A dozen turns of the Moon, she’d told him, she would listen to his ideas after a dozen turns.
So he’d waited, achingly aware of each rotation, his own body aging as it waxes and growing younger as it wanes. He could have come to her weeks ago, haggard and grey. But he’d waited longer still, as the Moon became more slender and his own body more capable.
He limps still, the old injury remaining regardless of his current physical ability or phase of the Moon, and tonight he appears a mature stallion, the brilliant sunset shades of his youthful coat having been muted by pale dapples so that he is more of a clouded dawn.
Fortunately, he does not have to limp far.
She is waiting for him, just where they’d agreed.
He begins without preamble, spinning for the palomino mare a tale of moonlit visions and what they mean, or might mean, or might not. He is not entirely sure of anything at all, and makes no secret of that.
At first she seems dubious, skeptical that after all these moons he wants nothing more than a meaningless title and the opportunity to speak with her about the Moon. But eventually she’d conceded and he’d left her company not only as one who speaks to the Moon, but as the Moonspeaker.
He’d expected to feel different afterwards.
Yet as he watches his shimmering reflection in the water of the river, everything feels the same.
Ruhr takes a deep breath of the warm spring air, closing his eyes as he lifts his head to the bright afternoon sun.
It is a beautiful day, the Moon has been encouraging, and he has everything he wants.
But everything still feels the same.
Ruhr sighs, and turns away from the water in search of a conversation to distract himself.
02-13-2025, 08:18 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-14-2025, 09:01 AM by Claudia.)
She’s normally a night-dwelling creature, sleuthing about, grinning with those sharp glowing teeth and drinking in the dark world with her shimmery wet eyes. She’s up early today though, and the sun is still hanging low, orange and warm. The day’s fading light casts a golden sparkle over the river, and beneath the tumbling ripples of travelling water the metallic sheen of her scales can be seen catching the light as she swims.
Her small dragon, Tybalt, twirls and twists playfully around her as they move with the current, fishing along the way and breaching the turbulent surface briefly now and then just to see the world above. A few yummy trout, but nothing spectacular or interesting so far – until…
“Hello.” She says this in a silk voice to his turned back, vaguely recognizing him for the male she’d barely greeted in the past and disappeared on like a ghost; as she’s known to do. She rises half-way from the crystalline river, her body changing seamlessly to replace most of her scales with sleek fur, her gills fading away to show her curved equine cheeks. She tilts one side of her face toward him, letting her blue eye examine him closer. “I haven’t seen another soul wandering about in quite a while…I thought everyone dead, or gone.” She breathes in, smelling him. “No such luck, I guess.” She laughs underneath that creamy low tone, slithering closer to the water’s edge. The little dragon clings to the kelpie mare’s golden mane, blinking curiously at the exchange.
@  Ruhr ♥
The sound of a voice from near the River brings him to a stop, and Ruhr turns his neck to look back toward the speaker. Not near the River, he realizes as his afternoon-bright eyes, but in the River. Her glittering scales are an effective disguise, but as she transforms into the more terrestrial shape Ruhr had seen before, he recognizes the mare with her golden hair and matching eye.
To cross paths twice is an oddity attributable to the Moon. He turns and limps back the few feet to face her, remaining with all four hooves on dry ground as he faces the surfacing scaled creature.
Not Baltian, he sees now, just unfortunately aquatic in appearance. At least the Moon has granted her the ability to wear a hide without scales. She has also gifted the mare with strange desires, but Ruhr only tilts his head and asks curiously: “What would you do with an empty world?”
What would he do? What would the Moon want?
The possibilities are endless, he realizes quickly.
But what does he know of those beneath the sea? Perhaps that is why the Moon had crossed their paths, so he might know of what lies forever out of his reach.
“Is the water as quiet as the skies?” He asks.
Her voice threw and invisible lasso, and with a harming limp the stallion spun around. Something in his gaze is so distant, and his expression hard to read – was he unhappy, numb, water in his brain? Oh yes, I remember now. She thinks to herself. He’s strange. She’s come to realize, strange usually means interesting.
His question makes her tilt one ear back, lifting half of her mouth with a contemplative smirk. “What a silly question.” she laughs, blinking her glowing eyes up at him. “It would not be empty.” her grin pulls at both ends, a gluttonous glint in her expression as she finishes. “ I would enjoy all of Beqanna’s fruits to myself until I died fat and satiated in the warm sun. Unbothered.” She draws in a breath watching his next question form in his thoughts before he says it.
She rises from the water to take a few steps nearer to him, closing the gap to stand comfortably in front of him. His question has her thoughts drifting to memories for a few seconds. Some of her deepest scars momentarily glow with the pulse of her heart, but when she speaks again the soft light fades. She snaps back into the moment, “I have not seen anyone else, sky or water, while I’ve been off hunting the coast, and I usually don’t these days.” She suspects everyone is still around, but for whatever reason, everyone is keeping to themselves. “I wonder where it is everyone has gone to hide away from us…” she offers a mischievous grin, briefly revealing her sharp glowing kelpie teeth.
Like most of the natives of this place, she is taller than he. It’s not the height that causes the feathers along Ruhr’s spine to itch with the desire to flare in warning, nor is it the sharp glint of too many glowing teeth. Even without the teeth, the glint in her eyes is predatory.
Even protected as he is by the Moon, Ruhr is neither a fool nor immune to pain, and takes a single step back as she climbs from the water. Not enough to seem fearful (he hopes), but to give her space. To give himself enough space too, to wield the Moon’s magic and petrify the aquatic creature if she were to attack.
Well, at least enough room to try and petrify her; with his lack of experience he would have to pray the Moon granted him strength to do more than turn her fetlocks to stone. He’d been lucky the one time he’d used it before, Ruhr knows that now. He is not eager to try petrification again, but despite his emotional state he will do what is necessary to limp away from this encounter.
But she seems content to talk, her answer to his question the very opposite of reassuring. He will ask the Moon about this one, he decides, if only to be sure that his fate is not to be eaten.
When she confirms that the sea is as empty as the sky, Ruhr smiles.
Perhaps the Baltians have disappeared entirely.
Ruhr can only hope.
He wonders briefly how his ancient enemy had reacted to the aquatic natives of this place. There could have been a battle for the seas, he realizes, but instead there are only empty waves. Or maybe the Beqannaians had won, if this grinning creature is anything to go by.
“Underground?” He muses, voicing the only place the pair of them had not ventured. He’s heard tales of fiery and magical mountains; perhaps there are living things within them that he has never considered.
As he speaks he shifts his weight, appearing more comfortable. That he is poised to leap into the air in flight Ruhr hopes is not apparent to the kelpie. She’s not done anything dangerous beyond existing, he reasons, and surely the reflection of the half-Moon visible in the river behind her would warn him of more. He is less sure of the permanent safety of the handful of horses he does know of, so rather than mention the Gates, he says what he knows the Moon would want him to.
“That seems like a rather small dream.”
@ Claudia
ooc: so I read your post and then I wrote a reply and then I reread it my post and see some things don't quite make sense in context but if its totally unintelligible just let me know and I'll blame excessive amounts of DayQuil and will edit lol
She doesn’t quite smell fear, and her keen eyes somehow miss his subtle retreat – or at the very least she does not see it as caution, but respect; her hungry ego is ever expanding. Claudia lets a few intrusive thoughts come and go, flashing across her mismatched eyes and fading away as her gaze flicks over his body with reptilian focus.
“ Maybe.” she muses with him about everyone being underground. Watching him ‘relax’ and shift his weight makes her grin to herself and she matches his posture. One of her hind limbs tilts to slant her hip, a gesture to show plainly that she isn’t hunting or attacking anything.
Tybalt is busy swimming and flipping over rocks to chomp down on anything he can find. He’s a blue scaled menace to the mini rapids.
“ A small dream that will never happen.” she adds this for sarcasm, but avoids delving into the thought of an actually citizenless Beqanna and what that would really mean. Nothing good. “ Should we check the caverns and tunnels then?” the bay mare steps passed him with a grin, looking over her back to see if he might follow.
@ Ruhr
oh no you're totally good. mine is gibberish and i have no excuses haha
an adventure??
The world around them is slumbering, and Ruhr can feel it.
There is no slow rise and fall of the horizon, no heaving of the earth below them in giant restful breaths. There is no outward sign, save for the quiet. Ruhr feels it in the way the world spins by, and finds each moment outside of himself inconsequential.
Sentient life beyond his reach has all but vanished, and he wonders if it is because the Moon cannot reach them. They might see Her, but how would they know what She said? How would they know to follow Her commands, if there was not a Moonspeaker to tell them?
He considers this and more, staring at the celestial reflection in the water behind Claudia. Not until she speaks again does he shake himself free, not until she asks if they should check the caverns, if they should go underground.
“I’d rather pluck my own eyes out.” He answers bluntly, thinking that if there were one thing worse than being under the water it would be being under the earth.
Then, because he is not entirely opposed to the thought of an adventure, adds: “Have you ever been to The Mountain?”
@ Claudia
an adventure!
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