go your own way || lexa

[Ellyse]

loving you isn't the right thing to do; how can I ever change things that I feel?

  Weariness settles into the very pit of her bones as her tired limbs push her forward, fatigue wearing into her. Her heartbeat thrums heavily within her chest as a surge of hormones flood through her veins, an agitating side effect of what stirs and develops deep within her womb. The dawn of the breaking sun had long since waned into yet another dusk, the light giving way to the heavy blanket of stars overhead and the looming moon tucked somewhere off towards the horizon - alas, there is nothing but impenetrable darkness and thick, stagnant humidity to receive her. The moisture in the air weighs upon her already tired wings, but she draws them closer to her lithe body, hazel eyes searching through the shadows for something - someone, her senses and interest piqued. 

   Exiled from a long slumbering land, she had little alternative but to leave - she could have fought, yes, and drawn his ribs away from his sinewy muscle and contorted a limb from a cartilage-fused socket, but she had gone with little else but spoken word left between. Loyalty runs deep within her blood, for those deserving of it - those who seek strength but not power, and favor humility over ego, and yet she had been cast away for questioning the self-important Zeik. Irritation festers still, and she mourns what will become of the warm sanctuary she had come to know as her own for so many years - stirred from the ashes and yet flammable and liable to burst into flames. 

   Her mind wanders to Sahm, the gentle but fierce and loyal magician, and his kind eyes. He is too true, too vestal - a beacon of light; if only there were still a refuge to shed light upon. Magnus soon weighs heavily on her mind, and her heart sinks within the pit of her aching chest. His hardened lines and warm smile would not so easily leave her mind, and somewhere within her is new life, growing and developing after a coupling that had left her both breathless and restless - of this she is certain. Emotion wells up within her esophagus, but she swallows it, unwilling to yield to it.

   At last, she is drawn from the recesses of her own mind, and a heavy stench of estrogen emerges from the thick of the jungle. With her flaring nostrils pressed to the moist soil, she inhales the mark of many. An unseen borderline; of which she would not violate. The dull brims of her hooves linger along the invisible boundary, and as she tilts her chin up to the heavy canopy above, her voice echoes - a call for any; a call for the Queen.

Ellyse

[riva]

i don't love you;

but i always will.

Dusk finds the bay tovero slick with river-muck.

She is completely stationary, beyond the ebb and flow of air through her until the mud hardens.

It begins to flake off the moment she moves from the river’s fast-flowing side, and begins to stomp off through the Jungle. She is, at times, not a quiet or elegant mare and moves more like a starving elephant. Tonight, she has no reason not to be loud as she stomps her way into some overgrown viney nook that she has claimed as hers. From there, she can see a bit of sky peeking in through the tall tightly knit canopies of trees and within that peekaboo patch of sky is a sly curve of moon that she can just barely make out beyond all the leafy interference.

She has her face turned up to the sky, and has been staring at it long enough to be entranced. Long enough also, to notice when the light is interrupted not by swaying leaf-canopy but by a shadow that should not be. Flyer, she thinks, before casting her eyes about her viney nook and making sure she had not dreamt the thing that she had seen. The shadow of it is gone though, and she cannot find it amongst all the night-dark green of the Jungle but she knows that she saw it. Not an unfamiliar sight, fliers often soared across the sky and their shadows raced them along the ground, but Riva hardly looked up for them - they could still walk like normal horses could and that was her expectation of them, since she lacked wings (and the desire for them) to fly like they did.

Her sleepytime routine suffers now because she is curious, and we all know curiosity killed the cat. So thank the monkeys, Riva is not of feline persuasion or else, she’d likely have used up all nine lives by now. Nonetheless, her curiosity prods her to action and she tromps off in the direction that the flier appeared to fly in. The sky has deepened to a lush dark, and this is the big cats’ time to mate and hunt. Riva can hear them chuffing to one another in the night, they are not quiet and neither is she in her trekk. Noise is made; branches crack and leaves grumble at her passing, they scratch out their displeasure in angry welts upon her skin that she ignores.

She is first to lay eyes upon the flier, who looks rather tired. Riva cannot blame her, the energy it must require to hold such mass aloft and on such delicate looking wings! She notes the way the mare stands on that invisible territorial divide, toeing the line but not crossing it as if unsure of her welcome. Riva, still in a rare mood of friendliness, emerges from the dark and offers a wry grin of greeting. “Welcome to the Jungle.” as if the mare had no idea as to what earth she had planted her hooves in, and Riva almost laughs. Instead, her brown eyes spark with that selfsame fire that fuels her (even after the thing that she has done, a dirty but necessary deed that throbs with secret pleasure in the pit of her foul heart) and lends character to Riva’s rather severe face.

Riva

[Lexa]

the dead are gone, and the living are hungry.

If there’s any silver lining in any of this, it’s that pregnancy does not suit her sister well. Larken has grown especially ornery over the winter months, and her belly has expanded to a ridiculous size. Her abilities too, have become increasingly predictable, and Lexa has been treated to more than one instance where Larken has accidentally dropped a rain shower on her own self. It might be cruel to laugh at her sister’s predicament, but she can’t help herself. Larken is the one that got herself into this mess after all.

And Lexa might as well laugh at it while she can. Soon enough there will be a child in the world. A child with a wildly irresponsible mother.

She still hasn’t decided what to do on that front. She’s talked to Larken about the pregnancy, but neither of them have broached the subject of after. When there’s a living, breathing child to look after.

It had been different with Jinju. Lexa had decided to take on that responsibility, and Jinju had chosen her. But this child … Larken hadn’t chosen this child. She’d had one, silly fling in the meadow, and unintended consequences.

Options rush through her head as she continues on her border patrol, forcing her way angrily through the underbrush. Any way she looks at the situation, she feels like she’s going to end up raising the child herself. But, who knows. Maybe the responsibility will make Larken grow up.

Yeah right.

She’s rounding a particularly old rubber tree when her thoughts are interrupted by the scent of another. A foreigner. She moves into action immediately, tracking the scent to the border’s edge, where a mare awaits. She’s pleased to see that, once again, Riva has beaten her there. She gives the paint a friendly nicker before turning to the winged newcomer with the faintest hint of smile on her face. This stranger has at least respected their borders, which is more than she can say for some of their other visitors lately. She will do her best to be friendly and welcoming. “How can we help you?”

lexa