[P] The Praise of Thunder

[Eik]

In the gentle morning light, Eik is drawn to Calliope completely against his will-- given he even has one anymore(- or am I just floating from place to place, drinking up thoughts and dreams, and floating away, a hapless leaf in the wind). He is not sure, sometimes. So much has been lost over the years- parts of himself included.

But Calliope... where he is empty, she is overflowing. She reminds him of what he once was, but so much more. And as he approaches he feels a sense of nostalgia for a sensation long crumbled to ashes-- that, and something akin to oil-slick fear. If she is the war, he is what comes after. He is the burned and bloodied battlefield, the people and places that are broken and discarded and eventually forgotten to the passing of time. He has seen firsthand the way history, too, is a weapon, twisted and painted pretty to hide the filth of all our yesterdays. And he knows (without really knowing, you see?) all those lies don't just sit there in antiquity, they spread and rot and as the past is tainted the future becomes poisoned, too. 

(and we still clap our hands as the curtain falls, believing ourselves the audience and not the actors even as we feel the heat of the stage lights drawing sweat from our brow, even as we hear ourselves clapping before us, and-- the great wheel keeps turning, no matter which color we paint it)

Here is the truth he learned in all that blood and fire, the truth we try so desperately to protect our children and ourselves from:  there is no honor in war. There is no glory in death, nor killing. There is only ruin. But Eik never learned how to be anything but a soldier, and if there is no war to fight... well, then he'll wage one against himself. He can see no end to the cycle, even though he is desperate for it. What else can a ghost do but haunt and be haunted?

But as we were saying: Eik is drawn to Calliope completely against his will. The funny thing is that he doesn't need to go out of his way, she's standing between himself and the festival he feels obligated to attend. He would not call it an act of divine intervention, nor fate, nor anything to do with rhyme or reason. These things just happen, sometimes, for better or worse. He crests the hill she stands on and stops beside her. Before them is the festival, and from here the sound of the stage reaches him- a soft, sad melody resonates from some unrecognized instrument, large and almost like a bow but with many strings. It suits the sleepy morning, lulling to sleep the party goers who had stayed up late enough to see the dawn.

Eik turns his attention to the stranger to his left, maybe a length away. He can sense without looking at her that Calliope is awake. "There's a storm coming." He murmurs quietly, almost to himself, keeping his eyes to the darkening horizon but his awareness, sharp and precise, on the mare beside him.

-     -     -
There is no better way to know us
E I K
than as two wolves, come separately to a wood

@Calliope I'm sorry this is such a long starter post -_- I imagined this taking place before the storm hits in this thread <3

[Calliope]

– Calliope –
and the thunder rolls

*

The dawn when it comes feels like more than just a brightening of the sky. All the pastels between the sky feel darker, tinged with the faintest of greens. Calliope too feels different, more like herself, more like the lion queen who sold her soul to fight for freedom. She feels alive, awake, aware as the storm rumbles in the distance and a long buried roar echoes in her soul.

And when the stallion joins her she feels strongly that there is something 'more' promised by this dawn. Even her eyes seems brighter, sparks made of sunlight reflecting off them when she tilts her dark, feline grin towards him. “Oh?” She says, as if her eyes have looked anywhere but at that darkness just now brushing out where their gazes can see.

Her tail flicks, agitated and restless, at her back, crushing all the grass down to dirt and rock. “There is more than a single storm on the horizon.” Calliope doesn't close the distance between them, doesn't reach out to smell the sand and blood on him. She's too alive to touch, too restless. She thinks that her touch now, with the storm making the air seem like a wall of waiting electricity, that she would burn him alive with nothing more than a whisper of her breath.

So she only lets silence fall between them, her eyes to caught by the promises on the horizon. All her edges seem to shiver and fade and fold into that hot, summer air that's too still. Calliope is barely contained. She strains and boils like a maelstrom inside this unicorn skin of hers.

She feels like she's been waiting here, poised on some cliff of tame, cultured Novus waitng to leap down to ruin all the things they think they know about wild things, about gods. Even the muted, quiet song sounds like a war-drum in her ears. Calliope longs to answer it's call, promise that she has not forgotten what payments she is honor bound to collect.

Only when the silence feels thicker than the air and more oppressing does she turn to the gray stallion. He's a simple man, gray and plain in a world full of scales and vanity. He lacks the boldness of Calliope, the inherent danger promised by that hungry blade upon her brow. However he is not so simple to brave the black unicorn on the hill with her skin that's darker than the coming storm clouds.

Calliope thinks there is a braveness to him and she has ever approved of bold, quiet men. “What do you know of storms, stallion?” The words are harsher than the sound of them on her lips, her sudden smile turning them into a gun-smoke whisper.  

The smile though, stretches the scars across her eyes so that the sleepy sunlight reflects on them just enough to draw attention to them. Calliope is fearsome even when her smiles reach her eyes, deadly even when she's distracted enough to greet a stranger with words rather than the tip of her horn.

@Eik

[Eik]

Eik is not afraid of Calliope's touch, but he respects the distance between them and all the silent things which fill that empty space. He even craves it sometimes, the distance that speaks louder than intimacy. The safeness and the wanting of it.

"There is more than a single storm on the horizon." The sound of her voice sets his hair on end. He does not speak, he simply nods his head. As a boy he had always enjoyed watching the storms roll in, no shelter but his family pressed close to brace each other against the squall. In his mind, wide open and too big for his world, there was something both exciting and comforting about it all.

And then he grew up, and each storm became just another reminder of how easily perspective can change.

"what do you know of storms, stallion?"

He does not consider the tone of her voice or her haunting smile. What does he know of storms? As much as any beast of the earth who has felt the whip of the wind and the angry rumble of thunder. And perhaps more. What he does not say is that there are unseen storms that whirl beneath the skin. He does not say each storm has two names- the secret name and the one we speak. There are too many things he knows, too many words swallowed so he may say instead, slow and calm, what seems to him the only thing worth saying: "The storm always passes. And another always takes its place." It is the way everything is in this infinite world: spinning, balanced,, cyclic,,,

((we dive into the pattern (it swallows us, greedy yet patient, with a purr) and floating we realize the soup of the universe is full of things lost and found once more. In this upside down place, the water is orange. And when you sink here, you fly))

What is it we are trying to say? He pictures all his inadequacies unfolding before him-- the extent of them is overwhelming, and for a moment there is an angry, frustrated tightening of his lips. He wants to ask what she knows of storms, but how would he ever understand? What can we do when language is not enough? He searches and searches, all his questions rising into the dark and hungry horizon before he can speak them out loud.

Before them, and seemingly very far away, the festival stirs sleepily. Here and there, gentle dreamlike laughter rises above the masterful plucking of a harp. Somewhere a young man retches in the bushes, setting a flock of indignant sparrows in flight.

There are so many words in the unicorn, calling to him with a persistent tap tap tap on the inside of his head. But he knows too well that unlike blood, words must be freely given. "Would you tell me a story?" He asks, finally, the storm lending him electricity. He braves a smile, weak and short-lived. "Would you tell me your name?" He feels something like shyness, like modesty, and then the nervous discomfort that follows unfamiliar feelings. 

The wind kisses his cheek with the promise of rain, and he finds himself in a state of anticipation where one ought to feel dread.

-     -     -
There is no better way to know us
E I K
than as two wolves, come separately to a wood

@Calliope

[Calliope]

– Calliope –
alone we float away

*

A rumble echoes far out, a promise of the torrent of rain and electricity soon to lash against their skin like a million tiny whip-cords. Calliope already anticipates the way her nerves will feel alive with the pain of it. It's a reminder of the universes she's traveled too, the gods she has challenged, the monsters she's destroyed.

For a moment she can forget that there is a gray stallion beside her. If for only a moment, she can forgetting she's trapped in such a civilized place by her endless searching.

His words echo against her skin, closer than that salvation of a storm in the distance, and she is brought back to the now. “It's the things that rise up between the storms that matter.” She doesn't look back towards him now, doesn't look at anything but the looming darkness. “All the things no storm could dare to wipe clean.” Something in her tone thickens and coagulates like blood upon a battle ground.

It whispers that there has never been a storm able to lay low the justice of Calliope.

Finally she looks back at him. There is only darkness for him to see, only that strange silver, hunter's stare to meet his gaze. She is disappointed by the fleetingness of his smile. Part of her thought that he might be like Raymond. That he might be one of the few men that could withstand the way all the edges of her promise blood and vengeance instead of gentle, soothing caresses.

He reminds her a little of Asterion.

Perhaps that is why she looks away to release him from the weight of her gaze. Still she doesn't close that gap between them. The stories of Calliope are too heavy to pair with touches, the sorrow and rage of them too great to share skin to skin.

“There's a world hiding in the dark places between the stars. It is forgotten and half swallowed by a magic that even the gods who claimed the land could not stand to wield.” Ahead that storm rolls in and the thunder is almost close enough now to rattle the dirt at their feet. “They were wicked those gods, greedy and cruel. Land burned by the apathy of them. Mortals could barely contain the echoes of elements that lingered in their bones.” Calliope blinks and it's as slow and steady as her heartbeat. “A child burned down an entire forest and there was no price to pay. The gods wanted no justice for the trees and the animals she turned to ash.” Her voice laments for those innocent creatures and the graveyard of decay that still holds all their bones.

The black clouds gather and the first streak of lighting flashes between the clouds as she continues on with her story. “But there was a queen who carried the feral magic in her bones. She recognized no gods and wore no crown upon her brow. Her kingdom had no walls and no law but justice and righteousness. The only thing she bore were scars, lighting and a lion that lay ever waiting in her bones. She saw the fire and heard the screams of dying forest creatures and ran towards the blaze to save what she could.”

Calliope pauses only for the lightest of breaths to beat back that sorrow of her tale. Her eye's never shift, never waiver from the storm that is already sending the others to shelter. “That queen was the only one to hold the child accountable for her recklessness. And so below the judging stares of the gods and a single dragon she sliced a mark across the child's shoulder and told her to learn or die. Youth wouldn't save her again.” Another bolt of lightning hisses though the sky. The light of it turns her eyes to comets as she closes the distance between them.

His shoulder is hot under her lips and the sand on it brings with it a memory.

“They called that queen of the godless magic Calliope and she was more wild and reckless than the magic in her bones.” Suddenly her story isn't just a story anymore. It's a storm of words, full of more potential danger that the winds that begin to cool and sharpen into blades.

Calliope could have smiled at him then and whisked him further down into the abyss of her. But she is a unicorn and she only tightens her lips into a blank sort of expression and taps her horn gently against his neck. She won't ask for a story or his name.

The way her horn lingers against his mane is demand enough. There are payments that must be made.

A unicorn never tells a story just to hear the sound of her own voice.


@Eik

[Eik]

They both stare at the storm, thinking their separate thoughts. What, he wonders, hasn't the storm wiped clean from him? What makes up the core of a man, what outlasts time itself? He has an answer but not the words for it, so he holds his tongue.

And then she begins her story. In truth, Eik had not expected her to oblige him. He had expected a scoff and maybe a single word- a name. But in just a few words ("there's a world hiding...") she has him under a spell. He drinks up not just her words but the way she says them, the powerful, calm alto of her voice. It reminds him a bit of the way the gods sound, or at least the few he's met.

" The only thing she bore were scars, lighting and a lion that lay ever waiting in her bones "

He shivers, and finally his eyes close. Her words paint pictures more vivid that vision itself. He smells the fire and he sees the wound opening on the girl's shoulder. He sees the blood that drips on the dirt floor and the way it glistens on Calliope's horn. The only thing, really, that he cannot see are her eyes.

She closes the distance and he flinches at her touch. Not in fear, no, just surprise. He is not so jumpy as he was when he first came here, but physical contact continues to catch him off guard. Of course, he quickly finds he enjoys having her lips on his shoulder- how could he not? He leans into her slightly as the storm thickens around them. When she says her name, the thunder rumbles its approval (-- or was that a trick of his wild imagination?) and the wind howls in hunger for more of her words (, and this he knows is true). Each new gust a syllable, cal- each more fervent than the last, -li- her name whips them in loving fury - ope! which fades to a jittery hush as she quiets and taps a demand into his neck.

It takes a moment for him to catch his breath.

In the quiet that follows, his weak heart thunders in his chest, in his ears, beating itself almost to the point of bursting. He reaches into himself in search of words and comes back empty-handed time and time again, empty except for inky blue-black soot-- not enough to build a story out of.

Not enough for anything.

Finally he lets himself remember all the things he ever chose to forget. Finally the words rise, murky and simple but his all the same, and he holds each one close before releasing them, tentatively, to the woman with a lion waiting in her bones.

"Beneath the great tree at the top of the world," as Eik begins he doesn't realize his eyes are closed until lightning flashes and paints his vision red and white. The thunder snarls soon after. (or is that the stomp of a hoof in the ground, the restless demand of Calliope?) Her touch reminds him of home, of the long and cold winters spent huddled together. How pathetic it would have seemed to the people of Novus, sprawled on their feather beds, tucked away behind stone walls. How he misses it now.  He continues boldly, blood still fire-hot beneath the cold touch of the unicorn's horn. "The most beautiful tree among gods and men, a valkyrie gave birth to a child. They named him Eik, after the tree where he was born. He grew as all boys grew there- angry and violent. Just as their fathers, and their fathers before them. It was a matter of survival."

The rain starts to fall in fat drops. Like the panting of a beast, the wind comes and goes in great big gusts that hurl the rain sideways.

(somewhere a snake eats its tail)
 
"But he was not like all boys that grew there. He dreamed, and he heard voices, and worst of all he strayed, each time farther and farther. He saw things no mortal was meant to see. And one day when he returned, his world was on fire--" He shakes his head, forgetting the horn at his crest even when it pricks him, even when a thin line of blood slowly crawls down his neck. The memories have seized him- even the storm closing in on them feels a world away. "No, it was mostly burned at that point. Perhaps it was started by a child who forgot the meaning of the mark on her shoulder." He opens his eyes, looks into Calliope's with so many questions and so little fear.

"But I always thought it was the gods." He always knew it was them, in that way you know without knowing. And if it wasn't, well, they certainly didn't do anything to stop the inferno. "And although I was always called Eik, it was not my true name until after that fire." His heart flutters again as it remembers the smell and the sight and the sound of it- how loud a wildfire is! But most of all he remembers the smell. It comes back again and again in his dreams and nightmares.

Eik has spoken enough of himself for one day. He wonders if all men open to this like Calliope, as easy as closing your eyes. She could not know how rare it is for the grey to speak so many words. "Would you hold the gods accountable, if it was they and not the child who burned the forest?" He must speak louder now, above the storm that shakes the ground. Seeking shelter has not occurred to him in his intoxication-- although he already senses their paths diverging. Too soon. He wants to cling to her, stay with her. There are so many questions she might answer.

The wind picks up once more, screeching her name like a war chant- cal--li--ope!

-     -     -
There is no better way to know us
E I K
than as two wolves, come separately to a wood

@Calliope

[Calliope]

– Calliope –
believe in me

*

Talking of fire while the lightning rages and crackles overhead is fitting for them. She can tell he too is  a wild thing, a throwback to the ancient horses who knew only the open plains and survival. Calliope thinks that he would fit well with her and Raymond and all the other transplants from Ravos and the Riftlands.

Her eyes blink as he talks and she forgets that the tip of her horn is still resting against his crest. Behind those dark eyelids she can see the fire and wonder at the same time what the tame horses of this place would think of a raging fire that refused to be held within the boundaries of walls and kingdom lines. They would burn, she thinks, for they do not know what it's like when things consume without end or mercy.

Calliope and Eik, the horses with freedom an endless echo in their blood, know fire too well. Perhaps they wouldn't even open their eyes to witness the smoke and destruction. They would not need to watch it burn to know the sting of the heat.

He shakes and the spell is broken when she feels the tip of her horn sink gently into his flesh. Like Shrike his skin tears before her blade like silk. Calliope pulls back her weapon and replaces it with her lips.

He tastes like the desert. It's iron, sand and war that lingers on her lips as she tenderly wipes away  the blood. Calliope offers an apology in her touch. He's not the sort of monster she kills (not the sort of man). Her words too are an offering, one bathed in steel and justice. “The name of god absolves nothing, forgives nothing.” Calliope is hot now, full of lightning and a fire that consumes like all the rest. It feels like her lips burn as she traces his spine and brings them to his cheek.

That touch could be a drawing of armor upon his skin, a choreography of war where she brings her touch to the hollow above his eyes. She paints him in a promise made of iron.

“Even gods must atone for their sins. Just as all men and mortals do.” Calliope doesn't say as unicorns must, doesn't need to. She is a scale just as much as she is a mortal caged in a skin that must know pain and death.

Overhead the sky brightens to a blinding white and the meadow is ablaze as if a comet has turned its deadly eye onto the world of Novus. “We could stop it from happening again. You and I.” Her touch is as bright as that comet as she lets it linger above his eyes. Perhaps her touch feels as deadly and unstoppable as that flashing, violent lightning.

Perhaps above is not the only storm has gathered slowly in the clouds before letting loose a cleansing sort of rage.


@Eik

[Eik]

The story he tells triggers a rush of memories that leave him feeling raw and weary and so very old.

(a flaxen mane blows in the wind-- a mare sings to a child (his child) a song in an ancient tongue-- a skinned whale lies on the rocky shore--)

Fill him with water and it would leak out in a hundred places-- there are so many cracks, too many holes... yet for all that's been taken from him, nothing is is really gone. For all the damage that's been done, he is still whole. Different, but no worse a man than he was before it all. No better, either, but that's a given.

(Not everyone rises from the ashes, and not everyone burns in the first place. Life is not as beautiful and magical as that, and it sure as shit is not that simple.)

He barely notices the prick of her horn. He does not mind bleeding, in fact tomorrow's scab will remind him of today, and assure him that it was not all just a dream. Still, he accepts her apology, as unnecessary as it is, by leaning into her warm touch. “The name of god absolves nothing, forgives nothing.” He shivers, and her lips move up his spine to his cheek. The sensation of fire follows soon after. First fire, then strength-- the way a blade or armor is forged. He absorbs her silent promises.


"We could stop it from happening again. You and I."

He does not feel strong enough to stop a god with tooth and hoof, but she offers something more than that. She could elevate him in ways rage and sorrow alone could not. Calliope, who holds the gods accountable for their sins. He shivers again, hot and cold. Wanting and afraid. In her presence anything feels possible, but he wonders... Stopping the gods seems as futile as stopping the flow of a stream. Push a boulder into the river and the water will simply find its way around.

But the important thing is that she does not offer vengeance. She offers justice, and those who don't know the difference have never had to balance the two. The quiet man wants to scream yes, his body wants to bleed it. But the gentle, persistent calculation of his mind overrides it all. He would not be alive if he made decisions on emotion alone.. And he must not make promises that he cannot keep.

So he looks at her long enough so she will understand, long enough that she can see the want in his eyes and the way he can barely restrain it. If he hadn't met Seraphina, perhaps he wouldn't bother with restraint. If only the desert didn't call to him for protection. If only he weren't just slightly greater than himself. And as he lets himself be seen he looks into her, he drinks in her fire and lightning and he sees the lion that crouches in wait behind her blue, blue eyes. "I know," he says, although what he might really mean is I believe, and the storm is all but forgotten now even as it whips against their faces and shakes the ground beneath them and sets the world alight.

"How will I ever find you again?" He almost expects her to dissolve into the storm before he can make out her answer-- It seems like the sort of trick the gods would play, dangling something good before him only to yank it away once more.

-     -     -
There is no better way to know us
E I K
than as two wolves, come separately to a wood

@Calliope he's gonna exit in the next post. He'll for sure be thinking about this interaction for maany days to come <3

[Calliope]

– Calliope –
feel the courage within

*

It feels as if all the lightning above them was born in her blood, her bones, that heart of hers that feels so much that it must bleed just to feel peace. Beside Eik Calliope feels like a wild thing, a unicorn made of worlds far greater than this. Not for the first time she feels strange, a lion in the midst of lambs.

They talk of gods and their faces and Calliope has only ever talked of their blood and sin. They slumber in opiate dreams in seas of fabrics as richly colored as blood and shadow. Calliope has ever only slumbered in the wilderness and rested her horn upon beds of thorn bushes and leaves. And where they play at reapers, at life-takers Calliope can remember the taste of flesh upon her teeth.

All these horses hide their fangs and the god's slumber in statues and text books.

Sometimes she feels like the only real thing that might live in this world, the last wild one, the last unicorn who has known what it means to be a lion.

Other times, when gray stallions look at her with a fury of belief in their gaze, she feels like something new. Calliope might once more be the queen of the godless ones, the free ones, the one to create the path so that others might not suffer from it.

With the storm raging overhead they could be not in Novus but upon the thunder plains of the Riftlands. It feels like magic, that storm above them, as wild and unfettered as all the sick, monstrous magics she has known. “You would have enjoyed my worlds Eik.” Even the way she speaks of 'her' worlds suggests freedom. Unicorns only claim wild places in which no chains have ever been made to hold things that have no desire to be held.

Calliope could watch the entire storm pass here with Eik beside her, promise herself that she isn't the last at all. That there are others who rage and boil with justice as she does. Others beside just Raymond.  The downpour when it comes feels like a baptism, a cleansing from the trappings of this fake, broken place.

Ahead a bay with stardust on his skin is highlighted in a flash of lightning and Calliope remembers that neither she nor Eik are the only ones who rage (one silent, one with blood-lust) for justice and righteousness. There is an army of them, wild things trapped behind thrones that long for dust and storms at their backs.

And Calliope has always known what armies are made for.

“Have faith.” She touches just once the crown of his head with the point of her weapon. It's a touch that speaks. Not faith in gods but justice. When she pulls away on a crack of thunder everything about her seems to promise that he could have faith in her too, in unicorns.

The rain runs down her horn, wiping clean the last of the blood from her old, forgotten, dead world. It catches the lightning, just one more time, and then Calliope vanishes into the downpour and darkness like a lion might when it's time to prepare for the hunt.

@Eik

[Eik]

A bigger storm is building, beyond the horizon. Of course he can't see anything but the one that is upon them, falling now in fat angry drops that echo the unicorn's glory. "You would have enjoyed my worlds, Eik." His imagination is set aflame with desire for a life that was never his. All he can do is smile sadly and nod in knowing agreement. There is something terrifying and captivating about this woman, something that he does not think he could understand even if he had a lifetime to know her.

"Have faith," she says, in this moment more god than mortal as the sky flashes with lightning and the earth quakes, and the tip of her horn resting on the middle of his forehead sends a shiver deep into the marrow of his bones. "Faith," he repeats.

When was the last time he had faith in anything?

Even before she is gone his mind is whirling with her absence, reaching out blindly to grasp at something that is no longer there. When she leaves he stays at the top of their hill for a moment, letting newly unleashed memories lash against him just as the wind and the rain do. The black stain of the past grows and grows and takes him over in a dark wave.

Have faith.  His awareness of time stops as he searches himself for the grace of wild things. There it is, there! Buried with skeletons long laid to rest, so deep in his mind he had forgotten it was even there. That wild grace flares in his chest now, as wicked and frightening as hope.

Long after she is gone, a shiver of cold finally stirs him from his thoughts. He slowly makes his way down the knoll and to the treeline, jaw tightening as he thinks and rethinks the meaning and value of faith. "Cal-li-ope," he shakes his head in wonder. He will never forget the way the storm chanted her name.

-     -     -
There is no better way to know us
E I K
than as two wolves, come separately to a wood

@Calliope <3