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

Private  - fragments of light & color

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Maret
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#1


take my hand. feel my heart.
tell me what's wrong with it.

S
he had no idea if he had gotten her message or not.

Maret was not sure that she had even sent it to the right place (and she had decidedly less faith in the carrier dove she had managed to rent being able to find him, at any rate.) And even if the tightly rolled piece of paper had found him, small chance though it was, she was even less certain Leonidas would know what to do with it. It had been hard for her to not write a whole letter, knowing well enough that he would likely be unable to read it; even still, she was not sure her abruptly written “meet me by our cave lake, saturday at dusk” signed with her usual sunflowers and annotated with a sun setting over a mountaintop had sufficed. 

She had realized belatedly that her picture of a sun setting might look the exact same as a sun rising, or just a sun overtop a mountain during the day.

So she had come early. Just in case.

Her hooves click against the cavern floor, each tap of gold against stone sending echoes racing along ahead and behind her. It feels strange — it has been so long since Maret had felt anything besides sand beneath her hooves, the stone floor feels almost unstable in comparison.

The last time she had been here she had not had her horseshoes. She had not had her golden hair clasps, either — at least not these ones that she had gotten specifically for the last solterran party she had attended. The hairstyle she wore with them was also new; hair swept back from her face, glossed and braided in the tight plaits that were so common in the Day Court. And where once she would have let her hair grow long — now the ends of it were bluntly cut and short (she had learned quickly that long hair felt more stifling in the desert, and as much as she had agonized over the idea of cutting her hair, in the end she had grown rather fond of the new style. It made her feel more… sophisticated. And as if she better belonged in her new home.)

It all feels unfamiliar now, though, as she waits for him beside their lake. She had not realized before how much she had grown — although change was like that, she supposed. Creeping in more often with steps instead of leaps, so that the depth of it did not become apparent until finally she turned and looked over her shoulder to see how far the beginning of it truly was. Until she awoke one morning and no longer felt quite like herself, and there was no single event to explain why.

It was why she had come back. She had almost gone home, instead — only home no longer felt like home. So, feeling as though she did not recognize herself in the mirror, she had gone to a lake that had always seemed to her like a mirror of its own.

She can hear the echo of a stone falling somewhere across the lake, the ripple of it sending streaks across the glassy surface of the water. It makes the lights reflected there from the glowing leaves hanging from the cavern ceiling dance. For a long while she lies there alone by the lake, the water lapping at her front hooves, chin resting on her knees. Her journal — filled with scraps of unfinished poetry, and stories, and notes on her latest articles — lies forgotten by her side as she stares out in the shadows across the lake. 

The sound of another set of hooves echoing in the cavern pulls her from her daydreams. She stands quickly, dusting the sand from herself as she turns to face him. Even in the dark, features lit only by the bioluminescence of the plants growing along the lake — she would recognize him always. 

"Hi." She smiles at him, stepping forward almost uncertainly. "I wasn’t sure you would come."



{ @Leonidas "speaks" notes: text }
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Played by Offline Obsidian [PM] Posts: 123 — Threads: 14
Signos: 520
Inactive Character
#2

I am not like any ordinary world

i wasn’t sure you would come.


Of course he would. Leonidas does not think there is anything that could have kept him from coming. Not the fallen trunk in the deep of his woodland retreat, not the tangle of the brushes that wrap about his ankles, not the ominous open mouth of the cave, nor the winding dark, dank veins of the underground cave system. 


Of course he would, when she waits for him beside the lake, lit by the glow led glow of underground life. Above them, upon the cavern ceiling the water’s reflection ripples in time with his heartbeat. He hears her rising, echoing around him in a chorus that would be swallowed by a wood, if there was any life here, but them and that which glows in the water. 


Maret is hesitant when she steps to him, but the wildling boy is not. He moves to her, a piece of woodland escaped underground. He might seem strange here, with the leaves tangled into his mane, twigs and bones and flowers and herbs. They all find a haphazard place upon his body, within his hair. Leonidas is a part of his wild wood come to life and it moves to her, this girl of midnight black and moonlight white, trimmed with golden charms. 


She dreams like him. He knows. He has seen her, in the briefest moment before she heard him, her eyes drawn out across the water, her chin wistfully resting upon her knees. What is he more eager to draw from her? The stories upon her page or the ones she keeps behind her eyes, locked behind her lips? Leonidas does not know; he cannot decide. But he holds for a moment over her notebook with its well loved and worn leaves and then into her eyes. 


Yet the wildling boy is not made to be still for so long. His lips tip into their feral grin and he reaches for her, to tug her out into the water and wash from them everything from the world above until there is nothing but the sound of them filling every corner of their lake’s cave. 


The water welcomes him, lights his stomach with bright blue light, highlights the sharper, more manly lines of his face. But oh, his grin is boyish and wicked. He turns back to her, splashing, laughing, drenching the gilded feathers of his wings until they are useless. There is no need for flying down here, in the hidden, secret corners of Novus’ belly. 


He waits for her, bright and wicked and wild and beckons her, less a monarch of the wood than an elven king, made for the magic of places like this.


@Maret

"Speaking."
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