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  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


    take these bones & breathe them back to life -- keeper
    #1
    He awakes in sweat, drenched with a heat that is unfathomable within the safety of his cavern walls; the autumn chill had brought him and his dark companion deeper into the belly of their twisting catacomb, and despite the air’s icy fingers trilling across his flesh, the blue of his skin is darkened by the moisture of his intense heart rate, his sides heaving as he gasps for breath. 

    Balto thought that with time the nightmares would begin to fade - that once he was back in his real world, with Faulkor, his mind would realize he is safe. But, if anything, the nightmares have only gotten worse and even more real, and he awakes with thin scratches against his flesh, though nothing would enter the caves this deep - nothing living, anyway.

    With a deep and shuddering breath, the stallion moves forward to find the cooler parts of the caves - leaving Faulkor to sleep within the warmth of the cave’s underground. The black stallion certainly recognizes the trauma that riddles Balto’s sleep, or is at least aware that something is not the same as it was - but the two men were of little words besides the necessary ones for survival, and though sympathy is not something the two give out freely, Faulkor had been sure to remain nearer to him since his return from the mountain. 

    His hooves click and echo on the cold stone beneath him, turning and twisting his way through the tunnels expertly to the one that would lead him to the opening within deepest part of Beqanna’s forest, where nary other equines travel (except for one). The cool, autumnal air whistles from the pinprick of an opening before him, drying the stains on his coat with chilling fingers. He sighs deeply, allowing the fresher and thicker air to soothe his tired body and mind. Suddenly, the whistle of the wind grows and swells, no longer a whistle but a low, groaning howl. Balto’s muscles coil beneath his skin, his stomach dropping as the moans of demons brush past his ears, yowling for his flesh and blood. He closes his eyes, trying to convince himself that it is only another nightmare, he is still fast asleep next to Faulkor, but the groaning only increases in volume and intensity, licking at his face and neck with hot, sweltering breaths. 

    It feels like hours before the breath of demons finally quiet back into a barely moving breeze, cold on his flesh like it should be. Balto shudders, but the sound of movement from the entrance of his cave catches him off guard, and his flattened ears now prick forward curiously.

    --
    once the king of beasts but now they feast
    on thoughts beneath his vacant crown.

     
    @[keeper]
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    #2
    How many times had she walked by the mouth of his cave and deluded herself into thinking it was just because the best mushrooms happened to grow in that same area?

    Too many, she knew.
    Even the bear had worn a trail nearby through the undergrowth and marked a few of the trees with her claws as warning that this cave and the land surrounding it was under her protection. The bear even considered it a prime hunting ground though she kept her kills far enough from the cave for them not to be discovered much.

    Keeper told herself it wasn’t stalking - she’d made a promise to come visit him on the nights when the moon was never quite at its fullest and brightest so it couldn’t hurt his eyes. But a few of the times she’d come and called softly to him, she’d received no answer and the morning light had driven her off lest she be discovered lurking by the other he’d mentioned that live deep within. She could never cite the source of her disappointment as she walked away, just that it was there and he wasn’t.

    There was one thing that Keeper knew and believed: she couldn’t stay away. She kept returning as many nights as she could. Rain, sleet, and snow could not stop her. Extreme heat that made her swelter beneath the trees could not dissuade her to turn back from where few breezes dared blow. She just kept coming, even on a night like this when the chill enters her bones sharp enough to make them ache and the bear rumbles sleepily in her breast longing for hibernation.

    She could have approached the cave-mouth as the bear but she chose to shift her shape at the last moment. The bear’s thick fur tolerated the chilly air better than Keeper’s did, so she shivered in the aftermath of the change. It still seemed eerie here because even though she knew the cave was in use and occupied even when her blue friend wasn’t there, the scents of Balto and his cave-companion did not fill the air for her to sniff them out. That was another reason she shivered as much as she was momentarily spent too from the shape-shift.

    But there she was: the pony-sized dunskin mare that had come hunting mushrooms in the moonlight and now came to hunt him out because she missed him. This time she was bold and braver than before as she poked her muzzle and only her muzzle through the hanging curtain of vines and creepers to murmur his name into the cavern air - “Balto?”

    ooc: posting from my phone so excuse typos and lack of html. <333
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    #3
    Through the vines comes the voice he had longed to hear but he had not allowed himself to dream of it, to even think of its owner. Since he had trekked down the mountain and somehow found his way back into their cave, he had been riddled with thoughts of her, drowned out by the wails of demons and the thought of their blood running down his body. She had been his saving grace, even though she had no idea that she had been. It is her that he thought of in the crypt of their bones, as he tore away at their flesh - they were a fantasy, their love had been fiction, but she had been real and she still was. That idea - her reality and her doe-eyes beneath the moonlight - drove him to get out of the insanity by any means necessary.

    And as the vines whisper in the breeze, parting for the darkened lips that open to barely whisper his name, his brow creases with sadness and he feels his heart breaking.

    She didn’t know what he had done - the horrors he had committed just to get back to this moment, to find her once again in the pale moonlight and talk beneath the darkness, like two old friends. Could he even tell her? He swallows hard, reaching forward delicately to meet her muzzle with his own, his nostrils fluttering wildly as he inhales her scent - something that had been just a dream to him for so long. 

    “Yes, Keeper,” he whispers back, his dark legs moving him forward slowly so that he emerges from beneath the cave’s depths, the vines parting as he passes and brushing against his blue mottled skin, resting on his back where he stops, looking at her with new eyes. He knows that he must look different - she would be able to tell that he carries something with him now, something far worse than what a life in darkness will bring you. It hangs heavy on his very soul, and he is unsure if it will ever lighten. 

    His ears flick back and forth, listening to the sounds of the forest. All is still tonight, save for the warm breeze that gently touches their skin. After he has soaked her in for a good few moments, drinking in the peacefulness that she brings him, he looks around himself as if seeing his forest for the first time. He squints, peering into the darkness and waiting for the terrible howls of demons that would soon find themselves on the wind and breathing down his neck. With a curious expression he turns back to her, the brokenness inside him still evident in his blue eyes. “I don’t hear them,” he says mostly to himself, incredulous. It had been the first time in many moons that his thoughts were his own, not stained with the memory of his time in the cave of the mountain. 

    Balto tosses his head, taking a deep breath and hoping to appear somewhat put-together before her. “I’ve been gone,” he says slowly, his lips pressing into a thin line. “I’m sorry.”
    But he is apologizing for so much more than his absence - he is also apologizing for the devilish things he has done, just so that he may see her again.


    --
    once the king of beasts
    but now they feast on thoughts beneath his vacant crown


    @[keeper]
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