Fairspell Meadow trying to find tomorrow and ease in, til you dive in

permission given to watch akashingo <3

four days qiao had staked akashingo, observing the industrious mesa's comings and goings. small little charmspells here and there, whispered against an easterly wind, kept her sharp olive eyes unnoticed as they turned towards the land of eternal sun.

there was not much to see from so far away. qiao was many things, but trespasser came last on the list and only in times of immediate peril. many times over the span of these hours, qiao consulted the skull and her sisters: they insisted a trinket of immense value was somewhere here, hidden under stone and damp earth.

but what? she would ask them, what is it i am looking for? and they would laugh and flit off like the capricious spirits they were, souls beholden to no wills but their own.

they were, after all, ghosts -- and ghosts had their own secret reasons for lingering among the living.

not since her meeting with @Ramesses and his newly acquired mutant had qiao seen the pharoah grace the cold walls to his north. he was either a well-kept king, or an incredibly busy one -- for even in divination, she saw and heard little of him.  this made the seer suspicious: what if he had his own seer, his own wytches? what if the veils she encountered any time she tried to search for evidence of him in the overworld was a ring of protection by hidden sisters working against her?

such thoughts were often easily ran off with -- qiao reminded herself that there were so few of her sisters left in the world, so few, and the ones that lingered on were the ghosts that spent their time bickering amongst themselves, or dropping her scant little tidbits of information as if she were a half-starved mongrel.

as if by an unseen hand, qiao stopped at the boulder where she had first seen the strange creature and the king. some cunning intuition told her this place had significance -- it was here she began to upturn the earth in shallow graves, leaving ugly stains of clay and loam on thin ribbons of snow.

Nothing much had come of his meeting in the forest of the plateau, and so he wandered southward, relishing the sight of the plains turned white with snow. With each centimeter, he floated upon the pale expanse; he kicked it up and behind as he sailed, pelt gleaming in the bits of sunlight that found their way through heavy clouds.

This one was brown, and starker against the brightness of winter. Robespierre saw her from a distance and headed her way, brows lifting higher still as he noticed what her fine-boned body bore.

Qu'est-ce que tu fais, sage femme? he asked upon approach.

The reek of wolves had grown heavy; they were not far from a pack claim. And yet here she was with no definite affiliation upon her pelt, watching and. . . Digging? he thought— And for what?

He watched her, mouth set in half-sneer as he awaited a response.

little piles of rubble rose here and there. qiao paused from her dirtwork as she heard footsteps behind her. a lean thing, carved like a glacier with dubloon-gold eyes that held no softness within them.

she straightened up upon hearing his voice, her expression cold as she saw the lingering of a sneer hanging off his long nose. "whatever you speak, i do not know it." her voice held a matronly calm tinged in something darker. her chin lifted. "even with that handicap, you could be useful. you know how to dig, yes?" qiao pantomimed dig with a flourish of her thin legs, then she returned to the earth with eyes kept upon the stranger.

The sneer did not disappear as she spoke, but did not grow by any measure, either. Désolé d'entendre ça, he said dryly, then transitioned out of his beloved langue des mères. Yes, I can dig. What are you digging for, madame?

Still, even as he asked, Robespierre lent himself to the task, grimacing slightly as his coat—usually kept pristine—became spattered with earth, his forelegs especially dirtied by the task.

The monotony of it was soothing, though, and he felt himself lulled into somewhat of a meditative state as he awaited her response. Easy enough to churn, over and over, muscles burning (not unpleasantly) from the effort.

a transformation came over the crone as the man's language swapped. there was something coarse, even vulgar, about the loss of that language -- qiao had never heard it, but it reminded her of the tongue of her sisters, a language that she did not know was far older than her own or french.

"what are we digging for? hah!" qiao crowed, a jeer aimed towards the sulking spirits of her sisters. they remained silent -- so unhelpful.

"they won't tell me." she admitted, pulling a stone from the frozen soil with a frown. would he understand, could he understand? qiao found men and their imagination limited. "there is something here, ah. something old -- i feel it, but i know not its shape. so i dig! i dig."

qiao turned back around, new determination hung upon her thin muzzle.

Her answer went nowhere in settling things. Indeed, he was even more confused than before she had spoken, and paused in his efforts to stare at the woman, countenance dubious. Who is 'they'? Robespierre queried. And why are you searching for them the unknown?

He'd heard tales of treasure chests, of wolves striking metaphorical gold. Caches long forgotten, meat preserved by the long northern winters, frozen in permafrost. But this was not the north, and things were different.

She was sage femme, so she must not be so easily fooled.

What was she up to?

You'll have us digging to the ends of the earth, madame, he said, a little scornfully, but picking up where he left off nonetheless.

the man was doubtful, but bless him, he kept digging.

it was that act of unusual willingness alone that saved him the sharp knives of qiao's stare. she must give him something, but too much would put her -- and him -- in jeopardy. hers was a coven fastidiously guarded -- from men most of all. men, with their greedy hearts and bloody brains, with their rough hands and wandering, powerseeking gaze. the world as she knew it was run by them, and soon, it would be sundered by them.

"my sisters." qiao answered in a half-truth, for she had learned long ago to fold little lies between pockets of truth. "we will not dig to the end of the earth. it is here." 

qiao returned to her digging, pausing then to give him a tidbit. "sometimes these things are strange stones, from another world. sometimes they are things that have been used by greatness, or parts of things that once held immense power. things like a dead general's teeth, the antlers of a wolfkilling moose -- sometimes, it is even a little flower that was nourished by a maiden's blood."

His brow furrowed as she spoke, and slowly, he began to shake his head, chuckling ruefully. Relics, he remarked, golden gaze gimlet into hers. I don't believe in such superstition. My god is truth, madame—vertu et vérité.

He cast a clod of dirt aside, then stood back. And virtue has no solid form, Robespierre said. It resides only in action. In works and deeds.

The man was a mess, now, cloaked in earth-tones that spattered his precious pale pelt. His mouth pulled taut with disgust indicated that he was fully aware of this predicament. Still, he gazed at the sage femme, wondering whether she'd choose to ignore him or cast a spell upon his person.

What do you believe, madame?

qiao set aside a clump of dirt she’d pried from the earth, giving the male the benefit of her full attention. his pelt was streaked with grime now, marring the pale snowwhite of a once proudly clean coat. "none of this is truthful or real." qiao countered, brushing dirt from her chest. "you see this world through eyes that have evolved to withstand them, and your eyes have become accustomed to its strangeness they way they adapt to a world of darkness. the truth is, if you were born to any other world, you would see it for what it is -- a world built on burning bodies and fevered dreams. the trick of a laughing cosmic fox. a fiery cosmos held in the skin of a single blade of grass. there are other worlds, other realms, other dreams -- each more infinitely inviolable, insensible, and chaotic than the next. this world makes no sense, there is no truth but disorder - and from it, all life is born."

she nudged the bolus, which was held together by old clay, dark matter, and a tangle of half rotted roots. how funny was it that the last thing to decay in a great tree wasn't its incredible trunk or long branches, but the gnarled and twisted stump -- which lived its entire life in the realm of dark and dirt. "truth matters only to those who cannot see the world for what it is." the ball began to roll, and qiao's attention fell to where it crashed against the very boulder they stood near.

upon collision, the mat of dirt and detritus broke. from within, something tumbled forth. 

qiao gasped and leaned forward — and the hushed whisperings within her mindseye became a roar.

i saw this thread was archived so i pulled it out so i could wrap it up -- no worries at all, i just needed to conclude this so a future post makes sense! <3

the mat of clay broke open. within it something was nestled like a filthy pearl.

teeth. little archways. a pocket of hollows.

a chipmunk skull whose voice rose to a deafening roar.

qiao lifted the thing from the snow, wide eyed as around her malignant voices climbed to the sky. the man was thoroughly forgotten -- it was just qiao and this taotaomona now, whose frothy voice sung out in a perverse tongue like whiplash.

* * *

she was transported somewhere -- to somewhen. sun beat down in ruthless pylons. bittersweet birdsong filled her ears. somewhere close by, perhaps beyond fronds of tropic ferns, sighed the unmistakable breath of the ocean.

a man rose from her vision. at first, qiao thought it was robespierre. but no, this man was sharp and murderous. a black glint like offal-blood in his gaze. he was filthy, grinning -- his fur doused in mud.

no, not mud. blood.

and he was holding the skull with an imp's foul smile; offering it to a svelte war-trim figure in black. qiao's attention sharpened to the woman -- and it was then the voices rose in crowsong around her and she was pulled back with a sharp crrrrrrak.

* * *

qiao's eyes opened to a world of cold and snow. robespierre's figure swam in her vision. hastily, the seer unbuckled her greenbrier. the skull was shoved into the folds of the deerpelt, still rimed in decay and dirt.

qiao was shaking as she doused her torc. "i must go." she offered little else before she set at a blistering pace east.

the skull thrummed against her chest.