02-12-2018, 07:55 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-27-2018, 06:07 AM by Saedìs.)
Her darkness was once light: blinding, pulsing light … this light has been extinguished; not by fear, nor time, as so often it is attributed. No, she has lost her in-borne beacon to a gloomier, unsuspected adversary: heartbreak, ravaging and pillaging as it has gone along, has taken much from her which can never, will never be returned. Like most others, she mourns; unlike most others, she mourns that time has left her so unfulfilled – she is a half-carved mountain, a half-dead tree, a winding river that, finding its passage fruitless, has curled into a pool and become stationary. She longs to have passed with time itself, into a murky place, an unspoken place – to have become that which she now seeks: a relic of an age long past, of a life unlived, of a duty unfulfilled.
But she was once cursed. Cursed with innocence and a dreamer’s capricious heart, and thus she cannot give in to the melancholy that pulses and wreathes in her heart. She is still Saedís – snow-white and doe-eyed and even in the wake of hope lost and dreams shattered she must not lose herself.
Tonight - her small feet lay claim to the forest-floor as if she has grown from it´s very soil, from the stones and the tree roots which trip her feet as she travels, alone (as she so often does) and on a solitary trek through the wilderness; she has come to find that the woods here are different, the trees older, the boughs more knotted and twisted than elsewhere. The water is opaque, the ground solid; it is as if the land itself is refusing the secrets which she would so gladly bear, if only to be within its’ embrace. But it does gift her with something else.
He smells of a world which is lesser known and lesser traveled, and his eyes speak of darkness and riddles, and she knows that he is a strange creature delivered to her doorstep, wanting little and needing less. Still, my star-ember smiles her summer-smile, and the layers of hurt and gloom fall from her shoulders like shed skin and she is star-bright and innocent again, whispering a trembling hello.
”I am sorry, nightwalker, to have disturbed your peace. I am Saedís.”
Her tone is light and curious, and her stargazers’ eyes beg his own name in return.
@[Faulkor]
He is changed.
He awakes with a terrible taste in his mouth and an ache in his head, as if he’d been asleep for many days, dreaming of other worlds - of other states of being. He is changed, but he does not know how.
For a time he lies very still, blinking into the darkness of his forest cave. Since their arrival into the lands of Beqanna, this cave had become home to him and his companion, but now, as he lies strewn across the wet stone, the place feels foreign - strange.
He does not notice immediately how the aches in his joints that he has become so accustomed to are no longer there. He does not notice how the rattle in his chest that has plagued him the last few years has relented into the steady rise and fall of healthy breath.
“Balto?” he calls hoarsely, his voice grating against the dryness of his throat.
And then suddenly he remembers those last moments before he collapsed upon the stone floor. A flash of light - of magic. Now he raises his ghastly head to examine himself, gingerly testing his legs, and upon finding them to be without pain, he slowly rises.
“Balto?!” he calls more frantically, but there is no reply.
How long has he slept? He searches the cave for any sign of the passage of time, but the underground is slow to age - it does not show seasons or months like the world above. It takes milenia for caves to change, for their teeth to grow, for their rivers to carve out deeper channels and chasms. No, it is not the cave that has changed.
Faulkor creeps out from the depths of that earthen hole. Cool moonlight greets him. The fact that it is nighttime brings the star-strewn beast an inkling of peace. There is no danger in the night for creatures like Balto and him. Faulkor decides that he will not worry over his companion’s absence unless the sun rises without him.
He is hungry, he realizes as he picks up the scent of carrion upon a whisper of a breeze. Strange - not so the scent of death, but the growling of his stomach in reply. He peels away from his home and into the ancient woodland, seeking the opportunity to sate this peculiar craving. But, he finds her instead.
She glows radiant in the starlight, and Faulkor stops dead in his tracks - not for her beauty, though she certainly is - but for a startling memory of a former love. She had been pale like this stranger, although perhaps less refined in her beauty. Faulkor is dumbfounded, standing stupidly with his jaws agape.
“I am sorry, nightwalker, to have disturbed your peace.” She speaks, melodic and kind through the trees. “I am S,” How the “S” drags out like a finger over the ancient pages of an old story.
“Sider.” he interrupts, and the rest of her name falls upon deaf ears. “My love.” he proclaims, and if it were possible tears would have welled up in those hollow eyes he wears.
F A U L K O R
|
@[Saedìs] - Sorry for the wait, and this is going to be weird. Faulkor's old lead mare was white and her name was Sider. He may or may not snap out of it.
She said nothing, at first. Silence became them as she reached forward. They touched, briefly, and even in her fear Saedís was resplendent. She always had been, with her sylph-like build and sea-song eyes. Now, she was the same and yet time had not left her unchanged- there was sorrow in that gaze, diffidence in the downward tilt of her muzzle and in her voice as she said, simply, softly, ”Who are you?”
Somewhere in the darkness, a dove cries; it is not the coo of the morning, the soft greeting for new day and beginnings which cannot be contained. No, it is a soft, mourning sound – a weeping twitter against the cool fall breeze; the wind carries it to her, sequestered as she is at the side of Faulkor, and she betrays nothing more than the slow, purposeful blink of her deep, star-spun eyes. She does not know of that which the dove mourns this morning: perhaps child, perhaps mate, perhaps the forest-self which she is forced from with the coming of winter, which she return to with joy in her breast each spring?
But Saedís does not know of this bird; she knows that the soil has turned cool and curdled, the rivers have become sluggish, and that winter is fast approaching at the dancing heels of fall – but she loves winter, as she loves each season unquestionably. Oh, but tonight; with dove-song in her ears and starlight in her eyes and a strangers’ lament before her – Saedís aches for both bird and horse – this wild-eyed stallion who smells of mountain-depths and darkness. The longing between his words overwhelms her, but she stands where she is, swaying and lost and wistful. She does not know why this stranger provokes this reaction from her, or why she feels her vulnerability is warranted – she has lost, too, but it seemed his dreams were returning.
And now she must be the one to shatter them; oh woe. In her sorrow; the stars she wields flicker and fade on her skin – shrouding her in star-sprinkle and moon-tears.
”I am sorry, stranger, but I am not her.”
It is a sinking feeling that accompanies her words; and oh, how she wishes she could have been the one his soul yearns for – if only to undo the hurt she knows must follow her words.
@[Faulkor] poor Faulkor! She feels so sorry for him haha
|
