[open] i've never seen someone lit from within

[Islas]

you think i’ll be the dark sky so you can be the star?
i’ll swallow you whole.

There is something missing, and it haunts her.

It is not Loess or Pangea, lost to the sea, the two places that she had once called ‘home’. They weren’t really, though, just simple place-holders, somewhere to let herself pretend to have that feeling of being anchored. They could never be home, not when home existed in a galaxy far from here, in a sky so distant that not even the stars that hang suspended above her now could tell her how to get there—a place with no name, a place she cannot even form into a solid memory, but a place she knows exists all the same.

This world as she has known it—the way it has been since she was first born into this equine body—has changed drastically. She can only assume that this is why she feels unsettled, that the sudden departure from what she has learned to be normal has disrupted the makeshift sense of belonging she has worked so hard to craft over the years. Because while everyone else seems genuinely upset (they have lost homes and loved ones, their world has dissolved into dust, leaving them with little to build back on) she does not share their sorrow.

This must be the thing that is missing, the same thing that has always been missing; that spectrum of emotion that she never could quite grasp a hold of.

She does not make the connection between the last time she saw her father and the knot of unease in her chest.
She does not consider that before he left he had taken something from her, a cruelty disguised as a favor as he left holes in her memory that Tiercel should have filled.

She does not remember that she had loved, once, that she had caught the most elusive emotion of all, and she does not realize that now it is gone.

She stands instead alongside the river at nightfall, surrounded in the cold glow of her own starlight, distant from the rest of them as always as she tries to once again find a place in a world she was never meant to be a part of.

Islas

[Ion]

If this had been death, he would have welcomed it with no hesitation. But this is too unkind for death. Too filled with the pain and despair and sorrow of so many. All of the things he has known too well and tried running from his entire life. They are reminders of a time he had believed without doubt his life should have been swapped for another.

Just as before when everything had grown to be more than he could bear, he retreated inside the predator living just beneath his skin. It’s a simpler life, filled only with the instinctual need to hunt, the metallic tang of blood, and lazy naps beneath the shade of an overhanging tree. And just as before, the small wren fluttering at his shoulders tries to lead him from the darkness.

Of course, Wren had learned long ago just how incredibly difficult it is to lead a creature as mired in their own wretchedness as Ion.

Yet today, for the first time in ages, he finally listens. It is night of course, though he can hardly be faulted for that. It is his domain after all. Even the strongest would find it impossible to drag him from his cocoon of safety and forgetfulness during the light of day.

As he pads slowly from the haven of the trees, his gaze travels to the sky. The stars glimmer above him, filled with a purity and beauty he isn’t certain he has ever truly known. It isn’t until another light - one that glows with the same ethereal softness of the stars overhead - flickers along the edges of his vision that he draws his gaze back down.

For a moment he stares at her, vaguely nonplussed at seeing her there. When a gentle trill echoes in his ear however, he grunts and shakes himself from his stupor.

The dark fur that ripples with his abrupt movement continues to shudder as the shift spreads across his body. Sleek pewter replaces thick black as he morphs from feline to equine.

The renewed trilling causes his ear to flick in agitation as a sigh escapes his lips. With a grimace, he steps forward and approaches the softly glowing mare that had snapped him from his reverie. When he settles beside her, he simply stares until tiny talons pluck at his forelock. With a grunt, he looks away before offering her a half-hearted greeting. “Hey.”

ion

in the empty of the grave, only distant dreams remain

@Islas

[Islas]

you think i’ll be the dark sky so you can be the star?
i’ll swallow you whole.

The stallion that appears alongside her moves with a predator’s ease, and though she feels the weight of his presence pressing towards her, she does not look up. They are always coming and going—some may linger, watching the starlit mare for some kind of sign that she is open for conversation, but rarely does she meet their gaze anymore, and almost always they simply continue on their way. She does not mean to be so unapproachable; she cannot help the sharp angles of her face that hardly ever softens into smile, or the fact that her eyes are such a deep, disarming purple-black that it feels like falling into a starless galaxy when she fixes them with her detached stare.

She does not know what to say to them anymore, and they so rarely know what to say to her. And since there is no longer a driving force behind her efforts (though she cannot pinpoint the exact moment she had stopped caring), it was difficult to find a reason to keep trying.

Perhaps if she drifted long enough as a lost star she would once again return to the sky, with nothing to tether her to the earth any longer.

It is not until he speaks that she angles her head towards him, her eyes flicking quickly to his face, but she says nothing. Despite the length of time she has spent here there is still an otherness to her stare, to the way her mouth remains so rigid, and yet, somehow despite the outward stoicism, there is nothing unkind about her. She just simply is.

“Hello,” she returns his greeting, the single word silvery in tone but strangely devoid of emotion. Movement near his forelock catches her eye, and for a moment something else finally flickers in her eyes, a fleeting curiosity, but she does not comment in his winged companion yet. “My name is Islas,” she tells him out of habit—one of the few she has managed to ingrain into herself, along with the barest of smiles that follows.

Carefully, she pulls down a few threads of starlight, twirling the ribbons of silver just above their heads before eventually breaking them apart and spinning them into small stars—a night sky that floats just within their reach. “Do you like stars?” she asks, surprising herself a little. She has never really directly asked anyone if they liked the stars, assuming wrongfully that everyone was like her and did not pay much attention to things that did not concern them (and she, of course, is concerned with the stars a great deal).

Perhaps she has not entirely given up on this world after all.

Islas

@Ion i wish i could tell you that since this took 2 months that means it's really good, but sadly you have eyes and will see that is not the case