#so the wrinkles on her shawl/robe came out a lot better than I expected them to

[w-e-dread]

Made an attempt at a cadence redesign over a month ago!

I originally just jumped straight into a redesign, new colors and all, and then did the show accurate version after. Skipped out on drawing wings since I wasn't sure how they'd work with the pose, and I wanted more of her hair to be visible.

I know the purple color is off in the 2nd one, but when I was color picking I didn't want the outline to blend into the hair too much (I also got lazy and didn't want to do her gradients).

Ngl, I like the lighter purple more.

This one is an in-between from the transition to show accurate that I really liked. Considering keeping her original coat color because of it, but overall, I really want to add more yellows and blues to my next attempt.

And then finally, some screenshots from the original coloring process. I added a lot more crack-like marks on her body in the first screenshot, but took them out because I wanted to keep Cadence simple compared to Twilight.

Was also toying around with extra colors around the muzzle, but just decided to leave it off. Might re-explore it later, you can never have enough hearts.

[allykatsart]

(In your mortal radi au) Does pk miss the white lady, did he go to the garden to see/serch her ?

I know that she isn't the most important character but still....

Does he even love her anymore ?

Mortal Radiance AU

These are some good questions, and they actually got me thinking a lot. I didn't really include the White Lady in my story or touch on her much. I did have one comic idea with her but it got cut to keep the story from veering off track.

Now that I'm done, though.... This is a very fascinating question.

(5 days later)

Slams paper on table

HEY SO I WROTE A THING

I am ill for weeks after I am pulled back into reality. Something about all my pieces not quite being together means I take longer to recover than She did. She tells me that it is fine, that I need to recover my strength so I can work. We still have many graves yet to dig. She will shoulder the burden for this little while.

I am told my children are informed of my new existence, though none have visited. And I do not leave to visit them. Two of them terrify me, though for vastly different reasons, and the thought of meeting again with my daughter troubles me.

When I can finally get out of bed without assistance, I do not go see her, however. I go see my Lady.

It is hard navigating without being everywhere at once. I know the path to my Lady's garden intimately, but the path is far more difficult than I recall. Greenpath, surely, has had no caretakers, so runs rampant with overgrowth. The thorns catch on my robe and tear at my skin.

I bleed something dark and smokey.

I try not to think about it too much.

My Lady's branches spill out above the entrance to her hideaway. The corpse of brave Dryya. Once a friend, now only a carcass decorating my Lady's garden. Old blood coats her blade and shell. Even in death, she seems stalwart.

I am stalling.

The White Lady stirs as I enter her chamber. Her eyes, once the purest blue eyes I have ever seen, are clouded now. She wears age like a shawl, it weighs on her shoulders and bunches up around her neck. Her face, once pale and youthful, now is tired and wrinkled. Yet, there is a beauty there of which I could never seem to word. A thousand poets could never do her justice. I should know, I have had them try.

"Child? Is that you again?" Her voice is as I recalled, and a sharp pain creases my soul. I will never again be able to call back to her.

She has bound herself, so I move forward until I am right under her. Still, her cloudy eyes do not recognize me at first, and I cannot blame her for it. Not for the first time, I wish the vessel had left me my voice. There are so many things I could say to her, so many words that now I will never be able to reach.

My Lady's eyes finally find my hollow sockets, and she gasps. It is a small thing, barely audible, but in the silence of our meeting I know to look for it. There is a moment between us of unspeakable agony.

"You." The Pale Queen finally breathes the world, and it breaks the aching quiet.

I put a hand on her bindings, 'Me' I wish I could say.

There are so many words I wish I could say. There is so much between us. Good and bad in equal measure. It has been years since we have been face to face, and I thought it would never again happen. I find myself unprepared for this moment.

She does not need my reply. My Lady knows me better than I know myself sometimes. She smiles, though it never quite reaches her eyes.

"You are smaller than I remember."

I laugh, as best I can laugh anyways. I point to her, and gesture that it is perhaps she who has grown taller. It takes her a moment to understand, but the chuckle I earn fills what is left of my soul with joy.

"Perhaps." She concedes, "I have grown much, and still have much to grow still."

Her eyes dim suddenly at that, and she looks around.

"Where is our child?" She asks at last, voice soft and weathered.

I tell her, as best I can, that I do not know. That I came to see her. I expect this to lift her spirits. It does not.

"Did you see this outcome?" She asks.

I pause for a moment. There is much to that question that I do not know. In part, it is hard to remember what it was like. How did I describe it to my daughter? Like a great root that I scuttled across, observing paths unseen to most.

I shake my head. It is too slow and uncertain for my own liking. But it is as much of the truth as I can muster.

There is a long silence that follows. I have gotten used to those, especially with Her. She rarely talks to me at all. So I wait for my Lady's response with all the patience that I have learned.

"Was it worth it?"

Her voice is so soft when she speaks, like it could crack under the gentlest of touches. Delicate, and heartbroken. With four words I can feel what little ground we shared start to shatter.

"Was any of this worth it, I wonder?" She continues, "I do not think I know anymore."

And there is a gap between us. An aching maw of a chasm that threatens to swallow us whole. I want to cross it. I want to reassure her that we had done our best, that we were not to blame.

Yet the words I was once so masterful with are gone now. The voice I would use to soothe and heal her pain now is no more. So there is silence.

Anything I would say to her would be a lie, anyways.

[dunmerofskyrim]

54

Tammunei knelt, back straight and shoulders steep, and fussed at their hair. Little bone comb in their hand, sawing away at knot and tangle like a gardener trying to pull weeds. Same disappointed surprise every time they found one. Same noises too. Laboured silence, concentrative, and sometimes a hiss or squeak of pain as they tried to gnaw through some lock or botched braid, a tangle more obstinate than the rest.

That was Tammunei’s half of the woven mat. Simra’s was scattered and littered. Pens and papers and parchments. Notebook bound in swirl-dyed purple cloth, coarse blotty kreshrag paper inside. His inkstone in its yellow bone box, with wetting brush and dipwater. Posters torn from bounty boards and contracts long expired. He sat amongst it all, legs crossed under him. Elbows on his knees and chin in his hands. Back bent forward and down at a slant.

Books, scrollcase, papers, pens. None of them were in use but they made him feel like he wasn’t making a complete uselessness of himself. He’d rummage amongst them sometimes, checking he still had something he’d all but forgotten till then. He’d look at old records of spendings and gettings until he felt hollow and sick and had to stop thinking about money. He’d sharpened the edge of his sword already, so long and so often it’d likely notch the first chance it got. Action on action and none achieving anything much, in a constant struggle to just be doing enough. Like someone stuck inside, waiting for rain to pass and trying not to let it waste their day. Wasn’t that always the way?

Noor returned somewhere towards noon. Her figure was curled against the wind, wrapped in layers of blankets and the napped hide rainslouch she wore, shawled and bound over her old and age-thin robes. She climbed the last lip of the headland and huddled across the frost-mazed rocks and towards the half-sheltered dip where the yurt sat.

“Blessings.” It came curt. Tammunei’s teeth were grit as they worked the comb.

“And on you.”

“What news?”

Noor walked the last few strides and stood at the corner of the mat beneath the yurt’s awning. A heavy shrug and she stuck out an arm towards the stiff white sky, the hiding ocean, mistbound and muffled to silence. “Cold,” she said, murmuring. The chill had stolen the flex from her mouth. “The wind bites. Anything cruel about the plains, the sea makes tenfold worse.” She troubled to purse her lips and seemed like she might spit.

Tammunei raked up with the comb and stabbed it into their hair, holding a nesty bun there at the top back of their crown. “You’ve been into town?”

“Yes.” She bent and slung off a gathersack, and bundled it to the ground. From her other hand she set down a black clay jar, carry-string muzzled round its sealed mouth. Skull-sized and pot-bellied, no mark on its outside to say what was in it.

“Thought I’d have to go.” Simra hadn’t noticed she’d gone till after she was back. “Usually the way, right?”

“I thought so too, until it became clear that you wouldn’t.” She reached out with a foot and pushed the jar towards Simra. It wobbled, then shunted over, rucking the edge of the mat. “This is for you. The pock-faced Baelathri in the pickle shop said it would put fire back in the belly and spring back in the step.”

“Useful.” Simra bent further, leaning towards the jar till he could hook one of its strings by a finger and pulled it to him. He sniffed at the paper seal on it. Tapped it with a fingernail. The sound was dull and full. He crabbed it onto his lap, between his knees. “What is it?”

“Sweet,” said Noor. “I just got it because it seemed the sort of outland perversion you’re so weak for. Good with rice, the merchant said.”

For all her scathe there was a smile in her tone. Simra felt it prickle unexpected up the back of his scalp. He took the small razor from its hidden-stitched pocket in his jacket and worked to cut open the seal.

“The harbour is full of ships,” Noor continued. “Boats, tying up wherever they can find space. Bumping bellies and sides. It’s a racket.”

“Any bound for Vvardenfell?” said Tammunei.

“I asked. None bound anywhere, so far as I could tell. They’re all waiting.”

A sigh of thick sweet scent rose up from the split paper seal. Garlic, the toasted nut richness of dried hotpeppers, and the sharp fizz of ferment. Simra bent his nose to it. Breathed in then cricked his neck back up. Half-listening before, he gave Noor both his ears now. “Waiting? Well, fuck. They’re Wintering here?”

“That’s not usual for Winter?” Noor’s brows knit. “I had thought . . . on the plain, you pause. Put down roots somewhere secluded. I had thought it would be the same with boats.”

“Not here.” Simra shook his head. “Not on the ordinary. Up towards Blacklight, Solstheim, Skyrim, maybe, and that’s only for the sake of ice. Must be we’re in for a bad one.”

“Winter?” said Tammunei.

“Reckon so. Might be there’s ice on the Vvardenfell coast? Or someone’s put the fear up everyone, foretelling some sort of squall. Anywhere with some sea to it, it’ll have weatherseers, weatherworkers, and they love the attention that comes with forecasting a storm.”

“I can believe either,” said Tammunei.

“Dew on the moor-ropes this morning,” said Simra. “Frozen. Icicles hanging off them. Like glass, like moss.” He’d snapped them off then, jangling and wet, cramming the cold shards into his waterskin with hands that first felt icy, then numb, then curious-warm. Free water was one kindness that came with the Winter months. Easier to harvest a potful of snow than catch the same measure of rain. Easier to snatch dew from the dawn when the dawn’s so cold the dew freezes. Easier than getting water from Branoristown and paying for the privilege. “So yeah — bad Winter? I can believe it.”

“Then we’re stuck here,” said Noor, “same as them.”

“And they’re stuck here same as us,” said Simra. “Think any of those boats you saw had bellies full of grain, Noor?”

“How should I know?”

“Well. If not . . .”

“So little grows here,” said Tammunei. “Branoristown and Tel Branoris. They’re both fed by the mainland?”

“Who knows how the Telvanni feed themselves, but I’d say so, yeah.”

Noor wrinkled her nose and snorted. Almost a chuckle in her voice when she spoke. “Sorry to say, Simra, it looks like you’ll have to share your medicine.”

He looked down into the jar she’d brought up from town. Deep spice-red honey inside, bead-sized bubbles, and a tight pack of cloves, tooth-white. His stomach growled. “We’ll need more than pickled garlic to get through Midwinter here.”

“What do we have?” said Tammunei.

“Hm.” Simra looked over at his notebooks, his papers, like he hoped they’d have an answer to him. “To eat? Let’s see . . .”

He clambered up in a griping of knees that faded as he started to move. Like a scavenger looting over a battlefield’s leavings, all keen eyes and low hopes, he brought out his bags, picked through them, emptied them out onto the mat.

His rolled apron of chitin and steel scales, bound up with its own earth-red sash. A sealed compact of glazed clay and a few twists of dried guljana root for chewing. A pouch of salt and a bone-needle sewing kit in a messy-broidered little wallet of cloth — his own handiwork, in idle moments. A paper-wrapped brick of black fermented tea, half crumbled already into countless kettles, and looking now like something gnawed at.

“Could you make a pot of that?” he said, to either one of the others.

Noor stooped and knelt, and snagged up Simra’s kettle. Paused. “Heat?”

“Fuck . . .” Simra balled his eyes shut and knocked the heel of a palm into his forehead. “Stupid of me. Right. It can wait. That sack of yours — see what you’ve got?”

Looking back to his own things, scattered and rolled across the mat, Simra’s brow furrowed. It was good to have work that needed doing; a spur at his flank or whip at his back. Might be you can’t beat the grey, but there are times where you can forget it. His eyes slid particular over it all. An earthenware jar of preshta-jan, rough and unglazed outside flecked with red where spatters of the oil inside had freckled it. A grubby little bottle of tincture: wickwheat spirit, marshmerrow cores, mammet’s switch, a sickening spoilt-milk colour through the hazy grey glass. A cone of set black sugar, shrunken and irregular with all Simra had scraped from it. A folded paper purse with the last scraps of black hunter’s finder mushrooms he’d not had the heart to finish up — scarce more than crumbs now. All that and the last of the rice.

“Enough for maybe two days if that’s all we’re eating.” Simra groped at the grain sack, guessing at its contents. “Longer if we’ve got things to help it go further. Not a lot longer, but longer.”

“I wasn’t able to buy a lot,” Noor said. “Some ugly roots. Dried crabmeat and smallfish dumplings, I think? Your pickled garlic . . .”

Simra looked at Noor’s offerings. “Huh. Celery root. That’ll bulk rice. Flavour it too. Nice if you’ve got oil to fry it in, which we have, or stew to stew it in, which . . . not so much. The dumplings? Boil them back to life in water and that’s a soup. Well, a soup of sorts, anyway . . .” He remembered Old Ebonheart and Caselif’s ricewater soup. Can’t just call anything ‘broth’ so long as you’ve boiled something in it. Not on the ordinary. But when starving’s at stake, the rules change. Simra’s mouth twitched, following the line of his scar right up to the edge of a nostril. A flicker that might’ve been the start of a smile he’d thought better of, or might’ve been a spark-up of anger.

“I’ll check the edges of the island,” said Tammunei. “Next low tide. Every low tide, maybe.”

“You and everyone else if things’re as bad as they might be,” said Simra. “Guess that’s one way we’ll know what to expect from this Winter. You see poor wretches scraping up barnacles for their breakfast, let me know, alright?”

“Alright.”

“I’ll try town tomorrow,” said Simra. “See what’s for sale to those who ask. Or at least see what the news is on the docks.”

Noor nodded. There was an uncertainty in her face now. Like they were moving into territory strange to her and leaving behind what she knew and knew how to live through. “That tea . . .” she said, sounding like she needed it now.

“Right,” said Simra. He walked from under the awning and into the wind to where their cairnish little hearth was. Rubbed his hands together. Asked for heat.