"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
i never said that i would be your lover
i never said that i would be your friend
i never said that i would take no other
What is it that takes her out of Hyaline and sends her to Pangea with the child in tow? Her rose-gold splashed princess brindled in mauve doesn’t look like her father typically does but it doesn’t matter either way. Soothe knows who she belongs to and Kensa cannot imagine herself pretending any of her children come from any men other than those they do. Even Valek who knows so little of his father has never had his parentage concealed.
She cannot conceal this girl any more than she could have concealed that handsome son and cannot imagine she would need to. Not when she has seen her husband’s many children some of them almost as fine as her own. Crybaby and Hatchetface in particular are handsome, strange young things and as Kensa passes into the canyonlands she glimpses them along with an odd pink and black puppy…? A rabbit? Not the strangest thing she has ever seen in Beqanna but its close. As much as she wants to and thinks that she somehow recognizes that rabbit she is here to see Lie and introduce him to this new member of their family and does not have the time to stop. Kensa trots on until she finds the handsome cremello not far from one of the many rivers that wind in and out of the canyons he has made his home.
She whinnies a greeting to him and lopes the last little distance unperturbed when she sees two new foals in his company, pleased to see that he has clearly chosen a fine mother to expand their family, the colt and filly just as beautiful as little Soothe. She comes to him, greets him with a kiss and then a press of her muzzle to his cheek.
Until her topaz eyes refocus on the boy, the girl, and the glint of constellations on their little bodies. Kensa draws back calmly, placidly even. “They are beautiful Lie. Who is their mother?” Its not a question she has asked before, ever, she has never cared...but she has never looked at one of his children and felt like her ribs and sternum have turned to lead.
Not wishing the give away how much her question matters, Kensa looks down at her little daughter and says with tight but genuine pride. “This is Soothe.”
boy what's normal to you? 'cause that sure ain't normal to me.
An ache, one so strong it twists Litotes’ insides like pretzels, has taken control of his body. For days now the sensation has built and built until he thinks the discomfort is choking him: wrapping long, slender, pale fingers around his throat and squeezing until the bones of his neck snap. Pain that grips his muscles and joints and tugs, as if there are puppet strings attached to his limbs that tighten and tighten until he is a horribly coiled and combative machine. Nothing feels right when he exists like this: all food too bland, all water too hot, all touch too barren.
It is a limbo - or a hell.
He is simply -
liminal.
Most of his suffering disappears when he sneaks the twins away for a day. Draco follows with his sly eyes and prying questions; Dove trotting just behind his tail and sweetly squeaking when she trails too close to its twitch. Apathy does not exist when Lie is nestled between his children, even if they are a symbol of a strange and powerful secret.
The limbo of black passes into grey and white vision, and for the time being the cremello is aware he is alive again.
They rest by a canyon river: Dove crying that she is thirsty, and Draco begrudgingly admitting that his mind reading is becoming too overwhelming around so many strangers. He smiles down at them half-heartedly, the love from the first time he saw them blooming into something so much bigger. He is dipping to ruffle Draco’s mane when he hears the unmistakable call of his wife. A worried glance of his gold eyes tells him that she is accompanied by beautiful filly, and that there is no ill-will in her gaze. Lie relaxes into a more comfortable stand, nervously twirling misty shadows at his twins’ hooves.
Kensa’s kiss is welcome, and the Archon leans into it with the tiniest feeling of relief. A small smile is all he can muster, before studying the child at her side in the second in between their touch and his wife’s words. She may be his, and she may not be. That hot, familiar flash of anger and jealousy tilts his eyes into slits, but any cutting remark he may have remains unsung. They know of each other’s trysts, after all. Lie cannot tear her from her pleasures when he does not demand the same of himself.
Still, that stifling guilt swallows the will to live his children’s presence gave him. She must not love them like he loves Starsin - or maybe she does, and she feels just as much guilt. There is no give away of that pain in her eyes, though, and he wonders briefly if she would tell him. He wants to talk about Starsin, to lay his fear and pain and guilt out so plainly, but he does not make time for it; or perhaps he is worried that his wife will love even more freely.
“Uh,” he says then stops abruptly, tilting his ears backward in a negative sort of curiosity. “Her name is Starsin. We were good friends when I was imprisoned in Loess.” Lie number one. He does not know how to tell her his best friend is someone he has never introduced her to, even if it was entirely on accident. “You should meet her.” His smile is weak when he offers it. “And Soothe is beautiful.” But he does not ask like she does, he does not want to know. Call it jealousy or call it trying to understand one cannot own another - Litotes is not sure who he is in this moment.
and if i fall would you know that to do? and if i'm caught up would you stay?
i never said that i would be your lover
i never said that i would be your friend
i never said that i would take no other
She had known before the question had even left her mouth and yet… and yet…
How unprepared she is for the jealousy and horror that climb the ladder of her spine and settle throbbing at the back of her skull. She knows she should not feel this, but there had been greed when she had touched that woman, tasted the constellation patterns on her skin and she had wanted her for herself like she has wanted only two others. More even, in ways, though that seems impossible when she is with one or the other. Still Kensa had said that everywhere else they would only be friends, why then, here in the light of day with three infants milling between them does Kensa want to drop her ears and challenge her husband for something she cannot even name.
They have never shared a lover before, she has never considered it. The both of them taking their private time and satisfying themselves outside their own bed, rarely even acknowledging that it happens.
Too there is something that turns her eyes sharp, the edges of them like blades against the whites of her sclera. She has had Starsin, and having tasted her changes something about Litotes mating her. There is no way he feels so casually about her, it isn’t possible after being with that woman… or are her own confusing feelings making her read too much into his back turned ears and wavering smile? She should not care, but this is a perfect storm and she finds herself unable to straighten out her feelings.
I have. She wants to say, I have and I’ve wanted her a hundred times since the first...and you, you must want her too. She does not say it.
“Starsin. She was the one you tried to steal from them.” Did that sound thoughtful? She hopes it does. She tips her head to the side slightly, wearing that unread-ably quiet expression that means she does not care at all or her mind is a hurricane of thought. What tangled webs. Then, because she cannot help it, and because she finds herself wanting to make him squirm so that he cannot notice how rigid she finds herself. “I have met her. She is very beautiful.”
As beautiful as I am, do you think? Kensa wants to ask him, to see what he says. He would not know the right answer, even if he were to think he did. Mine her heart snarls.
Finally, her gorgeous gemstone eyes, glittering, drift back to the lovely children who she greets with the same affection she pours out open all the others because they are hers too. His are always hers too, and hers are his. “You chose well. They are going to make us proud I think.”Us. The three of them, because now she is tied to Starsin in a way she had not expected to be. After reaching out to the twins (who smell of their mother in a way that pleases and confuses her) she touches her darling little Soothe, Ophanim’s child and wonders if Litotes would think the girls parentage to be quite as amusing as she currently does. Or she is just losing her fucking mind.
Worse yet she finds she wants him now, another match upon the confusing pile. Yet there are children present so instead she breathes a prim little sigh and looks at Litotes quietly. Slowly calming her foolish response to what should have been a benign revelation. Or at least trying to.
boy what's normal to you? 'cause that sure ain't normal to me.
If the cremello knew of his prickling wife’s thoughts, he might turn volatile; instead, he sits in an instinct that he has not drawn upon in a long time.
A lion, furious and protective, roars in his mind. The wind blows the tangled mess of his white mane, and for a moment he can feel himself start to lose control. The hair begins to shrink, to soften - and then back to its wild length in an instant. He sharpens, in sight and in mind, body tensing to defend something he does not understand. It is a monster, now: being locked away for so long has made it hungry, consuming. The taste of blood sits distantly on his tongue, he draws away, retracting the fangs he did not realize were tearing into his gums.
He will not hurt her again, at least not like this.
She is very beautiful. The phrase repeats itself over and over again in his mind. It taunts the angry, starving creature inside of him - the one that wants to tear every good person in his life limb from limb. What exactly does that mean? Any number of events could have transpired, but Litotes does not find Starsin the kind to stand idly by and chat with his lover. No, he knows her and Kensa far too well to know that their conversation will not have been a harmless one.
The flames of his lion’s fire roar higher. His chance to discuss this with his wife has been ripped from him.
They are going to make us proud. The King’s mind snaps back in place, only fully comprehending Kensa’s last sentence. He does not hear the three that whispers just behind us; nor does he think that the only two women he has loved are tightly and irreversibly woven together.
A shudder rushes down his spine. What feeble and flammable cage he built around his sanity goes down in hiss and pop.
“Yes, they are too smart for their own good,” is Litotes’ sighing reply. The words are a bit shaky but he finds relief in not allowing an awkward silence to stretch between them. “It is good these three have met each other.” He smiles again, though it does not reach his eyes. For a moment he is able to resist the spider of pissed off need that crawls up his throat. It bites the back of his tongue and covers his mouth with a web, leaving him to choke on his swelling mouth.
“Did you get to know her?” he finally blurts out, hoping that he does not sound too desperate.
and if i fall would you know that to do? and if i'm caught up would you stay?
08-12-2019, 01:36 AM (This post was last modified: 08-12-2019, 01:40 AM by Kensa.)
i never said that i would be your lover
i never said that i would be your friend
i never said that i would take no other
No, he would never hurt her like that again. The woman who ran from his lion is gone. Though she does not realize that violence seethes beneath her husband’s skin because she is at that moment thinking distantly of other constellations than those mutedly catching her gaze as she watches the three infants inspecting each other. She would rise to meet him and her fury would rival his own, even though she could never beat him.
“It is…” Kensa replies absently and she should say something about how they should encourage closer bonds between the children she raises in Hyaline and those he sires beyond them. It would be a natural thing for her to say after all, but though the thought forms it bursts again and leaves her only with the nagging sensation of something forgotten.
“Starsin?” Though she knows who he means perfectly well. “I did spend some time with her, though I can’t claim to know her well. She knew me the moment she heard my name thanks to you.” A small smile pulls a the corner of her mouth but she watches his face with those topaz chakram eyes. The chestnut does not like the way she dreads some unexpected variation in his features and so lets her attention skip away, her face turning into the wind. “We only spoke a little though, I didn’t get the impression that the two of you…” Though her eyes flick to the twins they bounce quickly back to Litotes. She knows how these things sometimes go, and anyway she wasn’t worried about that when she met Starsin. She had no fears about her husband and they only spoke a little… “I enjoyed her company.” This is the truth, but saying it to Litotes suddenly feels too vulgar and so she quickly adds, “I expect I will get to know her better now.”
Even as she pretends that is enough she cannot stop talking. “Is she someone you would want me to know well?” This is that old curiosity flaring to life, morbidly perhaps. Even if she doesn't know how like serpents they are now, rivals circling one another when their prey has already escaped.
boy what's normal to you? 'cause that sure ain't normal to me.
A Litotes in another universe, one that can read his wife’s mind without a single hesitation, bristles beneath the possessive fire of Kensa. Starsin is no more the Primarch’s than she is his, but even the vaguest idea that his lover deserves the star-woman’s attention more than him would send a terrifying fury down his spine. He would rage against her, fight her tooth and nail, because he has laid himself barren for Kensa and will be damned before he presents her something else to be ripped apart.
When Kensa mentions she will get to know Starsion better, Lie tilts his head away in suspicious confusion. They have never spoken of his other children’s mothers. A discomfort itches at the back of his mind: what is it about Starsin that makes Kensa want to get to know her more than the rest of his fleeting lovers? The only one he can imagine his wife with is Dawn, but even the Pangean queen is one the sabino avoids, even if for reasons other than their shared . . . interests.
An order for the children to go play far, far away is on the cusp of Lie’s tongue when Draco coughs out a maniacal laugh. He is young but far too harsh for his age, and the twisting emotions in his red eyes immediately put the Archon on edge. “I think you already know her well enough,” he snaps out, childish disgust wrinkling the skin around his eyes and mouth. “Don’t think about my mom like that, please.” The sentence is harsh but as Litotes pieces what he can together, he notices how cloying his son’s voice is. He would reprimand Draco if the subject was not so jarring. “And you don’t want my dad to know my mom, so why are you asking that?” Even through all of the strange cutting remarks, there is a childish misunderstanding. Lie whips his head around to stare the demon-boy down. They face off until Draco finally heeds the orders his father is mentally demanding.
“Let’s go out, idiots,” the colt yells, then kicks off further down the river. Soothe and Dove reluctantly follow.
When they are out of earshot, Lie turns back to Kensa with an uncharacteristic glare. “I’m not fucking doing this, Kensa. What the fuck is he talking about? And why the fuck can you not be straight forward about it?” He is harsh, cursing and stamping a hoof against the ground. The hesitance and worry of before have entirely dissipated. The breath he takes in is long and heavy, and he closes his eyes against his reality.
“I don’t understand you anymore. Maybe I never did.”
and if i fall would you know that to do? and if i'm caught up would you stay?
i never said that i would be your lover
i never said that i would be your friend
i never said that i would take no other
She has been dancing around him, trying to gauge what he feels about Starsin, how meaningful their connection is. Who has more right to her. That uncharacteristic mistake of possessiveness turns on her like a rabid wolf.
Too, Kensa does not just resent that they have shared a lover. It is knowing what it is to be intoxicated by Starsin, though they have only known each other a short time. He has been her ‘friend’ for years and in the next moments as his demon child shatters her neat glass facade, she wonders how far her husband has fallen to Starsin. As if she has any right to wonder.
Luckily thoughts of Brigade do not sneak into her mind, not when she is so focused on teasing out just how close Litotes and Starsin are.
She shouldn’t care, and it is a cruel slap in the face to be reminded of it. The boy’s outburst leaves her in a stunned silence though she almost summons her daughter back, protective, embarrassed and furious with Litotes’ red eyed son. She should have expected at least one if not both of the children would share their mother’s gift and have their father’s capacity for biting words. The discomfort of jealousy, the heaviness in her chest is joined by a sickening visceral plummet…
But Kensa, rises to meet Litotes' glare with one of her own. Her body shifts, tightening, chin tucking protectively against her throat. “You don’t understand me. Why? Because I fucked Starsin? Is that what you wanted me to say in front of a trio of children?” She snaps, unprepared, unrehearsed because he was never supposed to know. Starsin had asked they not tell. “She didn’t want you to know.” She says softly, too softly almost, lost and wistful and realizing all too rapidly that she is not holding all the cards.
She is ready to fend him off, to defend herself against stallion or worse yet jealous lion. The scars from before don’t sing with the memory of their creation, but they should. Kensa should put more space in between the two of them but she is distracted by the realization of just what the secrecy meant.
“Litotes. Why did she care if you knew?” Because she has spent no more than a few hours with Starsin and yet sees that they are rippled reflections of one another, proud and beautiful and unafraid of conquest. Starsin could hide what she wanted from Ophanim but it shouldn’t have mattered if Lie knew...unless Starsin herself didn’t want him to. Kensa backs up a step, her gold trimmed ears dropping back against her blond waves. ”Why didn’t she want you to know, Lie?” It matters more than she wants it to, all her jealousy withering back as she recognizes that her claim on the gray mare is little more than an infatuation. Blind.
08-12-2019, 11:49 PM (This post was last modified: 08-12-2019, 11:50 PM by litotes.)
boy what's normal to you? 'cause that sure ain't normal to me.
A fierce protectiveness flashes in Litotes’ eyes when he senses Kensa’s anger. He almost steps after his twins, into the empty space their clattering hooves echo - anything to keep them from the nightmare unfolding in this little river canyon. If she wanted her child, she could have it. If Lie knew whose it was, he would probably throw himself beneath the mountains’ lake again and hope drowning holds less suffering than whatever bull shit he has gotten himself into.
“You fucked Starsin?” he snaps back, replaying the only night he will ever have with her alone. Had she been with Kensa before then? The cremello takes a step back from Kensa, eyes distant as his ears tangle with the wild mess of his mane. Something that betrayal chokes him, but it is severely overshadowed by anger. “She didn’t want me to know,” he echoes, even further from reality than before. She didn’t want me to know? Suddenly the cremello wishes he had died in his father’s fire, or at least that the flames had chased him far, far away from Beqanna.
For the first time, he sincerely wishes he had never met a single soul he knows here; and that flare of panicked emotion sends him tumbling down a cliff’s edge of compartmentalization.
Kensa’s own realization passes across her face and into the agitation of her ears. They sit there as fools, and perhaps both of them are wondering if they were dragged into some sick game. Litotes gulps then blinks away the haze. The anger returns.
There is heat in his eyes when he finds Kensa’s. “Because I fell in love with her, and she probably feels the same, but she is much better at living in fucking denial. And twisting everyone’s narrative to better suit her interests. I was fucking stupid . . .” What started as cutting ends as uncertain. He still loves Starsin, and that realization steals the words out of his mouth.
“Why?” he whispers as he takes several steps back. The gentle trickling of the river unnerves him. “Why would either of you . . .” He stops suddenly, straightens out a head that was bent with the jolting weight of epiphany. “I love her, but I chose you. I love you, and not a day went by that I did not think of you - and I wanted to speak to you, to lay it out, but I never . . .” he pauses, “I just never did. The guilt, Kensa. I -” On this pause he chokes and looks away, eyes misting. Then his chest tightens, and his eyes find that same cruelty from before, and he sheds a couple of tears before spitting, “But that guilt is all gone now. I see I meant fucking nothing to her - I’m not even worth a heads up. I will not remain locked up in her secrets, or yours. And if you want me to stay away like Draco dragged from your mind, then you’ve fucking got it, Kensa. Starsin is all yours. And yes, darling, I do not fucking understand you.”
Lion’s teeth protrude from his lips, and shadows swirl protectively around him. He could leave if he wanted to, disappear in an instant and find Draco amongst a Pangean shadow; but he does not.
Perhaps he wants to be hurt.
and if i fall would you know that to do? and if i'm caught up would you stay?
i never said that i would be your lover
i never said that i would be your friend
i never said that i would take no other
Kensa would never harm a child, even her anger at Draco’s meddling outburst is short lived. She has been a mother too many times, and feels too much love for even those that do not belong to her to ever feel any unkindness for long. It doesn’t matter though, Litotes has already seen it, another sin for him to count.
She cannot find it in herself to believe she was manipulated by Starsin, the two of them together had been as honest as anything. Yet all that time ago, a year at least, (more?) Starsin had wanted it hidden from Lie, had known that it would hurt a man that did not belong to her as much as it might the one that did. What had the chestnut woman thought could exist between them anyway? A sneaking secret affair that only occurred in that grove beside an uncharted length of the river? She cannot indulge in Starsin and come away unchanged. In time it would have consumed her… but that is irrelevant now.
Kensa watches her words break over Litotes and at first seeing him hurt is a twisted victory, a blow landed in another impossible battle between them. How juvenile their fight in the meadow seems by comparison.
She doesn’t want to love him right now. Not because she is angry of feels cheated. Kensa wishes she felt nothing because even when she is the one to hut him she suffers and her chest is already too tight.
Though she knows the words are coming they are still a slap across her face with a firebrand and she recoils. Her head twists to side and she strafes to the left and back again, beauty in the severity and agony writhing through her frame. To hear he loves Starsin, that enough has passed between them to birth not just children but love makes tears spring to her eyes, angry and hot. Not for Starsin, not now. She too walks a fine line towards this betrayal but Litotes has gone over before her and though she cannot hate him for it she feels the weight of every secret moment between he and the other woman he loves, everything given to Starsin instead of her. It burns away her guilty moments with Brigade but in doing so leaves a scar.
“You love her.” It is perhaps not what he thought she would say, soft and wounded but she is staring at him, dragging herself back into place. “You love her.” Though it hurts her, she sees how unmoored he his by the revelation that Kensa and Starsin had laid their own foundation of secrecy beneath the love he has for both of them.
Litotes tells her of his guilt, wonders at the duplicity of these two women whom he loves, and finally, with his shadows climbing up around him tells her he will go. Their eyes bore into one another, all of them reddened and wet and miserable. Her fatigued body shivers and Kensa has no defense at all for herself. “I would make her yours if I could.” It is not a cutting, strange version of “go be with her instead”, though he might just take it to be. She yields because she has never asked him to love only her, never expected that he would forever be satisfied by her no matter her beauty or charm. “I didn’t know.”
He does not understand her, her ravenous heart is a limitless and generous heart. It may be too late to make him see...and even now she does not want to take back what transpired between herself and Starsin. So Kensa faces his renewed anger with nothing but honesty. “I love you. I’m going to love you until I’m dust. I wanted her, and when I want something I make it mine. You. Hyaline. Our family. I don’t need you to understand me. I played a game with you today and it was wrong but there is no…” No taking it back. No stopping his loving her. No life in which they will be able to pretend themselves back to the blissful ignorance of their youth. She moves closer, knowing in doing so she invites the glittering teeth and the strangling shadows. “You love her and I want her, if one of us needs to stay away it is me.” Kensa sets her jaw though, refuses to pretend anymore today, and her voice is low and severe when she says, “But you should know that I wont.”
boy what's normal to you? 'cause that sure ain't normal to me.
Ask him how it is that he ended up here. Go ahead. Ask him. Litotes does not have a goddamn idea; or he does know, and he tells himself he does not because the reality is too much to face right now. What sits before him is a faultline, one that gapes and groans and separates the lovers by fear and force. He can jump that length, if he truly wants to, but the choking honesty is that he does not. He wants Kensa to remain opposite of him. He wants her to suffer for her secrets.
Rage tightens his muscles and shapes equine teeth into predatory ones. There is so much anger that the cremello can barely keep his skin under control (the madness of when he first discovered shifting feverishly beckons him). Shadows swirl as his lips curl to reveal those teeth that could tear flesh from bone in a mere second. How dare she not want to hurt him? How dare she not want to fight? Lie sees her lack of fury and does not understand (cannot understand); and now he wonders what does make his wife angry? And does he really know her at all?
There was a time when the King would have bent the knee to Kensa. He almost wishes that level of servitude would return. It is much simpler than ripping a several years long love out by the roots.
Litotes hears everything Kensa says, but his mind is already made up. The only murmur that draws him from his seclusion is the one that warns him she will not stay away.
He laughs.
It is an ugly, cold, cutting noise. It catches on the back of his throat and nearly sounds like a choke. “Did you really think I thought you would stay away?” His voice is a growl, eyes low and ears pinned back. “Do you really think, at this point, that I am worried about you fucking Starsin? I don’t give a fuck, Kensa - and I never will again.” The pain, the fury, the strangling knowledge that he is terribly overwhelmed: he explodes. “I am not some collectible to be added to your stash of ‘wants.’ You may want me, but I do not want you. Not anymore. Not like this. I don’t want someone that has no fucking self-control, even when they look the one they are hurting in the face and continue with their behavior. I don’t want you.” He stops, tears spilling down his cheeks even as his mouth gleams with all the weapons in the world.
Am I lying?
“And for the record, Kensa, I was the one that wanted you. And now I regret it.”
Doesn't matter.
He backs away, body morphing into a lion that leaps into the Pangean dirt. Lie turns tail and pads off, praying for his sake and Kensa’s that she does not follow.
and if i fall would you know that to do? and if i'm caught up would you stay?
