08-16-2017, 08:45 PM (This post was last modified: 08-16-2017, 10:49 PM by Luminar.)
LUMINAR
Since emerging from the Portal, Luminar had kept a steady and rhythmic pace onward through changing terrain. Dense forest gave way to even denser forest. The temperature rose, and -unbelievably- the humidity started to rise even more. There were minuscule changes as well; Different types of trees and ferns, different smells and fauna, even different insects flew about here. The flowers seemed to be watching him, the trees seemed to be watching him, the entire forest seemed to be zeroed in on his movements, waiting to strike when he least expected. Nevertheless, his mood had settled and he had decided to explore his surroundings some. He had come upon a vast cliff, carpeted with dense and alien rain forest to the very edge. The vegetation was so thick he had nearly trodden off the sharp edge of nothingness, wheeling back and cursing as rocks fell a thousand feet below, down into the black abyss.
He had not encountered a soul, save for some odd looking birds and beasts with no language. He found his thoughts wandering back to Silver again... His long dead lover. He forced those euphoric and torturous thoughts out of his head, breathing deeply the scents of the strange land. What came meandering into his nostrils surprised him at first, but that surprise was quickly snuffed out. Nothing should surprise him in this foreign region.
His military honed instincts kicked in and he stopped walking for the first time in what seemed like years. An ear and a half swiveled round, straining to hear even the faintest of off sounds in a land of a thousand unknown voices. A familiar odor had reached him, for a fleeting moment. Just long enough to incite a momentary flicker of electricity in his brain. Straining his eyes in the darkness, he knew someone was there. Whether they knew he was there or not, he didn't know.
Mauja had always been somewhat of a ghost—pale and heartless and graceful, lost in some black current only he could feel. A distance in his eyes, as if his soul wasn't quite there, but rather, encased in ice, somewhere out of reach. He had been a harbinger of death, he had been a frozen King, and, finally—a ghost, well and truly. He had died and died and died, but he still walked the land, a haunting specter in the downpour and fog.
He hadn't felt alive in a long, long time. It was, he thought rather dully, something that happened if you spent a couple of years either in a glacier or the sea, being, for all intents and purposes, dead to the fucking world, but he should've sparked back to life. He had been heading in the right direction, until that fuckwit Kisamoa decided to kill a lot of people he cared about, and then throw him through a Portal, which.. which did unspeakable things to him.
That space in his soul that should've been occupied by Irma gaped raw and empty, except there was no cut edge, no scar tissue, just a smooth, smooth surface, as if she'd never been there at all. And Kahlua's stone, giving to him so long ago when she had no idea how to comfort him, had lost its glow. Myrrine's flower charm, left behind after the poor mare finally died of something, stopped blooming. Diego, his remaining owl, was sluggish, hard to reach, sullen and feverish. He wasn't well, but he'd always been a sickly child—maybe that happened if you were plucked from your nest, had your egg nursed back to life, and hatched in a time of rampant, destructive magic.
That Diego remained did nothing to ease him, to soothe him, to ground him. Irma had always been his anchor, had always been his heart, from the day their minds first touched—his guardian, his friend, the one who kicked him when he had to get up, and who told him she loved him in the dark, cold hours of night when he wondered what he had become, or when he was afraid.
Irma, who had raised Diego as her little brother, because Mauja had been too emotionally crippled to take care of the owlet.
Irma, who had been his everything.
Gone.
So he'd crashed through the forest, day after day, barely sleeping, barely eating, his already thin frame growing more skeletal again. Whatever fever plagued his companion plagued him too, a fire running rampant in his veins, his eyes circled by white-and-red, his mane tangled, his hide sweaty.
He was looking for her, and sometimes, he thought he saw her, the flash of white, the metallic glint of her blue barring, but she was always out of reach, always just out of sight, for when he turned his head, she was never there.
He'd cried his eyes raw. He'd shouted his voice hoarse. He was burning up.
It was in such a state he stumbled upon the hefty black stallion, barely seeing him even when they shared the same glade, ringed by neon eyes and hungry shadows. Mauja's body shuddered to a halt, his steps faltering before his brain realized he had stopped, and it took even longer for his eyes to notice the other horse, and when he did—
AH! he tried to yell, but all that came out was a weak, rasping, "ah?" and his worn eyes focused on the creature. It was a horse. It was not Irma. It was irrelevant, but he might know something, and Mauja's gaze sharpened, grew intense, which only helped to make him look even more deranged. "Have you seen my owl?" he demanded, oblivious of the fact that he might have to explain that he was looking for his other owl, and not the sorry-looking one currently perched on his back.
08-29-2017, 06:49 PM (This post was last modified: 08-29-2017, 06:50 PM by Luminar.)
LUMINAR
A great beast was advancing through the brush. He heard it from nearly a mile away. Crashing and barreling it's way through the forest. Luminar narrowed his eyes and set his massive black hooves in the earth. Something was coming, and he was ready. Beyond the clatter a ways away, the forest had grown silent. Birds had stopped screeching and chirping, beasts with no name had stopped their calls, even the wind had died. Something was getting closer. Adrenaline surged, his blood grew hotter. Closer now. Closer. He lowered his head, and a great white beast barreled out of the thicket. It was a unicorn, and he had scarcely noticed Luminar. He powered right on by. Luminar was dumbstruck, then the spotted stallion stopped and turned toward him.
A chill passed over Luminar for the first time in years. He was not scared by any means, but the animals eyes were glazed over with lunacy. They were feverish, he was emaciated, a walking skeleton with a tattered pelt draped over bones. Maybe a sickness? Luminar thought as he took a step back from the irate equine. A breathy sound came from it's throat and he spoke."Have you seen my owl?" His voice wasp raspy from misuse. Luminar was all too familiar with the sound of a throat that hadn't uttered a word for a long, long time. But an owl? His jaw hung open as he searched for something to say. He did see an owl, when he first passed through the portal and emerged in the Rift, a white owl with spectacular blue barring. A beautiful creature. Then he noticed the owl on the great dying stallions back. "Um. Is it right there?" He gestured to the sickly looking bundle of feathers that was hunched over. "Although, if that's not the one you're looking for, I did see a brilliant white bird about two days ago." He eyed him warily, he was insane, and Luminar did not know what he would do. He was still at the ready, feet planted, in a defensive position.
"Talk."
SHE'S A COLD, HARD BITCH, BUT JUST A KISS ON THE LIPS AND I WAS ON MY KNEES.
It kills me not to know this, but I've all but just forgotten, what the color of her eyes were, and her scars or how she got them.
He was not thinking straight (—did he think at all?), but could you blame him? Could you, for one second, blame him for searching high and low, day and night, for the one thing that had kept him alive through so much misery?
The answer?
Yes. He was Mauja, fuck's sake, made of ice, heartless, a true being of frost and winter and control.
But all of that, gone. Washed away by years of suffering, loss, growth: coming to terms with the monster he had been, and the monster he had become. It mattered too much, two owls sitting quiet and accepting that he wanted, needed, to die, but disappointed all the same. Even in that moment, when Ophelia came lumbering towards him, they had loved him and been ready to go with him, even though they hadn't wanted to.
And now, poof, she was gone, like she didn't even fucking care, so he had to do all the caring for her, too.
So he stared wildly, too tired, too worried, to be sane, composed, controlled—or to even make sense. "Um. Is it right there?" the large, dark stallion asked, and Mauja pinned his ears and gritted his teeth in frustration. However, before he had any chance to somehow take it out on the other, or even yell his desperate denial of it, the stranger went on. Part of him was intensely grateful that there had been no need to explain I had two owls but I sort of lost one. It was...strange.
"White?" he whispered, brokenly, his voice raw and so painfully full of hope. He struggled to take a few steps closer, swaying dangerously, but at the same time, not quite looking like he was about to fall over. "How? Where?"
Rainforest Cliffs
