#millstarter

Location : The Sapphire

Time : The month before the ball

Zoya : @zoyaridzel

Sunisa was stationed in the Valley for a short while, to help ease the passage of the various dignitaries who passed through into Tsuki. Presumably she would be here until called back to help guard for the ball, shuffled around into whatever duties were needed. At least it kept her mind and body busy, kept her doing things, kept her exploring into the broken facets of Tsuki that she’d never realised existed before.

Who knew that the Valley could be so different to the Palace, the same country and yet such a different face? And the Sapphire the strangest of them - also home to nobles and the influential, full of opulence, full of hidden darkness and murmurings. The only difference was that she was expected to root out the corruption here.

But her workday was over for now, so she went to the bar and leaned against it, eyes scanning the rows of expensive booze - so much finer than the cheap whisky they’d treated wounds with in battle. Tapping her finger against the counter, she tried making a choice, before someone on the other end of the bartop caught her eye. 

Immediately, she smiled and made her way over, slipping into the seat next to Zoya.

“Why is it that I always find you in the strangest places?”

LOCATION: The Crystal Palace, Tsuki

STATUS: Open

Away from the din of celebration, the balcony air carries tendrils of lingering perfumes. Notes of imported jasmine and peach, magnolia and lemongrass; they have rubbed themselves into the atmosphere, like ghosts to the evening wind, and mingle strangely with the scent of receding snow. Spring is slowly rising. Life will begin, finally, to lift itself once more from the crevices of a hibernating world - something Cedric finds he’s looking forward to.

Unsurprisingly, he prefers the warmer season. He comes from molten sulfur and sun, from a world of hissing heat and brilliance. Cold settles uncomfortably about him - and this winter in particular is heavier and longer-lasting than what Tsuki expects each year. It feels distinctly unpleasant. 

No. Hungry. 

The sucking chill nips at Cedric like a mouth, and the sensation unsettles him. He’s felt awry since Magnus’s arrival, since Selene and Endymion left for Kova, since the Silver Army’s deployment to the borders. Perhaps, it is for this reason he has slipped away from the ball. There were, all at once, too many hands on his body, too many mouths against his ear, too many sets of pretty eyes exhausting him of grace.

The mortals will never not adore him. He has made it so: convinced them he is a cornucopia of elegant excess, that he is made of nothing but pearls and starlight.

But tonight, Cedric feels ransacked. He is thinking about a prophet’s mouth, whispering chaos; and of Ysra’s, the angry twist of it as she bit down on his neck earlier; and of Ilo’s, bared tonight in dizzy, sweet violence - but not for him. For her. The mortal Queen of Paol.

Something shifts behind Cedric. Footsteps; an exhale; the sound of crinkling fabric.

“You’re missing the dance,” he offers quietly. It is a greeting, and a curt farewell.

Leave me be.

Two months Magnus has spent calling the moon home. Two endless months he has spent shackled to Selene, a reluctant advisor removed from his post to guide an empress that he still, centuries later, will not kneel to. He misses outer space desperately; it is desolate, a yawning valley of speckled nothing, but it is the nothing that he is bound to protect. To spend this long away from it feels blasphemous. He is filled with with the dull ache of longing, a sadness that he knows will not fade until silence absorbs him once more, but he cannot leave. Not on his own terms, not until Selene confers with Nehelenia. Such is the nature of the arrangement they have agreed upon: he stays here—a phantom indulging in the Lunar Court’s luxuries, a memory from a millennia ago now embedded in its tomblike halls—until Kova’s savage queen is made aware of the coming Armageddon. Only then will Magnus be free to retreat to his nothing.

He considers this as he stares into space’s vast darkness, gaze intent on the distant pinprick of tawny light that is Pluto. Two months Magnus has spent out of his self-imposed exile and in his siblings’ orbit, but they remain strangers to each other. The dance they twirl around him is a complicated one, rife with palpable apprehension and sideways glances. Is it fear that makes them hesitate? Of what? Surely, they must know by now that he is not in control of his prophecies; he is merely the vessel from which they flow, a fountainhead of unwelcome truths wrenched from some unspeakable place in the galaxy that neither he nor they can traverse. Or perhaps a millennia is just too long. Perhaps his chance to stand among them is forever lost, squandered on years of grief instead. Whatever the reason, he is grateful for quiet moments like this one: there is no presumption of civility, no pretense of familiarity to uphold. He can simply be, unhindered by expectation.

The ocean sparkled with the city lights reflecting off the waters. Dark, calloused fingers disturbed the peace as they dipped under the surface, causing ripples to bounce off, disappearing into the horizon where the setting sun kissed the ocean. The air was salty and the calming, chilly breeze brushed upon the cloth that hung loosely off Endymion’s limbs. A whimsical desire of stripping off his royal clothes to go swimming was briefly entertained, a thought of diving into a natural abyss that the moon didn’t have tugging at his heart.

There were certain pleasures that his home just did not have, which included a large, beautiful ocean, sweet smelling air, and leaves rich in color wafting through the air when a strong gust of wind hit the towering trees. Endymion never waded in such pleasures for long, since his home remained with the moon. However, whenever it was necessary for him to descend upon Earth, he always found himself lingering on the way back home, stopping to admire the flowers that were unfamiliar to him. 

The sound of footsteps on the boardwalk behind Endymion caused him to retract his fingers from the mouth of the ocean, standing as he shook the droplets off his skin. 

“It’s a beautiful night.” Endymion said gently - a greeting to the stranger in his presence. His tone was questioning, a curiosity at another being, as if it was strange to see another at the very popular Summer Palace. “What brings you here to join me as the sun disappears behind the mountains?”

Camille had chosen her escape carefully. She had considered asking Victor to appeal to the queen, but she feared what would happen if the queen denied her safe passage back to her homeland. The thought of being in the presence of such powerful beings as Jove and Persia pushed her to back a more drastic and risky decision--- to venture out on her own wearing the face of another.

She had brought her vials of magic with her on the journey in order to ward off sympathetic stares from her brother, but now it appears the little vials would serve a bigger purpose. She had only really used a little magic at a time--- a splash near her eyes to make them sparkle, a douse on her hair to make it shine, some magic on body to give it that sun kissed look she had been lacking recently. Nothing too extreme in order to not draw suspicion. She had never attempted to become someone else with the magic, but she knew her best way out of here would be to do that. 

She had taken one of her vials out and held it in her hand. Closing her eyes, she started to rub the magic onto her body, envisioning who she wanted to be. Her hands weave through her hair, making light waves turn into a dark straight appearance. Her fingers run along her skin, changing it from the bronze glow it was to something a bit duller. Her eyes turn from a brilliant hazel to a dark brown. She stared at herself in the mirror when she was done, and she gasped. She couldn’t recognize the face she was seeing before her. The girl looked nothing like the princess had, and it took a moment for the shock to fade before she laced up her cloak and set forth back to her land.

She had been travelling for a few hours now. The cold had hit her the moment she was out of the castle, but as hours went on she found herself chilled to the bone. Shivering and practically frozen to the touch, she had sought out some place to rest. She was about to collapse right where she stood when she spotted a figure not too far away from her, and she set out again despite the ache in her bones.

“Would you happen to know how far away we are to the docks? I’m afraid i’m due to catch a boat, but I seem to be a bit lost” Not totally a lie. She didn’t have a boat prepared, but when she shows up as the Paol princess she would assume someone would offer her a spot. 

Her exile is self inflicted, a wound in which she never seems to lick clean. Painful is the reminder that she, a ravaged sovereign, burns inside at her own hand. Flesh, charred from insides out, a slow decay that had been going on for centuries. She glides swiftly, a slice through the still air, towards courtyard. A solace amongst the heavily snow capped trees, able to breathe in the scent of pine and feel content in her boiling blood. In her rage, in her anger. Moon illuminates as the cloud free sky shines, stars of far off beauty flicker throughout the black backdrop and Nehelenia cannot help but feel a feral madness beat within her heart. To the sun, to the moon, to the stars. Her anger is not a misdirect, nor is it unwarranted. Yet, curious be the soul that had managed to break that barrier, to deteriorate further the rotting wall in which she’d hidden herself away within.

Beneath footfalls, snow crunches and a surge of glacial winds weaves through her thickly weaved cape. Wolves fur wrapped around her neck, her lithe digits curl around collar as she readjusts. “If I had wanted your company, I would’ve sought it out.” Monotonous in her displeasure, she needn’t avert her gaze from it’s still remaining place upon the trees to know he’s present. An ever looming presence within her castle. He, as gleaming as the sun itself, could hardly go unnoticed against the harsh juxtaposition that came with Kova. Perhaps centuries ago, when the world around her still thrived, when florals bloomed and the mountains moved. Now, however, he was an incessantly lively thing within her cemetery, her country serving as nothing more than a mausoleum. 

More often than not, the weight of the public’s eyes was enough to stifle the rippling across her emotions: the spikes of resentment, the flashes of regret, the immense sorrow that always waits behind the curtain, numbed but by no means gone. When the people of Tsuki called their princess from her fallen throne to them, for her smile and her grace, Yuna played the part so convincingly that she believed it, too.

Here, in a country that is not her own, it was impossible to forget that once, she dreamed of her own coronation with ferocious wanting. That once, she and Victor would get lost in conversation about their dreams, their futures, the kingdoms they would build and unite.

Imperceptibly, Yuna dug her nails into the skin of her palm. It was left to Kou, now. And Victor had given his birthright away and Daphne had lunged to snatch it from him. Which was worse? She couldn’t bear to scavenge the ruins of herself for the answer.

Emotions rising to the surface, salt stinging the back of her eyes, Yuna turned and, in a corner of the kingdom, took a moment to catch her breath.

The sound of footsteps interrupted her meditation, and with the speediness of someone used to snapping her heart shut in a matter of heartbeats, Yuna straightened and offered a smile. “Excuse me, I was searching for a bathroom.”

The air on Earth was sweet opposed to the lack of atmosphere on the moon. With every inhale there was a new scent that Endymion picked up on he was not used to whenever he set foot on this planet. Not to mention, everything was so colorful compared to his home. As much as Endymion loved the moon and everything she stood for, there was something truly alluring in the rustle of green leaves, dancing in the wind. 

Endymion ached to eventually return home, but his short stay on Earth post-royal duties could be prolonged just a little while longer. On his way outside, Endymion found himself at the entrance of the training arena, a familiar face dealing harsh blows to a training dummy. 

A faint smile graced his face as he slowly made his way to the woman. Speaking softly, Endymion stood up straight and allowed his hands to rest behind his back.

“Your form has only gotten better, Sunisa. How have you been?”