"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
How long had it been? Jinju couldn’t exactly tell anymore, except for that it was too long. From one moment to another her mother had disappeared from her life. And it hurt. It had not happened just once, or twice. No. With Reagan’s disappearance she had lost her third mother. A mother she so desperately wanted and needed in her life.
Especially now. Her stomach showed the early curves of pregnancy already, though, not enough to have her stay at home. Jinju knew that her father preferred that, or at least that she took someone with her, but the fire child could look after herself. And the delicate matter that had carried her to the forest again was something she had to do alone.
Like she had promised Enfys she had never stopped looking for their mother. The black woman was still grateful that her mother had entrusted her with the care of her youngest sibling, but just like her, little Enfys missed her mother too. And stubborn as she was Jinju kept coming back to the forest. Never venturing too far or too deep, knowing that Reagan would’ve made her den close to home.
But even if she would find the den, the chance that she actually would lay her eyes upon the gray and emerald mare was small. Even if she longed for it so badly. Jinju knew that her mother wouldn’t show herself until she was ready. She could only hope that if Reagan would learn of her daughter’s pregnancy it would make her a little more willing to allow Jinju back into her life.
She no longer bothered to call, choosing to wander instead of disturbing the forest. She’s not completely silent, sometimes murmuring stuff for nobody to really hear. Reagan would know she was there, know she was looking for her, and Jinju hoped that it warmed her mother’s heart. ”You’re going to be a grandma, mom..” she whispers.
something has been taken from deep inside of me; the secret I've kept locked away no one can ever see.
He is quiet.
He is a silent, statuesque figure tucked away into the shadow of evenfall – his dark, marred flesh soothed by the darkness and its delicate caress. Once upon a time, he had relished in the sensation of the bright, hot sun pressing its fervid heat into his skin – he had savored the sensation of its warmth seeping into his flesh, as he so often felt anything but warm while enveloped by the brutality of winter, shrouded by cloud cover and covered in frost.
The sunlight did not often touch the ice-laden land he had once ruled, and so on the rare occasion it managed to peek through the heavy clouds and past the high mountain peaks, it was an affable surprise. He longed for those days, now long gone, with little else but fading memories for him to clutch onto.
But much like the icy tundra he had once called his own, his yearning for the sun no longer existed – it reminded him too much of the flickering ember inside of him; it reminded him of the hot flame threatening to burn through him. It reminded him of the very same scalding heat he desperately tried to quell, wary of its prowess; mistrustful of its influence.
And for that, he shies away from the sun, preferring the dark allure of the dense thicket instead.
He is still; motionless and pressed firmly against the girth of an old, crooked pine – and he is towering; so much so that a wiry, brittle branch has tangled itself within the matted tresses that lay haphazardly along his neck. He is lost in his own thoughts, filtering through memories – filtering through both reality and the nightmares that so often plague him, wondering why he cannot discern one from the other.
But he is not alone.
He is stirred from his silent reverie by movement, and his eyes – a dark, but searing red, glowing in the dim light of the forest – follow the dark figure, tracing the curve of her hip and the swell of her expectant belly with his stare. She, too, is alone, muttering to herself – or so it would seem. But there is something familiar in her stature; something familiar in the hollow of her cheek, and in the rounded edge of her jawline.
It is not until her cheek is turned that his heart, once a steady hammer inside of his chest, nearly comes to a halt and drops into the pit of his rolling stomach. Draped in darkness (her coat is as dark as his own; pitchless and yet flawless, unlike his own), with the very same glowing, burning red eyes as his own.
But all he can do is watch as the mirror image of himself traverses before him, unsure of what to say –
Unsure if there is anything to say at all.
”Congratulations,” he finally manages, his voice rough from disuse, and ragged with undiscernible emotion, as his eyes never leave her own – uncertain if she had even noticed him.
And inside of him, the fire flares, growing and building with a pressure that burns brighter than he has ever felt.
wounds so deep they never show; they never go away. like moving pictures in my head, for years and years they've played.
Her fire answers his. It dances and grows, its hot flare shimmering in her ruby eyes. Eyes that meet equally as red eyes. Well, that was not something she hadn’t seen before, just never before had the owner of those red eyes resembled her as much as he did. Or perhaps did she resemble him. Aside from the scarring that stood in high contrast with his black coat.
She had sensed a soul out here in the forest. Her father lessons of the way of the wolf hadn’t been futile. Jinju had also sensed that it wasn’t the one she had been looking for and thus not paid attention. Her mistake.
One she would not make again. ”Thank you” she eventually replies stiffly. In the silence that follows she studies him. He’s tall, even taller than her – where she had grown past Ruan’s height – and his black coat and red eyes are very much like hers. She reads his eyes without difficulty, almost instinctively. ”You have fire.” It’s not a question, more like a statement. Though one she was eager to hear confirmed as her heart hammered in her chest.
Unlike the black beast before he she had accepted it wholeheartedly. It was a part of her, she had carried the flame with her from her very first breath. A while Jinju hadn’t known what she had lost in the Reckoning, aside from a mother. Once she had gotten it back, though, she had wondered how she couldn’t have missed it. It felt as natural as breathing.
Her preference for the forest – or any foresty area – was something they had in common, but, both had their own reasoning. To Jinju it was home, she felt sheltered here. Very much different from the Jungle where she had once resided, but the feeling was the same. Never it would be an escape.
Or a place to hide. Jinju never wanted to run or hide from her loved ones. She needed them near.
you're waiting for someone to put you together, you're waiting for someone to push you away
She was tired.
Tired of walking. Of running. Of hiding. Of being broken.
The longer she stayed away, the more sick she became. Her magic, her broken heart, her mind—all gone, and entirely out of control. Her body convulsed, tremored. Hidden away, her pride—dilapidated. Such the dumpy little farm girl, turned raving disco lunatic.
Her form this day, was a tall slender deer, whose colors swirled wildly while her skin thrummed with the sound of a constant vibration—like a generator kicking off, as it were. But the deer… she grew antlers, then which shrank and disappeared without a trace. It didn’t hurt anymore—because from the glitch magic and the insane babble inside her own head, Reagan found that she was always hurting… so one pain was veritably indistinguishable from the next.
But the more she tried, the harder she felt that tug…the one of Jinju looking for her mother. The one relationship that she had always looked for—and the one that was stripped from her the day that Ruan told her not to come back home. Whether or not Reagan should have chosen to fight her way for the sake of her children was neither here nor there. When it came to Ruan, there was no fight.
And after their last conversation in the forest, Reagan had found that there wasn’t much left of anything else, either.
Along the deer’s left side were the laceration marking from the ice-wolf’s fire that had never healed; wounds that dripped blood that fell to the earth in a hiss, creating a keleidescope of color wherever she went. She was immortal, and so could not die, but neither was she healing from an otherwise mortal wound.
In a word, Reagan was an absolute mess at the current moment.
And so, when the scent of Jinju is followed by that familiar tug of warmth—of love—Reagan finds that her body is too tired to hide any longer.
From behind a massive oak tree, the deer spies two inky figures standing in the shadows, their red eyes looking at each other as if they’d seen ghosts. The shorter, one, rounder. Reagan recognizes her daughter, in a heartbeat. Her heart is warmed, and she starts cry silent tears. The other figure, a large imposing thing as if cut from a solid piece of pocked obsidian, stands looking at a reflection of himself. The deer’s magic is too far consumed, too far gone to be able to read minds. But she would have been a fool not to know Offspring by the look of him.
The deer grows massive antlers, and appears to the other two as a stag of the forest. Taking a breath, it comes out of hiding, swirling colors too many to mention. It figures, why not cut the awkward tension with yet another awkward entry.
something has been taken from deep inside of me; the secret I've kept locked away no one can ever see.
It is slow at first – a gentle and unhurried burn, boiling over within the very pit of his stomach, as it carefully unfurls from within. He is uncomfortable, as he has become all too aware at how the flame flickering inside of him is stirring from more than just his own restlessness – it is calling out to her; it is reaching out to its own kin – a realization that settles like heavy lead within his veins. As his dark, burning gaze bores into her own, the flame burns hotter, and the fire threatens to envelope him in its entirety.
Perhaps, if it had only been appearance (their dark, inky black skin – their vivid, burning red eyes – their broad, muscled build), he could have ignored it and brushed it off as coincidence.
But then --
You have fire, she utters aloud, and the fevered inferno inside of him burns brighter.
”I do,” he says, almost breathlessly. While her muscles are coiled tightly, wary and uncertain of him, he is rife with emotion. His mind drifts away for a long, quiet moment, remembering the heat of her mother’s skin against his own (so pale in comparison to his own; russet and tangerine – but there had been many that year; he couldn't be certain who - a brief tryst; nothing more than sex shared between them), and the brief warmth of her kiss along his jawline.
The realization of what lay before him draping over him with its heavy weight, all-encompassing in its truth: even if she does not realize it, he does, and he is looking in the eyes of his own daughter.
”You do too,” he murmurs, his voice a rumbling murmur, though it reverberates off of the dense foliage surrounding them. It, too, is a statement – not a question. He can feel his own fire longing for hers; a kinship he did not understand– a kinship he had not even felt with his own son, who too carried it inside of him.
But he is drawn from his awe-stricken reverie, his steady gaze shifting to a heavily built stag, as his eyes trace the length and height of the antlers perched precariously on top of an otherwise graceful, carefully molded creature. There are too many colors for him to process, and he grimaces in discomfort, as tension boils inside of him – magic has touched him too many times before for him not to know it when he sees it; and for this – he is wary.
Hello, Jinju, it says, but in her veiled form, he is none the wiser as to who lay beneath the cloak.
Alas, he says nothing. Jinju is not his to protect – but still, the fire grows stronger.
wounds so deep they never show; they never go away. like moving pictures in my head, for years and years they've played.
It would be a lie if she said that she had never thought of her sire. Of who he was or what he looked like. With the years the memory of her dam had faded. Since that was the one mother who had willingly left her behind, Jinju didn’t bother to spend a single moment thinking of her. With that, she had let go any thought of her sire too.
Never had she expected that she was a smaller version of him. An almost perfect copy.
”I do too” she says, after another short pause. There was no point in lying, he would instinctively know that what she had known too. Jinju’s ruby gaze hadn’t left the one of the stallion in front of her, ears altering between pointing straight forward and turned back. Nobody had ever prepared her for this.
Perhaps that is why she notices the arrival of another first. Her third mother, the one she had spent so long looking for. Her breath hitches and the fire flares. The flame of hope burning brighter with every heartbeat. Jinju’s voice is barely a whisper. ”Mom.”
She does not move, just watches. Ruby eyes never leaving the stag with huge antlers that revealed itself. No gray, no emerald, but many colors swirling. There is red too, from a wound, still bleeding and fresh. Her brows knit together in a worried frown.
A bit nervous and uneasy her ears flick back and forth, eyes flickering to her sire’s massive form. Not only had she not expected to meet him like this, but this was clearly not how she had imagined to find her mother again. The fire within her flares, growing bolder and wilder, licking the little restrains that she has to hold back. She takes one step forward, then stilling again, unsure ow how to handle the situation.
05-31-2017, 01:24 PM (This post was last modified: 05-31-2017, 01:28 PM by Reagan.)
you're waiting for someone to put you together, you're waiting for someone to push you away
She makes her way closer. She should have known that Jinju would have known who she was immediately. But there was no emotion. There was nothing that Reagan could see from Jinju’s outward appearance, and the pounding in her own head was so loud that she could not deal with the effects of her magic. She drags her body towards the pair, making no notice of Offspring, other than laying hard eyes on him before drawing her attention back to her daughter.
The antlers disappear again, and in its place, fangs grow into massive sabre-tooth incisors. Colors are still swirling, and she leans against a tree. She is nothing. Not a magician—for surely magicians can control their tricks. Not a wife. Not a Queen. Not a wolf. Not a mother. She is nothing until she can learn to love herself again—and she does not see that happening any time soon.
Fire, she says mentally. To Jinju, to the other stallion… she does not care which. Cauterize the wounds. Bleeding out is a bitch.
She snarls as her sabreteeth disappear from her mouth and reappear on her head. Inwardly, she feels terrible that she had intruded on what may have otherwise been a touching family reunion. But outwardly, she cannot bring herself to care. She breathes heavily, looking for some direction, expelling all of her energy... Simply wanting to be normal again.
something has been taken from deep inside of me; the secret I've kept locked away no one can ever see.
He had lived what felt like a thousand lifetimes, each carefully layered and interlaced with one another, with little else but wistful memories and tired, aching bones to show for a life lived beyond its means. He had loved, and he had lost – he had children, grandchildren; many of which he had never known. A low, rolling pang of guilt lingers in the pit of his stomach as his dark, searing eyes rove across her solid breastplate, and along the solid, muscled curve of her shoulder – Spear, and Spark, and Moment as well had all known of him – had sought him out in their youth, seeking some semblance of his presence in their lives.
His heart was spoken for, but self-loathing and a longing for reassurance had led him more than once into the comforting embrace of another, even if only beneath the pale moonlight and only for a short time. Though weary and worn, a thin tendril of lust still courses through him, and it has drowned out his logic and guilt more than a time or two. The glimmering spark of the glowing ember inside of his daughter’s burning eyes remind him of these times – he is nothing more than a simple man, and he too has weaknesses.
Though she is so much of him in so many ways, she is vividly striking and beautiful in a way that he never had been, nor ever would be. There is a commanding presence in her rigid stance, and a grace lining the soft curve of her cheek – he does not know her (in fact, he only knew of her name because of the peculiar force standing before them now), but a swelling of pride has already begun to fill his chest cavity with each passing moment.
Alas, it is fleeting, and his attention is drawn away from her by the crackling of weight pressing on dried leaves as the creature moves closer. The antlers disappear, and soon a thick set of fangs protrude from the doe, and it is then that he sees the blood seeping from her skin as she weakly presses her frame against an old, wiry oak. The word cauterize brushes the surface of his thoughts, and the burning flame inside of him flickers.
With a brief, wayward glance towards Jinju, he moves towards the multitude of swirling colors, deliberately stepping in front of her to keep her from the doe, who is all but foaming at the mouth. While she was still not his to protect (and never would be), the life that is stirring within her is a steady, driving force, and though he is hesitant, he presses his broad forehead onto the open wound, slowly tracing it down the length of her body. Though the fire inside of him is contained, it is burning more brightly than it ever as, and his skin has become scalding hot to the touch – and with a few brief moments of contact, her bleeding wound is sealed, and he is searching her delicate face for a reaction.
Gently, her blood trickles down his forehead, matching the dark, dangerous red of his eyes.
wounds so deep they never show; they never go away. like moving pictures in my head, for years and years they've played.
She’s frozen and forced to watch. A total opposite to the way her blood is boiling. Anger, hurt, fear, hate and more emotions flash through her. Some fuelling the fire, some extinguishing it. And all Jinju can do is watch how the black beast hurts her mother. Nobody, bloody nobody, had the right to touch her.
Blood trickles down his head, the color matching his eyes – hér eyes. It’s the sight that pushes her forward. Ears are pressed back against her skull, teeth bared, as she steps between the stallion and her mother. ”Don’t touch her” she tells him, her voice much calmer than how she actually felt. But it would be a lie to say that he wouldn’t be able to recognize the fire in her eyes. Just as her magician mother would see right through it.
”Mom” she murmurs, and as she bends her neck to look at the creature again. No, not creature. Her mother. Tears shimmer in her eyes, though before they even have the chance to roll down her cheeks as they evaporate. ”Mom.. I’ve missed you.. missed you so so much.”
OOC: I know, short, crappy and I’m sorry. I’ve been struggling with writing replies, but short words make it easier for now.
06-13-2017, 11:51 PM (This post was last modified: 06-14-2017, 12:00 AM by Reagan.)
you're waiting for someone to put you together, you're waiting for someone to push you away
She moved then, closer to the black male’s power. She could feel his magma from the second she had come into the clearing. Offspring. The man she had spent so long trying to meet when she had first come back to these lands. The decision to go with Sahm into the company of the former Tundra king, only to be swept up into the tide of Demian’s scheming to create his own kingdom within the folds of a torn brotherhood. The Taiga had been born out of an undermined daughter and son in law—a state from which the Grey Lady had taken on custody of, only to be cast out. Reagan knew all this and more about the Fire Frost King, and she slumped against the tree when she saw him step towards her wordlessly. He was seething fire and sex appeal, though she was hardly in a state to appreciate his raw beauty. He was carved from a single piece of shimmering obsidian, all carved and jagged… and yet beautiful in its own right. Offspring So he did exist after all this time. And as he stepped forward, she knew was in good hands as he lowered his head to her, opening up justly the crux of his true power. Liquid fire spilled over like melted iron, weaving its way through her skin, rippling like a black oil slick lazily licking at a beach. She breathed and jolted, saying nothing as she rooted her body to where she lay on the ground, urging the vines to bind her in place as he set to work. The gashes and lacerations weave together in a crystalized pattern, much like cooling lava trailing its way down a mountain side. These scars would remain, and she shudders as he closes the wounds, paying utmost attention to his patient. A warm breath washes over her as she keeps her eyes locked on his. The rising and falling of her belly as she lay so vulnerably exposed to him. Never has a man been this close to her with her permission, unless it was… No. Not anymore. And so as the former Tundraman weaves his magic, closing the wounds, she finds her blood clings to his wantonly, seeking the heat of his body… something she herself could not currently do. And above the screams and the din in her own mind, the elevated tones of her fiery daughter are heard. Don’t touch her! And Reagan starts to cry. Offspring says nothing—he merely does as has been asked of him, and when the fire is put away once more, and her blood is dripping down his forehead, Reagan breathes heavily, her antlers disappearing as her body jolts, as if having a seizure. She lifts her head and twists her mouth wryly at Jinju. Mom hits her ears, the first time in months, and a tear slides down her cheek and lands in the dirt. Mom, I’ve missed you.. Missed you so so much. Reagan reaches up and nuzzles her now grown daughter, a warmth in her belly seeing that her own child was full with the wonders of the breeding season as well. She struggles to her feet, breathing heavily, and shakes out the dirt from her pelt. She is still deer-shaped, but she is as she has always been. For now. “Oh Jinju. I love you so much.” The magician still has a long road of recovery ahead of her. But for the moment, she is with family. That has not happened in so long. She takes a step, stumbles slightly—and then leans against Jinju’s weight for stability, and comfort. A warmth envelops her as she eyes her savior in all his glory. If she thought he was magnificent when she was barely breathing, there was no word grand enough for the manner of man that had deigned himself to save a stranger’s life. She looks at him, her ears turned away, embarrassed, unsure. “Thank you, Offspring.” Her voice is quiet, cracked like gravel, and she finds that her magic is spent. Beyond seeing what is in front of her, currently she is useless in all other manners. Time to change back to a horse would have to come later. “I owe you a life debt.” Reagan swallows the heart she has in her eyes as she steps back from him, curling into her daughter. Her voice is still weak, but she tries.. she has questions that she needs answered. “Jinju. I am so sorry. I tried to come. I wanted to. But the baby. Your father… I. I couldn’t, in the end. I didn’t want to hurt you. Or the pack. Or Enfys.” Her voice trails off, sadness cloaking her words as she thinks of her smallest child. “How are they? How is home? How is your father, and your sisters? Iasan, and Enfys?”
