into the viscous ink he had made. Absentmindedly, the mule would tap the inked end to his lip as he analyzed his work. Each success he found was met with a private joy and enthusiasm as his writing utensil danced across the loose pages he had scattered around him, another note added to his ever growing log.
He was knee deep in his studies, his outer body simply a placeholder while his mind wandered freely. Each paper he filled was pushed aside in wake of a new one, though in his haste he managed to tip his well over. Black oozed over several of the pages, absorbing Nico's efforts within seconds. The teak haired mare all but shrieked. He dropped all else in favor of picking up the well and setting it right, away from his notes.
He had to act quickly.
The mule shot to his hooves, his shrouded gaze now darting about his residence in search of anything to mop up his mistake.
So set on his task, he hadn't even noticed anyone approaching, no. No one ever came by, unless of course they found him by chance which was rather awkward indeed. Awkward, awkward...
@danaë
10-11-2020, 08:12 PM - This post was last modified: 10-12-2020, 12:45 AM by Nicodemus
Spring has come and the snow white winter hare is dying. His eyes are growing colder by the trembling death beat of his frantic heart. The sun is shining overhead but, from where he rests just above her shoulder, Danaë feels him like the shadow of frost on her father’s garden. He feels like the ice that frosted her eyelashes in diamond dust while she raised a graveyard with her sister.
And she knows, she knows as a unicorn knows in her marrow, that she should lay the point of her horn to the hare’s belly. She knows she should crack him open like a shed-star's egg so that she might plant daisy seeds in the chambers of his heart and ivy notches where his veins split towards his heart and towards his liver. He could be her own (or his own as she would whisper to him) instead of a thing suffering in bleating sobs of agony.
Until now she had not understood the terribleness of the sound of dying. Until now she had thought it the sweetest sort of melody.
The hare’s eyes flicker open and he digs his teeth into the meat of her withers in a feral need to be free of the unicorn holding him too tightly with magic instead of understanding. Blood gathers in the knots of her mane where twigs, and leaves, and rotten flowers have been woven in by her twin. At the thought of her twin Danaë feels a secret sort of trembling.
Isolt would rather a dead hare than a suffering one.
Danaë thinks that maybe she might be the crueler one of them to make the hare suffer the saving.
When she notices the building in the forest it is almost by accident. It rises from between the tree trunks and the shadows like a secret gate to somewhere she suddenly longs to go. Her heart, in which she carries every cry of the hare, stutters in her chest like a sparrow in a cage as it dies. Like all made things she does not think to be cautious as she races through the doorway.
And she does not think to be anything but a unicorn when she tilts her horn towards the stallion standing there and demands, “help me”, instead of asking.
"I can feel it mounting; a dark wave - upon the night of my soul”
ike a ghost materializing before his very eyes (minus the sudden bang of the wooden door against the equally wooden wall), the apparition of a mare stood before him. Nico startled at the sudden company, his nervous limbs acting before he could process. He kicked over a stack of books in his surprise, only furthering the mess he had created.
"Help? Help with wha-?" The mule began before the shrill cry of a much smaller animal cut through the air. He peered down, only then noticing the small creature she held close. Close enough for it to have latched onto her flesh at some point recently. Nicodemus admittedly cast a glance to his notes, the pages long since ruined, with a soft sigh. He returned to the mysterious mare and her mysteriously injured rabbit.
"I-I see. Bring it here then, I suppose I'll have a look," The young equine neighed quietly. He toed carefully over his stacks to then start to clear a walkway for his guest. He gave a half-hearted chuckle as he quickly pushed things aside and hoped it didn't look as uninviting as it did. He'd really let the place go, hadn't he?
"Apologies for the claustrophobic nature, nary do I receive visitors," Nicodemus chuckled anxiously, trying to lift the oppressive mood that was permeating the space around them, "I-I don't garner much foot traffic at all actually." The mule started towards the flight of stairs at the back of his abode, only to turn back towards the lady and what he presumed to be her pet. With his foreleg stood upon the first step, he beckoned.
"This way, Miss. I'll be able to take a closer look with some of my tools up here," He wasted no time scampering his way up the rest of the way, his hard hooves clacking against the aged planks that creaked in protest each time the two met.
"Oh, and uh, d-do watch your step. It'd be a bit of a nasty fall," the chocolate brown stallion added, peering his head down through the opening in the ceiling above, "N-not that I would know of that or anything of course!" With his rapid fire addendum, Nico pulled his head away from the stairwell before disappearing into the attic above.
Each drop of blood falling from her shoulders to the wooden slats of the floor sounds to her a star crashing through the atmosphere. Her ears ring with the ticking life dripping, dripping, dripping from the half torn out throat of the hare. Her heart, that tangled rotten mess of roots and seeds and chambers, stumbles like another dying thing in her chest. And she can hear, in the echo of her own pulse, the melancholy sound of dying.
She does not see books, and ink, and mortal trappings she cannot understand, as she follows him through the mess. Even the stairs leading up (so much shorter and frailer than the steps of her father’s castle) seem nothing more than a mere whisper under the echoing of the hare’s agony and the stumbling war-cry of her violent heart. But like a lost thing she follows him because her magic begging her to grow roots in each drop of blood painting out a constellation on the wood does not understand how to help living creatures.
And she tries not to hate him when his voice stutters like her heart and his words promise to look at the dying hair. But her horn angles towards the point of his hip because she cannot help the wolf-cry of her heart pleading for violence in the almost empty promise of his help. “You will do more than look at him.” Below the warning of her horn her teeth snarl instead of smile or beg as lovely things are oft to beg.
Their hooves land on the attic floor and her own echo like thunder in the frail mortal home as she gently pries the dying hare from her shoulder. He makes hardly a sound as his broken body falls against the wood. Danaë barely turns her gaze, bloody and red, from the pools of his blood burning shapes into the wood. Her magic starts to rouse like a bear from slumber in her blood. It purrs at the sight of each trembling breath falling from the hare.
“You will save him. And at this she turns to fully look at the mortal who, at this point, has been little more than an afterthought in the wake of her demands. She follows the uncertain lines of his neck and the almost fragile way his eyes crease instead of snarl. The mortality of his form blazes against the blackness of her eyelids as she blinks and whispers to herself to be kind, be gentle, be like her father instead of her mother.
Behind her, in the cracks of his wooden attic, lotus flowers start to root and unfurl. Her magic begs for liver, and pupil, and stomach instead of old, dead wood. Her teeth ache as she grinds them together and whispers, no, to the monsters in her blood.
When she steps away from the hare her hooves still echo faintly like thunder. “Please.” And this time, when her horn points back at him, it is to ask instead of demand and to beg instead of render apart.
"I can feel it mounting; a dark wave - upon the night of my soul”
