broad-shouldered beasts fill the sky; malis

[aleksandr]

but wasn't it you who said I was not free 
and now it's you who's floored by fear of it all

He could hear his grandfather’s beating heart beckoning to him, all the way to the borderline of where he carelessly lounged. The vibrations were heavy beneath his paws – blood calling to blood. He vaguely wondered if Malis found comfort in this blatant reminder of their ties to the chamber. Aleksandr had never once visited this kingdom before learning of his older sister’s monarch status. But he knew of his father’s reluctant reliance and his grandfather’s avid devotion. 

He couldn’t deny his curiosity of the place.

Mamulya had made mention of Malis’ whereabouts when the panther child had asked. Most of his siblings were scattered about the land and he barely saw them. Even his own twin remained distant and this distance of family viciously tore into him. How could he be sure that they could all stay safe when they were separated like this? But he supposed it wasn’t surprising, his own father often disappeared for large amounts of time before reuniting with Mamulya and continuing where they left off. 

And so he decided his mission of family visits would begin with the kingdom which continued to loom over their family tree. 

Normally he would have stridden through the border without a care, but he supposed he shouldn’t begin his visit by offending his sister’s fellow kingdom members. Instead, he released one loud roar and patiently waited for her to appear. The black panther yawned widely, large fangs glistening in the sunlight, while he sunbathed quietly. The loud palpations continued beneath his body, a rhythmic melody to lull him to sleep with.

Aleksandr

Makai and Oksana

[Alight]

She had been encouraged to stay around the Chamber, but Malis’ had been tight-lipped when Alight had asked why, unwilling yet to explain it all to her. (Giver had nodded severely, he was at least mindful enough to find the agitation in the Chamber Queen’s voice.)

But Alight was always rather pliant as a child (often yielding, even now, as a woman), and perhaps that was Malis’ intent, if not her hope – she had to be soft enough, willing and wide-eyed enough, to be safe. She had to listen and heed the stories she had been told, sleepy-eyed and yawning, of the thing that bumped in the night

The thing that wielded fear like a blade; that would know her – (just by her hair!) – if it saw her. And if it saw her, he would turn her to bones and jelly.

The thing that hunted indigo, hungrily and greedily, like a poacher hunts for ivory. (That thing whose bruises she bears, even if she cannot see or feel them. They are purple and angry; blood like her blood, pooling under the skin. The skin so like his own.)

She has always loved it here, so her orders were not resented. She enjoys her meanders with Giver – first the soft moss of the Forest, exploring the green murk and queer, bare patches on the trees (‘Bears,’ Giver would say, gravely, and they would push on); then the Meadow, sinking into the silt of the river’s bottom and dragging her chin through the rush of cold water. At night she watched Giver gather stars and galactic energy around his body. She could count constellations in the bright aura hovering over his skin.

But this is home. This is home in the way a hundred paws and hooves have pounded family trees into the earth like destiny. It is home in the way it took her mother in, and her too, though still suspended in that prenatal haze. In the strange heart that pounds below – and it is hers, too, she thinks. So she passes easily through the knowing softwoods, humming and dropping her nose to smell the sharp piney scent until she catches something perilous and odd. 

It is danger and horsehair combined, she follows it because she has been warned against a monster, but a monster she has always believed she would know just by feeling it near. As if it would disrupt time and space itself, send warning like the wriggle of worms to the pit of her stomach. She does churn nervously, when she reaches the black cat, examining, warily, it’s toothy yawn. “Hello.” She swallows, breathing evenly.

But behind the sheen of black fur and the lean slink of felinity, she is sure she can see him.

alight, of monsters and queens.