#visc. all

[shesnakes]

CLOSED STARTER ━━ day three of the celebrations. among the stands between bouts, two women engage with the sharp play of their tongues. for lady rohanne reyne @g0ldensaints

blood dries in the sands, and the attention of the princess flattens with it. like any dragon visaera thrives on sacrifice, though the joust often offers less flesh than the scale within her ribs will move for. her champion not yet in the lists, gaze skirts sidelong to the spectators seated across the way, observing what has been offered in amusement when knights and lieges do not battle: courtiers.

"i heard the youngest lady of hornwood retired to somewhere quaint in sheepshead hills some moons ago. a rest meant to alleviate ill humours... she's emerged quite cured, if her current rosy visage is anything to go on." head cants to one side, a gesture delicate as curved hook through silk. she is stitching in the attention of one who knows how to amuse: the crimson lioness of castamere. "how very fortunate for the poor thing." visaera's fingers trail idly against the stem of her goblet, her eyes still roving with a honed kind of passivity over the crowd. "have you any further news of her health, lady reyne?"

[shesnakes]

CLOSED STARTER  ━━   in the stone halls of the red keep as the prince makes his way to the great council, a home now dyed a deeper colour: that of a mother's blood.  for princess rhaella targaryen  @drcgonblooded

"mandia¹," she lapses to high valyrian, the tongue of their most ancient fore-bearers, as if this small act might bring them closer. as though she might cut through the belly of language to slip inside and find the womb they had lost. visaera's hand takes rhaella's jaw, that curve of bone so purposefully carved by the gods ⸺ so dutifully an echo of their mother. her forehead comes to rest on the swell of her sister's until they are pressed together, an image refracted. "aeryn is naejot se council sir. aderī mirre se dārion kessa gīmigon zȳha sȳz muña iksis morghe. īlva muña²."

[shesnakes]

CLOSED    STARTER     ━━    DAY ONE OF CELEBRATION w. PRINCE MORS . ( @beyzadim )

A  DOZEN  TONGUES  AT  THIS  TABLE  ALONE  and  visaera  uses  none  of  them  to  speak  [ ... ]  a  language  for  each  of  the  seven  kingdoms  and  a  spate  of  dialects  fractured  from  the  original  speech:  there  are  an  infinite  number  of  modalities  to  express  your  desires,  and  innumerable  more  with  which  you  can  mislay  them.  in  the  end  the  only  difference,  the  princess  knows,  is  a  matter  of  lilt  and  intonation,  of  cadence  and  rhythm  inserted  by  men  in an  attempt  to  civilize  what  is  eldritch.  A  TONGUE,  it's  called,  for  a  reason.  the  first  bastion  of  communication  lies  in  the  body.

  so  visaera  does  not  open  her  mouth  to  speak  to  him  from  across  the  garden.  she  talks  in  limb,  in  gesture;  a  series  of  otherwise  innocuous  motions,  no  more  or  less  meaningful  to  those  seated  between  them  than  vibrations  in  the  sand.  from  her  place  at  the  table  the  tip  of  a  middle  finger  drags  slow  over  the  pulse  point  carved  into  the  midland  of  her  neck,  a  soft  pad  pressing  just  there,  into  the  skin  ⸺  proof  of  her  own  heart.  it  throbs  hot,  restless.  a  creature  lying  in  wait.  a  viper  buried  in  its  sand - warmed  pit.  to  draw  it  out  the  nail  of  a  ring  and  pointer  finger  trail  down  the  column  lines  of  the  throat,  ending  on  the  sharp  line  of  her  collarbone,  a  flourish  that  draws  hair  off  a  rounded  marble  shoulder.  the  serpent  coiled  in  her  chest  unfolds,  flairs.  expands  until  visaera  feels  it  choke  her.  ENOUGH  WAITING.

  when  she  rises  early,  there's  none  to  question  her;  just  as  the  moon  who  occasionally  reveals  herself  during  the  hours  of  day,  to  be  seen  is  her  prerogative.  any  glimpse  is  auspicious.  into  the  folds  of  the  garden  she  recedes,  hair  and  shoulders  and  gown  all  pale,  colourless.  white  as  opal, as cloud cover. as  the  exposed  belly  of  a  rat  snake.