"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
09-05-2016, 12:02 PM (This post was last modified: 09-07-2016, 11:56 AM by Ainlif.)
His legs quivered, the color of coal. Dark mane plastered to his curled neck, unseeing eyes staring blankly at the ground. Rasping breaths wheezed from the beast, the monster. The red-gold pelt wrapped around him was slick and damp. His exhaustion came from within, raging a war in his mind, with himself. His heart.
The ghostly apparition of his daughter was no where to be found. He'd failed her in life, and now she wouldn't show herself anymore. What had he done this time? Didn't she see he needed her? She used to follow him everywhere, keeping him company in his isolation from the rest of the world. His beautiful baby girl..
She had been so real to him. Almost reborn. His second chance. But she was gone again, and he wasn't sure she was coming back this time. He wasn't sure he could survive losing her again. He failed her.
Like slick clay, he melted to the ground. He let his legs fall wherever they would, uncaring. Unfeeling. His throat closed and he choked, grimacing in pain no type of healing could cure. Unshed tears spilled to the clinging dirt as his head fell heavily. Barrelled sides heaved with stuttering gasps, the darkness around him somehow growing darker. Am I dying..?
A last deep breath, and with a slow exhalation his body stilled. Numb. Detached. So emotionally spent, he could only stare ahead, not even registering what his eyes took in. Everything was bleak and blurry. So dark..
A light..so faint. So soft.
A face.
Kinley?
His heart clutched and tightened, he couldn't breathe. Tears fell from him, unashamed, happy. She was here. She came for him. He was too fatigued to move. Could only lie there, his inner turmoil spilling down his face as he stared bleary-eyed at the figure. She came back. His baby.
"Please..don't leave me," he whispered with a choking sob.
She has been to the Mountain --
Whatever magic and mystery has been long buried beneath the earth has thrust up, tall and peaked, to make itself known. It mothers them; brings them to her rocky breast and bids them to remember who they are - horses, first and foremost, all the rest was just the trappings of magic and time, and to the very bone of them, they would always be just horses.
Scalped is okay with that; she began life as a horse and ended life as a horse, until her eyes opened and she saw the bright blue of the sky above the Plains on which her head laid last where it had fallen in her death throes. She knew then, that she had been forever changed as if Coyote had come to her as she bled out from her heart’s source and touched a tricksy paw to her brow and said, Live my child.
She can feel that immortality once again, after having come down off the Mountain.
It licks her bones and glosses them over, scrapes away the age and strengthens the imperviousness of her mostly pale flesh.
The medicine hat mare can scent her children - they are safe; thank Coyote for that! There are small miracles in the aftermath of this, after all. She moves through the trees, almost trailing them and she can see them engaged in play with a red-maned black filly. It is easy to see that the girl must be a half-sibling to the twins through their big black father with his red eyes, but she does not go to them - not yet, there is time enough for family later on. She feels drawn to the trees, and Scalped is not a creature of closed in places - trees are claustrophobic to her, if only because she has only ever known wide open spaces, like her beloved Plains far far from here, almost in another time, it seems.
But in her travels, she comes across a stallion lying on his side on the ground. He seems to be breathing and she almost pokes her nose at his ribs just to see if they rise and fall with each breath as they should. The stallion started to cry unashamedly, asking her not to leave him in a choking sob and this spooked her badly - she had thought him near death! Now he was blubbering in sorrow, and she stumbled back a step or two, lowering her head to the dirt, snuffling at it and almost nosing her way back to him - almost closer. “Are you okay?” she ventured softly, concern pinching her face tight as she focused her black eyes on him. He almost looked like… but no, the smell was all wrong. She nearly sighed and pulled her head up, that was long ago in and magic snatched that place away.
Scalped snuffles at his neck, nosing the hairs of his mane along it. “Why do you cry?”
She edged closer, his baby, her image fuzzy for the first time. He didn't care; she'd come back to him. She was giving him another chance, and he nearly cried again with joy. All the places he'd take her this time; the meadow, the field, anywhere. Everywhere. But his crying had startled her into retreat, and somewhere in his mind he felt a thread of suspicion trickle through. She was never unsure of him.
And with the sound of her speech, the suspicion bloomed. "Are you ok?" he hears a gentle voice ask. In life, Kinley had of course spoken to him, but never again since her death no matter how often her image appeared to him. A tiny ember of hope still sparked though, and he blinked rapidly, trying to see her face. He needed to see for himself it was not her.
Bleary eyes slowly focused, too weak to do anything more than lift his head inches from the ground. The sweet face so near had no calming effect to the anguish that assaulted him next, ripping through him with violent shudders with the painful realization Kinley hadn't return to him after all. His mind felt sluggish and dulled, a sickness of sorrow lodged deep within him. And it took longer than it should have for him to remember she, the stranger, was there, so lost in his pain as he was.
The faintest brush of her breath against his neck was what brought him around again. He flinched, and stiffened. unaccustomed to being touched. He had isolated himself for so long, slowly losing his mind as his only company was the imagined manifestation of his guilty conscience in the form of his dead daughter. A part of him could not deny an innocent pleasure in another's touch, wanting to melt against it for the offered comfort.
But a slow, dangerous stirring in his mind marked the waking of the beast within. The feral one. Uncontrollable. Yet more evidence of his fraying state of mind. It roused with a low rumbling growl, almost as quiet as a whisper at first, using him as its mouthpiece. It stretched its great bat-like wings in his head, hot steam slipping from the corners of its mouth. He was amazed, not for the first time, that the massive creature even fit in his consciousness; though, it wasn't truly real, was it?
The intelligence slipped from his eyes then and he felt his head rise again, slowly. Locking her with the look of a rabid dog, the growls intensified. It was a bluff, the monster knew, for his body was too weary and worn to follow through with the threat. But it bared its teeth regardless, his own lips peeling back as though commanded, as if it felt threatened by her innocent kindness. Afraid someone, some day, would soften and dull the lethal weapon it knew he was.
His tears make puddles; a queer mix of sentiment and mud that pools beneath his head.
She is afraid he will drown in his own sorrow, but her fear is not so great as to make her move him in some way. Rather, it is paralyzing and she flashes back to a time when the tears of others fell on her like rain and she lay not in a pool of her own tears but blood, damnably red and darkening the grass under her head.
Scalped blinks away the memory;
She is brave, brave enough to bring her muzzle inches from his neck. His stink is one of stallion and sorrow, but there is more pain than horse there, she thinks. She blows out a gentle breath on his skin, but he flinches at it and she backs up again. Something stranger happens after that --
He stiffens.
He snarls.
She lets him bark and bare his teeth, and she is still unafraid in the face of his naked, raw pain. Scalped comes back in close, her lips skim the length of his neck exposed to her like the belly of some beast. He tries to be beastly and she refuses to let him. It is his pain that lashes out at her; that snarls and slavers, as a thing dark and wild comes to the surface in his eyes. Her breath catches in her throat, a hitch - then, she can breathe, in and out, and she recognizes the wounded look of him, an animal in distress, and she is beset by sentiments old and familiar like a pair of hands running up her neck, brown and long-fingered.
Scalped sighs, steps around him and folds her legs neatly beneath her. Her side touches his, barrel to back, and she speaks more to him and the wind than anything else. “You’ve lost someone.” It is statement, perceived fact, or perhaps instinct that drives her to say this but it falls like hard truth from her tongue. Scalped is moved by compassion and comparison; loss is familiar to her, though she lost a boy and he lost a daughter that she knows nothing about, or even that this is the origin of his pain. She just feels it - the pain, and it feels great and terrible, and she can shoulder as much of it as she can, as he lets her.
“I cried like this once, too. But it was too late, always too late.”
The admission is soft, pained, and she hates the memory of it.
The growling had increased, and yet she seemed unfazed by it, though maybe a little hesitant to start. Like a memory forged, he could still feel her breath where it had stroked him.
She sighed and stepped back. His aggressive utterances quieted warily and his head instantly fell back to the ground with a fatigued huff. But she wasn't leaving, and he sensed her circle around to his back. Warmth spreads along his back and the growls return, louder, ears flattening. His heart sighs though, finding pleasure in the feel of another body against his. So conflicted...
Her gentle voice silences his protests, and the great dragon in his mind hesitated. She went on to relate to his pain, the intelligence flickering back in his eyes as her words started to sink in to him through a haze of bitter hurt and anger.
"I cried like this once, too," she says quietly. "But it was too late, always too late." Her words wound his heart, striking so close to home. He had been too late. Too late to save her before she was murdered. He should have been there. It was his responsibility to protect her and his mate and he had failed them both. The beast of his anger stirred again, but he pushed it down. That battle was with himself, not her.
His skin twitched where her warmth held him, fighting off the foreignness of her touch like an illness. But she was persistent, and remained where she was. After a time of -almost companionable- silence, his body seemed to accept it and stilled. A long sigh released his taut muscles as he settled, somewhat grudgingly.
The pain in her voice called to him, and he found he wanted to comfort her, protect her from future hurt, as he once would have done. But he was too weak just now, and didn't know her. Besides, he wasn't the same anymore, was he? No, he couldn't grow attached. She was a stranger to him, they all were. It was best he keep it that way.
"I used to see her..." he admitted just above a whisper. "I feel I've lost her twice now." His voice was low, and a bit gruff with misuse. He'd chosen to live in solitude for a long while now. First in mourning for his family, and then punishment for failing them. And now lately, as if protecting himself.
He was no longer knowledgeable in conversation as he had once been, long ago, and didn't know what more to say. An odd thought occurred to him, and he wondered: if she left now, would he remember her tomorrow?
It had been too late;
Too late to avoid the horn of the old bull that hooked her breast and ripped it up.
Too late to avoid the way her boy slid off her back as she stumbled, eventually rolling end over end.
She, as a horse, was too big to trample under the multitude of their hooves.
He, as a human, was not.
They leapt over her, and others ran to either side as her flesh parted the sea of them. But him, they did not spare and their hooves trampled bow, arrow, and boy all at the same time. As the life bled out of her, she saw only his mangled flesh feet from her but her legs stopped answering her brain’s demands to move. Her stare became one of death, looking out beyond his body and far out over the endless grass and sky.
Scalped still does not know why she woke up days’ later, sucking in a breath and stuck to the earth in a crust of her own blood in a marriage of dirt and dryness. The gaping flesh of her breast had healed up, puckered and pink across the splotch of red fur and on up into the white of her throat. But she blames Coyote for it, that trickster god that has a paw in everything and since that awful day when she woke up, more alive than ever, she’s never aged or changed.
(The brown and black of him reminds her of brown boys and shaggy buffalo skins.)
(The sorrow in him, reminds her of her own.)
He sighs; an ear twitches, hears it.
She makes the assumption that is he gradually coming to terms with her barrel against his back in small waves of acceptance. Reluctance still stiffens his spine, she can feel it though it is not altogether too uncomfortable; she understands, had refused the touch and look of all else but the wind for many years after, until she came upon her own kind again - horses, like him and her. She fell back into the old ways, moved with the herd and bore foals.
They lived;
They died;
Scalped did not.
It was this that drove her away.
Coyote had tricked her off the road to the stars and chased her back down to the earth, driving her right back into the same house of flesh that had failed her. (That old trickster dog might have had a paw in that too! What else could have turned that buffalo bull into her, hooking his horn in her breast, but fear and a slavering jaw in the flying dirt and dust behind him?)
“I don’t know if it gets any easier,” she tells him, coming back to him from deep in a pit of memory that was dark and terrible. “Maybe we lose them over and over so we can never forget what it is that we lost.” She cannot be sure if she is talking from experience or not. The memory of that day comes around every few years and she feels like she lives it over again; even dies all over again but it feels too real and how can a memory feel like that?
Her nose finds the top of his head between his ears, and she buries it there, breathing him in.
She had yet to shed a tear but it slips down the roman length of her face, circles the curve of a nostril and falls onto his poll; apparently she is still capable of crying too.
09-15-2016, 11:36 AM (This post was last modified: 09-17-2016, 05:32 PM by Ainlif.)
It seemed a long breath of time before she spoke again, her voice like a cool balm on his wounds. It both eased him, and irritated him. That a stranger could effect him so easily was evidence enough of his lack in defenses. Perhaps imagining Kinley for so long had weakened him, rotted away his inner walls.
He would rebuild them. Lock it tight.
"Maybe we lose them over and over so we can never forget what it is that we lost," she added softly. He could see that, but he also thought he'd rather forget than feel so much pain. Damn, he was a terrible father. And mate. So consumed in despair for his daughter, he could hardly remember what her mother looked like, despite loving her so long ago.
His teeth ground together as he let his thoughts slither in their own darkness, driving home the self-hate he'd formed long ago. Before all of this, he would have seen self-depreciating thoughts as weakness; if one thought so little of themselves, how could they become anything more? But now it seemed a strength, in its own way. He cared so little for himself and his own welfare, what did he have to lose?
He lurched out of his thoughts at her touch. Held stone-still, he felt her velvet nose sink into his mane at his poll, filling herself with his scent. The intimacy of it shook him to his core. He remained, afraid to move. Was he dreaming? Is this another hallucination?
Another moment later, he nearly didn't feel the telltale wetness that dampened his coat. Just one drop, almost imagined. He realized he'd been holding his breath and forced himself to breathe again.
Finding strength, he rolled to his belly, the movement putting a small distance between them. His spine chilled immediately without her warmth. He avoided her gaze, looking away, his mind swimming. He'd forgotten what it felt like to have someone touch him, how good it feels. Emotions, sensations, all clouding him. He couldn't seem to hold onto one thought before it slipped away, grasping for more but failing as they all seemed to melt into the whirlpool.
Conflicted. Confused.
His old self wanted to comfort her, as she had done for him. Soothe her ache. But he fought against it, knowing how quickly he could grow attached to a kind soul. Knowing he'd suffer the pain of loss again, lose himself. All he could think of now was the feel of her.
He knew what he had to do. He had to end this. But he was too selfish to walk away. This stranger's touch, he craved now. If he didn't leave, then he'd have to drive her away instead. And he'd at least allow himself the painful memory of affection, something he'd forgotten in his solitude. Enjoy it while it lasts.
The beast had lay dormant in her presence, but he nudged it awake. Never before had he chosen to call upon it. He needed it's strength. It's cruelty. Impassive, cold-blooded.
Unfeeling.
He turned to her then, gold lights in his sharp eyes. His gaze slid slowly to her cheek. Throat. Neck. Shoulder. Hip. No emotion claimed his face as he reached for her, carefully, tentatively. His nose brushed her cheek lightly, hard eyes watching her, then pressed into the soft skin beside her jaw, inhaling deeply. Eyelids shuttered the danger in his gaze, and he shifted his broad body closer, lining himself against her side. Let her hate him. He'd take this much at least.
Every movement was both deliberate, and unbidden. Slow and careful so she could see it coming. She would touch him a little? He would touch her too much, push her away as he'd never done to anyone before. His attentions, unwanted?, were as a lover's would be. Precise. Gentle. Sweet.
She’s had nothing but time.
Years of it.
Years enough to know that the severity of pain has lessened over time.
She chewed on her pain, fed off of it and grew fat with life (in more ways than one). Pain had become a familiar fare, as much so as grass was to her, that she could not imagine taking it and making herself stronger for having tasted it. She wore her pain and her memories proudly upon her red-shielded breast in the form of that long jagged scar and it’s pink puckered flesh.
Scalped had other scars, but none so memorable as this; scars from arrows, even a bullet once, that burned along her hip. She had scars from the mating dance with stallions, and scars from mares challenging her authority in the herd. None stood out as noticeably as the one on her breast (or the bullet that grazed her hip) and it held the most power, as only memories can, and the most pain too.
Pain could become a demon though, and she suspected that his pain had become such a demon to him as to terrorize his very self.
He was so very still beneath her touch that she thought he almost stopped breathing; wondered, if his heart had ceased to beat for the moment it took for her to breath in his musky stallion scent and pull her head back almost reluctantly. She had not meant to be so motherly, so intimate and not with him! He was, after all, a veritable stranger to her and here she was, sticking her nose in the nest of mane about his poll and inhaling the scent of him like her lungs were starved for air. Worse, she had shed a single tear! Scalped could not remember the last time she had cried, either in happiness or sorrow.
Shocked, by the tear she’d shed and the fact that he suddenly rolled to his belly, she took a hasty step back to give him more room to maneuver. She thought he might climb to his feet but he only kept his gaze averted from hers, seemingly lost to the demons of his own pain that ate at him. Scalped understood, but she chose to master her pain and eat it. She was far too unbridled to let anything ever master her again, except the pure inexplicable love she had for her babies and grandbabies and so forth. There was something about the innocence and adoration in a foal’s face that held her captive.
It is only his sharp hawkish gaze that catches her attention; she can feel it slide along her skin, the soft unprotected areas that beg a bite or a kick and she carefully angled her head just so, to protect her throat as his head moved towards hers in a painfully slow motion. He surprised her with the touch of his nose against her cheek, so light as if she imagined it there until he pressed harder into the soft spot beside her jaw. She could not help the way her ears went back against her head, even as he breathed her scent in and she gradually released the tension that tightened her flesh in preparation of an attack.
He kept touching, kept claiming inch after inch of her flesh and she let him.
That surprised her more than anything else -
She let him touch, and in return, she touched him back. Just as bold. Just as daring. Touch for touch, but her black eyes never closed like his did. Scalped drank in the light and shadow of him, the way his muscles bunched and gathered beneath the rich brown of his skin.
(He reminded her of her boy, only as a horse.)
She sighed, drinking him in.
A different sort of pain to conquer.
She said nothing. She didn't have to. Despite her ears falling back warily at his advance, with each faint touch he placed on her, she boldly returned them to him. She was clever, she saw the danger, but her reaction surprised him, fueled him on. His skin shuddered at her contact, foreign but so thrilling. His blood flowed quicker, breath came heavier. She entranced the beast, made the monster in his mind demand more. Foolish girl. Why aren't you running? This was meant to push her away, frighten her off.
But he didn't want her to. He wanted her to stay, he wanted to feel again. The warmth of a body, the sweetness of a caress. And damn she felt good. So soft, so delicate.
Deep within his consciousness, his true self struggled. He knew what would happen if she didn't stop it. He couldn't let it, this was not enough. It needed to be from love. But he'd awakened the beast, and that's who was in control now. It was his own doing, his own undoing. She'd have no warning of what he'd unleashed on her, and his Self silently, helplessly tumbled back into the darkness.
The monster smiled.
A sweet, wicked thing. He loved her ears pinned back, like she knew to be cautious. And yet she touched him back. She didn't truly know, did she? Or was she so strong, so bold, as to challenge a nightmare? He could teach her to fear.
The bay dun edged closer still, encouraged by her daring affection and those wary ears. He buried further into her side, pressing skin to skin all along and down their shared side. Shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. He no longer gave her slow warning of where he'd touch next. A lip at her neck, a firm nudge at her cheek, a gentle bite near her throat. He goaded her, prodded. Tested her limits, challenged her boldness. How much fight did she have in her? How far would she let him go before she realized the danger?
He lingered at her crest. Carefully, sweetly, he began grooming her. He calmly nibbled the dirt from the base of her mane, inhaling her heady scent. That, too, fueled him. His eyes glowed with hunger, with silent threat. But he held it in check. Deliberate. His position would trap her. If she shifted too far, he would grip her and pull her back against him. Like a rabid animal hoarding its kill, she was his. His delicate prize. His temporary possession.
His gentle grooming gradually eased into a slightly stronger tug... tug at her mane. It wasn't meant to be painful, only for the fun of it. Tug. Tug. Steady and predictable. An easy rhythm. Like the knock of a criminal on the window, one that knows you are trapped inside with no where to go. Tap. Tap. Toying with her, testing her. Playing with her. Last chance, Beautiful.
![[Image: commission____scalped_by_pegasusstudios-dahbsg9.jpg]](http://pre10.deviantart.net/5738/th/pre/i/2016/254/d/3/commission____scalped_by_pegasusstudios-dahbsg9.jpg)