[private] I am alone - then again, I always was || crevan

[Corvus]

.Corvus.

(yes, I am alone)
but then again, I always was. as far back as I can tell.

  He kept to himself, and it suited him.

   He had never longed for the company of others as so many might have – perhaps it was, in part, due to the bitterness that festered inside of his chest like an open, gaping wound. The bitterness that he would never be like his brother, that the wolf would never emerge from the hearth of his breast – or bitterness that he had never known his father. He only had the briefest of memories of him to remind him that he was not some figment of his own imagination – that he was real, and so very absent. 

   A bitterness that threatened to consume him entirely.

   His feathered appendages lay heavily along the curve of his barrel, inky and gleaming in the pale light of the dense woodland – iridescent beneath its gentle rays, warming the hollowed bone to the core. He does not take to the sky often; it does not give him any comfort to be closer to the starlight that so openly mocks him, nor to the pale moon and its glaring surface, illuminating every fault and flaw etched into his gilded skin. You look so much like your father, his mother had crooned while he and his brother had once suckled from her breast, but the words are laced with resentment now – he longed to wear a skin that was anything but familiar.

   Alas, he cannot, and in the wake of the destruction that left Taiga floundering, encased in thick, oozing magma and boiling with saltwater from the very sea from which it had been birthed. His mother had found him, drawn her close and pulled him into the pristine water, effectively saving his life - his feathered appendages provided him with the opportunity for flight, but when a cumbersome branch struck him as it fell from a swaying, withering oak, he was left to utilize only his legs - which were no match for a towering wall of bramble. He is drawn from the darkest shadow by a pang of loneliness only quenched by the presence of his brother. He tried not to think too much of him, but as death had loomed so precariously over his head, his mind began to regret the distance he had so grievously put in between them. 

Though he is longing to see him again, to know that he, too, had escaped the wrath of the magma and seawater wolves, the envy remains.  Crevan is power, while he, himself, is .. what is he? Nothing. Nothingness, and as the thought echoes within the emptiness of his mind, a heavy and powerful gust of wind roils through the forest, expanding from his chest and filling the empty spaces and crevices carved out by the tall and winding copse of trees enveloping him.

   And finally, his voice – rough from disuse, tilted toward the thick canopy over head - calls for him, a plea for a brother he felt as close to as he felt distant from.

I think maybe it's because you were never really real to begin with.
(I just made you up to hurt myself)

@[Crevan]

[Crevan]

forget all the names we used to know

Corvus would never call unless he meant it. Never. That’s why Crevan has slipped skins - donned the coat of his ancestors and transformed into an ivory and taupe beast - to race from the Field to the Meadow. Faster and more adept this way, though he knows he won’t keep it in his brother’s presence. No - Corvus had never liked when Crevan wore this coat, had always been bitter during training session and glanced at him with spiteful eyes when his voice took the shape of flame. It was as natural as the way Crevan glowered at those silky, perfect wings pressed to his twin’s sides, as natural as the growl that slipped from somewhere unknown when his womb-brother shaped the wind to his own desires.

To be in competition with each other was just the way they were, had been, would always be. Where it stemmed from his mother could never pinpoint, though she knew (that woman never let much slip past) and chose to keep a tight lip about it. More than likely she assumed the two would figure it out themselves and, in their own strange, quiet way, they did: with distance. It was the key to their tumultuous relationship, the one thing that reminded them of their blood ties and kept them coming back time after time to reunite until, at last, one or the other would grow too weary and the two would split again. Cyclical, a bit petty, but altogether necessary.

A huff of breath and then Crevan is slowing; he can smell the familiar calling card of his twin (eerily close to his own) and so he chooses here and now to shift once more into horse. Upwards he grows, step by step molding himself to become the shape he was born into: a muddied, goldenrod stallion with the shock of a navy mane and tail to set him off. The grasses around him bend, sway, break against each stride until he comes to rest at a standstill before his mirror replica; their only difference being that Corvus was lighter, more honey and framed in swaths of dark green hair. “Brother!” He exclaims, the tone of curiosity alighting over his face to transform it into increduilty. His twin had grown, and for the better.

“Too long, it’s been too long.” He admonishes, though he’s partially to blame. A bump of his nose against the elder sibling’s shoulder and then he paces back again to stare at him fully. “Is everything alright? You sounded .. strained.”

revan