The wind croons its hollow song against the arch of ice as I pass beneath it.

Dog is in a fit of sorts over the sound, dancing and prancing with her ears perked high on her head and tail lolling behind her in an insane trajectory that I cannot and never have been able to predict, searching for the beast atop the glassy structure who calls to her with such a sad, sad melody. Ethereal, it has captured me for different reasons, mostly because it is often the sound of my own soul drifting across the desolation that has been left behind by my ancestor’s foolishness and cruelty.

We have not come this far north, though I have, when I first came to this land; I hadn’t come to the frozen earth, of course, having clung to the skies during my first weeks and surveying everything as an eagle, learning the map of the land I had come to from a perspective sacred and clear. The skies will not have me, this evening, thick and cold as they strike down from the mountains and rush the film of white clouds that still clutter the sky downwards to sleep among the peaks in the dreamy cloak of the midnight mountain, and Skýlos and I walk.

There is much to ponder about my life here, to be sure, such as the treason of Circuta and Eris and the turmoil in the hearts of my unknown herd mates because of this broken tryst. I do not care much about it, either way, for it involves no one I love and nothing I am concerned about. Unless some racist regime pools into the Hidden Falls, I am safe and will have a home; my heart feels as much concern for who “leads” me as it does whether or not stones can think while they sit in eternal silence and stillness or the number of daisies that mark the earth with their smiling white faces.

I give no shits.

I think, instead, of the pristine and almost dreary beauty of this place, how it stretches endless and white and ripples in the gusts of wind that leave me clinging to the chilly surface of the world as night rises into the heavens. I think of the songs of the world and the songs of my soul, the poems of my life and the stories of those before me, all that I had had before this wretched kingdom and what it was I had thrown my crown aside for.

My purpose, I suppose, the meaning of life; philosophy that is too droll to elaborate upon in more detail other than that I feel as if I am the tundra as I walk across it, and that Skýlos is the white ripple of snow dancing across its cruel relentlessness. And my dreams? They are the stars, so bright and cheerful, unattainable as the Moon’s smile.

She looks upon me, my queen, my mistress of Umbrian embrace, and I do not know what she sees anymore. I am not who I once was, nor am I all that changed. I am only alone.

Being alone tells one much of themselves.

I nearly displace Skýlos from her paws as she stands staring at a figure gathered near some frost laden boulders, perhaps only ice themselves; she yips disdainfully and hops away with a scowl on her normally bright features, softening and returning her eyes back to the man as I smile in apology and touch her hindquarter gently with the end of my long, lion’s tail, pressing not having meant to have trod upon her into my emotional fabric until she felt its pulse soothe her sense of disrespect.

That she is maturing does not escape me, her concern for things having grown and her wariness evident in that she alerts me to the stallion rather than rushing forth herself as she had done as a young, young pup. Together, we walk towards him, my dark tipped wings tucked to my sides and Skýlos’ large head held low along with her tail. I stop a respectable distance, my hound perching upon her haunches alongside me with her white tipped nuisance of an appendage slowly dragging back and forth behind her, pink tongue partially exposed as she grins a mostly friendly smile.

"Good evening," I say in the tongue of this land, figuring that he, as the rest, does not know Elysian, "has the wind stranded you for the night as well?" He is winged and, while male, is handsome and attractive in all the ways desired among my homeland, and it is a welcome thing to be among my kin if only to avoid the cacophony of the black bell when it looks upon the lesser species. It still growls at his masculine stench, my nostrils displeased with his scent in ways that a more normal woman would perhaps find him pleasing; such is my curse, to debate my reality with that which was supposed to be.

To contain the shores of that dark, dark lake within myself as best as I might, so that I may not fall as Hemera or Persephone, too broken to know the horror of their own lives, too consumed by the poison etched into our skin.



C e a l e s t i s</style>
who knows how deep the heart runs</style>

He smiles upon us as we arrive, which is a good sign no matter what nation you are in for most circumstances. I return the gesture, as best as I may; it is perhaps cold, the distant smile of a woman who feels nothing - and it is possible that that is what I have been reduced to over the past six years of my life, no matter how hard I have struggled to maintain the vivacity for life and learning that once flooded me. While my heart still beats and my soul still yearns to expand itself, I find that my body slowly becomes stone that closes in the flames of my being because I will not let the darkness devour me as it so longs.

It punishes me, for refusing it. And so I am caged.

Dog yips as he greets us, the sharp sound drawing me from the dreary thought that I am not at all who I once was and back to the frigid reality of the tundra. I realize that he has smiled at the puppy, an action that has earned him much admiration from the easily wooed idiot who laps at attention as vigorously as she does the cool waters of the springs of the Falls after an hour long sprint after invisible invaders.

Just barely I manage to refrain from rolling my eyes and kicking her. Instead, I keep them focused on the man with the glowing hooves, taking in his gentle voice and finding as minimally offensive as Quilyan’s has been. He is blessed company, his only curse his gender, but he has a certain air to him that I find pleasing, as if he challenges nothing and seeks only to exist; it had once been my dream, in ways it still was – but I know better than to grasp at things out of my reach.

To just exist is too droll. It is why we are here, trapped in a blustering wind in a land of ice, because I lingered to long in the Hidden Falls and have managed to make myself feel trapped though my own mechanisms. No one holds me there. No one ever will.

"I came to think, and to let Skýlos run. She has never seen the ice lands of Helovia," I say, my words deeply inflected with Grecian tones as I take a few steps nearer the white winged stallion with Dog in tow, "I have never walked them, myself, only observed from above. Perhaps the Goddess deemed it was time to show humility to the snow." My smile is soft in my mind, at least hopefully less sharp than the chunks of liberated ice that pelt me as they fly in on the wind.



C e a l e s t i s</style>
who knows how deep the heart runs</style>

I find that Dog is much better at inviting others into a state of friendliness than I am, her own soul more pure and shining than mine perhaps ever was, even before the smut was etched into my flesh. When she smiles, the world smiles back, proven again as the teal hoofed stranger returns her lolling expression in his own handsome way. He eventually finds me, his eyes squarely resting on my features, and it seems he thinks something for a while before he speaks.

I take in his calling and former rank with mild interest lighting my face, finding that he had once resided where Skýlos and I spend most of our days. As large as this land is, time and time again the fact that all things move in circles is proven to me over and over, that a stranger so far from the lush haven of the Falls had once known its comforts; how many more were no longer there, who once had been? How many more would I find that had just narrowly caught the place where our paths might intersect?

I long to know the future, as I once did; the dreams do not come, my mind filled with mundane images of my own life in the present and past.

"I am Cealestis of Elysia, and this is Skýlos," I nod down at the dog who promptly stands and does one of her flippant twirling maneuvers in delight of receiving mention, "we hail from the Hidden Falls, once called the Foothills of your past." I smile, fond of my knowledge of this land as slight as it may be; I even know much of their origin tales, from my hours beneath the earth learning to read the ancient writing in the stone.

I wonder if this one may know more of the original story; it seems few of the original Helovian lines or tales remain among those that live here. I would perhaps be better off attempting to call down one of their Gods to ask for assistance.

"If I do not press you to deeply, why is it you left there?" I ask, knowing that leadership had changed quite abruptly with the shape of the land once the darkness had lifted, and currently witnessing the dissent and treachery that had been born of that sudden change; like dark clouds, the unbidden alterations of their lives hovered over the herd still, many attempting to ignore the storm that was brewing and now sending cracks of lightning through the air. Perhaps he is wiser than I am, for he does not remain within the eye of the storm – but it is also barely my home. I love no one there and owe them nothing; if I might simply claim the land as my own and banish them with my former rights as a princess of a powerful kingdom, I would do so.

To be alone was often more blessed than company. It was why we had fled, was it not? To escape the constant eyes and wonder of those who sought to own us, to use us for their purposes?



C e a l e s t i s</style>
who knows how deep the heart runs</style>

I watch interest light on his face at my words, true interest as is common among men of our breed in this land as I have discovered so far. First Quilyan, who was quite obviously of a status similar to my own at some point, and now this man, who hears the name of a foreign land and lights up momentarily before seeming to slip into more solemn thoughts – perhaps of his own past, or perhaps he knows of my homeland. I pity him if it is the latter.

Elysia is no place for any man to live and find happiness.

My ears raise and Skýlos yips as he repeats the name of my home and the race of emotions that flood me pound against her psyche. It has been so long since I have heard the name spoken from the lips of another that I have grown ill used to the rush of darkness that beckons me back into its arms and the tightening that grasps at my belly as I rebuke it. Still, against all these negative sensations, a rising of pride swells in me, for Elysia, for all its wickedness, is one of grand palaces and greater knowledge and wisdom than Helovia of the present, a place of beautiful and strong women from ancient lines who ruled with nefarious grace over their men and slaves. It is laughable to think that I have been led here by my dreams, a land more wild than even the pens in which the stone workers toiled or the forests that bordered their yawning mouths, and that I have found not a single one of my sisters for all my struggles in this barbarous place.

"About a years flight to the far east, alongside the sea and old forests among the other cities of the empire. It is a wicked realm ruled by cruel winged women with stones for hearts," I answer, finding curiosity on his face as he asked the question and so indulging him with more than just the bitter reply of a woman who both loathes and longs for the land of which she speaks, "but it is beautiful and strong in its own right, if one can look past the insane laws of my foremothers. It is still no place for a man. They would never let you leave." My tattoos tingle on my skin as I speak of the place in which they were crafted, so perfectly etched that they seem to have always been there. At times I am thankful, for it spares me having to explain them to others – but sometimes I wish that someone would ask, to grant me a reprieve from the weight of the secret and the magic that binds me to a hatred I do not understand or truly feel.

It is no wonder they go mad, the great women of my home; my mind slips further from me each day, no matter how hard I cleave to it and wish it to remain whole.

My turn comes to ask questions, and my expression falls and Dog wags her tail slowly with a lowered head at the evident disheartening that my inquiry had inspired. I had pressed him – and I am sorry for the act, though the black bell rings gleefully in my head for having inflicted any sort of discomfort on the lesser male. I chase the internal sound away as he speaks again, my eyes soft for once in the gleaming world of snow as the wind tugged at our bodies and manes.

He speaks of them as if he had loved them, as if the loss of his friends had darkened some lights within his soul that he had yet found ways to reignite, and I try to sympathize with him as best as I can; most of my heart is cold and passionless, purposefully smothered to protect others from the curse of my kin, and so it is difficult to view the herd in which I live with the eyes of someone who cares what becomes of them. In my time in Helovia I have met very few that have inspired any sort of admiration from me and I had known about as many in Elysia that could say the same – and most were wearing thin my kindness in that place. It had made it that much easier to leave.

I find it is easier to find concern when I ponder my sisters, and so I settle on that hollow in my soul to compare to that of which he now spoke. I nod as he concludes the explanation, not finding words to suit his own, having been able to follow the Asylum in their travels and thus not having become lost as he had. We had come to the Falls after the change had swept it, the crown a gift to Seele from the Earth God himself, and never before now had I wondered who had been there before we were.

He smiles, a weak thing, and I return the gesture with what comfort laced into my face that I can. His next question causes a flicker to break my smile. "It’s beautiful, to be sure, but I suppose that is to be assumed when it is the realm of the Earth himself, and the rulers are just and strong," my grin manages to make a fleeting reappearance before I direct my tongue into more serious matters than scenery, "but it seems the heart of the herd is divided in many directions, with no common causes aside from the few friendships and original ties they have with one another. The Czarina led a group of madmen and healers before she gained her rule, and as with all madmen there has been some… derision among their ranks recently. The Czar is a kind man with much wisdom, but he is of another land as well, and so many of those who returned to the Foothills when the darkness lifted to find two strangers leading the land either left or remained to harbor contention among their thoughts for the loss of their former lieges." I pause, smiling softly at him and hoping it does not hurt him much more than he already seems to suffer to know that the Hidden Falls struggle – all lands struggle, truly, in their own ways, and it is not so bad that I have left. Surely that is some comfort to him.

"I hold no ties to any of them. It is a place to rest and call home, and so their social rabble disturbs me very little but for the meetings about it all," I laugh, a light and dancing thing in the air, "I mostly watch, and listen. I may not be able to dream up the future, but I believe they simply need time to learn to trust one another and see the value of the rulers the Earth provided them."



C e a l e s t i s</style>
who knows how deep the heart runs</style>

That I have described the land of my raising as what it is and the stallion still bears it interest is curious to me; I feel a brow rise at his first inquiry, sensing that the need to know is strong within this man, and that it would be wise to leave any and all descriptions aside that might actually lead him there. What he says next makes me laugh, too, but for a different reason – no one ever did cross the women of Elysia. At least, not without vast punishment to fall down on the poor victim once he was discovered. That to cross a woman in Elysia could be something so simple and uncontrollable as the gender which you were born to is a thought that adds to the sharp laugh that wildly finds its way free from my lips, Dog whining softly as she sweeps her eyes up to catch my own, wondering if the poison is driving me mad or if what the man said truly was of humor to me, her heart prying away for the emotional reverberations that leak away from my soul into her senses.

"Just?" I breathlessly manage, looking at Murdock with a humored light gleaming in my eyes and my lids partially shut to squint at him thoughtfully once the laughter dies on my lips, "they have never been such things in Elysia. But, no, none cross my foremothers." The same smile that had framed my face as I laughed leaks back into place, uncontained by the dark hilarity that lies in this all; the image of bodies strewn across the stone before the palace, the procuring of the images of the slaves deep down at the bottom of the pit, so haggard and weak it was hard to tell if they were dead or alive, only given away when movement touched them. Most simply lay slack and were drug along by their stronger companions, too exhausted or their will too broken to bother walking like dignified, living beasts are born knowing to do. "At least not to have the last laugh."

My finishing statement comes with a collection of images, the sight of my dam and her council laughing over their herb lunches about whatever poor slave had just died at their hands, or been sent to the pits; they even laughed as they discussed pulling that one man apart, piece by piece, for daring to give my aunt a son rather than the daughter he had promised when they had paired. I had been only two at the time I overheard that lovely tidbit of Elysian culture discussed as if it were as tranquil and innocent as a day at the beach – and it still settled about as well as curdled milk inside me, no matter how deeply the perverse poison had inched into my heart.

The conversation turns, though, for which I am grateful; its not that I’m unused to curiosities when it comes to minds who do not know the tales of the lands they hear in passing, but that I find that the thought of this one finding his way to that wretched land is almost as awful as the thought of returning to it myself. While we have only just met, he is kind and displays manners that I’ve found lacking in others, the most simple denotation of this behavior being that he asks as many questions of me as he answers of himself, not focusing the words on one side of the fence as those who seek to use others are prone to do; while this stag is not one I can define in detail as my sisters or the cruel keepers of Elysia, I do know that my homeland is no such place for a man with gold in his heart such as this one.

He’d have a good life as someone’s personal soldier, until she seduced him and he failed or he grew less handsome and less capable than his younger competition - whether he could fight or not, he was fine stock to breed from. Either way, it wouldn’t end well for Murdock and his strange black coat.

His smile falls as I what once was his home, and I watch the change of expression with a passing interest that does not care that it hurts. Much of the things we will learn in our lives are unpleasant truths that, had we been given the choice, might have wished to never have heard – but it did not change the fact that it was real and tangible, that it was how it was in the present hour. And while I feel sad that his home as he remembers it is gone, cast across time like sand into the wind, it is not so much that I regret telling him what he needed to know as I regret feeling so cold and without compassion for it.

He asks me what I do there after a short pause, as if he has digested that time has mutilated everything once again and has accepted that home is no longer there if it ever was. My eyes glimmer in thought and a single ear tools backwards as I try to remember the word for my ranking, a strange thing contrived by Seele and her lunatics that, surely, might have been an easier one if they’d only thought a little longer on it. Skýlos makes a chortling, low toned barking sound alongside me that I recognize as laughter; I swat her with my lion’s tail with an audible shkk-pop to get her to shut the hell up before answering. "A Genetrix, of the lowest tier," my accent is heavy around my rank and makes the strange word for the learners sound even more foreign than it is, "I seek answers to what there is to know." I don’t know what my job is called in other herds, either, and so I cannot suggest much more than an added description of what I do.

The thought of bringing to mention the runes in the caverns seems interesting, but the caverns are tied to dark events and I have already spoiled the conversation with solemn topics too many times this not so fine, blustering eve.



C e a l e s t i s</style>
who knows how deep the heart runs</style>

I dwell in the companionship I’ve found, dangling as I always am off the solid edge of everything into the precipice of the unknown darkness that has lingered at my hooves all my life. Perhaps that is why the sky is comforting; it has no corners to be pinned to, no bottom from which to fall or top to hold me back. It is weightlessness, freedom, the allure of all the things my soul wishes to hold to itself and cannot manage to grasp tightly enough. While the conversation is not one that I care for, revolving around my dark heart and the women who had bent it so, it is a conversation, and he keeps up with me with his inquisitive glances and cheerful smiles, at least just so; the notion that a realm of women was more savage than any ruled by man seemed one that was hard to grasp for him, and perhaps I have discredited my tales with my own kindness.

But he deserves it, for he offers it as if it is air and has no end. Such souls are rare.

He takes in the title of my rank with the briefest hesitation that withers when I explain the strange name away. His smile as he shifts is the most genuine he’s worn yet, and I find myself easing into the soft lines as quickly as my heart screams out in protest, the wrath of a thousand starved lions bleeding its sour sound through the beauty of our shared time together. My insides ripple with the dark bongs of the Elysian bells burned there, controlled still by the wavering ties of my stronger will. It was only a matter of time.

The thought consumes me as he speaks on my work, the words partially heard through the pulsing of my spirit as it weakens under its daily struggle. To be so lonely while not alone is a hell I do not want – to know that I must hide to keep myself and the world safe is an ugly truth that I ignore for the sake of more time here, in the normal throws of life, where a woman could share words with a handsome gentleman in the snow and not stain it red with blood.

I feel my blue eyes ripple under the pressing weight of my thoughts, knowing he speaks of Helovia and its mysteries and all I might learn. All the world is this way. Why would Helovia differ? That is simple and without order in comparison to Elysia does not diminish its wonder, only adds to it, and that I have discovered a history lost in the dark confines of a cavern that most born to the land itself do not know only deepens the depth of what I might learn. There had been no tomes in the library of Elysia on the history of Helovia, only a map and its location, a lose jumble of symbols to denote that they believed in Gods as we did and that magic flew through the earth as swiftly as it did beneath our grand palaces.

But Helovia is not broken, or bleeding black blood. It is only sad, and simple.

There was still hope for a brighter future in this place; Elysia had only bones and ash, and I lie among them, even so far from her dark eyes.

His question saves me from myself, allowing me to focus my thoughts on things other than the land of my birth, the place we had fled from, Hemera and Persephone in tow, bound and tethered to our willing sisters, too broken from the ink on their bodies to know we were sparing them.

Where were they now?

That is the answer I most wanted to know, aside from perhaps how to remove the curse from myself – however hopeless a thought that might be.

"I do not know," I answer softly, "I once knew everything by simply dreaming of it. Now I have only my own means to divine and learn from, and it is not the same." He had been open and raw in his expression of self with me, and it was with this in mind that I gathered the strength to be so, myself. It could harm nothing, and while I was resistant to lowering my pride and being a soft hearted filly with a man I barely knew, the weight of my thoughts were so heavy, the days so lonely. Skýlos could only siphon away so much of my guilt and sorrow, too much for only two to support. And Murdock?

He seemed to have a good back.

"I left Elysia with my sisters, but a storm drove us apart. I most want to know where they are, if they are safe," my voice suddenly drops into a next to nothing whisper, perhaps loud enough that he might here it if he lifts his ears and strains, "my dreams said they would be." Blinking slowly as I look into the distance to collect myself, I smile, turning sad blue eyes towards the strange man I’d met in the snows. "I am also learning of Helovia, and the writing once used to record its history in the caverns to which we fled in the darkness alongside two others. Much of what came to pass in the past of this land seems to have been lost. There is much to recover if we might decipher it."


C e a l e s t i s</style>
who knows how deep the heart runs</style>

The cold touches me, too, but it is no bother; I’ve settled into the fact a long while ago that such discomforts are the least of my concerns. The ache of the frost helps keep me focused on moving forward and not becoming ensnared in the dark undulations of my soul beneath the calm and sad exterior that covers it. Dog silently bares her discomfort, the first ushering of our emotional bond suggesting that she is quite cold and miserly, and with a silent show of what little love I can feel for her, I wrap my tail about her haunches and pull her closer to my body, shielding her with a wing.

It’s a slow gesture, one that I don’t want to invite an end to this quiet, stolen moment of serenity in the maelstrom of my thoughts. Perhaps I should seek out Florabella again and more often, the gardening mare who reminded me of my sweet Purrhos, and hide within her warmth as I have Murdock’s; it is false, the sensation of life without a pulse, without dreams, but it is a reprieve.

Do I deserve such things, with what I have done?

He says nothing more of my family as I bleed it across the ice, the staunch of the flow of more interest to him than the fountain that had inspired a quick, invisible seal. That he genuinely means what he says is evident as he glances around him at the frostier parts of Helovia, a curiosity lingering in his eyes that gives the truth of it all away. I find it alluring, this blend of sinew and thought, and meet his smile with a downtrodden version of my own.

It brightens, some, as he offers what he can in my search. At first its simply to hide the grimace that threatens to take my face – traditionally, males had little to do with artifacts and the translation of such things, with only a small number of the men literate where as even the most lowly ranked female handmaid could read Elysian, some capable of many more languages than that. But this is not Elysia, and Quilyan had already paved a road for Murdock to earn consideration rather than immediate scorn.

I would have to teach him, of course – but that was no matter. He seemed he would be quick to learn, and the earliest etchings were primitive enough a child could decipher most of them.

His eyes slip to Skýlos more comfortably nestled beneath and behind my body and downcast wing and the sound of her thudding tail reaches my ears, the second offer falling from him striking me deeply; the only other who had offered me such things had wanted things in return. But this man? I take a hesitant, wavering breath as the realization that he is offering out of kindness strikes the tolling bell into a stunned silence.

I feel a sliver of water run down my cheek, freezing before it falls away.

Rain?

"Wh…Why?" I ask before I know it is leaving my lips, staggering back inwardly while remaining frozen in time on the exterior, the only show of my emotional maelstrom the stutter that breaks my word in two and the crystal of water suspended on my blue cheek. Why do you give me this kindness?

I do not know that he owes my blood for his life; a certain blunt and crass damsel had flown in to his salvation, trumpeting her cries of war. Oh, if only I did. If only I had been there to hear her as she sang out the song that had always flooded her savage soul.

Brighid, who had unchained her heart through the use of her strength, where I had only been able to beat it back with my logic and dreams while slowly losing my mind to a bitter, cold embrace.

I had no dreams to cushion me, anymore, and the thought is terrifying. How fast will I fade when I go? Will I still know who I am, even when no one else can see her?


C e a l e s t i s</style>
who knows how deep the heart runs</style>

To all my confusion, he offers a simple thing, white and gentle with all the necessary accoutrements to soften the tension that has wreathed my heart, emotions that make Dog peer at me with wide blue eyes full of worry and restrained fear. She knows how deep the poison runs in my blood, the active struggles that I take part in daily without an ounce of my will poured into the notion; it grows weary, it grows tiring. The only ones who know my pain are lost into the wind, and this man is so obliviously courting ease into the heart of a hungry tigress, entirely unaware of what sort of woman I can be as logic slips away and the ego takes a firmer grasp on the physical actions I take.

Another crystal freezes on the cheek opposite the other; Dog wriggles beneath my hooves, her tail curled and pressed into her haunches and wrapped to her belly, her low whine almost without notice over the wind and slow cadence of Murdock’s voice.

To meet his gaze is to meet a thousand devils and saviors dancing in a struggle that has defined my life since its forth year, but I do it with the bravery known to the princesses of Elysia, with the strength of will that has forged my path until now. Inside, the bell is riotous, it roars and bongs with the ferocity of seven storms, it darkens the solid blue of my irises and darkens my soul, but there is light.

There has always been light.

When his words fall away, so do my eyes, almost as if to rescind into myself to watch my heart being constricted by the black blood that pulses and the emotion that throbs beneath its mutilated surface; his offer is genuine and it touches the parts of my soul that are still sensitive to kindnesses, the parts that have not hardened and steeled themselves into the dark paths of my ancestors, the one that we have all been forced to walk by no will of our own.

Could he find them? Were they even still alive?

And the strangest of it all was that he seemed to offer out of kindness, out of a goodness that nurtured his soul, and I cannot understand it. The land of my birth was a place of treachery and self service, and such acts as what was offered to me were unheard of and mocked. More reminders of how far the wind has tugged me, of how lost I have become.

The dreams had lied. They were not here, and they never would be. I would die alone and crazed as Hemera, lost in the madness I had never wanted or understood.

"Thank you," I settle on, my voice cold and emotionless despite the degree of aches and tribulations that undulate through my core, a restrained tone that hides the peeling of my bitter soul as it longs to extinguish the light that so blinds the wretched creature within me, "I… I don’t have much to offer you but my company, and it is only good for a time." A frown creases the prettiness of my face, thoughts uncontrolled rising to the surface as they did thousands of times that want to guide me far, far away from this man.

Before I can hurt him as I have done the others – but desperation, it burns deep, and loneliness is cold and dreary.

"There are seven of us, including myself," I say after a time, pulling to mind gently and affectionately each image of my darling siblings, they’re grace and beauty a balm to an aching heart such as my own, "we are all marked with the ink, though we share little else than this. Our fathers… none of us are of the same man." It is the truth behind that statement that causes the angst to rise in the hollow of my breast again, memories of the men my mother had used like trash and discarded from the vast windows with wings broken and ruined.

"Selene…" my pale sister, my beloved daughter of the Moon, the midnight mistress of my heart; how far she drifted from me in the storm, how deeply I long for her love, "Selene of the Moon, lost Hemera, brave Brighid, cruel Persephone and mad Iris. And blessed, gentle Antiope… even a whisper of them would ease the ache of my heart."



C e a l e s t i s</style>
who knows how deep the heart runs</style>

A spark of interest crosses his face as I whisper the names of my beloved siblings, my blue eyes searching the change of the lines for some promise that I have finally stumbled upon a path that is not dead ends and wasted words.

They are here, I know it in my soul. Where else could they be? Why else would my dreams send me here?

He mirrors a name as my words cease, a beautiful name that fills my wretched heart with a hope so bright it scalds, it burns. My lips grow slack in eagerness, my pupiless eyes flickering with a wetness that I cannot control or understand in its entirety. I have never been the sort to wallow in loneliness, I was never the sort to need them so when all I had to do was call out their names and they would pour from the heavens to my side.

Skýlos whines softly and wags her tail weakly, leaning into my leg as she feels the odd rush of sorrow entwining with hope and love. It is one she feels often.

She still does not understand.

He says he knows her, my valorous sister of the earth, and a weakness swells in my thoughts, white and blinding and fuzzy as cloud kisses, the world fading out ever so slightly in the intoxicating rush of hope that consumes me at the simple mention that she is alive.

She is surely not in the Foothills, what I knew to be the Falls in the present era, for I have never seen her or caught wind of her scent in the myriad hills and hollows, trickling over the silver brows of the rivers that dappled the body of the realm. He’s smiling, I take note of, but for why I do not know.

Perhaps he cares to ease a woman’s aching soul, perhaps it fills him with purpose.

That Brighid had saved him from a moment of peril is not one I doubt for a moment; her heart is full of fire and bravado, and while we are not of the most honorable of lineages, Brighid stands proud and regal among us with her statutes of defending those who needed her aid. I am not so bothered by the suffering of others as she would have been, and I cannot promise I would have spared him as she had.

I likely would have merely walked away, as if the screams were only wind.

I can see her in battle, oh, how my heart remembers them each with abysmal perfection. My cheeks are cold in the frigid wind that buffets us, my body complains quietly beneath my pressing emotions that it is cold, ever so cold.

But I deserve it, don’t I?

"Brighid…" such a sweet note to sound out over the dark peels of the bell that hangs in my heart, "Brighid is of the Earth, in coloration and soul. If she wore anything like these hideous things…" A wing pulls aside to reveal the blue lines etched deep in my skin across my haunches, the same pain as always rising in me when I remember and know what they have done to me, to us. The right complains as it stretches, the band that had broken aggravated in the chill that buffets and sweeps, but it hurts more often than I’d like to admit. Perhaps it is only the contrast of true pain rising over the aches in my spirit that makes it so obvious this night.

"I have not seen her in the Falls," I add softly, the intoxicating high of the hope I’d felt run through me fleeting and swift fading to leave me in the trenches of despair that rise after such rushes of positivity, "yet... you are right. She could still be in Helovia."


C e a l e s t i s</style>
who knows how deep the heart runs</style>