It is summer and humid and charming out in the earth's blessed air; the flowers cup precious gold in their velveteen palms and the sunlight is heavy with clusters of dust, frothy and torrid with the spectral luminescence of an otherworld's stars, whispers of fluttering breath through the skies. There is vibrance on the lip of every hollow, every vein, every chalice of silver morning dew, and there is a haze rising from oaken feet in the soil and the pearly glistening of the leaves and the taste of it is sweet and naive and rare, but then there is a girl who is not so much a girl with holes for eyes and blood on her crown, sweating shards and beads and blushing tears of the fire between the sentinel trees, the arc of her breast rising and falling with laborious pulses as the silence consumes the raucous song of her own footfall, and she is a child of something wicked.

She moves with iron and sleep-laden legs, but there is a stirring from the world to kiss them awake and they remember why it was that they had drawn her here, and so they still, and the cruel sculpture of her face emerges from its brooding semblance of monotony. She is ensnared in a deep reddish hue as daylight slithers over her frame, and her cheeks are alive with the shadows her lashes cast, and there is very nearly a smile pressed to her mouth, but not quite, for the warmth has reminded her of home, and so she busies herself with watching the dark places of what has presented itself to her; an entryway, an end to nothingness, the beginning of something real, something tangible, something beautiful and foolish, and of what else, she could not know, but the thrill of being somewhere was enough to quell the passionate rage of her heart if only for a revelation's moment.

She takes a tentative step.

Perhaps if it was not for the heat, she would've turned away. Perhaps if the forest was not so curious, so cherishing, so gentle on her swollen flesh she would not have let it settle into her bones, but it has wound itself within her now, and perhaps if she was not so lonely and broken and half what she once was she would have poured her desperation into something more attainable, something more glorified, something more... more, but her stubbornness is unrivaled. She will find her missing parts here; she prays, and she holds the idea of men and kings and thrones and war in her head with a tender grasp until she can touch the watery softness of silks and smell the sweat of soldiers and feel metal burning into her skin, and she vows to know it as she had once known it and be it as she had once been.

She vows to find her son.

A shrill voice at her ear that she knows is not there tells her that she no longer has a child, and that she is no longer a mother, and that all that is left of her heart and strength and soul is ashes and a hollow skull and that it was her father, her emperor, her lord and master that had sent the flames to eat him whole, and she listens to the fingernails scraping down the iron between her ribs until she cannot stand it and she has to move and shake her head and get away from it, but then she sees that it is only the touch of leaves against her ankles and wind on her neck and she fears that she has lost her mind, for only the sane doubt their sanity. All sound has collapsed and she is standing in hallow emptiness, and she waits for what she hopes are the insane.

Before long there is a figure that has replaced the shadows with which her eyes were dancing, and how pleased she is when she sees that it is a man; a king, at long last, throwing his lucent crown against the dribbling ribbons of daylight so that it may embody their brilliance, and she stares at him, at all that he is and was and will be, and she wishes to bend before him, to say his name and thank him for being, but then there is something white obstructing her view, and she is still. An ivory wolf, or some odd variation of one, had very nearly launched itself at her, and now it stands and shakes in its excitement and looks at her with deep, deep eyes, and she looks back at it incredulously, something akin to disgust pulling and twisting at her lip, as if for it to soil the very air that she breathed was unthinkable. When the prince, tall and crimson, introduced the thing as his companion, she swallowed what had begun to brim and turned to him with a narrow smile, deciding against trusting her tongue and instead announcing her forgiveness silently.

And, quickly, as if her bones could not bear it any longer, she bows.

With her horn to the soil she hears his title, Déodat, the word unfurling from his mouth in masculine tendrils, and she repeats it to herself with a whisper against her tucking and shifting flesh - "Déodat," - before her woman's legs recoil and she rises as his brother again. "I am Liriope," she says now with fervor and strength behind her teeth, her name accompanied by nothing more than its harsh and and fruitless lyric, for it was all that was left that she knew with certainty was her own. She walks forward a single step before she remembers the dog and leans away from its supposed ground, stretching her neck forward as if to reach out to the crimson prince, to touch him, to see if his skin was as cold as hers, but he is too far away, and she does not wish to upset him if there is a custom to uphold, so she watches from her place on the other side of the world.

His eyes burn like violet embers and she looks to them in the hope that they are ruthless. He is pitted and round with years of muscle, lacerated and torn by years of war, and it is because of this that she can trust him, and because of this that he can trust her, and so she asks for mercy from the merciless:

"Your Aurora Basin; is it home to many soldiers? Men like you?"

Of this soldier, she is unafraid. He, with his bitch and his battle eyes and his hide woven with tatters and blood, is more of what it was that she reveres, that she so craves than she would ever be, for of their differences there is only one that Liriope could never cherish so thoroughly as he. No matter the elaboration of the metal with which she adorns herself or the permanence of her wounds, the skulls of which she has punctured and sliced or the bitterness of her words for they are but a ruse, a hollow facade if without that which runs through a true gladiator's veins, and she is indeed without, only half, and so, yes, she bowed, and, yes, she is silent, now, draws her lips into a smile befitting and does not call to him as her brother, for she is still not worthy, still tainted, still a woman, and how she despises herself for being so, as if she once had a choice and chose the color that looked the prettiest.

She revels in the warmth and brazen edge of his gaze, hoping that it finds her pleasing, praying that it does not think her a vile, fragile thing but an able and willing warrior, a hunter and her weapon polished, and she listens gratefully to the baritone that slips so artfully from his throat until he mentions soldiers, and female, and a Queen, and a frown cuts into her face and spreads like wildfire. "Your soldiers are led by a mare?" Her voice is broken, and she immediately wishes to rid the taste of sourness that spills over her lips as she speaks such filth. She can barely hide her disbelief, and has no room left between her raging thoughts to regret the quickness of her tongue, for he, this creature so handsome and so powerful that she has bowed to had been bowing to one even subordinate to herself, for in all her lowliness Liriope would never soil a throne by sitting upon it, and she felt a flutter of rage settle behind her breast at the thought of another lesser so shamelessly breaching such boundary.

It takes a few precarious moments for her to realize what had been offered to her, and with a hot swallow she breathes a hesitant "Yes," before she is returned to solemnness, reconciled. "I will accompany you to your Basin to serve amongst your men." For there is nothing more sating than to witness a woman-king's fall.