[AW] a midsummer night's dream

[Pavetta]

p a v e t t a - - - Perhaps she should be mingling, laughing, dancing.  Instead Pavetta merely watched, lingering near the forest’s edge amid the glowing lanterns and flickering fireflies. She was not in a festive mood and yet she had allowed a young child to paint swirls of glittering silver and and rose on her cheeks. Pavetta had smiled as the child babbled on excitedly about the festival, and then when the girl’s masterpiece was finished, Pavetta had retreated once more to the edge of the forest. Dusk had settled across the sky, ribbons of color and threads of darkness unfurling along the horizon. The summer air was cool; a gentle breeze tousled silver hair across her eyes.  There were many sights, all beautiful and unique and quant, as was the entirety of the Dawn Court. Flowers, color, laughter, lovers, art, music. She had never met such peaceful, content souls such as the ones that dwelled within these fairyland borders. The maidens were fair, shy, demure and the men were gentle, loyal, steadfast. Where did Pavetta fit in? She felt too unrefined, too rough around the edges. She had lived wild among the Clans of the mountains, a bride of war and battle, a healer to the bleeding and the broken. War was a distant thing here, nothing more than a bad dream.  This isn’t the real world. Out there, beyond Delumine, was the real world.  Would she ever see it again? A portal had brought her from world of death, darkness, monsters, and chaos. At first she had thought it a blessing when the fair King Somnus resuced her and brought her to heal in a place of peace and sunlight. But now? Now she wasn’t so sure. Only time would tell. a pearl in pigshit, a diamond on the finger of a rotting corpse, creature in whom nothing, but nothing, remains of an elven woman ---

art by the lovely sid

[Calliope]

– Calliope –
a war is nourished on her horn

*

The forest is a place made for unicorns. All the flowers and tall, butter-soft grasses could not hope to hold the wild edges of them, all the dangerous things that are promised by the tips of their horns.

Unicorns are made for the trees, for the shadows beneath their gnarled and ancient trunks. They are creatures to be whispered of and rarely seen.

Calliope too is made for the darkness and she's there, hidden from sight, watching the coming and goings of her court. She is not made for flowers and children and all the lovely, soft things that can be found at the festival.

Raymond (as she watches him sharpen his wicked blade) is better suited for this festival than she.

Calliope is made of war and justice. She is a downpour of righteousness and all the harsh edges of her body promise battle and stories too dark and full of death to share beneath the gentle dusk. She's too wild for the world of Novus, 'other' even in a world full of horses more fantastic and bright than anything she has ever seen.

It is not a good thing that Novus still holds a unicorn that has never been held by worlds and walls and crowns before. Nor has that long faded lion her bones known any cage strong enough to hold back the hunger when it takes.

Nothing good comes from the feral storm of Calliope once she's set her sights and let loose her rage.

She does them a kindness by keeping to the shadows and setting her scarred and silver gaze far, far from the children and the peaceful horses of the dawn. This land is not made for her and so she only watches, tight enough to snap with the way she has nothing to do here but think back, back, back...

Back to a time she has smoked out the dragons and tore them to pieces, to the way she lured sea-monsters to the shore so that she might flay them. Calliope remembers too well finding a underworld from the top of a staircase and the way she had to take the last breath of her sister in a merciful death. She has hunted sick, infected horses and electrified a river to save the healthy.

Oh, Calliope remembers the monster she's had to become over and over again to save those who are too weak to kill, to take their vengeance swifter and harsher than any wild, winter storm.

There is no shame in being the unicorn who lingers in the dark, who welcomes the blackness to flush out the monster too gruesome and grotesque to behold. Calliope regrets nothing, fears nothing. She is the reaper and death the blood-crusted tip of her horn.

And perhaps it's because she's thinking back to all the universes that have tried to hold her and could not that her voice is a little too much like a lion's rumble when she turns to the gray unicorn as she wanders across her path. “The forest suits you more than the glitter upon your cheek.” Calliope's smile is a little too fierce as she walks closer. It is the smile of a wild thing, of a unicorn untamed.

“All the fun is found out there.” She tosses her nose towards the fields where children scream and frolic and stories are whispered with touches and looks in the low firelight of bonfires. “Why do you not join them?” There is something in Calliope's deep silver gaze that promises more than she asks.

There is a world far beyond Novus and any possible reality in that bright, violent gaze of hers and the way it's framed only by dark skin and brutal scars.

@Pavetta

[Pavetta]

p a v e t t a - - - She recalled the evening spent in the Night Court, surrounded by shadows and exotic strangers. A man with golden eyes and a black mask. More shadows, the perfume of lavender on her skin. There had been no expectations, no exchange of names, no promises. Just drinks in the darkness, firelight in their eyes. She could be anyone she chose, any personality she desired, because who would know any better? A night of discovery and adventure, intrigue and mystery all beneath the moon cloud and stars.  Dawn had come too soon. “I suppose you are right,” Pavetta agreed with a sigh, startled by the truth the unicorn offered and feeling somewhat foolish for attempting to be something she wasn’t. The paint on Pavetta’s cheek chafed; she fought the urge to scrape it off. Pavetta couldn’t recall meeting the ebony unicorn before, surely she would have remembered such an encounter. The unicorn’s smile was chilling, her silver gaze piercing. No, Pavetta would remember such a woman. The stranger had the proud, regal bearing of a sorceress, the prowess of a cunning panther. Scars littered the sleek black skin. A warrior perhaps. Other worldly, a queen. It seemed like Pavetta should feel deep unease in such a profound, dark presence, but instead found the stranger's company oddly comforting. Their conversation seemed easy; not bogged down by faked pleasantries or the exchange of woven floral crowns. Trying not to stare too outright, Pavetta followed the stranger’s gesture to the fairy tale scene before them. Glowing lanterns, music floating sweetly through the air. Laughter of children; men and women wearing flowers in their hair and glittering paint on their skin. “I don’t know,” Pavetta admitted truthfully, feeling as though her answer wasn’t right, wasn’t good enough, and probably disappointing. And then she found it even more bewildering that she cared about the stranger’s opinion at all. The intensity of the woman’s silver gaze was burning, scrutinizing. What does she see? Who is she? It was clear she was of old, ancient unicorn bloodlines, far more pure than Pavetta’s scattered unicorn heritage. Surely she wasn't from the Dawn Court, nor even Novus in its entirety. “You’re not from around here.” Blunt, straightforward, burning curiosity lingering in her voice. Was this woman from a world of death and chaos and monsters, too? a pearl in pigshit, a diamond on the finger of a rotting corpse, creature in whom nothing, but nothing, remains of an elven woman ---

@Calliope

[Calliope]

– Calliope –
a justice that no flesh can hold

*

It is a dangerous thing when two unicorns come together beneath the ancient trees. There is a connection between their eyes, rose gold to silver, black to gray. Something dark grows, something powerful, something older than magic when their scars glint just so beneath the shady light. How heavy the shadows seem between them, too thick for any fire to breech.

Calliope is comfortable in that place where the air seems like oil and smoke and to breathe it feels like drowning. She wonders, if they were to tap their horns together what sound might ring out in that heady air, what tinder they might alight with the sparks of their weapons. Like a lion she moves closer. She is nothing more than a wisp of strangeness as she comes close enough to taste the lingering sweetness of sunshine on gray unicorn skin.

“No.” The word sounds like more than a syllable on her lips. It sounds like a rumble of thunder, an echo of all the lighting storms that lived on the tip of her tongue once, so very long ago. “I am not of Novus.” Calliope smiles. Even that gesture is something more than a flash of teeth and the tilt of her lips looks too feral for a horse to wear and it sets her eyes to sparking like stars.

She leans closer, reaching out to wipe away all that paint and glitter on the other unicorns cheek. They need no adornment but their horns and the brutal patchwork masterpieces of their scars.

“I am from more universes than you could dream of.” Calliope is from worlds far beyond this one. She has changed her skin, her weapons. She has changed so many parts of her, over and over again until all she was left with was her soul and that wicked, violent purpose of hers.

But this body, four too long legs, that curving scythe of her horn and that streak of white lighting down her side, is the most familiar to her out of all the bodies and bones she's worn.

Behind her that double tail flicks and twitches over the soft, summer weeds. It moves just like a lion's tail, a hint that this body she wears is more than just a unicorn. That tail promises that she's a hunter, a wild-cat in the body of a legend.

“What of you?” How heavy the air as become now, thicker than oil. It's as thick as the ancient blood of unicorns that courses through their veins. “What kind of unicorn are you?” Even as she asks the question, Calliope remembers.

She remembers killing all the other unicorns who raised her and the way their skin felt like paper beneath her rage.

@Pavetta

[Pavetta]

p a v e t t a - - - I am from more universes than you could dream of. There was a time when Pavetta might have been able to dream of such a thing. Years ago when she was a lonely girl in the mountains, dreaming of her mysterious father and of the adventures they might have journeyed on together, the worlds they might have seen, the things he could have taught her. The dreaming had went away, though, faded and withered like dry grass in the heat of summer. Life wasn’t for dreamers, it was for survivors. Pavetta had learned that lesson early on. Pavetta tensed slightly as the black unicorn moved closer and reached out to her cheek, tail lashing like a panther about to pounce. She held her breath as the paint was wiped away, the glitter spiraling to the forest floor like rain. “Why here then, of all universes?” she asked, releasing her breath in a sigh of relief. The paint was gone and her cheeks felt cleansed, as if the masquerade mask had been tossed away for the first time since she had arrived in Novus. What kind of unicorn are you? Pavetta paused, uncertain and reluctant to answer, wondering how the evening took such a strange, bewildering turn. Who am I? She was the girl from the mountaintop, the young bride meeting her husband for the first time, the widowed girl in the swamp with shorn hair and wild, hungry eyes. She recalled when the priestesses abandoned her for four nights in the black forest in a last effort to bring forth her dormant magic in dire life or death circumstances. Alone in the forest at night: a certain death sentence for one without magic to aid them in their fight for survival against the monsters and creatures that stalked in the shadows, hungry for blood. She remembered the tears, crying, pleading, pounding on the fortress door, screaming, let me back in. They did not. Her magic never surfaced, remaining dormant as ever, but she survived. After that the priestesses packed her off down the mountain to marry a lord she had never met. She remembered the dark initiation ritual into her husband’s clan, the feeling of rage and helplessness as the sizzling red-hot silver bar was pierced through her nostrils (a mark of ownership), the stench of blood on her skin; the way she was bathed and hair braided and woven, paraded before the men like a cow at auction. Anger, hate, bitterness at the lack of choice, of freedom in her life—black, boiling emotions that both fueled her survival and frightened her. And she survived that too. Thrived, even. What kind of unicorn are you? “I don’t know...yet,” she said at last. An answer that conveyed uncertainty and self-doubt. But her voice was strangely calm and her gaze steely as she met the black woman’s expecting eyes. “I could be many things. I have been many things." a pearl in pigshit, a diamond on the finger of a rotting corpse, creature in whom nothing, but nothing, remains of an elven woman ---

@Calliope

[Calliope]

– Calliope –
a titan that is rising

*

Calliope watches the other unicorn and there is a predatory gleam in her silver eyes. There is nothing horse, nothing mortal, nothing forgiving in that gaze of hers as she watches the mare tense and pause. She wonders what it might be to feel uncertainty, to feel like a unicorn with something more than purpose and justice in her bones.

Always has she been instant in her choices, fierce in her convictions. All her steps have been full of a drive for the end, for the end she can't quiet seem to reach.

The world is not done with Calliope, nor is she finished with it. There are still more monsters to pluck out from the seems of the universe, more walls for her to crumble down to dust. Where there is evil and sin there will be Calliope, ready to build a graveyard with the bones of beasts.

She watches the unicorn and answers with a blaze to her eyes and a flick of her tail. “There is something I have been searching for.” It is easy to believe that there is no universe that could keep her from her quest, no fate she could not bend before that iron of her will and horn. Even the trees seem gentle and fragile where her eyes looks out past their shadows, as if even now she can not be kept from her searching.

“Novus might have need of me.” She turns and looks out over the forest, out to where a fire blazes with the destructive power of a dragon. Inside that old, dead lion roars for it remembers how scales felt against its claws. Calliope too remembers the way that dragon fire could not slow her rage as she turned them to ash, bones and warnings made of death.

But here in the forest, in a moment between two unicorns and shadows, there are too many things to think of than dragons and monsters to be put down. Later her judgment will come, when she knows the entire story.

Later will be brutal.

Now she only lowers her horn to tap gently across that hollow just below other unicorn's eyes. It's a kiss of a weapon, gentleness from something stained in blood. There is nothing vicious in her movement, in the way she leans just close enough to be considered brash. “You could be unstoppable.” Calliope holds a promise in her voice. All the mare would have to do is but to ask Calliope, ask her what that silent echo in her words might hold.

“How did you get your scars.” It's not a question, not really. The words cannot be anything so kind with the way they echo with old lightning, old rage.


@Pavetta

[Pavetta]

p a v e t t a - - - “Like treasure?” A mysterious woman who travelled between universes for something so fickle and materialistic as treasure? It wasn’t right, the black unicorn didn’t seem the treasure hunter type to Pavetta. Treasure hunter or not, that predatory gleam in those silver eyes betrayed that the woman in black and white was a hunter of some kind. What if she was not looking for something but rather someone?  Novus might have need of me.  Pavetta felt chilled but there was no breeze in the air.   From what little she knew of her father, he had been of the same sort: bounty hunter, assassin, monster hunter. Different titles but all held in the same regard: a dangerous individual that was not to be messed with if you knew what was good for you. Pavetta wished to ask more questions; had the burning desire to know more about the unicorn’s strange motives but the topic felt forbidden, as if the cryptic woman had said all she had to say on the matter. Pavetta followed her feral silver gaze to the forest, to the fire that burned bright in the night. Again she wondered, what does she see? Pavetta only saw shadows and light. What was and not what could be. Pavetta dared not breath or move when the black horn lingered on her cheek, a whisper of death on her skin. You could be unstoppable. Inwardly, she faltered, resisting such a tempting offer, falling back into her pattern of uncertainty and doubt. She had no magic, was no one. She was only Pavetta, an Order of the Sorceresses reject, a widower, and recently a Dawn Court reject. Had she reached too far when she voiced her desire to be Emissary, was her ambitious too obvious, too frightening? You are too young, they had told her. Too inexperienced. What did the black woman have to offer her that the Dawn Court could not? “How?” Pavetta asked tentatively. Was she crossing a line? It felt like she couldn’t turn back, as if she had already opened Pandora’s box didn’t have the strength to shut it; eaten the forbidden fruit and condemned mankind. “Most are from the initiation ritual into my husband’s clan.” Of which she was proud. “The rest are from foolishness and mistakes.” Because I am young and inexperienced. Their words lingered, burned into her mind like a brand. "How?" she repeated, this time firmly, surprised by the unrelenting steel in her voice and the hardness she felt forming in her heart.  a pearl in pigshit, a diamond on the finger of a rotting corpse, creature in whom nothing, but nothing, remains of an elven woman ---

@Calliope

[Calliope]

– Calliope –
a titan that is rising

*

Another smiles blooms on the dark lips of Calliope. It's a brutal twist of a smile and when her teeth flash between the black it looks like the grin of a wildcat, a lion or some predator that has found in a poor, lonely mouse a rabid survivor.

Had she been a different type of unicorn she would have laughed. Soon enough the gray will learn to guard her words. Those weapons of language are weighty blades, swung far to easily by most. They rarely touch the flesh. Calliope has learned well that every inch of her is a weapon. Her silence, her words, the deadly tipped horn and every muscle on her body all are weapons honed to deadly perfection.

The young unicorn would learn soon enough. Even their scars are weapons they must learn to wield.

“A ghost might be a treasure to some. But for me she's more.” The smile lingers in her voice, all  curved steel and war-sirens. A ghost waits for her somewhere in Ravos and she will crumble every wall and law in this world until those broken shards of her soul are made whole.

She says nothing more as the gray unicorn continues. Her eyes harden to steel as she speaks of a man, of their foolish rituals that they themselves could never hold upon their own flesh. Calliope doesn't say it, doesn't need to voice those words spoken so silently in her gaze as they linger on the scars of the younger unicorn.

Calliope would gut the man who tried to initiate and mark her. She would rend him from nose to hip and let his foolishness rot and decay with the rest of his petty ideals. Her flesh is not made for a man to shape, to claim and mark as something that belongs with him.

Everything about Calliope is made to consume, to swallow up shallow men who think they have a right to bend and mold a body other than theirs.

That too the other unicorn would learn.

When she asks Calliope 'how' her smile only deepens and darkens and flashes like white fire in the forest shadows. “Find me and I will show you.” Her voice is a bolt of lightning, heavier than any religion or war. There is an entire world in her voice. A place full of change lingers in her syllables. A place made of sand, bone, fire and a vengeance that knows no end.

“Tell them that you look for Calliope.” The last she whispers into the gray's ear. Her breath is hotter than any dragon's. That leonine tail is gentle though as she lets it tangle briefly about the younger unicorn's legs. It could have been a snake or a whip against any other but beneath the trees she lets it be  nothing more than a caress, a promise.

This is the first task Calliope gives: to hunt down the hunter herself.

And then Calliope is gone, faded into the forest and returned to her ghost that Novus cannot keep from her. The smell of her, feral and metallic, is all that lingers in the darkness she once filled so completely.

It lingers as if to say, this place held two unicorns and now it shall never be the same.


@Pavetta

[Pavetta]

p a v e t t a - - - Again, that predatory smile endured a moment too long, cold, dead eyes a touch too hungry. Perhaps Pavetta ought to feel uneasy or repelled by the black unicorn and her cryptic words and wolfish smiles. Questions leading to more questions, promises swathed in shadow and mist; the kiss of death lingering on her cheek. A black maze riddled with fog and danger and it didn’t deter Pavetta as it probably should have.  A ghost. There were ghosts in Pavetta’s life, too. Some had faded away; others more prominent and permanent. The father she had dreamed about running away with on his many adventures in the wild of the Rift. Her husband; the braids of his hair and the smell of earth, sweat, and rain. The pyre burning, stars and embers blazing overhead.   Pavetta didn’t fail to notice the sudden cold in the black unicorn's eyes, the tight frown when she had mentioned a husband; however subtle the signs might have been. A sore spot—disapproval. Again, why did she care what a stranger should think of her? Somehow it did matter, a great deal, but Pavetta could not bring herself to feel ashamed of the pride in her ceremonial union. The touch of a man, the caress of a lover, whispers in the dark. Pavetta desired such intimacy, such closeness; the fire lit between two souls.  But it did not mean she was a prisoner, a captive. At one point, she had been, a captive among powerful women. A frightened woman-child paraded before potential suitors and husbands at her time with the Order. And then she had been shipped down the mountain to marry into a war clan. But there, for the first time in her life, she had fought for a choice. For him. She had chosen Fearghal and he had chosen her. There was a certain freedom embracing her sexuality, a bold independence that she had not known before Fearghal. He had taught her much about the ways between a man and a woman and opened a door she could not close. He had never sought to control her; he had tended the embers, let them smolder and burn, but never had he suffocated her.  She had not loved him, perhaps, but she had chosen him. Pavetta did not feel the need to explain herself or her pride in her marriage ritual, but perhaps one day she would, if they should ever speak again. For now she was content in her confidence, in her passionate nature and the need for companionship. Pavetta could admire any woman who did not need engage in such frivolous affairs but she might pity them also. Find me and I will show you. One last caress. And then the shadow unicorn was gone, only the whisper of a name remaining--Calliope. Pavetta was left alone, wondering if it had all only ever been a hallucination; the aftermath of one too many goblets of wine.  a pearl in pigshit, a diamond on the finger of a rotting corpse, creature in whom nothing, but nothing, remains of an elven woman ---

@Calliope