"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
There is no such phrase as I can’t. There is only I will and I won’t. There are no limitations to what one can do, not really. Not when you set your mind too it. And so Straia would never understand a love story that begins and ends with can’t. Or heartbreak, for that matter. She has no heart to break. No really, anyway. Yes, it is still inside her chest unlike Atrox, but it simply keeps her alive.
But always, always, she believe the only phrase is I can. Because any other attitude on life and you end up worthless, end up accomplishing nothing. End up like Cordis, lost and uncertain and drowning in a power and a darkness that could be harnessed for so much more.
The ravens pull toward the silver mare then, unnaturally drawn to her. Not because Straia can feel Cordis’s magic itself, but she can feel the tug on the raven’s minds. They are linked to her, after all. She doesn’t try to stop it (doesn’t know if she could, even), but rather watches curiously as the birds stop moving just as quickly as they started. That tug, that desire to be near Cordis, disappears from them.
The mare speaks honestly, and Straia listens, appreciating the answer. Not that she necessarily likes the answer. The bay and white mare wants to know. Knowledge is power. But of course, she cannot blame Cordis for not knowing, and so she simply nods. And then she mentions Evrae, and magic.
Oh. Well isn’t that just juicy.
“What makes you so sure that she was lying?” Because Straia doesn’t think it was a lie. There’s no reason Evrae would lie about something like that. At least, not based on the stories that Straia has ever heard about the mostly absent magician. A raven takes flight, hovering slightly away from them at eye level. “Try turning that one into ice,” she suggests, nodding to the bird. They were terribly willing subjects for experimentation, after all.
straia
the raven queen of the chamber
Use of mild power playing is allowed; no injuries without permission
What makes you so sure she was lying, the queen asks (Cordis calls her a queen because the word repeats itself in her mind – she doesn’t know rulers, but the word queen wraps itself around the mare like a living beast), and she doesn’t know the weight to the question. It’s one Cordis asks herself, sometime, as she stands dressed in lightning after running for days with nothing to sustain her, her heart like a live wire in her chest. The thought that maybe she is magic.
But a magician would have escaped sooner. A magician would not have spent years in His lair, a magician would have summoned water when He sought to burn her alive. A magician would have broken out, would have fought.
The thought that there was magic in her, an opportunity unspent, is horrible to confront.
The past should be the past, but she lives all too often in there, fool that she is.
(What she doesn’t know is He quelled the magic in her, tamped it down. She never knew the sensation of lightning in her chest until she had escaped.)
“I lived for years as nothing,” is what she says, because she does not speak of Him, she does not speak of the years being taken apart and pieced back together, a toy with burned bones, a creature made and remade a thousand times, in a thousand horrid ways.
The mare then brings a raven forth, hovering near them, tempting.
Turn it to ice, she says. Cordis stares at the raven, imagines ice growing from its skin instead of feathers, imagines snow where its eyes once were. She watches with a growing hunger and fascination as ice grows like a living thing across the bird, weighing it, dropping it--
The raven shatters at their feet.
she said it was a mistake to let them burn her at the stake
Cordis
(and she learned a lesson back there in the flames)
She would always be some sort of Queen. Not of the Chamber, not forever. But of ravens, always. Of herself, of her life, always. At least until the Chamber asked for her life, and then Straia would be ash and dirt and bones. But until that day, Straia was always a queen of some sort. She held herself like one, even long before she’d been any of what she is now. Just a princess with an agenda, with the betterment of the Chamber always in her head. An agenda somewhat synonymous with the destruction of Beqanna.
Straia wears the word on her sleeve, not just with the crown of feathers on her head. One didn’t need to be magic to pluck it off of her, but perhaps Cordis saw it in a different way. Not that Straia can read minds, or knows this. But if she did, she would ask how Cordis knows. What’s the word look like on Straia, in a magician’s mind? Knowledge is power, after all. Not that Straia would ever be pure magic, not that she’d ever wear lightning on her skin, but still, she enjoying knowing things. Knowing what it’s like.
“Haven’t we all?” Straia replies easily. Not that Straia was ever necessarily nothing, but she had been very little as a child. Petulant and annoying because it amused her, but she’d had to shed that skin to become anything on the Chamber. She’d had her years playing at Princess, with no actual power and no actual skills. They were short years, yes, but still, at one point everyone had been nothing in some sense. Did Straia’s nothing compare to Cordis’s? Probably not. But that’s not the point.
The point is simple. It is never too late to become something.
She thinks this particular thought very loudly, suspecting (though of course, not knowing) that Cordis will hear it. It doesn’t seem like a thought that needs to be spoken aloud though. It’s the kind of thought that belongs inside the mind, turning around in there until it’s been polished smooth like a stone tossed in the ocean. What pretty stones, those are. What powerful thoughts a simple idea can become.
The raven does turn to ice, and it falls and shatters at this feet. This time, Straia does not put it back together. Instead she simply smiles, very certain that Cordis is some sort of magic. Maybe there are limits to that magic, maybe not. Straia leans toward the latter, though they’d have to spend quite some time testing that theory to find out. “Perhaps you are magic, and perhaps not. But there is no denying you are something, Cordis. And if you’d ever like, I would be happy to help you figure it out. But if you want to find me, you’ll have to put that raven back together,” she nods to the one on the ground, still in pieces, “and have it find me.”
Not that this particular raven wouldn’t melt in the sun, but she thought that Cordis could pull the water out of the ground, turn it into ice and then a raven, and send it back to Straia. It was a test, yes. And it was a promise to help, as best she could. Because Cordis was a terribly well kept secret of Beqanna, and Straia would keep that secret. And perhaps, if she was lucky, Cordis would decide to become something. And Straia could definitely help with that, as well.
Her grin widens just slightly as she adds, “I hope I see you soon.” And with that, she nods once, shifting back to a raven before taking to the skies. It was time to go home, but she imagined they would meet again. Cordis was simply too much fun, too much of an enjoyable mystery, not to see again.
The time in His lair, she had been nothing.
Nothing because she had been a mousy brown girl then, with a different name.
(She had been Mahala, but she changed it, after, because she’d heard the name too often dripping from His lips.)
Nothing because she did not fight back. She tried to escape, once, but had been hunted down after, fox to His hounds, and Him the huntmaster, laughing that wretched laugh as she was felled.
(He punished her for her escape, of course, and she didn’t know until years later that He had set her up.)
She had been nothing, a girl on her knees, begging and crying and screaming for Him to stop.
And later, for Him to just kill her and leave her dead.
He granted neither wish, of course, made slow and torturous work of breaking her.
The time in His lair had been everything.
Had been everything because it was the catalyst to her, it was there she was made so fearful. It was there, perhaps, that she was infected with whatever dark virus grows about her now, makes her find a sort of pleasure in burning.
There is a distant sound and Cordis looks for it. She doesn’t realize it’s the woman’s thoughts, shouting out at her. The queen’s lips aren’t moving but Cordis can almost make out the words. It is strange, like most of this is strange.
The mare shifts to a raven and Cordis’s own skin itches. She might try to fly, later. Not now. Not in such a blatant facsimile. She is left with a shatter of ice and snow at her feet.
Put it back together, the queen had said, but it is so much harder to create than it is to destroy.
(She had, once. A gold woman dead at her feet, and with lightning breaking down and the river swelling, she had asked a question: will you come back for me?)
She looks at the ice at her feet, the once-raven. It has begun to melt.
She thinks, live.
She thinks, fly.
The lightning is her constant, it goes out. The raven rises. It is no longer snow, it is electricity. It is a dual creation, inadvertent, and she thinks she might keep it.
she said it was a mistake to let them burn her at the stake
Cordis
(and she learned a lesson back there in the flames)
