The streets of Delumine were empty, almost all their souls sprawled across the Illuster Meadow for the festival. Children raced with baskets between the fires and the forest in celebration of Spring. Fire too brought life in its wake, just as Spring woke the flora from its winter slumber. It is an intricate dance that brings all the world into balance. A balance that she can never have, nor does she understand. The stars twinkle into existence to join the gathering masses. They dance overhead, obscured only by the coloured plumes of smoke dissipating into the sky. At the edge of the forest the darkness begins to yawn. It creeps through the trees, the same horrible monster that it was the day before. The day before was one filled with resentment, each and every soul except for one. A winged man who was forged from the earth, but made for the sky. The other two had been enough to make her blood churn into the volatile creature that swam beneath her rippled surface. Meira often wonders if she belongs in Delumine. Their ideals seem so out of place when applied to her. She is not wise, nor delicate. She is not the epitome of neutrality. Meira is made from the sea, and so she does not know what it means to lead a quiet life.
She is as wild as the fires that roar to life across the meadow. Somewhere nearby at the edge of the forest, a bard sings the epic of the old gods. The ancient beings that came long before Solis, Oriens, Vespera, or Caligo. In a way, they represent the old ways of thinking, and these new gods that are strewn across Novus are their children. Instead of celebrations of old traditions, they celebrate ideals. She often wonders if Solis will abandon her the way she has abandoned his court. Meira frowns at the thought, for though she respects Oriens, he is not her god. Solis loved her with all the wrath and passion that only a man built for war could. Yet, she felt a kinship with Caligo for the way her moon sang lullabies to the tides. It was a push and pull between the two of them. Meira flicks her ears backward as she moves into the forest. She moves until the darkness swallows her up, and the swell of voices is reduced to a gentle hum. The salty scent of the sea leaves its traces in the trees, she can smell it here. Just as she can hear the wind gently blowing the grasses at the base of the trunks as it weaves through the towering figures. Meira is reluctant to admit she is alone here. Delumine is not the home she would have chosen, but she could not go back.
There was always only one way to go in life, and that was forward. No longer could she run back to him. Gone were the comforts of her childhood, she had shed those robes long ago. The forest was as quiet as the sea, or at least it made her soul quiet. It writhed and gnawed on every fiber it could wrap its greedy lips around. Out here, away from all the gathering masses of mages and men, she could just be quiet. The darkness was her only solace, it concealed what she had left behind. Only it knew of her turbulent past. Only it knew that she planned to join the Roannes and bring their proud heritage to Delumine. A revival for her family was upon her, for she could not go back. It was much like time, in the way that it only shifted forward unless it was dragged backward by the mages. Meira sighs as she closes her eyes, surrounded by the darkness of the forest. It is sweeping closer and closer to the edge of the meadow. She can still hear the bard from here, but all the other sounds of the festival have grown quiet. Meira is alone. Truly alone.
She is her own entity, free of the chains that bound her. Ivory limbs swivel her bodice back in the direction she had come from. Her eyes pop open, in the distance she can see the glimmer of the bonfires that lie in stark contrast to the darkening sky. The Roanne woman hovers at the edge of the forest, peering out at the bonfires, listening to the idle epic spun by the bard.
@Alecto
I know this is super rambly. It won't be like this the whole time ;afjd. She's just staring at the bonfires from the edge of the forest near the bard. Just.. using the shadows as a cloak lool
e knows shadow as he knows light, something to play games and laugh. It curls against his spine where the flames do not lick, it presses into his heart where the streets of varan have left him barren and cold. Ice. Ice. Oh how it burns so cruelly. And yet, he cannot feel its chill seep into the depths of his marrow, inching along his limbs until he is slave to naught but his gods alone and the selfishness that lives and breathes and flies within his beating, screaming breast. Alecto is alight with fire. He is hidden by the stars. When he came upon the tide of people it was dawn, and the day has waned and waned and waned. Solis, that is what they call the god of Daylight here, took his fire and swallowed it down into his belly. The next dawn would burst forth, but Alecto knows it is not by that god who is claimed to bring it.
He listens to the bard as their voice rises and falls, a wailing with the wind, a story of the days long past. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, before even the gods of this land were born, there were gods even older than them. Creators. Those who gave birth to the deities beings of today know.
Alecto scoffs at it all inwardly.
These people know nothing of gods and their awesome power. They know nothing of those who are chosen by the gods for greater purposes as they are in his homeland. Those who are claimed to be gods here might be powerful and mighty, but they are little compared to the faith of his people. The story is interesting in the way that it is only that: a story with no foundation and no proof. What is nature but something born over time and shaped by the will of the world itself? He gives the performer only half a thought as he moves, imbued with all the graces granted to a star.
And oh, he is a star, he shines so brilliantly!
Skin of deepest night and loneliest star, eyes of molten sun filtered through honey wine, Alecto is a dream walking. Proud. Preening. Captivating. He is a meteor shower arching over the world as he moves through it - so easy to miss and so hard to look away from. With his own gravity field, he pulls you in closer and closer and closer and then launches away too quick to follow.
So he draws nearer to Meira, casting shadows on his skin as war paint, melting into them as darkness incarnate. Alecto knows what it is to burn just as he knows what it is to be so much a part of the night that you forget what you are, who you are, until the dawn should kiss you again. And the dawn is a wonderful lover, too.
Gold flashes and gleams, finds itself sliding along tapered limbs and angled horns. Blue flashes towards him, but he only raises a single brow.
”Are we playing hide and seek?” he inquires, drawing nearer to the woman who still smells so much of the sea than she’d like. The salt of her skin is still wild and fresh, just as her heart is still roaring with an undertow pulling it down.
§
Once upon a time, they say, there was a girl...there was a boy...there was a person who was in trouble. And this is what she did...and what he did...and how they learned to survive it.
The steady thrum of voices drift into the night, the music is carried with the words that have grown muffled. He is too bright for the darkness. He shines and shimmers in the same way that something new does. He is so new, beautiful. Stars pool at the edges of his face. Gold protrudes from his crown. He smells like fire, and smoke. He smells like the streets of Denocte she is still so familiar with. His words bubble to the surface of his starry sea, the words are too joyous for her current mood. The sea rises inside her as she shifts to look at him. She wonders why it is all men from Denocte are so jovial, so charming. Her anger and hatred bristles in response to the way he shifts closer to her. As if she has invited him to stand beside her. As if she is out here, away from all the others because she wants company. The stars are the only company she wants this night, for even the sea cannot soothe the wounds she has again inflicted upon herself. Unlike him. He is not one of them. This man made of stars will not apply the salve she so desperately needs. Especially not if he is a man from Denocte.
She cannot love the city as much as she wishes she could. Her oceanic gaze finds his honey stained chasms. "It would be a very lonely game to play on your own. Yet, I hide from no one and seek only the solace that night can bring." She wants the kind of solace that seeps in your marrow. Until it spreads along each and every bone until you can feel it in your spine. It is something she knows that she will never get, because not even Solis can provide that to her. Not unless he can erase her past. Meira stares at him, almost as if to ask why he is disturbing her. Her irritation bristles again as she peers at him. He is everything that she is not, for the night sky is far more fathomless than the sea. Meira turns her gaze back to the fires burning in the distance. It is not enough, nothing ever is. She is too empty. Meira turns and begins to walk deeper into the darkness once more. Until the shadows fall upon her in such a way that only the glow of her eyes can be seen. "Until the dawn can provide a salve." She speaks up again as she swivels to face him.
She does not want him to see her tides. She does not want to be recognized, which is something she risks when encountering others from Denocte. Meira stares at him again. She cannot place why he rubs her the wrong way, despite being friendly enough. "What are you hiding from?" She asks from the darkness, surprised she is feeling social given the events of the night so far.
right. So bright and knowing is the gaze that falls on her. The amusement that tickles it does not rear her lovey head, instead the unicorn’s head tilts to the side, just so. Antlers reach for the trees they so rarely touch. He does not sharpen his horns on bark that is only mortal. And those golden eyes that gaze into the night, into the heart of the girl who is the heart of the sea, are so knowing and so soft they could cut the skin of an elephant with just one pass.
His breath is gentle as it hums from his lungs, his voice is even softer when he again speaks up. Before, if it was a whisper between them, now it is barely more than a fetid gasp. ”You wish me gone,” and it is not a question but a statement. In its depths, there is no judgement nor condemnation, simply a fact come to surface, one he does not care to entertain.
Alecto shrugs his broad shoulders. What should it matter, truly, if Meira wishes him beside her or not? She turns from him and moves deeper into the darkness, hiding from the tide of the moon that would pull her into the open once more. Only after she settles, turning to lash at him with those blinding blue eyes, does Alecto bare his wolfish smile. A flash of charm, a hint of danger, something that would do well on the seas as some terrible and wonderful beast to prowl the coastline and devour any wayward ships and wayward sailors who thought it wiser to abandon their own than pull through a storm.
This is a man hungering. This is a beast on his mortal, aching leash.
”Lucky you, I don’t flee.” Prowling nearer again, the dragon-kin challenges the daughter of the sea, sweeping closer with a flick of his golden tail. He can smell the salt of her again just as she can taste the smoke that’s seeped into his hair from his time among the crowds.
They are not his people.
This is not the home of his heart.
But it is a place to live, a place to flourish. And so he does. He does.
Alecto’s brow arches when she snarls right back. There is little bite to her words, and only a laugh is drawn from his chest. It is full and rich, steeped in good humor and shadow. ”You think I’m hiding when you first came to the darkness?” With a shake of his broad head, Alecto tsks the woman gently. ”I think you’re good at running,” he confides, looking over her, assessing, breathing in the woman that she is and the woman that she wants to be.
Something, everything, is feral and barely contained.
She’s wanting.
They both are.
§
Once upon a time, they say, there was a girl...there was a boy...there was a person who was in trouble. And this is what she did...and what he did...and how they learned to survive it.
« r » | @Meira
As am I ;u; Meira is so interesting!
You want me gone. He states to her. In the silence, she feels the weight of his words fall upon her. Yet, he is gentle. So gentle, and that makes him dangerous. She is a raw, and open wound, and he is a bandage wound tight around it. This man is so calm, immovable by the tides that rise and cascade into him. Meira feels her emotions bristle again, because she likes him. She doesn't want to like him, but she does. "Yes." She answers him. It too is a statement that carries no judgment. She wants to scream to him that it is not only him she wants gone, but everyone like him who could possibly notice her. Those who can view her sea.The smooth way the light caresses his features is as mesmerizing as the way he speaks. The way he speaks, is too close for her to relax. He sees her. It makes her ache, every inch of her bones aches. She feels pulled into his gravity, she is helpless when this star grows near. Meira wants to believe that he is a liar, but only truth falls from his mouth like a permanent ink. The earth-bound sea wonders how it is that someone can be so intelligent, so attentive that they can look beyond the scars that bury her deep below. He ignores her abyss that is creeping out of her, crawling like all terrible and beautiful things do.
This man is the night, and he burns so brightly that she wants to shrink into the abyss to escape it. He spills a promise to her, that it is only luck that he doesn't to flee. Meira laughs, and it is a bitter sound. There is nothing lucky about her, not even the star nestled in her ear. "Your own luck, perhaps." She snarls to him, the roar of her waves can be heard in the words she speaks. It warns him to keep away. Keep his distance. Meira knows she does not want that, but the salt is still too fresh in her wounds to think of him. Yes, he is beautiful, but he is no sun. The sea whispers to her. His next set of words snare her, she is bound helpless to this man who refuses to abandon her to the abyss where she can drift until she slumbers. He asks if she believes he was hiding, and in the same breath tells her that he believes she is too good at running. "I think that most men are hiding from something, whether they are aware of it or not." She answers him, this time her voice is stained with acid. It takes the place of ink which can only be beautiful, but she is a terrible thing.
The earth-bound sea waits for him to speak again, to deny he is hiding from something. That was the thing about life, almost everyone was hiding from something. "Very good She agrees with him, her voice barely a whisper. And from you? Why should I not run?" She asks him, prompting him to convince her why she should not abandon this conversation.
Oh, but she does not want to. She is sure that he knows it.
@Alecto
I'm in love with Alecto and he is a perfect little bean a;jdf
