live by love, though the stars walk backwards

The sylph had been having strange dreams, as of late. Her subconscious was restless, and at night it played. Her mind spun a beautiful kaleidoscope of colors, sometimes plotted against a storyline, sometimes not. Her waking hours were depleted, distracted, for this reason. She was grateful that it was the height of the year, and if she must wring the creakiness out of her sleepy bones, she could at least do it in the bright summerlight. She rose from her bed of waxy leaves and soft boughs and proceeded the yawn, stretch, and mull over the the voices that had risen from her subconscious while she slumbered.

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grabby grab

The onyx phantom that she was, blending within the obscure crevices of one of the chambers of the ruin. With her incandescent, blue eyes the only silent hazard alighting her presence from the solid bleakness she hid amongst in plain sight. She was the smoke seeping into the quiet, immovable, watching the powdery female awake, with her signature stare devoid of any feelings; the rise and fall of their gentle breaths were the epicenter of her interest during the time they slept.
The pearl stretched and so did she, like a mirror, twinning with their fluid movements.
And waited for their next move.

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Warmth and blood percolated through her body as she eased into movement. She had arrived to this place the night prior, and the darkness had not afforded her a glimpse of her milieu. It was most interesting and unnatural — the shewolf lilted her nose to the air, drew in scent in order to better understand the composition of what land she had stumbled upon — and that was the moment that the heathered witch knew she was not alone. The scent was new, and not faded in the least. In fact, she sensed this other to be quite close. “Who goes there?” she asked, almost surreptitiously. She wasn’t certain the presence was lupine until she spied the form of spilling shadows over her shoulder, roiling and curling in itself as it moved. Still, the wisp of a woman asked again. “Who is out there?”

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Amidst the black canvas, she roused from her throne of jagged rocks and the perilous hound slithered out of the comfort of shadows; unashamedly making a show of herself to the dust wolf as they questioned her being.
‘I think the correct question would be... What am I?’, feminine lyrics sugar-coated her voice, like the succulent nectar of one of the dozing hens she hung between caged fangs just earlier that day.
Her movements were languid, as such as a kitten stalking a piece of thread, until she was close enough to seat herself. Cerulean eyes spellbound onto the female, she waited calmly for the cogs of their minds to pedal into some kind of understanding of her own posed question, or even why she was here.
Eris, herself, was letting the uncontrollable minions of her mind scatter chaotically, as she made her own assessments of the wolf. Were they friend or foe here? Were they going to attack her as others had?
She remained neutral right now but secretly yearned for a friend in this new haven.

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As the other shewolf came into her full form and drew closer, so did Olive. The woman turned her featherlight frame, however diminutive, to fully face the other — where a semblance fear might have existed a moment prior, now she experienced curiosity. “Are you not a wolf?” she asked with earnest, her green-gilded gaze decoding the figment she saw in front of her, hungry for an otherworldly experience.

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Now Eris was far from what was deemed the norm in this new havens society, with fevered insanity brewing away every day in her mind, in her body. She couldn’t stop it, she would never be able to, but she didn’t know she was unquestionably special. Called many names, cruel names at that, but never once had she been challenged about her own species.

There was a glimmer of desire and expectation within the viridescent eyes of the other female, and Eris was here to shatter it of course. 
‘What else could I be?’, was her immediate thought and response. An eyebrow arched quizzically, before continuing, ‘Have you met many wolves… that aren’t... wolves?’, she couldn’t help but sort of laugh at the poor girls’ question, because that was a pretty ludicrous suggestion, was it not?
She paused her small laughter though when she realized perhaps that wasn’t the best way to befriend someone she had just been staring at non-stop; waiting for god-knows-how-long for them to rouse from their sleep.

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Fortunately for both Olive and the shadow, this wasn’t the first time the little witch had been laughed at. In fact, Eris’s obvious amusement brought a similar smile to her own pearly maw, and she beamed, half because it was silly, couldn’t really be explained, and it was an appropriate reaction that meant that she had been heard and understood. So many others only cared for superficialities, glancing over the strange things that made Olive’s deepest heart sing. It was validating, if you extrapolated a bit.
 
“Oh, yes, more often than you’d think.” the moonglow woman tittered. She didn’t know exactly what they were — visions, apparitions, ghouls, ghosts, dreams — but figures certainly haunted her subconscious, generally being helpful presences in her wayfaring life (but not always). Olive regarded the inky stranger with a quizzical brow, and continued to muse as she took several light, well-placed steps towards her. “But I can’t often… touch them.” It was true. Touch, of all her senses, kept her most tethered to reality. The druid knew this woman was corporeal due to her warmth and scent, but still, Olive indulged. “May I?” she asked, gesturing her soft, black leather nose at the flat muscle of the other’s flank.

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A feather-light touch of a smile reached her glacial irises, amused and awed by their response. Touché, the clever pearl woman proffered an answer Eris perhaps hadn’t anticipated, nor realized she wanted to hear.
She edged closer as if on a cliffhanger, tilting forward in curiosity, leaning in for the novel secret. ‘Oh?’, she prompted, stretching for their elaboration. How could that make any sense? A wolf, but not a wolf, and one that was not a physical, concrete being to the touch?
The riddle chewed upon her naive, destroyed mind enough to distract the unbalanced hound, whilst Olive moved to her so delicately.
By the time they were at her side, Eris’ whimsical eyes pursued them, craning her neck as they met her side.
The steady, unperturbed beat of her heart stepped upon the gas, and accelerated as they inched closer, the only reason for this was for the bullet of a thought: what if she can’t touch me?
‘Go on…’, was her façade of encouragement, not allowing the powdered female to mind-read her insecurity.

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For better or for worse, Olive was quite the empathic soul. She felt the energy of others and could, for the most part, read their unseeable footprints as if it was coded in a special language made just for her. When the stranger watched her in her approach, so did Olive pursue the stalwart unmovingness. When the inkdark’s heart skipped forward a beat, so did the sylph’s. When Eris tempted to be be touched, Olive dared. She thrust her nose forward, into flesh, and remained there for a moment before withdrawing.
 
“Hmm,” Olive bit her lip and took a step back, as if assessing her scientific findings. Eris was real, of course. “as disappointing, as it is utterly relieving.”  Her gaze glittered as it searched for Eris's as she noted in jest, as this all was clear from the first moment Olive had spotted her purveyor — the wolfess was simply to warm and alive to be anything but — but ghosts were fun. Ancestors, lingering presences, even demons could fun. A real wolf was fun too, but it was different. Certainly, that must be something that the nameless, ruinous stormcloud must deeply understand.

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Whooshings filled the silence within gnarled eardrums, from the rushing of blood jetting around its stream as her heartbeat escalated, awaiting the conclusion to the test. Her eyes, akin to the abyss of Uranus, glazed over with anticipation, focusing solely on the black tip of the pearl-wolfs nose, watching it push into the depths of her darkest fur.
A moment was all it was, and she, herself, felt the heat and corporeal realness of the other.
But why the hesitation and dawning insecurity lap over her? 
‘So… you can touch me’, evidently, ‘then what happens with others you’ve met, when you can't?’, she shuffled around to avoid craning and straining her neck any further, pretty much face to face with the contrasting female. They had evaded her prompting only prior to her examination, and now she wanted needed an answer to this.

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As Olive had intuited from the first moment of their meeting, the shadow was not averse, foreign, or closed to the idea of non-living presences. Olive found, in her many lives as a priestess and shaman, that there were godly wolves and there were wolves with no gods, who did not believe in the things they couldn't see. The latter were numerous, but they bored her — so often, the best parts of life were invisible. Love, was invisible. Family ties and loyalty were invisible. Yet, they were far more vivid that the most splendorific, watercolored sunset could ever be.

So Olive's eye twinkled once again with excitement, lashing her tail behind her. "It seems as if they're always just out of reach..." the ashen woman explained. "My mother taught me that's how our ancestors can talk to us. They appear in visions." Olive did not want to be honest about how many times these souls came to her — faces so familiar she almost recognized them, with scents that smelled so like her own, children, siblings, lovers, lost to another time, reaching out to her — "Usually it's in my dreams or in trance, but I never know at the time. It feels so real." It wasn't an inherently sad thing, but the sylph always felt an iota of sad when these lucid experiences came to and end, and those surreal connections severed.

Olive pawed one diminutive swipe at the packed earth beneath them, continuing since the shadow seemed intrigued. A curious wolf, she found, was a godly wolf. "The gods speak in other ways," she chimed, thinking of how the gods tended to speak the language of nature; the ocean and it's tides, the weather, the starts, the interminable cycles of life and death. Then she added, since she had a suspicion this would more interest the other woman "I've heard you can also see demons, but I have never encountered one..." Her ears craning forward, suddenly intrigued. "Have you?"

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Appear in visions… Gods, faiths, and fates were stories come moonlit skies that were untold to her. Sprits, ghosts, and demons were another, but instead of being unlikely stories, they were more her haunting reality. As eyes fluttered closed for dreams of sweet nothings, this was very much wishful thinking for the unhinged woman, as the prongs of her hellish past crept and lurked into her deepest of slumbers, where awakening was no real option.

As the shaman narrated her beliefs and experiences, the paranoia leaked in, with its eerie tongues licking and caressing the wires of her brain, convincing Eris that the pearl was talking as if she was directly in her very own unbalanced head.
She kept silent, -- cerulean blues stuck in a hypnotic haze as she stared unblinking at her, registering it all.
Were her nightmares ancestors? Or were they demons? Utterly confused at this point, at this novel revelation.

Have you? She snapped to attention, the echoing howls of her torment lingered with sorrow at the back of her mind.
‘I.. Believe so’. Unsure whether to elaborate further, she continued her silence, and let the torture of her paranoia ensue. She could feel the cold of a rainy day run intravenously, as she froze, completely petrified by the idea she was being dragged into dreams of agony by demons or ancestors. Had she done wrong before, to deserve it all? The morphing of discomfort in her features was plentiful for the pale lady to see.

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One did not need to be an empath to intuit that this subject touched a very deep, real, and fearful place within her new friend. Once, Olive might have reacted in a cascade of apologies, and would linger, dwell on how her words might have triggered another's traumas interminably. However, in her lifetimes, Olive had come to understand a certain truth of the world: that every being had their traumas, and a tripped wire was an opportunity to know oneself better; and the inherent discomfort, a reason to overcome it.

At least, this is how Olive came about when it regarding her own being. When it came to others, the maiden bestowed a much gentler hand. One could only solve their issues at the level of their own consciousness, and it was clear that to her shadow, this was still a raw wound, albeit a spiritual and emotional one. The sylph strode closer, ears pulled back, taking on a comforting, diminutive stature.

"Have no fear," the woman whispered, at long last. "They're not real. They cannot touch us." Olive only knew this fact, and relied upon it so heavily, because she battled similar feelings herself. Though the presences she felt were often beloved, the sadness and homesickness that accompanied them could only be equated to supreme helplessness. The feelings of something that once was, but could no longer be. However, because they were not real, the emotions they procured within her weren't real, and it was this mantra that saved her from utter despair and endless questioning. "There are no demons here." Olive's gilded gaze looked up at Eris, close to her, but not breaching the barrier of touch. She visualized wrapping the woman in an embrace, and wondering if she could feel it energetically.

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Eris had to close her eyes, to concentrate hard on the turmoil of emotions that plowed through her already exhausted body; the habitual coldness that would coil around her in an unforgiving vice would inevitably lead to the blood-curdling fiend that was not as pleasant as the initial deranged side of the onyx woman. She could feel the bile rise that was her anger, her resentment for the devils that buried in the hollow pits of her mind, and ultimately she’d project this hostility on to the next bystander, — and at this moment it was the unfortunate delicate pearl.
 
She was losing an endless battle, her eyes re-opened and were full of lust to splinter the nose of the ash girl, that was ever so temptingly nearby. Strings of drool inelegantly seeped and cascaded from the nethers of her parted jowls… but then the black storm looming over her unkind mind parted its ways to allow heaven through. The trickle of light from the other woman’s words granted her peace over the belligerency. Her pupils readjusted, her body language recomposed, and she felt… relaxed, reassured.
 
Blinking away the dying cries of her wretched paranoia; of her wrath. Her cerulean-blues searched for the serenity unleashed by the other and for the forgiveness for her brief lapse of toxicity. Muttering a sullen sorry to her, that perhaps could barely be heard.
 
Her head bowed, embracing the stillness right now of her stability. Cold-stricken eyes stared relentlessly into the ground at her feet. ‘They won’t leave me alone though. The visions are endless. My dreams are full of horror’, she sighed, weary of the ongoing terrors, she felt like Olive knew what she was saying, that she understood her as no other had. With eyes full of hope, she dared a glance back up at the sylph, ‘How can I get them to leave me alone?’.

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there was a new moon last night, if you want to close this & have another!

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The sidereal sylph watched, in both wonder and dread, the emotions that crossed the other's visage, as plain and readable as the stars in that smattered the night sky.  Her eyes closed, then they were open, and but for a mere moment, Olive was certain she was about to be harmed. Olive grit her teeth, ready to bear the brunt of the force of Eris's frustration. This sometimes happened, when dabbling in demons and dark magic; these energies ran deep, and Eris was afflicted by them. Even as her brow furrowed and she turning her fine-boned face to the side, her heart went out to this creature and wished her the same healing that the gods had once gifted Olive.

— when harm did not befall her, the little witch slowly unfurled. It seemed the fugue moment Eris had suffered was passed, and Olive immediately knew that the danger had too. However, Olive knew she was playing with forces far more powerful than she, and the woman did not want to further entice her cohort into a sort of impending insanity. If she were going to help this woman, as Eric pleaded of her when she came to, she would need to amplify her magical abilities. That all depended on the moon, which both activated her energy and quieted, quelled that of the spirits.

"We must cleanse you of these dark attachments," Olive offered tenderheartedly, eyes soft, not bothered to steel her defenses. If she found her death at the teeth of a wolf she was trying to help, she would die proud, and without fight. Flee, however — flee, she might just do, if given the chance. For this reason, Olive knew the moments she would spend here, with Eris, were coming to their close. "Find me again, when there is naught even a sliver of the moon in the sky, and the entire night is dark." The new moon was a night made for ritual and intention. It would be Eris's greatest chance to find a glimmer of freedom.

"What's your name?

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yes! i'm happy to end, exit on next one?

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While the pale one hadn’t flinched or retaliated with their own defense after Eris’ brief unchained moment, it was clear as a blue sky that she was now fleeing from her, if not diplomatically.
 
Her ears fell slightly at this, at the failure of her inability to gain trust and a friend once again. Heart sinking as they were bidding farewell in a tactful way, but she still hung on to the last remaining yarn of hope the other trailed in front of her, not just for the possibility of seeing the pearl again, but for the act of benevolence, of aiding to rid the implanted demons and devils in her head.

‘You really believe you can?’, her tail brushed at the loose debris behind her, feather of happiness reflected through this gesture. ‘I’m Eris. What’s your name?’, she chanced the question, wondering if they would hold back this information or provide a false name just to leave the uncomfortable situation.

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perf!

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Olive could not help but notice how easily Eris saw through her departure; and a pang of sympathy struck the sylph, for she suddenly realized how usual this must be to the roiling shadow. It must be commonplace for her intensity to scare off the average joe; but as Olive had come to learn with those who suffered from illnesses of the mind, it was not her place to put herself in harms way. When her intuition urged her to movement, Olive usually acquiesced with little hesitation.

Still, the witch was loathe to abandon her new friend, when she was in such need. Perhaps, in another dimension, Olive was a less spiritual being, and Eris a less traumatized one, and they played and cavorted in fields as pups and simple folk do. However, they were not simple folk. Not even close.

"I do," Olive affirmed, glimpsing the glimmer of hope as it flashed acrossed the other's darkened, blue-black face. "but we need to ask the help of the Gods," In earnest, it was she that did nothing, and the powers of the universe that did everything. Her true role as a conduit, the woman figured, was not important in this moment. How would they find each other again? When the moment was right, and the Gods saw fit, it would happen with very little force; almost like a coincidence. "I'm Olive," the white dove offered her own moniker in response, turning to leave this hallowed, abandoned place. "I has been a pleasure — I look forward to our next meeting."

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Specks of gold in a deep sea of emerald were searched for the earnest that would match and marry up to her words, she held onto their promise like the anchor stopping a straying float. If only Olive could be the moor she needed to regain some stability.

A light smile broke the tight seal along her lips, as her hope gathered momentum. A name was proffered, and Eris collected as much as their earthly and herbal scent as possible, with the cavities of her nostrils constricting and ballooning to savor it all and to facilitate her navigation back to the sylph when needed.

‘Thank you… Olive’, a name, a friend, at last, ‘I shall search for you when the time is right’. She hid the frightened interior, afraid of what was to become of her. And doubts began to flood her mind of the ifs and buts. What if it wasn’t possible? She itched at the gremlins that were her paranoia once again, as she pearl turned and left her all alone.

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{exit}

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