Please stay, for this fear it will not die; Kora

[Noori]

Most days, most days stay the sole same
Please stay, for this fear it will not die
Down low, down amongst the thorn rows
Weeds grow, through the lilies and the vines

It's a mite too cold for her up here in the north, but if her mother could stand it, then so could she for fuck's sakes. Don't let it ever be said that Noori didn't possess the same courage as Scorch, though she would die to be related to her mother in any other way; but at the very least, she refuses to be labelled a pussy. Especially now, as her tree-like figure transitions from childish to distinctly adolescent; mood swings, nap times, and telling everyone to go fuck themselves are her middle names.

Consequently, when she does happen to run into a family member, it is with a little more anger than perhaps anticipated. Then again, she has always been a spitfire girl with rash, impulsive tendencies (just like her mother!), so Shahrizai probably hadn't been too taken aback. At any rate, the enormous hug he wrapped his older sister in managed to subdue whatever sassiness remained her, and in the end, she left smiling and warm for having met with a brother she had not seen in decades.

This made a nice soft pillow for when she ran into her mother, too; thanks to Shahrizai's easing her back into family matters, she managed to handle the whole ordeal with a fair amount of grace, even bestowing the clearly neglected bastard son of Scorch's with a happy flower crown and some forest friends to follow him around for some time. The child had seemed greatly happy with just such a gift - attention seemed to be a thing he lacked - and even Scorch had been forced to smile, and to give her eldest daughter a sorely awaited hug.

Of course, Noori did not mention that she had been with Hestoni not days before in Tephra. That would make absolutely everything blow up, and not even her teenaged affliction for shit-disturbing could bring her to rend that kind of hole in the already-destroyed tapestry of her family's well being. Instead, she left her mother feeling slightly less settled than she had arrived to the land, not really knowing what to expect but knowing for a fact that there were even more people she knew awaiting her in this cliff-side waste land.

noori

@[Kora] so this is really more of a dictation of everything she did before finding kora but like, i hope that's okay

[Kora]

On the Isle’s northernmost shore, Kora had watched as the child borne was made into a child no longer. She had looked on as the babe’s infancy had been traded in for something else – something womanly and iridescent – an alien beauty. She was sleek with scales, her hair silvery and adorned with blossoms. Kora remembers the way their satin petals shimmered in the light just before her daughter had walked into dark waters and disappeared. Ironically, Kora had once done the same. Yes, a daughter – though because of what Kora and Woolf had decided, she would live her life as the daughter of none. It had been for the best. Their tryst may have resulted in a child, but neither were fit for parenthood. The night they’d spent beneath spinning galaxies of snow had culminated in lustful curiosity and nothing more. Love and affection had played no part – and yet a child needed both to survive. So instead, they gave her what they could. The mage of blood gave her knowledge and years, while the mage of winter gave her a name. Evia. Standing there upon the shore, Kora had watched the place where the last glistening scales had slipped below the surface – waiting until the ripples had faded and gone before turning to leave herself, the sound of the waves like a pulse in her ears. It wasn’t long before she left the Isle in need of a distraction. The gold-and-silver mare knew her brother would come searching for her as soon as he was able after convalescing in the Pampas, and she didn’t particularly feel like being subjected to the look in Leander’s kind brown eyes when he discovered what she’d done – no, not just yet. So it was that Kora came to be in the neighbouring territory of Nerine. As always, winter follows in her footsteps. A dusting of snow covers the lush summer grasses around her, though snow isn’t falling. It seeps instead from her breath as infinitesimal crystals exhaled from cold lips, like dandelion seeds. She stands upon a small hillock which overlooks a sweeping expanse of seaside cliffs – the amount of accumulated snow the only testament to how long she’s done so. A sound behind causes her delicate head to turn. Blue eyes blink only once before a frosty breath of laughter causes snowflakes to swirl toward the approaching figure. The creature was small and oddly misplaced by her youth, yet nonetheless altogether familiar. Of course, the mage of winter recognizes the mage of spring – she who had been a friend in a lifetime long gone. “Why Noori, you haven’t aged a bit.” kora mage of winter

@[Noori] bwaaahhh I am so excited for thissss

[Noori]

Most days, most days stay the sole same
Please stay, for this fear it will not die
Down low, down amongst the thorn rows
Weeds grow, through the lilies and the vines

Every now and then, she forgets that she is one of four (five, technically, though she never considered the shadow creature a true part of the seasons on account of its pure alien nature post-quest). Despite having relations with all of them (Kingslay, he who threatened to burn her alive; Etojo, whose attacks Noori fended off via animal sacrifice; and Kora, the mare she saved that day, and the mare who became her only friend for a long while afterward), the self-absorbed nature of teenagehood combined with decades of isolation from the other three left her relatively ignorant as to the possibility of meeting another season manipulator.

Comically, her own magic leaks distractedly in a trail behind her, pale red flowers popping to life and sun-illuminated poll flitting through the air above. Small woodland animals also trailed behind her, rabbits and mice and even a deer; they never stay long, but there exists in their souls a constant drive to be close to their mother Spring, if even for a single minute or perhaps two.

They had always been opposites, or at least, in contrast to one another. While one could handle the alternate temperatures preferred by the other, they would never be truly comfortable in one another's climates long enough to maintain any kind of constant connection. Noori doesn't necessarily mind such a thing, being a hermit herself; today, however, an end of their collective isolation is a welcome respite to the loneliness the young woman feels heavily in her thin chest.

Stepping out from the needy arms of a pine tree forest, their worlds clash: with her own harmonic burble of laughter, Noori's lips split into a grin upon the sight of her winter friend standing just there, atop a hill. Without hesitation, the mage of spring gallops to the mage of winter, willingly subjecting herself to the frigidity surrounding her beautiful ice-locked companion. The depths of her pupilless emerald eyes glimmer emotionally, her head bending to tuck itself into the grown woman's frosty neck.

In this way, with Noori curled compassionately and gratefully into Kora's embrace, the winter manipulator comments on her age. A loud jet of laughter pulls the two mares apart, Noori's expression far feistier now that they have sufficiently reacquainted themselves (hey, it doesn't take much to refamiliarize yourself with someone who lived and breathed the same life changing experience as you, after all).

"I'll take that as a compliment, though in my past life I may have smacked you for it." Her smirk toys coyly with Kora's imagination, the dogwood flowers in her willow frond mane practically dancing in joy at their reunion with the ice-armored creature. "And for not being an immortal, you look pretty good yourself, Kora - what do you do, put yourself into cryogenic comas to wait out the hard times?" Noori nodded appreciatively, her face elongating as if she had not considered this to be a particularly excellent plan just before she made the jibe. "Next time take me with you, wontcha? Or is there some other explanation for your decade-long disappearance?"

noori

@[Kora]