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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


    darling, you're wild-eyed, empty, and tongue-tied; castile
    #1
    Sochi

    darling, you're wild-eyed, empty, and tongue-tied
    maybe you need me or maybe you don't

    She barely notices that the world explodes around her.

    All of her attention is trained on the black cat who clashes with her. He is fast—faster than she expected—and it takes every inch to keep up with him. She feels his claws dig into her shoulder and tear; she roars, lashing out to retaliate, but he’s gone before she can hit a hit in. She feels his teeth against her neck and she is thankful for the folds of fur and skin that let her roll away with just punctured flesh.

    In the end, the two only break apart when they are thrown through the portal and into Loess. 

    Atrox rolls away from her, leaping to his feet in a motion far too graceful, and she is almost surprised to see the dark crimson stains of his own blood against the velvet of his fur. Still, his yellow eyes are electric and his feline smile spreads wide. “A pleasure, love,” he drawls, shaking his coat, turning on his heel, and then lunging in the other direction. Sochi blinks after him, wondering at who the hell he was.

    But it doesn’t matter because he’s gone and she’s left alone.

    Her legs tremble when she finally makes her way to them and she feels the way his claws ripped apart her chest and raked down her back. It stings, but already she can feel the way that her body begins to knit itself back together. It is slow, and painful, but she knows in a day or so, the flesh would be whole.

    In the meantime, she turns exhausted eyes—burning with fire and ash—to Loess. It is hardly better than the land she left behind and she frowns as she considers the maze. Pieces of it pull back into the ground. Other pieces smoke from fire or are singed from where various powers cut through it.

    That, much like her body, would be repaired in time too.

    What she doesn’t see is her daughter, or her son, or even Castile. Frowning, she angles her head back before she begins to make her way forward, limping into Loess and searching for her family.

    playing the slow rooms, howling at half moons
    if you are a Queen then, honey, I am a wolf



    @[Castile] - no rush! I just figured they could have a new thread post-war.
    [Image: sochi.png]

    I was less than graceful, I was not kind
    be out watching other lovers lose their spine

    #2
    and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left
    a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was
    Castile saw her in the fray, but his mind was far too gone and lost in the madness. Mayhem exploded around them as they messily carved their way into Tephra and ripped it open.

    The only regret he has is being absent for his children as they scattered. Reia faced the maze that resulted in a broken and torn wing. There would have been blood had the thorns been able to penetrate her scaling. There was a cut, however, underneath her left eye that dragged toward her mouth, halted only by the rising of more scales. With help from Tiphon, her wing popped back into place with a pained scream. She was a little battered and exhausted, but fine overall. Upon his return to Loess, Castile cradled her to his side before seizing the opportunity to find Sochi.

    They move together, nearly in unison, but Castile’s gait is weary. The climb down the hills tests his muscles as they groan from the recent exertion, but he masks all of his discomfort once Sochi enters his field of vision.

    ”Mom!” Reia exclaims as she bounds forward, the cut left alone by Tiphon’s healing at her request (“I look tough,” she told him). Her face buries into Sochi for a single moment before she retracts and peers over her shoulder at father as the distance among them closes. His mismatched eyes settle tenderly on Sochi and a lopsided grin lifts the edge of his mouth. ”You’re okay,” his tone is borderline nonchalant because he knew she would be. It’s one of the many reasons he is so drawn to her. Unlike many others, she is fierce and so very strong. They are both predatory in nature, an advantage that heightens their warmongering.

    A soft press of his muzzle is punctuated by a kiss against her neck. He breathes her in and shuts his eyes for a few heartbeats as the war replays in his mind. When he looks at her again, electricity courses through his veins. ”I’m happy you’re safe.” But as he says it, he glances away in mild search of their recent child whom he hasn’t yet met.


    castile



    @[Sochi]
    #3
    Sochi

    darling, you're wild-eyed, empty, and tongue-tied
    maybe you need me or maybe you don't

    Sochi feels something like relief explode in her chest when Castile and her daughter come into her vision.

    It is instantaneous and she isn’t able to keep it entirely from her features as she accepts the feel of her daughter against her chest, pulling her close and burying her head in her mane for a moment. “Reia,” she breathes, her voice even more husky than usual with the touch of smoke. She pulls back and takes her in, noting the cut beneath her eye. “You brave girl.” She reaches forward to press her nose to her cheek.

    “You look every inch a warrior.”

    It was only fitting.

    But her eyes do not linger there long because he is present and he is gravity. She just smiles leaning into his touch, feeling the warmth that blossoms so quickly. “I’m okay,” she affirms, even though it is obvious. Her chest is split and she can still feel the marks from Atrox’s claws down her back, but she is alive. Her lips twitch into a smile again as she takes him in, disheveled and alive with the battle. “You are too.”

    She doesn’t miss the way that he glances away and her stomach tightens slightly.

    “You haven’t seen Nikolaus, have you?”

    She knows he hasn’t had a chance to meet their youngest yet, but she hasn’t seen him since she returned from the war. “He has my blue,” she says, as if it matters, her expression crumpling into a frown.

    “I haven’t seen him since I got back.” Another faint ache in her belly. “I’m worried.”

    She didn’t have a word for it—or a way to explain it—but something wasn’t right.

    playing the slow rooms, howling at half moons
    if you are a Queen then, honey, I am a wolf



    @[Castile]
    [Image: sochi.png]

    I was less than graceful, I was not kind
    be out watching other lovers lose their spine

    #4
    and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left
    a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was
    ”Not as brave as you,” Reia confides as Sochi’s lips trail delicately across the healing cut below her eye. She only blinks, never winces, as she admiringly drinks in the sight of her mother beneath the broad sunlight. A rare, subdued smile stretches across her lips, absorbing the adoration and compliments with a feral purr. A small plume of smoke coils from her nostrils, harmless and seemingly unintentional by the surprise on her face. As though he has the answer – though she is well-aware of what she is – she glances over her shoulder at Castile just as he closes the space among them to touch Sochi.

    A warm smile traces the edges of his lips and softens his war-torn face. It’s easy to fall into her embrace, melt into her touch. She, along with their children, is his weakness. For years, Castile tried to defy the depth of his heart and keep prospects at an arm’s length. He warned them away, scared them away, because he realized how precarious it could be if loved ones fell into the hands of enemies.

    Reflecting now, he realizes that is exactly what mother did.

    The epiphany elicits a subtle retraction of touch, but it lasts a single heartbeat as he suppresses the subconscious fear.

    ”I am,” he whispers into the arch of her neck even as his gaze slips across the wounds laced across her back. His gut clenches, wanting to destroy anyone – everyone – for harming his family. Reia is only scratched from the maze since Tiphon dutifully mended her broken wing. Sochi’s chest has been split, the edge of flesh curling and withering as the tissue dies. And Nikolaus? Castile’s eyes flash with recognition. The worry in Sochi’s voice hooks him. Their son. They have a son. But he isn’t here.

    Fear approaches the lines of his face, playing with the idea of exposing his weakness. It presses near enough for a corner of his mouth to quiver and for his heart to suddenly flutter before he grasps it and controls it. ”Shall we look for him?” He needs to be the calm, the steady rock, for her and Reia as she peers up with a widened stare. ”Where did he go?” Blinking, she rolls her attention to the hills and cacti around them, calculating where to even begin.


    castile



    @[Sochi]
    #5
    Sochi

    darling, you're wild-eyed, empty, and tongue-tied
    maybe you need me or maybe you don't

    There is an animalistic part of Sochi that wants to give into the howling, keening fear that threatens to rend her apart. There is a part of her that wants to split apart at the seams and then hunt down anyone who had dared touch her family—who had dared to harm her dragon-born daughter or her youngest. To anyone who had threatened to rip them apart before Castile had even been given the chance to meet his boy, the one with her coloring and a gift she can only assume came through his side.

    A gift she doesn’t understand and yet loves all the same.

    Still, more than her feral grief and rage, there is a sense of control that she has harnessed her entire life, and looking down at her father’s wide eyes, she holds onto it now. Instead of shifting into her tigress form and hunting down whomever had harmed her family, she remains calm, her silver eyes the only source of the churning tides within her. “We should,” she agrees, her husky voice steady despite it all.

    She glances down at their daughter, pressing her nose into her neck.

    “Can you go find the other children of Loess? Perhaps he ran off playing with them.”

    She pauses, realizing that Reia has yet to meet him.

    “He looks like the blue of my face, but all over,” she smiles, despite the tightening in her gut. “And he has your eyes.” Her eyes, she thinks, looking into Reia’s, but she refuses to let her daughter see anything but perfect calm on her face. “Now, hurry, while your father and I look through the hills.”

    When she is gone, and Sochi is certain that she is out of earshot, she closes her eyes, taking a steadying breath and feeling something like panic rear its head in her. She fights against it, breathing out hard, before she finally opened her eyes again and looks up, studying his face.

    “I don’t know where to start,” her voice is tight. “I don’t know where he would have gone.”

    playing the slow rooms, howling at half moons
    if you are a Queen then, honey, I am a wolf



    @[Castile]
    [Image: sochi.png]

    I was less than graceful, I was not kind
    be out watching other lovers lose their spine





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