she's no saint but she'll take you to your knees
try her boy but she'll still do what she please
Imagine if you will a great cat laying upon a log, its tail swaying idly beneath and behind it: so lazily one might note the slow curves and patterns of how it bends. The beasts head lifting from crossed paws but not with malice nor hunters intention, rather it peers and watches: waits, and takes a breath that is deep and long and exhaled in a manner that its throat rumbles with a cacophonous purring. Those beautifully smooth shoulders rolling back and its body drawn up as it sits on curled haunches with its ears twitching and muscles rippling beneath the furred and patterned skin.
Aysel is, in the moments he speaks, much like the very cat. Her posture still and body language settled as her full attention is given to Magnus and his tale. She notes each pitch change and rumbling, each breath between words: her head leveling and ears leaning forward at the very mention of the Valley, and even of the Chamber. She minds this, but, there is a strained look of conflict in her dark blue eyes- one that fades away as she considers many thoughts and things: many truths.
“Time is a lie,” she interrupts, purring and yet half growling- the sobriety of her words mirrored in her very expression. “A strange myth, it exists differently for all of us. Many see it as the sun rising and falling, as the number of times that cycle occurs and how many we see.” shrugging, she peers at him with no greater change to her nature at present. “But for some of us, we cannot count. We do not exist in the spectrum of it: I stepped out of a voidal place, of somewhere where it feels like you’ve blinked and suddenly fifty years has passed. You and I? This is our curse and our blessing.”
At that she pauses, waits and listens- adds no more in or out and merely notes the way the sun illuminates the curves and muscles of his body. Notes the scars and all the world of experience written across his skin. When finally she does speak up, it is with the flicking of her ears and the gleaming of something ancient and war-like in her very eyes. “You are not the only one to die and return, to freeze and fall into darkness: returning as you had been centuries ago. My mother was a woman named Soraya,” she speaks with no love in the name, only bitterness and anger.
“Soraya and her brother, her twin, Stelios- they conceived myself and my siblings. Kadir, Savas, Damla, and Mehtap… we were gifted with power over the elements. Of Water, of Air- it was the nature of the place I call home. My grandmother, Larxene, was a Queen and an Oracle whose power over Fire gave her such skill that no man or woman tested her and she ruled the reborn Summerlands without challenge for years. She raised me and my brood, because my mother was a wicked creature who slaughtered every female and their child who lay with my father: and in time she tried to kill the Kings and Queens of the Reef, of the Sands.” she pauses, lifting her head and glancing away with furrowed brows.
“I came to Beqanna many years ago and found my elemental powers gone, I walked upon this place when the Chamber was young and the rulers were masterful in their ways. Yet it was Asylum who brought me to the Jungle, and she asked that I serve Prague as I did her- and of course I bowed to my new Sister, my Queen. I remember the first time I vanished, when I saw the depths of the forest and walked into them. Time was frozen and strange: it did not exist, and there was only the wilds of the jungle. When I emerged again there was Pangea and Sylva: the Taiga. Shiv told me to go with him, he asked, and I for a time did- because I was lost and I could not remember the Jungle. Carnage, his father, I was told has become or been revered as some God; but shiv was merely a man and for him I bore a son named Tithe.” in this pause, she delays- considers and thinks.
In her silence she tries to recall her pale son and how sickly he had been: how anguished she was when he could barely lift his head; but in those breaths she turns back to look at Magnus once more with a degree of warmth hidden in her severity.
“I took Tithe into the depths of the forest and he grew; but only for so long before all the world froze again. He is man now, doing as pleases; but I am frozen and aging again, lacking powers still, and recalling ancient things as if they were yesterday. You are not the only one to know these strange realities, but, never fear Magnus- General, and once-King… I have no desire to turn away from you or Tephra with these things said. If anything, I understand now more than ever why it is you seek to bolster and grow her. Your passion… and desires.” the latter prompts her to wink, to offer a coquette grin.
She chuckles, her body leaning and resting against his in the a relaxed and aloof manner, comfortable. “And if he does not live up to it, so be it: another will replace him more deserving and capable. That is the nature of kingdoms and Beqanna.” she’d have shrugged but there is a crooked way she tilts her head- a fire in her eyes that grows and smolders. “Ohh, I hope you don’t, I would hate to see you pulling punches… such a turn off, and so foolish. Mhmm, after all, you seem a bit rougher- I like it.”
