[open] antlers and horns and scales

[Ajatar]

ajatar

devils speak of the ways in which she'll manifest;
angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress.

Time passes.
Pangea is gone.

Where there once stood land is now empty, slipped effortlessly into the sea. Ajatar watched through clouded eyes as the kingdom that spat in the face of the fairies disappeared into the great abyss and left nothing behind. She was smart to outrun it - were others? Did her mother remain a drowned goddess below the waves?

She can only hope.

But she's free, isn't she? Perhaps Harmonia will think her dead, too, and with that thought Ajatar turns on her heels and kicks it into the distance. She'll go as far as she can and rest, then go further, then rest - then...

The meadow, she supposes. Where she sets her quiet mind down to graze.

[Longclaw]

Don't be afraid when the night wolves cry,
feast on their bones, suck the marrow dry.

There’s an expression of excitement in the curve of that slender, dark body when she bends her neck and mouths the last crop of summer greenery. Life, so unrestrained and willful, lights those kobicha eyes and adds an air of ‘something else’ to her overall features that draws, with alarming alacrity, his own gaze in turn. Up and over the ridgeline that makes her mane and swooping down into the bout of her spine his eyes leave spotless trails; Longclaw hardly even notices that his breathing has taken a new tempo, or that his own lips have begun to curve taught as a bow.

Indulgence, on his part, and not exactly prudent.

Long, leonine flicks of his own legs have him moving in her direction and his body begins to tremble, - Patience! Patience now, not too quickly -  but he maintains until his approach at her shoulder comes close to uncomfortable. Here Longclaw stops, (as if merely pausing to admire something for close inspection) before vanquishing that tell-tale smile in order to speak to her. “Would you mind if I grazed here?” He queries, rather innocently despite the mark of youth having fled from his facial features. Breaching three he is already something of a remarkable stallion, in conformation and slight of attitude. “You seem to have found and cornered the best spot.”

The hint of a smirk relaxes his mouth. “I’m Longclaw.”

Longclaw

ooc: No idea what her eye color is, I guessed brown but if I'm wrong let me know and I'll change it

[Ajatar]

ajatar

devils speak of the ways in which she'll manifest;
angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress.

She, too, is youth. Striking youth, with the sinewy muscles of recent puberty, with the gentle curve of a childish face - she still looks so innocent, despite everything. And naive - it doesn't occur to her to watch her back as her mother might have (might have instructed, had she a motherly bone in her foul body) or be aware of predators. No, she was forever treated as the master predator, a thing to be feared and held at arms length. She never needed to learn protection, her fear protected her when it crawled out in its foul, abysmal pox.

Pestilence. Even her grandfather, the walking form of dereliction, cast her as something else.

But for all the abuse the filly remains in good spirits - a quick, easy smile to the stranger. Of what does she have to fear? In Pangea she knew only peace, and out here in the wilds she knows only peace. The predators keep wide berth of her, so she is unaware they exist. She lacks her mothers mean streak though - when prompted - that temper!

Such is not the worry now.

"Yes, of course, there's plenty to go around," she says with a nod, regarding the grass. "Though I suppose I'm not the one to ask for permission from, the grass belongs to everything, right? This is no kingdom?" She is now genuinely curious - did she wander onto a kingdom? What this a horrible breach of manners? Oh dear.

"Ajatar," she allows when he offers his own name. "That's my name," she clarifies, realizing he might have thought she just spouted out a random word. Did others do that? It's possible.

[Longclaw]

Don't be afraid when the night wolves cry,
feast on their bones, suck the marrow dry.

A quick, unassuming smile is reward enough for his composure and he would’ve been happy with that, certainly, had it been all she offered. Any reaction is reason to continue, though he warrants a positive reaction is more appealing than the negative. She does, for all appearances sake, seem positive; Longclaw can clearly appreciate the subtle curve of her jaw, the tender lines of her face where innocence still lights eyes and mouth alike. If he only knew what dwelt beneath…

But he doesn’t, just as she’s unaware of the fire thrumming through his veins at this very moment. There’s destruction veiled by flesh and bone, smoothed out by light banter and quick, easy smiles. Kindred spirits, it would seem. “Don’t trouble yourself, Ajatar.” Longclaw chuckles, the persuasion in his tone meant to set her problematic mind at ease. His voice holds an unusual air of authority for one so young and unproven; it’s his vice, perhaps: complacency in all manner of situations. But even this cannot snuff the coiling excitement in his belly as he sweeps his splendid head down, teeth gripping and then shearing the earth of her fine, green dress.

He is a manipulator, after all. This authoritative edge to his mannerisms can be shaped to his advantage and he does that now, quickly, while his head rises deftly once more. “This grass belongs to everyone, but your company belongs to you alone and I’d like, very much, to hoard it for a bit.” The stallion relates, gaze brimming with expectancy of her approval. His teeth set against each other suddenly, the urgency within him peaking, but -Easy now, calm yourself- it was a game designed in her favor and out here, in the open, he won’t be so crude.

He might be an animal, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t in control.

“I’d like to know where you’re from, what you’re doing here?” He presses again, easing into the heart of the matter between them. “I’m very curious about you, you know.”

Longclaw

[Ajatar]

ajatar

devils speak of the ways in which she'll manifest;
angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress.

It is an overwhelming feeling - to want to be known. It's not new to her - ever since Harmonia found out about her...gift...she utilized it to gain favor. Pollock, Deimos, anyone who might hold some scrap of power that Harmonia could cling to. Harmonia was a ladder climber, Ajatar was a rung for her. The child had a great inkling of what her mother truly was and hated her for it - though in the detached way most children of abuse hate their parents. In theory, not in practice. If Harmonia came sweeping through the meadow to collect her now, what would she do? Follow, Ajatar realizes, she'd follow the palomino creature to wherever their new home was.

He does not really answer her question about if this is a kingdom or not, his answer is a non-answer. She's used to this. Playing with the monsters in Pangea made her astutely aware of non-answers and what they really meant. Keeping information from her. She grows weary, though curious still - who is this Longclaw? Why does he want to pry such information from her? She's eager to give it - there's nothing much to say.

"Well, I was from Pangea," she says, mulling over her own piece of fresh grass. "But it's gone now, so I suppose I'm from nowhere." She gives a shrug, scratching her nose on a bit of snake scale from her foreleg. "What about you?" she asks of him, a slight tilt of her curious head. "Do you have a place you come from? Or are you a meadow bum?"

[Longclaw]

Don't be afraid when the night wolves cry,
feast on their bones, suck the marrow dry.

Ah -Can you feel it now? That feels like satisfaction- the link of one chain attaching to another is so internally pleasing to him that her answers merit the broadest, the most endearing of smiles from the shimmering blue stallion. A chuckle breaks the calm exterior and if before his face had been near to perfection, now it is mythical beauty reborn. How true, her statement on Pangea! Gone - and with it the anchor of her past. So this is the reason for her spirit to reflect as joy in every shift of movement, subtle as it may be. Even now, while her nose rubs soft circles over the bulge of her fetlock, she seems so certain that nothing can or will go wrong. Optimism; it suits her well. “I’d be hard-pressed to use the word ‘bum’, but yes to the first and no to the second.” Longclaw answers, the smile about his lips dimming from the need for speech.

“I was born in Nerine,” He starts eagerly enough, breaking the sentence apart now to swoop once more for forage. “But my sire took me to Pangea when I was old enough to travel on my own and I trai-” He stops, swallowing silently while he retracts and considers his words. “And I grew up there.” He finishes, tail batting thoughtfully at his sides. “Now I call Tephra home and tomorrow, who knows?” He shrugs himself, a mock of her previous, noncommittal reaction.

“Do you miss it? Pangea, I mean.” The shifter now asks her, cat-like curiosity narrowing his vision before another swoop-and-grab can be made. “Were there people you loved, people who loved you?” He asks more poignantly, trimming the fat of pleasantry from their tet-a-tet to add a bit of an edge to the question. He wonders if it might strike some vital organ or another, this query. Ponders if it might let other emotions flow freely from her soul. His eyes, endlessly green and infinitely hooked on her cannot, will not, move from that sweet, dark face. “Or were you taken there against your will, like me?”

Longclaw

[Ajatar]

ajatar

devils speak of the ways in which she'll manifest;
angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress.

"Nerine," she echoes, quietly, to herself - a land she'd never heard of. Tephra - another land. She keeps this land to herself, tucks it away quietly behind the layers of things she knows and doesn't know. Silently she considers these things, these different lands and what they may mean. Which did her mother retreat to? Which does her mother terrorize now?

Her thoughts shift quickly, he's asking her a question. "Funny we never met, I spent my entire life in Pangea." She almost said childhood but that's not right, is it? Is she still a child? Was she when she left? Years are fickle things she doesn't quiet know how to track. That's part of having a magician for a mother, she supposes, and being immortal. She'd be young and fair forever, if she wanted to.

"I don't know if I miss it," she admits freely, rolling her shoulders as she considers it. Harmonia always played things so close to her chest, held her cards tight and didn't let anyone else in. Ajatar just didn't see the point. So what if this stranger knew her mother was a horrible creature, how could that knowledge hurt her? She is as young as she is naive. "I had friends - Pollock, Rodrick. My mother, Harmonia, was there. I'm not sure where she is now." She doesn't clarify if the mare loved her, though she suspects she did not. "When your a child do you have control over anything?" she asks, half to herself, half to him.

But the thought passes, and with it a brightening of her eyes as she regards him once more. "Tell me of these other lands, I've never heard of them. What are they like?"
Where should I go?

(Sorry for the delay, for some reason I never got an e-mail you replied, which I've been getting the whole time. Silly board)

[Longclaw]

Don't be afraid when the night wolves cry,
feast on their bones, suck the marrow dry.

Fascination gives way to curiosity, which in turn gives way to obsession. Longclaw, eyes tracing the movement of her lips, the rise and steady fall of her proud breast, feels himself nearing something of an obsession with this girl. The two, cleaved from the grasps of their respective parents, continue to placidly admire, shift, and inspect the many facets of their young life to compare differences; but the more she opens up, the more Longclaw seems to find in common with her. At last, struck motionless by the heightened intensity of her bright stare, he can only chew thoughtfully and focus on the main points of her conversation for answer.

He’d been distracted, clearly. “Funny? I find it terribly disappointing in not having met you earlier.” He states firstly, “To be fair though, I wasn’t there to make friends - .” The stallion cuts himself short, neck stiffening as his head rises. One blue ear tips aside (his eyes following quickly enough) to scan the rough waves of meadow grass. All, apparently, seems well. Overhead a lone bird titters, gathers among a cloud of its kind, and begins its journey south for the oncoming winter. Ajatar’s soft question goes unanswered. “Well,” He inhales, relaxing once more before returning to his previous occupation: admiring her, “Nerine is everything exhilarating all in one glance. The black cliffs, the pounding sea, the wild wind that sometimes wails throughout the night and rips leaf and limb from tree.”

“And Tephra,” He exhales, finding it hard to stop a natural grin from warping his lips at the memory of Warrick and his first night there, “feels like the place I was meant to be.” Longclaw surmises. His hunger satiated, clarity returns and with it, the knowledge that she was free to do as she liked. No one had come looking for her, she clearly wasn’t searching for anyone in return - Longclaw had greedily taken her time and felt none the worse for it. Only eager for more. “My mother still inhabits Nerine, you’d be welcomed if you mentioned my name.”

There, a token for your patience. His grin slackens into a black, hard line. “I won’t go back there while my father still lives, or I’d offer to take you.” What had once been so pleasing about the young male, so light and attractive, was now repulsively apoplectic. As quickly as the storm blows in, it’s spent, and his face settles again on a more or less monotonous appearance. “Or maybe I should snatch you up - take you to Tephra where I can pepper you with endless questions.” He chuckles dryly.

“I’m afraid my earlier absorption with you has only doubled, and I find you guilty of nothing less than being the most curious creature of all.”

Longclaw

ooc: It's okay, I punished you with reading a novel (of my own writing ... :O )

[Ajatar]

ajatar

devils speak of the ways in which she'll manifest;
angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress.

Curious.
She's known this sensation, this dissection before. Her mother started it the minute she saw the snake scales on Ajatar's legs, knowing something wasn't quite right with the girl. Of course, you mix two magicians you're bound to get something strange. Something fascinating. Harmonia picked and prodded until the pestilence came out. Deimos? He was terrified, his great dark eyes sweeping over the girl like she was the plague and the savior. Rodrick, Pollock - curiosity, but also - like a bargaining chip. The familiar sensation is...well, she's unsure. Is she unnerved by the attention? Her face is conflicted ,she doesn't have a poker face.

But his rendition of the lands - Tephra! Nerine! She's hooked on these vivid descriptions, so much that she misses his insinuation that his time in Pangea was not mandatory. That it was horrible, maybe, even awful. She misses all of this because she's wrapped in these thoughts of other kingdoms, other lands. Beautiful, strange, where wind rips off branches!

"I think I need to travel more," she admits thoughtfully. "I'd very much love to see your Tephra, and perhaps Nerine. Are there many other lands to visit?" Oh, what a thought - that Ajatar would break from her long line of heritage and find a kingdom and be a diplomat to travel. War is in her veins, death is in her touch - she need only be triggered to unleash the horrific plague on the small land. The idea of losing control, of killing all those around her never quite occurs to her. It should.

[Longclaw]

Don't be afraid when the night wolves cry,
feast on their bones, suck the marrow dry.

Had she been indentured into hermitage her whole life? “Are there many other lands to visit?” “A whole world full of them.” Is his reply, and it comes in the form of hushed awe. Intrinsically his tongue glides out, flickers over puckering fangs to pierce the wall of his lips and taste the air. Heavy with the last of summer’s humidity it tells him many things; their time to travel by the safety of daylight is waning, this autumn would be pregnant with rainfall and, in turn, would give them a bitter winter, but most importantly: that Ajatar lacked any sense of self-preservation over this journey. There was neither the acrid taste of fear nor the salty bite of her sweat for him to savor over.

It was almost as if she’d never known terror.

Curious indeed. “I’ll lead the way, happily.” Longclaw chuckles, borrowing the mantle of tour guide for her sake (and only her sake) alone. “Though,” He adds, swinging portside in an arc as his forelegs cross over one another to point him, bodily, North, “I hope you can swim, or else I may have to do more than just lead.”  The glimmering stallion warns, pushing ahead to make tracks so that Ajatar might follow. Her earlier question assaults him now, playing repeatedly in that same, soft mantra she’d spoken in earlier, “When you’re a child do you have control over anything?”

“No one has control.” He wants to tell her now, even though the moment has come too late, “Fate fucks us all bloody.”

Briefly, he glances back to the scaled girl; she lives, breathes, hasn’t disappeared like some strange ghost into the bright afternoon. Smiling, almost as if to himself, the pyromancer turns back and lengthens his stride.

Longclaw

@[Kortnee] See you in Tephra?