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cw: pagan-esque ritual sexy times, assassination attempts, body horror, sea themed horror
[ The memory begins as one of revelry. Of a fire, great and bright, that illuminates the scene. On a beach, in the hundreds, people dance.
Not a polite courtly turn, but in wildness, in passion, they fling themselves to the full strength of their body. Their clothes a mix of simple, and yet, ornate. White linen, embroidered in red, blue and silvery threads. Their heads are crowned with huge wreaths of flowers, and like Gilia herself, they all have a grip of the sea on them. Made manifest at its strongest in this wild display of hundreds of bodies moving as one. Gills on their throats to let them breathe deeper for their movement, hair moving like they were submerged underwater, their skin shimmering with scales of the brightest of fish, their movements so quick, so effortless and smooth. A world that was far, far back, to anyone inclined to know such things, a time removed earlier from even the Trench. There are those not adorned in the ocean, but they are no less, horns, burning red eyes, legs more like a deer, tree branches growing through skin. No one particularly human amongst them.
That, yes, if inclined to look a little further, on the edges of the light, it was possible to see quite a different sort of dance, coupling between men and women, women and women, men and men, twisting limbs moving with an even older sort of fervor. The couples - or more, it seems - having no care for their display.
Between them, walks Gilia, tall with her form on display, beside another man, Nikolai, who was taller than her again at near 6'6 in height. It seemed, though his hair was dark and far looser curled, their eyes of sharp blue were the same. Siblings. That the murmur calls them for what they are. First-Child, Second-Child. The Co-Rulers of these people, and they are greeted with respect, the soft murmurs as they pass, behind them flanked by their staff and families. Two ladies' maids for Gilia, and what appears to be the elder brother's two wives, that dispense charity gifts on Gilia and Nikolai's behalf.
Though in time, they are both stopped, a younger woman bows deeply to them both and smiles brightly. ]
"Will you not dance, kunigai?"
[ She gestures the area beside the fire that people were already moving out of the way, for one of the royals to dance. Gilia looked to Nikolai, the silent question which of them should do it. But Nikolai had never had half the love of dancing that Gilia had - and he gestures her onwards.
Nodding her head, her ladies step forward as immediately, and go to remove her crown of flowers, at its great size, and let her long curly hair float free. Wildly floating around her head, spanning out even greater than the flower crown. She moves to the center of the circle, and takes the hand of a man from the crowd, as they throng forward for the chance, and stepping long into it, the dance begins.
It's a test of grace as much as strength. As she begins, and the man is at least able to match her. That his job is largely to lift her in a series of flinging kicks and encircles, whilst the crowd whistles, cheers, clapping their hands and raising their voices to the loud drums of the music. Louder, and louder, as Gilia is spun out by herself and she gains momentum, to begin to spin, heel striking the ground as flings her legs and goes into a series of jumping kicks. Over and over, and over, faster and faster. The world blurring in the memory, the music matching. The clapping takes up beat as she turns like a spinning top, like a whirlwind, the calls turning wild as their Queen does as she should, dances in holy action, to commend them all to the Sea-Father's notice.
This was first, last, and always, a holy space. A divine space. That to each note sung, each movement, every member here would swear to the great purity of this act.
Incensed, moved, deafened as they all are, no one, no one sees the man move from the back. Face half-hidden in the darkness of dancing firelight, behind a crown of thorns. His hand moved to his belt knife which is not so strange, many here carried a knife.
But to draw it? Like a wolf approaching as Gilia's head it snapping around with her movements in a blur, she never, not once, stood a chance.
Her foot landed one last time, as he snagged her around the waist. Dizzy from dancing, she fumbled, falling back - as the air shattered with a pitched scream as the knife was at last seen.
And the knife is plunged directly into her throat. Attempting to slice, but Gilia's lurching movements and the sudden lurch of the crowd, he cannot hit where he wants, and instead the blade slips and moves, a jagged back and forth where it skids over her collar bone, sinking in above it, and drags it up. Up, up, up to her jaw. Tearing the silvery, seafoam surface of her skin that is more like fragile glass than human sinew and bone.
In this holy, magic state, it's not blood that wells out as she opens her mouth and screams in pain.
Something dark and far worse creeps out of her body. A bladed tendril of a place so dark, the light had never reached it thurst suddenly out. A creature from before there was life itself, of many eyes, no bones, sinks teeth into the hand that holds the knife, wrapping the tentacle around the arm to hold it, and rips the hand from the wrist with a vicious shake.
The crowd explodes into panicked screaming, stampeding as the cry breaks, the Queen is under attack! and the memory ends.
Gilia sits up, a silent scream, clutching the wound that is still open on her neck. The memory dragged up enough to activate the self-defense mechanisms of her other form, as seawater begins to drip out of the wound and she hastily tries pulls a blanket to it, trying to stop it. ]
Enough! Enough. It was bad enough to live it once than to share it with strangers!
[ The memory begins as one of revelry. Of a fire, great and bright, that illuminates the scene. On a beach, in the hundreds, people dance.
Not a polite courtly turn, but in wildness, in passion, they fling themselves to the full strength of their body. Their clothes a mix of simple, and yet, ornate. White linen, embroidered in red, blue and silvery threads. Their heads are crowned with huge wreaths of flowers, and like Gilia herself, they all have a grip of the sea on them. Made manifest at its strongest in this wild display of hundreds of bodies moving as one. Gills on their throats to let them breathe deeper for their movement, hair moving like they were submerged underwater, their skin shimmering with scales of the brightest of fish, their movements so quick, so effortless and smooth. A world that was far, far back, to anyone inclined to know such things, a time removed earlier from even the Trench. There are those not adorned in the ocean, but they are no less, horns, burning red eyes, legs more like a deer, tree branches growing through skin. No one particularly human amongst them.
That, yes, if inclined to look a little further, on the edges of the light, it was possible to see quite a different sort of dance, coupling between men and women, women and women, men and men, twisting limbs moving with an even older sort of fervor. The couples - or more, it seems - having no care for their display.
Between them, walks Gilia, tall with her form on display, beside another man, Nikolai, who was taller than her again at near 6'6 in height. It seemed, though his hair was dark and far looser curled, their eyes of sharp blue were the same. Siblings. That the murmur calls them for what they are. First-Child, Second-Child. The Co-Rulers of these people, and they are greeted with respect, the soft murmurs as they pass, behind them flanked by their staff and families. Two ladies' maids for Gilia, and what appears to be the elder brother's two wives, that dispense charity gifts on Gilia and Nikolai's behalf.
Though in time, they are both stopped, a younger woman bows deeply to them both and smiles brightly. ]
"Will you not dance, kunigai?"
[ She gestures the area beside the fire that people were already moving out of the way, for one of the royals to dance. Gilia looked to Nikolai, the silent question which of them should do it. But Nikolai had never had half the love of dancing that Gilia had - and he gestures her onwards.
Nodding her head, her ladies step forward as immediately, and go to remove her crown of flowers, at its great size, and let her long curly hair float free. Wildly floating around her head, spanning out even greater than the flower crown. She moves to the center of the circle, and takes the hand of a man from the crowd, as they throng forward for the chance, and stepping long into it, the dance begins.
It's a test of grace as much as strength. As she begins, and the man is at least able to match her. That his job is largely to lift her in a series of flinging kicks and encircles, whilst the crowd whistles, cheers, clapping their hands and raising their voices to the loud drums of the music. Louder, and louder, as Gilia is spun out by herself and she gains momentum, to begin to spin, heel striking the ground as flings her legs and goes into a series of jumping kicks. Over and over, and over, faster and faster. The world blurring in the memory, the music matching. The clapping takes up beat as she turns like a spinning top, like a whirlwind, the calls turning wild as their Queen does as she should, dances in holy action, to commend them all to the Sea-Father's notice.
This was first, last, and always, a holy space. A divine space. That to each note sung, each movement, every member here would swear to the great purity of this act.
Incensed, moved, deafened as they all are, no one, no one sees the man move from the back. Face half-hidden in the darkness of dancing firelight, behind a crown of thorns. His hand moved to his belt knife which is not so strange, many here carried a knife.
But to draw it? Like a wolf approaching as Gilia's head it snapping around with her movements in a blur, she never, not once, stood a chance.
Her foot landed one last time, as he snagged her around the waist. Dizzy from dancing, she fumbled, falling back - as the air shattered with a pitched scream as the knife was at last seen.
And the knife is plunged directly into her throat. Attempting to slice, but Gilia's lurching movements and the sudden lurch of the crowd, he cannot hit where he wants, and instead the blade slips and moves, a jagged back and forth where it skids over her collar bone, sinking in above it, and drags it up. Up, up, up to her jaw. Tearing the silvery, seafoam surface of her skin that is more like fragile glass than human sinew and bone.
In this holy, magic state, it's not blood that wells out as she opens her mouth and screams in pain.
Something dark and far worse creeps out of her body. A bladed tendril of a place so dark, the light had never reached it thurst suddenly out. A creature from before there was life itself, of many eyes, no bones, sinks teeth into the hand that holds the knife, wrapping the tentacle around the arm to hold it, and rips the hand from the wrist with a vicious shake.
The crowd explodes into panicked screaming, stampeding as the cry breaks, the Queen is under attack! and the memory ends.
Gilia sits up, a silent scream, clutching the wound that is still open on her neck. The memory dragged up enough to activate the self-defense mechanisms of her other form, as seawater begins to drip out of the wound and she hastily tries pulls a blanket to it, trying to stop it. ]
Enough! Enough. It was bad enough to live it once than to share it with strangers!