"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
Reclaimed by magic and mountain, the summit of which hears their pleas for the return of lands and missing pieces of themselves. She is fortunate to have been born long after the Reckoning turned it all awry, and is fortunate still to be as she is meant to be - fanged, invisible. There are others less fortunate than she will ever be, thinking that the mountain’s will is done and now, they are a now generation of it’s children that are perhaps not quite as free of their parents’ sins as the mountain likens them to be. Femur does not think she is free of her parents’ sins, but rather, is the byproduct of them, like the leftovers from a wolves’ kill, all tissue and bone that they’ve cracked open to suck the marrow out of.
She feels marrowless, or perhaps that is directionless - light and lacking, bereft of a sense of belonging now that the kingdom to which she was born is gone, back to dust and never-was. Because of it, she has no place here and knows it keener than a hawk’s cry for it pierces her breast with a sharp beak and rips right through the meat of her thick pulsing heart. So she shares in that feast, drinks long of her own blood and sups on her own self until she claims a thicket near a stand of birch trees for her own in the midst of the forest. Let the trees and the dark keep her, she’ll become their own secret wild thing, she thinks.
And for a time, she does - she is ill-kempt and unclean, when she is visible enough to see the smears of dirt on her skin and the trinkets of moss and burr that burrow deep into the growing knots of her mane. Mostly, she is a fanged cheshire grin that haunts the trails, floating absolved of all flesh and reason above the footholds of root and earth. She is a fright and feeds on their screams as they tuck tail and run away from her, and she floats ever onward to her own ruined keep of grass and branch. Even the squirrels and rabbits flee from her, and if she had to admit - and that takes much, like swallowing a thick lump of emotion - it, she is a bit lonesome.
Only the wolves smile at her from a distance, but she thinks their smiles are more leers. Their keen noses can sniff her out but are met only with a glimpse of a fanged mouth opened in warning but they wait, she knows they do for they are crafty beasts and given the smallest chance, they’ll make a meal out of her but she is unafraid of them. Scares her own kind towards their dens and hungering bellies, and they leave her to play with the bones of their kills until Femur’s own nest is something of branch and bone, sharp and scratching but familiar.
Still, the quiet is enough at times to drive her out and she climbs to her small quick feet and blinks herself invisible with but a thought. If she wills it, she leaves hoof prints in the dust of the trail to confuse those that she encounters and sometimes, she turns that fanged grin towards them and is nothing but an exposed mouth frozen in a sneering smile.
Secret things, wild things - this is something Longclaw knows too much of already. In the dappled shadows of the Forest he rambles easily enough on four paws where instead, it should’ve been hooves. His thoughts are bitter, despite recent events, because he knows now that he’s a cursed creature. There’s a mark as black as sin and deeply troubling over his heart, engraved there and left to fester until the sickly tendrils of spoilt blood reach every corner of his being. The brightness of youth has fled his face, his eyes, and it leaves a hollow sort of emptiness to his wandering, green gaze.
He’s been carved out and made anew.
Some things, though, remain the same and one of them is his spectacular sense of smell. A familiar sort of scent itches at his brain, one that stops him in his tracks and has him lowering that silver-white head to the earth where a finely made, particularly small hoofprint indents the bare earth. It’s only visible because the trail has already been traveled so many times, leaving the sandy earth bare where normally it would have been smothered in the age-old droppings of the woods. Longclaw’s curiosity piques when he senses that the particular set of prints he’s looking at are singular in their purpose - not many others have ingressed this deeply without reason. That fact prompts him to move forward once more, black nose whuffing greedily at the pattern of steps while he trots ahead.
It’s only when the smell suddenly becomes overwhelming that he stops- that proud, finely made head of his rising above silver-capped shoulders to peer further ahead. A smile, bodiless and fanged, gleams back. Were it not for the shock of such an unusual encounter, he doubts that he could replicate a shift as smooth and instantaneous as the one he executes, twisting upwards to reform into the iridescent stallion that he truly was, complete with his own set of fangs to match. “Reveal yourself, coward.” He demands, with a voice that reverberates in his chest. The curse within spreads.
On his face, his eyes combust. Blue-white flames, hungry and terribly beautiful, burst from the sockets to spiral upwards where they remain to flicker and weave while he takes a solid step forward. “Now.”
One-Half contract between Wyrm and Heartfire
ooc: for some reason, you gave me allllll the muse
Smell; this is the one that will always give her away.
However, most of them do not utilize this sense and choose to use their eyes and their ears, or the gifts that bubble up from their blood and take over their brains.
Femur languishes between the shadows and the trees; she likes it here, it soothes her dark little heart. Something about tangles of roots and bones that make her watch a beetle walk all over them, indifferent to the highways it travels and she wants a bit of that indifference to be her own. She snatches the beetle up in her teeth and with a snap of her mouth, she gobbles it up. Femur still relies on grass to sate her hunger, but sometimes she tries other things - like spiders and moths, cobwebs and dew. None of them make her darker or sweeter, and some of them taste like nothing and others, like gross squishy things that she should never have put between her teeth.
Her own sense of smell is not heightened but it works and she uses her nostrils for things other than breathing - like catching the scent of a wolf on the wind that blows through the trees. She remains invisible as she sniffs the wolf out because it does not smell like the pack she has seen running parallel to her in the forest. A lone wolf? New to the woods? The pack won’t take kindly to that, she muses, still grinning to herself as she walks back down the path - all fangs and footprints, the only things that she allows to be visible. Instead there is an iridescent stallion that barks out a command to reveal herself and she laughs aloud, unable to help herself. “Maybe if you ask nicely…” she says back in a singsong tone.
Just then, his eyes combust into blue-white flame that spirals up from the sockets and she is entranced enough by the sight of the strange fire to flicker back into solid unquestionable existence. “All you had to do was say please,” she says with a pout as he takes a menacing step forward that brings him that much closer to her because she refuses to back up and show any fear.
ooc: ah i love him! sorry for the long wait on the reply. <333
Don't be afraid when the night wolves cry, feast on their bones, suck the marrow dry.
The air shivers. In the wasted shadows around them Longclaw can’t be sure of his own vision, so he narrows those bold, burning eyes and watches as fangs become face, hoofprints to hoof. So, the ghost he’d been tracking was no ghost at all - just an invisible girl. There’s the imperceptible downturn of his lips that hints on disappointment (he’d been so ready to unleash a terror of flame) and he snuffs out the tendrils of fire slowly, deceptively allowing peace to settle once more over his features.
He appraises her, like an interested passerby who happened to be drawn in by a window display, but finds that her lack of fear only excites his curiosity. So alone, and so frail at that! Just a creature of adept camouflage with the refuse of forest droppings strewn among the wispy tendrils of her tail and mane. How long this little clouded mare had kept to herself, Longclaw couldn’t be sure; it neither stops him from stirring to meander forward nor does it quell his tongue as he mutters, “I needn’t have asked at all.”
There’s a laziness to his actions as he turns aside from her, passing by her sallow ribcage to glide easily behind her and then around to her opposite side. They stand together now, shoulder to shoulder, while Longclaw outstretches his nose and whuffs greedily at her skin. She gives off a heady sensation that pulls him nearer until his lips are pressed ever so gently against that palatable, golden fur. He draws them upwards, opens his mouth while following the natural curve of her neck, and enjoys the sensation of his teeth as they depress into her pelt. Almost … tender.
“Hiding?” He muses, pushing away from her if only to stop himself, “Or have you been forgotten?”
I love the way you rake my skin, I feel the hate you place inside.
Femur does not believe for one second that he is settled and peaceful now that she is visible, even as the flames go out in his eye sockets and his eyes are more normal. If she had to guess, he looked almost downright disappointed that she was not a more ferocious foe for him to battle and unleash those flames against and she cannot help the imperceptible quirk of her own lips in a smile that is altogether too sly for her small face. She can feel him looking her over and it amounts to nothing more than the Krampus-king’s looks had whenever Sinew had presented her to him - if they bore no striking resemblance to him or showed themselves capable of inspiring fear, he had little to do with them. Not that her mother would ever have let him easily snuff any of their inconsequential lives out like a candle on a birthday cake… but Femur remained unafraid, casting her own appraising look over the stallion.
“Maybe not,” she mutters back as her eyes track his every move around her until she has to turn her head too much to see what he is doing. He seemed too much the predator, his interest in more like how the wolf eyes the lone doe grazing and knows her to be an easy meal for is pack… She is not a quick meal and never will be but the touch of his shoulder to her own distracts her as much as the way he whuffs at her skin as if his hunger is breathy and given voice and maybe, for a moment, she feels a little chill skitter down her spine. His lips then press and distract further against her skin, but she knows this is no chaste kiss but more like a shark’s exploration that is all bite as the pressure on her starts to suggest. There is no pain in it - yet, but she steels herself against it and goes absolutely still beneath the ministrations of his lips and teeth.
Just when she expects the bite to hurt, he pushes away and her eyes snap open. Femur wasn’t even aware that she had closed them, that she had let the predator lull her into a false stupor of safety. How foolish! She chides herself, even as he asks his question and it takes her moment to think of an appropriate answer that might satisfy him enough or leave him intrigued enough to remain. Femur is also unaware that parts of her are going invisible about until she is just a floating head and fanged mouth that answers him, “Both. It’s easier that way.” though she isn’t quite sure why she says that - what is easier about being forgotten or hiding? Trickery and mischief, she tells herself, that’s what. But then her curiosity gets the best of her and she rounds on him with a hard questioning stare, “How did you do that with your eyes, make them go all bright and hot and flamey?"
Don't be afraid when the night wolves cry, feast on their bones, suck the marrow dry.
Had they known … had they only known that fate would laughingly bring them together in the same place, nearly the same manner that their respective parents had been drawn together once, it might shed new light on this encounter. But as it is, there’s only the soft dappling of a late sun to give them an air of hushed understanding. Longclaw has driven his quarry from her cover, tasted the salt of her flesh and found it tempting. She, in turn, had neither shied nor reprimanded him but all the same has culled a piece of his nature from the encounter and holds it now in examination - her humorless eyes speak volumes long before her question proves his assessment of her right.
They are not afraid, then, of each other; only afraid of what they yet can’t understand: that they are inherently the same: Hidden and forgotten.
Hers is an external ability; it cloaks her now and leaves her suspended, head and neck, above the forest floor. His is less apparent but still the same. “I’m cursed.” He tells her briskly, a bitter edge honing the phrase. How could she ever understand, how could he ever make her understand that the fire was him, but not him? The stallion she rounds on now is only another manifestation of what was once a much more innocent Longclaw.
But that Longclaw doesn’t matter anymore, he’s hidden and forgotten, if you remember.
“What’s your name anyways, little ghost-girl?” He pushes, the infliction of his tone giving the impression that nothing had ever gone unanswered for him. In the same manner his brutish desire, fueled by her earlier acceptance of his unwarranted ‘examination’, drives him to return to her side where he trails blue lips over an invisible body. She’s tangible, then; not truly gone as she would appear. Still mortal flesh, just cloaked in resplendent obscurity. Longclaw withdraws with mild satisfaction over this new discovery. “Or are you a nobody like me?”
With trepidation he swallows, tilts a handsomely shaped head back into her line of sight, and lets his ever-green eyes connect wholly with her own. “I … I want to kill you.” The iridescent shifter whispers - and though he hardly knows what he’s saying, truth reflects itself in every word. But his eyes, so pained and distorted with the disgusting irony of it all, say more: “I found you, little hidden thing, little forgotten thing. I found you and I want you for my own, if you truly have no fear.”
I love the way you rake my skin, I feel the hate you place inside.
If only they had known…
Fate though, was a bitch lusting after the thing hanging between any regular cur’s legs and never getting it. So Fate meddles. Brings them together in soft dappled sunlight in the same place their parents met in long ago, unbeknownst to either of them. Femur - not Fate - can still feel the ghost of his lips on her skin and how he saw her, really saw her. She was afraid but it was a delicious feeling considering that she had grown up in the shadow of the creep-twins and under the crass eye of the once Pangean King. With a bloodline like that, fear had been bred out of her but he elicited something from her, that smallest bit of fright that tickled her spine and made her fanged smile wider.
Just as she is afraid, she is enlightened too - they know a secret about each other, this secret of hidden and forgottenness that each of them exists in. Secrets like that can make them friends out of each other but she is smart enough to not expect much in the way of friendship from him as he tells her that he is cursed. The bitterness in his tone brings her ears forward in concern, and the fanged mouth frowns a bit - where is this odd concern coming from? Why should she care if he is cursed and bitter about it? But Femur does, for some obscure reason that dangles just out of reach of her slow equine brain. More of her goes visible as if pulled forward by his bitterness that seems to be more apparent in his stance and the features of his face than just in his voice alone.
“How are you cursed?”
Fate meddles more by making Femur ask him such a thing.
For every question asked, there is another to goes asked but remains unanswered despite the push in his tone that demands a response from her. She flirts with the idea of leaving him with just that sly fanged grin but opts for a different retort, “I like little ghost-girl better.” Parts of her go invisible again as he creeps closer and reaches out with his lips for more touch - no, he tastes her, she realizes that, has always realized it - he tastes like a snake tastes the air with it’s tongue except his lips are wolfish in their exploration and hunger. The breath and thought have gone out of her until he asks if she is nobody like him which she knows to be untrue. “Well flame-eyes, I doubt you are as much of a nobody as I am.” But she knows, thinks back to that secret understanding that they share - they are nothing and no one, but here now, they are something and someone to each other.
His eyes are evergreen, like the trees.
She did not realize this until he fixed her with his stare just as she was about to give him her name. In the space of a heartbeat and his look, the breath is gone from her again as visceral as a kick to the gut. Her fanged mouth forms a little moue, an ‘oh’ that goes unvoiced but flutters around in her throat like a trapped moth. That same flutter might be fear, or not. It could be anticipation and triumph at his painful admittance through which all manner of truth burns clear - he wants to kill her, could kill her, may kill her yet. But his evergreen eyes say something else that brings her wholly to a visible state and with an emboldened step to his side, she proffers the slightest chance at her slender throat as if baring it to him as a gift.
Yes, he could kill her.
Yes, he wants to kill her.
But something in his eyes says otherwise, speaks of possession and Femur responds to that above all else. Damn her mother’s blood!
Femur
dude i have been dying to respond to this! she doesn't really want to die of course because i love her but damn damn damn! so much fun writing this reply! <333
Don't be afraid when the night wolves cry, feast on their bones, suck the marrow dry.
Terrible, cruel thing. That she should react in this way; exactly the way he had wanted. The wisp should’ve run when she had the chance, disappeared into herself and the forest once more where she might never be found again. If the fanged girl had been (at the least) listening to him, they wouldn’t have even gotten this far. But here they are - pressed quietly to each other in the bruised places of the world, one offering and the other contemplating. Longclaw’s eyes trail slowly, passionately over buttercream skin that throbs with life. Up the supple curve of her neck to the apex of skull and spine, where shadows linger just there beneath her throat.
His own lips cannot resist; see how eagerly they jump to feel her quivering strength! Beneath his mouth she’s a warmth he’s never known, a promise he’s never made or been given before. “They call me Longclaw.” He murmurs against her, aching in his gut for something only his heady tone can relate. Blind with desire, his jaw swings open. Teeth grown sharp scrape gently across the dome of her throat to encapsulate her entire jugular, he grips her there; kneads gently as if at any moment it could turn to a shake, a clamp, and then releases. “Stronger than you thought.” He thinks wildly. “Strong enough to resist.”
For how long, though? Shaking, panting almost, he blinks and withdraws his head. That he could’ve hurt her - that she would’ve allowed it! Without any provocation or means to an end, his Ghost-girl has silently laughed into the face of death. “You terrible, beautiful creature.” Longclaw ponders in awe, eyes traveling once more to the flat of her neck near her crest, where sharp pinpricks of her lifesblood have risen in defiance of his touch. Tenderly he kisses her there, wipes the slate clean to smear it instead over his lips where he’ll taste her once more as he’s wanted to all along.
“Come with me.” The shifter asks, even as the words spill out fashioned like a demand. “Leave this place and hide away with me, instead.” He tempts, though why he should fear a denial he’ll never know, or acknowledge. That she should refuse him? Impossible. He could no more rid himself of her as he could rid himself of an appendage. He had found her, this bright little treasure. He had come to know her, as she’d soon discovered him. Just the idea of someone else coming along, taking her elsewhere, keeping her for themselves … it … well it just -
Behind them, an oak bursts spontaneously into flame. Ravenous for destruction and fueled by his momentary rage it devours the poor tree, whole. In the span of seconds there’s nothing left but ash and glassy, hardened earth - Just a taste of the havoc he could wreak when properly provoked. Heaving, his chest draws deep lungfuls of clear air before the smoke can cover them in a hazy fog and he finds that he’s nearly crushing her to himself; his neck is draped across her own, every muscle twitching with the urge to shift. “I want you.”
Another admission. Another regret. He’s too far gone to care anymore. There is nothing outside of them and everything between them, and Longclaw wants her as he’s never wanted anything else before.
I love the way you rake my skin, I feel the hate you place inside.
No one has ever made her feel like a possession.
Like prey.
Femur was not deluded enough to think herself invincible nor could she tell if his desire was true or not. Did it matter in the end? She supposed not, even if his desire to have her with him proved as false as a lie, the girl knew she would not trade this moment or all the ones leading up to it for all the useless coin in the world. Not that their kind dealt in flashes of gold and silver, but thoughts and deeds, and she valued what was taking place, this subtle alteration of a life groomed as a predator of sorts (or a fanged ghost at the least) to this thing of meek prey that offered her slender throat to him for the taking.
Who are you?
Whispered a voice in the back of her head to abase herself like so to him?
That whisper wanted to know where the proud cruel girl of fangs and invisibility had gone. Where is the girl your mother raised you to be?
Gone, she whispers back, an eldritch smile on her lips as if she is truly possessed and not at all herself.
His lips finds her throat and she can feel her pulse leap there in response. He murmurs his name there, like tucking a secret into the shadow of her neck is as good a place as any but it still reaches her wildly twitching ears (no wilder than my heart! She thinks, giddy in a way that she has never been before). Then - - she feels it! Sharp elongated teeth that belong to no horse but something else. It begins in a gentle scrape that a grip that is both tender and threatening and Femur has forgotten how to breathe in that moment. She is so still! So very very still as if one move would bring him biting down on that precious vein and then… he pulls back. It is over as swift as it had come, though she has no idea how long they’ve stood like this. Minutes? Hours? It makes no difference to her, she basks in the richness of his almost-pant and the way that she has defied him, silent and strong.
Femur can feel him looking her over, coming back to that spot on her neck. She wasn’t even aware of the tiny pinpricks of blood that bubbled there, bright red against her skin. He kisses her there, which surprises her more than anything else so far has and her black eyes find his, searching, mindless of the way her blood looks on his lips - red smeared against the dark blue. She is slow to smile at him; it is fanged, clever. He asks but his asking is like a demand that she cannot ignore. How could she ignore him now that he’s tasted her, tried her even?
Her lips are poised to deliver an answer just as the oak bursts spontaneously into flame behind them. The outward explosion of heat and wood glances off her flanks and as quick as it had happened, there is burnt earth and ash. She turns from the oak to give him a long measured look through the smoke but finds herself crushed to him instead, held fast and tight by his neck and twitching muscles as he mentions he wants her. His provocation was also as surprising as his admission and she could no longer deny him - his patience was spread thin as it is, she could feel it.
Femur pushed her fanged mouth into his shoulder and left a sharp kiss there. She didn’t know how to be kind, and her fangs got in the way of such niceties as kinder kisses that he could command from someone other than her. But she suspected he wanted no such kindness but someone who stood toe to toe with him, pushed back for every inch that he sought to take and give. “I want you just as much.” she admitted, though it cost her nothing to say it - no trembling muscle, no outrageous thump of her heart, just a certainty that emboldened her to bring her fanged mouth up to his cheek and press there as tenderly as a snake’s kiss can be.
“I’ll come,” she promises, held fast to him by something other than his neck and his desire to shapeshift. “I’ll come.” it is more of a gentle murmur the second time around, if only to spare the forest around them from more of his forceful flaming wrath if she thought even to deny him but she couldn’t. Femur knew she was under his spell now and forever.
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