"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
GLACIERS MELTING IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT AND
THE SUPERSTARS SUCKED IN THE SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE
He doesn’t really know how he ended up here.
One minute he had been exploring his home in the gates and then next thing he knew a group of strangers had swept him up. He had maneuvered himself to the back of the group, intently watching every one of the strangers’ moves. They seemed confident in their selves and calmly herded the others away from the kingdom and to another land far away. What had once been open fields covered in tall grasses soon turned in towering, rocky cliffs. He could hear loud crashing of what he assumed was a large body of water. The sea wasn’t something familiar to the newborn that had only just started venturing from his mother’s side a couple of days ago.
Mismatched eyes, one blue and one yellow, glance upwards to see a strange statue of iron looking down upon their little group. It was an ill omen to be sure. Their guard seems to let up when their group passes beneath the watchful, dead gaze of the iron stallion and Warner sees his chance to slip off. He was certainly small enough to perhaps escape their notice. They seemed more occupied with the blue roan girl than any of the others; he was a mere afterthought to them.
The chestnut roan boy slows his pace and eventually drops off completely from the back of the group. He finds himself to be on some kind of soft earth, fine grains of golden brown cover the ground before him. It was much different from the rich, brown earth that covered his home. The source of the crashing noises became apparent as he watched, mesmerized, by the constant ebbing of foamy waves meeting the shoreline.
A startling, sharp cry draws his gaze from the water to a frantically stumbling about seagull. Curious as to what could be the cause of its distress, Warner approaches the bird with the dragging wing. It squawks insolently at his approach and he snorts in reply. There’s obviously something wrong with its wing as it hangs limp and brokenly at its side. He grumbles at the annoying thing before poking at it.
“Hold still!”
Unknowingly, he instigates a seemingly miraculous event. The fragile broken bones begin to mend at his touch and torn muscles quickly stitch themselves back together. The surprised bird hops away from his touch and the uncomfortable sensations before flying off with a raucous noise. Warner watches its ascent with puzzlement. He was uncertain if they bird had really been injured in the first place or perhaps it had merely been faking its injuries.
01-25-2016, 03:39 AM (This post was last modified: 01-25-2016, 03:39 AM by Kirke.)
peel away the layers till you're nothing and no one
She wishes there was something she could do to help her gain favour in her Father’s eyes.
To any other father she would be a pride and joy - a beautiful young purple and lavender filly, with a rare set of colourful wings. But here in the Cove … she is not quite enough. She is enough that she is not a disappointment of course - how could she be - but compared to her sister she will always be a sad second.
Potion’s power is something incredible, something very, very useful, and all Kirke has is … wings. Not completely useless to be sure (her Father has wings too after all), but in comparison to Potion? She’s really not very impressive.
It’s frustrating to her. The abilities she possesses are not something she can control and, unless some faerie takes pity on her some day, there is no way that she will be able to change and gain any more power.
So for the moment, the best she can do is practice.
Kirke soars with the breezes, dipping and rolling and practicing daring manoeuvres until her wings begin to ache. She will never be as special as Potion, but she can at least be the best at what she can do.
She needs rest for the moment though, and begins to dip back towards land. Her wings relax gratefully into descent, but as she approaches the ground an interesting sight catches her brown eyes.
A young colt, the same age as the twins, stands in the sand, staring out to sea in wonder. As she watches, an obviously injured gull wobbles by the colt, dragging its wing in the sand. She almost expects him to stomp on it (as many of Khaos’ children would do), but much to her surprise and wonder, the bird suddenly flies off as if it had never been injured. How very interesting …
Kirke leans into a dive and pulls up at the last moment, alighting with surprising grace upon the sand. She eyes him for a moment, considering. He does not have any of the purple that would mark him as a child of her Father’s, and he has a strong smell of somewhere other than the Cove. He must be one of the horses captured on the children’s most recent journey to the Gates.
But really, that’s not what interests her.
She takes a few steps towards the younger boy, fixing him with an openly curious stare. “How did you do that?”
GLACIERS MELTING IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT AND
THE SUPERSTARS SUCKED IN THE SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE
His hard-earned solitude is interrupted with the swishing noise of wings and a solid thumping of hooves hitting the sand behind him. He whips about in order to see the cause and his mismatched eyes (an inheritance passed down through his father and his father’s mother little did he know) alight upon a rather overbearingly purple girl. A silent staring match ensues and Warner is not inspired to break it any time soon. He’d rather she went away and refrain from letting his current location be released to any of his captors.
Of course, perhaps he was looking at one of his captors already.
She finally breaks the silence by approaching him with open curiosity and he is not sad to see that probing gaze fade away. It was uncomfortable to be scrutinized by a stranger and Warner felt like he perhaps hadn’t measured up in some odd way. He was rather silly for assuming such things but even one still so young could feel the pressures of judging peers. The boy simply didn’t have enough experience with social cues and calculating the inner workings of a stranger’s mind.
“I didn’t do anything? It just flew away.”
Warner hadn’t realized that he possessed what others might call a gift. He simply hadn’t lived long enough (a mere couple of days at most) to realize peculiar things about himself. After all, his only interactions had involved either his mother or the group of strangers who had taken him from his home. The boy couldn’t have known that the time he tripped and scraped his knees that he would have bled and eventually that blood would have clotted into scabbing. Instead, his skin had begun to stitch itself together before that process could even begin – all that remained was the traces of blood that had once ran freely down his legs.
In fact, this girl’s wings were a source of curiosity for Warner. Her gift was obvious – one of the most physical of gifts one could possess. But it was an abnormality in his young eyes. All he knew was his pretty bay mother with her glittery shoes. Warner was coming to realize that perhaps this world was much too large for him to know intimately. Feathery wings and strange golden earth with its crashing waves was merely the tip to the iceberg.
02-08-2016, 04:54 PM (This post was last modified: 02-08-2016, 04:56 PM by Kirke.)
peel away the layers till you're nothing and no one
The boy denies it, and Kirke immediately snorts in disbelief. She’s not stupid - she saw the bird’s broken wing and she saw it fly away, uninjured. He did something to it, whether he admits it or not. “Don’t lie to me! I saw it! The bird was hurt and then you fixed it!” Some sort of healing ability is her best guess. She can definitely see why her aunt and uncle would have chosen to take him from the Gates. A healer would be very useful to Khaos’ children.
His mismatched eyes are now lingering on her wings and in spite of her curiosity, she can’t help but take the moment to preen. She stretches out her big purple wings, unfurling them so that the boy can get a better look. She flaps them dramatically a few times for his benefit, before tucking them back into her sides. It’s a little nice to have the attention, to be eyed as if she’s something special. Here in the Cove she is perhaps more special than many of her siblings (like Apothyx, Halocyn and Medic), but she will never be as special as Potion.
That said, if this boy is indeed a healer, she will never be as special as him either.
Jealousy rears its ugly head and her eyes narrow at him again. She takes a step closer, ignoring personal space. “Anyway, how did you do it? Did you have to touch it? Did you put energy into it?” She barely leaves time to breath, let alone give the boy time to answer. “Can you only fix animals? Or can you fix horses too?”
If only she could learn an ability like that. Then she could gain favour in father's eyes.
GLACIERS MELTING IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT AND
THE SUPERSTARS SUCKED IN THE SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE
She snorts derisively at him and immediately accuses him of lying. He stares, bewildered, as she denies his words. But he truly didn’t realize that his words did indeed contain untruths when it came to describing what she had observed. The miraculously healing wings weren’t anything that stuck out to the young boy for most things seemed to fix themselves around him. He just hadn’t ever taken the time to wonder about these things; it was a normal facet of life in his eyes.
For a brief moment, it seems her tirade has settled and she eyes him with a smug look in her eyes. He takes a startled step back towards the crashing waves behind him when her garishly-colored wings stretch out to their fullest length and flap a couple of times. He can’t help but watch their movements as they are something that’s he’s only ever seen placed on those of the Aves class and she certainly didn’t fit into that category.
But that moment of relative calm was fleeting before she was back to tearing into him once again with narrowed eyes and a running commentary of pointed questions that he didn’t have the answers for. She was loud and in his space – an entirely new experience for the boy who only had his somewhat absent mother as his only companion in life.
He sighs exasperatedly at her.
“I don’t even know if it’s me doing anything to begin with. But sure, let’s test it out. First, let me just pull out a bunch of your feathers for the sake of the experiment.”
Of course, he was merely bluffing. He wouldn’t actually go out of his way to meticulously hurt someone like that. The mere idea seemed absurd to him. But he tried to convey a quiet seriousness in his tone that might plant some reservations about him within that little brain of hers.
peel away the layers till you're nothing and no one
And somehow, he still denies it. Kirke closes her eyes momentarily, steeling herself. Does he take her for an idiot?! He clearly fixed the bird! She saw it with her own two eyes.
But his sarcastic ‘comeback’ does hold some promise, whether he intended it to or not. “No that’s stupid. Even if you can fix things, you clearly have no idea what you’re doing. We should test it on something like a mouse. Or another bird.” And considering where they are, they likely won’t have far to go to find some injured little creature. Her uncles particularly enjoying inflicting pain, and when they cannot find horses, they make do with what little creatures they can find about the Cove. She doesn’t particularly like the practice, but she understand why they do it - they need to keep their skills honed and at the ready. Who knows when they might be called upon to fight for Khaos’ glory?
“Come on, lets look around for something that’s hurt.” She slips through the sands and scrabbles up the path through the cliffs, pausing once to check if he’s following. She doesn’t particularly care whether he does or not though - she will track down a hurt animal herself and drag it back to him if necessary.
As she’d suspected, it doesn’t take long. After a few minutes of searching through the long grasses at the top of the cliff she discovers a young rabbit with two freshly crushed legs. The legs are on opposite sides of its body, so its clear that it’s the result of one of the Coveling’s games rather than an accident. She glances around to see if the boy is near. “Hey, what’s-your-name … I found one.” She pauses, head cocked to the side. “What is your name, by the way? I’m Kirke.”
GLACIERS MELTING IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT AND
THE SUPERSTARS SUCKED IN THE SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE
He’s somewhat pleased with himself for ruffling her feathers.
For all the haughtiness she was giving him, he thought it appropriate that she also shared in some of frustrations. She was certainly someone who thought highly of themselves. Warner has officially decided that this girl’s attitude must mean that she is in league with his kidnappers somehow. Otherwise, why would she seem to hold such hostility to his words. When she suggests other options for the experiment, he gives her an almost disdainful look. Was she really suggesting that they intentionally harm some defenseless creature out of morbid curiosity?
“Bloodthirsty thing she is,” he mutters under his breath.
The purple girl begins to head away from the beach and towards the cliffs while Warner reluctantly shuffles along behind her. He chooses to not answer her command and instead mismatched eyes anxiously watch as she scrutinizes the tall beach grass which grows at higher elevations away from the damaging waves. He’s decided that if she really was going to stomp on some poor creature, he’d have to intervene. The roan boy just wouldn’t stand for such a grotesque break in morality.
She abruptly stops her search and seems to be intently studying something hidden in the wispy, windblown grasses. He is then rudely addressed and he can’t help but answer her inquiry. “It’s Warner. Shouldn’t that have been the first thing you asked?” But at least he now has a name to address her by. He draws closer and the thing she had found reveals itself to be a horrifyingly injured rabbit with its legs strewn every which way.
“I hope this isn’t your work, because this is absolutely horrid.”
He throws her a stern, disgusted look before returning his attention to the clearly dying rabbit. Warner lowers his head, hesitates in a brief moment of incredulity, before touching the poor thing’s floppy ears. He draws back with wide eyes as the creaking and snapping of bones begins and its’ fur begins to stitch itself back together. The clearly lifeless body and dull eyes now shown with life and after several minutes of awed silence it hops away in a frenzy.
peel away the layers till you're nothing and no one
He follows, as she’d known he would. Despite his denial, he’s curious, wants to know the truth. He’s no doubt tempted by the possibility that he could be special. Anyone would be. She would be. He tries to hide his interest though, masking it with apparent disbelief and surliness (seriously though, how can he still be in denial?). He just can’t agree that she’s right yet after all.
When he joins her, she simply shrugs at his comment, tucking away his name in the back of her mind, and turns back to inspect the little injured rabbit in front of her. Warner draws closer so he can see and his little noise of horror makes her look back up. Her head cocks to the side as she stares at him, nonplussed. While she doesn’t have the taste for violence many of her family members do, she knows that it’s simply a normal, necessary part of life. Distasteful perhaps, but not horrid.
“Oh, no. Probably my Uncle Kult.” But he’s already reaching towards the little creature, and suddenly the thing is healing before her very eyes. Bones re-knit and fur regrows and the little rabbit suddenly hops away, clearly not wanting to stick around after all it’s been through.
Kirke’s jaw drops and her eyes widen as she looks back up at Warner. It’s one thing to suspect his healing abilities, it’s another to see them work before her very eyes. “So you are a healer.” She snorts at his comment. “How on earth did you not know?”
GLACIERS MELTING IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT AND
THE SUPERSTARS SUCKED IN THE SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE
He’s certainly feeling the contempt ingrained in those last few words she threw at him, but he can’t claim knowledge of something he’s never been made aware of. But she seems almost impressed by his ability and he wondered if it was something different. Considering the girl standing before him was decked out in bright purple and rainbow colored wings, he’d have to say she’s probably run across her fair share of oddities.
Instead, he was from a completely different kingdom where his only experience with oddities involved his mother’s glittery hooves. Otherwise, he had met no one else who resided there. Orani had been most quiet within the kingdom these past few years and mainly kept to herself. Perhaps this was why he had been such an easy target for these strangers to kidnap. He had been by himself, practically defenseless, a baby bird who had fallen from its nest and into the hungry cat’s claws.
“Well excuse me for not assuming I was some weirdo. It’s not like I wander around hoping to find broken things to fix in my free time.”
In fact, the sea gull and this rabbit had been his first attempts at healing things outside himself. As all young foals, he’s had his fair share of scrapes when mastering the ability to walk and to explore his surroundings. But the bleeding never seemed to linger for long and instead of days, it might have been a matter of hours for his scratches to disappear. But when he’s had no comparisons to make to himself, it was difficult to realize that there might be something else going on.
Mismatched eyes stare sulkily at the purple girl before him.
05-15-2016, 12:57 AM (This post was last modified: 05-15-2016, 12:57 AM by Kirke.)
peel away the layers till you're nothing and no one
The boy still seems utterly confused, and she’s starting to wonder if he'd actually been telling the truth. But how the hell could he have not known? To have such a wonderful, incredible ability within his grasp and to not know about it? Is he an idiot?
“Weirdo? Do you not understand how amazing of an ability that is? I would kill to have something like that …” That’s not even an exaggeration. If she had a way of getting Warner’s healing ability and it meant she had to kill him for it, she would do it, no questions asked. She would give anything to be as special as him or Potion. Anything.
He’s sulking now, staring at her. She rolls her eyes right back. “Happy? You’ve had this crazy ability all this time and not even realized it? What’s wrong with you?!” She stalks away from him right up to the edge of the cliff and gazes out to see, brown eyes glazing over. Nothing she does has ever been good enough. Nothing she does will ever be good enough. Potion will always be the darling, just because of her ability. No matter how hard Kirke works, she will never measure up.
What’s the point in dwelling though?
She spins back around and bears down on Warner. “I wonder how powerful you are. Do you think you could heal a broken leg on a horse? Or … do you think you could maybe even bring someone back from the point of death?” Unfortunately this isn’t one they can really test out, unless Uncle Kult brings home any new toys any time soon. But it’s certainly interesting to think about.
![[Image: kirke.png]](http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y125/102938475611/kirke.png)