creator_raven | (no subject)

(no subject)

Raven has no love for gods.

They are far too often lazy, and cruel, and very, very stupid.

Also they do not so much like paying prices, or fighting their own battles.

Possibly this is a thing Raven will see changed. For he can feel the Wild crackling in the air, hear it in the wind that blows down from the plains of the Dalrei, and he knows well what chaos is waiting to be unleashed.

There are always choices to be made.

It is time, perhaps, for something other than humanity to make a few.

And possibly Ceinwen would not mind meeting a new face?

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The light in the forest is sunlight-gold at this time of day, and not the silvered moonlight that she prefers to hunt by.

Still, it does not necessarily matter.

Her bow is in hand, and the goddess Ceinwen, the Huntress, twin to Cernan of the Wood, stands at the edge of her grove, looking skyward toward the sound of wings. An arrow is notched to the bowstring, and her hand is light but sure on the fletching as she draws it slightly.

"Stand forth and be seen!"

"You are, perhaps, objecting to perching?"

Raven, who is currently sitting on a tree branch and looking remarkably careless, grins at Ceinwen.

"It is almost not what I might have expected."

She lowers the bow, a fraction.

"You do not belong here, winged one."

Raven beams, teeth flashing in the forest's gloom.

"That, I am thinking, is not so much for you to say."

He drops neatly to the ground, coattails flying behind him, and paces toward Ceinwen.

There is little of care in his manner.

This is possibly not a surprise.

"Who better, here?"

Radiance bursts forth from her as if a star has come to earth in the heart of the grove, and in one smooth motion her bow is raised and the bright silver of the arrowhead trained on his heart.

"Come no closer!"

Raven snorts, rolling his eyes.

He also does not stop moving.

"You, I think, are not so much paying attention, yes? But that, too, is not so much a surprise. It is a very great pity, perhaps."

"Neither are you, if you think me unwilling to shoot."

It is all the warning he has, as in the next second the bowstring hums with the Huntress's arrow released.

Raven is, abruptly, several feet shorter and several feet closer, black eyes wide and bright as he blinks up at the Goddess.

"Now that, perhaps, is not at all what I am thinking."

Her sudden laugh is low and satisfied, and her bright wild smile capricious in its joy.

"Good enough."

She lowers her bow and looks at him with curiosity.

"What do you in Fionavar? Not on errand for red Nemain or Macha, surely?"

Raven snorts again.

"I am not so good a messenger, I do not think. Or a servant."

His shoulders twitch.

"But there is a thing that will be loose here, soon."

One corner of his mouth curls upward.

"I do not think it will end so well."

Slowly, Ceinwen's smile fades.

She looks at him in silence for a long time.

"We are not to act on the Tapestry."

A beat.

"What concern is it of yours?"

Raven makes a face.

It may be more directed at the Tapestry than at Ceinwen.

Or rather, at the rules that govern said Tapestry.

He tilts his head, watching her for a moment. He is taller than he was a moment ago. It is a thing. Perhaps.

"I am fond of Paul, I am thinking. Or is it Pwyll?"

He considers this for a moment.

"Also Kim, yes?"

Beat.

"Existence is also a fine thing. So."

He tilts his head a little farther, black eyes wide and unblinking.

"Possibly it is the same for you?"

"They do attract interest, don't they?"

Ceinwen's voice is a throaty murmur, but she shakes her head as she looks back at him.

"It is not to be. The Tapestry itself would be rent asunder, were we free to act on it at will. They will have to manage on their own; I have already done more than I should."

Raven's smile is bright, and sudden, and very sharp indeed.

"That, perhaps, is what they tell you. Possibly, I think, it is even what you believe."

There is laughter in his voice, now, but behind it is something else entirely-- something old, and wild, and full of flame.

"But excuses are a thing that grows old, yes?"

So.

"It is no excuse!" she flares at him, the radiance within her bursting forth with her temper-- or at that which lies behind his laugh. "And you know it as well as I, meddling bird."

A pause. Almost as if against her own better judgement, green Ceinwen asks,

"What comes, that you seek me out so?"

"Do I?"

He laughs again, sound swirling higher in the clear air.

"You are, I think, for knowing what I am, yes? It is not a thing I much hide."

Bird-bright black eyes watch the goddess, waiting. Measuring.

"And I, perhaps, am not the only thing that can move the moon."

"The Wild Hunt."

There are some things that can disturb even a goddess, it seems. Ceinwen is very, very still.

"They do not go where they are not summoned."

Raven just grins.

"It is convenient, that."

Beat.

"Also possibly something best remembered, yes?"

"I never forget."

Green Ceinwen smiles, cruel and bright.

"I know something of the delight to be found in the hunt, after all."

Raven's smile is a quiet thing, and small.

His eyes are black and old.

Very old.

"But you, I think, are for stopping."

The goddess shrugs, drumming her fingers against her bow as she watches him.

"So you would have me stop the Hunt, is that it? You would?"

There is calculation in her look.

"A surprise, that."

And in a blink (perhaps less than that) Raven's grin is back.

"That, too."

He shifts, his shadow fluttering like wings against the green, green grass.

"But I am, I think, always changing. So."

"So," she echoes, and then suddenly the Huntress lifts her head, as if listening to something-- or scenting the wind, perhaps.

Not all that far away to the west, just north of Celidon, the heart of the Plain and the Dalrei's home for a thousand years, a battle is underway at the River Adein.

"It begins," she breathes.

Raven just laughs, voice rising high and wild, bright enough to match the cry of a hunting horn.

The smile he turns to Ceinwen is bright and sharp as dawn.

"I will, I think, wait to see the endings. Some things are better remembered."

"No. You will not."

The Huntress's words are flat, but no less fierce for all of that.

"If I am to do this thing, it will be for reasons of my own, feathered one-- but something I will have of you for it, in any case."

Raven tilts his head, black eyes dark and unblinking.

"You might try, perhaps. It will not be the first time."

There is a warning in that, too.

Fair warning, some might call it.

Raven does.

"Oh, but I think you'll give it."

Just as flatly said as before, but her eyes are bright, dangerously bright, and her look challenging.

"They are not of Fionavar, Raven. Even so, they have a right to be here; to be involved in these things. In that sense, they belong."

A second's silence, long enough to hear the wind rustling in the branches of the forest around them, whispering secrets.

"You do not. Owein's Hunt is the randomness upon the Tapestry in Fionavar. Not you."

Raven snorts, half-laughing.

"That, I think, is a thing I know very well. I have never been much for patterns. Or for being bound."

Raven is also, it must be said, not always so random as he appears.

So.

In the silent space that falls after his words, there is a dim echo of music from the far-off singing of the lios alfar who have come together with the Dalrei in bloody struggle against Maugrim's forces-- music that is soon drowned by the thunder of wings and a wild howling, as Avaia's foul brood of black swans descends at the same time that Galadan's wolves arrive to join the dark svarts and urgach in battle.

Ceinwen's smile is cruel, and sharp as the swords being wielded on the battlefield nearby.

"Ah, but you would have me do the binding instead, would you not?"

Yet even as she speaks, the sound of a horn cuts through the air, ringing over the field-- and the sound is Light. Not the soft light of moon on snow, or gentle warmth, not this, but instead the sharp-edged flash of noonday sun on a bright blade, the red light of a burning flame, the cold glitter of stars in the night.

Owein's Horn, blown in desperation by Dave Martyniuk, summoning the Wild Hunt to Celidon. Where they will ride, and kill, until none on either side are left alive.

Still smiling, the Huntress says,

"Go home, feathered one. Go and do not return. Leave Fionavar to its own. I promise you that I will do this thing, and if I promise it is not a debt, but a gift -- but you must go. You have no place here."

Raven's smile is, for a moment, crooked and almost sweet.

"They will find their own way free, I am thinking. It is what they are for, yes?"

It is what they are all for, at the heart of it.

"And what I am for--"

He trails off, studying the goddess for a moment.

Something wicked flickers in the dark of his eyes.

"You will also be learning that. Later."

And then, laughter still rising above the sounds of battle in the clear sky, Raven is gone.

He leaves nary a feather behind.

Even as he vanishes, the air rings with more laughter that blends uncannily well with his-- a cold, wildly joyous laughter, harsh and bright as the smoky steel that slices through the air and into Maugrim's forces and the Dalrei and the lios all alike, as the Wild Hunt descends upon Fionavar for the first time in thousands upon thousands of years.

Still, even as the slaughter begins, Ceinwen delays. She looks after Raven, and laughs as well, low in her throat-- and hers is neither a happy laugh nor a kind one.

"As if I did not already know. And if I did not, Macha or red Nemain would be sure to see to it, with what I am about to do. But it will be as I have said -- for my reasons as well as yours."

In the next moment, she is gone, and not long after her voice splits the air over Celidon, crying aloud in command,

"Sky King, sheathe your sword! I put my will upon you!"

There are many, many dead, when everything is said and done. Dead, and gathered gently by the goddess herself under a mound by Celidon, covered with green, green grass.

But not all need die, she tells Dave, standing with him on the mound. Not all, she says, even as she gives him Owein's Horn once again, along with a caution against using it so a second time.

Not all.

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