[ Open thread for anyone who wants to chat with Kis! First come, first serve, so it's up to the first who responds if they want to let more people join. c: ]
Solanis.
It wasn't a place he remembered as intimately as he remembered the Rainforest Cliffs, Ennunyenda, and the Summit—it wasn't a place he barely remembered, like the Labyrinth itself. The wild specters snapped at even his heels, and it was hard to discern the spectral forms of the bamboo when it kept on swirling and changing, never still, never silent. Always, a voice humming, roaring, shrieking, keening, crying. Never a moment's peace, never a true memory, the splendor of the Riptide Isles lost in the same haze.
Holes, where the land's hearts had been ripped out. Everything awash in the blood, a tide of power, draining the Rift from within. Drying it up. Bringing the Helovians here hadn't fixed things.
Their Gods had seen to that.
It offered them respite. It gave them a few more days, a few more weeks, maybe even a few more months, but unless they began to give—which would be faster than him taking—they were still lost. At risk, he liked to think, but the anger washing through the land was too strong to ignore.
And it seemed to follow him, just like the burnt prints of his mismatched feet did. Even Solanis, a strange and wondrous place, seemed to dim in his presence, as the rain sluiced down in thicker and thicker sheets, like needles trying to hammer into his back. In the distance, the thunder roared at him.
Kisamoa ignored it all. He swept into the illuminated forest, a large shadow, a monster in such a place of light—truly a demon, leaving a scorched trail for any to follow.
His rain-wet skin smoked from the heat of the little suns, and they chapped his lips as he stopped in a clearing, and began to pluck them from the earth. Strangely enough, none of them went out as he severed them from their roots, but rather, one by one they rose in the air around him, little globes of light following the shadowbeast.
Where he left scorched marks on the earth, she left plants behind hers. At first, that was the only reason why she was following him - wandering the trail left in the earth, not really paying attention to who had left it - in the hopes that the nutrients and seeds that she would leave behind from her hooves would encourage life to grow along that barren trail once more.
She knew peace in this forest in a way she couldn’t explain - as though these trees and ferns and glowing flowers somehow protected her from the sadness and pain. She could focus on raising Mika, on helping Naerys with her young daughter and Sansa with her young son. On finding the rest of the once-Edge herd and making sure they were safe. She had family here and they were her priority.
Pausing to bend and use the side of her face to itch at her leg - where small feathers were starting to sprout through the skin - she snorted in frustration at the pain associated with the itch. She had quite enough of whatever this was and hopefully it would be over soon!
Glancing back up, she realized she was within a few metres of him - the one who had destroyed Helovia, who had killed so many of her friends, who had brought them here. Her eyes flickered to the floating solar flower heads around him, vibrant glowing stars around his shadowy form, but instinct wouldn’t let her attention divert from him for long. “Oh!” She really didn’t know what to say to him - and her uncertainty showed on her face as she hesitated where she was - the circlet on her head moving into the armoured headpiece with a single thought. But that was the only movement she made, wariness radiating from her green form as she lingered - caught between the desire to give him hell and the desire to flee to safety within the forest of her childhood.
As though somehow it might save her and those she loved.
Not that he ever was, not even in such a place as Solanis; the eyes were everywhere, and even inside, he was not alone. He was four chaotic minds arrayed in a single skull, four wills coalesced into five, of all damn things. On some days, he knew a kind of quiet he thought might grow into peace, when the wills of his predecessors aligned. And on some days, he forgot what he had been thinking mere moments before, because his thoughts shifted so wildly.
Sometimes, he wasn't sure why he was doing what he did, why he had found himself moved to make a dangerous promise, but he had, and whatever parts of all his four wills realized it was a chance of saving themselves. And for that reason, they were in agreement, and would honor their word.
His aching lips closed on another stem, jagged teeth sawing through the root, and the little sun cast its warm, friendly light on his marred visage. He remembered enjoying the forest for what little time he had, wandering its glowing pathways, but what had transpired in the shadows he chose not to think of.
Most of it had happened in the shadows. It left few memories of the suns. He chose not to think about that, either.
He enjoyed the forest now, too, but he felt guilty doing so in the presence of others.
“Oh!” she finally said, as if she had no idea who she had been following, and walked in on, as if she was surprised to have caught up with him. Kisamoa didn't believe her, and he didn't quite believe himself either, because the sound of her face plate spreading and the wariness on her face once he glanced at her hurt him.
Well deserved he chided himself, and raised his head from the ground. "Hello," he said pleasantly, or as pleasantly as one can when one's mouth is full of mismatched teeth. His eyes, his only permanent feature, glanced at her fetlocks before sliding off her to the floor again. He wondered if it was polite of him to not stare. He wondered if it was polite of him to not use their names, as if he didn't know them, but he knew them.
The uncertainty about him (was he even a him? An it?) rose after his greeting so that it was choking her. All she could do was watch him, feeling as though every single hair on her body was on edge. The anger was still there, of course, blaming him for the loss of the Edge, of Helovia, and all those that had died before they had crossed into the portal. It raged within her still.
But then why wasn’t it showing? Why wasn’t her volcanic anger vomiting out of her mouth in hateful spurts the way it had in the past?
She knew it was this place, the forest that they stood in. Even if her father wasn’t here in flesh and blood, his presence was unmistakable in this forest and it was calming. She wasn’t sure she was capable of instigating violence among these trees and ferns, with the floating heads of the sun flowers around them. Even though her circlet had expanded into the piece of armour that protected her skull, logically she knew that wouldn’t protect her if he decided to kill her.
Alysanne couldn’t die. She had a young son, had too many that she needed to care for. She couldn’t afford the consequences of speaking her mind so instead those angry questions and accusations would burn at her from the inside.
“I lived here once.” She commented quietly, her head turning from him as she spoke and angling up - her bright green eyes (the green of these trees) scanning over the plants nearby, as if she remembered each and every leaf from her life before Helovia.
He buried his broad nose in the sun flowers, let them burn his skin—his fetlocks already blistered and bruised—for it felt easier than watching her in silence. These days, it felt like silence was all he had. He saw them from underneath his cloak, but he could not join them. He heard them and he felt them and he tasted them on his tongue each time he breathed in, but no words passed his lips.
In part, it felt futile. So many of them doused him in vitriol whenever they had the chance. It had one of three effects: it made him angry, it made him sad, or it did absolutely nothing.
They were a mountain he could not climb, and to destroy it would bury him in the rubble. He found himself losing faith and heart, listening in the long hours of darkness to what he had once been, before his.. revelation. It was a thing of cynicism and rationality, he told himself, a choice made, but one that presented life in a frustrating light.
An unruly world. A people that would not obey his every command without thought. No, in order to achieve anything, he would have to win them, but how?
“I lived here once.”
"As did I," Reszo said with Kaos's mouth. There was no bitterness in his voice, it passed from the shadow beast merely as an observation, while the wolf within remembered dark pathways and hidden sins. Kisamoa pulled his blistered muzzle from the heat of the flowers, and watched her. He smelled anger, but he did not hear it, and it confused him. Why this information that refused to add up..? He blinked, and let his eyes watch hers, drink in the green of life and forests, the green of memory, the.. the green that wasn't teal-and-black death. Somehow disturbed by it, he turned his twisting neck to watch his own body. Gods, he was a mess, wasn't he?
Alysanne was far more pleasant to look at, so he turned his gaze back to her. "Are..." He hesitated, and thought of Castiella in the beach, and what she had told him of loss and lands. Kaos licked his scorched lips. "Are you happy, to be here again?"
Solanis
