"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
He holds the effortless arrogance of youth and something more. The knowledge that he is, in essence, indomitable. With the lazy blink of an eye, he can summon destruction, on a whim; he can meld into shadows and darkness. And now – he can disintegrate and reassemble wherever he pleases.
Ever since he made this discovery, he has been stalking the remote parts of Beqanna. Watching, listening, learning. The only thing that keeps him rooted to this mundane world is his sister; dreamsong in his blood, the steady buoy in his bay of turmoil. But there is wanton hunger in his eyes, and a vile chasm in his chest. More and more he wears the skin of shadows. Black and gold, monster and child. And he can sense that his grip on this world, on sanity, is slowly fading.
The night is deep and he moves through the shadows slow and heavy (he walks not because he must, but because he still can). Here and there a birdcall penetrates the silence, and he starts at each one, tensed and wanting. It fades into echoes, then fade into quiet. The subtle hum of the underbrush and forest begins again, and he moves on. He is a methodical flow of thoughts, stemming outward from each thud of hooves on the earth beneath him. Past. Present. Future. He remembers. He predicts. And in the sweet caress of the shadows he dreams.
Memories of time spent in darkness press close, and he longs for the white hot prick of solitude. He aches for the swirl of fear in his veins. Because it was easier. Easier than the sweet-syrup feel of the shadows’ call along his spine. He would have to pay their price, because he was gradually turning into a shadow himself. Now, he wish he hadn't, because things aren't easy anymore.
He is escorted by the wolf tonight; sharp-fanged and prodigious in comparison to the colt. It howls a predators lament into the night; hungry and terrible and it sends a chill down his spine. The colt, cresting his first year but with the woes of a man twice, thrice his age in his eye stops suddenly – wolf in tow. His small golden ears flatten against his skull at the sound of something in the dark.
”Who´s there?” he asks, and his voice is silk and honey – altogether unexpected from those lips. But the wolf growls, nefarious and wanting and the colt falls silent. Let me eradicate them it whispers into his waiting ear, and he swats the thought away like one would swat a fly.
i fell like a dreamer for sweet tea and lemonade; it clings to my t-shirt it’s loud and it lingers, designed to suffocate. i light up to find what i’ve known all this time, there’s some beauty here yet
The silver chalice of the first year of life will soon be within her grasp. She is still as a wild a thing as ever (perhaps will never cease to be, unless someone or something might come along and break her), evidenced by her adventuring through the farther corners of Beqanna. Warrick might’ve had a heart attack if he knew his beloved daughter were flouncing around among the River in the middle of the night.
But Wishbone enjoys the thrill. It’s a bitter night, in the midst of autumn, but the moon is bright above her head. The shine of the constellations catch on the tangled, wispy knots of her hair. She’s a beautiful mess — there are cuts and bruises along her knees and chest from climbing some impossibly steep cliff or another, her locks are tangled and filled with some assortment of leaves and pine-cone and bird-feather, there’s a decent amount of grime caking the backs of her heels that she hasn’t bothered washing off yet.
Although there should be, Wishbone feels no danger toward the nighttime world. She is weaving along the embankment of the River, ducking under low-hanging branches and splashing through shallows when thick undergrowth blocks her path. In fact, she doesn’t consider the possibility of someone else lingering around until the sound of a smooth voice and the depth of a growl reach her ears.
Wishbone twists toward the source of the sound, amber eyes sparkling with the reflections of a hundred stars glowing miles away. She’s a petite thing — wild and untamed with the background of the River and the looming presence of the shadows — with long legs and the gentle curve of growing hips. Wishbone doesn’t answer the voice’s question (the darkness seems thicker in some corners, but beside that she doesn’t see much else) as the timid thought that someone from Tephra might’ve followed her twirls through her mind.
Auburn strands dance against high cheekbones. “I thought I was alone.” Sable nostrils quiver as she attempts to scent the stranger. She catches the hint of horseflesh, but it is unfamiliar and clouded by the tang of the running water over her shoulder. “Do you plan on hiding in the darkness all night?” There’s laughter in Wishbone’s voice and her lips curl into a wild smile.
Khaedrik feels the too-close presence in the night, the heady hot sensation of another living being, breathing down his neck. The shadows wrap him tight, and his nerves rattle and sing as he catches the silver bright voice of the filly. Who is there? Khaedrik´s glitter-dark eyes flash bright in the darkness. He backs away from her voice, and sidles to the right, moving with a silence and practiced grace. Intrigue. Bred into every elegant curve of his body. He drops his small head and reaches the tree line, no longer in the double-darkness of the forest. And Khaedrik stands, in the feeble starlight of this night in Beqanna, obfuscate but glorious. His voice is shrill – too young and innocent to belong to those lips. Khaedrik is every inch a monster. Every inch something more. ”I´m Khaedrik” he offers. Perhaps it means something to his companion, but to most – nothing.
He is too young still to admire the swing and sway of her hip, but there is something about the sylvan wildness of her that sparks his interest. He raises his head and his dark eyes are both turgid and empty. Inquisitively – he sends out a tendril of darkness; silk-smooth and ink-black to coil around her body. A spider-web made of shadow and smoke and his wolf growls again – to Khaedrik, she might be a possible new friend, a wild-eyed filly with dirt on her hocks and stories of adventures to share, but to the wolf she is prey caught in his net. Khaedrik glares at his monster, a master´s warning rebuke to his slave. The wolf might break bones, but Khaedrik would knit them back together. Let there be no confusion as to who is in charge here. The wolf obediently slinks behind Khaedriks tail – the annoyed swish of it a silent warning.
”And I don´t hide in the darkness” he states, in that offended tone that suggests he is much more child than shadow-master. Khaedrik never really did learn how to grasp the concepts of humor.
i fell like a dreamer for sweet tea and lemonade; it clings to my t-shirt it’s loud and it lingers, designed to suffocate. i light up to find what i’ve known all this time, there’s some beauty here yet
They are nearly kindred spirits (both independent and untamed, both finding comfort in the silence of night, both equally interested in each other) but they are crafted from different material. Wishbone is a star — a shooting star, at that — constant and blazing in the sky. She is elegant and rowdy, confidently pushing her way through any darkness she might find. Khaedrik is fog, rolling between bodies and under legs. He is hazy and quiet, but too much of him can choke anyone who lingers in his presence too long.
Though he moves, she cannot sense him. Suddenly he is dragging himself out of the darkness and her amber eyes are dancing over the starglow lines of his face. He looks to be around the same age as her — all long legs and unfamiliar body and growing muscles — and whatever anxiety over a Tephran following her is shattered. “My name’s Wishbone.”
There’s a half-smile on her face. It disappears into a look of wonder when a shadow pulls itself away from the hoard and curls around her body. It feels cool against her skin, soft like Warrick’s feathers. The sensation brings to mind memories of swimming in the ocean (the drag of the current against her heels, the silk of the water on her shoulders) but when the darkness pulls away, her mahogany body is not wet.
“What is that?” She isn’t fearful. Even if she knew the power over life and death Khaedrik holds, she would not run from him. Wishbone has an awful habit of running back into the mouth of lion for the sheer thrill of it. The wolf growls beside them and her sunset eyes watch the interaction between master and dog. She doesn’t say anything in response, but rather gives a loud laugh that shatters the nighttime silence when he doesn’t understand her joke.
“I was messing with you,” she says, her words choppy in between the rise and fall of her laughter. “Why are you here in the middle of the night?” Wishbone knows why she’s here (she knows every inch of Tephra, but she’s determined to know every inch of Beqanna itself), but she’s full of questions and one of them is to know why he might be.
They are both runners – but where she runs from family and protection – into the arms of unknown adventures – Khaedrik has only tried to run from his own shattered mind.
And oh – how miserably he fails.
She holds his interest – with her scent of almost forgotten rosemary and thyme, and her saline breath. She is like him – a new spirit, rangy-legged and wild. But there is no star-shine to brighten his brow, no; Khaedrik is despite his young age a broken haggard thing, made deranged by the constant war inside his head. From the shade of his racing heart, he peered into the forest´s many rotting hearts and dissembling halls – and found the same smiling darkness, that lurked inside his own breast.
The wolf lifts its black, black lips to reveal a row of predator-teeth. It is the monster – so different from the boy, golden with youth and innocence. But oh, how effortless it would be to let go of the control he has over his own mind, to trade prey for predatory – to drown her in wolf´s breath and rake-teeth. Everything in the world was to be flesh, consumption to those vile teeth. To consume all that those claws of rip could grab, the maw of death and salvation. The beast sees only skin, supple, tangible and soft. Easy to eat, easy to chew.
And he had no sword, to stab at the glee of his nightmares.
All he had was twined in the snarls of his mane; and he shook those curls of darkness, wondering if he was going insane.
It is her name; wildflower-pretty and her that brings him from wolf and madness and back to forest and girl. There is a moment of absolute clarity; where his mouth tastes her name, tastes the dreams and salt-spray that is braided into each syllable.
”Wishbone” he repeats – and there is strange appreciation in his voice. ”I like it”
He clings to her laughter; to the stardust she sprinkles over him – splintering darkness and madness and danger. For a moment; he rests in his own skin, for a moment he feels normal.
”I´m trying to figure out what to do with myself” he answers truthfully, still clinging to that momentary respite.
Cryptic, perhaps. But is she not child, too, has she not the same questions and insecurities that all youth share. Except the wanton lust to kill those she would call friends.
i fell like a dreamer for sweet tea and lemonade; it clings to my t-shirt it’s loud and it lingers, designed to suffocate. i light up to find what i’ve known all this time, there’s some beauty here yet
She is not on a path to self-discovery. Wishbone has a strong sense of reliance in herself, something as deeply rooted as the oldest of Beqanna’s forests. She doesn’t ever turn inward to herself (to any turmoil she might face, to wonderings about why her emotions are how they are, to look back at her past and see how it has shaped her) for the simple reason that she does not feel the need to. The wild girl would much rather spend her time exploring the unknown depths of Beqanna — and maybe Beyond, if she discovers every inch of this home.
Perhaps that is why her heart is starshine and delirious adventure.
That stardust, forested-wilderness of a heart warms at the appreciation in his voice. She enjoys the sound of her name as well (the “shh” of the beginning like a wind through her ears followed by the soft severity of the end) and it makes her happy to know her newfound friend feels the same. If they could be called such things; little does she know of the violence lingering in the depths of his golden chest or the snapping of teeth barely maintained by whatever childlike innocence is left of his mind.
“I’m glad you like it, Khaedrik.” She likes the sound of his name on her lips as well. Wishbone takes a few steps forward, encouraged by the sudden warmth he shows. She doesn’t know of the effect her laughter has over the darkness that preys on him. His answer causes her to halt in her tracks and think it over. The expression of thought flutters across her face as strongly as a thundercloud rolling through a bright blue summer sky.
Wishbone hadn’t ever thought of the need to do something with herself. She’s only ever been. Perhaps that is her immaturity compared to Khaedrik — she has spent her childhood simply being a child. One day duty might call for her (a day that is approaching sooner than she might have expected), but for now she has no need to do something, not when all she needs to do is be herself. “Why do you need to do something?” She’s truly curious, amber eyes searching his face amid the contrast of moon-glow and shadow-dark.
When most close their eyes they see darkness, the emptiness of promise and the whole stretch of the cosmos. When their eyes are closed the perceptions of flesh disappear, and the perceptions of the soul can drift in idle abandon through the shadowy halls of forever. Khaedrik´s eyes close, so that he might see and gain an understanding of the “self”. So that he might dream and draw on the potential he ignores, glean from it the secrets and mysteries of life; chase understanding with desire and flaw. His eyes close on light, and open into glorious darkness.
He clings to the moonlit slant of her face, as if it might save him from that darkness he so desperately yearns and spurns all the same. He seeks redemption in the silverbell chime of her laughter. She still holds the innocence of youth and wild things; he has replaced it with cold and stone. With war on his own mind and madness and the worship of darkness. Khaedrik´s life has been the trial of mental supremacy; the struggle of sanity against insanity where the price of a moment’s weakness is the swift touch of an untimely reaper. When he wasn´t leading shadowlings into battle he was waging war against them.
It is a barrier that stands between him and affection – that darkness which never washes clean. Oh, he would like to spill his secrets to her ears, swapping secrets for sanity and more than a fleeting moment’s respite. His eyes follow her as she takes a step closer; feline and liquid-smooth. There is something stirring in the pit of his stomach – though he cannot place it and thusly thinks nothing of it. And yet….
And yet he takes a hesitant step closer, until he can almost sense the warmth of her stardust skin. The sea-salt on her breath is foreign to his nostrils; and he closes his eyes against it.
”It seems so easy…..” he begins, but doesn´t know how to finish off the sentence. So easy for her, for the rest of them? And what of insanity – how do you tell someone you´ve just met that you are struggling not to let the monsters in your closet devour them?
Khaedrik certainly does not have the answer to that question.
”There are moments” he tries instead, and still he doesn´t open those bitter-black eyes of his for fear of what might lurk behind the shadows there. ”There are moments when I think I am going crazy”
03-29-2018, 06:16 PM (This post was last modified: 03-29-2018, 06:16 PM by Wishbone.)
haze like a fever
i fell like a dreamer for sweet tea and lemonade; it clings to my t-shirt it’s loud and it lingers, designed to suffocate. i light up to find what i’ve known all this time, there’s some beauty here yet
He moves with her (two children swung together by the current of time and chance) and she can’t help but feel even more drawn to him. He sings to a piece of her she cannot identify. Yet that corner of her personality is a huge anchor in who she is — it is her constant thirst for discovery, it is her easy-boredom, it is the way she is drawn to the puzzle that he is.
Khaedrik is someone she is unable to figure out and it tugs on the adventurous side of her so stubbornly that he might be the one to perplex Wishbone for the entirety of her life.
He is honest — encouraged by the cleansing rain of her laughter and the metaphorical light she dazzles him with — so she listens for once. The words that fall choppily from his mouth are laced with hidden fears (things she cannot even begin to put together for the simple reason that she could not even fathom them in her imagination).
She is quiet for a moment, sunset eyes searching his charcoal face. “I’ve never heard someone who’s crazy call themselves out for their insanity.” Her voice isn’t condescending but it is simple and pure. While his eyes might be sewn tight shut against the world, Wishbone keeps hers wide. She isn’t afraid of the gnashing teeth in the shadows or the skinny, decaying fingers that might cling to her heels.
Wishbone has always been a guns-blazing type of girl. It’s woven into the very fiber of her being. It’s as much a piece of her as the mahogany of her skin or her parents’ blood in her vessels. “But if you can’t face your demons, I’ll face them for you.”
He longs for the forest; for the forest which, like a sleeping demon, curls at the feet of the mountains and slumbers mightily; he longs for the decay and rot of the leaves, which there dot the grassland, fading into the soil with the coming of winter. Control
It is a paradox – a contradiction in the swirl of his kohl-black eyes. Khaedrik is ambiguity – a whirlwind of impossibilities and torment, and control has never been something he claims to master. But of course, if control can be counted in times where he has not devoured his companions in shadow and ruin, then maybe he does. There is something to be said about perspectives.
He is silent as she speaks. It is more unnerving than words, more disquieting than accusations; a soft hiss of air escapes his lips, curling in midair about his nostrils – and still, he says nothing. But there is more than nothing here – and he listens.
Her words are lullabies to the strained chords of his mind.
”Wishbone.” The syllables of her name are clipped and ornery, the accent garbled and curious; it is an accent of monsters, of despair and longing; it is an accent which speaks of darkness and silences in the mornings and lightness in the deeps of night. A warning – and a promise.
As though guided by some will other than his own (though longing did lurk, tucked below his sternum) he extended his mouth; and brushed it, along the wan plane that was her skin. But such a kiss (for kiss it was: the giving of a heart, from lips to flesh) does not sate.
”Thank you” he swallows – as he withdraws, and there´s a sour taste in his mouth, and the fleeting suspicion he has done something terrible. His shadows hiss a warning, ancient and foreboding but his ears are deaf to them.
”But I believe I must face them myself.” he continues – ”Though I sure could use some of that bravery of yours…”
He tries a laugh – suddenly ashamed at their nearness – but it is a hollow laugh, filled with shadow-snarls and hopelessness.
@[Wishbone] Uhm yes, so I am terribly sorry for the one month wait lol, but life has been crazy!
