"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
09-19-2017, 09:57 AM (This post was last modified: 09-19-2017, 10:05 AM by Magnificent.)
Magnificent
She could drown in the depths of her wrong doings, if she could make the connection, if she could fully understand what was right and what was wrong. The meaning of her actions could barely grab hold in the chaos of what could be, because her inner fight dug trenches in her truths. Things she buried away in the deepest catacombs, things that sometimes longed to be freed. Untouchable though they might be, they splintered in roots far below the surface, fervently seeking light- wanting sustenance in which to take hold.
She starved them, crippled them until they rotted.
Yet they always returned, she was a stubborn plant, it comes as no surprise.
To drown, would that not be bliss?
The river rushes to her mind, just as it had pressed itself over craggy rocks and tossed its very being in splashes of white water. Those spots where it was given life, adrenaline, meeting its full potential. Where it became lethal and beautiful and intoxicating.
Just like him.
She tosses her charcoal head, blinking away from her gaze of nothingness, crooking her neck and closing her amethyst eyes. Tendrils of plummy hair spilled across her neck, hanging in limp strands as she wished the roots away, digging them from the hardened soil. Will they not just die?
He was like the river, quenching her soul and instilling life in her. She wanted him to wash her clean, to cleanse her of her evils and yet she would have never allowed him to do so. It was a conflicting and alluring pipe dream, the thought of the possibility alone intrigued her. He could be something to make her whole and new, something that let her repent just like holy water and yet she understood nothing of Christ. But if she did, she would sink beneath his surface and rise unsoiled into the sun, breaking his unmoved glassy reflection and letting him consume her.
She faded from him though, much like many childhood memories, hazy at the back of your mind. To touch him was both pain and pleasure, being so close was excruciating and why did she return to him the way she had. Why did she find him at the river and bleed herself before him? Why?
Why do they do the things they do anyways, what drives them?
It was for the best, bowing out, saying goodbye to the rapids and in a sense, goodbye to him. A silent goodbye because she whispered no such things and hinted at far less. Just gone, taking leave in the night. They were not for each other, a bittersweet truth, one that was reluctant to be lifted from the plowed soil, something that walked behind the rows. A devilish imp of a feeling and she stroked its ego, letting the devil of emotion caress her jaw as she opened her eyes to the field. Fire burned there, knobby fingers nudging coals, until she could feel nothing for him- if only for the moment.
Keeper should not be here;
Has no reason to be. She belongs to herself (not true, comes the murmur in her mind that leaves a shy smile on her lips for a second) and has not found her niche in this great wide world of their doing and undoing. But here she is, a small wild looking creature that steps out of the nearby woods as if she had easily stepped out of another story - one that involved deer, moonlight and lakewater, and even cherry trees and dragon scales. The story however, is not that grand or romantic - it just is, and here she is, looking around with eyes bright and black.
Her eyes catch on the black mare with the plum hair and the eyes that shine like pretty purple amethysts uncovered from the dirt. There seemed to be a shiver of something in the mare’s jaw then a fire that brightened the purple of her eyes, a fire of determination or something secret that only the mare herself could know. It is that that draws Keeper forth, because she understands secrets - why, she’s one herself! Or so she fancies. She is like a shadow, small and creeping and shy, and like a shadow she wants to be known - she wants to know if the black mare is like her, someone with secrets - someone who is a secret and a shadow, because secrets and shadows know and recognize their kind.
“Sorry I couldn’t help but notice that you seemed… determined.” She hesitated for the briefest instant, uncertain of how to phrase her interruption. Keeper came closer, close enough to offer her nose for a breath of greeting then pull it back, tucking her chin almost to her breast and tucking the mare’s scent into memory. It never occurs to her that she could be wrong in her guestimation of the mare’s emotion, Keeper does not often do well with emotions - she watches, she recognizes, but fails to comprehend because none of them are like the deer (or him) but are so alike to themselves that Keeper cannot keep up with them.
Her chin comes away from her dunskin breast and her head acquires a curious tilt to it as she never takes her blackberry eyes off the mare. “I suppose this is where I introduce myself since I interrupted your idyll…” she trails off, looking away just once before continuing, “I’m Keeper.”
09-20-2017, 10:12 AM (This post was last modified: 09-20-2017, 10:19 AM by Magnificent.)
Magnificent
Gentle is the spring breeze that spirals up her dark legs, winding a whirlwind path through the obstacles they made. The flies that once rested, nipping at the tender skin, took flight and she twitched, acknowledging their departure. Her weight shifted, from resting on her left to her right and her body swayed with the movement- a dance of sorts but nothing beautiful or graceful. Nothing like the simple artistry of the vivid green grass that folded like ocean waves, brushing her fetlocks.
Relieved is the sigh that leaves her sooty lips, as though she breathed him out and left him to the wind. For now she was stilled, content with what was at hand, the burning ache that had momentarily filled her now dissipated into a whisper of a thought.
Perhaps that’s why she did not turn to the guest with venom, this seemingly delicate creature that approached her.
It’s all very hard to say what sort of greeting one might receive from the dark woman. Magnificent could have easily coiled like a serpent, displaying a very reptilian nature, something to mirror the scaled wings that clung to an ebony back. However, the self-willed sense of euphoria had not bled from her just yet. She regarded this fawn (unassuming like a deer the dun was) with her bright jewel toned eyes and something that might mimic interest. A touch, a brush of velvet skin that accompanied a warm breath, solicited a curl of her lip. The membraned wings at her sides lifted inches from her ribs, stretching in response to the unexpected proximity.
Did she just touch me? she asked herself, and something else unexpected occured.
She laughed, a quick chuckle that was foreign to her ears, something equally unusual to otherwise clenched lips. It felt like hard butter, her vocals like a hot knife separating the dense yellow margarine with ease. How long since that unusual flutter of happiness gave itself life, granted itself a vessel from which to escape the cavity of her lungs?
“Do I?” a question, not one necessarily needing an answer. “I suppose I am- was..” she corrected herself, answering her own inquiry. “You seem…” pausing to pluck an ample adjective from her mind. There were many she could have ushered from her brain, instead she dug in the dirt, instead she chose a truth and offered the broken root to the child. “You seem fragile,” she revealed, dropping the offering in the dun’s proverbial hand.
Magnificent did not often give and so she was tempted to snatch it back, to latch her crooked fingers around the gift and return it to herself. “Keeper?” she wondered out loud, though the namesake was not so unusual really. “I’m called Magnificent. Tell me, why are you so far from your herd little beasty?” By herd she imagined the spotted, frolicing pelts of juvenille doe because in her mind’s eye (the one that would rest where a spiraled black horn pierced the sky) she pictured deer. This girl was sunshine and sipped wine, twinkling fireflies and murmured magic, she was soft and practically sickening.
Yet the dragon harbored an unexpected warmness to her, bold as she was...for poking the bear.
Keeper can feel the spring swirl around them in warm breezes and the scent of blossoms opening their perfumed insides to the world. Either of them has but to look amongst the grass and find the swaying heads of flowers fat with scent and color, attracting myriad bugs to them to feast on their pollinated guts. But neither has eyes for the flowers or insects; Keeper looks over the black, notices the wings lift inches off the ribs and how they are as membranous as a bat’s. She has nothing else to compare them to since she has never seen a dragon in her life - the scaled stallion might be the closest to it that she’s come, but he was nicer than a dragon had a right to be.
The black laughs, and it draws Keeper’s eyes back to that bright amethyst gaze set inside such a dark face. There is no menace in the laugh but her head tilts further to the side just the same, her curiosity deepened by the fact that the black seems as surprised by it as she is. “You don’t laugh much do you?” she blurts out, unable to hold back from questions such as these. It wasn’t that the laugh sounded strained or forced, just different, like it hadn’t happened in a long time. Keeper likes laughter; she laughs when she hunts for mushrooms by moonlight, when she is quiet and quick enough to snatch mouthfuls of grass beside a doe and her two spotted fawns, when she is gliding her lips through fur black as night and finds the patches of white on him like spread out constellations.
She cannot seem to look away from the charming spell that is the black mare, from the sheer magnificence of the black horn spiraling to a sharpened point up from her brow to the sparkling jewels of her eyes that held Keeper still. One might say it was like looking at a dragon, beholding some piece of forgotten magic found again in the world but then Keeper laughs, ducks her head just a little because no one has ever said she was fragile. “No one has ever said that about me before.” she chuckles, thoroughly amused by the idea of it. If she had to guess, her bones were fragile enough that gopher holes could snap them in two and her skin might rip easily beneath hungering jaws but Keeper had never seemed fragile. It tickled her to think that she might be seen as such and she couldn’t keep the smile off her lips.
Magnificent. She could imagine no other moniker that fit the black mare as perfectly as that because she was magnificent from the tip of her horn to the tip of her tail. There was no denying that and Keeper did not even try to dim down the dark brilliance of the mare before her. One thing she was good at, was poking bears especially ones deep in the throes of hibernation - it had started off as a squirrel’s dare but Keeper had gone too far to just come back and lie about it. She had actually sniffed the moldering skin of a bear snoring in its den and brought back a nut from its stash as proof and prize for the squirrel. Keeper just does things like and the other beasts don’t seem to mind her because she’s not quite like the rest of them. “You are certainly that,” she murmurs, enchanted by Magnificent’s magnificence.
Little beasty. It makes her smile to hear it. She belonged with the beasts than with them. So why then, is she here? Keeper never comes to this place, this field of hopes and sorrows that has pockmarked the land and the very air about it so that it reeks of things promised and broken. Because she had been out wandering, took a different path than usual and come across Magnificent who stopped her in her tracks. How could someone like Keeper ignore someone like her? Her fascination showed plain on her face, as did the quickness of her mouth as it moved between smiles, some broader than others. But for a moment, she thinks of Hyaline and decides that Magnificent should see it - she’d look regal amidst the wisteria with the mountains rising up at her back.
She gives no answer to the question of herd and farness; an idea takes shape in her mind and burns hot in the back of her throat so she says instead, “Come with me!”
09-21-2017, 10:48 AM (This post was last modified: 09-21-2017, 10:59 AM by Magnificent.)
Magnificent
Neither can take much heed of the flowers, not even as their pristine petals prickle with untold stories, and promise secrets buried in their centers. The gnats will have them, the butterflies will whisk them away and spread them against the clusters of primrose and none shall be the wiser. Such a trivial thing, to gain knowledge from the earth and yet it was there, it was for the taking but instead the two remained transfixed, locked in some unspoken curiosity. Unspoken, but understood nonetheless because it was etched in their features, even nestled against the pitch black of Magnificent’s jawline.
Fragile, she chose because when comparing to herself, the girl was soft lines, she was delicate. The dun mare was smooth and silken, the sunlight illuminating her coat and making it a spun gold spectre. Keeper was a river flowing because when Magnificent looked at her own reflection she saw jagged edges and harsh angles. Scales and sinew.
She was lovely in her own sense, like a rosebush, thorns included. Soft hands would find them easily, may even unknowingly seek them out, too eager to reach for vibrant blooms and failing to consider the consequences. Eyes were always hungry things, clouding judgement, misleading the body and admittedly Magnificent was not an exception to that fact. Beautiful she was and maybe majestic, a craggy cave that held hidden wonders few might take a moment to explore. Magnificent was quick to analyze their differences, it’s not something she could help. A character trait that was ingrained when she was quite small, even in the short time she had spent in the Cove, it’s effects, its lessons learned, were lasting.
Kirin would have be pleased to know this, to watch it fester and grow in her as it did. The lavender leviathan would smile his crooked, charming smile and relish in the glory of these tangled roots.
“No,” she said with a solid certainty as she continued to take in the gilded girl “I don’t laugh often.” The thought has never occurred to her before, this truth was not something she took time to consider and now that it was presented to her she wondered if she had always been so sullen. She imagined Keeper laughed often, a tinkling noise that would instill a giddy wash of light on one’s soul just to hear it. Magnificent’s first impression was growing into a fantasy of a fairy tale and she spun the image in her mind because it felt like power. It felt like control to wish and will this assumption into truth, if only for her own amusement.
“Really?” the question left her as quickly as it had formed itself in her mind, the dun admittedly surprising her. “No one at all?” No one had told the fairy girl that she came off as meek, that she appeared as gentle as a lamb and equally as soft? Perhaps the onyx dragon only felt that way because when lined up side by side they were polar opposites. They were day and night, light and dark, heaven and hell and Magnificent’s opinion of herself was largely skewed. Dark, blissful perfection was she and while she could (in a sense) appreciate the doe for what she was, she was still a doe set in the reflection of two gemstone eyes.
Eye of the beholder they say.
Certainly that, certainly. Did Keeper mean to sweep her words like a soft brush along Magnificent’s ego? Did she intend flattery, did they mean to coax the reptile into a dancing cobra? “Come with me!” The request was abrupt and unexpected, a lasso around the neck, a sinkhole in sand. Everything in her said to struggle, to fight and break free of the braided leash and yet she remained still. Go away, said her insides but it was not often a snake was approached by a mouse so blatantly- so trusting and transfixed.
“Lead the way,” her words returned, as if spoken by another mouth. They were statue stiff, struggling to bend concrete shaped into absolution by guided hands.
