Yros

I would break every inch of my love, there's a storm rolling in off the sea. the first winds carry the smell of the ocean with them and the distant rain. the twin suns hide behind the gathering gloom, casting the world in a dull, gray light. the kind that makes the edge of crest somehow sharper, more desolate. a spot of gold clings to the rough ground overlooking the cove below, watching the waves as the come and go. here, he's at the edge of the world. stolen away from the fractured remnants of his crown, of his family, of the life that was. with the rain slipping in on a hard breeze and the clouds rolling closer, he can almost feel his father's disappointment. a soft scoff meets the touch of wind. what would old pyros--third of his name in the house of mourning--say now? he'd tell him they must gather what remains of the family, to rebuild, to find independence from the crown once more. the house of mourning yielded to none; they did not bend the knee.

"I'm not," pyr muttered.

well, not really. after all, he didn't join the high court like those traitors had, waiting for the matriarch to cast her eyes in their direction and bestow upon their brow a fancy new title. pyr had just...disappeared. he'd let the world forget his name, his house, his court. he let himself become a ghost. ghosts couldn't bend the knee and the matriarch was none the wiser.

the old world was dead. it was as dead as his mother, his father, and all the others. there was no house of mourning.

there was only pyr at the edge of the world, watching as the waves brushed against the shower and a storm tiptoed ever closer. he could exist in this moments, could feel the freedom that was just at the edge of his fingertips, waiting for him to shed that last remaining guilt of yesterday. and he never could. each time he thought he was close, he could feel his father's dead eyes glaring from beyond the veil, watching his son burn everything their ancestors built to cinders.

but, then, pyros never should have had a firestarter for a son.

the alps

"And you—you’ve always been a wretched bore!" a carousal cackle, more bleat than a stifled banter. The words and the sound that throttled in its' wake barked across his shoulder. And it was met with a choir of boisterous cackles, snapping echoes that seethed like salacious and hungry embers. A sound that crackled and popped, that called up storms of lust, of want, of hungers that most of their kind knew.

There came a skip to his step, a buoyancy that flounced any pretense of barbarism and aristocracy—they were in the wilds, after all. Beyond the eyes of the High Court, of those remnants of Dusk and Dawn. There were No Houses in the Wild, and Eternally Young Rhoynar of House Dune would do his very best to relish the lawlessness, the feral kingdom set beneath his step. Grinning fool, that he was, bade adieu to his traveling companions of the day, seeking out the fair face he’d hungrily made an appointment to meet.

And as the departure from one stage led from exeunt of one to entrance to another, the princely mongrel spied the presence of someone new to pester—someone else to yoke into audience. Not the Fair Stranger whom asked him there, but familiar all the same. Vaguely so, but enough where the Dune knew better than to put on his usual display of flippancy. Forgetting the pretty face—thinking of anyone long enough to ask if any had seen them was certainly beneath the likes of Pretty Boy Rhoy—instead, he swept himself into the company of the brooding fellow.

Pondering, albeit briefly, whether it was better to chase swallows or to brace against a firestorm, he took in the stranger he'd found. Who needed sense, when you had a sense of humour? "Honestly, the further you are from the Dell, the Grander the world seems." Passing a subtly daring look to his new friend. "Why those cold mountains when the seat of their throne could be here, I'll never know."

Pyr

Rhoynar