[open] we pull apart the darkness while we can; any

[Illum]

may these words be the first to find your ears
the world is brighter than the sun now that you're here

It is strange how quickly things can unravel, stranger still how far they will go once the momentum has built. The day had begun just like any other, unremarkable in its sameness, but when the opposing kingdoms had thrown down their challenge it had been the beginning of the end. The Desert's warriors had gone off to defend the kingdom, even their King and Queen, but no one had returned. Instead the warning came, and with it the churning of muddy tides that swallowed everything he had known. Many got out in time, but even now when he closes his eyes he can picture the motionless shadows he had seen like burn marks beneath the blue once he took to the skies to scout for his family.

He had found most of them, and that was a comfort in and of itself, but the things he saw, the weight he felt unraveling the pieces of his fragile heart seemed too much to burden them with. Shahrizai had been loyal to the kingdom for a long while, he had known and loved many, and it was easy to see the way he ached with his own losses. Ilka did not feel the loss quite as keenly, her heart rested with Shah and not so much the kingdom, but she had young Augusta to worry about, and Heartfire was still unaccounted for. It seemed unfair to unleash his ghosts on his family, unfair when they were each already drowning in their own.

So he is quiet when he leaves, silent when he unfurls those dark wings and takes to the evening sky, using the cloak of his shadow to conceal himself against the growing dark. For a while it is enough to sail alone in the black, to greet the stars when they twinkle out of the black like diamonds buried in a burned earth. But a quiet ache builds in his shoulders and his feathered wings protest at so much use as of late. With a sigh that feels like dissonance in his chest, he angles downward, falling through the night until his hooves strike the ground with a heavy thud. His eyes peel apart the dark, a pale, crushed gold that matches the swollen moon, and even though he doesn’t see anyone nearby, he refuses to let the shadows fade from his skin.

Illum

[stoney]

She came away with a love of bones;

She came away with a fresh scrape on her cheek;

(teeth had torn the flesh to tatters, her first blooding)

She came away with fresh knowledge of her own immortality.

Stoney came to a precipice of stone and dune;

Of new made beach, where a fresh sea lapped at what had once been a desert.

Hot tears ran down her face as her black eyes beheld the thick sludge of mud as it moved sluggishly before her. It came close to her hooves, threatening to coat them in its brown slickness and she shied back away from it, sickened. What had become of the Deserts? This was her birthplace!

Gone, is the oak beneath which she napped time after time.

Gone, is the medicine hat mare that is her mother.

Gone, is her precious innocence and belief in a mere mortal existence.

The pintaloosa backs away from the sea that the Deserts has become, and returns to the only place she has left: the Meadow. Fear crawls up her throat - what if Violence finds her again? What if she kisses the skull and dances with the beautiful grotesquerie of bone that Violence built and commands? A shudder runs through her, sharp and cold as ice - what if that is what she wants? Her desires have become dark and terrible, and she runs from them as much as she runs from the ruin that is the Deserts.

She runs, like he flies.

Unlike him, she cannot hide - the bay pintaloosa stands out, even in the dusk.

She runs until her muscles protest as they turn to jelly; her breast heaves with the strain of harsh breathing but she still can hear the sound of wings and air commingling. Her head turns but there is nothing there, and she discredits her hearing - blames it on the bats, maybe. Shadows swarm and slink nearby, the torn flesh of her cheek throbs with torrid memory and her head bends to rest against a knee as she catches her breath. It seems like forever before she lifts her head and can breathe normally again, and as she does, she thinks she hears a noise or sees an echo of the pale crushed gold that is the moon but something about it is all wrong - why has the moon fallen from the sky and cleaved itself in two?

Stoney snorts, blinks the confusion and exhaustion from her eyes despite the terrible heaviness of loss that bows her barely old spine. She was but a year when she last left the Deserts, but Violence’s possession had stolen not only the innocence from her, but also time. Regret spreads from heart to vein, pushes and pulls through the entirety of her until she does not even realize that she is uttering an apology to the shadows and the moon high, high above them.

“I’m sorry,” she keens desperately, throat raw with grief.

“I’m so, so sorry,” she moans, absolute in her sorrow as it drips from the still fresh gouges in her cheek.

Blood and tears mingle in their roll down her face, pattering the earth that she wishes would just open up and swallow her.

“Please,” she begs, not knowing that he is nearby because she cannot smell what is cloaked in shadows - not knowing that the two golden moons she saw where his eyes. She pleads with the air and the night, not knowing he is there. Pleads, not knowing what it is she is asking for.