So mastered by the brute blood of the air - Cordis

[Alight]

once upon a time;

‘Where have you been?’ Giver asks.

They are in their tower, high above that black ocean of pine. They sit on a pile of bearskins and soft pillows, trimmed with ermine; his shackles of silver sing gently as he talks. 

From either side, she can hear the crackle of a fire, chasing away the cold that seeps in through the broad, glassless windows.

‘I was with father,’ she replies softly, her floral crown nestled atop her pert, indigo curls. ‘I found him.’ Here, she feels no sadness over it, nor confusion. Here, she speaks it without hesitation and without fear. ‘He lives in a kingdom, far-far-away.’

Here, she thinks of it fondly.

He tilts his strong, beautiful head, the bright, silver ring around his muzzle catching that strange fire-light. ‘Father?’

‘Yes.’

She can see his jaw worry, tighten and loosen, his brilliant, brown eyes dropping to the ground.
He isn’t supposed to think here; he isn’t supposed to question, here.

‘I have to go meet someone, Alight...’ 
And so it replays;


They are by the shore—sinking into the white sand of Tephra’s southern beach—and she is looking at herself refract on the water’s pitch-black surface. Over her shoulder, he stands abreast with her—Spark. ‘When are you going back?’ he calls to her, and in between the sweetness of his tongue against his teeth, Alight can hear a womanly giggle.
His tone says: because you are interrupting us. Please leave.

Plop.
The water shrinks away from her offering—some thick, meaty chunk falling from the underside of her jaw, exposing her bone-white mandible. She falls, piece-by-piece, into the ocean, until what is left is a tongue lolling over her flat, yellow teeth and a pair of amber eyes sitting queer and bright in her hollow sockets.
A skeleton, skinned and gutted by jealousy. 

‘I d-do not w-want to go.’

But go she must. The giggle gets louder and louder, pressing hard on her eardrums, and thrusts of Giver’s laughter join with it. It is merry and anxious and expectant, and it chases her from her own dream world.

***

She wakes up at first light, her ears still ringing with the admixture of aphrodisia and lapping waves.

She screams, pacing the beast-lair. It echoes off the sand and limestone and traveled onward into the endless bowels of the hinterlands.

(How could he!

—that black-bonnet, those lips, drinking deep those miniature stars.
—those necks, encircling each other a hundred times over, impenetrable…)

She runs, avoiding the detection of her father, because that kingdom is ugly and dirty and dry—desolate, like that pockmarked moon— and Alight is meant for prettier things. Alight is meant for arable lands and fecund passages; she is made for fairytales and she was made for that moment, with him.

(—she was made for that moment, with him.
—she was made for that moment, with him.
—SHE WAS MADE FOR THAT MOMENT WITH HIM!

Usurping tart!)

“MAGICIAN!” she twirls and turns, breath labored, her wings wooosh-ing and sparking in the air. Others turn, heavy-lidded and irritated to look at her, pacing away to find the quiet she has disturbed.

“MAGICIAN!” she knows it will work. She had felt they way they were sewn together by the fairy-magic when she gave that voltaic magician her power back. And, because she was powerful, Alight could sense her frantic calls would make it to the silvery mare’s ears, wherever she was

‘Tell me when, and he’s yours.’ 
She had promised. She is indebted. They need her.

“MAGICIAN!”

PHOTOGRAPHY © TASHA MARIE

@[Cordis]/@[Cassi] - if you still want/have time to this this IC, I suppose it can just be a short thread, but in any case. I have now hoarded Cordis.

[Cordis]

She’d said she’d do anything to have her magic back, and she wasn’t lying. She’s not much of a liar, she has no time or energy for it, the truth spills blunt from her lips when she finds occasion to speak.
She didn’t know what, exactly, she had promised the girl, but it hadn’t mattered, because there was so little she would not do to have her magic back. She’s killed before – some deserving, some not – and as she stands now, a woman cold with two hearts beating but a lover gone, she has even less mercy than before. There has always been a blackness to her heart, one either bred or put there (He took her so young that there is no detangling nature from nurture), and now, without Spyndle to act as a dam, as a lighthouse beckoning, the blackness grows, like frostbite.
Ultimately, she is selfish – those whom she loved are gone or dead, and all that’s left is herself, a silver figure draped in lightning.

But she is a woman of her word – out of some fear that the woman might revoke her gift, if nothing else – so when the woman cries out for her, not by name but by title, because Cordis is just a thing to her, as the woman is just a restoration to Cordis; she appears, honed to her side by whatever joined them.
The woman is distraught, a froth of sweat to her, and Cordis can smell it on her as well. It’s distasteful, in a way, and the lightning over her skin crackles. But she stays. She is here, obedient, a pet magician.
“I’m here,” she says, and her voice is steady, “I’ll pay my dues.”

I’ll touch you all and make damn sure

Cordis

that no one touches me

[Alight]

once upon a time;

Her ears perk and swivel at the sound of that angry crackle.

She faces the magician, reeling back and heaving with her own circular and furious momentum. She breathes, smiling and shaking, tip-toeing towards Cordis. Each hair stands on edge. Her brain pinches fear into her nerves, screams it. She is such a silly girl. She is just aware enough to stop before she gets close enough to that lightning to invite it in.

The first time they had met, Alight had almost been kind (or stupid) enough to ask her why the silver women felt so empty—their forsaken hearts, perhaps, had called to each other; but just as the magician holds back disgust now, so had her own loss repelled the slimy, unkind nature of Alight’s own ache.

She’d like to think she has something in common with this women—lightening for fire; love loss for love withheld—but that would be the arrogance. (Father-giveth.) All she has is a temporary power over her, thinly securing their union. It all moves and pulls and pushes towards this moment.

She had promised. She is here.

“Magician,” she repeats, relieved and weak. Again, the title. The utility. (She will never see it; she would never accept it, even if it was brought to her, plain-faced and simple. She fancies herself a kind girl. And she can be—but the princess needs, doggedly and she gets what she wants.) “I’m glad. I need you—we need you.” She licks her lips (that kingdom is dry and dusty).

“I am in love,” (she is a woman possessed), her eyes flutter shut delicately at the sound of her own fables, “but something has come between us. Someone.” (She has never sounded more like her father than now—that word barely scraping through the cage of her teeth).

She pictures all she knows, hold it fast in her mind with a steel grip;
—the black bonnet over her ears;
—one eye is red, but she cannot remember which;
—she is earthy and windy, uncivilized;

Her eyes open again, holding that woman captive if she needs to, “Her name is Spark.” She spits it, her wet, amber eyes reflecting the fire and electricity, “Giver—he is confused, you see. He has strayed,” this is softer, outreaching and loving, her smile wavers, and then it twitches as her eyes narrow slyly, “make me look like her, magician. One night is all I need. I’ll help him find his way back to the light.” Her breath is heavy, her lips wet and quivering.

This moment would be hers.

PHOTOGRAPHY © TASHA MARIE

[Cordis]

A better creature than she would ask questions.
A better creature would prod and poke, would at least read the situation rather than take it at face value (as if the fervid nature of the words didn’t speak well enough for the nature of the situation). But she is no such creature, she thinks every good part of her was carved out – pieces of her left in His lair, and the rest of her left on the shore of a riverside, next to a pile of bones.
She is jealous, beside - I am in love says the girl, and Cordis knew that feeling, once. Her story was one writ across years – across decades – a tale of water sparkling on her back like jewels, of laurel bushes, of lighthouses beckoning her safe to shore.
(A tale of moments, giving and taking, leaving – but coming back. She always came back, for her.)

Had she not owed the girl something, she would have refused in her own petty jealousies, but instead, she is here with a debt to be paid, to finalize her magic’s return.
The girl still speaks, but Cordis barely listens til she sees her eyes flutter closed, and then she darts into her mind – on the surface, quick like a fish – and grabs the image, hooks it, pulls it out from her mind into something real, into something that she throws over the girl like a blanket.
Spark - the kind of thing that starts fires. So little is needed.
Before her is a crude rendition of the girl, but Cordis looks, and makes changes, colors an eye red, makes the coat wilder.
“It’s done,” she says. She doesn’t ask what the girl will do in her new body.
“Go quick,” she says, “it will only last a few hours.”

I’ll touch you all and make damn sure

Cordis

that no one touches me