[Quest] every storm runs out of rain

[Theodosia]

let our eyes show the 
fire in our hearts tonight

That potion may have been the weirdest thing she had ever tasted -- it lingers for what seems like days, coating her taste buds in a strangely familiar combination that makes her want to gag and comforts her at the same time. It tasted like the ocean-salt that clings to Terrastella’s shoreline, like the citrus fruit that weighed down the branches of the courtyard trees, like the musty earth deep in the swamp when she breathed in deeply, like the crackling ozone taste whenever the sparks began to roll from her feathers and into the air around her.

She thinks, maybe, despite the strange taste, she would be willing to label it as tasting like a home she had never quite known before, like she has been accepted as a child of Terrastella and not as the foreigner she has once been. Perhaps she might even begin to consider Vespera as… not entirely a friend, not entirely someone she could trust just yet, but at the very least, the potion hadn’t ended up poisoning her despite the way she had spoken to the goddess, so perhaps a tentative sort of acceptance?

Despite her reticence with the goddess, she thinks Terrastella truly is home now -- she can’t imagine being anywhere else, in Novus or elsewhere, and being able to say that she belonged there. She had certainly never felt this way back in Caeleste, back in Dead Horse Ridge where her selfish father lorded over his mortals and her siblings squabbled over the crumbs of power and attention he deigned to scatter amongst them.

When she turns her attention to the sky, to the way the wind whispers as it smoothes over her feathers, she notices the cloud immediately. How could she not, when it sits so dark, so angry, against an otherwise bright blue sky? It calls to her, Storm-singer, Lightning-child, in a way that is not a voice and is not silent, either, ringing in her ears, beckoning her forward and forward until her hooves begin to tread over the muddy grounds of the swamp. It almost sounds like the voice of her dam when she had been a child, the way he had sung to her to sleep, but yet the voice is utterly alien to her, sending shivers down her spine as it begins to increase in volume.

The cloud descends, suddenly, filling the spaces between the trees until all she can see is a black vapor swirling around her, rumbling out discontent, and she can feel the way every hair on her body seems to stand on edge as the static electricity washes over her. The cloud grows louder, biting into her ears with each and every shrill note, ringing between them until suddenly the entire swamp grows silent, the cloud disappearing into thin air without a trace that it ever existed.

When she breathes out, there is a new weight upon her head, a magic stirring she had lost upon her entrance to Novus, one that she had thought she would never have again -- a magic that bound her to her dam, the way her storms bound her to her sire, a connection she had thought severed.

“Thank you,” She murmurs to whoever might have been listening, and turns to resume her normal patrols.

credits

@Random Events hey look its only like six months overdue