[open] Giver, Affy pony, any!

[Volcan]

Volcan

Burn slow, burning up the back wall
Long roads, where the city meets the sky

Home - a concept that ought to have been foreign to the smoke girl. Having known the abyss of a universe without time, having been kidnapped and never returned to her rightful destiny, Volcan ought to have never understood the meaning of the very simple word, home. And yet she did - and it killed her. She carries a cloud of Desert sand all around her, a force field preventing the in-coming of outsiders. The grains of matter stung her nostrils and chafed her legs as she stalked sightlessly from the Deserts to nowhere, but never once did a single particle of rock fall from her telekinetic grasp.

It was by the grace of the Gods that the young mare found herself in the meadow at the end of the day. Her lungs burned from the exertion of crying out as she ran and kicked, as her earthly body screamed to return to that body-less place among the timeless waters.  Vanquish, she called most. Father.

As the scent of other intelligent beings wafted through her sand-storm armor, Volcan knew that the time to be quiet and calm had come. Immeasurably attached to the grains which symbolized her ocean-wrecked home, the sturdy, sleek mare allowed only for them to fall to her hocks, constantly in motion, alive as her kingdom had once been.

And with her back to a tree and her Scorch-green eyes to the world before her, Volcan steeled herself, shutting down the tears which constantly threatened to break her outwardly aggressive composure. Vanquish had taught her strength, and in his absence, she would present herself to the world as nothing but.

This is not the end, this is just the world
Such a foolish thing, such an honest girl

lava texture © Mavrosh-Stock

[Giver]

He follows soft golden yellows and mauves from the pinewoods, after he has made sure she has drifted off somewhere safe. After he has made sure she is secured in a crib of family and Chamber natives – things of skin and rot; the scraggly and winter-thinned wolves that stalk the outer reaches, but do not dare delve inwards. He will be back before she falls asleep, he says.

She nods and dances, dances, dances. She is frustrated, but contained. Successfully caged by the thorns of her mother’s warnings. Giver is free, in the sense that every evening the door is swung open and he does not wear chains, so he can leave. If he wants. He does not always want; he is not truly free. Sometimes he stays and walks with her. (She dances, he walks.) They talk – mostly they remember their small things – and then he plays her concertos of constellations and old, night-stuff. They are suspended in these soft hours; children. They laugh and recall their time-ridden playthings in the night. 

(‘Don’t be late.’) Sometimes, Alight thinks she owns him, because she always has. He is her man; he has come to understand his abduction as a thing for her, he was charged the impossible task of ensuring her safety. Somewhere, day and night, a monster hunts for indigo…
(‘When have I ever been late?’)

If he could carry home with him, it would be a flurry of pine needles and indigo threads – but most of all, stars. And these he can wear, as she wears sand and stone by her feet. But only when dark reveals the venerable galaxies from which he draws, like a thirsty man from a well. 

“Do you take those everywhere you go?” He would never mean to startle her, but he speaks softly because he knows that she is uneasy – lost, perhaps? Sad? He cannot always tell clearly. He rounds to face her, yellow and silver-haired, soft-eyed. Beneath his able muscles, his heart beats out for the above, impatient for night,

“Where is it?”

Is it home? Or somewhere in between...