let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
As he stands within the crowd, he remembers a girl who ran through a festival in Denote. She has ribbons in her hair, red as fire and gold as sunlight. As she ran she pretended she was a phoenix and ate from all the sugar stalls. To think of it, to remember it, brings a deep ache to the once-monk’s chest. When they disappeared, he went looking for that girl and never found her. The worlds were too vast, the times too eternal. She was gone.
So was his past.
Slowly Tenebrae rises up, out from his memory and lets this new festival, in another court, surround him. Spring scents, spring life is all around. Children still run, but none are like her… that child he almost began to see as is own, such was his love, his affection for her.
Yet like all things, that was gone too.
Tenebrae drowns in the noise, the feel, the taste of this new festival. He turns his unseeing eyes to Verenor. The peak would tower above them all, shrouded in black. As he stands, he waits, but he does not know for what. His heart is a heavy, broken thing, bound together with fraying string.
Life thrummed at a steady pace throughout the festival. Bodies gathered in celebration of spring under the watchful eye of their Sovereign Callynite. Lost in the sea of faces and bodies was one of the younger members of Delumine, Illia. The striped daughter of Meira and a stag known as Sebastien. The young vixen didn't know her father and knew only that he was not to set foot in Dawn lest he faced the consequences. Illia's rich brown eyes swirled full of excitement and wonder at the festivities and the faces around her. It was the kind of wonder that could only be afforded to a child like Illia.
At this time, she was roughly six months old and ever eager to sneak away from her mother's side. Meira was always worrying that Illia would somehow make her way outside of the borders of Delumine and be snatched away by her father. She knew better though, her father was unkind. She wanted nothing to do with him. These thoughts she let go as she drifted through the masses until she spotted an unusual figure who stood out. He stood taller than her, like most adults. Shadows drifted around him, and it seemed that most others gave him a wider berth than usual. Illia was curious like most children were. The young stripped mare approached the man who could not see, and wondered if he would notice her.
"Hi there! I'm Illia... Are you here alone? Would you like a friend?" The youth murmured to him with eagerness. Her willingness to find and make friends often left her mother dismayed. Meira was not social like Illia.
