[open] drown my daring heart

[Claudia]

Graves. So many of them. Stone pillars, mimicries, structures and whatever else – all dedicated to those beyond the veil, constructed by those broken hearted souls they left behind. Tragedy after tragedy piled so neatly on display. In the ruins there lies many things, many forgotten nooks and crannies, many abandoned gardens and haunted mazes of dilapidated walls. Claudia is never far from the water, but here, among the shambles of history, she is also at home.

The tall bay moves with feline grace, stalking over ad under and through until she’s at the center of the graveyard. The old crypt entrance howls with underground wind, moaning through the opening as if it is daring the mare to slip inside.

She snorts in response to such a beckon…It is not I that would be so daring – not alone, anyway. She laughs to herself, creeping around in the darkness to read more graves and admire more sad statues. The midnight hour, only a half moon to light the land below; it is a perfectly spooky spring night.


- - - - -
C L A U D I A
ivar x wrena

8

[Ruhr]

Beneath the crescent moon, the youthful stallion makes his way through the Ruins.

The bright coloring of his feathers has only just begun to fade - it will be at least a week before he loses the brilliant pinks, blues, and oranges to stormy gray dapples instead. Yet despite the barely middle-aged appearance, his pace is slow and labored.

His preferred way of moving is always by flight, and the reasoning is clear. There is no visible injury to his right foreleg - it is decades healed - but his gait is uneven and he favors the side. The stony ground makes for treacherous footing, and yet he carries on by foot.

The Moon’s vision had shown him walking through the Ruins, and so walking through the Ruins he would go. She had not granted him a vision in nearly a dozen cycles, not until last night. He was checking only out of habit these days, and he’d almost missed the shimmer of magic in the moonwater pool.

Almost.

He’d turned back at the last moment, in time to see the crescent’s reflection turn to something other than the pale moon. He’d watched himself, moving through the the Ruins, just as he is now.

That is all that had been shown to him; the visions were rarely detailed.

He saw only himself, no others, but when he rounds a fallen ruin to find a stranger standing there, there is no surprise on his sunset-colored face, only curiosity and perhaps some anticipation.

“Did the Moon send you here as well?”

@Claudia