[split] (se) aeria gloris

The world caves in; colours and sounds scream inward as if you're standing at the bottom of a drain and all of creation is swirling toward you.

And then..oh. Well you're actually not that far from where you started.

Midas is king and he holds me so tight

He smells the the fresh blood; feels it in his curled paw, cooling rapidly in the breeze. Whatever he holds is bleeding out, and whatever Mabel holds is similarly limp. Undignified. Just flesh: empty. It'll barely be enough to make him notice it in his mouth.

Her ferocity echoes in the space between them. He pushes away his own conflict, his own doubts and hesitancy about what influence he might have upon her, relishes instead in her fierce joy, her lethal success, and then—

Then his own dive pans out into a thoughtful glide, his prey dripping blood onto the world below. What is it she asks, truly? He doesn't know.

You did well. It could be this; it could be LongNight; it could be anything—

The flowers rush up to swallow him as the world folds and folds and folds and folds—

Mabel! he cries out through the white noise buzzing in his ears, in his skull, and Aamu drowns in color.

But as the world unfolds again, he is still above familiar ground. It is the barrows of King's End, Meadowreach a distant, colorful blot half-hidden in between the dips and rises of the graves. Mabel? Frantic, the dragon's head whips around, searching for that black-and-white eagle in the vast, frigid sky.

and turns me to gold in the sunlight

Aamu

Come sit right here and sleep while I slip poison in your ear

The response was just as vague, as if they were speaking in circles and rhymes, nothing and everything all at once. You did well curled upon her and that was something she’d very rarely heard, taken aback, nearly loosening the prey in her talons.

Except it didn’t matter either – because then there was a blinding whirl, a suffocating thrall, and the youth couldn’t understand, couldn’t explain what was happening. Maybe she was drowning again, mid-flight and suddenly exhausted, and her wings shot outwards, desperately clinging to some aspect of life. They pummeled and swung forward, striving to gain access to the air again, but she was still being pulled down, down, down –

And then there was nothing but fear holding her hostage. Waiting for that doom and gloom to strike once more. Waiting to settle into the Voice’s world as another wayward, lost soul, come to roost far too soon.

Except then – there was only color, and rolling hills below her gilded feet, and the apparent confusion riddling her senses. Aamu? She questioned, looking, glancing, until finding the dragon in the piercing night. She’d lost the blink hare at some point, but didn’t bother questioning it. It’s okay. Mabel didn’t know who she was reassuring at that point.

Graves. Graves and graves and graves rolling through hills, and it seemed they hadn’t stranded or strayed far at all. What happened?

MABEL

Midas is king and he holds me so tight

She's there: her presence brushes against his mind again, and his eye finds her, another star in the sky. She's still with him, still flying, though her hare's gone—Aamu's dragon-heart slowly ceases its anxious thundering in his chest, and as the pressure ebbs from his veins he feels... tired. Worn; spent.

Hearts and organs are such strange things to him now, but he misses the scents. He misses the sunlight.

I don't know. It is the words he hates to say, because he hates to not have answers. Hates to guess. Hates to wonder. Grips his dead moushroom tighter and glides along, slowly descending again.

The Barrows aren't as plentiful of prey as Meadowreach, but surely they can find something here, too?

Aside from the obvious: we were teleported. He gives his head an uncomfortable shake. But I don't think it was Her. She'd know who he meant: the Voice, their strange mother of a sort. This had been wild and untamed, full of color and life, and not the ether fog of her dimension.

and turns me to gold in the sunlight

Aamu

Come sit right here and sleep while I slip poison in your ear

There was so much more to the unknown, than the understood variables – vast and overwhelming, casting without preamble, without preludes. Like she was back in the sea, a tiny speck on the horizon, and then nothing at all. Except these were fields, shadows, flowers, feathers, and scales, and she could ground herself in its tempestuous edges. These wouldn’t carry her into ruin.

Maybe. It was difficult to tell after the latest occurrence.

She followed his descent, and they wandering in and amongst catacombs, stars, and prey again – her eyes drifting, catching the nuances and glows of the blink hares once more. But her own human mind won out over the animalistic, predatory consignments for a moment, pondering Aamu’s answer.

Then what would it be? The Old Gods? A punishment – two Ascended drifting out into the world? Daring to be something in the wake of all these ancient things? To the ones who couldn’t change, except to erode? Who had the arcane wake posted beside their names, to remind others that they couldn’t be altered, couldn’t be evolved?

Or something else, another foreign entity, altogether? A legend, a myth, a story, missed in between the folklore?

MABEL

Midas is king and he holds me so tight

Slowly the wind streaming through his lungs begins to carry scents: cold spring, hares and mice, the old, earthy smell of the barrows themselves. They merely tease his instincts, too large to truly care to hunt such small and fickle things, and Aamu himself is not focused enough yet. His wild joy, his sense of casting off his shackles, is curbed by the lingering dread and panic.

Seems too petty for them, he responds after a moment, still thoughtful. Their heralds, perhaps, but if they were here—likely it would not have been so benign. The thought is uncomfortable.

Aamu begins to touch down, beating his wings hard to come to a standstill, until he touches down among the rolling graves. Probably just some anomaly. If he doesn't sound entirely convinced, it's because he isn't.

While he probably should think about it, he doesn't want to. Instead he peers at the iron door sealing the nearest barrow, before turning his attention to the tiny mouse hanging limply in his massive paw. That he even got one at all was a bit of a miracle. Carefully he sniffs it. I kind of want to fry it. I'm just not sure if I'll set anything else on fire too. His head turns upon its thick, serpentine neck. The Barrows, mist-shrouded as they are, were probably too wet to catch fire—probably being the keyword. See any water around?

and turns me to gold in the sunlight

Aamu

Come sit right here and sleep while I slip poison in your ear

They’re carried on the wind, on the breeze, intermingled with mist and darkness, and while she could hear his sentiments, she didn’t agree. Too petty didn’t seem quite possible; but perhaps it was her own prejudice, her own spite, her own vitriol casting its wares and stones. To Mabel, all of them would sink pathetically enough to infiltrate and annihilate; especially towards the Brightened ones, the beings who could cast themselves out of their ancient shackles and tethers.

So she grew quiet and sullen again – though eagles couldn’t bear frowns, the muted venture would likely say enough. An anomaly was possible, probable, but given these uncanny circumstances, everything unwinding, unfurling, Mabel didn’t know what to say. What to think.

About anything.

Her gaze darted towards the mouse in his clutches, to the iron door barricading, guarding, keeping them away and whatever remained sealed on the other side.

But then the statement drew her away, a sudden panicked sensation she couldn’t hide. A widening of her gaze, a thrumming, harsh beating of an artificial heart. No more fire. An involuntary shudder wracked through her, and then she flew downwards. I will look. A distraction, descending lower and lower –

With all the mist, something must have collected. In between one of the barrows, where mound met edges of rolling hills, a spot segmented as shallow, she could see a small, minute amount; Flowerbirth’s intricacies. Here. Whether it would be enough or not, she hastened the call, talons brushing into the puddle, plumage tucked along her sides.

MABEL

Midas is king and he holds me so tight

He can sense it: her silent disagreement, and he lifts one scaled, massive brow as he peers at her across the sky. It's a feeling he doesn't like, but one he doesn't know how to address without delving into things he doesn't quite want to go into. He chooses to let it be, not because he's convinced that he's right, but because—because he doesn't have any better answer, and he's a coward.

And a fool.

He hadn't realized the fire had licked her soul (as badly as the water had washed her out)—should've fucking known better, but instead he's left standing by the grave's door and peering after her like a concerned idiot. It's too tempting to crush the moushroom in his paw, to curl his claws in on it and pulverize it, but after several seconds all he does is exhale. In the moist spring air it turns into a white plume.

Coming, he sends her way, coiling back on his powerful hindquarters before launching himself back into the sky. His voice lacks enthusiasm, his flight lacks ferocity; he glides in in silence, again touching down, and his head cocks to the side. I'm sorry. I didn't realize.

His claws dip into the small puddle as he (gracelessly, one foreleg still held up with the mouse in it) hops around to keep the little eagle in his sights. Do you want to talk about it?

and turns me to gold in the sunlight

Aamu

Come sit right here and sleep while I slip poison in your ear

The silence went on and on, a series of events and circumstances in between those unsaid nuances. She offered nothing but her residual stare at first, and had she contained a chin in this form, it would’ve been jutted forward. Instead, she watched and waited, hesitant and stubborn, used to fending for herself in range of emotions (until they were nothing, of course, crushed and mauled, suppressed and diminished, or they flickered and drowned – like fire, like water).

Had he not been bothered by the fire? By the way the Sparkbird had sent everything into flames? By the way they could’ve been encased in the same inferno amongst the barracks, eaten and consumed, swept away into nothing? By the certainty of death? To have been sent out into this world again, only to be snuffed out soon after?

Resurrected as she was, reborn and renewed and scraping, clawing her way out into the wilderness, Mabel was too greedy, too avaricious, to give herself to demise so soon. Not now. Not again. There were too many other things to do. Too much hatred to expel.

She couldn’t tell what the purpose of the water was, but she strayed from its contents, brushing through misty grass and moonlight. The barrows might have been elegiac, enigmatic, and eerie, but so was he. So was she. So was the potential for this pending conversation. Do you?

Or could he maintain indifference? And how?

MABEL

Midas is king and he holds me so tight

It is turned back on him, and had he worn his human face, he would've smiled: a small, complicated thing, grudging affection. Does he, indeed? He doesn't like being put on the spot like this, prefers to be the one offering the support, the comfort. He is the beacon, he is the guide—a symbol. He'll be fine, he's always fine—

He bends his great head to rub his scaled snout against a foreleg, enjoying the pleasant tug of scales on skin.

I was brought straight from a war, he finally says, spreading his wings before settling them more comfortably against his sides. It skews your perspective. The Order wasn't stupid; they knew of our weakness to fire. This wasn't my first time in an inferno.

He pauses, bending his head to the surface of the puddle to peer at the distorted, blue-eyed dragon. Mabel will hear him anyway, even though she's doing the bird equivalent of pacing around in the dewy grass. I'm too used to suppressing what I feel and just going on, pretending everything's fine. Hiding my fear, everything I worry about...

He shoves the tip of his nose into the shallow pool. It's cold against his scales. To tell you the truth, I'm devastated, and I'm pissed, and I'm tired. I've been fighting for years, I lost everything I held dear in the stasis, I lost my niece, I— He breaks off. He doesn't want to go there. I just don't know what to do with it. And for a moment he lets it linger around his projected voice, that hollow-eyed, tear-smeared sadness that he hadn't been able to hide when he came to the Infirmary, the bitter frustrations and the heartache. It lays heavy across his shoulders.

And now I have you, he says. As if it somehow explains things.

and turns me to gold in the sunlight

Aamu

Come sit right here and sleep while I slip poison in your ear

Hesitation, pausing, delaying in the mist, and she was just a tiny speck in its doldrums, in the rise and fall of so many aches and pains here – in barrows, in hills, in locked, iron doors. When there was nothing for a few short moments, the girl and eagle both blinked, thought to look away, to glance over surroundings and pale moonlight, the shimmer of effervescence still gleaming to corpses and graves.

Then scaled wings spread, and her attention didn’t waver again. She focused, she listened, in her quiet threshold, in the pulse and vibrancy of life still clinging to her skin, to her plumage, to feathers that weren’t her own (but taken from an offering; and now she’d always be that way).

And here was where she’d lost some comprehension and understanding along the way. Mabel had never been in a war, hadn’t been able to conjure the likelihoods, parameters, or feelings from stories passed down. They’d existed inside and within their barrier, taking in the same myths and legends, until they were numb.

But Aamu was someone who’d been in it, immersed in the quandaries, in the hell, in the Order ramparts, in everything damned and due to come again. And her eyes fell when he mentioned suppressing the emotions, the feelings, because she swallowed down a multitude each and every day until she was a shell, and it was so much easier to live in her reticence and hate. But it’s not fine, is it? For herself, for him. They could admit it.

Mabel didn’t expect the anguish thereafter either – maybe she’d thought about it, wondered his containments and thoughts too many times before but hadn’t pressed, hadn’t really asked until now. She deeply regretted it; hadn’t meant to cause him anymore pain, because he’d never been a target. Nieces. Everything. Fighting fighting fighting until he’d been pulled here again.

I’m sorry, she held aloft, because she was. The youth wasn’t regretful or apologetic about a lot of things. She didn’t hold many rues in her chest. She existed on whispers and eerie quandaries, on a slight balance of resilience, resurrection, and malice. And Mabel was a poor, pathetic replacement for moments and people held near and dear.

Her talons gripped and grasped the grass, like she might be pulled away on a pulse of wind. I’m tired of being useless, she admitted; because there were so many plots and motives to uphold, and her stupefying frame had yet to manage how or when or where. I’m tired of being a pawn for other people’s games; a reciting of her thoughts and feelings on the LongNight debacle. And I’m very tired of Wessex, and there she laughed, but it wasn’t a joke.

MABEL

Midas is king and he holds me so tight

But it’s not fine, is it?

He feels his heart beat. It vibrates through his dragon's body, a quiet, powerful thrumming in his veins. He'd forgotten how it makes you feel alive, with the scent of the world in your lungs and a clock ticking your life away. No, he responds after a moment, soft in the ether. It's not fine.

The cold water seeps through his fangs. He relishes it as he swallows, enjoying the taste, amusing himself with thoughts of a dragon drinking tea (would it get a stomach ache if there was milk or honey in it?) as he lets her take in his revelations.

He is more than the ardent guide in the ether fog, more than the quiet wolf shepherding souls: he had arrived, begun again, but he had been in a time before. No one has ever wondered about him, what his life had been, who he had loved and who he had lost. He is merely a window to the past, a conduit of a time forgotten, and who he is (who he had been) is irrelevant.

It's not your fault, he tells her, gently, drinking again from the small puddle. He wants to urge her to do the same, to relish the goddamn taste of something, but he knows that's to flee the conversation and he feels he owes her more (owes the world, some belated courage).

His laugh, bitter, joins hers for a brief moment. Humorless and stale. Oh, Wessex: he does not know what to think of her anymore, conflicted by his desire to elevate the good in her, and too disappointed in the slaughter she orchestrated.

But first things first. You are not useless. It is not the empty knee-jerk protest one might do, but thoughtful. I'd guess overlooked and underappreciated instead. Because isn't that how it goes, most of the time? His tongue flicks into the water, creating ripples.

Wessex though... Aamu raises his great head up again, water dripping from his chin, and sits down. Neat, feline, though it feels a little awkward in his dragon's body. What about Wessex, though? He is, after all, fairly new to the politics of the Grounds.

and turns me to gold in the sunlight

Aamu

Come sit right here and sleep while I slip poison in your ear

She watched while he drank and coordinated his thoughts; she remained as a quiet little maelstrom in fields of mounds and barrows, where the dead rested behind doors and grass, where time no longer pierced and punctured, where other things were meant to simply cease. Maybe it was best he didn’t ask her to join along the puddle – her fear of the water had not yet abated or desisted. The only time she’d seek it out was to know how and where to avoid it; broken locations, unending nightmares.

But the youth didn’t hang her eagle head, tilting it to listen, to pick up on the intonations flickering and sliding through. Not her fault. Not useless.

Overlooked and underappreciated instead. Mabel laughed – quick and hollow. Not as strong, not as capable, not as talented as the rest. It would make sense that they wouldn’t see her. Not until she did something noteworthy or conquered a common enemy. Even when she’d attempted to concoct that stupid house for LongNight, the exalted Queen had quickly taken over.

To everything else she stayed silent. Except for that last question, because her eyes narrowed into mutinous little threads, and she had half an inclination to spread sedition where she saw fit. Don’t you think it’s odd we had no say? No choice? No provisions? Newly arrived, resurrected, given life again, only to be tossed right back to the wolves? And she could howl, but only for so long, only so far. Plans were mostly orchestrated by her, even when others had clearly tried… for something else. Not the chaotic semblance they’d been given and granted. Couldn’t we have voted again? Who cared about the monsters? Mabel wasn’t certain what she was implying; but it was enough of a start. It seemed she just sent us out there to die. And it didn’t seem to matter if they’d been prepared for it or not.

MABEL

Midas is king and he holds me so tight

Perhaps in time she will see herself as he sees her, he thinks, struggling not to wince at her laugh, or to childishly mutter that it's true. He doesn't know how better to explain it, or how to take the edge off if he were to say it any other way.

So he doesn't.

What he thinks doesn't matter all that much, anyway. Better to keep training her, until she believes it herself, so she survives to become older, wiser, and what other attributes she values. (And yes, with Aamu around, the most likely thing you're going to get taught is more murder. Great, no?)

He wants to say, well, yes, but—but Wessex is Queen, it was a command, it seemed reasonable enough to him when he didn't know anything, and yes, it was a frustrating lack of cohesion at the planning meeting and it did jack shit for them in the end, because they weren't fighting monsters and somewhere in the middle of it he grows very, very cold. It settles like nausea in his gut, a cold, clammy feeling his dragon's body doesn't know how to express.

Voted? he echoes, something terrible unfurling inside of him. I- I thought this was a wish from The Voice, even though it never made any sense. His confusion is palpable, but it would explain so many things—like why it didn't add up with what he knew of his deity.

His restless desire to pace is curbed by the tiny rodent still clutched in his paw. He remains seated, the agitation displayed in the set of his jaws, the way he holds his head, his slightly lifted wings. I think she thought she could take them all on alone, that she could control how it would go, or that we would—I don't know, magically grow tough as nails and more blades. God. Children, a bartender, a bookmaker, an artist... His mouth opens with a hiss. It was just thanks to Azrael not more of them had died. And you tell me she chose this?

and turns me to gold in the sunlight

Aamu