[private] i set all my regrets on fire

[Gale]

i hear the wicked get no rest, but when you do ---------- i hope you dream of me Many of the residents have fled the jungle, and the world beneath the emerald Tephran canopy has grown quiet. From where he perches on an obsidian outcropping, Gale can see much of the tropical kingdom. Steam erupts from the numerous places where lava and water meet, filling the spaces between the trees with fog. The heat rises, and the winter clouds overhead lose their snow instead as a fine and mistlike rain. In the western distance, the sea stretches toward the black sand, and far far out in the distance he can See the black white sand islands - Islandres and Ischia. To the east, the volcano-warmed jungle eventually ends in the distant red hills of Loess. Far beyond that, farther than he cares to look, is Hyaline. His power has only grown since he left the mountainous kingdom, and he has carved any regret for that decision out of himself. It lives in Ciri now, along with the rest of his weakness. The residents there will be dealt with when he’s bored enough to make it there. Until then, he is content with his harassment of blood relations and the Tephran residents. One such resident, a hollow-eyed yellow mare, cries in her sleep and catches his attention. Lyla. She’s been especially distraught since the death of Midway; the pair of them had kept each other company since Gale had found them a few days after arriving. The mare had given him nearly six months of panic, fear, and a dark and delicious depression before she’d thrown herself into the lava. He wonders how long it will be till Lyla follows her. In the end, he doesn’t wonder long. He loses his patience with her pleading, and by midafternoon is wandering the Jungle with blood splashed across his navy face, searching for something to occupy himself with. Gale is wingless today, and the glowing golden slashes of brindle along his sides are clearly visible. The lightning that dances across his skin and white spinal mane is a pale blue, and the flashes illuminate the thick, belly-high fog that floats between the trees. GALE

[splendora]

how can i put it down into words,
when it's almost too much for my soul alone

Splendora had missed the exodus of home, the mass migration of those that had been friend and family since the time of her birth. It had been the dark that set her free initially, a living skeleton loosed into a world where even the monsters had not found her worth their while. Why waste time on a thing already dead and empty, on a girl all but tiptoeing on the edge between life and death. A ghost in every way except a mortality so easy to hide in all the empty spaces between those delicate, glowing bones. And so Tephra had become a place that was like home but not home, a sun whose gravity held her fast even when she was busy learning the secrets of so many other places. She always returned though, always to see her brother who existed to be the other half of her wayward soul, always to see her mother and her father and the siblings who had chosen to remain with them.

But even she can tell that something has changed as she finds herself among trees so dense and overgrown that they can only be the humid jungles of her childhood. There is no one here anymore, no one to greet her, no one to redirect her sightless wandering to whichever volcanic corner her family is calling home. So she travels from one tree to the next, moving slowly to spare herself from colliding with things much larger and firmer than her. So it must be solely by great fortune that she does finally find someone in this deep jungle place. It is all lost on her though - the strange midnight beauty of iridescent navy and glowing golden slashes like comet tails across his sides. She cannot see the lightning where it sparks, or the fog that swirls with the movement of his strides.  To her he is nothing more than sound and sensation, nothing more than scent.

“Hello?” Her voice is as soft as the fog that pools between them, almost shy in the way she doesn’t speak loudly so as not to startle this new companion. After all, she is told there is day again and the monsters have all gone. “Do you know where everyone has gone?” She thinks she is close enough to reach out now, but when she does her nose finds only humid open air and the sudden metallic stink of blood. “Oh,” she falters, and worry blooms in the delicate lines of her red merle face as she reaches out again, this time more delicately, “are you alright?” It is evident now, if it hadn’t been before by the gentle way she nosed along from one tree to the next, that those pale green gemstone eyes are wide and worried and filled with too many clouds to be anything but sightless.

SPLENDORA

@ Gale

[Gale]

@splendora

i hear the wicked get no rest, but when you do ---------- i hope you dream of me The first thing he notices is the way she moves - wounded. There’s a hesitation in her step, in the way she moves along the empty path between them. Gale reaches for her eyes out of habit, and finds nothing at all. So he draws his magics back and surveys her with his own brilliantly blue gaze instead. Her coat is a pattern he’s not seen before, and another iteration of himself would have wanted to keep it as a souvenir. Her eyes are green and glassy, and Gale reaches out again, but only to confirm that she was born entirely sightless. He considers letting her watch her impending death, but thinks perhaps sensory overload might interrupt his meal. Having been delivered such a defenseless dessert, Gale is not eager to waste it. He answers her first question with honesty, his voice almost amused: “Most of them have fled.” In the dim light of the jungle, she glows faintly as she reaches toward him, and he doesn’t move away, knowing how thickly the blood coats the part of his pale mane she reaches toward. Closer, he can taste her worry. He leans closer, so she might feel the warmth of his breath against her ear, and smell the blood on it when he answers her second query: “Very much so.” He’d been standing with Lyla just like this not a half hour earlier, Gale thinks. Will this blind woman plead like the blond had? GALE

[splendora]

how can i put it down into words,
when it's almost too much for my soul alone

She is certain when he speaks that this is someone new, someone she does not know. The voice is wholly unfamiliar, and though she thinks she might like the shade of amusement that colors his tone, she isn’t sure what would be amusing about families fleeing their homes. It makes her feel unsure, the first shy prickles of doubt that don’t yet bloom into full wariness as she steps close enough to touch him.

“Why?” She wonders aloud, soft and unsure, suddenly worried about her own family and where they might be, how she will ever find them if they are gone from this place. “Did something happen here?” She has already forgotten that a moment ago she wasn’t sure if she should trust him. That the subtle amusement was a poor match to his words.

But when he leans closer and she can smell the stink of blood on him again, wariness blooms in full within the cage of her delicate ribs. “No,” she says, and the words feels out of place, like a shield she doesn’t realize she is trying to raise between them, “I can smell the blood. I know you’re hurt.” She is speaking so softly, whispering because the hairs prickling along her spine are trying to tell her that something is not quite right.

But she is stubborn or she is stupid, and when she reaches blindly for him again it is with a determination to find his wounds and have her suspicions verified. She touches his mane first, some of it feels dry and crunchy, other parts still damp and sticky. All of it smells like iron though, like something that makes her want to gag and pull away from him.

Her brain is trying to tell her that it is too much blood to be his, too much stink for him to be moving quietly and speaking coherently. But her heart is so loud and it tells her brain not to worry so much, this place is safe because it is home, she’s just scared because she’s a little turned around, a little lost.

“I could help you wash this off.” She says after a moment, quiet and unsure and still reluctantly unwilling to acknowledge that in all her quiet exploration of his neck and his chest and shoulder, she had found no injury. “I’m headed home, but it can wait a bit.” She lifts her face to his, orienting herself by the sound of his quiet breaths before reaching up to touch her nose to the sound of it, the sound of him. “My name is Splendora.” A smile, still unsure but gentle, like silver starlight in a midnight sky. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

SPLENDORA

@ Gale

[Gale]

i hear the wicked get no rest, but when you do ---------- i hope you dream of me Her tone is doubtful, and her questions full of uncertainty, yet he can taste no fear in the air. Even when the worry blossoms, it is not for herself, but rather tied to the way she continues to seek a wound along his unmarked chest and shoulder. “Splendora,” he repeats her name, which sounds light. Fragile almost, and yet entirely at odds with the emptiness in the air around them. The cursed creature is accustomed to fear, has fed on it nearly exclusively these last few months. When she reaches out to touch him, her empathy is so saccharine that the brindle stallion nearly gags. He blinks, and thinks of Other planes, and in an instant he’s torn away some of her goodness. Enough so that he doesn’t wince when he steps closer, and finds the place on her chest most near her beating heart. It beats rapidly, unprotected by scales or armor or magic, and yet his magic can feel no fear at all. “Splendora.” This time when he says her name, and it’s almost as much a question as the words that follow: “Why are you not afraid?” Her answer will not save her, not as he presses his sharp teeth where his lips had rested a moment earlier. Her chest is as pale as snow, soft and unprotected. There are no rippled scars to intrigue him, no battle-hardened muscle beneath the sleek hide. Splendora won’t make it home tonight, but she’ll survive long enough to answer his question at least. GALE

@splendora