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 Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2022 5:10 pm
This is a solo RP between my Soq Varduhi and Mizuki Selene. Please do not post. Varduhi posts in #ED5ED2, Mizuki posts in Powder Blue.  Leaves skittered weakly across the ground in a dying breeze under a darkening sky. This shouldn't be happening. There had been no signs that this should be happening. Dark eyes gazed up at the stars appearing in the midday sky, breath coming in short, sharp gasps. A small voice in the back of her mind shouted at her, but Varduhi couldn't pick out the words. What was happening?!
Bird song had ceased, and even the noise of the Cirque Lunaire behind her had quieted, one of the only times it had since she had found her way to this small circus after she had parted ways with her twin. Unconsciously, Varduhi began to shiver, feeling subsumed in all the subtle wrongnesses that seemed to be stacking up too fast. Almost like the world was ending.
What was happening?
How did she make it stop happening? Mizuki had noticed the sudden darkening of the sky and the return of stars to the heavens above. Around her, those who were awake were watching the skies curiously, and even Mizuki found herself doing the same.
The dark hippogryph cross had heard of total solar eclipses before. But she hadn't heard of any happening in a few generations, and she'd never experienced it personally as a result. Nobody had told her how beautiful it would be to enjoy stars in the middle of the day. Nobody had told her exactly how long to anticipate it lasting, either. Some in the circus were socializing, only periodically peering up at the lowering sky, others had gone back to bed.
One, however, was doing neither. She was standing apart, as she so often did.
Unlike usual, this carnie looked terrified.
Mizuki gave an unconscious shiver herself. Varduhi. Their fortuneteller, and, from what she'd seen so far, one of no small talent. She'd come from another circus, a family operation, but that was about as far as anyone had succeeded in prising out of the dark mare. Mizuki personally suspected that it hadn't been the happiest of family homes and had left some serious emotional scars on the fortuneteller, who seemed to feel more emotionally secure hiding in her tent with her crystal ball than socializing with everyone else. That said, any scarring had not led her to ever so openly expressing fear or anxiety, just wariness and a general standoffishness.
Picking her way across the dimming ground with all the care she'd show at twilight, Mizuki made her way over to Varduhi.
"Hey. Varduhi. Are you OK?"
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Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2022 10:19 am
Varduhi started visibly, hearing the ringmaster speaking to her. She wasn't accustomed to talking much with anyone else. Not since her twin left. Jasinda had been the only one Varduhi had truly trusted since deciding to leave home.
"Sky wrong," she barked out. "Light going away. Wrong, wrong, wrong!"
If Varduhi could have thought in a straight line, she would have been ashamed at herself. She sounded so vulnerable, and the vulnerable always got eaten first. Her family might not have been Shifters, but they had taught her to avoid ever looking so weak. And now, here she was, looking like a shattered wreck in front of her new ringmaster.
Varduhi could feel a faint repulsion under the fear, which increased her anxiety. If something bad happened to her, Varduhi would deserve it for looking so vulnerable.
Mizuki blinked her moon-pale eyes, parsing what Varduhi said. Had Varduhi not heard of total solar eclipses? Or was this a fortunetelling thing? She'd heard it said Varduhi sometimes mentioned something coming that nobody else could have seen, though, from what the young ringmaster had seen, Varduhi just seemed to be extremely observant.
Had Varduhi failed to see the signs? She couldn't remember having heard much, just that it hadn't happened for a few generations, and that the sky would be as dark as night. Were there even any signs to pick up on?
"Varduhi, hey. Listen to me. You didn't see this coming, right? Talk to me, Varduhi. Help me understand." She tried to keep her voice gentle, but firm, a rock the fortuneteller could cling to. Varduhi needed to trust her, even as it looked like the sky was only continuing to darken through twilight in the direction of what Mizuki could only guess would be a time of true midnight during the middle of the day.
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Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2022 10:33 am
Varduhi was having trouble thinking past the whirl of emotions.
"No. Couldn't see. No signs. Light gone forever!"
To her utter shame, she could feel tears pricking at her dark eyes. It was true. The midday sun should have been too strong for night to overcome, and yet, night was falling relentlessly. The light was going out of the world and Varduhi was crying and she was going to be punished for being so weak and it was never going to be OK ever again--
Mizuki's question cut through the confusion and terror like a knife. "E-e-eclipse?" Varduhi had heard of eclipses. But weren't they when something blotted out the moon? They happened sometimes, Varduhi didn't like them much, either, but the world hadn't ended when the moon had vanished for a time. "Eclipses cover moon. Not sun."
Mizuki exhaled softly. This was bad. This was very bad. But she needed to know. Did Varduhi not know of eclipses?
"Varduhi, have you ever heard tell of a total solar eclipse?"
The fortuneteller's panicked eyes seemed to focus on the ringmaster. She knew of lunar eclipses, no big surprise there. But she clearly hadn't heard of solar eclipses. It made sense; there hadn't been one in living memory.
"Eclipses can conceal the sun. I remember hearing about it from the elders of the circus when I was a filly. They couldn't remember having seen any, but they heard stories of the last one from their elders as foals. And they said, like a lunar eclipse, solar eclipses end." Or, at least, they presumably ended. After all, hadn't all days since that last solar eclipse carried some small warmth and light of the sun? It had to come back. The heavens, in Mizuki's experience, tended to be more consistent in its patterns than letting something like an eclipse change the rules.
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Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2022 10:48 am
Varduhi blinked, her dark eyes focusing on the ringmaster's calm, moonlit eyes as her anchor in this sunless, moonless gloom that grew. "Solar eclipse?" She couldn't chase the hope out of her voice, no matter how much she wished she could. Around her, the sounds of the world continued to recede, like the world was falling into a torpor. Or a slumber.
Solar eclipse. If eclipses could be solar as well as lunar...well, that was utterly terrifying, but if there was one thing Varduhi knew, lunar eclipses always ended eventually. If a solar eclipse had taken place before, and the sun still rose...would this eclipse end, too? It had to. The stars were consistent.
The fortuneteller blinked. Stars.
Her head shot up, eyes searching the celestial gloaming. The stars. The stars were still there. The sun was gone, the moon had vanished, too, right around the start of this eclipse, and it had been riding so high, but the stars--the stars still shone. It wasn't darkness eternal.
Tears slid down her cheeks, and Varduhi almost didn't care. The stars were still there, maybe in a different place than they should be, but the stars moved across the night sky normally.
Mizuki nodded. "Yup, solar eclipses," she said calmingly.
And something seemed to click. The fortuneteller's gaze shot up to the stars above, and tears slid down her lace-marked cheeks. The ringmaster blinked, uncertain how to feel about the tears...but Varduhi's eyes. They weren't as terrified anymore. Fragile, yes. But the sight of the starry sky seemed to anchor her.
Stars. Was there some kind of celestial pattern Varduhi hadn't spotted? Was that part of what had caught the fortuneteller so off-guard? Mizuki had heard a bit from other fortunetellers about astrology, but she'd never met an astrologer. Would an astrologer have predicted this was coming?
"Varduhi...do you know much about reading the skies? Is there some kind of sign this might have been coming?" she asked gently, not wanting to upset the fortuneteller. Not now. Not now that she seemed to have the stars.
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Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2022 11:10 am
Varduhi blinked at Mizuki's words. Had the skies been saying something? No, she wouldn't have missed--
No. The moon. The moon had been so high, so close to the sun. Had the moon passed before the sun, overtaking its light?
Varduhi hadn't learned much more than the absolute basics of astrology. Astrology was supposed to be more important to read at the birth of a foal, so her family had only really gone to astrologers when a new foal was born, but never employed one, never consorted with one, never saw fit to adequately train any new fortuneteller in astrology.
Had the stars had the answers all along? And had her family unwittingly robbed her of the answers? The latter seemed probable, which, convoluted as it might sound to an outsider, made the former also seem probable.
Astrology. She had never seen fit to get into it. But...who could she ask?
"I don't...I don't know much." Her eyes returned to their contemplation of the stars. An anchor in the growing darkness. "I don't know who to ask for more information." The admission cut deeply and painfully, but it was true. The lack of knowledge, the lack of foresight, though it was simply pattern recognition, it had been utterly devastating, and Varduhi didn't know how to fix it.
Mizuki sighed inwardly. It had been worth asking. "I'm sorry to say that I don't know of any astrologers who could teach you. But, I promise you, I am willing to ask contacts as we travel. Maybe someone else knows where we can find an astrologer. Or someone who can read the stars; someone has got to know what they're doing when charting the course of the heavens."
Watching the fortuneteller, she could tell Varduhi had calmed down. Mizuki smiled softly, the expression visible by the broad blaze down her face in the growing starlight. Asking had been the right move. They would need to find an astrologer. Maybe if they found one before winter began, they could spend the winter with the astrologer? The ringmaster couldn't imagine astrology would be quick to pick up; fortunetelling seemed complex enough in its own right before you started adding the charting of the night sky to that equation. Could she practice in the meantime?
"Can you keep some kind of a star log while we search for an astrologer for you?"
The stars might be the answer Varduhi needed.
Varduhi nodded slowly. A star log. Maybe if she had something she could consider at her leisure, she'd spot something that would make things make sense.
"I can. Do you promise to find an astrologer, Ringmaster?"
"Yes. I'll start looking tomorrow. And until the sun returns, I'll stay with you, and you can tell me what you know about astrology and charting the stars." And Mizuki meant it, too. No matter how long it took, she'd find someone who understood the night sky for Varduhi's peace of mind, and to help her grow.
After all, wasn't that what a good ringmaster should do for her carnies?
(Final WC: 1890 words)
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