"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
04-24-2020, 07:51 PM (This post was last modified: 04-28-2020, 09:06 PM by dark.)
and in the end, i will seek you out amongst the stars the space dust of me will whisper “i love you”
She is not the ugly erosion of her mother. She is quiet, but she is the quiet of early morning and pink skies, the quiet of damp fog and dew soaked webs. She is the peace of dawn and the forgiveness in a brand new day. There is a weight to her, a heaviness learned from watching someone she loves hurt so deeply, but it is not her weight - though she tries to bear it anyway. Selfish, perhaps, because it is easier to share a burden than to watch someone you love wither beneath it alone.
She is bright gentle eyes the color of pale bark, of tanned mushroom skin in the shadow of a quiet forest. She is blue like her mother, but the color is so much paler, almost steel, almost cornflower - mother is dark like the bruises she keeps in her heart. There is white on all four legs, reaching all the way up to knees splashed dark with satin black fur. There is a second splash of white across either side of her neck and settled like stardust over her chest, and a third that spills over her belly and towards her flank. Her face is mix of dark and light, a wide blaze between her eyes and stretching low to reveal the fragile pink of her nose and mouth. But the rest of her is that dreary blue, like the way a sky turns steel right before a storm.
Dark is no storm though.
In all regards she is plain except in one way, in a lineage she is proud of, and the way her parents gave her light to wear like armor over her skin. She has learned to control it better now - though as a child she was nearly always draped in light, like a million constellations drawn together over steely night skies. It has always made her feel so beautiful, to be bright like mother, to carry stars like father. To have something so special from each of them with her always.
She calls on it now as the day fades and the sun sinks beneath a distant skyline. It’ll be brighter in a while, once the pinks and golds and sunny oranges drain of their color and dark truly sets. For now the armor is just a quiet glow of mimicked starlight she wears in the image of her handsome father. A plate of soft starlight over the long bone of her slender face, thick plates over hip and shoulder, with more narrow pieces patterned over long legs, and narrower pieces still over each delicate curve of rib.
The trees she wanders beneath are dark and full of long, reaching shadow, and with a smile she releases the concentration of armored light so it spills over every inch of her steel and dark skin. The light isn’t solid, more like a fog of twinkling light clinging to her sky, like stardust in the corner of a weary night sky. So when she slips more deliberately into the deeper shadows with a gentle kind of amusement traced across the gentle face, her physical body disappears from sight so that there is only a starlight girl left in its wake.
(she is using light armor and shadow camouflage to appear like she is made of stardust)
DarK
into the infinity of the universe (dovev x luster)
She is made of light and stardust, and he is made of darkness and sorrow. He watches her from the edge of the wood, and should she just glance to the side she would perhaps see the glowing red of his eyes, but little else. Here in the dark the shadows of his body are indiscernible from the shadows of the forest, and he knows that should he just close his eyes he would all but disappear. He used to, at first. He used to be afraid of them – anyone – seeing him, he didn’t want to taste the fear that unfurled from them as soon as they caught sight of the glowing red eyes staring back at them from the never-ending darkness of his face.
But he is captivated by the way she disappears and materializes as stardust. He is enraptured by the idea that someone can turn into something beautiful and not something horrendous. She does not crave fear and sadness and anger, he thinks. She does not survive off all the things terrible in this world, and he is so sure that she would be appalled by anyone that does.
It’s why he doesn’t know why he walks towards her.
He peels himself from the shadows, and in this dying light it is not as noticable when the darkness of him wavers like a living thing. He steps towards her slowly, cautiously, like he is afraid he might startle the starlight back into the sky should he move too fast. In the twilight the red of his eyes is not as harsh, and the light strains through the wispy shadows of his mane and his tail when he asks in a voice that sounds unfurls like smoke and tastes like ash, “Who are you?”
and in the end, i will seek you out amongst the stars the space dust of me will whisper “i love you”
He is the kind of creature you imagine late at night, when you’re all alone and the dark has managed to settle her teeth in the soft of a vulnerable mind. He is darker than the shadow that gathers and grows in the trees between them, and his body is made of edges that seem soft and hazy, indefinite. It is only because she had not noticed those burning lantern eyes that her mind allows her to categorize him as one of the haunts that lives in her periphery - one of the things you see but is always gone when you give in and turn to look.
But then he blinks and she does turn, startled and wide eyed and all aglow with twinkling lights over every inch of that delicate blue body. Her heart races, thumping wildly in her chest as he comes closer, but it is only because she’s never met a haunt before. They always disappear.
She feels both frightened and exhilarated by the fear that thrums through her, and when he finally draws to a stop beside her, she takes the opportunity to take another step closer until she is near enough to touch her nose to his. It feels like stepping into mist, cool and with a strange uncurrent of billowing air. He is so strange, and she cannot help the way the hairs stand all down her spine - but he is also quiet and gentle, so far, giving her no reason to be so wary.
So her delicate face softens, those warm brown eyes gentle as a shy smile slips across the pale and blue of her whiskered mouth. “I’m Dark.” She answers, and her head tilts gently to one side in a way that makes her seem curious. “Though maybe not as dark as you.” She is so delighted by her own joke that those soft eyes shine and twinkle from beneath the tangles of a dark forelock. “I’ve never seen anyone with eyes like yours,” she tells him, suddenly earnest again and examining him with such a bashful curiosity, “they’re like rubies full of fire. I like them very much. Mine are just brown.” She pauses, tossing her forelock out of her eyes so he can see them better. “Like,” she pauses, considering what their brown is most like, frowns and then smiles that sunshine grin again, “not rubies full of fire. Who are you?”
DarK
into the infinity of the universe (dovev x luster)
He startles her, accidentally, and he fights away the hunger that gnaws at his gut at the scent of her fear. Fear is adjacent to the things he craves, and in the silence between them – that moment when she is staring at him all doe-eyed and utterly innocent – he fights away the urge to see if he could incite from her what he truly wants.
He does not think she is made of anger; he cannot imagine this girl spun of starlight ever being fueled by rage, and so that is pushed to the side.
But she could be sad, of this is he sure, because as light is opposite to dark, so are happiness and sadness. And you cannot have one without the other; their existence depends on their counterpart.
(And how long would it take to break her until she is nothing but despair and sorrow, how long until she is so entirely made from it that he could suck her dry and be satisfied?)
He catches himself in these thoughts, and he blinks his bright red eyes to bring her face back into focus. There is shame burning in his throat and it drops to settle like a hot coal in the pit of his stomach, and he almost leaves without an explanation. Torryn has never been a cruel creature, but the shadows have began to turn him into something – someone – else entirely. He wonders how long he can fight it; he wonders if this feeling of starvation is real, if it is not just something his addled mind is tricking him into believing.
She reaches forward to touch him, and he knows he should pull away. He already knows, even before it happens, that she is not going to feel him. She will pass through him like the nothing that he is, and he is so afraid of the emptiness that they are both about to find that he is not sure if he can withstand the disappointment. Despite his earlier thoughts of what she would be like full of sorrow, he realizes, already, he does not want to see the light ever dimmed in her eyes.
He is surprised, then, that he does feel something. It is not quite tangible, it is not as sure and strong as touching skin-to-skin, but the shadow of him seems to recognize the starlight of her, and that, more than anything, causes him to forget the incessant hunger clawing at him.
“Dark,” and it is no surprise at all that his tongue caresses a name like that so perfectly, and there is a wisp of a smile on his mouth in appreciation of her joke. “How ironic.”
He resists the urge to turn away when she studies his face, afraid of what she might find the longer she looks at him. The tendrils of his mane swirl and billow like smoke across the shadowy shape of his neck and in front of those bright, burning eyes that she stares so closely at, yet he does not move. He wonders if she can feel the way he is staring back; the way he is looking so closely at her face, trying to understand why something so light and delicate was choosing to stay.
“There is nothing wrong with brown,” he tells her, and if the harsh glow of his eyes can soften then they do. “My mother’s eyes are brown.” He does not say that his eyes used to be brown; he does not say that he would give anything to have plain brown eyes and be simple blue roan again. “My name is Torryn.” He looks again to the starlight draped across her, and though he finds himself taking a step closer, he does not touch her. “You are made of starlight?” The question is asked with a quiet kind of wonder, and maybe also a trace of envy, though it is so faint he does not recognize it; consciously, he just wonders would it would be like to be made of light rather than shadow.
