"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
04-05-2022, 11:40 PM (This post was last modified: 04-05-2022, 11:46 PM by Ethenia.)
Ethenia
it was an honest mistake
Once she had begun running, she could do little to stop herself. The path that had stretched invitingly before her shrank away until soon it became nothing at all. She could feel the eyes of the trees watching her, as though they could smell her desperation. Could trees feel pity? She became keenly aware of every leaf, every twig she snapped in her haste. The brush clawed at her skin electrically, like lightning flicking at sand, melting it, resolving it into perfect shards of glass. She could have been made of glass herself, she thinks. She wonders with each step if she will shatter against the earth.
For a girl who had never felt true fear, this is exactly how she had imagined it. Or dreamt of it in her all-too-real nightmares, anyway.
Ethenia runs until she forgets why she is running to begin with. At first, it was because he had told her to. Then, it was simply because it felt good to stretch her long legs and wind through the maze of the forest. Time, and miles, melted away as though she could run straight through the years themselves, up into the sky and away with the stars, at last. But she could not, of course, and she begins to tire as any other mortal creature would. The delicate mare can feel the once crisp air become hot and constricting in her lungs, gasping like a fish out of water, unable to take in the oxygen quick enough. The boa constrictor at her throat insists that she slows, and so she does.
The forest that had wrapped its fingers thick around her seemed to release her like a gasp. She finds a small clearing, exhaling into it like a hummingbird to a flower. Ethenia looks upward, searching for the moon. She cannot quite make it out through the looming canopy, but she sees just enough light to know it is there. She can hear just enough deafening silence to know that something else is there, too.
Once, Pangea had been their home - and land whose inhabitants were off-limits to harm from this creature and its children. But that had changed. The master was there but not, content to allow her strict tether a little slack. Suddenly the canyons were able to become hunting grounds, and though there was now no other hunter by its side - this one enjoyed chasing all manner of creatures from that land.
Ever since the darkness, ever since the loss of their partner, this monster has been increasingly on-edge. Somehow more filled with rage, more erratic, more bloodthirsty than ever before. Killing when it did not need to feed, leaving the corpses where they fell and moving onto the next.
This night, though, it is hungry. It moves through the forest, quiet - though the soft green glow that surrounds it gives away its location. It hasn’t minded so much - there is little by way of a challenge in these woods and, like most predators - it doesn’t believe in picking a bigger fight than it needs to. Deer are a common meal, as are any of the equine creatures it believes are an entirely different species than itself.
The sound of a body, large and therefore laden with plenty of meat, running through the forest draws its attention and it follows at an easier pace. Feeling the anticipation growing with every stride, its knife-weilding tail held aloft, carefully and gracefully avoiding colliding with any trees and making any more noise than strictly necessary.
In a clearing, a mare patched with grey and white stands - only a few slivers of moonlight illuminating her.
A strange clicking noise emerges from the throat of the hunter as it slows its pace, moving around the clearing instead of directly into it. The foliage helps obscure some of the eerie green glow but not all, hints of the armoured body show and illuminate the cold black eyes that blink in a hardshelled face.
Will the mare be tired from her run? Or will she have enough strength for her legs to carry her somewhere other than this clearing before she falls?
Truthfully, no real thoughts pass through the mind of the hunter as it steps past the trees - it has a singular focus now. Its lips curl back in a snarl, revealing two sets of gleaming silver teeth, before it lunges.
