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+---- Thread: [mature] undo the knots of the past // any (/showthread.php?tid=17303)
undo the knots of the past // any - takei - 11-20-2017
Takei
Orion. His black and white frame illuminated by moonlight. The sound of the ocean sings quietly in front of him. The stars are spread dramatically in the sky, twinkling silently down on his ink and paper coat. There is no movement aside from the swell and recede of the waves.
Cassiopeia. Her severed head mounted atop the blood-covered rock like a queen on a throne. Her eyes gouged out, replaced by empty pits with nerve endings and blood vessels lain bare. Her delicate lips stretching into a smile that causes eyes to look away. The water surrounding the rock is painted a deep red.
Takei rises from the swirling world of dreams. They come in flashes, vivid memories kissed by the haze of fantasy. The force of gravity pushes its ugly feet down atop his muscles - so different from the lightweight sensation of floating between the crevices of reality - and he lets out a groggy moan.
Sensations of springtime crowd his mind suddenly. The weak bleat of a newborn filly. The pungent scent of growing wildflowers. The hesitant warmth of the sun on his side. The memory of the island melting away comes to his mind and, with it, the sharp taste of panic in his mouth.
Takei lurches to his feet, noticing then that - although his eyelids have slid open - the world is still dark. He blinks hard first once, then twice. There is nothing but infinite darkness, stretching out like the cold hand of death. Yet he knows he is back in Beqanna. He can smell the familiarity of honeysuckle and pine, he can hear the water rushing off the cliff into the lake, he can feel the grass against his ankles.
Despair crashes against his emotions, thick and grimy alongside the bitterness of panic and the ache of confusion. Orion… His ink and paper lover must have been lost in the swirl of the island. Takei had heard stories of the tricks played on the innocent of Beqanna.
It had granted his mother her spring life. It had riddled his father with his deathly looks. And now it had cursed him with his largest loss.
A low moan sings past Takei’s lips. He would never spend another warm night dancing along the shoreline with Orion. He would never tease the stallion’s sensitive skin with his blood and ivory lips. He would never chase Andromeda along the forest trails with glee in his heart.
He flexes his right leg, feeling the tightness of growing skin across the gashes created by Draco. They would scar - the wounds deep enough to expose tendon and connective tissue - but they would be a reminder of the separate, fantasy life he’d lived on that island. At that thought, Takei blinks again. His vision is still impaired, lost among the swirling destruction of his beloved home.
This time there is a painful, high cry.
Cassiopeia. Her severed head mounted atop the blood-covered rock like a queen on a throne. Her eyes gouged out, replaced by empty pits with nerve endings and blood vessels lain bare. Her delicate lips stretching into a smile that causes eyes to look away. The water surrounding the rock is painted a deep red.
Takei rises from the swirling world of dreams. They come in flashes, vivid memories kissed by the haze of fantasy. The force of gravity pushes its ugly feet down atop his muscles - so different from the lightweight sensation of floating between the crevices of reality - and he lets out a groggy moan.
Sensations of springtime crowd his mind suddenly. The weak bleat of a newborn filly. The pungent scent of growing wildflowers. The hesitant warmth of the sun on his side. The memory of the island melting away comes to his mind and, with it, the sharp taste of panic in his mouth.
Takei lurches to his feet, noticing then that - although his eyelids have slid open - the world is still dark. He blinks hard first once, then twice. There is nothing but infinite darkness, stretching out like the cold hand of death. Yet he knows he is back in Beqanna. He can smell the familiarity of honeysuckle and pine, he can hear the water rushing off the cliff into the lake, he can feel the grass against his ankles.
Despair crashes against his emotions, thick and grimy alongside the bitterness of panic and the ache of confusion. Orion… His ink and paper lover must have been lost in the swirl of the island. Takei had heard stories of the tricks played on the innocent of Beqanna.
It had granted his mother her spring life. It had riddled his father with his deathly looks. And now it had cursed him with his largest loss.
A low moan sings past Takei’s lips. He would never spend another warm night dancing along the shoreline with Orion. He would never tease the stallion’s sensitive skin with his blood and ivory lips. He would never chase Andromeda along the forest trails with glee in his heart.
He flexes his right leg, feeling the tightness of growing skin across the gashes created by Draco. They would scar - the wounds deep enough to expose tendon and connective tissue - but they would be a reminder of the separate, fantasy life he’d lived on that island. At that thought, Takei blinks again. His vision is still impaired, lost among the swirling destruction of his beloved home.
This time there is a painful, high cry.
watch the mind run far away, way ahead of us
RE: undo the knots of the past // any - keeper - 11-22-2017
Keeper-
not knowing how deep the woods are and lightless
@[takei]
RE: undo the knots of the past // any - takei - 11-25-2017
Takei
They dance together. Ink and paper, blood and ivory. They twist and wind and curve around one another to an unsung melody. The ocean laps on the shore beside them, occasionally sweeping wide to tickle their heels. The stars are an endless swirl of dark navy and twinkling silver. Takei feels his nerves flare with heat as his side brushes against Orion’s. His body grows cold when they separate.
They are separated now - whether by the forces of dimensions or the forces of fantasy. Takei is cold now, shivering beneath the warmth of the sun and the longing for his partner. He sobs to himself, grieving over everything he knows he has lost. A scent draws his attention, musky and warm and coppery.
A bear.
He’s seen one before, lumbering in the darker corners of Beqanna. The scent was distinct then, and he has clearly not forgotten it. Takei’s muscles tighten and he swivels his ears around rapidly, trying desperately to locate the predator. In the back of his mind there is a voice (“Do you hear others running? No one is afraid!”) but it is quiet compared to the roar of instinct. He prances in place for a moment, limbs tense and ready to bolt.
Panic grips him for a quick moment as he realizes he can’t run. If he can’t see, he won’t be able to run. He might head straight into a tree and end himself there, or careen off an unforeseen cliff, or plow over gentle children. The scent of a woman floods his sensitive nostrils then and his anxieties are calmed.
Takei shifts his body in the direction of the voice, his red and white face a swirling pattern of varying emotions. Her question nearly undoes him, but the stilling of his panic is enough to shock him away from sobbing into a stranger’s shoulder.
“No.” His voice breaks, low and forlorn. “I’ve been able to see my whole life, but I just woke up and now I’m blind.” Takei leaves out the most important pieces (washing away from Beqanna by the storm, falling in love on a foreign island, getting attacked by those he considered family, watching that island melt away into nothingness), though perhaps they might come out someday.
Just not today.
They are separated now - whether by the forces of dimensions or the forces of fantasy. Takei is cold now, shivering beneath the warmth of the sun and the longing for his partner. He sobs to himself, grieving over everything he knows he has lost. A scent draws his attention, musky and warm and coppery.
A bear.
He’s seen one before, lumbering in the darker corners of Beqanna. The scent was distinct then, and he has clearly not forgotten it. Takei’s muscles tighten and he swivels his ears around rapidly, trying desperately to locate the predator. In the back of his mind there is a voice (“Do you hear others running? No one is afraid!”) but it is quiet compared to the roar of instinct. He prances in place for a moment, limbs tense and ready to bolt.
Panic grips him for a quick moment as he realizes he can’t run. If he can’t see, he won’t be able to run. He might head straight into a tree and end himself there, or careen off an unforeseen cliff, or plow over gentle children. The scent of a woman floods his sensitive nostrils then and his anxieties are calmed.
Takei shifts his body in the direction of the voice, his red and white face a swirling pattern of varying emotions. Her question nearly undoes him, but the stilling of his panic is enough to shock him away from sobbing into a stranger’s shoulder.
“No.” His voice breaks, low and forlorn. “I’ve been able to see my whole life, but I just woke up and now I’m blind.” Takei leaves out the most important pieces (washing away from Beqanna by the storm, falling in love on a foreign island, getting attacked by those he considered family, watching that island melt away into nothingness), though perhaps they might come out someday.
Just not today.
watch the mind run far away, way ahead of us
@[keeper]
RE: undo the knots of the past // any - keeper - 12-06-2017
Keeper does not know how to reconcile this new part of herself with a horse’s innate instinct. Instinct is something that is so ingrained in them that she understands the reaction it has upon the shape of him as he tenses and tries to locate the source of his inherent distrust that she knows is because of her - because of how she smells, of how she was earlier and is later on, unable to shed despite the fact that she does not wear that skin now. The bear stays with her, just beneath the surface and she can feel it more and more as it merges with her soul and her horse-skin.
But the longer she stands there, just stands there, the calmer he seems to get because the scent of her - a mare - starts to push through the thick musk of bear. Keeper has no idea to tell him that it was all her, both scents, the presence of predator and prey in one shape that has no idea who she is these days as she becomes aware of the bear like a second self that is separate and struggling to usurp the horse that she had always been. Apologizing seems like a start but she has no idea how to begin it because it would require an explanation that she also doesn’t have.
The blur of emotions on his face is too fast and too much for her to follow but she understands that her question is one that he cannot offer up a genuine answer to. Of course, Keeper never fully expected him to say that he was okay when he clearly did not look it. But the break in his voice pulls at her heart and she cannot help how she goes to him, unthinking as he presses her small nose to his neck and tries to breathe a calm breath out against his painted skin. “I’m so sorry,” she mumbles into him. “I have no idea what that is like and cannot even imagine the horror of seeing then not seeing the next day.”
Despite the fact that he is a grown stallion, Keeper feels an odd motherly instinct towards him. Or since she does not consider herself old enough to mother anyone, it is perhaps more of a sisterly instinct and she moves her nose to his mane and smooths a few strands of it against the thick set of his neck. “You shouldn’t be here alone then,” she murmurs without trying to come across as chiding. Her concern is evidenced by the way she tries to press small sisterly touches into the curve of his cheek and the nook of his knee, as if assessing for other smaller hurts that she might actually be able to help him heal through non-magical means.
“I know a place where you could recover from whatever has left you this way.” because she has no idea if his blindness is permanent or a transient thing. What she does consider is that the bear in her would protect him fiercely, as much as the little pony-sized mare would and that he should come back with her to Hyaline where the wisteria and the blue lake would treat him with more kindness than this cold old field.
But the longer she stands there, just stands there, the calmer he seems to get because the scent of her - a mare - starts to push through the thick musk of bear. Keeper has no idea to tell him that it was all her, both scents, the presence of predator and prey in one shape that has no idea who she is these days as she becomes aware of the bear like a second self that is separate and struggling to usurp the horse that she had always been. Apologizing seems like a start but she has no idea how to begin it because it would require an explanation that she also doesn’t have.
The blur of emotions on his face is too fast and too much for her to follow but she understands that her question is one that he cannot offer up a genuine answer to. Of course, Keeper never fully expected him to say that he was okay when he clearly did not look it. But the break in his voice pulls at her heart and she cannot help how she goes to him, unthinking as he presses her small nose to his neck and tries to breathe a calm breath out against his painted skin. “I’m so sorry,” she mumbles into him. “I have no idea what that is like and cannot even imagine the horror of seeing then not seeing the next day.”
Despite the fact that he is a grown stallion, Keeper feels an odd motherly instinct towards him. Or since she does not consider herself old enough to mother anyone, it is perhaps more of a sisterly instinct and she moves her nose to his mane and smooths a few strands of it against the thick set of his neck. “You shouldn’t be here alone then,” she murmurs without trying to come across as chiding. Her concern is evidenced by the way she tries to press small sisterly touches into the curve of his cheek and the nook of his knee, as if assessing for other smaller hurts that she might actually be able to help him heal through non-magical means.
“I know a place where you could recover from whatever has left you this way.” because she has no idea if his blindness is permanent or a transient thing. What she does consider is that the bear in her would protect him fiercely, as much as the little pony-sized mare would and that he should come back with her to Hyaline where the wisteria and the blue lake would treat him with more kindness than this cold old field.
@[takei] sorry for the long wait! and the fact that keeper is very touchy lol <3
RE: undo the knots of the past // any - takei - 12-12-2017
Takei
The battle of good and evil.
It’s an eternal concept of life — with no beginning and no ending — but every living thing must go through it. Each day, decisions are made. Whether to fight or run, whether to hate or love, whether to comfort or bully, whether to live or die. The war is widespread and deeply-rooted, extending its arms through every period of life and beyond.
Takei doesn’t know how furiously she is fighting in that battle. He will not ever understand the sins and sorrows that grip her today and will grip her in the future (when she must eat, as all animals do, but it comes from the flesh and blood of another creature), or the way she will have to combat the more sinister side of her. Takei used to wonder what it might be like to hear inside someone else’s mind — to listen to their thoughts and see their imagination and touch their emotions.
It’s most likely a good idea he has not had that wish granted.
Her apologies barely soothe the coiled snares of grief and confusion that twine beneath his skin. It will take a long time for Takei to accept condolences with grace. His teeth grit, barring the sobs that want to escape from his thoughts. She touches his trembling, sweaty neck. He is startled by the sudden action, but the touch of another soothes him more than his words could have.
He is swimming in the cold abyss of darkness, but her touch grounds him.
She offers him someplace to stay — safety. Takei has seen the predators of Beqanna before (not just the other animals who prey on horses but also predators of the same species) and he is immediately grateful for her protection. He realizes that he has yet to say anything in response to her murmuring words.
“Would you mind harbouring me? I would prefer not to be a sitting piece of meat for predators to fight over when the sun sets.” His voice hitches, climbing in tone with the tightness of anxiety. Yet her embrace and her warm words and her sweet smell — so different from the whiff of bear he had just scented a moment ago — still his terror even so.
It’s an eternal concept of life — with no beginning and no ending — but every living thing must go through it. Each day, decisions are made. Whether to fight or run, whether to hate or love, whether to comfort or bully, whether to live or die. The war is widespread and deeply-rooted, extending its arms through every period of life and beyond.
Takei doesn’t know how furiously she is fighting in that battle. He will not ever understand the sins and sorrows that grip her today and will grip her in the future (when she must eat, as all animals do, but it comes from the flesh and blood of another creature), or the way she will have to combat the more sinister side of her. Takei used to wonder what it might be like to hear inside someone else’s mind — to listen to their thoughts and see their imagination and touch their emotions.
It’s most likely a good idea he has not had that wish granted.
Her apologies barely soothe the coiled snares of grief and confusion that twine beneath his skin. It will take a long time for Takei to accept condolences with grace. His teeth grit, barring the sobs that want to escape from his thoughts. She touches his trembling, sweaty neck. He is startled by the sudden action, but the touch of another soothes him more than his words could have.
He is swimming in the cold abyss of darkness, but her touch grounds him.
She offers him someplace to stay — safety. Takei has seen the predators of Beqanna before (not just the other animals who prey on horses but also predators of the same species) and he is immediately grateful for her protection. He realizes that he has yet to say anything in response to her murmuring words.
“Would you mind harbouring me? I would prefer not to be a sitting piece of meat for predators to fight over when the sun sets.” His voice hitches, climbing in tone with the tightness of anxiety. Yet her embrace and her warm words and her sweet smell — so different from the whiff of bear he had just scented a moment ago — still his terror even so.
watch the mind run far away, way ahead of us
@[keeper]
RE: undo the knots of the past // any - keeper - 12-15-2017
Keeper-
not knowing how deep the woods are and lightless
@[takei] let me know if you'd like me to post again, introducing him to Hyaline or if you'd like to just post there and carry on. <3