this is fact not fiction, should have held them in your lungs. the words I said are spinning, reeling; your wide-eyed dreams weigh a ton.
The fresh scent of pine offered a crisp feeling of winter amid the punishing heat of summer. Of course, ever since her visit to the Tree of Light, Taivas had been blessed with refuge from the harsher side of the elements.
The strange bauble which the Matrons gave to her was fastened tight in her mane with the other beads, yet changed resembled a snowflake which radiated a cold breath straight from freeze which relieved her skin from the awful heat of the season. With her winter coat full shed, the air became liveable. In the shadows of the young forest, the rays of the sun felt miles away, and I began to feel closer to the earth than I had in many months now.
Something about the forest sitting in the shadow of a great mountain peak felt out of place. Taivas knew little about the true nature of the Rift and how it absorbed lands from other places. She knew the tune of the earth's pulse felt different and calm here in comparison to the rest of the lands she had visited, aside from maybe Uwaritace. As she travels, hooves plodding softly along a small path decorated with pine needles, she feels peaceful, a rarity here in the Rift.
Then, she sees them.
Strange obsidian stones reaching from the earth in a clearing in the forest, glimmering below the broken light sifting through the fingers of the trees. As she comes closer, inscriptions worn by weather and time become apparent on their surfaces. Taivas attempts to read the strange scrawlings in the darkset stones, but fails to assemble any sort of meaning from the signage. They look like mere scribbles to her, though in the Fields they had a form of written language to document various aspects of the Spirits in their home. The dialect on the stones is odd and out of place, just like the forest they sit within.
Standing amid the tomes, Taivas closes her starry eyes and reaches her soul out toward the surrounding area. She feels the quiet pulse of spirits gathered below her hooves, within reach of her magic. She does not attempt to pull one from the earth, but simply meditates on their presences, swirling about the stones and the trees. Life hums around her in the forest, invisible to the eyes but clear to the heart.
A fragile smile paints her face and she begins to hum a familiar tune, one sung to the stars in the morning as they are slowly usurped by sunlight. She would hear no returning song from the stars, as they might call to her father. For, in the middle of the day under a foreign sky, she had not the knowledge or relationship to warrant their song. She would never be a true starsinger, and the thought made her heart heavy.
However, dappled by the sun and the trees with a soft expression on her face, you would never know.
taivas.
[ ooc - open for anyone. Just felt like writing with my girl and exploring <3 ]
Surrounded by trees, I scanned the area around me. The trees were not old. They were rather young and delicate, but most of them were pines that had grown to heights which reached above the level of my sight. They grew tightly together, so that it was difficult for me to see too far ahead in the direction that I was going. I felt the soft soil compressing beneath my hooves with every step. Occasionally, I would step on a smaller plant that grew low to the ground or a patch of moss. Other than that, the forest floor was bare.
It was another of the Rift’s countless forests. In my travels across the Rift, I had encountered many forests, some vast and dense and dark, and others filled with colorful flowers and shrubbery and fluorescent trees. Something told me that I had not been here yet, to this particular forest, and that made me all the more interested in seeing what secrets it held.
My breathing was deep and steady, and every now and then I would snort and swish my tail to ward off the lightning bugs that swarmed around me. With my vine-covered antlers perched atop my skull like small trees, and the dirt and dust that turned my coat a brownish color, I blended into my surroundings quite well. Movements muffled by the soft earth, my striped hide wove carefully between the trees like a tiger stalking its prey. I did not stalk ordinary prey, of course. I pursued knowledge; adventure, something hazardous and exciting, particularly the exploration of unknown territories such as this one. I did not know what I would discover in the forest’s depths, but given that this was the Rift, whatever there was to find would probably be worth my while.
At my side, the glowing orb that Otem had given to me pulsed brightly. It had stuck by my shoulder all of this time but I had yet to find someone else to share it with. An opportunity would present itself soon soon enough. I still did not understand exactly how spreading the orbs would heal the land, but I had not inquired further of Otem. Perhaps I should have, but in the moment I had decided against it, not wanting to be a nuisance. It wasn’t the worst problem to have. I believed that eventually someone who crossed paths with me, a native or a creature who had been living here longer, would be able to provide me with a more detailed explanation.
Now, above the tops of the trees I could see what appeared to be a great mountain in the distance, shrouded in mist. The pine forest began to dwindle. The spaces between the trees grew wider, and I was able to see what lay ahead of me more clearly. Peering through the trees, I saw a collection of large obsidian stones. These were not the product of nature alone. They were arranged in some sort of pattern which I did not understand. As I crept closer, I could see that they were inscribed with strange symbols. Before I could get a better look, a silver pegasus stepped out into the clearing. She was not Aurelia, for she lacked the golden markings and dapples. Instead, the mare was a stranger who I had never seen before. I held back for a moment, watching her study the stones. From what my emerald eyes could see, she looked to be reading the strange markings. "Can you read them?" I asked, stepping away from the protection of the trees and into the clearing.
"Talk."
they heard me singing and they told me to stop
quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock
this is fact not fiction, should have held them in your lungs. the words I said are spinning, reeling; your wide-eyed dreams weigh a ton.
The girl's starlit eyes flutter open as the stallion walks into the meadow, altering his presence with a question that startles her from her reverie. She turns, watching on his figure with some difficulty. His tones mimicked the earth and trees around him, making him hard to discern from the forest. Eventually, the shaman manages to lock find his eyes set within the landscape, and slowly recreates his figure.
He asks her about the stones, and Taivas looks expressionless as ever as she replies with one simple word:
"No."
Someone else may have explained that they could read, but not the particular language scrawled upon the rocks. They might have bragged about their learned skills from previous episodes of their life. Taivas was not one of those types. Instead, she saw all of that as irrelevant to the conversation. His question only begged for a yes or no reply, and even if she could, in fact, read the writings, she probably would not have responded with much else.
The oddity of the shaman was that she never quite mastered the art of conversation. She had long been a bookish girl, living in her studies and throwing herself into her connection to the spirits around her. Her peers had envied her prowess, and rarely did they talk to her without sharp tongues and even sharper eyes. Here, however, she got a fresh start as an unknown face. Her remarkable aptitude for healing had been reduced by the virulent soul of the Rift, and she started over from square one.
Looking at her company, she begins to realize that he has horns, something uncommon for her still. He also carries a small orb of light, though she knows he had not been present at the meeting with Kisamoa. She wonders who keeps meeting these unfamiliar faces before her, but honestly cares not enough to ask the stallion who passed the hope to him. Instead, she turns gracefully around to face him directly because her neck was becoming strained from craning it about to look at him.
She almost asks this stranger if he knows what is inscribed on the stones. She suspects that he, also, will be unable to read the stones. Why else would he have asked her such a question? So, instead, she stands looking at him silently amid the stones of obsidian in the light of the summer sun.
I suppose I really wasn’t that surprised when the mare answered me with a simple “No.” Instead, I felt a little disappointed because I was curious to know what language the runes were written in, and what they said. The pegasus mare didn’t say anything else to me, just turned her body toward in my direction and stared at me with her starry eyes. Beside her glowed an orb of light that was identical to mine, so she must have been familiar with Kisamoa and the healing of the land, everything that Otem had told me about. She didn’t offer up any words for further conversation, so I took matters into my own hooves. I introduced myself, walking closer to where the mare stood. "I am Rixen. Who are you?" It seemed that I didn’t go a day without meeting someone new here in the Rift.
Now that I had a better view, I scanned the stones up and down. They were almost taller than my sight could reach, but not quite. Their black surfaces were covered with many different markings that I did not recognize, although they looked like symbols that I had seen before in my homeland. The carvings must have been old, because many of them were almost completely faded away, to the point where they might have been nothing more than scratches on the rock’s surface due to weather and age. If it weren’t for the less-worn symbols in the middle section of the obsidian, you would have never guessed that they were intentional. Perhaps they were inscribed here by the very first discoverers or inhabitants of the Rift. Before I could stop myself, I was muttering my thoughts aloud. "I wonder who put these here… surely they must mean something." My speech was slow, pensive, and not really directed at anyone in particular. Considering the stranger did not know what they said as I had hoped she would, I doubted that she would know the answer. However, I was not opposed to hearing her thoughts on how these mysterious runes might have come to be. If she had any thoughts to offer up, that was. She struck me as the quiet type, but of course I could always be wrong. My initial question hadn’t exactly been open-ended.
Patiently awaiting her response, I paced before the slabs of obsidian, emerald eyes fixed intently on the runes even though I knew full well that staring at them would not help me to understand anything more. For all that I knew, these runes were another one of the Rift's questions that I might never know the answer to. Even if I did not find out all that I wanted to today, I made a mental note to come back some time in the future and investigate further. Maybe I'd ask around, if I could remember.
"Talk."
they heard me singing and they told me to stop
quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock
this is fact not fiction, should have held them in your lungs. the words I said are spinning, reeling; your wide-eyed dreams weigh a ton.
Thankfully, her company appears more adept at conversation than Taivas herself.
He introduces himself as Rixen, and the girl does not recognize the name - not that she expected to. He directly asks her for her name, something the mare herself had never been forward enough to do for others. "Taivas," she responds, her voice sounding light and airy, much like the sky she was named after.
His attention wanes from the shaman and reattunes to the stones, her own starlit eyes following his. She wonders again if he actually might know how to read them, but the murmur which escapes his lips, seemingly unbidden, answers the question she never says aloud. He did not know either, and so another mystery of the Rift is to live on in their minds, slowly gnawing and garnering curiosity from the new arrivals. At least, she assumed he was a new arrival.
Most everyone was, that she had encountered thus far.
He wonders on their meaning, but the shaman suspects they, like many monuments of this level of grandeur, are to pay respects to whatever higher power their creators believed in. A sacred place, meant for prayer or meditation or understanding. The possibility of them being anything other than religious relics does not occur to the girl, but this is her own special sort of ignorance. In the Fields, their lore revolved around their appreciation of the spirits, the sky and the stars, and while there existed more cultural depth, most of it was painted by the philosophies taught about spirits and the power of the sky.
It becomes obvious that his murmurings expected an answer, but only after several moments of awkward silence begin to pour between them. The shaman blinks rather suddenly, but otherwise her face is calm and still as ever. "Ah," she stammers out of her mouth, a plain syllable before launching into more eloquent speech. "I would assume a spiritual relic of some kind. The energy here is strong but peaceful, which is rare in the Rift."
Of course, he can believe her or not. After her encounter with Aurelia, Taivas began to understand that not everyone understood the world the same way she had been taught to. Her gentle heart felt the world more keenly and on different levels, it seemed, though she had lost much of her sensitivity coming over into this new realm. The spirits here were largely unfamiliar to her, though, so it made sense that they would be less inclined to call out to her.
Around us, the forest was quiet. The trees were still. There was no breeze in which their branches could sway delicately to and fro. Rising above the treetops was the volcanic mountain that was most likely responsible for the formation of the obsidian that Taivas and I were now studying so fervently.
"You can sense the energy?" I asked, interested now in this strong but peaceful energy that Taivas could feel coming from the runes. What did the energy of the rest of the Rift feel like, if the energy present here was a rarity? I didn't exactly understand what Taivas meant about the stones being a spiritual relic, but I did want to know what she knew.
In the place that I came from, there was little emphasis on spiritual beliefs. Some horses believed in them, my mother being one of them. When my sister and I were young, she would tell us about the spirits in every living thing, and of gods in the sky. Being young and impressionable, I never questioned what she had told me. I simply did not know any better. But now, I was not so sure that I believed in such things any longer. They seemed like stories made to comfort those who could not face the harsh realities of the world. That was not to say that I was completely against the idea of the existence of divine beings and spirits more powerful than any mortal. I would just need to be convinced, which I did not think would happen unless I witnessed said divine power for myself. To what extent did the starry-eyed mare believe in these sorts of things?
Taivas was a strange girl. She was of few words, with a gentle and reflective expression that seemed to be a permanent part of her features. Her face was calm and expressionless, but not in a cold sort of way. I watched the silvery pegasus closely with my emerald eyes, waiting for her to say something more. She added that there was a possibility the rune-carved obsidian could be marking a burial site. My gaze diverted back to the stones, running from the damp soil to the top of the writing and then back down again. They did have an ominous look to them, like they could have been placed here to mark some sort of mass grave, now that I studied the rocks through the lens of death. If that were true, I was curious as to who had been buried here.
"Talk."
they heard me singing and they told me to stop
quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock
01-01-2018, 07:43 PM (This post was last modified: 01-01-2018, 07:44 PM by Taivas.)
this is fact not fiction, should have held them in your lungs. the words I said are spinning, reeling; your wide-eyed dreams weigh a ton.
You can sense energy?
So, he does not understand the world as she does. At least his voice sounds even-keeled instead of venomous and argumentative for argument's sake, thinking back to Aurelia and her pointed expressions. His green eyes seem to study the shaman now instead of the stones, as if searching by what miraculous power she held to feel such invisible forces. His own curious eyes are met with dark, placid lakes filled with stars and confidence.
"Yes," she says, a flat tone clipped into a short answer he likely did not seek. He wanted the how or the why, not an affirmation that he had heard correctly.
That is not immediately evident to the young girl, though. Once more, like several occasions already in this small exchange, Taivas stays quiet, watching her company with patience. Only when he does not deign to speak again does she understand he sought an explanation. You might think the shaman would be embarrassed, but no heat fills her cheeks nor does she laugh awkwardly.
Instead, she simply turns to her eyes to look out at the world for a moment, as if contemplating how to explain the concept. "There is the visible world," her voice is matter-of-fact as she looks at the trees and the sky above. "Then, there is the underlying pulse of the earth under our hooves. The stream of spirits which flows through unseen by our eyes." Her attention turns back to look at Rixen with another neutral expression, looking for confusion or comprehension on his own. "In my former home, we sought understanding of our world by connecting what could be seen with what could only be felt, until eventually you might form a connection with the unseen."
Without warning or fanciful speech, Taivas closes her eyes and slowly, quietly, pulls from the earth a strange looking billow of ethereal smoke - a spirit. The small thing dances and glimmers in the sunlight, forming a face for a brief moment before returning to a shapeless, wild plume. Gently, Taivas smiles at the spirit before it slowly seeps back into the earth at her hooves, disappearing without a trace.
"By listening to the spirits below, the slow pulse of the earth, and the imagery afforded by our surroundings, we form a more complete picture of the energy of a place. It is a feeling -" she points a wing toward the chest of the stallion. "- that lingers in your heart."
Taivas’s explanation of there being two worlds, a tangible one and a spiritual one, is not something that I’ve heard many horses speak of before. At least not in the land that I came from. Somehow, though, it made sense that everything was connected by spirits. How else would the world function if there wasn’t some unseen force shared between every living and non-living thing? Without such a thing, it would be impossible to understand the earth. It would be impossible to feel the Rift, assess its condition, and understand what needed to be done to help this place heal. That, or I was just desperate for some type of consolation amid the ruin of the Rift.
My emerald gaze followed the mare’s as she looked to the trees and sky. I studied each carefully, searching for some new conclusion about life or the world to jump out at me in an aha moment, but there was nothing. And not a cloud in sight. The sky was brilliantly blue, clear as a crystal lake above our heads. The young pines were beautiful, of course, but it was the same natural beauty that could be found in all of nature - nothing out of the ordinary. I tried to see the spirits in them but all I could see were tall trunks and spiky green needles.
I watched as Taivas closed her eyes, a concentrated look on her face. Then, the earth shook before our hooves began to shake ever so slightly, as if wakening from a deep slumber. From the damp soil rose a cloud of dust or smoke or maybe even something else - something more magical. Either way, it had the appearance of a translucent mist, rising up in the air to a height that was about the same as my chest. It twisted and twirled before my very eyes, transforming from a shapeless blob into a creature with a face and then back into a swirling mass of mist. The sunlight could shine through it, but looking through the mist I couldn’t make out the details of the pines on the other side. My eyes fell back onto the silvery pegasus with golden tresses, my mouth falling slightly ajar in amazement as she manipulated the magical substance, guiding it carefully back into the patch of earth it had come from with utmost care. Her eyes, her lips, and her spirit all at once smiled at the ground before her hooves, and then raised back up to me. "You can do that?" Was all I could think of to say.
It was a spirit. A strange, swirling mist, but nevertheless a spirit had risen before my very eyes. The spiritual world had always seemed so distant but now, it seemed...real. My mind flooded with questions about how everything worked. There was always so much that I wanted to know, and, well, there was so little time to learn in this short life. Taivas began speaking again, raising one feathery wing and pointing to my snow-colored chest. I flinched slightly, but it wasn’t the result of nerves. The feelings that coursed through my body were a mixture of awe and curiosity. I was never one to believe in spirits or magic or anything of that sort, but now I felt sure that I certainly could. "Do you think that knowledge of these...spirits can help us heal the Rift?" I asked, my brow furrowed slightly as I considered the question myself.
"Talk."
they heard me singing and they told me to stop
quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock
this is fact not fiction, should have held them in your lungs. the words I said are spinning, reeling; your wide-eyed dreams weigh a ton.
The shaman appreciated the dedicated attention with which Rixen listens to her explanation. She is far from the teachers she grew to love and respect in the Fields, but at least some of their lessons could be imparted and passed along to anyone curious enough to listen to her ramblings. Aurelia certainly had not been open minded enough to accept a different view of reality, but the stallion before her now seems interested, if only so he could better understand the painted girl.
His eyes captured by the dance and swirl of the spirit's ephemeral form, maw falling agape as he looks back at the girl's placid face. The spirits were a natural part of her home in the Fields, so the amazement which pours from his eyes is hard for her to understand. The allure and beauty of them never escaped her, but the knowledge of them had long since dimmed her excitement and bewilderment in seeing them appear from the earth. She would be much more perturbed not to feel them living alongside her.
He asks in a heavy voice, You can do that?
A chirp of a laugh falls from her lips briefly before she looks at him. "Aye," she says, though her connection to the spirits had already been demonstrated behind his very eyes. She supposes that the shock of seeing one's first spirit could briefly dim your wits enough to ask the obvious. Besides, she failed to pick up on some of the more obvious cues, so who could she really judge?
Excitement seems to grow on his face as the implications of her words grow more firmly in his mind. While before he may have shrugged her off as a strange, spiritual mare, she had shown him the proof of her beliefs. He flinches at the motion of her wing, but she quickly withdraws it back, folding it neatly on her back. His question drops lazily from his maw, almost like he is already considering the answer before it is given. Taivas sighs, a soft billow of air escaping between them, and she gives deep consideration to his words.
However, there is a problem glaring at her from the back of her mind. Her connection to the spirits in the Rift is a shadow of her former strength at home in the Fields.
"I do not know," she answers honestly, deciding that her informal pupil deserved nothing but the truth, as her own teachers had given her. "The spirits in the Rift do not know me as they had back home. My connection with them is growing stronger but remains tentative and weak."
"I am certain they could help repair whatever injury this world sustained, but I cannot say how or when they would be inclined to do so."
"Another of the Rift's many mysteries..." I said with a sigh that echoed the mare's. My gaze rested steadily on the runes, although by now I had stopped trying to understand them. Who knew how long it would take to figure this place out? It could be years, or maybe even longer than a lifetime. It would be near impossible to have a thorough understanding of any place, but even to have some grasp seemed like attaining such knowledge was unable to be done. Would I ever be comfortable living here? It was not like I had a choice. Either way, I felt unsure that I could ever fully adjust to such an environment that differed so drastically from the one in which I was born. All I could do was try. And if I failed? I knew that failure was not an option. The Rift presented me with two choices: somehow find my place here, learn to understand the creatures, beliefs, and customs of this place - or die trying.
Taivas did not say much beyond answering the questions I asked her, so I found myself struggling to make substantial conversation. Some horses were simply not as talkative as others. At least she thought to elaborate in her responses rather than giving a one word answer, which I appreciated. When the silver pegasus finished speaking, I did not wait for another lapse of silence to fall awkwardly upon us. Instead, I thanked her for what she had told me, knowing it would be useful at some point or another. "Thank you for telling me about your spirits - for showing them to me. In time, I could see myself believing fully in such a thing, now that I have seen a spirit for myself. If anything, this knowledge that you have given me of an existing spiritual world might be beneficial to better understanding my role in this place. I had never seen magic until I arrived here, much less a horse summon spirits before. You seem to know what you're talking about, more capable of understanding Riftian spirits than any horse I've met so far. I'm certain that this connection that you speak of will eventually grow stronger."
Realizing that I had been staring at the strange obsidian stones for, a time one could say was far longer than a horse should be staring at a cluster of obsidian stones, I decided it was time I ought to be going. "Anyway, I'm hoping to reach the sea by nightfall so I'd better get going. It was nice meeting you though. Perhaps the answers we seek will eventually become clear. And hopefully we will learn what these runes mean-" I paused to clear my throat before finishing the rest of the sentence, "-and exactly why they were put here." My words were accompanied by a final gesture of my head in the direction of the runes.
With a casual swish of my tail as if I were without a care in the world, I moved away from Taivas, strolling toward the trees with a light swing in my step. Without turning my body around, I swung my antlered head back in the mare's direction a last time as I approached the edge of the sunlit clearing. "So long." I called behind me, before my striped sides were engulfed by the pines.
"Talk."
they heard me singing and they told me to stop
quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock
Siren's Summit
