not long now to the rising; any

[Zosma]

even monsters are made of stardust

Night is the kindest to her.

It is fitting, perhaps, that a creature so saturated with shadows exists best in the darkness, but it is true nonetheless.  She wears her grief like those same shadows, dense and deep at first, a cloak not easily shed.  Because even though the night is kindest, it is still hard.  As the sun slips down behind the sharp slope of the mountains and the stars begin to spin overhead, she is reminded of Her.  

Somewhere, sometime, in another place, her lady waits.

Not for Zosma, though, not anymore.  

She moves on as best she can.  This sanctuary becomes a balm to her soul.  And even if her sadness sticks stubbornly to her, it becomes more bearable each day.  Her cloak becomes lighter.  She thinks that maybe one day, she will leave it behind her forever.  Not today.  Not tomorrow.  One day, maybe.

The stars are put away now as she moves towards the lake.  The night is easier, so she forces herself to habituate to the light once more.  Every step is its own therapy.  Every breath of morning air its own sort of healing.  She is on a path that she cannot turn back on now.  Still, this is the most she’s shown her face since she’s been here – the most she’s exposed herself to the others since coming to Hyaline almost a year ago.  Zosma isn’t sure this is where her journey will end; she’s not certain that the granite mountains will weigh her down enough to stay.  

But she’ll never know until she tries.

So this is her trying.  The demoness eyes her own reflection in the glassy mirror of water.  She doesn’t linger in the sight of the monster she’s become, but lets her opal eyes track upwards to the far shore.  There is a lone figure over there, a stranger from this distance. There is only one way to remedy the situation. Without hesitation, Zosma propels herself into the air with her leathery wings.  She skims the surface of the lake, even letting on hoof dangle lazily in the cool water underneath her racing form.  It is a quick but exhilarating flight.  She touches down all too quickly on the far side, eyeing her would-be companion immediately.

“Hello,” she starts, moving closer with a hungry gleam in her eyes. 

  

zosma

[Warlight]

She needs to leave. The three-pronged gash across her shoulder is still hot and tender and her head has been hurting more often than not. She couldn't stand her family's crowded grotto, not tonight. Warlight needed to be anywhere else, but preferably somewhere she could be the only living soul for miles. A place she could find her peace, or if she can't find that at least she can scream at the sky without a worried mother showing up. 

A smarter girl would have caught The Fear, valued the comfort of her family and grown wary of being alone. A smarter girl would learn her lesson, but Warlight intended to teleport herself somewhere far away. Nerine's northernmost shore would do just fine, she thinks as the lucid dream begin to close in around her, and she vanishes - or at least she begins to. 

'Hello'

That word worms it's way into the escapee's dream, sparking her nearly-fatal curiosity and turning her plans on their head. It is enough to cause her thoughts to flicker back to Hyaline as her dreaming begins to re-arrange her molecules, to flood her thoughts with images of the lakeshore and derail her intended journey. 

With a pop-- Kagerus' daughter reappears behind the mare, four hooves in the water and silver ripples radiating out around her. Dark eyes, like black river-stones at midnight, run across the stranger without bothering to pretend to do otherwise.  She was different and intriguing, so it is with near reverence in her voice the antlerd filly speaks into the darkness. 

"Who are you?"

Warlight
Soul as sweet as blood red jam

A little backstory here! Warlight was attacked by a bear a week or so ago and saw a friend die and another seriously injured in the same attack. Also I picture her as looking a lot like Kagerus in color/build

[Zosma]

even monsters are made of stardust

She’s staring at the stranger until she’s not.

The girl disappears just as Zosma is inching her way forward to converse, the air curiously and suddenly blank of the object of her attention.  Oh well, can’t say I didn’t try.  In the next second though, there’s a telltale pop into the water behind her.  She’s used to parlor tricks aplenty (her lady had enjoyed both harmless ones and those that only seemed to be harmless at first), so she isn’t shocked when she turns and sees the girl has reappeared behind her.  

She is rather surprised at the resemblance, however.

So her suspicions have not been unfounded, then.  The painted dreamweaver has indeed settled down from her time of midnight trysts with perfect strangers in the common grounds.  Zosma has perhaps been holding out hope that it hadn’t been the case.  But seeing the proof now, here in the flesh, she finds herself less affected than she thought she might.  After all, Kagerus had been a tempting and dangerous resolution to a conflict she had no part of herself.  She had been a balm to a burn that had left Zosma aching more after the encounter than less.  But she hadn’t been a future.  Even now, staring at her daughter –  likely the fruit of real devotion - the demoness knows it wouldn’t have lasted, wouldn’t have compared. 
 
Still –

“I am Zosma,” she says in that deep voice that echoes in the hollow of her own chest.  She doesn’t ask the girl’s name right away.  Instead, she tilts her head to regard the water-stationed filly with a searching gaze.  There are so many eerie similarities between her and the dream spinner that it’s hard to imagine any contribution of genes more than those of Kagerus herself.  There is one thing.

“You are injured.”  It’s not a question, and as soon as it leaves her lips, she’s stepping forward into the water for a better assessment.  The forked gash on the girl’s shoulder is angry but not new, she realizes, not actively bleeding at least.  For one as intimately familiar with pain as she is, Zosma can almost feel the sting of this attack in her own muscles.  The cutting and slicing of one’s own flesh isn’t readily forgotten, especially a wound so new.  “Does your mother know about this?”  She asks it conversationally, without too much interest.  She knows how much of a hellion she was at this age, how little the chance she would have told her own dam.  

There is really no good reason for her to care about a few scratches on an unknown filly in the middle of a kingdom she can’t even call her own.  But she does.  Damnit, she does.    



  

zosma

[Warlight]

"Not really," she answers the stranger, though the wonder in her tone flattens as she addresses the very subject she had been squashing away for the last week. "You're fine, compared to Thati," her mind reminds her with force. She had no right to claim injury when her newest friend lies dead in the summits above them.

Don't think about that now. 

"My brothers a healer," she says, her voice, along with her gaze, trailing off now that half of her thoughts have returned to the aftermath of the bear's attack. Velk had mended the muscle, stopped the river of blood, but the wound still required old-fashioned time to fully mend. "It was his first attempt at healing anything," she adds, feeling the need to explain the inflamed wound on her shoulder. 

Warlight realizes that her gaze is tracing the snow-capped mountain peaks and her dark, roaming eyes returns to Zamora's face. She observes the horns and scales which adorn the powerful woman with fascination, stirred by the rich tones of the demoness' voice, the restless yearling matches her stride. Disrupting the mirror like surface of the lake once again, Will halts beside her strange companion, and she doubts that Zamora has ever met an enemy she couldn't conquer. 

Does your mother know 

"No." Wright's reply is short, almost suspicious, as she suddenly wonders if this woman knows her mothers. In their world, thinking someone has a mother who cares is a bold assumption, and Warlight abruptly feels this stranger is not so new to Hyaline. Or maybe she just knows her antlered mother knew everyone. 

"Are you going to tell her?" 

Warlight
Soul as sweet as blood red jam

[Zosma]

even monsters are made of stardust

The girl’s tone changes when Zosma mentions her obvious injury.  She is glad, in a wholly selfish way, that the focus has shifted away from her own strangeness.  Because there are far more important matters in their world, far more interesting and wondrous things than a Cursed woman damning and darkening the shores of an otherwise placid lake.  At least this is pure curiosity rather than fear, she thinks, taking an unconscious step back from Warlight.  She’s unintentionally inspired enough fear to start a riot in her name over the last year or two.  At least this way, she can focus on something else, something new.  

She can try to solve problems that are not her own.

The water stills around them once more as she listens, her ears twitching mildly as she takes in everything.  There is so much to this place she hasn’t fully grown accustomed to yet, sights and sounds that have not become regular.  She is still new here, still learning – still not sure if she will stay.  The black creature leans back from her cursory examination of the wound.  It is part of it, but not all that she meant.  “He has done a fine job, to be sure.  But I meant other injuries, too,” she says, tilting her heavy head so that her horns cradle the silvery light from above.  “Internal injuries – those of the mind and heart and not of the flesh.”  

She could see it in her eyes the moment she saw her, the look of hidden devastation and desire to be alone.  Pain is like a love language to Zosma now; she can read it anywhere.  Especially on the faces of those who try to hide it the most.  “Do you want to talk about it?”  Again, she’s blasé in the way the words leave her parted lips.  The sense that she should tread carefully as to not frighten the girl off keeps her voice level and measured.  “Or do you want to tell me more about Hyaline?  You must know all the secret and scenic places.”  Warlight moves closer and she takes it as an encouraging sign.

“No,” she answers immediately.  “I would only tell her how brave and strong her daughter is.”  Zosma smiles gently, though it looks more like threatening than anything as her fangs poke out of her lifted lips.  She’d been raised among docile women, women who believed their place was firmly behind their man, existing only to raise his children.  Fortunately her mother had instilled and fostered her ferocious independence.  She told her many times to rise up and spread this strength to other females.  She misses her fiercely now, thinking about mothers – she would love this sanctuary tucked away between the jagged mountains.       




  

zosma

@[warlight]