Welcome to Gaia! ::

The skies were always dark. Congealed with ash except for when the red lightening burned it all away. Sometimes it rained acid and filth, swamping the streets with some mixture of refuse, melted matter and magic. He hated the raining days more; if the acid didn't kill what was left as an excuse for life in the area, the rising chemical fumes from moisture of any kind burning off in the scarred lava pits would. It simply wasn't air.

The cumbrous entrails of the sky, gangrene and distended so near the ground they seemed to brush the trees, spoke in spit of pre-emptive rain and stacatto rumblings. He would not go out today.

The only reason he did anymore was to mourn the sky, and for some brief hope of distraction. Would looking at the wounds make them feel less? Only the strongest stars blinked through the inky black that whorled beneath his form now, shot with starglimmer-blood on occassion when he winced as another something inside ruptured under the rancor of Destruction.

He almost missed the gentle sound at the door. Tentative, shy seeming at first, then his mind assumed it must be Kaelin returned again to his quarters. His hands might be full of scavengings for his koi that meandered in Lucius' pools, and his foot was left to call for help. He rose from his place in one of the gilded alcoves and stood infront of the door, a brief hatred of handles rising before he checked it as irrational. Awkward enough, he managed to turn the knob using the flats of both hands with minimal tangling of the wires around it and stepped back to bring the door open, "It isn't ea-"

Who in the world was this?

Luminescent yellow-gold burned behind his eyes, remnants of curiosity resurfacing as he stood back and curled his arms instinctively around his middle. Fists hid behind elbows.

Familiar, though I cannot place her. Was she a her before? Small enough breasts, maybe she was a he... He gave it up after so little, blinking his gaze from its interrogation. "Not many seek to treat with me. You .....weren't present at the battle, so I don't suppose you would be coming to pronounce a judgement. "
He turned away from the door, leaving it open, and crossed the room back to one of the recessed, cushioned alcoves. "Speak if you would, I will hear it."

If the stranger chose to introduce herself, she could. He would not let on he didn't know her by name, he was disadvantaged in enough weaknesses as it was.

"If you find yourself able to understand my condition, then I will count you an empath indeed. " He shifted his good wing, stretching it out dramatically before folding it again on his back.

Hesitant, this one, and skittish seeming. A pale white paper with green and red characters painted on it, a prayer, fixed desperately to a cord and straining against harsh winds. What mortal soul had affixed such a prayer, raised it up to the blackened heavens in hopes of something finer?

Something stronger?

That weak coil of soul must be sadder now, he imagined. House to a pixie-winged tremble of godly might. "Gods in jewels, huh? Fascinating. And I suppose this Harmodius is some sort of all-powerful, all-knowing deity. I guess you're a god too, right?"
The words and voice floated back to him, across what felt like a gulf of years. Another trembling, but brazen and foolish girl, bloody-kneed and brandishing small steel at him. Sarcasm and hate as a reaction of fear.

He sat straighter, eyes narrowing, "Your host was the street girl who tried to break into the store." -the rude one.

First there was only silence as his eyes dimmed in melancholy reflection on her entreaty. Finally, he gave a long, tired, sobbing laugh. "Who ARE you? While first I preferred the play of deity and lesser, I must say I am absolutely dumbfounded in trying to figure out why anyone outside of those events would care. "

That same draining weight of fatigue on his limbs. It had been weeks of relative solitude and quiet, he had been free to feel and think nothing except for the barest instincts. Every instance of social grace he encountered involved such cursed topics. His shoulders wracked, shaking as he brought his knees up, curling down to rest his forehead against the beginning arches of the joints.

"And what have the others said? Base, mindless traitor....insane...but what did they know of what went on. Were you kept here? Were any of you employed at the shop every day of your rebirth? You were let to you lives, given freedom to come and go at your leisure! You could hurt Him or embrace Him at your discretion! " He looked up finally, the brand burning beneath the screen of his hair, "I alone served him night and day. I alone walked the inner sanctums and cared for the fallen form among the roses. I loved him, unseen except for scorn....never fast enough, strong enough, smart enough. But the others were given favor, given His last strengths for their fickle mortal fears and hearts. What was I given? Answer me that! I would have gladly died if it would have meant he thought better of me...loved me. "

His fists strained millimeters open and then closed again in their sewn bindings. Nova-bright, his stare did not falter from her thin form, "It was not doomed to failure. You tell me the serendipity that so many should converge in seconds of the act? So many who had been dwelling their own perfect lives as I was the only looking after Harmodius? Why in the span of seconds did they care for what they'd ignored moments before? Oh, they all rallied once it was their own lives in imagined peril. In fact, until Beryl and Eamnonn came, well into the affair and by dumb chance to be near and notice the struggle, there was no chance of losing my prize. No...by mere closeness to success, it is proven what waspossible. Considering that, you tell me what it is everyone really hates and fears about me. About what I almost achieved while all others paid only themselves mind. "

He listened. Where that Wind-b***h's words had fallen on dead ears and before dead eyes, this unknown's words did find purchase. He wondered at it, weighing the reasons in the back corners of his conscious while looking at her anger. It was easier, perhaps, to listen to an outside source. Those unconnected to an actual event could look on without prejudice, whatever was lacked in experience.

The fires died again, expectations and reactions meted out in due kind. His voice dried, thin air over burnt forests, "You need not preach to me, girl, about my Failures. I am well aware of them, and that side of the story. Parrot to me about another subject, if you be Polly. The analogies, though...those are new."

It was love, godling, He looked away, across the room at the shimmers of reflected light on the dim ripples of the waterways. He could not explain it, she had not felt it. None of them ever had. This only acted as concrete over the coffin of conviction. It had been madness. Was madness. Whatever the point of his brand, it only served to mark out the already present taint. He had failed, in service and in rebellion. Whatever this stranger may say, he hadn't ever met any expectations. There had never been approval or love of any kind in either red or blue eye. Of that he was more certain then any other.

Even-toned, settling notes in words instead of some other medium, "You have your answer, then, for as much as it pleased you. Is there anything else?"

His eyes fell to the fingers the one among many of wires. It was..... too much.

He stood, both up and out, from the alcove, tearing his arms back and away from this bold, assuming wench. If she was knocked aside his good wing in the process, it was no loss. "You take liberties not allotted to you."

"I would know the same of you, godling, why it is that you come to me with such questions and alternating honey or ashes in your mouth. Why do you care, or what do you pretend to know of me? I know nothing of you. " He sneered, his full lips drawn back from glimmered teeth, his proud and shapely jaw upturned. "There is nothing left to me but phantoms in days passed, and phantoms now. What right would you claim or care to know them? "


Lights born, but not in his skin, the steady tearing of blood and sinew fromhis body. Something barbed had latched into his flesh, and drew it up and off in coils, like a drawbridge drawing up chains. There was no one there.

"If you wish to know what shadows haunt me then know there was only pain and empty space. Space into space I went, what I was drawn off into the around, and I was fleshless and naked. Before that.....before that I can barely say. Love walked beside me once, shining and bright, and whispers of a voice deep like the Well of Sighing-" His voice paused in its stinging, mocking recount. A name? But where was that, and what did it mean? A shudder ran through his shoulders, chill. "Ladders...I remember ladders, and carven stone, the horse with pillared legs and pearls and silver eyes. Silver skin. Indigo drags of translucence hang and sway in breeze. But a Well?"

His voice had become hurried, and he had looked away towards a wall but not at it. Distracted inward, as if his hands had held secrets and spilled open sand on the ground and he no longer noticed, or only half noticed, that that woman stood there. His lips frowned, and he gave a long, sobbed sigh. "No...nothing more. There is nothing more, will be nothing more. "

Gaia, then? A mother and growth figure, something bastarded together from hearth, nature and fertility. The Venus of Willendorf came to mind, an old knowledge from his host, no doubt. Either way, here was one more lithe, high-browed and lovely then the early works of man on that Earth. Maybe it was Gaia who was first and those three had come later, more specialized children of hers and ....Empress?

He gave a barked, ghostly laugh. There was no malice in it and only vague amuse. "I see now, Lady, why you should care what I have or have not done. Well, May you fare better in earning His love then I, should you care to seek it. No, you must care....or there would have been less venom and more plain scorn to you. Illumin hates, you can regret. "

"Heart's healing to you then, Moth--" Again what began in irony cut short, and there was fear in the bright eyes within destruction-blackened skin. "Be well, Gaia...."