"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
IT ALL ADDS UP TO THIS: THE HOLLOW CHEST, THE BRUISED NECK, THE SHAKING HANDS.
YOUR BODY, THE TRIUMVIRATE OF UNHOLY THINGS
Alone.
Alone.
Alonealonealone.
The word echoes in his mind much as hunger gnashes its teeth within his belly. The need is all consuming and he yields to it with little resistance, trudging along old familiar trails. It is the scent of blood and life, he tells himself. His vibrant green eyes dance over the trees and the faces of those he passes, certain that he does not recognize this place. His memory is hazy and he doesn’t care to delve into it. Vulgaris is certain he had children at some point but they were trembling, skinny things that he had no use for. There was not an ounce of that paternal love to be found in him for his progeny.
His tongue escapes his jaws and drags itself across jagged teeth at the sight of so much meat. Faces, faces. He corrects himself and shuts his mouth tight. To rein in his hunger has always been such a monumental task but he knows impressions are of greater importance. The chimera lifts his head to a more proud height and lifts his legs a little higher with each step, giving him a more fluid gait than his lazy pace before. His gray forelock hangs to the side of his face while the pale mane cascades over a strong neck. His coat is still a dark gray, with little dapples kissed across his body. The light bleeding between the leaves creates an almost dizzying pattern across him but he doesn’t seem to notice.
His scales are freshly shed, glimmering like precious jewels in some ancient dragon’s hoard. A faint smile completes the charm of his serpentine face, inviting like a lure to careless prey. The ache of being alone, for now, takes precedence over his gnawing hunger. There will be time to feast later, when the trap has snared a feast.
VULGARIS
THERE WAS NOTHING MORE DIVINE THAN HAVING SINNED WITH YOU.
i'm super rusty, so sorry. i'll get better with practice!
05-30-2018, 06:43 PM (This post was last modified: 05-30-2018, 06:45 PM by Pond.)
Pond has known a kind and welcome life on the island of Ischia, a gentle life among the bachelor herd. She had not expected such kindness. She is still discovering the new world around her herself - when she had fallen asleep, she had expected to wake and return to the Deserts but all that has gone now, as if she had dreamt of it with heavy muscles.
Despite Brennen and Belgaer’s hospitality, she has a penchant for wandering, just as she had before. She had rested in their company, she had dreamt of the old lands, but she cannot settle in one spot for long. She will return, but she is strong enough now as a yearling to swim the small bay and return to the mainlands.
This is where she had been reborn, where she had begun again. She feels drawn to it like a negative to a positive. The grove, the gentle sound of water, the silence aside from it all. She flutters her shadowy wings with a soft sigh and drinks deep of the air. When she opens her eyes halfway, the mossy trees seem kind to her, almost as if they are hugging. She takes a moment to flex her shoulders, rubbing against them as if the shadowy wings caused some irritation in them and the gentle bark of the trees helped to alleviate it.
But then a sparkle catches her eye. She looks up with a small and childish snort. Something was there, in the water and something almost jewel-like! She stops, pauses, and then steps forward beneath the canopy of the trees. “Hello?” she asks in her voice like a bell. Allured by the glitter of his scales she continues on her small feet. Once she realizes the stallion there, glimmering in the dull light, she tosses her head with a grin. “Hi!” She almost laughs. “You are beautiful!” She can’t help the words tumbling forward now as she admires his scales and the slim form of his body. “What is your name?”
IT ALL ADDS UP TO THIS: THE HOLLOW CHEST, THE BRUISED NECK, THE SHAKING HANDS.
YOUR BODY, THE TRIUMVIRATE OF UNHOLY THINGS
An ear swivels as he listens to her approach. The sound of each little hoof fall is soft on the forest floor, not at all like the proud and fully grown nearby. He turns his great head and watches her with a magpie eye that hungers to snatch her up. He even parts his lips to bare his teeth until she speaks in a voice soft as gosling down. He blinks slowly and closes his mouth as she compliments him, though it makes him narrow his eyes as he turns his body to face her.
“Beautiful?” he repeats as his lip curls in revulsion. “I am Vulgaris. ” The thin pupils of his eyes comb over her curiously. Though he seethes at her words he does not snap at her throat or lunge for a taste of her shoulder. Thin, trembling things, he thinks to himself. The strange girl is delicate as Shiya was. He snorts at the thought and shifts his weight uncomfortably. “And who are you, strange girl?”
The hunger has gone to slumber as he watches the odd girl before him. His mood has soured, but his face eases back into a comfortable smirk. Strange that one so easily enraged should wear a natural smile to his lips, though the significance of this is lost on him. Vulgaris turns his attention to the shadow swirling over her in the shape of wings as he steps closer to her. Perhaps he is too close for comfort, encroaching on her as others have not. There is no concern for this evident in him as he exhales lightly, so that the smog of her wings flutters for a moment before settling back into its proper place. “What an unusual gift you have,” he mumbles as his head tilts curiously.
There is a flickering moment where he wonders how magic might make her taste. The thought retreats as quickly as it reared its head, though. She is malleable and he is more intrigued by what wicked things he could do with someone like her.
VULGARIS
THERE WAS NOTHING MORE DIVINE THAN HAVING SINNED WITH YOU.
The snake-like manner of his tongue sends a thrill through her body, telling her she ought to get away. But he tucks it away as if in politeness and she tosses her small head to shake away the fear. It’s as if she shakes her mind free of the thoughts, the fears, and whatever else is telling her she should be afraid of the scaled stallion before her.
She cannot help but be drawn to him, the way his scales glitter and the very way he carries himself. She wants to lip at his skin, to test how it feels, but she resists because he is a strange still, so she clacks her teeth instead as she speaks. He responds as if befuddled and she snorts softly - was he unaware of his beauty? “Yes!” she pipes when he questions her about his appearance.
“Vulgaris,” she repeats, and the name seems so heavy on her mouth, not at all befitting of the man she sees before her. “My name is Pond.” Her voice is still light, gentle like a stream over smooth stones, like a breeze through the leaves of trees. She is fascinated by him and it is obvious in the gentle tremor of her knees, the tumble of her heart.
And then he steps nearer to her… and somehow she is not afraid. If he had not hurt her already, he would not hurt her now. She twitches and shifts, watches him, but then he bows his great head toward her and she braces - he was a stallion, and she was not his offspring. What if he meant to kill her? So she braces her small haunches and fixes him with her gray eyes… but he only huffs at her withers and comments on the shadowy wings she bears.
She laughs gently… the wings were not her choice and she is still unaware of how they might work. She can control them - flex, flap, preen… But she does not know how else to use them. She streteches them up into his face, but she doesn’t quite know how she does it. Pond dares to turn her head and lip at Vulgaris’s scaled skin gently, curiously. “You are curious too… I like the way your skin feels.” She isn’t aware that she should be afraid of snake scales at her young age, but something about him does feel softly comforting.
IT ALL ADDS UP TO THIS: THE HOLLOW CHEST, THE BRUISED NECK, THE SHAKING HANDS.
YOUR BODY, THE TRIUMVIRATE OF UNHOLY THINGS
She is honeysuckles bathed by a summer sun while he is jagged rocks waiting beneath a calm lake’s surface. You could dive into either with confidence, really. His name leaves her lips and he nods slightly in affirmation. The name is simply what his father decided to call him and it does not concern him beyond that. There was a trend of father’s giving cruel names to their sons in their family, he once noted in reflection. But her name is short and the sound of it suits her for now. He says nothing as she gives her name but he does sniff at her wing as she brings it closer to him in playful offering.
It smells of forest fires and tear-salt. He lifts his head from it in confusion and turns to watch her lips find the scales of his shoulder. His muscles tense briefly, forgetting what it was to feel lips that did not also seek to rip him apart. Vulgaris backs away a few steps to look at her once more. Why does something so soft, so delicate smell of death and agony? He grows suspicious, until a thought creeps from the recesses of his mind.
“Pond, what do you want to become?”
The words hang there and there is something gleaming in his eye as he asks the question. His smirk spreads into a grin as he awaits her answer. A new hunger blossoms within him and embeds itself deep within his heart. To corrupt one’s own child is the hobby of an amateur, a feat even the laity may accomplish. To breathe violence into something separate and pure would be a new adventure indeed. An old, ink-black darkness stirs within him and seeps through the veins just beneath his skin.
“Perhaps I could help you.”
The serpent, that vile tempter, has slept for so long within his breast. But there is no need to take shelter beneath his shame and sorrows anymore.
VULGARIS
THERE WAS NOTHING MORE DIVINE THAN HAVING SINNED WITH YOU.
The nearness of him felt almost familiar - it reminded her of her mother and of her father, the way they had huffed at her shoulders and made her feel safe. Their heavy breaths, the way they huffed against her face. She had tucked into those warm breaths… but Vulgaris does the same, breathing against her as if he were her father.
It calms her. Her eyes lull, she licks her lips and grinds her teeth more gently. She huffs a heavy breath and swivels her ears. His voice seems to slither in her ears as she listens to the words.
“I don’t know,” she replies to his first question, though there was some snake-like notion in the muscles of her small back.
She can feel her limbs tingle. Something bade them to spring, to rush and to be flighty. Even her chin was lifted and gave the energy to cast skyward. She could feel her breast jump upward.
She sprang from her docile state and tossed her small head. “Come with me, Vulgaris! Let us greet the sun when it rises!” She is suddenly spriteley with a flush in her cheeks and a vivacity in her heart as she begs the elder male to chase her alone toward a sunny part of their veld.
IT ALL ADDS UP TO THIS: THE HOLLOW CHEST, THE BRUISED NECK, THE SHAKING HANDS.
YOUR BODY, THE TRIUMVIRATE OF UNHOLY THINGS
Vulgaris doesn’t know the first thing about love – not true, honest to god love, at least. He thinks he loves Shiya and there’s certainly some softness to be found within him for her sake but he would never suffer or go without for her. All he’s ever known is how to take when others believe they have nothing more to give. Why, then, does Pond melt like honeycomb beneath his touch? Why does she bloom for him and welcome him like an old friend? As always, he does not stop to soak in the significances. All he can see is what possibilities present themselves to him.
She springs from him then and he moves without hesitation after her, a hound after a rabbit that he had previously been so gentle with. Suddenly she is only prey and his teeth snap to test their might, to prepare for her throat that would be all too easy to snatch up in those terrible jaws. Her legs are so much smaller and so very clumsy compared to his. Their shoulders nearly collide as he realizes that does not want the game to end so soon. For a fleeting second, he had planned to knock her off her little hooves and maybe even break her spindle legs.
Vulgaris eases left, drifting from her side.
For a moment, he is frightened by his own loss of control.
He swallows hard and blinks quickly to dismiss the thought of destroying her, for now. Only true monsters kill without thought. Only useless, sniveling creatures lack discipline. No, Vulgaris is a practiced hunter capable of restraint and he focuses his gaze ahead of them while the sound of his own pulse thrums in his ears. Larva never warned him that it would be this way, he thinks with a pang of shame. No one ever told him how hard it is to choke down the mindless hunger for torn pink flesh and blood drooling down his chin. Still, he eyes her throat and the way all those precious muscles flex beneath her skin.
He is so, so very hungry.
VULGARIS
THERE WAS NOTHING MORE DIVINE THAN HAVING SINNED WITH YOU.
All she sees is a stallion with silky-smooth skin, his scales glimmering in the moonlight and his voice like cream in her fuzzy ears. Surely there was nothing wrong here - he treated her as gently as her father had, huffing on her shoulders and speaking kindly. What was wrong in this?
And when she invites him to join her, jaunting off toward the east with her tail up and the shadowy wings spread open as if they belonged, he trails after. She does not even see the way he snakes after her like a predator, the way he lolls and trails her like any predator would its prey. She is young yet and oblivious to such dangers. She prances on small hooves and breathes light of the air.
She is unaware of the struggle Vulgaris endures behind her. All she knows and cares about is their abrupt friendship and the sound of his hooves behind her.Something in that breath he’d passed over her shoulders had helped to ground her, even settling the whispy wings against her withers.She only briefly thinks of her brother, his cardinal wings so full and feathered, and as she trots to the east now her shady wings settle against her sides.
Pond doesn’t realize that she’s led him right toward another small collection of foals. She wants to show him off, to brag about her new slithery friend. They would be so envious, she’s sure,and she would be such an envy! Little does she know that his hunger would start such a tumble of darkness.
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