"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
He has spent his time wandering Beqanna and he does not understand it much better than when he had landed here in the first place. Their kingdoms. Their squabbles. The entangled relationships. It was all so petty and small. It reminded him of why him and his siblings had never dealt with mortals before. Why they had been content to live their lives set apart—content to remove themselves from the mess.
But even then, as serious as he has always been, he is not content to live in such solitude.
It grates on him, eventually. It makes the experience of living this hobbled life even more unsatisfying.
So he takes to the skies one evening. massive ones unfurling. The summer air is warm but cooler than it had been with the sun at its peak—and he is far more comfortable. He detested this change in seasons that happened on this land. Back home, it had always remained cool, bordering on cold. The air had a bite to it that had never reached beneath his coat. Bite that had invigorated and made him feel the truth of himself.
But this is close enough and he finds that he is nearly able to forget this prison when he flights in the dead of night, the stars dappling down on his back. It’s then, the wind wrapping around barrel, that he sees the flash of white. The otherworldly shine of it. He frowns, narrowing his gaze as he does a wide swoop back around to get a better look. When he recognizes her, there’s nearly a smile that touches his mouth.
He angles down, landing with a thunderous clap before folding his leathery wings atop his back.
“Islas,” her name comes easily. “I see the night sky has not yet reclaimed you."
You think I'll be the Dark Sky so you can be the Star? I'll Swallow you Whole.
The stars were the same here as they had been in Pangea, and she is not sure if she had expected anything different. When she had been younger she had been convinced that if she could only get closer to the sky, that perhaps it would lead her home. She had seen the mountains that stretched up into the haze of the clouds, so far that you couldn’t see the top of it from the ground – and unaccustomed to these new mortal limits, she had thought maybe it ended at the stars.
She knew better now, though.
It took a different kind of magic, a kind that she did not possess, to go back to the stars. And even still, she has yet to find what she needs to to truly return home.
She does not toy with the starlight as she usually does. Tonight she only watches, with an unreadable expression on her face. Her own glow pulsates gently, mimicking the way the stars above flicker against the neverending velvet expanse. She hears the thunder of his wings and she turns her head just as he touches down, and the barest of smiles touches the edge of her pale lips. “Morrowind,” she remembers the stallion made of storms, how he could cultivate the power of one despite no longer possessing the magic he had once had.
She shakes her head at his statement. “No,” she answers him, and though there is no sorrow to be heard in the almost unsettling flatness of her tone, there is a distant, faint ache in the center of her chest. “Still stuck spinning starlight from the ground,” and with a glance above she pulls down three threads of light, twirling them until they combine into a single ball of light that hovers in the air between them. And then with a sigh she breaks it apart, letting it fall in a shower of stardust that fades as it reaches the ground.
“And your thunder is still trapped,” she tells him plainly once her dark gaze finds his face again, unable to fully conjure the sympathy she is sure she should feel.
There is a petty piece of him that grows envious whenever he sees he gifts that the mortals possess in this world. When he sees them control the lightning and stars. When they weave the water and the air. When they hold onto the powers that had once been only the gifts of the gods in his home.
When they do what he had once been able to—
and he remains empty-handed, dull, hobbled.
But he finds he does not resent her for her own gifts and he watches with appreciation as the sky answers her. As the stars fall down around her and then splinter above them. Perhaps because she is no mere mortal and even he can tell. Perhaps because she is the closest thing to the gods of his past. Perhaps because it would be silly to begrudge her the gifts that so clearly belong to her—and feel kinship instead.
“It is,” he admits, wondering at that dull ache in him. The loss having grown more acute as the days have passed, the feeling of helplessness battling with his own innate arrogance and belief that he would be able to return home eventually. “Hopefully not for long,” he answers as the arrogance wins out—as he gives into the comforting thought that this was just a temporary situation and the lesson would be learned soon.
He glances around them to this foreign land—even more alien than the common lands he had been wandering for the past few months. “Where are we?” he asks, doing his best to make it sound like a request and not a demand he would point at anyone else. “There is so much of this place I do not know.”
You think I'll be the Dark Sky so you can be the Star? I'll Swallow you Whole.
They are so similar, but maybe not to the naked eye.
To anyone on the outside looking in, they are just a plain, pale girl looking up to a dark, strong, but unassuming man. There is nothing especially astounding to be seen about either one of them. She pulls at the starlight, and a cursory glance from a stranger might find her classified along with all the other various star and light and shadow benders that roam this land.
There are a few, though, that know her for what she is – that feel it from the moment her black-hole eyes find theirs, the strange gravity of her trapped star that draws them in.
He had been one of them, and just the same, she had recognized what set him apart from the rest, too, even if his powers remained lost.
To the rest of the world they appear as nothing, but the two of them know they are so much more.
“This land likes to give out unexpected gifts,” she says, unable to offer him actual sympathy, though she is sure he doesn’t want it to begin with. “Maybe it will do the same for you.” She turns her eyes to a place in the distance, an unseen mountain that lies beyond the rocks and hills of Loess. “You should try going to the mountain. I think that’s the main source of their magic.”
Her gaze turns back to him at his question. “Loess. The main kingdom in the southern lands.” She is surprised at how much she has learned about Beqanna – is almost disappointed by it. It made her feel too much apart of it, which at one point had been all she had wanted, until she had realized that no matter how she tried, she would never seamlessly blend. She would prefer then to just remain an outsider; it seemed easier that way. “Why are you here?” She asks him that quiet, flat tone of hers, the natural lowness of her voice dulling what might have otherwise come across as blunt and uncouth.
It is grating to look so similar to the mortals around him. Grating to be among them and not look at all set apart. Once, he had the power to toy in their lives, should he have wanted. (He never did. Never had any desire to meddle at all with their simple desires.) He once had the gift of the storms in his fist. He had once had the ability to call down the storms and bring forth the terror of it on a whim.
And now he is merely at their whim.
Just as mortal and weak as the next one.
But when he is with Islas, he can nearly forget that. It feels as though he is in the presence of the Goddess of the Heavens, as if he is hosting her in the court of his old home, and he can pretend that all is right again. Perhaps that is why he lingers. Why he was drawn back to her—to the alienness of her.
“That sounds familiar,” he muses, thinking back to earlier conversations when he had first come to this world. Had another told him something similar? He can hardly remember now, and he knows that he would not have heeded their advice if they had. But Islas is one of him, one of them, and he heeds it when it comes from her. “I think I shall,” he says with a nod of his massive head. “Soon.”
His ears perk slightly as she explains the world around them, his mouth frowning slightly. “A kingdom?” he sounds unconvinced as he takes in the land. There was no richness to it. Nothing that spoke of royalty, but he knows this world is not home and Islas has no reason to lie so he just rolls his massive shoulders, taking her word. “I assume that you are Queen,” he goes on, not imagining a world where anyone would dare to reign over the heavens brought to life. “I would love to see more of your land.”
At her question, there is the barest hint of agitation on his expression but it disappears quickly.
You think I'll be the Dark Sky so you can be the Star? I'll Swallow you Whole.
He reminds her so much of the storms he once controlled. She watches the emotions that flash across his face; the storm-clouds of irritation that threatens to give way into the thunder of fury, but never seems to. She can only imagine what he must be like when enraged – what lightning must be like when it strikes the ground released from his fist, how high the waves of the ocean must swell when he sent winds across them.
She knows that he was magnificent, once, and that while he was still impressive in this form, she knows all too well that it is nothing like his true form.
Because she had been brilliant as a star.
With an untouchable light and no need for emotions, she had somehow stood out while still blending in – she had belonged, which was more than she could say for how she felt about living here.
He does not seem impressed by Loess, but she does not feel offended by that. To her, all of the lands were roughly the same – all too far from the stars, and none of them quite home. But her lips lift into an echo of a smile when he assumes that she is queen, and she shakes her delicate head. “No, I have not met the queen here, actually. The kingdoms here are....interesting. Most don't really rule for long.” Their years feel like moments to her, to one that would have lived millions of years in her original star-form. But they all seemed to think they were something spectacular, that they all were carving out pieces of history that no one would forget, and Islas does not care enough to tell them they are all essentially nothing.
The universe will forget them all, her included.
“I’m going to stay here for awhile,” she tells him, undeterred by the agitation that had flashed across his face. She knew how he felt. She also knew that he would find his place here, just like her, or forge his own way entirely. “You could stay too, if you wanted.” She pauses, her dark eyes searching his in that unreadable way of hers, “or at least come back, once you grow tired of searching every corner of this land like I've done.”
The storms have always felt personal to him—and perhaps that’s because they were. They responded to his mood, were drawn in by the shifting tides of his emotions. When he was happy, they were playful—striking out without injuring, drawing wild patterns against the sky. When he was furious, they took on his cutting edge—lashing out intentionally, with purpose, aiming to kill instead of merely dazzle.
So even those these skies do not recognize nor respond to him, they still feel like his.
He wonders if the cosmos are the same for her.
He is comfortable enough in her presence though, understanding her silences and the way that she sees him and straight through him in the same breath. How her gaze is both empty and piercing all at once. It feels right—more so than the nearly foolish mortals around them—and he finds he prefers it. “There is another Queen?” he scoffs, finding it difficult to imagine, but rolling his shoulder all the same.
“I have seen how mortals play with such titles,” he thinks back, trying to remember his studies and his observations over the centuries. “I support that is not entirely unsurprising,” He can’t imagine that he would ever bend the knee to someone like that though—can’t imagine vowing his fealty. Even in his past life, he had never been particularly loyal to others. Never interested in losing his independence.
But she says that she is staying and that is enough to draw his attention. For a second, he studies her a little closer, his gaze sharpening on her pale face. “Really?” he asks, not realizing how much like a demand the word sounds. He sniffs, that arrogant way of his coming through with each movement, with the smallest adjustment of his weight. There is a pause, drawn on for a moment too long, and then:
01-13-2021, 12:33 AM (This post was last modified: 01-13-2021, 12:34 AM by Islas.)
You think I'll be the Dark Sky so you can be the Star? I'll Swallow you Whole.
A true smile, one that imperceptibly brightens the seemingly endless galaxy-dark of her eyes, touches her lips at his noticeable surprise. She had never really thought herself a queen; stars did not rule, not in the way mortals did. When she had been reborn into this new body she had been too focused on trying to adapt and blend in, and while she had watched the kingdoms and learned their ways it had never occurred to her to rule one. “There are many kings and queens here,” she explains. “They fight over these lands like dogs might the last bone.” That was something she had never understood. To her, all the dirt and rocks and trees—they were all the same. But they insist on laying claim to certain pieces of dirt and spilling blood for a land that would never show them the same loyalty, that will forget them when it all turns to ash and dust.
But she doesn't understand a lot of things about this place, and so it's not something she thinks about too hard.
Her eyes flit back to his face with a curious tip of her shapely head at the sharp way he questions her choice to stay here, but true to her nature she does not find it offensive. She just answers him. “Yes.” She debates leaving it simply at that, but decides to elaborate; her lips pressed into a thin line before she sighs softly and explains, “When I was first trapped here, I hated it. Sometimes I still hate it. I miss being a star, and now I'm confined to only being able to communicate with them and not even very well.” It is the first time that there is a trace of depth to her voice—a kind of bitterness that lingers in the words and settles in the dark of her eyes.
She blinks, though, and it fades, the hollowness once again swallowing whatever may have sparked before.
“What was it like, where you were from?” she asks him, her mind abandoning her stars and her emptiness, preferring instead to think of his storms and the way his tongue sparked with the words he spoke.
He laughs at that, amused by her description of them and finding that it is strangely fitting for what he has seen of them. The sound is throaty and deep, rumbling out of his chest as thunder may roll across the sky. “What a sad thing to fight over,” he muses, wondering at how they must view themselves. So grand in their adventured—in their makeshift thrones. Do they not realize that they are but specs of dirt in the vast universe? They are no more consequential than shells that wash up along the shore and twice as brittle.
But, to them, it must feel so terribly important.
(It does not occur to him that he is no larger than the rest of them now. No different in his fragility.)
“Whatever amuses them, I suppose,” he finally says, bringing his piercing gaze back down to her so that he can study the endless depths of her eyes. The way that she glows and fills up the space between them. The way that she feels ancient and yet entirely new to him. He has talked to so many—gods and demigods and mortals alike—and yet he cannot remember if he has ever talked to a star before.
He finds that he likes it.
And he is glad to find someone who is as bitter as he. He nods at her explanation, feeling it in the very marrow of his bones. “It’s a strange magic to be sure.” There is no attempt at condolences, at trying to appease her. Morrowind knows enough to know that he could not possibly right this wrong. No more than she could bring him back to his family, to his courts, to his world. He would never dream of trying.
“You would have liked it,” he decides. “It was full of others, like me.” A pause, her own bitterness finding its hooks in his words. “Or least how I was.” It softens though as he grows nostalgic, his gaze going past her to the horizon as if he could see it there. “We lived in the belly of storms and at the root of them. We were gods. Careless, scheming, cruel—as varied as the creatures who live here, I suppose.”
You think I'll be the Dark Sky so you can be the Star? I'll Swallow you Whole.
Even his laugh sounds like a storm, and she is fascinated by it. There is so much to him, so many shifting layers, so many pieces that have come together to make something whole. If it had been possible she would have felt a flicker of envy; that there was so much to him, but so little to her. Plain and white with eyes like starless galaxies, and not much else— a nearly emotionless void on the inside and carved of marble on the outside. Someone had told her once that she was not how they had imagined a star being; said they had always imagined stars to be light and friendly, where Islas was cool and impersonal.
She hadn’t been offended by that, of course.
It wasn’t her fault, after all, that so few knew what the stars were really like.
Looking at Morrowind she does not think he ran the risk of ever being misunderstood. He was a storm, and even if he did entirely feel like one—even if he still felt like he was missing pieces of his old self—he still harnessed all the energy of one.
“You are still all of the things you used to be, even here.” From anyone else the words may have been soft-spoken and reassuring, but spoken from her tongue they are unpolished, a simple statement. Her face slants up towards the sky, and carefully she gathers a few strands of starlight, spinning them together until they drifted lazily towards earth as glowing orbs. “Being here is not the same as being a star in the sky, and I don’t know how to explain to anyone what it used to be like. What I used to be like.” She pauses, turning her eyes from the starlight to his own, a bare glimpse of a smile flickering at the edge of her white lips. “But I’m still me, and I’ve learned I don’t owe it to anyone here to conform to what they think I should be.”
