[PRP] Fortune Tellers & Thieves (Odhrán and Isadora)

[xo maho]

This is a private roleplay between Odhrán (Mahogany Sunset) and Isadora (Nyx Queen of Darkness).

 

[xo maho]

Odhrán crept along next to the cliff face, looking for a new cave to explore that he hadn't yet touched. Most of the ones around here had long since put the gold coin outside their entryways that marked them as friends of the Grail, and now it was hit-and-miss most days when he tried to find a new cave, and other times he didn't find one at all. It just depended which direction he started in, and today, he hoped, would bring new loot, for he'd set out in a different direction from home this time: toward the shore. Now he'd found what must be the side of a mountain or a hill or something, because straight up, reaching high above the surface, was nothing but the face of a cliff, covered with algae and other ocean life. This was a place he'd not been before - now all he had to do was find a promising cave.

Swishing his way across, he looked up and down, searching with his eyes. They were better suited below water than above it, but even so, he nearly missed the dark hole in the wall twenty feet below him - the daylight was so thin down there that the black empty void of the opening was almost the same color as the water around it... And there was no coin there, shining in the dim sunlight, that would mark it for one of the Grail's own. A smirk growing on his lips, Ronnie flipped over and paddled and swished himself downward, until he was floating outside the mouth of it.

It looked deep and dark and dangerous, like the lair of a kelpi, but things glimmered inside, beckoning him. Without another moment's hesitation, he swam forward, peering into the darkness and hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever might be in there before it could eat him.

Nyx Queen of Darkness

 

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Isadora restacked her selection of shells absently. Her mind was drifting into visions she had seen, into futures that were possible. Each one was possible and impossible, a mere fluctuation of currents that changed the tides of fate.

The algae she cultivated in this back room of her spacious cave glowed brightly illuminating the dark corners n it's eerie glow. She heard a sound from the front of her cave, the place she kept in complete darkness except when she resided within it.

Her pet lantern fish came to her call, and she sent it into the cave ahead of her. The darkness became illuminated and she saw the silver and green of a visitor. But she had seen him before, in her dreams or visions. He had been one of the wavy futures she had been given.

Some called it intuition, others vision, others magic but for her it was more than that. She felt herself a seer, someone who was given glimpses of what could be or might have been. Perhaps, she was crazy--she had been called it often enough. But she believed.

"Come for gold have you?" Her eyes focused on him as her lantern fish's bulb glowed brightly to show her and her guest.  

[xo maho]

Almost as soon as he peered into the darkness of the cave, he heard a echo out from the void before him, and then a blinding light met his eyes. Groaning, he blinked rapidly, trying to protect his eyes and see what was coming for him at the same time. There was something, the glowy brightness, that he recognized as a lantern fish of the deep, and another vaguely orange shape - an orange shape that looked vaguely like his own. And it spoke. "Gold?" he asked. He wanted to raise a hoof to block out that overly bright light, but it wouldn't reach that far even if he tried. No, he almost said, partly out of outright denial - but he also didn't want to see gold. If she had the gold coin of the Grail, he couldn't steal from her. He'd be exiled. And then he'd be off pining for a certain blue-scaled seathi from afar.

"More like anything but gold that you wouldn't mind parting with," Ronnie said, one corner of his mouth going up in a smile that was a half a smirk and half wry. He wasn't dumb enough to approach, at least - he'd heard those lantern fish had wicked teeth, and he didn't want her to sic it on her. That would be unfortunate, and he'd done the Folly specifically so that he wouldn't get scars. And it wouldn't do to come back to the Grail bloodied and lame before the eyes of George, would it? A story of pathetically failed unrequited love for the ages.

Nyx Queen of Darkness

 

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Isadora watched him as her pet stayed where she sent him. The cave lit up as she stroked the sleeping plankton into wakefulness. "I know what you want," she swam forward into the room her orange eyes glowing in the light. "You want to know if he will love you?"

She quirked an eyebrow at him, but she knew she was right that he wondered about that stallion. She knew that much, the rest was hazy and unsure. "Take anything in this cave that you want, but if you do I will not tell you what you want to know, not ever."

Motioning with her head, she gestured around the room. "So now, you must choose."  

[xo maho]

Ronnie stilled, her smirk slipping from his face. You want to know if he will love you. How...? He rapidly went over the words he had said to her so far as the room brightened with the soft glow of the algae and plankton, much kinder on his eyes than the sudden harsh light of the lantern fish had been. He had said nothing about George, nothing about a "him." Who was this mare? Had she been to the Grail before, on a trading day, and he had just failed to notice her? It was possible - after all, he so often had eyes only for George that he felt a fool more often than not, staring after him as though his eyes were as stuck to the seathi as his starfish was. His friend Tesni laughed at him every once in a while, told him to just go tell him, but he knew that George came from a proud family. The proudest of families, probably, not at all like most of the Grail families: his grandmother set down the rules for her grandchildren. She knew best, though that knowledge was flouted more than it was honored. The mare had a disdain for nixies; she was from a time before their encroachment on the reef, and the only thing that gladdened her about them was the fact that they fared poorly in saltwater.

Looking around the cave, Ronnie saw nothing that he did not already have: shells, a small bit of jewelry. His gaze turned back to this mystical mare floating before her. The black around her irises seemed to absorb all the light in the cave, drawing him in. "All right," he said, swallowing hard. "Tell me what you think it is that I want to know." And maybe I'll just steal from you afterward if I don't like what I hear. The light from the lantern fish was still cast upon him, though, and he didn't like the idea of those jaws closing on him, so he left that thought for further consideration after the fact.

Nyx Queen of Darkness

 

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Isadora watched his face in the faint glow of the cave. She had struck a nerve as she knew she would. "You want to know if he cares for you the way you do for him? If his heart beats fast when he sees you? You want to know if he could ever love you?" She looked at him, really looked at him.

To give him the answer would be both kindness and cruelty. Her words might not be believed and at the same time, they might stay embedded in the back of his mind. She could not make the other stallion love him--she had no such powers. She had inklings, feelings some would call it. Visions of the future? Or was it just an ability to read others? Others called it all kinds of things, but she preferred the simple phrase "intuition."

She pulled some fine seaweed from a covered pot and munched on it gently as she looked at him. "He does not and cannot love you. I am sorry. Love is close though, but it is not him. Do not waist your love on someone who cannot love you too."  

[xo maho]

The way the mare mundanely munched on seaweed as she attempted to rend his world apart seemed so obscene to Ronnie that he just floated where he was, unable to even twitch a fin. She had gotten his hopes up with those questions she had asked him. They ran through his mind, mocking him. Does his heart beat faster when he sees you? You want to know if he could ever love you?

And only a few moments later, she had answered her questions with the exact opposite of the answers he had hoped for. Sure, he had always known that George preferred mares - but so did most of the Grail, male or female. Hadn't he and George been raised with the same teachings as the rest of the herd? To love freely and openly? And yet, this mare said he could not be loved by George.

He shook his head, trying to get the thoughts out. What did she know? He had never seen her before. He was almost certain of it. She was just telling him what she thought he must want to hear - or, perhaps, not want to hear, to make him miserable.

Love is close, though, rang in his ears, confusing him. Who was close? Someone he knew? Someone he didn't? Again, he wondered how she could know, what she could know.

"Love is close," he said bitterly, eyes bright with anger. "And who is it that loves me, if it is not him? What I have left of a family? Motherly love? The love of my people?" These did not seem to be the kind of love she meant, and he knew it, but it was all he could think of. What else was left? He had his friends, Tesni and Flurry and Ilyrana, but that was all.

Nyx Queen of Darkness

 

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Isadora could feel his rage across the room, the way it seeped out of him like a poison--almost tangible, but not quite. She studied him a moment longer as she thought how to answer. Sighing, she began. "Those, I cannot say. But you think of her already. There will come a day that you see her, bright and shining as a pearl. And you will wonder how you overlooked her for so long. But you do not believe me, I know that."

She finished munching her seaweed, "You seek proof though you know in your heart the truth of what I say. Do you not?"  

[xo maho]

Her answers raised only more questions, and Ronnie couldn't handle it. His nose and his muzzle twitched, his mouth becoming a snarl. "A day when I see her, shining as a pearl?" he said, volume rising. All of the mares in the Grail shone like pearls, beautiful in their own unique ways, each reflecting light differently. Ronnie's brow furrowed as he tried to fight to keep his anger down. He was no Flurry Tiarnán - he could not fight off a lantern fish, not one with such savage jaws. Gods, how he wanted to rip that seaweed from his mouth.

"The only truth in the matter will come directly from his heart," Ronnie said, swishing himself back toward the entrance. "I came here to rob you of treasure, not to be robbed of a heart."

Nyx Queen of Darkness

 

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

"But he is the one that will rob you of your heart, smash it to pieces without meaning too. But she will give you her heart in turn, only she will love you as you deserve to be loved." She put the seaweed down and coaxed her lantern fish closer to her.

"The truth stings. Rob me if you will, take your honour and throw it away if you want." She shrugged a heavy shoulder. He was blind to the truth, to eager to not see what should be seen. Often, they all were. She could see shadows, intuition--the future in whatever way you wanted to call it. Vague impressions that she would interpret the best she could.

"Go and if I am wrong, take everything I own. Is that not fair?" She loked at him with luminous eyes like her lantern fish.  

[xo maho]

"Whoever she is, she is far in the future," he spat. "After all, I must get my heart smashed to pieces first." Finally, she put down that seaweed! It was not quite the satisfaction he might have gotten from tearing it from her mouth himself, but at least it was gone. She acts as though predicting the ruination of a love is mundane. Surely she would pay a price for this someday, but he would not be the one to make her pay it. Not in her treasure, anyway.

"Keep your baubles, mare," he said, and the snarl felt as though it had made a permanent home on his face, as much as Baby had made her permanent home in the midst of the tendrils of George's mane. It should have been my home, too. "And know that if you are right, you have crushed the heart in me twiceover. Once, for promising that the one I love cannot love me back, and again, for promising that someone I cannot possibly know will find me and mend it, when it could not possible be mendable."

Swishing out of the cave, Ronnie let himself sink down to the bottom of the rock wall, where he sat for a while, trying to shake himself out. Over and over again, scenarios where he told George his feelings had played over in his head, and now the only response he could picture was one where George ripped his heart out and threw it across the Grail the way the Merlok threw their tridents. Shaking his head, Ronnie was thankful that the salt sea hid his tears, and he headed home without a single piece of booty to show for his efforts. Instead, he had a pummeled heart, and that was good enough for one day.

Nyx Queen of Darkness

 

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Isadora sighed as he hurled his words at her like daggers. Often, she forgot how unsettling a glimpse of what may or may not be could be. One did not take it well to know that their dreams were to be shattered. She should learn to keep her tongue, but it was hard when she saw thing so clearly.

He would hurt and he was right, she had caused him further pain by making him anticipate it. But perhaps when she did come to mend his broken heart, he would remember that she had foretold that too. That in the darkness a light would shine into his soul and he would know love that he had never thought he could know.

She hoped he would find comfort in that. Not today, but someday.