"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 walks slow and steady (yet with a dance in his feet, a limp to his long strides, and a bounce in his gangly legs). Although it is the heat of summer, he can feel the nip of fall approaching steadily. It won’t be long until the green leaves will melt into yellow and orange and red (and then snap to the ground, to crackle as he steps across them). It won’t be long until the humid breeze will whip into a blustery one (one that pulls against his shoulders and sends him seeking shelter). It won’t be long until fall will morph into winter and then winter bleed into summer and another year will have passed.
Although it is the heat of summer, he is always looking ahead.
He comes to a halt (an entirely ungraceful one, but a halt nonetheless) beside a lazy stream. Flickers of fish dance among the shallows, their bodies shifting quickly before one might hit the other. He wonders, briefly, how they might know their company is too close for comfort (intuition or instinct or movement or senses or thoughts). With a smirking lift of his lips, the trickster takes a hoof and splashes it roughly into the water. The fish vanish, leaving behind only a wake of ringlets from his movement.
The cool of the water is refreshing on his leg (especially while the humidity of summer presses against his flanks and burns at his skin). The trickster drops his muzzle to drink down some of the stream’s portion. When he raises his head, he finds himself royally bored. No problem. Someone will find him eventually. Or he might have to find someone.
This meadow is disorganized. It reeks of a hundred more horses than I have ever seen in one place. It was a good choice for my first foray out of the cove. I had not wanted to leave until my physical strength had grown. Being a child is tiresome. Even now, at a little over a year old, I am still leggier and slimmer than I wish to be. Adulthood creeps towards me at a disgustingly slow pace. I envy Kirin and Nicia in an offhand way.
So many of these creatures are beneath my notice. Not only do they not carry a trace of the great god's blood or favor, they squander the potential of their lives with peace and harmony. So much more is to be learned in strife and pain. My eyes glitter with remembered agony, the gasp of awakening and arousal, the burning touch upon my neck. I crave it and I am willing to stretch my limits. Not one of my subjects has the stamina that I do.
Kult stalks behind me. We are better in pairs, my siblings and I. There are those who would tear us from our exalted place, or think to take advantage of our youth. Both would be grave mistakes. Kult would probably enjoy such an action on another's part. I know I would. A slow smile stretches across my orchid purple features. I imagine with great relish the taking apart of a body as complex as the equine one. Seals are as advanced as I have become in my studies.
I stop briefly and glance at my brother, the bay one. He looks unassuming. It is well that he does, but one would be an idiot to think he has no strengths. I am the flashy one, the one who draws eyes first. It's my role. I distract the prey with a smile. Kult decimates them. And then I pull them apart and learn.
But today, we are both free of blood (although the smell never really leaves us), and reasonably appropriate. Kult seems to be leaving the leading up to me, although his age is greater than mine. Whether by conscious choice or not, he tends to follow. I take control easily, choosing a stallion drinking at a stream, his legs being lapped at by the water.
I approach, brother in tow. My body is young but my eyes are filled with knowledge.
“Hello.” I offer with a touch of amusement. “Kersey, and that is Kult.” I glance at his feet. “Fish seem a poor choice of adversary. They submit far too easily.”
I would know.
K E R S E Y the academic executioner daughter of carnage and killgore
10-19-2015, 11:58 AM (This post was last modified: 10-19-2015, 12:03 PM by Kult.)
He doesn't often leave the confines of the Cove. He doesn't really need to. Their little slice of Beqanna held all he could require, most of what he could want. None of them really needed to leave, but sometimes the herd was too quite, or mundane. Sometimes, one just needed a change of pace to spark life back into them.
It is not unusual to find him trailing after his younger sister, Kersey. The two siblings had formed a camaraderie, filling each others needs, giving each other purpose. He was the trap, she was the surgeon, delicately undoing the seams of his catch. Kult did not posses any sense of delicacy, everything about him was coarse, urgent. And so, when Kersey had announced that she was traveling to the Meadow, Kult was quick to tailgate.
They traded the salt filled air of the shore, for the fragrance of wild flowers and a million horses. Some of which were no longer even present, not for a while. Like any place filled with potential victims, the Meadow was still a feast for the two black pits he called eyes. Even as ravenous as it made him, hot breath expels from his lungs in distaste for those gathered. He trails behind the female, crawling, snaking across the grass lands;head and neck slung low. He wove as if stricken with back problems, a prowling, out of place gait. However, Kult's back was perfectly fine, straight as an arrow.
Against his sisters vivid shocks of orchid, he was an unremarkable fading, flat bay. The tree-bark brown lacked luster, was made even more dull by the peppering of rose-grey to take its place. Even his eyes were black, void and unyielding. An irregular star sprawls beneath his clouding forelock in a letter 'x'. He only watches silently as Kersey leads them to a lone stallion, standing against the gentle stream that runs back the way they came. When she stops to introduce them, he walks to the bank peering into the cloudy water below. The stream bed has been recently disrupted, grains of sand still floating near the surface, not yet settled to the bottom where they belong. He does not add much to the conversation, the exchange of names has been taken care of, but he does give something. A single word of expression, "fish," he says with a crooked grimace. He was equally unamused with the poor entertainment of marine life.
