[open] talk some sense to me, any

[liesma]

liesma

“Did you think I wouldn’t see you?” she asks the stars, peering up through the canopy of trees that converge at the edge of the river.

“Did you think I wouldn’t know you were there?” she asks and calls them down to her, bathing herself in starlight.

Because she has learned how to control it, because she has practiced, because it is more than simply hoping that they might kneel down to kiss her. It is more than loving so fiercely that they have no choice but to crowd themselves around her. They yield to her will, just as they yield to her mother’s, her mother who has dreamed things into existence.

The stars she calls from the sky do not speak to her the way the star that hovers constantly over her left shoulder does. (She wonders, though, if they speak to each other. If the star that belongs to her knows that it belongs to the rest of them, too.)

Were she not such a serious girl, she might have laughed in delight as the stars wept into the river. She might have tipped back her head and caught them between her grinning lips, might have swallowed them down and let them simmer in her belly.

But she is a serious girl, because she is too much like her father, the lips have never bent around the soft folds of a smile. Instead, she merely stands among them and lets them gently kiss her flesh (they burn, they singe, but she does not curl away from them).

And this time, when she hears the approach of another, she does not return the stars to the sky. She does not blink them back into darkness. She only turns her head and peers into the darkness, waiting. 

i see you shining through the treetops
But i don’t feel you pulling strings anymore

[Lillibet]

Lillibet

She is surrounded, always, by magic.

Her mother's, that speaks to the fauna of the world and grants wishes to those who seek her preternatural help. Her father's, that transforms him into an ivory beast capable of protecting their family better than any horse ever could. Her brother's, a mirror of their father's. Even Manny's - her magic flows intangibly, its invisible fingers capable of rending and ripping memories from the minds of her target.

Lillibet, though... there is a bitterness that festers in her stomach whenever she remembers that her only magic is to glow. It does nothing for her, save for draw attention that she'd rather not possess. How could it be that her twin was birthed with the ability to change his body into that of a bear, but she can only glow like a large obsidian firefly?

She's reminded of this bitterness when she happens upon the opal star-wielder who lingers at the river's edge in darkness. The stars she grasps so easily in the air around her illuminate their surroundings, and while Lillibet's own ethereal visage adds to the lumocity, it is only minimally.

"They are beautiful," beautiful in that they are dangerous, she knows - she can feel the hum of their vibrations from here, knows full well that they would burn upon her skin. She wonders if the other girl is able to rend every star from the night sky, or if the effort would burn her alive. "Who are you?" she asks quietly. And why were you blessed with such a gift?

I do not want to move mountains;
I want the mountains to see me coming
and to crumble.

@liesma

RAYOFLIGHT

[liesma]

liesma

How soft the stranger’s glow as she steps into the light.
Such a horribly beautiful thing it is to emit one’s own light, Liesma thinks. For the only parts of her that glow are the blaze on her proud face and the stars tethered to her skin. She does not glow like this stranger glows, instead borrows the glow of the stars as they wink in the air around her.

And then she casts them out—not back into the sky, but outward in a great ring to cage the stranger in, to keep her there. Casts them out until it is the two of them standing in that great circle.

The stars are beautiful, yes. And Liesma knows them to be dangerous, too. Knows how they burn. She has pressed them against her mouth, leaving her lips scarred. 

But she does not speak to agree, only nods and turns her dark gaze to their edges. Should anyone happen upon the two of them there in the dark, certainly they would look like a dream, something too fantastical to be real.

It is the stranger’s question that draws Liesma’s focus back to her. A question so quiet it’s barely there at all.

“Liesma,” she says, burning.

“Who are you?”

i see you shining through the treetops
But i don’t feel you pulling strings anymore

@Lillibet

[Lillibet]

Lillibet

The stars move outward, noiselessly coaxed by the girl's invisible hand. They move beyond Lillibet gracefully, captivating her amber gaze even after they have settled into position. A giant halo rings the two girls in the darkness, one of them very much in control and the other very much in awe. Lillibet forgets she has even asked a question, so distracted is she by the stranger's affinity, that it takes a few slow blinks and a massive effort for Lillibet to turn her gaze back to the opal girl at the sound of her voice.

Liesma. She is unfamiliar with the name, though that comes as no surprise to the girl who has spent far too little time looking beyond her own little world. There is not much she is familiar with beyond Sylva and Loess, beyond her parents and Link.

"Lillibet," she responds gently as her amber eyes move back to the steady glow of their star shield, a brief moment taken to enjoy the alliteration of Liesma and Lillibet. "How do you tame them, Liesma?" she asks, with envy blatant in her quiet voice.

She has heard stories of the Mountain. Of the things that can be granted there.

But she has also heard of the Dark God, and though she does not usually balk at danger, there is something in the weight of Carnage's name that draws her to reconsider whether or not she sould venture to the peak and ask the omnipotent for more than they had been willing to bless her with at birth. Would she be too greedy to ask, and would the consequence be a stripping of her ethereal glow?

I do not want to move mountains;
I want the mountains to see me coming
and to crumble.

@liesma

RAYOFLIGHT