"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
dropping little reels of tape to remind me that i'm alone
playing movies in my head that make a porno feel like home
He creeps through the overgrown trees quietly. Branches and leaves catch in the ratted tendrils of his mane and tail, pulling and tugging as he pushes on. The glow from his skin momentarily lights up the bark of each tree as he passes by. It has been some time since his mother abandoned him along a creek in some strange, seemingly abandoned land. He wasn't sure what he had done wrong in the short time he had spent with her. He fell asleep as a newborn, awoke suddenly older and watched her walk away. Ghoulish. was the only thing he had heard her say.
Unfortunately for him, he drew a short straw in the game of life. A dark god as a father and a narcissistic leech of a mother left him with nothing and no one. Life is not kind to everyone, it is a hard, painful lesson learned young when dealt those cards.
The young creature stopped when he came across a small clearing. He leaned against a tree, scratching his glowing yellow green skin against the rough bark. Slivers of daylight speckled the ground through small openings in the tree cover. He turned his orange eyes towards the sky, wondering exactly what time of the day it was. He lost track in the depths of the forest where no sun shone through. It was quite apparent when night did fall, though, as his skin would rot away to leave patches of death and decay only to knit itself back together like nothing had ever happened when morning returned.
Perhaps that's why his mother didn't want him. A rotten, radioactive looking child with a skeleton painted across his body. Who could blame her?
He hears a rustle and crackling of twigs and flinches. Ears pricked up as he turned his head to watch with glowing orange eyes. Was his mother returning for him?
She does not have the doe-eyed innocence of others her age, nor does she share that curiosity and thirst for life. Where others flit about, she slinks; a wolf amongst the sheep. Many have tried to entice her into play; she's rejected most with a sneer and some with a mirthless laugh, but they've all been rejected.
She is small, and she is young, but she is not like them.
The night calls to her like a baying hound, and the red filly does not resist that call. She slips away from her mother easily, leathery wings tucked tight against her blood red sides. Mist swirls around her, cloaking her black legs from view and giving the illusion that she is floating through the trees. She has no goal or purpose, only desiring to escape the prying eyes of her mother.
The forest moves easily to accommodate her. Not for her size, but something in the way she carries herself makes the landscape seem to shift around her. She is almost silent, her tiny feet sinking into the leaf litter easily. She walks for ages it seems before her interest is finally grabbed, and what a sight it is. A startling colt, older than her but not by much. His coat is a lurid shade of green or yellow (she can't decide), but the skeleton painted on his hide is what really lures her in. His ears swivel to and fro atop his head and she knows that he hears her. It gives her a thrill, knowing that she is being recognized as the huntress that she hopes to be. "The itsy bitsy spider, went up the waterfall...down came the rain, and then he had to fall. Out came the sun, and saw all of the bones...and the itsy bitsy spider is never going home..." she trills as she makes her way towards him, dark eyes flashing.
Mother did say she was an odd child. Mother is right.
-Sanguinista-
the moon is my sun & the night is my day...blood is my life & you are my prey
dropping little reels of tape to remind me that i'm alone
playing movies in my head that make a porno feel like home
It's not his mother who breaks from the shadows of the trees but a filly. She's smaller than him and a blood red color surrounded by a dark fog that makes it seem as though she's floating across the earth as her voice chimes through the emptiness between them. He doesn't move from his spot against the tree as he looks her over, curiosity in his glowing orange eyes. Leathery wings like a creature of the night, red that matched the liquid that oozed from him when he fell and scraped his skin open while first learning to walk on longer legs, dark glinting eyes, and that suspicious dark air following her.
When she finished her rhyme, he gave a small tilt of his head and pushed off of the edge of the tree. He moved his glowing body a bit closer to her with a couple small steps before looking to the earth. "That's an interesting story." He said blandly, not lifting his head to watch the filly, "but, it's not really correct," a foreleg moved forwards and struck the earth sharply, a small black hoof lifted to reveal a large, crushed 8 legged creature on the decaying bed of leaves beneath them "Spiders don't actually have any bones."
He eyed the deformed body that no longer moved, wondering if it would knit itself back together the way his body did every morning. It lay there, still and lifeless. It wasn't coming back, just like his mother. An intrigued "hmm" noise crawled from his throat, and he returned his eyes to the filly, narrowing them slightly. "Should we see if you have any bones?" a small smile crept over his features as he looked the filly over again.
He had never seen a real dead horse before, only the grayish white bones that appeared through his rotting flesh every night. The bones painted across his body were somewhat visible to him but could only assume that's what they all looked like put together.
Some things become wicked with age. Whether their mind curdles or their soul tarnishes or both, something changes them for the worse.
Not her.
She was born wrong. She is only weeks old, but there is a general air of "not right"-ness about her. An overall wrongness that bleeds from her blood red coat and swirls in the mist that coils around her legs.
She is sin, or something close to it.
Other fillies may be alarmed by him; she isn't other fillies though. Instead, she watches him, cocking her delicate skull in curiosity. He is older than her but not by much, and the same foulness that oozes from her seems to cling to him too. "Noone likes a know it all." she muses, her eyes falling to the remnants of the spider. Its mostly dust and goo, though its too-many legs still twitch in the throes of death. If she had it in her, she could feel sorry for the tiny creature. Instead, she feels nothing at all.
He speaks again, and her eyes slowly rise to the lurid green colt. His words, the threat, ooze from his mouth like toxic gas. Other fillies would surely flee back to the safety of their mothers sides, but not her. She meets his words with a sneer, her teeth flashing briefly. "You'd have to catch me first, and wings trump legs every time." she says, flaring them from her sides for added effect. "Besides, mother told me theres all kinds of monsters that live here, and most of them look normal. What if I'm a teeny tiny monster?" Her words trail off into a giggle, though there's no humor to the sound. Only an eerieness that cuts through the silence of the night.
-Sanguinista-
the moon is my sun & the night is my day...blood is my life & you are my prey
dropping little reels of tape to remind me that i'm alone
playing movies in my head that make a porno feel like home
A know it all.
In honesty, Ghoulish knows nothing, but he wasn't going to admit that. He smirked and took a slight step sideways to look at her from a different angle.
She doesn't turn and run from him as he had half expected her to do, but instead greats his remark about her bones with a sneer. Intrigue flickered across his features as he watched her. It was true, he wouldn't be able to catch her if she took to the air. There was nothing he would be able to do to get off of the ground. His eyes wandered over leathery wings again as he thought about what it might be like to fly. Freeing, he was sure. "I suppose you're right. I couldn't catch you in the air." He stated before jumping towards with a little snap of his teeth her as she made a show of her wings, "But they wouldn't do you any good if I caught you before you got off the ground."
He stilled when all four hooves found the earth in front of her and moved his face near hers, trying to get his nose close enough that the eerie glow emanating from him might have reflected against her. He looked down to the dark surrounding her, wondering what would happen if he got close enough to touch the fog. Would it be hot or cold, or feel at all?
His orange eyes found hers, searching for any emotion. Was she as empty and eerie as she sounded? His curiosity piqued at her mention of monsters and her spine prickling giggle. "What kind of a monster would you be, little red banshee?" She made him think of a creature of the night or death. Something uncanny and cold and soulless - and it was so very intriguing.
From the very moment her eyes opened, her mother has chastised her. Not her existence; Topsail had willingly put herself under the Dark God and willingly bore him another child. For all her faults, Topsail saved her womb for those worthy of filling it. Unlike all of the others though, 'Nista was inherently strange. Spooky and unnerving, as if something has gone wrong during the building of her. By all appearances, she was perfect, but inwardly? There was an emptiness in her soul, in her emotions, that unnerved even a former Queen of the Valley.
Some say monsters aren't born, they are made. But she's always had the making of a monster.
He steps towards her and instead of moving backwards, she stiffens her posture and meets his gaze. Her leathery wings flair further, the tiny claw at the tip flexing in anticipation. She knows she would lose in a battle of brute strength; she simply doesn't care. Mortality isn't something she's overly concerned with. To be afraid of dying would mean being afraid of death itself, and she is more curious than afraid when it comes to such matters.
The glow emanating from him bleeds into the fog surrounding her. The glow swirls upwards and through the mist, finally reaching her eyes. They reflect the light back at him, but the light will find nothing else here. Only a void, something that consumes but does not return. His next words are another veiled threat, and again she flashes her teeth at him, her wing claw angling towards him. "You could try, I suppose. But then we would both have to bleed, and that does seem a shame." she says, a lilt to her voice that matches the tilt to her head. In a strange way, the emptiness within her feeds her bravery, and she closes the gap between them, her nose nearly touching his. He smells of pine and something sweet but sickly. She inhales deeply, her eyes never leaving his as she invades his space. His next question brings another giggle, and she steps back and shrugs her small shoulders nonchalantly. "If I were a monster, I'd be the kind with sharp teeth and a hungry belly. I'd want to stay pretty though, so no one was afraid of me. That makes it easier to sneak up on them. Sneak up on them and eat them up." she finishes with a nod. "What is your name, skeleton boy? My mother named me Sanguinista, but you can call me 'Nista for short."
-Sanguinista-
the moon is my sun & the night is my day...blood is my life & you are my prey
@Ghoulish
Ooc- here, have some rambling! this went off the rails and I apologize lmao
dropping little reels of tape to remind me that i'm alone
playing movies in my head that make a porno feel like home
He smiled when she didn't shy away from his proximity, catching a glimpse of her wings as they twitched in anticipation. He didn't have experience with other horses except his mother. His mother who had dropped him off like rotting trash in a barren, dusty land and disappeared into the world with few words. There was something about the red and black girl that exuded wrongness. It likely should have pushed him away, his instincts should have said flee but instead he felt a pull towards her with some dark curiosity.
Their mix of glow and fog created an interesting show around the duo as she states it would be a shame for them both to bleed and a short chuckle rumbled from his throat. "To each their own, I guess." He remarked as she stepped even closer to him. He didn't shy away but tipped his head slightly as he took in her scent. He could smell another horse on her, assuming it would be her mother, but she also had a strange smell. Something he couldn't quite put a descriptor to. Whatever it was, it matched the wrongness that flowed from her with the fog.
His smile grew slightly as she stepped away and giggled. Something about the emptiness in the giggle made him want to get inside of her mind and see what was in there. He pondered what he might find if he was able to crack her open as the girl began to tell him what kind of monster she would want to be. "I think that would be a fitting kind of monster for you, 'Nista." He said, coming back to reality and directing his orange gaze towards her, his glowing eyes still curious, "My mother called me Ghoulish, but you can call me whatever you want." What's a name, anyways?
