"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
She stares at the broken rabbit lying prone between her hooves with a sense of fascination. She watches as the furry creature’s chest rises and falls in ragged breaths. She’d broken the creature’s back. She was sure of this - she’d felt the bones give way beneath her hooves. She lowers her nose to the creature, inhaling deeply. It was an unnecessary action, sure, but the scent of blood and of death seemed to trigger something within her - some instinct that had been dormant until this moment.
The creature had stilled. Blood dripped slowly onto the dry, sunbaked earth below. Something stirred within her - something akin to hunger but not quite the same. So the girl sinks her teeth into the flesh. Equine teeth were not made for this purpose, but the flesh gives way all the same and the filly drinks greedily.
It wasn’t much, but what she was able to drain from the animal was enough. For the first time in her young life, she felt sated. There was no revulsion in her mind, only relief. She could feel the viscous liquid dripping from her lips as she raised her head. She frowned at the scene - not at the dead creature, at the mess she’d made in her attempt to feed. It felt clumsy and that made her uncomfortable.
She huffed, upset by the lack of an obvious solution.
She had never seen blood before. If there had been anything like it at her birth, of course those memories had been jumbled up and faded away the farther she got away from that night. The stark redness of it against the soft pink of the other filly’s nose is incredible, gross, messy, fascinating, and strange all at once. She recognizes the girl, of course, as being her teacher’s daughter - though Beyza’s a little embarrassed to have forgotten the name she had been told. Perhaps it started with an L?
She moves closer, propelled by her curiosity, and visibly flinches when the scent of the blood reaches her. There’s an instinct telling her to back off, something that is rooted deep within her, but the simple fact that she should leave is why she approaches until she’s close. Without any sense of boundaries yet, Beyza lowers her head to sniff at the remains of the mangled, dead rabbit. Her white eyes are difficult to track, but they move to look at the girl - to look at the blood on her face.
Up close, she can see that the blood is focused around the girl’s mouth. As though she was attempting to eat the creature.
She thinks to ask why but that isn’t the question that comes out. “Did it taste good?” Her voice is soft but with the blunt sort of curiosity found in the young. Her head tilts when she looks back down at the rabbit, her disgust continuing to lose the fight against her curiosity.
Suddenly self conscious, she did her best to wipe the blood from her mouth against a dark forelag. There was a part of her, deep down, that felt some sense of shame for having made such a mess. Part of her is embarrassed to have been found in such a state. But another part - perhaps a stronger part - does not care. This is who she is, and it doesn’t feel right to be ashamed for how she was born. So she straightens and turns her scarlet eyes towards the other.
“It was warm,” she says, in response. Taste was less important than nourishment, at a certain point. But she did supposed that it was the best thing to have crossed her lips since she had taken her first breath.
“It felt good,” she added, with a shrug of her slim shoulders. And it did - it did feel good to finally feel satisfied. To feel the energy thrumming through her body and the strength that came with it.
“I’m Livinia,” she offers, wondering idly if the girl would stick around or be repulsed by what she had done. She cocks her head ever so slightly. “You’re Beyza, aren’t you? My mother told me about you,” she adds. Beyza fit her mother’s description of her perfectly - and she didn’t imagine there were any others walking around Pangea quite like her.
02-22-2020, 04:05 PM (This post was last modified: 02-22-2020, 04:08 PM by jamie.)
He is a child, certainly, just as they are children.
But he is not the same as them.
He is a crippled thing, subject to the shadows, lurking in the darkness. He is most content there, as he tests his power. He pulls the fog, thick and dense and heavy, around himself. He tears open the fabric of the universe and travels through long, black tunnels. But oh, the energy it requires! It leaves him gasping, chest heaving, until he lays himself down to sleep. And he can sleep for hours – sometimes what feels like days.
Because he is a child, certainly
But he is not the same as them.
He has wandered into the sun but it does not warm him. He has wandered into the sun because he’d seen her – his sister – sprinting after a fleet-footed rabbit and he is curious to know whether or not she’d caught it. He emerges from the darkness, pressed against a canyon wall, and follows. But he is so much slower than she, his sister who is not hindered by the condition of being alive, and by the time he reaches her the rabbit has died and another child has joined her. The child is brilliant white, bright enough to make his eyes ache. He has to blink and look away, focusing his attention on the dead thing at his sister’s feet as he ambles toward them.
The joints ache and he heaves a deep breath when he finally reaches them and shackles his focus to his sister’s face. The blood dripping down her chin. Eating, he thinks, or trying to. He shifts his gaze to the rabbit as the two speak, thinks how easy it would be to sink his own razor-sharp teeth into the rabbit’s jugular so that his sister might drink freely. But he’d seen the way she’d wiped her mouth on her leg when the other child approached, so he doesn’t.
“I’m Jamie,” he says in the silence after his sister shares her name. Livinia watches the other child intently, but Jamie cannot bring himself to look at her. Not with the way all that white hurts his eyes. So, when he says his name, it is almost as if he is addressing the dead rabbit.
She doesn’t know what to say in response to Livinia’s statements about the blood, though the mention of it being warm certainly makes her curious. She did not think it would be, for some reason. She imagined it chilly, like the waters that came down from the mountains.
“Yes.” She replies in response to her name, feeling a small surge of joy that she would already be known, even in just some small way. They are joined then by someone else who is familiar, though Beyza has only ever known about him in theory and not yet glimpsed the shadow-boy, nevermind stood near him. “I know.” She says to him when he offers his introduction, but it is accompanied by a soft smile to lessen the bluntness of her words.
A pure white fog curls around her, mimicking the shadows that seem to cling to him, though hers only obscures her hooves as her attention slides from one twin to the other.
“You need teeth like him.” Beyza points out in a matter-of-fact tone once her attention is back on Livinia and the mangled rabbit. But just as she’s wondering whether their shadowy mother would be able to help, her thoughts manifest themselves. She is surprised to see two gleaming, pearl-like fangs begin to stick out of Livinia’s mouth. This is the first time her thoughts, her magic, have changed anything about someone else and the thought of it startles her so much that she cannot even say anything - her white eyes just widen a little further in surprise.
If she could speak through her shock, though, she’s not sure she would apologize. It is, after all, exactly what the red-eyed filly needed - isn’t it?
02-26-2020, 10:27 PM (This post was last modified: 02-26-2020, 10:28 PM by Livinia.
Edit Reason: tag
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l i v i n i a.
She notices Jamie’s discomfort, and the source is obvious to her. As it should be to her and only her, she thinks. He is her twin after all. So without drawing attention to herself, she makes sure to put herself between Beyza and Jamie. She doesn’t want to separate them or exclude him, but she hopes it allows him some solace - so he can be apart of the conversation without being sensitive to Beyza’s light.
Feeling a little left out, Livinia adds her own smoke to the mix of fog and shadow, though with far less finesse since she hadn’t really practiced with her ability yet. Not when her attention primarily was trying to figure out how she needed to live without really ever living. She felt a little foolish, but furrowed her brow as she bent the smoke to her will, sending it snaking between her legs before Beyza’s voice drew her back.
She mentioned needing teeth like Jamie’s. She couldn’t help but agree, dipping her head as the other girl spoke. But before she could say anything - something strange happened. The girl’s scarlet eyes widen as she runs her tongue against the new, much sharper teeth that have appeared in her mouth. She blinks for a moment, processing what just happened before turning to her brother.
”Look Jamie,” she says - grinning exaggeratedly to show off her new fangs, “Now we match!” A small giggle escapes her at the realization. And something about it warmed her cold heart - to be more similar to her twin. Even though they shared blood and genetics - the two were as dissimilar as twins could be. She’s pleased that now, outwardly, they at least have this in common.
She turned back to Beyza then, “Thank you!” she said, again touching her tongue to one of her new teeth, the gratitude openly evident in her tone. And there was something else there too.
He feels some strange pang in his chest.
‘I know,’ the child had said.
And he had been left to wonder who’d mentioned him to her. Or if she had merely puzzled it out herself. Or if she had some magic to her that he did not understand.
(There is so much magic in Beqanna that he does not understand.)
But he does not ask. Merely ducks his head to press his forehead gratefully against his sister’s cold shoulder. It is from there that he peers down to witness the pure white fog that curls around them. Intermingled with his sister’s smoke, a shade darker. And if he had not walked all that way to catch up with them, he might have had the strength to conjure his own fog. But he is tired down to the marrow of his bones, so he can only quirk a placid smile.
Their exchange – brief, simple – prompts him to raise his head and he squints at his sister when she calls his attention to her. She has wedged herself between the two of them – one stark black and one so impossibly white – but the light still leaks into those bright yellow eyes when he looks at Livinia. She flashes him a smile and he smiles, too.
The excitement that stirs at the very pit of him is subdued but there all the same. He reaches out and bumps her with his nose. He wonders about the white child’s magic. Surely it is more than it appears to be on the surface.
“Who are your parents?” he asks the girl, ducking his head behind Livinia’s shoulder again. “Where did you get your magic?” The ability to conjure brilliant white fog, the ability to manipulate the anatomy of others. It reminds him of their mother, certainly. Wonders, quite abstractly, if there is any relation.
jamie
