[open] into the darkness, we will send our symphonies; any

[illuminae]

Illuminae takes flight over a landscape as fractured as she is, over scenery that is rich and green and heavily forested, with patches lit by sunshine and others dark beneath drifting clouds. At this height it makes everything look odd, like pieces of different worlds shattered and forced back together to make something new and whole but entirely jarring. Something that looks like it doesn’t quite belong, isn’t quite right.

She is like that too, she thinks. Where her sister is a perfect melding of both their parents, gold and white and etched with the same inky dark of their father, Illuminae is her utter contrast. She is their fractured pieces, individually perfect, yet somehow on her they are thrown together in a jagged kaleidoscope like the light and dark of the landscape beneath her. Over her withers and a fraction of her face she is a white as pale as bone and glittering with the hint of Ryatah’s angelic gold, beautiful just like her mother. But there are larger areas consumed with black, sharp at the edges and in complete contrast to the white, all the darkness of her father.

She cannot help but wonder why in Radiance those pieces had come together, but in her they remain separate.

She cannot help but wonder if this is why her father had always kept his distance from her. But he’d loved Ryatah too wrong and too much, like a cat and its bird, and it’s no wonder she hadn’t stayed. Illuminae knows nothing about love, but she does know that anything so desperate could only ever be made to break.

She pulls her wings in close against her body, and for one weightless moment she can feel gravity wrap a hand around her ribs and pull her downwards until she is plummeting like a dark comet. Her eyes close, one so dark it might be black, the other an almost molten gold, and for a few seconds she thinks of nothing but the thrill of falling. She ignores the ache in her chest and the fear that these fractures run deeper than her skin, that she is on the inside just exactly as she is on the outside. Too many pieces put together all wrong, born fractured and imperfect.

The ache finds her again like a punch to the chest and with a groan she throws open her eyes, throws open her wings, and lets the wind carry her gently the rest of the way to the ground. When she lands she is in a small meadow at the heart of a deep, tangled forest. She is alone, she knows this (guesses) because she is always alone, because loneliness loves her as much as it loves her father. She did not inherit any of her mothers quiet allure, she is made entirely of her fathers dark and wretchedness. Made entirely of a regret that has no place or purpose, no reason, but has carved itself a beautiful home in the curve of her chest.

She sighs, and with a blink she pulls the dark over her until the white and gold are hidden, buries shadow in each individual fiber of her hair. She wears it like a cloak, wears it so well that the only remaining spot of color is the single gold iris like sunsets made molten.

ILLUMINAE

we can't dream when we're awake,
or fall in love with a heart too strong to break

[Faulkor]

Death releases him slowly. The regeneration of bone and blood is painstaking and tedious. Sinews grow like vines, twirling and reaching and spreading roots that bring him together again. When his black eyes open into narrow slits and awareness creeps in, he realizes that somehow he has shifted planes or dimensions once again. His first breath is one of panic, spluttering and wet as if he had been drowning.

He vaguely remembers the dream-like state that held him captive in the afterlife (if he can call it an afterlife anymore). He can still feel the weight of the river forcing him deeper and deeper still, and the way the rocks rent the fibers of his soul as the force of the water pinned him against them. He had thought that he would spend the rest of eternity deep in the river of the afterlife, unable to drown for lack of lungs, yet unable to breathe.

Death has had her fun with him. She does not want him anymore.

Eventually, the inky black stallion peels himself from the roots and worm dirt as a moth breaks free of the cocoon. He squints against the sunlight that filters through the trees as a large shadow sweeps overhead. A figure plummets all too quickly towards the ground, but wings reach out to slow her just in time. She lands not too far away.

Faulkor blinks hard as if he can shake off the sleepiness of death as if he had only been napping in the half shade. He staggers forward, legs like a newborn colt’s. His breath comes more easily now, and the scents of the forest fill his nostrils. He has been here before, though he knows not how much time has passed since… How did he die? His thoughts come reluctantly and fragmented. All the while, he watches her as she pulls the shadows in close, unwittingly pulling him closer as well.

He fumbles through the undergrowth, stumbling over roots that could have easily been avoided if only the synapses would fire just a little quicker. He is like a lumbering golem, made up of rock and clay that were not created for moving at such speeds or with any tact. But each step seems to come easier until he stops before the shadowy mare with the mismatched eyes.

For a few haggard breaths, he simply stares at her in the way a raven covets something shiny - only it is her darkness that draws him to her. “You seem sad.” He states, his voice ragged like the bark of the trees that surround them. He tries to remember what sadness feels like as his gaze takes hold of her feathered wings. Something other stirs within him, familiar and strange, and feathers sprout along his withers and bones form along his shoulders until he wears a set of wings as black as hers.

@[illuminae]

[illuminae]

She had thought she was alone until his dark silhouette separated from the trees in the near-distance. It makes her nervous to watch him move closer, to watch him halve the distance between them and then halve it again - and it isn’t that his strides seem awkward and ungainly, in fact she does not even notice that, it’s that he exists here with her at all when she was trying so hard to be lonely. When she was focused so intently on how completely unwanted she is.

Self pity is funny that way, isn’t it?

Her face is a mask of dark and distrust, of a wary distance she tries so hard to keep between herself and everyone else if only because it is easier to pretend rejection is her choice than it is to realize she simply isn’t good enough. It is why she draws the dark around her like this, why she hides inside it as though it puts the distance of space, of entire galaxies, between her and everyone else.

Distance is safe when it is her own choice.
Distance is corrosive when it is not.

The tumult of her soul tells her to retreat when he comes to a stop before her, those dark eyes locked on her in a way she does not understand. His intensity gentles her though, and she forgets to be afraid of the closeness of this encounter because the way he stares makes her feel oddly seen. She wonders if she should say something, if he is waiting for an introduction or an explanation or something she completely missed the memo on.

But then he speaks, and she can feel unease return like a spider creeping up along the path of her delicate spine. How could he know such a thing when she spends all her time constructing these careful masks to hide behind? She finds she cannot answer him with anything more than a flash of fear that ricochets between those mismatched eyes at being so seen by this strange, dark man. Then his gaze drifts and it seems that the very moment his eyes settle on the curve of her dark wings, a pair of them erupt from his back, too.

She takes a single step back at that, startled by the sudden presence of them. Everything about him is so odd, like he had been made with the specific intent to breach the comfort of every one of her invisible boundaries. Perhaps the oddest part is that she finds she wants to know more about him, that she wants him to stay. She still hasn’t answered him, but her eyes find his again, one black and one gold, and then she slowly lifts her shadow-shrouded wings from her withers. They unfurl like flower petals beneath a springtime sun, angling delicately in a way that seems to ask in the language of wings, do you like them?

ILLUMINAE

we can't dream when we're awake,
or fall in love with a heart too strong to break

@[Faulkor]