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    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


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    hold high in the lowlands; woolf
    #1

    It was near dawn, and she had yet to sleep. As she ventured out beneath a night-darkened sky, she was afforded a certain solitude which she found more necessary at present. Despite the season, a trail of snow falls in her footsteps. Leander’s sickness had been worsening in the past few days, and yet he refused to leave her on the Isle in order to seek out a healer. Her brother had told her of their relatives in Hyaline – some she had known from before, some whose names were those of strangers – and of a potential healer in the neighbouring safe zone. Yet while it was all-too clear that he felt drawn to return there, she found the prospect less appealing than Lee.

    Of course, the old Kora would have gone with him without question, tailing along in his wake like a lost weanling. Pathetic. Ever since her resurrection from the waters mere weeks ago, she had looked back on her prior existence with what could only be described as distaste. Old memories left a twinge of bitterness on her tongue and a curious pulselessness in her veins; and now Leander’s presence served to constantly remind her of them. It wasn’t that she disliked her brother – she knew she must care for him in some capacity, otherwise she would have told him outright that she wasn’t about to go with him.

    Instead, she felt a strange disconnect between thought and emotion. In her mind, she knew she should care about the things he held dear. She would have cared, back before she’d succumbed to the ocean all those years ago. After all, their lost brother was the link which had finally united Kora and Rhy – and now that he was here, she should be feeling something. She should be thrilled at their reunion. She should be anxious to know every detail of the life he’d lived with their parents in faraway lands. She should feel concerned for his health, and she should want to go with him to get the help he so desperately needed.

    Perhaps she was done with ‘should.’

    kora

    vanished winterchild of riagan and rayelle


    @[laura] xD
    Reply
    #2

    bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze
    if you must drink of me, take of me what you please

    He is not quite sure why he comes back to this forsaken piece of land—why he bothers. It wasn’t like he actually enjoyed his last time here: the brief encounter with the less than pleasant natives, the freezing cold biting into his flesh, the unnecessary conversation. He wasn’t tied here—technically, at least, although he had said in so many words that he’d be around to help Nerinians—but he found himself back on these shores regardless. He walked through the icy tundra, not bothering to warm himself up although it would be easy enough to manipulate the air into rising several degrees, his coat into thickening.

    Instead, he grits his teeth, muscles working in his jaw, as he treks through the island, surprised that all of the commotion and chaos surrounding the place had died down so quickly.

    So many so willing to go to blows over a land that they so quickly abandon.

    He huffs, a mockery of a laugh as it leaves his lips, and rolls his eyes, his motion pausing for a moment when he sees the mare out of the corner of his eye. She is entirely different than anyone he has ever seen before, and he frowns in thought as he studies her from afar, looking at the ice that encapsulates her body, at the faint glow of the blue. Something like interest flares in his emerald eyes and he angles his current path, heavy footfalls carrying him easily across the slippery ground toward her vicinity.

    “It’s easy to imagine the land just spit you out,” he says, voice as heavy as his footsteps had been, without any kind of sweetness or pretense to soften them. He angles his handsome head, watching her with eyes that are sharper than they have any right to be, mouth pressing together. He considers adding more, considers playing the more diplomatic hand, but instead he remains silent, content to just watch her.

    woolf

    I am loathed to say it's the devil's taste



    @[Kora]
    Reply
    #3

    His approach sends reverberations through the earth, his footfalls like the beat of a drum, though the slog of mud and snow dulls the sound that causes delicate ears to twitch, a glowing gaze to turn. Her chin tilts upward so that she might watch his coming. Small and slender in stature, perhaps she would look even slighter in comparison to his rather imposing presence – but she does not balk at his advance as she might once have done. Instead, she remains curiously still; waiting.

    Butterfly-heart no longer.

    Abstractedly, she makes note of the masculinity that emanates from his every move, and at the rumbling of his voice, a silvery laugh escapes her. “It wasn’t the land.” Her own voice is whisper-soft, laced with something that might pass for amusement. “It was the ocean.” She feels his emerald eyes on her. Surely the weight of his stare should cause her some discomfort – but no – she was done with should, remember?

    A blue-tinged tail flicks about slender hocks, and a sudden wintry gust of air brushes coolly through the tangle of his mane. Snowflakes materialize from the darkness to encircle his barrel, creating a garland of white that twines about the bluish-red of him for some seconds before falling limply to churned ground. In the fast-fading moonlight, the miniscule crystals glisten wetly upon the earth underfoot.

    “What a funny phrase,” she muses, her lips curving absently at the thought as she looks him over with faintly returned interest. “I can’t quite decide what it was that spit you out, though.”

    kora

    vanished winterchild of riagan and rayelle


    @[woolf]
    Reply
    #4

    bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze
    if you must drink of me, take of me what you please

    His eyes spark with interest when her tail flicks and the winter responds in kind. He doesn’t bother to hide his curiosity, his heavy-angled head tilting to the side so that his sharp, emerald eyes can focus on the snow as it rises around him, encircling his barrel and then falling to the ground. His head remains where it is but his gaze flicks upward to catch her own, the edges of his lip barely beginning to lift in the corners.

    “What a neat party trick.”

    He wonders what it would be like to be made of such an element, to be so closely tied to the earth in such an undeniable way—or, rather, tied to the ocean. “So the sea,” he muses, wondering at everything that goes unsaid in the moment, everything that lives in the shadows of their eyes and hollows of their faces. “I would love to hear more about that.” Of course, he could always pull the truth of it from her mind himself, would probably be able to pull the pieces of it without here even knowing that they had gone missing, but it was better to hear it from herself—better to hear the words fall from her own lips.

    When she asks about his own roots, he tilts his head back and the snow begins to swirl slightly around his legs. “Oh, I wasn’t spit from the land, that’s for sure.” The snow begins to morph slightly, turning starry and dusty, constellations that stick to his cannon bones and then float around him. The stars burn and flicker and his emerald eyes begin to melt into blues and purples, small galaxies that spin on its axis.

    “It was an ocean, of sorts.”

    woolf

    I am loathed to say it's the devil's taste

    Reply
    #5

    Adorned in ice, her delicate head tilts ever so slightly as their gazes collide. She might have deflected his musings, but something in his voice speaks to a deeper part of her, stirring reveries of her own. “I was nothing,” she starts, her murmured words trickling like silvery liquid into the quiet dimness that surrounds them. “In the water, there is only wave, after wave, after wave. That’s all there ever was – all there could be.”

    Perhaps the sea hadn’t spit her out.
    Perhaps it had set her free.

    Something flickers in the cool glow of her blue eyes as the snow begins swirling upward, faintly surprised that it was done at another’s behest rather than her own. She angles her gaze and watches him turn the once-fallen flecks to snowdust, watches his eyes change to become an enhancement of the cosmos that is now suspended and shimmering about him. A vague sense is roused within her – though whether this was avarice or desire remains indeterminate, veiled by the sudden defiance that flares through icy veins.

    She will not be overshadowed.

    As he speaks, the suspended particles begin to pinwheel. Collections of frost twist and turn in seamless patterns to create orbits of white dust. He and she are the planets, unmoving even as the interplay of their conceptualization becomes a swirling vortex that encompasses them both. Surrounded by galaxies of ice, she meets his ever-changing eyes and exhales softly, lips parted. “You must know what it’s like, then?” Her breath is a smoky vapour that does not fade. Instead, it rises over their heads – a rippling mist that undulates above them, wavelike. “To be endless?”

    kora

    vanished winterchild of riagan and rayelle


    Reply
    #6

    bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze
    if you must drink of me, take of me what you please

    He has a difficult time imagining her as ever being nothing—as ever being nothing but the water.

    Still, it brings a hint of a smile to his face, a curve of heavy lip, an amused glint to his emerald eyes. “It is much the same in space. You are nothing but the galaxies spinning. Nothing but starfire and dust.” He remembers the cold and the heat and the moments of nothing in between; the way that he and his sister hung suspended between the particles, floating through the cosmos as though they lived there.

    But his memory is cut short as she pulls deeper from her own well of power, the frost in the air beginning to spin and circulate, twisting on its axis. He watches it, giving her display of magic its deserved attention as it begins to spiral around them. Fully intrigued, he takes a step forward, feeling the heat of her through even the frost of her creation, the ice of her body. “I know because I am,” he breathes in response, feeling his magic seep from him into the ground, the blue light of it causing the earth around them to pulse slightly before the snow begins to fall more steadily, equipping her with even more material.  

    “Aren’t you?” he asks quietly, stepping closer and closer, drawn in by the gravity of her.

    He wants to pull her apart and study her. Wants to understand the threads that compose her, the threads that draw her up, turning her cool and aloof and yet defiant and passionate. He stands close enough that he could reach out and touch her if he wanted, could close that final distance between them, but he has never been someone driven by the more base desires and he keeps the space, finding her eyes once more.

    “Do you miss it, sometimes?”

    He does.

    woolf

    I am loathed to say it's the devil's taste

    Reply
    #7

    He tells her of spinning galaxies and stardust. In a previous life, Kora’s cerulean eyes might have widened, her soft lips forming a small circle of wonder at the mere idea – but her intrigue is much more subtle now. She allows the imagery he provides to fuel her craft, the swirling snowscape around them becoming more and more like the space he describes.

    There is magic in him – she can see it in the faint blue energy that courses forth, soaking into the earth and ripening the snowfall for her purposes – and there is something in her that is undeniably drawn to him. To his power. Even as he steps forward, a sense of magnetism stirs between them. Yet the allure is curiously unemotional, almost scientific in nature. An experiment.

    Hunger flickers in her expression when he comes closer, asking her whether she is endless, too. Under his analytical gaze, her reply comes as a brazen whisper. “I will be once more, I swear it.” Wave after wave, she had been stripped of her old self; had she still been the frightened girl of her past, his proximity would have made her nervous. Touch had always reminded her of the Flash – of electrocution. She’d never craved it before, and she doesn’t crave it now. Yet neither does the possibility scare her as it once did.

    She isn’t scared at all.

    Kora finds this complete lack of fear so empowering that she decides to indulge in it. ‘Do you miss it, sometimes?’ She doesn’t reply – not at first. He is close enough that she doesn’t have to reach far before she makes contact with the warmth of his mulberry crest. The ice in her veins hums as layers of translucent armor begins to spread across the bridge of her skin to his like a frozen wave; and as it washes over him, her snowlaced lashes flutter closed.

    In the slow spiral of constellations and the muted quiet of snowfall, she contemplates the play of warmth and cold against her lips – the slight sting of it. Finally, she answers him with a murmured breath. “Always.” While she pulls away just enough to be heard, icy remnants of her touch are left to wend and weave upon his amaranthine flesh. A distant look is in her eyes even as her mouth curves – perhaps she wishes to test a theory.

    “Will you remind me?”

    kora

    vanished winterchild of riagan and rayelle


    Reply
    #8

    bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze
    if you must drink of me, take of me what you please

    She sparks something in his veins, but it’s not quite passion. It’s interest, curiosity, and he finds himself continually drawn back to it, watching her with his sharpened gaze, the rest of the world beginning to melt away. She is something else entirely, something carved from the winter itself, and he doesn’t know what exactly lives within her breast. If one was to split her open, would they find nothing but snow drifts? Would it be nothing but an icy terrain? The world reduced to the breezes and the icicles of her breath?

    He wants to know.

    Wants to know the ice in her veins and the snow in her heart.

    Wants to know what drives her, what pulls her apart, what drags her down.

    She closes the distance between them and he leans into the touch, letting ice crawl up his legs, skittering across his flesh and meeting the armor that connects them. When it touches, it doesn’t overtake hers but instead slips into the middle of it, iridescent blue spidering through her ice, cobwebbing across it.

    “You already are,” he breathes, although it is a compliment devoid of unnecessary awe. It’s simply a statement of fact. She’s eternal in this moment. Endless. At her question, something sparks in his gaze, something that recognizes this moment for exactly what it is. She doesn’t seek whatever heart may beat in his chest, and he doesn’t seek hers. She is curious, hungry to know more, and he’s ready to provide.

    So he doesn’t answer her question at first. Instead, something sparks in his gaze and he reaches for the ice of her, his mouth skimming across her cheek and down her neck. Snow begins to build up at their ankles as the sky darkens, blood beginning to flow down his stained shoulder. His flesh begins to shift, darkening and then turning to indigo, the color shift like the changing of tides in the ocean.

    His mane begins to bleach of color until it is nothing but icicle strands against his neck, and when he opens his eyes to find hers, they are crystalline blue. His breath plumes in front of him as he closes the distance, chest finding hers, teeth grazing across her flesh. “The memory of it’s always been right here,” he rumbles, storms and war drums in his chest. “All you have to do is reach out and take it.”

    woolf

    I am loathed to say it's the devil's taste

    Reply
    #9

    They weave their magic under fading starlight, but they take no notice – why would they, when they have created a starscape of their own? What passes between them isn’t intimacy in the normal sense. Nor could it rightly be called passion, though something powerful does blossom in her chest when he speaks. It is as though he knows exactly what will slake her thirst. Before her very eyes, the stallion begins to transform with a slow precision; and his touch is an exploration that is anything but heated, just as hers had been.

    A dark trail of blood runs thickly down his shoulder, but he changes his skin and the blood becomes a red galaxy upon the canvas of him, an intentional stroke of deeply rich shade against indigo. Perhaps he was meant to bleed for this moment. She lips at tendrils of mane turned to ice, and when flesh meets flesh, she looks into the crystal blue of his heavy gaze with steady expectation. She doesn’t even know his name – yet she finds she doesn’t need it. This was never about knowing one another in that sense, after all. Kora needs something else from him, and it is so much more than a name.

    She needs to know endlessness again.

    And so she wordlessly does as he bids her –
    She reaches out and takes it from him.

    kora

    vanished winterchild of riagan and rayelle


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