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

Private  - don't let those butterflies out

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Played by Offline Sam [PM] Posts: 84 — Threads: 16
Signos: 525
Inactive Character
#11

kissed my penny and threw it in
prayed to keep my soul


S
he aches for what she cannot define. She has known so little of the world except what has been offered to her. By her mother, her father, her aunt, her godmother. And now Aeneas, he shows her things without realizing it. Everything he does looks entirely new to her, as if she opens her eyes for the first time. The way his breath fogs, the sound of wind through feathers, the shifting of his weight beside her.

She has doubted her place in Dusk, despite being made from it. In the burrs that tangle in the thick waves of her tail, the dirt congealed up her knees and the austere patience, like that of a mountain, or a rock splitting a river. In the arch of her neck, like the bow of a branch; the bent of a pollinator, busying around the bright, arousing revelation of wildflower stamina. She is dirt, and lavender and ocean spray. Still she doubts (maybe because she lingers too long in the shadows, or strays too far into darkened corners, this is not what little girls of sunshine do.) But Aeneas and how easily she fits beside him, he lets her know ‘yes, you belong here, because I do.’ And if Aeneas can belong, so can she.

The girl wants to believe at least.

She stood still, charmed by silence. She is so firmly grounded. Rocks and seafoam-green lichen, soil, the tangle of roots, tree bark, willowy new saplings; she is: the flutter of bug wings, the trill of passerines, the slow bleed of one season into the next. He is wind and sky. Does he makes ocean breezes when he breathes? Does he draw hurricanes when his wings flutter? Do rainbows appear when he smiles? Elli is too scared to ask.

And just as if he were his father, he would have smiled. If Elli were her mother, she would tuck his hair behind his ear and carve herself into his chest in this moment and tell him his father is alive and well, and not to think that way. But they have drifted so far from who their parents are, here in a meadow of secrets and light. “I will,” she promises, because unlike her mother too, she still believes in promises between boys and girls.

That wing moves and draws her in. Another night, in the future, this action will send her head reeling with questions and wonders and curiosities. But tonight, they are just a little girl and a little boy with magic reflecting in their eyes. They have big questions, but they hang out in front of them like little balls of light. She looks back at him and catches his eyes on her. “I think I was always meant to be the path,” she says and means it. Elli is not even entirely sure what those words mean though. “And I will be happy to follow you down it,” she says because it has never been about leading the way for her. She is too busy staring through the trees of a forest to look too far ahead.

“We need to go back,” she says and it is not with sorrow, but she has a look in her eyes, it is her ‘thousand colors look’ her mother calls it. The look she always has when she feels the itch for a paintbrush, as an image sits just behind blue eyes. The look she wears as she aches to paint a picture before it is gone. She presses a tiny shoulder into his before the pair begin to move from their secret garden that grew not flowers, but magic.



@Aeneas elliana speaks

elliana

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Played by Offline Syndicate [PM] Posts: 48 — Threads: 7
Signos: 10
Inactive Character
#12


   
    
   

I will, she promises. The promise, to a boy already so intimately tied to the current that flows between all things, between the positive and negative energies, to a boy already heartbroken—the promise means the world. And just as she will one day question the gesture of his wing over her shoulder, Aeneas will one day question what she means when she says, I think I was always meant to be the path. 

Even now, he glances at her, sidelong. Just long enough to see the way the luminescence of the butterflies has cast a brilliant glow on her face. Their colors here are muted, subdued, and yet still bright. Her eyes, especially, capture that light and reflect it. “I would want no one else besides me,” Aeneas whispers, and it is true. There is already so much between them; so much hope; so much potential; so much silence. It occurs to him that this place is their secret, and because of that, it belongs to them. He thinks, briefly, of how many secrets there are left for them to share, and to find. 

We need to go back, she says. 
“I know,” Aeneas agrees. And then: “But maybe just a moment longer.” And this time, Aeneas closes his eyes. He closes his eyes and feels instead of sees. He feels the way the stars are bright above them, and powerful, and the gods of many distant things. But mostly, he feels the butterflies and Elliana and how the two things, in this moment, do not feel so different. They are light to hold in his heart, to have pass through him, and it is when she presses her shoulder into him that he opens his eyes and turns away.

But Aeneas will not forget that feeling. 

That feeling of lightness. That feeling like flight.

When they return to Terrastella and she goes to her home by the cliffside and he to the citadel, Aeneas lays his head down to sleep and for once, does not dream. 


   
   
      Aeneas
      you long to be just honeyed skin and soft curls, but beneath it all, your blood boils fiercely; you were born with heaven and hell already in you, holy fire, hell fire
   
 










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