"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
12-29-2020, 07:17 PM (This post was last modified: 12-29-2020, 07:17 PM by Crevan.)
Our skin gets thicker, living out in the snow
CREVAN
Not for the first time and certainly not for the last, Crevan sat unmoving as a tree trunk rooted to the earth, staring out across the Meadow with a keen eye and a keener sense of loneliness. He was dressed as he always liked to be: wearing his wolf skin, free to point his snout at the sky and sniff out the horses in the distance who either hadn’t noticed him or had, the latter of which often paused in conversation or eating to cast him a wary glance. Studying them, he wondered idly what it would feel like to revert to the old ways, just try on his horse skin for the fun of it and join in on the conversation.
The large white wolf rose instead and turned away from the crowd, leaving his tail to follow behind as he made a quiet exit.
He knew better than to entertain an idea like the one he’d had moments before. They never did him any good, not when his mother’s eyes taunted him from the darkest parts of his dreams or when Corvus laughed at the back of his thoughts. It’d been years since Crevan had last gone horse, and there would be years to come before he put the old skin on again. Try as he liked, he was not one of them; he was only filled with the thrill of the hunt, the satisfaction of tasting warm blood on his tongue, and an acute pain that filled him with so much loneliness and sadness he found himself howling at the moon when it shone brightest and best. Even if he did dress the pretender [talk like they talked and walk like they walked], he was sure that the other horses would sense his “wrongness”.
So here he was: Crevan the lone wolf, Crevan the undying. The unyielding. Some animal stuck between two worlds, never fully belonging to either. An outcast - an outlaw in the very homeland he’d been born in, but persisting nonetheless. He lived because he could not die, and the cycle seemed a fitting sort of penance when he took to wandering nearer the other horses like he had today.
can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars,
I could really use a wish right now;
She had stayed away from them in the beginning. She had come away from that strange night on the shores of the beach, at the gates of the afterlife, with this new feeling.
It was supposed to be a gift, she thinks, but it feels like a curse.
Their emotions were too much, too loud.
They tugged and pulled at her own until she couldn’t tell where theirs ended and hers began; until she didn’t have her own, she was simply suffocating beneath theirs. She had her own fears and sorrows, her own anxieties and feelings of hopelessness – but she didn’t remember them anymore. Anyone she got close to she felt their emotions as plainly as one might hear speech, and it was not the kind of thing a girl like her was meant to shoulder.
So she fled, like she does best.
She retreated to the safety of the dark and solitude, she shed their emotions and was left with the bare-boned skeleton of her own.
But the dark is not the same as what she has come to know. It is thick, invasive. It chokes like smoke, whispers with sounds she has never heard before.
It brings back memories of acid-tongues and sharp teeth digging into her flesh, of knife-tails and alien-sounds that still haunt the corners of her mind. She knows, better than most, that the dark can grow teeth, and when she tries to leave it, tries to find her way back to the light, there is no light to be found.
She stands on the edge of the meadow, her heartbeat an erratic rhythm in her chest. Her eyes strain at the sky, at the dim halo of light that hung where a sun should, and she tries to swallow the icy dread crawling into her veins.
It’s only when someone else’s emotions press against her own that her attention is pulled away, to where a pale wolf sits. Her first instinct is to flee, until she recognizes the emotions are coming from him, and she thinks, but isn’t entirely sure, that she would not be able to pick up on the emotions of a real wolf.
This is only slightly reassuring since she has never done well with her own kind, either. She has always been too quiet and too shy, too timid and too unsure. She was a waste of their time, a waste of breath.
Her dark brown eyes watch him from behind a pale forelock that hardly stirs in the cold breeze, and driven by her fear of this endless dark and the things her imagination has invented to lurk inside of it, she steps towards him. “Do you want to be left alone?” She asks him in a voice that is painfully quiet, one that trembles with a hint of hope that his answer will be no.
I'm praying that this stairway leads somewhere like Heaven's door,
and when you get there don't look down
Crevan hadn’t noticed the mare at first. He’d turned his back on the world for the safety of the Forest when the long night came onto them all. A moon (the symbol of his life), eclipsed the sun and Crevan stopped walking. His paws steadily came to rest opposite one another, perfectly aligned like the celestial objects suspended above every living thing down below, and then the darkness overcame him, suffocated the light of this world, and jerked his body into a spasm like a doll being violently shaken. He could not comprehend what was happening even as the convulsion wracked his body. He wouldn’t be able to stop it, either.
The moon. The sun. The wolf. The horse.
They had always been separated by the natural order of things, by cycles and rhythms uncontrolled by magical forces. Crevan harbored more than a single body inside of his soul, and though majority of the time he could control shifting from one to another there were instances, instances like eclipses, that tore him asunder from the inside out. Evenstar had called out to him and he had stopped, then convulsed. How could she have known it wasn’t of her doing? How could she have even seen it in the dark, shrouded by the cowl of everlasting night?
“Everything is fine.” He snarled in answer to her question, mistaking her for a terrified animal experiencing the supernatural for (perhaps) the first time in her life. Cowed by the event, like all the others who murmured their worries intensely. “It’ll be gone in a moment.” Crevan muttered.
But, the longer he waited the less sure he was of the answer he’d given her.
The moon did not continue on its path where it belonged, yet hung listless and dark over the strange, dull ring of light behind it. Beqanna was as shrouded as a widow refusing to reveal herself, and the seconds ticked by. She seemed to be in mourning, and the cacophony of strange howls and scattered snarls rising from a darker forest beyond gave life to her soundless banshee wail. Death for them all. Death and Darkness.
The wolf shuddered again, probably unseen, and plunging his head to the ground he squeezed his eyes closed. No warning came; he slipped free from the bonds of his wolfskin with an audible rip that split the creamy pelt open right along the ridge of his spine. What was canine faded away, and the horse sleeping underneath grew up from the withered carcass, blinking his dull eyes and shaking his thick head at the dizzying reaction to nature’s rejection. He stumbled sideways in this unfamiliar body, though it’d been his birth vessel, and looked around blindly.
“Wait… wait!” He said, turning confusion to panic in less than a second. “I can’t see!” Crevan snorted, afraid for the first time in so long. “Help me!” He begged of her, undeserving.
How the mighty fall weak.
@[Evenstar]
@[The Monsters] ruin his Wolf Shifting
can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars,
I could really use a wish right now;
She was familiar with the strangeness of Beqanna— of the creatures that lurk and the way magic behaved in unpredictable ways.
But this was something entirely different.
This was different from unexplainable life-like dreams in the afterlife resulting in awakening with this suddenly overpowering empathy. This was different from her xenomorph and dragon sisters, different from the glittering skins and vibrant colors.
This was dark and heavy, sinking its way past her skin and to the depths of her chest where it settled like a stone. And around that stone beat her heart, anxious and humming, as she tries to not think of things that she cannot see in these new shadows.
Everything is fine, he growls, and while she cannot see the way the eclipse has trapped him within his own body she can feel the unsettled emotions that radiate from him. It makes her shrink backward, her delicate nose tucking near her chest, and she wonders if she should leave.
Her eyes adjust to the darkness though, slowly, and she can see that way that he convulses, and if not for the snarl of his tone she would have stepped closer to him. As it is she reluctantly remains standing, seemingly frozen— confused by the eclipse that lingers in the sky, worried by the way the wolf seizes and trembles, but too timid to do anything about either one.
The sound of skin tearing is nearly enough to send her away. She stumbles backward at the sound of it, her heart hammering as if it was trying to escape the confines of her ribs, as if it were willing her legs to follow suit. And had it not been for the way that he cries out she is sure that she would have ran — already fighting off the flashbacks of Ripley and Nostromo lashing at her skin, her scars seeming to crawl and burn at the memory. But his panic floods through her, bright and cold, taking hold of her and keeping her in place.
She doesn’t know how she does it, but somehow, she shuts him out.
She blocks out his panic and his emotions, she keeps him from drowning her beneath the immensity of his own confusion. And because she has always been too selflessly kind she steps towards him, reaching for the once-wolf that now stumbles blindly in his equine form. “I’m here,” and though her voice is whisper-soft she pushes something stronger towards him—a sense of calm and security, though she doesn’t realize yet that she’s doing it. She thinks it, though—she thinks how she wishes she could make him less afraid, wishes that she could soothe his panic and his confusion even if she cannot fix the situation.
She reaches for him and touches her nose just lightly to his shoulder, just enough to show him where she stands and to try and get him to settle. “Follow me,” she beckons, still close to him but taking a guiding step away. Her eyes are focused on the shelter of the trees that flank the meadow because she cannot shake the feeling that they should not be out in the open.
I'm praying that this stairway leads somewhere like Heaven's door,
and when you get there don't look down
Sometimes, you had to be driven to the edge at knifepoint in order to realize your own strength. You have to be left holding onto the root jutting out from the cliff, one hand on the only thing keeping you from plummeting miles to your death so you can break the limitations of your body and mind. No one person or thing pushes you there; usually it's the catalyst of events that come before the reckoning, and then at all once you’re stranded in the middle of an ocean, peering down into the bottomless depths with no water, food, or even a boat to help you navigate. Then what do you do?
You swim, dammit. You lunge back at the knife, reach up with your other hand and claw your way back to the top of the cliff. You don’t give up or give in to your fears, you devour them whole. A wolf never flees at the bleating protests of a sheep, and Crevan had never been pushed to ask for help but he does it now because he must.
He’s lucky then, that the jade green mare decided not to abandon him like any normal horse would’ve. Expecting to flick his ears and hear the sound of thundering retreat, Crevan is surprised instead to find a calm voice calling out “I’m here”. Nothing in his life had ever been so lovely, so warm and sympathetic than that phrase at that exact moment, and along with her magic he felt something else: repentance.
He should’ve never been so rude to her. Crevan had lived so long building up the tough exterior, hiding a sensitive and damaged nature underneath, that at the first sign of another’s kindness he’s brought low with shame. He didn’t deserve the glow of security wrapping around the pulsing neurons in his brain, spreading out through his limbs with each pulsing beat of his warrior’s heart. He deserved to be abandoned here where the creatures could have their easy pickings.
She still helps him. Touches her nose to his muddy-brown shoulder and guides Crevan away from the open and back towards shelter. For once in his life, he’s at a loss for words. The bulky stallion finds his legs quick enough walking behind her, but his head droops and his spirit plummets from pride to reserved sedation. The mare could’ve led him off a cliff at that point.
“... Thanks.” He murmured at last when the timing was poor. “Sorry.” Followed quickly behind it. “For the snarling earlier.” He explained.
A breath of silence.
“I don’t mingle.” The shapeshifter told her, blinking his eyes as the world slowly began to tilt back into shapes and forms again. “Ever.” He grumbled, finding the process too slow for his liking.
can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars,
I could really use a wish right now;
Life had rarely been kind to her, and so it hardly bothered her when he wasn’t kind, either. It’s not that she had not noticed; the snap of his voice may as well have been teeth against her skin for how surely she felt their sting. It just was not enough to drive her away. She was kind to nearly a fault—not in the way of her mother, who had adopted an almost overly passive and obedient nature as a way of survival. Evenstar was kind when others were not because she simply did not know how else to be. She was not made of harder things; their anger did not stoke a fire inside of her, did not awaken a need to retaliate.
All it did was make her ache—make her wonder what they have endured, to spark such pain and fury.
Something about the way he is suddenly so subdued fits like a barb inside of her chest. It did not feel like an accomplishment to her, to see someone with their spirit wounded. She doesn’t mean to pity him— something about the word pity felt wrong, or insulting—but she does feel sorry for him, in a way. Sorry that he does seem to be at home in this equine form. Sorry that perhaps it was the eclipse disrupting his shifting and keeping him in a shape he did not want to be. Mostly just sorry that there is no way for her to fix it. “You don’t have to apologize,” she tells him in the same hush of her voice, turning to offer him a smile through the dark, even if he couldn't see it.
She settles there on the outskirts, her eyes continuously flicking to the black abyss of the open meadow. She tries to ward off the uneasy feeling that had taken up home in her stomach by focusing instead on the stallion. She is still close to him, no longer touching but close enough that she could, if she wanted. There was something reassuring in having him next to her even if he didn't seem to particularly like her; she didn't think she had the right to be picky right now. “I don’t mingle either. Not anymore, at least,” she says, and she is careful to keep the wavering sorrow from her voice. She was not alone by choice; not really. It was just easier for her and everyone around her if she was. Until she could fully control the emotions that they send like a shower of rain from the sky, soaking her to the bone in things she does not wish to feel.
But she is so, so tired of being alone, and the once-wolf is, for now, seemingly trapped alongside her until he decides to brave the night, and she finds herself hoping that he will want to stay just a moment longer. Even despite his previous panic, there is something far more steady about him than most she has encountered, and she finds she doesn't have to work nearly as hard to keep his emotions away from her. “My name is Evenstar.” There is a noticeable pause, before she ventures to voice an observation hesitantly, “You don’t like your horse form very much, do you?”
I'm praying that this stairway leads somewhere like Heaven's door,
and when you get there don't look down
Crevan could slowly feel his senses sharpening again. The two of them, himself and the strangely polite mare, had gone quiet for a moment after his rough apology and the shapeshifter picked up her smell before anything else. She was sweet; smelled like meadow grass and he could taste the uncertainty lingering on her skin with a few raspy swipes of his tongue. Had they not been so close, Crevan might’ve missed that last bit, but now he could tell that they were less than a few feet apart from one another. Blind, deaf, and dumb - but with a sense of smell that could kill.
“Hm.” The stallion responded shortly, not exactly curious about why she claimed to never mingle. It felt easier to just accept things instead of questioning them, given that they were alike in this singular aspect. Being alone for so long had come naturally to Crevan; he suspected the same for the mare, Evenstar.
“It’s that obvious?” He asked her, blinking quietly. In the dark his expression was unseen, but she could hear the mild humor coloring the question if she listened well enough. No, he did not like his horse skin and had never been fond of the thing unless it was necessary. Now he was stuck in it.
“I’ve always been Crevan the Wolf.” He explained gruffly, pulling his head up from the ground to see the world lighten into grays and muted blacks. Seemed like his eyes were adjusting now, and he took the spare second to watch in mild fascination as Evenstar took on a solid shape before him. She was much… smaller. Much more dainty than before. “Life tends to be that way for kin.” The muddy horse told her, both his short ears flicking forward to parse out the strange sounds around them. He could hear the familiar rustling of an invisible wind as it shook the trembling leaves above them, and could hear the distant sounds of animals and horses alike moving off in different directions.
“We’re born with split personalities. Eventually, we tend to settle on one or the other.” He murmured in the back of his throat, a deep warble of sound not unlike the low rasp he’d used as a wolf.
“You came to me.” He remarked suddenly, aware of something he’d only just remembered. “Right before the eclipse. You approached me… a very unnatural thing for a horse to do.” Crevan wondered. “How could you tell?”
can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars,
I could really use a wish right now;
He doesn’t ask why she has chosen to be alone, and she decides she prefers it that way. She thinks he would find her weak; thinks he would not find it surprising at all that such a delicate thing was exactly the prey she appeared to be. She thinks for someone like him to be attacked by a xenomorph it would have incited rage, or a need for vengeance; for her, it just made her want to disappear.
So how foolish she must be, to have willingly approached a wolf—whether he was also half-equine or not his teeth still could have tore her open no different than any other predator.
She blames her loneliness and this torrent of emotions that wash like relentless waves over her. He was the first thing she had found that might act as a lifesaver—anything to keep her head above the water. She had taken her chances that being able to tune into his emotions meant he was equine, but she knew, better than most, that that didn’t necessarily mean anything.
Ripley had been born equine too and still did not hesitate to try and kill her.
His answer encourages just a small smile to her jade-green lips, and she feels her cheeks flush warm for even noticing. “It isn’t obvious, I could just sense it.” She doesn’t go into the details of that, for now; she isn’t sure if he will find it strange, or if he will close up and become uncomfortable to learn that she could read his emotions like other read minds. “Maybe when the suns come back so will your shifting,” she offers him in her quiet voice, though the words have an upward lilt of hope to them.
When the sun comes back—because surely it will.
Her eyes lift to the sky, and she thinks that the eclipse has lingered longer than usual, but she doesn’t know much about eclipses.
He makes another comment, on how she had known that she could approach him, and she hesitates. It would be suspicious to brush that off as an innate sense, too. “Your emotions,” she finally says after a pause, her words coming slowly as though she is measuring them, testing the reaction they cause. “I can feel emotions in other horses. I assumed that since I felt anything from you at all that it meant you were a shifter.” Something inside of her chest tightens, nerves that are beginning to coil. “I’m not reading your emotions right now, though,” she reassures him, but it’s a lie. She can’t control it; not yet. But something about being able to read how someone feels—not just their thoughts, but the very thing that makes up their inside and their soul—felt invasive, like she was seeing something she should have never been shown.
And she doesn't want him to leave; not yet.
I'm praying that this stairway leads somewhere like Heaven's door,
and when you get there don't look down
Crevan wasn’t sure what to say. Evenstar seemed like a nice mare, he thought. The kind that could be too nice, and who often needed someone to look over their shoulder for them. Her comment about the sensing things was nice, though. At least she was trying to be comforting. For her sake, Crevan scoffed in agreement. He, too, hoped that his shifting would return with the light, and if her senses were correct about her first observation concerning him, then he would bank on her being right about the second. From the corner of his eye, Crevan watched her head turn, and for the first time the shapeshifter caught the way her skin seemed to flash - like polished stone. Did she have that someone, he wondered? A someone who would look over her shoulder, like she looked over his?
“I don’t think I’ll hold my breath in the meantime.” Crevan muttered through his teeth.
And then something about her comment struck him: that she could sense his discomfort. Crevan hadn’t thought about it then because he’d been trying not to shift, but it came back to him now.
He didn’t distrust her. Evenstar hesitated to answer him, but Crevan was much calmer than before. He leaned the bulk of his awkward weight back against the rough tree trunk and shifted his forelegs around, intensely attentive to the green mare and what she had to say. The first part - about his emotions - made him shift to lean in closer, now that his curiosity was piqued. Evenstar was nervous, he assumed; she spoke slowly. In his gut, Crevan possibly knew why.
Shifters… they’re not the shy type. Crevan had known them to be a freedom-of-expression lot, who grew limbs in the middle of casual conversation and enjoyed hunting together whenever they crossed friendly paths. They loved for the world to know their secrets. But the other horses? The psychics or the elementals, (Crevan laughingly thought of them as ‘mystics’) were not the exposure kind of horses he’d come to expect, living among the free-shifters of Beqanna.
They played their games up there, Crevan blinked. Behind what eyes could see.
“The Power of Deduction?” He guessed sarcastically. Evenstar had just said that she could read other horses emotions, but she’d also nervously bumbled her way through trying to automatically reassure him. Crevan thought a joke might be appropriate.
“I don’t really care, if you were.” He surprised himself by trying to lighten her anxiety. In any other situation, he… would probably be pissed. “If you hadn’t already noticed, I’m not the kind of individual that holds back.” Crevan told her offhandedly. He wasn’t cheerful; there was still an eclipse happening, the common lands were all but abandoned now, but at least (he reasoned) things could be worse. “I’m usually not the overly emotional type, either, so maybe it’s a good thing we’re stuck out here together.”
At that, Crevan turned the broad side of his cheek so he could properly look at Evenstar.
“So,” He wanted to know, after giving her a few minutes to consider things, “Were you meeting someone today?”
