Episode 2: Of Monsters And Messages
You thought I'd never update didn't you,,,,, well THINK AGAIN BITCHEZ
It's a bit sloppy, definitely not the greatest chapter I wrote, but hey, it's here!
Once again, please check the trigger warnings before proceeding, since this story will probably have death, violence and angst and mentions of blood.
Cover made with Canva, crossposted on my AO3 account.
Read from the beginning here
"Close the book! Close it!"
Aditi wasn't listening to Rekha's frantic shouting, though. She was far more occupied with the fact that a streak of her hair was glowing a cloudy blue colour, and also seemed to be... floating, slightly. Letters had started to appear on the pages of the book and Aditi's excitement grew every second.
This was it, this was the chance she had been waiting for.
She reached out towards the book, flinching as Rekha snapped it shut.
"Rekha, come on!" She whined. "What's it gonna take to have a little fun around here?"
Rekha shook her head, her face still pale from shock.
"You... you have duties. Now is not the time for... this."
"I always have duties," The princess grumbled. "Nothing new ever happens in this place."
"Even if it did, you probably still would have duties. Now come on, let's leave. Sooner you get started, sooner you finish."
Before Aditi could protest further, Rekha whisked her away to attend to her duties.
Another suitor rejected, another message responded to, another meeting attended, another day of swordfighting training completed, another day of trying to improve somewhat in archery and failing miserably, another lesson finished, another citizen's concerns attended to, the list seemed to be endless.
Growing unrest in Nelaghati and Alinthi borders? That seemed serious, if it wasn't seen to soon, a fight could break out, and that was not the most optimal situation. Besides, Alinthi and Nelaghati didn't exactly have a history of being on the most friendly terms. At all.
Aditi knew she should take care of it, try to talk it out, should pay attention to her duties, she had done this every single day, it was basically muscle memory at this point. This should be easy.
But her mind kept flitting back to the book.
Nightfall. Aditi stared at the book under the bright moonlight, in the palace gardens. She debated opening it and risking waking up half the palace, or closing it and just... going on with her life.
No, absolutely not. She was opening that book, consequences be damned.
She slowly and dramatically opened it, and waited.
The dull glow of her hair illuminated the letters slowly appearing on the book. She squinted at them, trying to discern the letters in the dark.
At the twilight of day a powerful force shall meet an insatiable beast.
Wow. How helpful. This definitely cleared things up and explained this whole situation.
Still, better than nothing, right?
She sat there awkwardly, not knowing what to do next. What now?
Wait, wasn't arm hair supposed to be black? Not blue? And why was it growing so rapidly-
The blue light that had begun swirling around her became almost blinding, it was a miracle it hadn't awoken the roosters.
The transformation itself was a quiet process.
She knew SOMETHING had changed. Normally, the ground wasn't so far. And her feet weren't usually blue hooves. And she also used to have hands.
Mmmmm, but her hair was the softest it had been in ages. Kind of felt like it was floating.
She walked (trotted?) over to a nearby pool of water and gazed at her reflection in the pool.
Well, that was... interesting.
You see, normally, Aditi had straight black hair which reached her waist (and it was not silvery at all), tanned brown skin (which was in no way like blue fur), and a considerably muscular HUMAN build.
What she saw in the pool had a flowing mane of silvery-blue hair which shone with a dim white glow, blue fur, studded with square aquamarine gems at different places, and was, most definitely, a quadruped, shaped like a horse or a deer. It had a light blue nose, which was suddenly extremely sensitive to the smells around it, and a diamond shaped area on its forehead where the fur was white, kind of like Black Beauty's, if Black Beauty's forehead diamond glowed.
Either way, the 1877 novel by English author Anna Sewell was not written in her time, so she did not have any basis to compare the forehead mark to Black Beauty, since she did not know it existed.
So it was a glorified horse/deer hybrid. Aditi could live with that.
Actually, no. She didn't want to live with that.
She didn't know why she wasn't more surprised, it wasn't like people turned into gem-studded horse/deer hybrids everyday. Much less her.
But it somehow felt like this was bound to happen. Fate, or destiny, if you will.
She tried flipping through the book, a rather laborious task, considering the fact that she didn't have hands.
The idea of staying stuck like this forever was unappealing, to say the least. There should be something in the book to turn her back, right? She was beginning to panic, and she hoped against hope that there was something in there, there had to be- and then she was back to normal. Well, that was a relief.
It was too dark to think about this, and Aditi was absolutely exhausted.
She trudged through the dark hallways of the palace, book carefully tucked under her arm.
Everything felt sharper than usual, her senses were heightened to a supernatural degree, but then again, turning into gem studded horse-deer hybrids was a also supernatural.
Yes, she could distantly smell sweat and coconut oil and her sister's gajras and people who were far away, and see much more clearly in the dark than should be possible for a human, but strangely, she could (very literally) also smell respect and love and trust, and fear and - she couldn't quite put her finger on what that was, but it felt bad.
And she could see that danger was on its way.
Taglist (send an ask to be added or removed): @ghostdragoncookie @mina-globes-and-maps @quakeismyhero @ialmostdonothingnew @gravitational-potential-energy @death-and-the-lady13 @otbyosh @fierreth-who @mister-finally-found-himself @coffeelovinggayidiot @pinkyy-promises @sassychaostrash @lesbiansayaishii @planet-alicorn @cool-way-to-die @brkh96 @i-likestuff86 @aqueerembrace
19 notes
·
View notes