"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
03-02-2017, 04:26 PM (This post was last modified: 03-02-2017, 04:26 PM by Wyrm.)
:WYRM:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
The freezing water sources of this land were a predator's dream. For those who had the comforts of a true homeland, they could seek safety there. As for all of the others, they were forced to seek out water where they could - and that meant trekking through the barren meadow and forest in order to seek it out. Near the northeastern tip of the great lake that drew an invisible boundary line across Beqanna, Wyrm waited comfortably in the shallow cavity of a muddy brown tree. With leaves long gone, cover was harder for the wild creatures to find, but none of this seemed to cause him concern. It was as simple as changing color for the newly restored shifter, and that advantage had him blending seamlessly into the blackened hole with only rounded, yellow eyes to glare out.
A screech owl, small and insignificant, privy to any living being that might wander by. An owl … yet still Wyrm. It felt good to have his power back, felt right, and it reminded him of unfinished business that could now be put to rest. He doesn’t even mind the fact that soon he’ll have a new charge underfoot. In fact, that thought causes the proud ruffling of feathers while a sharp, early winter breeze disturbs the treetops. It was about time, anyways. He couldn’t depend anymore on the temporary immortality that had been his crutch for so long. Time was moving again, and taking him with it.
From below, a sharp sound catches his attention and he turns a wicked yellow eye downward to catch the interruption. A familiar-looking mare, in color only, but he knows from scent and sound that they’ve never met before. Still, curious enough for him to creep slowly from his cover and mold into a small, furry creature to make the descent easier. He could be himself, he knows this, but the vanity of shock-and-awe has worn off for him these days, so Wyrm changes into something very unlike himself, a skin he’s almost never worn for that fact of just how uncomfortable it felt to don it.
He becomes a mare. Lithe, not very tall or striking, a simple grey pony of stock breed with a curious, misshapen green star on her forehead who walks easily from the woods. The worst part is putting the final touches on - shortening and folding his vocal chords to mimic a higher, much more pleasant tone, one that sounds highly unlike himself as he utters, “Hello there.” The pony mare slows, stops, and gazes over the speckled girl with bright, excited green eyes. “Headed somewhere?”
She had been born and raised in a world of seasons, where autumn came and went and took with it the shades of dawn and perpetual fire. But autumn never ended in Sylva. The trees were always filled with burnt leaves – etched in brilliant golds and oranges and reds, held captive at the edge of a fragile life but never allowed the freedom of death. It was beautiful, certainly, to live in and among so much color. But she missed the changing of the seasons, missed winter most of all.
So she slips easily past the boundaries of Sylva, disappearing unnoticed beneath the trees and in the cloak of their swaying shadows. Her mind isn’t on where her feet carry her, instead it traces the reasons for the weight in her face, the hollows in those quiet, blue cheeks. Her thoughts are an endless loop of uncertainty, reluctant fingers grasping at unraveling threads. She would understand it if she wanted to, but some part of her mind protects the rest, keeps her from piecing together the things that will feel like stones rattling in a bruised chest.
At some point the leafy deciduous trees gave way to bare branches like skeletal fingers, coated in frost and ice and a thin crust of snow. She didn’t notice though, not until the snowflakes began to fall and coat her mane and her forelock, fill those delicate hollows near the curve of her hips. Her face softens and her eyes flit upwards from the ground – a ground that had turned white and gleaming while those busy eyes had been pulled inward and uncertain. But the cold feels like a kiss on her nose, sharp and welcome and she lifts that delicate face in quiet relief.
It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust, to fall against and trace the nearest trees, the snowy beach, the sheet of crumbling ice that tries to contain the waves of the lake. It takes another moment after that to recognize that she can see the small stretch of shore on which she had stood when the black and bone-armored stallion had found and buried his teeth in her. She shudders before she can stop herself, uncomfortable and uneasy, slipping back into the deep shadow of the trees where she can effectively camouflage herself from prying eyes. An owl hoots and she flinches again, reflexive, uncertain, and wholly unable to pry her eyes from the distant shore.
Hello there. A voice says, friendly and bright, and Luster is so startled as she turns to look behind her that the illusion of her shadow falls completely away. Headed somewhere? The eyes that find her are eager and green, and when Luster searches them openly, hesitantly, she finds no excuse to barb herself in shadows again. “Hello.” She says instead, turning, softening, reaching out to touch her nose to the striking green star on the mares steely forehead in a quiet, curious greeting. “I think I must be, I’m just not sure where.” Her voice is soft, silver like stars, like constellations, and she pulls her nose back, tucking her chin close to her chest. “Anywhere but here would be good,” she amends quietly after a moment, glancing back to the lake with eyes that are dark and uncertain and bruised with worry, “care to walk with me?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer, cannot wait another moment lest her nerves crawl like spiders out of her skin. But before she turns she touches her nose to the mares neck again, gentle and unassuming, pressing that small, uncertain smile into a grey that reminded her of steel-bellied clouds. “I’d love the company.” Softer, and with a smile that fades just a little, “My name is Luster.” She turns then, away from the beach, away from the lake, and if the grey mare is watching she will see the pink smoothness of scar tissue in the hollow of Luster’s murky blue neck, the only indication of the bruises in her eyes and the urgent need to be anywhere, anywhere else.
Surprising, how easily the dip of his head comes when she reaches across to close the distance between them. So gentle and unexpected. The caress of her nose against the last remaining hint of green that dyes his forehead seeps through his skin to erase that bitter ache of cold that soon returns once Luster draws away again. “Easier to trust because I’m like her?...” He reasons, “Or because she has no choice?” Indeed, with the quick turn of his eye he can see that they are eerily alone here. There’s only the inviting, untouched surface of snow to cushion their voices and wipe the slate of the earth clean. The snow, and then of course the two of them, oddities brought together by circumstance alone.
She’s talking, the spotted one, so his (or, should we say her?) eyes return to where the light sound plunges from her lips, falling stars, each one, to speckle the muffled air around them with noise. The pony mare can hardly resist such urgency, nor the girl’s innocent desire for company, especially when those comely lips are imprinting a smile into the curve of her marbled grey neck, so she only chirps “Then I suppose it doesn’t matter where we go, hmm?” before complacently following in the newly-minted tracks Luster leaves behind her.
It would be hard, of course, for anyone to miss the torn skin (now healed) that mars the otherwise faultless hide she wears. Harder even still to overlook the daunting fear that grips his new compatriot in the sharp hollows of her steely blue face. To see it there, resting in its horrible, twisted black form is almost too much for him to bear, like an oenophiliac detecting whiffs of a particularly desirable aroma. He wants a taste for himself, mulls over the idea while he lingers near enough to her that his mouth drifts, and then hovers, over her croup for perhaps a moment too long.
No. No.
Not yet at least.
His tongue pushes itself outward to part his ashen lips, rolling shakily over tooth and gum before swallowing that familiar urge. A lengthening of his short, rather choppy stride and then he is parallel with her, the bulbous, fleshy curves of silver-white shoulders, ribs and hips bumping casually against Luster’s own sinewy form occasionally as they ramble. “I have an idea,” Not-wyrm says airily, a cheeky smile brandishing the grey’s face to warm the chilly atmosphere, “something to keep your mind busy, and me chuckling, while we walk.” The little mare offers. “Something to keep me preoccupied.” He thinks. “Why don’t you try and guess my name? I’ll give you three tries.”
His inky black hooves pop prettily from the snow as he trots lightly forward, the thin crust of snowfall giving way easily beneath him as each stride strikes downward again. He puts only a few meters between them before stopping again, leaning under the weight of freshly-shaped muscles before he circles once for effect. “What do you think?” He queries, surprised to find that his own interest is piqued for her answers. “Am I a ‘cinder’, or more of a ‘sterling’ sort of gal?”
Then I suppose it doesn’t matter where we go. The grey mare says and Luster only shakes her head in agreement, smiling uncertainly again before turning away. “It doesn’t,” and her voice is silver, distant, “you can choose, if you’d like?” It seems like a safe offer to Luster. This is the only place she doesn’t want to be, the only place that from time to time still finds her in her dreams, darkening them to nightmares. It is true that she would prefer not to return to Sylva either just yet, prefer not to be a shadow beneath those fire-gold trees, prefer not to see him, that deepwater man she had come to love so dearly. But even that would be a lesser pain than this one.
Luster moves without prompting, assuming the woman will redirect her if she decides to take the blue girl up on her offer. But instead she falls into place somewhere behind and Luster lets her feet do the choosing, willing them to choose better than they had before. There is a moment where she imagines she can feel a sensation of heat against the base of her tail, can sense eyes on her skin as heavy as wandering fingers, but when she turns to look behind her there is only the small grey mare, only a face she has foolishly decided is friendly. Still, fear is an instinct and it must know some truth she does not, because she can feel it darken in the hollows of her face, draw cold fingers across her belly so it tightens and fills with butterflies.
You’re just jumpy now. Her mind reasons with her patiently, all while her heart turns wild in her chest, fighting, thrashing, eager to escape.
Then suddenly the small mare is beside her and Luster reaches out with that reflexive smile again, drawing soft, pale lips across those beautiful silver dapples. When she turns her face forward again, she does not have a chance to miss the closeness of warm skin because the woman has settled close enough at her side that they brush together at hip and shoulder. I have an idea, the woman says, and Luster finds her eyes returned to the pale pewter and white, why don’t you try and guess my name? I’ll give you three tries. Luster’s eyes go round with surprise, dark and luminous and curious even as her head tilts slightly in question. “What happens after three tries?” Her voice is whisper soft, gentle.
But the mare trots on ahead and Luster hesitates, wondering if she grew suddenly bored and has decided to leave. Except she only pauses and completes a circle, light on her feet and muscle flexing beneath the grey. What do you think? She calls and Luster hesitates, considering. Am I a ‘cinder’, or more of a ‘sterling’ sort of gal?
Luster catches up to her quickly, touching a soft mouth to the point of a dappled hip before continuing on, still eager to leave this part of the forest behind. “Fire or silver,” she muses thoughtfully, glancing over to look at the woman again, “I think maybe you are both.” She pauses but she knows this is not an answer, not what this new companion wants so she delves a little deeper. “But maybe you are neither, maybe you are more than something so singular.” She is quiet again for several moments after that, keeping those quiet brown eyes, bruised and luminous, on the endless white of the new snow. “I think you are more of a Cinder, though, something that lives on even after the fire has gone.” She turns then, running gentle teeth along the curve of a grey jaw so that the mare will pause and look at her, so that she will see the smile on Luster’s pale mouth when she adds, “Something stubborn, perhaps.”
