[open] In every tree a black bird - Printable Version +- Beqanna (https://beqanna.com/forum) +-- Forum: OOC (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=24) +--- Forum: Archive (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=81) +---- Forum: Lands (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=98) +----- Forum: Hyaline (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=92) +----- Thread: [open] In every tree a black bird (/showthread.php?tid=30058) |
In every tree a black bird - Raum* - 08-22-2021
Snow fell on Hyaline long before Autumn came, turning its high peaks to whipped sugar, glittering and beautiful and deadly. Popinjay spent more hours exploring the territory on foot and on the wing than she did on watching how quickly her children grew but Raum never much noticed the lack. On this day, his mother patrolled the jagged skies with her veil of lightning and her track could be seen easily by the trail of light that followed her as she wove her way between the mountaintops, coasting on thermals that would freeze him through if he tried to join her. Wingless, he could not, of course. The boy's interest was not on his mother's skies, however, but on a pool of shadow spillt across the rocky wall above him. The ledge he'd climbed up to was a narrow and precarious one, but he had his mother's sure feet and fearless nature and thought nothing of making the dangerous climb up to it. His reward, a fractured bit of mountainside stained red and green-gold with lichens, and silver-black with the ice reforming as midday's heat faded back to evening chill. Somewhere behind him, a pika cried out its shrill alarm, but the golden-feathered boy only flicked an ear contemptuously at the little creature and peered more closely at the darkness tucked beneath the cracked rock face. There, the darkness and the ice mingled so densely they seemed to have never seen the sun. It was the deepest shadow he had ever seen and pictures danced across it sharply. The shadow theater lived everywhere that the downy-soft paws of darkness tread. The colt shook his head. That description didn't quite fit the darkness in front of him, black as velvet but hard as a knife. It smelled of nothing and of eternity and of a thousand things a boy his age could only imagine, and he - tactile, like his mother - stepped forward hungrily to press his nose against it, but found instead nothing at all. Empty space loomed ahead of him. Pressing the tip of his pink tongue against a sharp tooth, he snorted and stamped and squealed into that impenetrable darkness that was so full of the whirling dervish on his premonitions; color and light projected on their opposite by the magic that filled his ruby-bright eyes. His own voice answered him from a thousand open throats. "Hello?" hello hello hello hello hello hello Raum* in every bird a black thought someone please come help Raum find trouble RE: In every tree a black bird - baptiste - 08-22-2021 you pour the water — — I would haul the stones @Raum* RE: In every tree a black bird - Raum* - 08-24-2021 Hello. That voice came from behind him and Raum yelps, spinning around to glare at the trio with all the ferocity he can muster, baring the bright ivory peaks of his teeth that so crookedly mirror Hyaline's skyline. There was little rhyme or reason to where they sprang from his jaws and the alarmed crown of black feathers at his crest perfectly centers attention on his face so as to give the girl and her guardians plenty of time to study the mountain range of his mouth. A girl. But not Anath, not Parish. Not any of the horses he knows. The high, childish, growl in his breast dies away with his surprise, stolen by the whipping winds, and the feathers lie down slick against his neck once more. The shadows have shown him a thousand different futures for the faces that he knows, but they never showed him her, black and gold and feather-soft, has she always lived here? "I never Saw you, before," he muses, frowning, the emphasis on 'Saw' soft and easy to miss. His gaze flits from side to side at the girl's Shades with a flat, unspoken, challenge. Raum has no subtlety, but more than his share of audacity. Not a breath later, his grin returns, resolved to ignore the dead things entirely, and his feather-curled ears lift away from his poll. He looks tothe haloed girl againand steps aside, an invitation for her to look more closely at the narrow, ancient cave he's found. If she wanted (and who wouldn't want to?) "What's your name?" Raum* in every bird a black thought @baptiste RE: In every tree a black bird - baptiste - 09-06-2021 you pour the water — — I would haul the stones RE: In every tree a black bird - Raum* - 09-10-2021 The cave is deep and dark and no doubt cold, and like so many caves of its sort, full of ancient ice and ancient water. When he follows her gaze into its depths, he sees the futures where he leaps into it, though he can sense no floor far past his own toes; he sees futures where they both leap, and ones where they do not. There are more possibilities than he can imagine and there's a giddy rush in guessing at which is the Truth that will come. "I'm Raum," he offers lightly to the too-full darkness, then turns to her again, black-tipped ears eager, "What do you see, when you look in there?" Looking at her brings the Shadows to his attention again, the souls lingering close to her, leaning over her. The boy lets his gaze soften as though looking through them into the distance, and he wonders if it is possible to insult the dead without wondering if it is wise to do so. "I know it's dark, but I can barely see the shadows through the pictures." Raum's grin falters slightly as he struggles to explain. The images come all the time, he has so little control over them. His visions play in every simple shadow and across the starry sky until it is never night at all but a world of imagery he barely understands. He struggles to turn the magic off. "There's a lake in there that never freezes, not even in winter," He says, plucking his future out of the void, and then he licks his lips as if he can taste the salinity of the water, "You wanna see if I'm right?" Raum in every bird a black thought @baptiste RE: In every tree a black bird - baptiste - 09-19-2021 you pour the water — — I would haul the stones @Raum* |