(Untitled)

[fortunes_phase]

[OOC: Part of the Duet for Claws and Swords plot.]

Moon is still in her tree.

It's become a comfortable place, really. She doesn't have to eat. She doesn't have to drink. She doesn't have to sleep. She can just sit in the quiet, occasionally dealing with family or the wolves.

She has grown fond of her tree.

Moon, it seems, has no intention of

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[bright_daughter]

She's drawn there by the light she knows second to her own, among other things. Trailing slowly through the forest, the cape of the forest floor undisturbed by her feet or the swish of the long white skirt as it passes half an inch over.

Star doesn't look up until she's actually made the bottom of the tree, but when she does there's a faint smile plucking at her lips as her gaze go to the only place it could be drawn here.

[bright_daughter]

Star nodded, settling next to her sister on the air above her perch, hand kept in hers. "Floods and famine do not deter the length of our walk."

[fortunes_phase]

"But what of their walk?"

She stares down at their entwined hands.

"The wolf and the warrior... Are we not culpable? Part of the pain? We guide, but do we lead as well?"

[bright_daughter]

"If we do, does it not fall that we also follow?" Star looked up as Moon looked down. "Their path, hard and hollow and set in cobbled stones, would have us even were we to choose not to be present."

[fortunes_phase]

"The path is lined with bone. It is flanked by the cards. Hands reaching and grabbing, leading and following. The watchers have become the players, and the players have become the lost," she murmurs.

[bright_daughter]

"They will be found." Star was certain of that, certain of the weight of the weight that would be it's phenomenal cost even without the knowledge of what that price would be.

"But there is more to be lost, too much that has been forgotten from been found so long it's lost being lost."

[fortunes_phase]

Fear flickers in her eyes.

"I don't want to remember what was forgotten. We forget for a reason."

[bright_daughter]

Star squeezed her hand gently, leaning a head on her sisters shoulder. "Ozymandias has swallowed the reason in his sands. It was not be all application and intonation."

[fortunes_phase]

Moon closes her eyes.

"Hanging from the windy tree, waiting, but not patiently. Wisdom. Do I seek wisdom, little sister, little star? Do I hang from my tree wounded by the spear? No, the... the... spear does not wound me yet..."

She frown, not liking the feeling she receives as she reaches for that misty Truth along the path, but it slips from her fingers, obscured.

[bright_daughter]

"There is more than that," Star said, quietly considering. "The pieces are falling now. Closer and closer. Wisdom is only one snow flake in the storm."

[fortunes_phase]

"The blizzard will blind."

She opens her eyes and holds Star's gaze.

"Can't walk through the blizzard. White everywhere. Nothing but white noise."

[bright_daughter]

The need is there. In the promise and the woman. Thrumming, promising, calling -- not yet, not yet, not yet.

So soon.

"The path does not die, even when the road founders."

[fortunes_phase]

Moon's eyes sparkle with unshed tears.

"The path grows dim, the roar of the burbling bog a frightening warning. 'Go back' it whispers."

[bright_daughter]

"Is it the bog?" Star queried quietly. "For there hangs a watcher watching then wishing it could be so."

[fortunes_phase]

"I want--"

And that was the heart of her dilemma, she realizes.

She wants to protect. She wants to defend. She wants to care. She wants to feel. She wants the holes to be filled. She wants the missing pieces back.

She wants.

[bright_daughter]

The king.

The wolf.

The girl.

Star nodded. "I know."