"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
He has always liked strange things.
As centuries drip through his fingertips in their wet-sand way, it becomes ever more difficult to find even a speck of entertainment. Fortunately, he is a creative god, and one with multitudes before him, but boredom finds even him. And so he returns to Beqanna, wanders its meadows and forests and fields, looking for those with anything to offer. It doesn’t have to be much – he doesn’t expect it to be – but something, anything, that suggest this experience could be different, could provide entertainment.
And so he sees the alien, its strange armored body and carnivore stink, and he decides that might do quite nicely.
He knows Ripley – not well, really only in the biblical sense – and so he smiles, shifts his body into a mimicry of the alien form. It’s a strange skin to be in, but he takes to it easily, as he does all monsters.
He moves forward, knifed tail switching against his narrow flanks, and lets out a cry to get Ripley’s attention. The noise isn’t quite right – too shrill – and so he adjusts the vocal cords, fixes them so he can speak more easily as himself.
But he doesn’t speak, only waits to see if she will answer his initial cry.
The call certainly grabs the attention of the lone hunter, the deer that it was half-following is forgotten. It wasn’t really all that hungry anyway - just bored and looking for some enrichment. This distraction could do, and the armoured body moves towards the creator of the shrill sound.
It doesn’t recognize the other creature, but it has learned that it has many… strange relations. The branches on the family tree that stem from this armoured beast are twisted, odd things and seem to grow more so as time goes on. His scent is familiar, however, though the memories don’t come.
When not being commanded, instincts drive this beast and they tend to blur together. Creating progeny was no different than filling its stomach.
Still, it is more curious than angry at the moment and it does not attack. The sense of familiarity is enough to delay that typical initial response. Its own armoured tail flicks behind it, not relaxed and trailing through the dirt but not posed for a strike either. A small series of low, creaking clicks emerges from silver-toothed jaws as black eyes blink at this not-quite-stranger and attempt to place it within the catalogue of faces it half-knows.
He stays in this alien body, enjoying the feel. He has always enjoyed a predator’s body, the feel of it. In those earlier mortal days, he’d spent more time in such forms – a wolf, particularly – because being in a prey animal’s body had felt so odd when he considered himself an apex predator.
Now, there is no such there as predator and prey, not for him. He is a god, and they are not, and that is the only division he needs.
He moves closer, watching the thing, considering. He knows Ripley is old, knows that long ago there was a betrayal there – incubator to the children of one of his great enemies, a mare now long gone, her stupid goddess with her.
Who knows if Ripley remembers? He knows the aliens do not think of things the same way.
“Ripley,” he says, his own voice forced by magic from the strange vocal chords, a strange, grating twist to it.
“Do you know who I am?”
He asks the question and then he shifts again, back into his own body, to make the answer to the question easier. For a moment, he misses the feeling of armor, the weight of a knife-tail, and then the fleeting longing is gone, for he has ever so many more weapons at his disposal.
It knows that name - though it has only ever been called it by the mother. Even its tenure as a tethered servant to the master had not come with the use of names. The daughter that was, the hunting partner, was born into that captive state and never called anything at all.
They had simply not needed them. The word he speaks, that name, is a remnant of a time forgotten. Of a knobby-kneed filly that would have smiled at her mother whenever it was spoken and giggled as her father rolled in the grass.
It almost doesn’t recognize the syllables, though - because it is so different, hearing Ryatah say them and hearing them from this creature. It is on edge, a curling ghost caressing its spine. It would be fear for anyone else, a warning, but not for this armoured queen. Soulless black eyes stare with what may very well be curiosity. The sort one feels when examining a new food for the first time.
The question he poses next receives only a blank stare in response. He changes forms, from predator into prey. Some instinct alerts it to not be fooled by the change, though - some half-buried memory reminding the queen that this is no ordinary horse standing before her, no matter how plain and chewable he appears now. It is a vague, minor instinct - not enough to stop it from taking a step closer.
Yes, it might say if it could. It remembers. And its voice would be unimpressed. Just another face, another magician. It has known so many. Half memories flash through its mind - two black, one a mare sporting a blue eye, and two dapple greys - one with ice blue eyes and the other standing before it now, with those of blood.
