"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
03-08-2022, 01:59 AM (This post was last modified: 03-18-2022, 01:36 PM by Indius.)
I KNOW I NEED US MORE THAN I NEED ME
The water crinkles and splashes as I split its lips and enter. I shudder at its coolness, knowing without looking that the steam of my post-gallop sweat peels off of me in contrast to the icy waters that lap at my chest below; a voice in my head (the ghost of my mothers' or my sister's, I suppose) warns me of the danger of such a harsh change in temperature. Good, I answer the concerned voice, heaving great breaths of frigid air into my lungs. Let it hurt me.
I lift my head to gaze at the stars but close my eyes before I can count to three; dizziness threatens, and I teeter there in the moonlight. The imprints of the jewels above perform a drunken spin against the black backdrop of my eyelids and I smile. A private lightshow just for me, an intrusive voice says. I wish Iri could see this.
I open my eyes.
Shut up.
Licking my lips and bidding my burning lungs still, I heave my body a step further and plunge my head beneath the waters, hoping to clear it of its aching and lonesome nonsense. I come up, spluttering and truly cold, now, the droplets sliding down my face freezing before they can drop. Fuck me. As an uncontrollable shivering sets up across my ink-and-ivory hide, I throw my weight onto my hindlegs and pivot in the water, the movement slow and laboured as my sizeable body fights against the current. Giving a slow-motion canter stride, and then another, I breach and trot up the rocky bank, head hung low as I attempt to stretch out the ice-stiff muscles of my topline. Well that was stupid, a voice says. I cannot discern whose.
Relegated to shiver the whole night through until the sun rises and frees me of this frigid prison of my own design, I heave a great sigh and settle in a path of clear moonlight. Atop my back, starlight shuffles and settles, its immaterial winged shape clutching my side but for the imagination of warmth. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I close my eyes. I part my lips. Without knowing what might come from them, I begin to sing, a quiet and slow melody more for myself than anyone else; a lullaby to soothe my aching conscience.
Once the little unicorn had freed herself from the shackles of the misty woods (the manacles of waiting), she discovered a renewed desire for wandering. Nerine still holds much of her interest but she feels lured to the common lands, to the River in particular. It had been a long time since she had come which was strange considering how much time she use to spend here. Loss is cruel like that, snatching the joy from the things and places that had once brought her happiness.
Once she had trolled these riverbanks and found the most interesting of companions. Only a few silver scars at the base of her arched neck remain from her last encounter here but she cherishes them now, those markings. She hadn’t once but that was before he had disappeared. Before they had all gone missing.
Despite the gentle rush of rapids that beckons to her, she doesn’t sink her slender body into the cold embrace. She is still damp from her travels here, flakes of ice clinging to the passionflowers entwined in her raven mane. Moonlight caresses the smoky onyx horn that spirals from her forehead as she moves beneath its cool path. Golden eyes sharp and watchful as she scans the waterline and then freezes as a dark mass moves against the water.
Suddenly the mass is thrashing against the surface and she doesn’t waste time, old instincts as an Amazon making her flex muscles beneath her buttermilk coat, taking a defensive position as she lowers her head and her horn. The shape breaches the shoreline but she is still too far away to truly make out whatever the creature could be. Curiosity naturally peaks her interest but she hesitates. It’s not out of fear of something that could hurt her, it’s more an anxiety of even meeting someone new that might only disappear again. Just as everyone else had.
It’s the song that follows shortly after that makes her lift her pretty head. Haunting notes that weave between her curved ears, entwines itself around her heart, sinks into her soul. She’s never heard such beautiful music before and her hooves move of their own accord, following the rise and fall of the song.
She finds him just around the bend, standing in a clear patch of light that shines from the overhanging moon. She has known handsome males before but he is something different, stars hovering over his backside and that soothing lullaby that slips from his pale mouth. Before she knows it, she has come up beside him and then she is standing before him, gazing up with a glint in her golden eyes and a smile on her own dark lips. She says nothing, simply watches him sing, because she would hate to disrupt such a beautiful thing. She doesn't want it to stop.
In the back of her mind, beneath the lull of his power, she remembers that beauty can be dangerous. There is a thrill of anticipation that works its way up her spine, makes her shiver in the cold. It had been so long since she had met a beautiful dangerous thing and her smile only deepens as she watches him and waits for his song to end, the floral scent of her flowers rising to combine with the rich melody of his voice.
They may call me a sinner, but I am at peace with myself;
He should not feel surprised when he hears the snap--crack! of twigs and underbrush nearby which signal the approach of a stranger. Yet there in his chest springs the red-toned emotion of surprise. After all, sometimes he gets away with singing to himself in private. But despite his best wishes to just be alone on nights like these, when his self-pity steams off his body in reeking sheets, his voice betrays him, the nature its magic predisposing him to attracting visitors.
When he looks up to reprimand the intruder in between notes, however, his anger stops in his throat and turns warm and liquid. His song falters.
"Gods, you're beautiful."
The words fall from his lips before he has time to catch them, quiet but forceful, earnest. His whole body shakes with the chill of his decisions not minutes prior, blinding him to sense or reason. Nothing else matters as he stares at the manifestation before him: small, woman, angel. In the breadth of this momentary glance, he consumes her.
"Come closer," breathes Indius. In the interim where she may decide to deny his request, the star-cloaked stallion resumes singing.
The melody maintains its soft volume but sheds its timidity. Its notes turn outwards and twist, the notes sharp, keening for her. Her, of the golden skin and beflowered hair, smelling more alive and luscious than any of the frozen waste surrounding them, with the black instrument of death poised atop the unblemished surface of her skull like a knife between red-stained lips. He thinks of silk as he looks upon her. Soft. Intimate. Binding.
What self-pity he felt before transmutes into something else, something raw, edged, and needy; and in his chill, in his lonesomeness and regrettable lack of internal boundaries, he begs the stranger closer.
It hadn’t been her intention to distract him. She had been content to simply watch and listen, had not noticed the way her eyelids had started to grow heavy as she become lulled further into his song. It is his voice that momentarily brings her back, the sharpness in her golden eyes returning when she looks up at him in a haze. A soft lazy smile finds her lips at his compliment, vain creature that she is.
It has been a long time since she had been openly admired and she doesn’t mind the way his gaze consumes her. It reminds her of something else (someone else), unfortunately, and so she resists his breathy request. At least, she means too. His song begins again but it holds a different type of beauty between its notes. Something dangerous and terrible, something meant to capture her.
The little unicorn enjoys being wanted but just as Tunnel had tried to mark her flesh as his own, she does not enjoy being claimed by another. Bardot belongs to no-one but herself. She does her best to resist the golden notes that wrap around her like a noose and pull her closer. Indignation sparks in the tarnished gold of her gaze as she looks at him beneath her heavy lashes, feeling the way his melody seeps beneath her buttery skin and begins to coax her closer. Her hooves begin to move, each step feeling weighted, as his magic fights against the resistance in her soul. Ss she moves closer, she notices the small similarities that bring back images of her lover of old. The blue-black of his coat, the unmistakable hunger in his eyes.
It hurts, surprisingly, to think of the monster she had once willingly given herself to. Finding pieces of him in another is something she hadn’t expected. It burrows into her blazing heart when she brings that spiraled horn to his throat, the tip pressing to his flesh, as her muzzle comes to rest against his neck. Yet another pantomime that brings a flood of old memories to the surface. Beneath the golden haze of his siren’s song she murmurs to him with only a hint of the restlessness that now simmered beneath her skin. “Be careful what you wish for.” She breathes into him as she obeys the command and tries to come even closer, letting her horn do the work she can't do herself.
They may call me a sinner, but I am at peace with myself;
![[Image: BQjeje-Bardot2.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/T37nJTF6/BQjeje-Bardot2.png)