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

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Played by Offline Jeanne [PM] Posts: 70 — Threads: 17
Signos: 20
Inactive Character
#1

WEAVE HER A CHAIN OF SILVER TWIST, / AND A LITTLE HOOD OF SCARLET WOOL, / AND LET HER PERCH UPON YOUR WRIST / AND TELL HER SHE IS BEAUTIFUL.



One of my lesser-known (and lesser-valued) skills is weaving crowns.

I picked it up mostly by chance in my first lifetime. You see, my mother absolutely adored flowers, and, when my sister and I were young, she would braid them into our hair all the time. If she wasn’t braiding them, she was making crowns out of them, and, somewhere along the line, I learned to do the same. The brilliant jewelry and bright gemstones that adorn so many of the residents of Novus were virtually inaccessible to most people at home, so we made do with what we had to dress up. Sometimes the priestesses used them, in ritual attire; my charms are from that. Otherwise, the brightest thing I’d ever seen before I left home were the golden laurels that sprung from the antlers of my king.

Now I am weaving flower crowns again, ever so meticulously, and I am laughing almost like I remember laughing when I would do the same with my mother and my sister, but in a different voice. (The tulips, sprung up from the frozen ground, are reborn; so am I.) This is my first spring, and it is beautiful. I have never seen so much green before in all my lives, dotted with head after head after head of multicolored tulips, which I have never seen before either – not in such great quantities. There are sweet drinks and pastries and the smiling faces of people that, after nearly half a year, I am beginning to recognize as slightly more than strange faces on the street, and I am trying to embrace every passing moment and be resplendently happy about it, without thinking now of all the ways that the tulips must eventually return to their place beneath the ground and how it has been nearly half a year, and I have not found who I am looking for, and how-

It is not good to think of dark things here. (Burned forests, burning starlings.)

I think of looking for Elliana, but, looking down at the collection of flowers in the wicker basket I picked up on the roadside nearest the field, I decide instead that I should look for Elena. If I cannot weave crowns for my mother again, and I cannot – we are separated by centuries, now, and lifetimes, and I have made my peace with it (as much as anyone ever will) -, I think that weaving a crown for her might be the next best thing. She is not a queen, and I have never served one, but I imagine that she carries herself with all of the grace and goodness of the ones who appear in Elliana’s bedtime stories.

I pick my way across the field, brow furrowed against the brightness of the midday light, and I find her eventually in the flowers, a speck of sun on the ground. I flash her a soft smile, calling out a gentle, “Elena?” and I pick my way towards her through the field, basket of flowers balanced neatly between my shoulderblades and wings. I gesture back at it with a turn of my head. “Would you like me to weave a crown for you?”

(My own, a mixture of bloodred and gold-yellow – to match my odd eyes and autumn colors – falls crooked on my skull; I readjust it quickly.)





@Elena || <3 || elinor wylie, "the falcon"
Speech





@







EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.
if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.


please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence







Played by Offline Sam [PM] Posts: 306 — Threads: 50
Signos: 900
Inactive Character
#2


Some girls are full of heartache and poetry


There are still things she dreams about that she would rather wish went away.

She dreamt of him. Of Azrael. Of her daughter’s face every time she calls him dad.

She dreamt of Boudika’s rage.

She dreamt of his back, for it seemed to be the thing she saw most of all.

It does not feel so long ago that she saw him on that beach, that he touched her and she lied to him. Maybe they are destined to always have this kind of miscommunication.

Maybe they are always destined to never quite understand one another.

Or maybe her heart is such a selfish, greedy thing that it rips apart whatever is placed in its hands. Maybe she is so terrified of him breaking her apart that she is breaking herself apart first. Maybe she thinks that it will hurt less if she is the one to detonate the bomb. At least she will know when to expect the blast.

One day, her want will turn on her.

One day, it will be the end of her.

She is terrified of the magnitude of her feelings. She is terrified of how quickly they sit on the edge of herself—how quickly she could succumb to them. She would drown in the way she feels about it; she would never grow tired of it.

She will burn with it one day, she thinks, but she will never say it.

Her eyes opened and they were hazy, blurry with all the emotion swelling within her. Elena blinks it away and despite the agony that raged in her chest, the storm that swirled in her mind, she still gave a soft smile, the kindness apparent at all those who pass by her. They stop to look at the flowers, to build bouquets. Elena likes to imagine who they are taking them home to. She spots a girl of cream, pale and beautiful with eyes of deep brown. She takes it home to her father who limps when he walks because of the war he fought in. The red haired girl with eyes as green as this spring day, she builds a bouquet for her lover, they fought last night and this is the only way she can say sorry. And the boy of obsidian, with a forelock so long and tangled she cannot read his eyes, he is taking his to the grave of his son, who died too soon. She blinks away the thought as her name comes rolling across the flower beds.

When Nic finds her amongst the flowers, and Elena turns blue eyes to her, there is such a warmth, such pride, and a love for the girl that swells inside her chest. Nic is as much a part of her as Elliana was. Her smile grows a little deeper with the comparison. “Nic,” she says, breathes, it is a relief to see her, to bathe in her presence. She does not need sunshine when she has Nicnevin in her company. “I would love nothing more,” she says. “Would you show me how?” She asks her, she finds tulips that look like pale morning sunshine and tulips of bright sky blue. She would make a crown for her mother she thinks, doesn't realize how closely her thoughts bridge towards Nic’s own. Elena’s own eyes of blue look to her as she adjusts her crown (a warrior princess, Elena amuses herself.) “You look lovely today, Nicnevin. Flowers and sunshine suit you.”



those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves
instead of running from them

@Nicnevin




[Image: ddvotwe-59302ba6-6a81-47bf-9846-30c5a5db...0iFb4PvyXE]

let's light this house on fire
we'll dance in the warmth of its blaze
pixel made by the amazing star





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