07-03-2020, 07:09 AM
l e p i s
I never thought it was a question of whether
A winter wind bushes against my side, slipping up beneath my feathered wings. I shiver, but it is disguised as a shifting of my weight, a resettling that makes it clear I’ve no intention of moving from where I block Izora Lethia’s progress into Loess.
She understands this too, or at least takes a step backward, nodding her head in acknowledgement. My blue-grey eyes narrow for the moment my visitor looks away, taking her in. Aten is gone, I know, yet there is a telling swell to the buckskin’s belly, one I have worn myself many times. Another suitor then, I think, and that at least I approve of. I hope that this one is more capable than her last, or at least capable of giving her satisfactory children.
I respond to her attempts at small talk with the same stony expression as before. Only when she begins ‘I came to seek you out’, do I suspect she is getting to the meat of her visit. I am doubtful it will be political; the North seems content under its current leadership. They have not grown wiser since my departure, it would seem.
She is here for something else then, though what I am not certain. The use of past tense with the descriptors she has chosen – honest and compassionate – does not go unnoticed. I have been called worse things than this though, and though I am often quick to take offense, it is not from paltry barbs such as these. At least not when they are followed by majestic and a series of questions that seem far too probing to have come from Izora Lethia herself.
“You went to the Mountain, didn’t you?” The words I speak sound like a question, but I do not need to hear her reply to know the answer. “Aten came to Wolfbane and I after he’d gone,” I tell her, “Asking the same sort of probing questions. Some task the fairies had sent him on, and I suppose we’d answered well enough, as he grew more and more like Castile afterward.” Perhaps that is what drove them away, I think, that implacable nature of a dragon.
What has the pretty mare in front of me asked for, I wonder?
It is something I would have asked her, back in the times that we were friends. Instead, I only answer her soft mention of a new gift with: “A magician gave me peace. The ability to manipulate it, I mean.” I look away from my former friend, to where the sun is slowly inching toward the western horizon and turning the sky around us to the same reddish orange of the hills surrounding us. “We’ve not had anyone taken from Loess since.” The north is not faring so well, I know. Has Lethy’s co-leader returned from her captivity, I wonder, and had the child she’d been carrying survived?
The path my following thoughts take is uncomfortably aligned with the questions that the other woman asks.
“I do not regret what I acquired. These new powers have been immensely helpful in keeping all the lands that I rule safe. Not that I couldn’t have done so before, but…you know.” She shrugs her shoulders, casually. They were useful enough, my shrug says, an advantage. “I never turn down help from the Fairies.”
Izora Lethia asks if it has all gone the way she expected, and Lepis exhales in a startled chuff. It turns into a wry laugh as soon as it meets the winter air, a puff of steam that fogs the air between them before being pulled away by the stiff wind. It will only grow colder, I know, temperature dropping as the sun falls away.
“Nothing ever goes the way it is expected to,” I tell her. I know that she asks about my power only, and I can admire her determination. Her reminder of the past had touched a part of me I have longed walled away, and I react predictably. “There have been deals made with devils and genies to keep this place safe, Lethy, in addition to that magic.” My words are short and clipped, but not unkind. “Perhaps other lands, and other families have been sacrificed to make it so.” I shrug, my mouth drawn back to a thin line, accompanied by a sense of inevitability in my words. I had seen Neverwhere’s scars and the iridescence of her son. Heard Celina’s casual mentions of her father. Listened to tales of the Lilliana and her many children. “But they had their chance and they squandered it. The blame for that is not mine.”
I fall quiet just as the mournful howls of the coyotes start. They will trail off soon, I know, and look back to meet Izora Lethia’s eyes directly.
“With power comes difficult decisions, the addition of so many grey areas in a world that to others seems purely black and white. But if you are certain of what you mean to achieve, there is no need for fear of corruption. You have a good heart. You need not fear that kind of danger.” Not when there are so many others. I am not normally this verbose, and am never so with strangers. The amount of information I have given her is indicative – but of what I am not yet certain. My eyes drift once more to her belly, an unspoken question, but I am not rude enough to ask directly.
@[Izora Lethia]
She understands this too, or at least takes a step backward, nodding her head in acknowledgement. My blue-grey eyes narrow for the moment my visitor looks away, taking her in. Aten is gone, I know, yet there is a telling swell to the buckskin’s belly, one I have worn myself many times. Another suitor then, I think, and that at least I approve of. I hope that this one is more capable than her last, or at least capable of giving her satisfactory children.
I respond to her attempts at small talk with the same stony expression as before. Only when she begins ‘I came to seek you out’, do I suspect she is getting to the meat of her visit. I am doubtful it will be political; the North seems content under its current leadership. They have not grown wiser since my departure, it would seem.
She is here for something else then, though what I am not certain. The use of past tense with the descriptors she has chosen – honest and compassionate – does not go unnoticed. I have been called worse things than this though, and though I am often quick to take offense, it is not from paltry barbs such as these. At least not when they are followed by majestic and a series of questions that seem far too probing to have come from Izora Lethia herself.
“You went to the Mountain, didn’t you?” The words I speak sound like a question, but I do not need to hear her reply to know the answer. “Aten came to Wolfbane and I after he’d gone,” I tell her, “Asking the same sort of probing questions. Some task the fairies had sent him on, and I suppose we’d answered well enough, as he grew more and more like Castile afterward.” Perhaps that is what drove them away, I think, that implacable nature of a dragon.
What has the pretty mare in front of me asked for, I wonder?
It is something I would have asked her, back in the times that we were friends. Instead, I only answer her soft mention of a new gift with: “A magician gave me peace. The ability to manipulate it, I mean.” I look away from my former friend, to where the sun is slowly inching toward the western horizon and turning the sky around us to the same reddish orange of the hills surrounding us. “We’ve not had anyone taken from Loess since.” The north is not faring so well, I know. Has Lethy’s co-leader returned from her captivity, I wonder, and had the child she’d been carrying survived?
The path my following thoughts take is uncomfortably aligned with the questions that the other woman asks.
“I do not regret what I acquired. These new powers have been immensely helpful in keeping all the lands that I rule safe. Not that I couldn’t have done so before, but…you know.” She shrugs her shoulders, casually. They were useful enough, my shrug says, an advantage. “I never turn down help from the Fairies.”
Izora Lethia asks if it has all gone the way she expected, and Lepis exhales in a startled chuff. It turns into a wry laugh as soon as it meets the winter air, a puff of steam that fogs the air between them before being pulled away by the stiff wind. It will only grow colder, I know, temperature dropping as the sun falls away.
“Nothing ever goes the way it is expected to,” I tell her. I know that she asks about my power only, and I can admire her determination. Her reminder of the past had touched a part of me I have longed walled away, and I react predictably. “There have been deals made with devils and genies to keep this place safe, Lethy, in addition to that magic.” My words are short and clipped, but not unkind. “Perhaps other lands, and other families have been sacrificed to make it so.” I shrug, my mouth drawn back to a thin line, accompanied by a sense of inevitability in my words. I had seen Neverwhere’s scars and the iridescence of her son. Heard Celina’s casual mentions of her father. Listened to tales of the Lilliana and her many children. “But they had their chance and they squandered it. The blame for that is not mine.”
I fall quiet just as the mournful howls of the coyotes start. They will trail off soon, I know, and look back to meet Izora Lethia’s eyes directly.
“With power comes difficult decisions, the addition of so many grey areas in a world that to others seems purely black and white. But if you are certain of what you mean to achieve, there is no need for fear of corruption. You have a good heart. You need not fear that kind of danger.” Not when there are so many others. I am not normally this verbose, and am never so with strangers. The amount of information I have given her is indicative – but of what I am not yet certain. My eyes drift once more to her belly, an unspoken question, but I am not rude enough to ask directly.
ooc: sorry for the novel, lepis decided to do some self reflecting too and i wanted to make sure she answered the questions fully
