[open] where the moon had turned - Printable Version +- Beqanna (https://beqanna.com/forum) +-- Forum: Explore (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: The Common Lands (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=72) +---- Forum: Forest (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=73) +---- Thread: [open] where the moon had turned (/showthread.php?tid=30055) |
where the moon had turned - cressida - 08-22-2021 Cressida The world has allowed her to keep to herself this last year. Herself and her brother. She has withdrawn, gladly, to contemplate the moon apart from herself. To watch as it cuts its trajectory across the sky and feel a longing so deep, so vast that there are some nights that she wonders if she would drown in it. She sleeps during the day—finding places where the sun cannot reach her—and she comes out when the sun has dipped below the horizon, when the world has cooled and only milky light is there to greet her. RE: where the moon had turned - lannister - 08-24-2021 oh, you said life was much better than this It is not often that a dream-creature bursts forth out of his dreams; and it is not often that said dream-creature experiences a reality he cannot control. Tonight, Lannister is tired of the darkness. He sleeps in his dream world, head curled over his legs in the form of a lion. He rests fitfully, finding a brief reprieve from the constant anger he feels being trapped in a reality founded on nothing. A tingling burbles gently in his chest. It starts as a soft humming, the sweet plucking of a harp. The orchestra doesn’t join in all at once, no—a flute adds the tiniest push of a pressure, then a cello—and then every brass instrument strikes up into a crescendo— Lannister’s chest feels as if it is on fire, and when he awakes, he does so violently. A gasp, raucous and paired coolly with a thick layer of sweat on his neck, fills the air around him. The stallion lurches forward, unsteady on hooves he expected to be a lion’s paws. “Fuck,” he whispers, closing blurry and terrified eyes. “I can’t do the dark right now,” he murmurs to himself, then opens his eyes and focuses on changing the moon into the sun. Nothing happens. He focuses again. He finds the same result. A prickling sensation builds between his shoulders. Lan recalls the other dream-weaver he met, the girl who asked about his nightmares. He wonders if he has stumbled upon another, if he is in a nightmare he cannot control. The stuttering heart in his chest pounds. “Hello!” he croaks, spinning in circles. Lannister presses into the darkness searching for someone—something—to explain what he is experiencing. When he spots Cressida as a lovely doe, he approaches without hesitation: “Are we in your dream?” he parrots the question Iridian once spoke to him, anxiety coloring his voice. lannister @cressida RE: where the moon had turned - cressida - 08-25-2021 Cressida She is not often approached at night. Perhaps it is because she runs away whenever she hears someone approach. Perhaps it is because she chooses the paths that are traveled infrequently. Whatever it is, she startles when she hears his voice crackling through the distance, her slender head whipping to the side and then up, her doe eyes wide. Her legs move beneath her with nervous energy and she fights against the urge to leap into the night, to let him take chase or watch as she bounds away. @lannister RE: where the moon had turned - lannister - 09-06-2021 oh, you said life was much better than this Her softness begins to still the pained beating of Lannister’s heart. He watches Cressida with the worry she mentioned wrinkling his eyes. It’s the gentle splash of moonlight that finally urges words from his mouth: “Did you do that?” It’s not an answer to her question, not even an attempt to soothe the quiet ache of realization creeping up his spine. It was easy to strangle others’ powers in the dream world once his new magic began to settle. When Lannister didn’t want his work interrupted, he shut their minds from their power, gently making them forget what gifts they possess. Now, as he tries to imagine golden tendrils reaching out to Cressida, to sense what it is she can do, he feels absolutely nothing. The hollowness of his imagination echoes and bounces back. He takes a nervous step back. “I’m okay,” Lannister finally answers, though it is barely a whisper, an indication he is anything but okay. He hadn’t been okay since his power settled in, since the last time he saw Elio, since years ago when he realized he was a prisoner. And this—this magic manifested by his anger—it was all the culmination of something ugly, something dark, some monstrous creature Lan sensed he was destined to become. “Where are we?” he finally asks, closing his eyes against the eventual confirmation. lannister @cressida RE: where the moon had turned - cressida - 09-07-2021 Cressida She almost doesn’t know what he means when he asks her. What he could possibly be trying to find out if she did. When she realizes that he was referring to the moonlight, she just smiles. It’s difficult to remember that such things are conscious acts—that she chooses to send forth the light toward him and then recoil it back into her chest. It was difficult to remember that not everyone lived in the world that she did where the moonlight was as simple as one’s own touch, as easy as breathing. meet me where the falling stars live @lannister RE: where the moon had turned - lannister - 09-13-2021 oh, you said life was much better than this The death of adoration is what eventually sealed Lannister’s fate. He was once a dreaming boy, a loving boy, a boy with such dedication and admiration for his father that Elio was all he could see—dream or reality. There was once a time that he would walk through fire for his father, up-end the entire universe and all of its realities to find him. But that bitterness of abandonment, that entrapment. He was shackled, pillars of magic keeping him tied to the endless, cloudy dreams of strangers. Perhaps he was always damned. A child as a gift. What kind of fate could Elio have truly wished for his son? Lannister is glad to be rid of it, even as the terror tires every muscle in his body. He blinks at Cressida, that quiet, fearful understanding melting into something molten—something that feels so real it burns his eyes. “The Forest,” Lannister parrots Cressida, still not fully capable of forming the kind of thoughts that foster conversation. He blinks at her again, then: “Cressida.” He peers intently now, rain cloud eyes searching for some answer the moon-weaver might be able to give him. Lan sucks in a breath, casting apprehensive eyes over their moonlit surroundings. “I’m Lannister,” he finally murmurs, returning the molten gaze back to Cressida. “Thank you, Cressida. I would . . . love to talk,” Lan adds, holding his eyes steadily to hers. “But I don’t know where to begin. Dreams, I guess. My father told me I was borne of a dream. I’ve been stuck there ever since.” He swallows. “You were born here, Cressida? In Beqanna?” That uncertainty colors his voice even as twin flames burn in his stare. lannister @cressida RE: where the moon had turned - cressida - 10-03-2021 Cressida She wishes she could understand what he was saying, what he was feeling, but whether her own experience are so limited or her mind so uncreative, she finds herself stuck in the in-between. She crinkles her brow in concentration, a corner of her mouth pulling down in the corner, and she watches him steadily—unwilling to glance away when there is perhaps something to be learned in the studying. meet me where the falling stars live @lannister |