As soon as they (someone, anyone) steps into the clearing, Larry’s show begins.
Near the center of the clearing, a dark-haired boy is breathing hard. He makes eye contact, the whites of his eyes stretched wide and then with an anguished cry, shatters into dozens of blood and black colored pieces, which fade to grey and disappear entirely. The cry, cut off so suddenly, is slow to fade in the thickly forested wood.
By the time it does, Larrikin, appearing whole and hale in the shadows at the edges of the wood, is trotting closer to the other horse.
“What do you think?” He asks, tilting his dark head curiously. “I never get to really see the reaction, but did it feel real to you? I’m trying to make it seem real. Did I seem like I was dead?”
Larry suspects that the smell of blood would make the display more authentic, but he’s not sure how to do that. It had already taken him hours to perfect the perfect ratio of change in his coat to make it most mimic broken flesh and bone. Days more to get the timing right with his Fairy Dust.
He needs it to be perfect, and it is quite difficult without a second set of eyes.
Being born into a large family had its perks, the first one being that she was never bored. Between her older siblings and her twin sister, Panda was rarely at a loss for things to do. This made things easy on her parents (or she likes to think so, anyway), in the sense that their children could often entertain themselves, usually without ever having to leave Sylva. Panda also liked to think that her mother was completely oblivious to the things her children did in this eternally autumn wood, because she was still young enough to think they were actually capable of getting away with anything.
Today, she was watching her older brother Larry show her something he claimed was ‘really cool’. Whether or not it was cool remained to be seen, and she had already let him know dubiously that she would be the judge of that. There wasn’t much that impressed her, even at this young age, but truthfully even if what he did was cool she definitely wasn’t going to tell him that it was.
She is laying on the ground in a pile of bright colored leaves, and the frosted swirls across her peach-colored back glowed faintly as she stared at her older brother. He screams dramatically before shattering into a million pieces, flitting away on fairy dust, before eventually reappearing.
She doesn’t want to admit that that was pretty cool, and she is maybe a little bit jealous that she didn’t inherit any of their parents actually useful gifts, like mind reading, or fire-breathing. Then there were her siblings like Lilt who had almost everything and let it all go to waste.
With a loud sigh she rolls onto her side, rubbing against the ground until her cream-colored mane is full of leaves and twigs. “You know what I think?” She says thoughtfully as she props herself up again, looking up at her brother seriously. “I think if you want to be really authentic, you will just have to actually blow yourself up.”
pandemonium.
04-26-2020, 06:16 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-26-2020, 06:16 PM by pleasure.)
every night she sharpens her steel on the hipbone she made from me. kisses the mouth she took, the one that says her name right and doesn’t bite. sometimes she calls me baby and I swallow my own tongue.
sometimes she hands me the knife just to watch me give it back. pleasure Ophanim tries so hard to pass on life lessons to his children, but his efforts are wasted on a child like Pleasure. Her incredulity is evident on her face when she cocks one eyebrow and stares at him, jaw lowered slightly in question. He’s saying something about finding the perfect partner in life, but the words trail off into some story about him and Mom. She’s not sure what the point to the story is. The angel boy is just crying laughing about the first time he asked Starsin out. Pleasure tilts her head and glances to her left to see if her sister is catching any of this when she realizes Pandemonium left ages ago.
“Dad, I know you love mom. You say this literally every day. Can I go play now?” she pouts as she edges toward the direction her sister went. His laughter dies into a soft chuckle and he nods, but she’s already scurrying to catch up to Panda. “Just remember, your mom’s perfect! And be safe! And I love you! And-” His voice trails off in the distance and she catches up to her siblings just in time to see Larrikin explode into tiny shards.
She skitters to a stop and looks to her sister for some explanation until he reappears, good as new, and asking for critique. The dark filly gives a snort and rolls her eyes. Pleasure is certain she would have been much better off with that trait that him. Maybe they could bully him into asking the mountain to give it to Panda? But her sister is already teasing their brother and the haloed twin snickers in response.
“Maybe if I set him on fire first? Now that would be a show,” she offers with a smile that is far too sweet for her words. They are each trouble on their own, but they are tiny terrors when they come together. This thought gives her a sense of pride and she nestles in closer to Panda. “Larry, does Dad still tell you really long, pointless stories or does that stop at some point?”
She tilts her head and observes him curiously, picking through his thoughts for some kind of insight on what to expect.
@[Larrikin] @[Pandemonium]
“Well Nota,” Larrikin begins with emphasis, pausing a moment to clear his throat in an impeccable imitation of the trio’s father. “Starsin told me once - you know Starsin, right? Your mother? As beautiful as the sun...no, beautifuller than the sun!” Though he exaggerates the words, there is no doubt who he mimics.
Larry’s Dad Impressions are some of his very best, if he does say so himself. It had been easy to modify his own habits into those of the man he’d learned most of them from, and Ophanim does provide them all with a nearly unlimited stream of source material (like those long stories that Pleasure has asked about). While mimicking him, the boy’s color has changed as well, a near-perfect replica of their sire’s eye catching markings.
“Maybe you could set Panda on fire,” Larry suggests, fading back into his natural coloring (and a few red and white streaks in his mane that Malone has assured him look “super cool”). “Right as I explode, and then maybe it will distract the audience enough that they don’t notice the details. We should do time it for dusk...no, twilight.” As he talks, the boy is moving around the clear, tilting his head this way and that, trying to imagine the scene. He knows that his sisters had meant to tease him, but they’d really just given him even more ideas.
“Would you let Notapleasure set you on fire for my show?” Larry asks Panda. “I’d owe you big time. I wouldn’t even make you practice before.”
@[Pandemonium]
@[Pleasure]
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