( closed. )

[alar]

WHO: danica, ellis, and wysteria
WHAT: corpse bride voice: new arrival
WHEN: whenever ellis and wysteria have time honestly
WHERE: near the mountains

Danica dreams herself in her wedding day.

She wears the beautiful burgundy gown Eleanor made her, the ring Zane gave her on her index finger. The court is gathered before her, every eye trained on her. Each face is known to her, yet she she cannot place a name to any. Rei is no longer on the dais with her. Only Zane remains, holding a hand out to her, his scarlet eyes glimmering. Do you trust him? Danica raises her own to lay in his. Another hand grabs her, jerking her violently away from him.

The woman wears Mara's face, but this is not her sister. The dream makes her identity known, though nothing else does. Alasdair. Alasdair, the first avian queen. Alasdair, the first victim of this conflict. Her golden eyes, a mirror of Danica's own, are wide on her eternally fifteen-year-old face.

"What have you done?"

When Danica opens her mouth to answer, she is swallowed by emerald lights. Her stomach turns and she realizes she is falling. Instinct has her turn, her wings unfurling in a cascade of gold-and-brown feathers from her back. It means she does not hit ground so much as land heavily, the sudden stop jarring her ankles and sending her to her knees. Her dagger lands in the earth. The hand that reaches for it aches, a glowing green slash stretching from her knuckles to her wrist. The runes on the dagger catch the faint light. Runes for protection and luck. Funny. She isn't laughing.

Rising, she looks about her in a mounting panic. Her bare feet stumble over loose stones and hard-packed earth, not cool, polished marble. Her Demi-form allows her access to a hawk's eyesight, but though she can see further, the details clear as crystal, nothing she beholds is familiar. A scream rings behind her, like another dead on the battlefield. She turns in time to see a spindly creature like a monstrous mantis slashing for her with fingers like knives.

Danica has enough time to remember the brutal tearing of her abdomen before she slipped into dreaming. Maybe this dream played out in reverse; maybe she dreamt first the effect, and now her mind has seen fit to supply the cause.

Comments

[heorte]

While Wysteria's impulse had been to reach towards new magic, Ellis' had been to give it space. His hand had found her elbow, meant to draw her back a step, but the transformation is over before he has time to do much of anything. The winged woman collapses in on herself in the span of a few breathes, and before Ellis can think of anything to say, she is gone.

He is as much at a loss as Wysteria, but relinquishes his grip of her elbow when it becomes clear nothing else is about to befall them.

"Aye," is his contribution, unsure of what further commentary can be provided. The woman is gone now, and neither of them can chase her. She will come back to them or she won't. Ellis turns from where she'd stood, and nods at the stakes he'd driven into the ground upon their arrival.

"Help me with these," he instructs. "We should think about getting back."

Normally Tony pulls the stakes while Ellis holds the unwieldy items, but today Ellis is going to have to enlist Wysteria to hold them as he yanks each out of the soft earth.

[alar]

Danica has no thoughts to spare for those she left behind. A handy thermal tosses her high into the sky. The view is beautiful…and terrifying.

The mountains stretch away east and west. Beyond them she spots sweeping plains. When she turns west, she finds a thick forest and, to the south, a black-walled city sitting on the coast. When she beats her wings in its direction, the ache in her wing proves less.

There is nothing familiar. Not the mountains or forest or coast. Not the black city or the plains beyond. She cries out, but no known call answers her. Usually she can outrace her fear in the air. Instead, she feels its skeletal fingers wrapping around her throat. She turns back.

Her fine hawk’s eyesight helps her find the two humans she had met. Strangers, yes, but ones who had not attempted to harm her. She has no desire to try her luck in an unknown place, much less shift back while surrounded by their kind.

She calls out as she approaches, a hawk’s hunting cry, circling the two once before descending. Upon landing, she returns to human form.

The differences make themselves known immediately.

Her bones weigh heavily within her muscles and tissues. When she inhales, she does not seem to get as much oxygen as she did. Her heart rate, typically beating at twice the rate of a true human, is halved.

The knife drops from her hand. She opens her mouth, but no word escapes her. I’m very tired of fainting, she manages to think before the world around her sinks into black.

[heirring]

"--which is why, in retrospect, I will allow that there are cases in which this work does clearly require the presence of at least two individuals with anchors. But in the case of someone like, say, Mr. Stark or Madame Baudin"--ugh--"who are both reasonably capable of dealing with the closing of a rift on their own, then I see no reason at all why they might not--Oh!"

They are pulling up the last of the stakes (which is to say, Ellis is wrenching up the last of the stakes and Wysteria is following along in his wake to collect the muddy things under one arm) when the hawk returns. She is just thinking that the abrupt conversion back into young lady is somehow less remarkable than the reverse when the young lady in question pitches toward the ground.

[heorte]

The work goes easier with Wysteria's commentary, which meanders from the misplaced new arrival to a long rebuttal in return to Ellis' mild observation that they'd have been well-served to bring a third person. It's pleasant enough to listen to Wysteria work her way through an argument, accepting each stake as Ellis wedges them out of the ground.

He'd been thinking on what should be said when they return. A report would have to be filed, wouldn't it? Even if they woman remained a bird and they never saw her again?

But he's saved from considering it any further than that, because the woman reappears. And faints.

Ellis hands the last stake to Wysteria, fully expecting the entire assortment to be dropped on the ground at any moment.

"Get her dagger, Wysteria. She'll want it back."

Her dress is going to be ruined, Ellis thinks. (Is that Wysteria's influence?) But he eases her carefully onto her back anyway before leaning down to check and see if she's still breathing.

breaks turn order for the bit

[heirring]

"Then maybe she should have thought to sheath it before indulging in such drama," Wysteria announces primly, shoving the last stake under her arm alongside all the rest.

She fetches the knife.

how dare you

[alar]

Danica stirs weakly. Golden eyes blink open, their color a shade darker than her hair. She tries to rise, but the very attempt has her falling back once more, her breathing shallow. The hawk pendant rests at the hollow of her throat, its ruby eye staring fiercely at the humans present.

Eyes closed, Danica focuses on her breathing. Her entire being feels heavy like weights were attached to her wrists, her ankles, her neck and her chest. Her body does not feel like hers.

“Have I been poisoned again?”

The question is phrased a touch too wryly to register as humor. Truth be told, she would be glad of this were all a strange fever dream.

Too unwell to feel embarrassed for her weakness, Danica moves her hand, seeking something to help herself up. She finds an arm. The toughness of the fabric bites into the pads of her fingers. Making another effort, she manages to raise her shoulders off the ground.

a crime

[heorte]

A quick glance to Wysteria finds no helpful medical advice, but the exact expression Ellis probably should have expected. A continuation of her earlier statement, which he considers rebutting, before Danica's hand finds his sleeve.

"Steady on," is the first, clumsy thing that comes to mind. "I don't think you've been poisoned."

But Ellis isn't a Rifter, so how much can he really know about the effects of an arrival? He looks again to Wysteria as he tries to help Danica sit up, hands careful on her shoulder, supporting her back.

"Wysteria, did you feel faint when you arrived?"

The look Ellis gives her is an obvious plea for some help. Will it pan out, who can say?

[heirring]

"I have never in my life for even a single moment ever felt faint, Mr. Ellis," she snips back, but cannot refuse such a look from him.

With a great sigh over being so inconvenienced - perhaps this wouldn't have happened if the young lady had simply listened to reason instead of winging up into the air -, Wysteria sets down the bundle of stakes, brushes the mud from the smart little waxed top layer she is wearing over her dress, and moves to join them.

She places the back of her hand on Danica's brow.

"I feel no heat. The dream you were having before you arrived - were you poisoned in it?"

[alar]

Experience around the serpents for whom keeping space between one another was practically an insult allows Danica to tolerate the two humans’ invasion. Once sitting, she raises a hand to her brow. There is no heat; for an avian, her skin is strangely cool. She shivers.

“I dreamt my wedding day.”

No, she remembers now, that’s wrong. When she wore this dress, she pledged herself to Zane at the serpiente palace, not the Keep. The avian court had not been in attendance. They had not even known what she was doing—which was the only reason she had got away with it. And her sister had not been present. Mara had been murdered years before. Like Zane nearly was. Like Danica…

“I was shot.” Her hands go to the site at her waist. Beneath the silk, her skin is unbroken. But Danica can still call to mind the searing flame that tore through her. “That wasn’t a dream, I’m sure, but I am missing the injury to prove it.

“I thought this a dream too,” she continues quietly, speaking more to herself than the humans. “My dreams have always followed this path. One lucid dream after another, each dissolving in violence. This isn’t a dream.”

She looks up, something beseeching breaking through her composure. Her fear makes her look younger than her nineteen years.

“Please, I must return home. My husband is a good man, but my people will only follow their Tuuli Thea. If they believe I was harmed…it will be bloodshed.”

She lacks the words to impress upon her listeners the extent of the violence she means. The fields drenched in rotting blood. The lines and lines and lines of bodies. The dark plumes of smoke from the burning bodies, thick enough sometimes to blot out the sun.

The court had grown more accustomed to Zane, but Danica has no illusions that they would follow him. Just as the serpiente tolerate their Naga being a hawk, but only because their Diente is a true cobra. Andreios would surely know Zane was not responsible, but the Royal Flight are soldiers, not administrators. And what would her mother do when she learns of Danica’s disappearance? Months had passed, but Nacola Shardae had no love for her daughter’s chosen spouse, only a begrudging tolerance of his presence. If she believed serpents targeted her only surviving child…

[heorte]

The litany of misery tumbles, one after the other after the other. The hand supporting Danica shifts to rubbing clumsy circles in some instinctive attempt to comfort her.

He looks up at Wysteria again, at a loss. One of them is going to have to explain to Danica that this is real and that she can't go back. Are either of them really equipped to do it gently enough that it won't make her distress worse? It had been easier somehow, when Fitz dropped into the middle of their expedition all those months ago. He'd been upset but not like this, and Tony had been familiar if not exactly comforting. The circumstances here are far less than ideal.

Clearly Ellis thinks he's the best bet, because he looks away from Wysteria and back to Danica.

"I'm sorry," he begins, faltering before finding his footing, voice steadying. "We don't know the way to send people back through yet."

The "yet" is extraordinarily optimistic, but he can't bring himself to imply that she's trapped here forever.

[heirring]

"Mr. Ellis is correct," says Wysteria, straightening as she withdraws her hand. If he cares to be the gentle hand, she will have no reservations about being-- well, the slightly less gentle one. She is hardly without sympathy. Certainly she recognizes some measure of the distress so apparent in the young lady from her own arrival. But one can only express condolences so many times before they become quite useless indeed.

"Let this be a consolation to you," she says, not without kindness. "There is strong evidence to suggest that your husband, the place you left and everyone in it, will continue on as if you had never left. Perhaps even as if you are there still. If you like, I will introduce you to Madame de Cedoux who is a Rifter like us and most familiar with the idea. She will put your mind entirely at ease with respect to your home, I'm most certain. In the mean time, let us be thankful that you appear not to have brought your wound with you for it is a long walk back to the Gallows and we should take care not to be here when darkness falls."

With a glance toward Ellis, she adds, "Not that I have any doubts in your ability to safeguard us from scoundrels, Mr. Ellis."