"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
There’s a deer in the clearing, grazing on a bed of dahlias. Although the forest is murky surrounding her, the picture is as perfect as if the best hands had painted it. The springtime sun highlights the golden atop the doe’s shoulders and along her back while her long legs and leaning head are shaded by the bulk of her body and the shadow of the flowers. The dahlias are lovely shades of white and red, looking nearly akin to the lionfish that swims in the ocean, and their colors contrast the emerald green of the grass around them. Birds twitter in the trees surrounding the clearing, singing happy songs of spring and rebirth and growth.
But the shadows stir with imperceptible danger.
Time to hunt.
A simple thought to the mind, yet layered with calculations and decisions. A twitter leaves her throat (nearly a whistle like the breeze through a hollow tree) but to the doe’s ear it sounds like the breeze or a bird. One golden-brown ear turns in the direction of the shadow, but her hunger causes her to toss care to the wind (tending after a child is exhausting work, after all, and a momma needs to feed) and she doesn’t raise her head.
If she had, she might’ve seen the shadow slip away from around a pine tree and then launch itself into the bright sunlight.
Kill. Kill. Kill.
The dahlias (in their shades of white and red) are now splattered with deep, flowing color. So too is the shadow’s chest and head splattered with the same deep, flowing color. But the color is hardly paid to the mind because the shadow’s mind is too absorbed in its hunt. It’s a seamless, practiced, perfect one that is laced with the untold stories of hunts before and hunts that will come after.
She growls as she tears through the flesh and into the sinewy muscle. Her mouths grab at the prey easily, shredding and gulping down the muscle hardly before the blood can spurt across her armored head and against her inky chest. It’s a savage act, miles away from the road of manners, and she finishes within a half hour.
In the near distance, cradled under the shade of a pine tree, lies a tender little fawn with dapples still fresh upon its skin.
The chaos that reigns in the deepest pit of Sylva’s darkened forest is almost too much for the solitary stallion. There are too many words, too many threats that linger without much forethought, maniacal laughter too often floating to his ears. Perhaps there is a method to all of the madness, a meaning behind the political plot twists and the calculating moves made by king and his pawn alike. Maugrim only cares for Maugrim, however, and will only do what is beneficial to him. It’s enough to send the two-toned stallion into the deepest recesses of the red forest, cloaked with shadow and blackness and the ever-dampness of his water - just to be alone.
The dampness of the cave coils around him much like a passionate lover, the soft drip drop of water onto the smooth stone floor rhythmically lulling in his ears. A recent rain freshly covers the entirety of Sylva, the leaves of the tall and stretching trees dripping loudly into the dampness of the ground. His skin is slick and wet as he enters into the sunlight, drawn into the open by the only thing that will stir curiosity in his otherwise thoughtless demeanor.
Blood.
He can smell its metallic tinge on the springtime air, just like had only a few days prior. The stallion snorts, wading through the forest floor like a serpent.
Maugrim comes upon the scene as the silent predator he is, stopping as soon as the sound of cracking bones and gnawing teeth fill his ears. Dark eyes scour the area and fixate on a terribly familiar (and terribly frightening) figure, its head hidden by the open ribs and chest of a doe. He watches for a moment, enthralled with the sound of teeth grinding bones to meal and the tentalate snap of muscle from tendons. Nexu nearly hums with contentment and for the briefest of seconds he almost wishes that he was capable of devouring his victims.
He says nothing to her, save for a soft snort that she may have heard. His eyes drift, to the nook of a pine tree where a restful, beating heart stirs in a tiny ribcage. Without much thought or decision, the stallion remains in a wide berth around the feasting creature, not wanting to disturb her. Instead, curiously, he strides to the sleeping fawn. Maugrim halts a few feet from its sleeping form, silent and still. His pale lips dampen with a swift lick of his tongue, eyes narrowing in thought. Grappling moisture from the recent rain, he wields it expertly before his face, spiraling it into a spear-like shape. His dark eyes glance down at the young deer, and with merely a breath, commands the water down its throat and into its lungs, where it drowns in minutes despite lying on solid ground.
Maugrim turns his head over his shoulder, ears flicking through the shadow for the sound of Nexu. He calls to her with a neigh, bobbing his head; wondering to himself if the black-armored creature would collect his newest victim.
While they scheme and rape and steal and burn, she eats.
Her mouths still cannot grab ahold of their slippery language, although her mind might be able to understand it with time. She is intelligent under the armored planes of her body, despite how feral she is in nature. They can speak eloquently among one another, snatching children from their mothers to torture them like disposable ants, but she finds herself not so easily entertained with their talk.
Sometimes, it is as the saying goes: All bark and no bite.
She consists of the components of a bite and it’s shown in the unashamed way her mouths bury themselves in the ribcage of the doe. The meat is tender and warm, appeasing to her tongues and stomach, but when she hears the low snort of a Prey and the scent of him among the bitter tang of blood, her face draws away from her meal. Two dark eyes watch the emerald-Prey.
He is from the first day here.
He’d interested her, when she first slipped into the shade of the yellow-orange forest, and he interests her now. Dagger-sharp tail flicks against her heels in two quick swipes, curiosity almost tangible as a taste along her jawline, mingling with blood and bone and meat. She keeps quiet, offering no welcoming chitter, as he skirts around her to the shadow of a pine-tree.
Something is being made.
The moisture from the trees and ground pulls away from its resting place, winding through the air like a visible breeze. A soft exhale of air leaves her nostrils in quiet wonder and she takes two steps closer to the emerald-Prey, eyes focusing on the liquid as it moves to form a shape with a bitter point at the end. There is the sound of leaves scattering then, as the fawn opens it sleepy eyes to find danger poised above it.
The gurgling of the fawn’s attempts at water-invaded breaths finally draws a sound from her mouth. It’s pleased and somewhat awestruck, a complicated twitter that sounds half-bird and half-alien. Her intelligent eyes are trained on him now, not moving from his pearl-and-emerald face even as she steps closer.
Has he done this for you?
She stops within his personal space, armored crown tangling with the tree’s branches above their heads. She wonders, for a moment, if he will shy away from her close proximity. Her shoulder brushes against his own, inky dark armor sliding against splashed, soft hide. She’ll accept his offering, even though her belly is full from the feast of this young Prey’s mother. She buries the fawn, there below the pine tree it had just been sleeping beneath, and then turns toward the emerald-Prey with her knees muddied and her face bloodied.
Follow me.
Still in close contact, she touches the curve of his neck (the pulse of blood under his skin calls to the drive for a hunt within her; she can practically taste the sweetness of his life-force in her mouths) and turns to slip into the shadows. Whether he follows or not, she moves forward. The place she is going she will go to with or without him.
While the coolness of a cavern calls to the emerald-Prey, the darkness of a thicket calls to the Predator. She’s been raised among bramble and decomposition and natural fortification, thus her home is a large entanglement of such things set in a corner of Sylva’s autumn-forest. There’s a dark hole, large enough for her massive shape to slide through but hidden by features of dripping vines and the overhanging branches from a substantial weeping willow tree.
With another whispering tune, low and husky against the backdrop of the forest’s sounds, she disappears into the shadows. The interior of the thicket is wide and smells thickly of her (an acidic tang mingling with the bitterness of blood and the musk of forest), but when she slides out from the opening there will be plenty of room for the Prey to enter.
The floor is dark and earthy, yet pushed to one corner is a high pile of various decomposing skeletons. For the most part, their tissue and the fabric that used to cloak them has been stripped away, engulfed by her hunger, but some straggling pieces remain. There’s the slenderness of a fox nestled closely with the agility of a doe, but many species of Prey lie in the pile as well.
She thinks he will find the morbidity of her trophies enthralling. Her head twists toward him, intelligent eyes finding his own. Will he be the one to find her home interestingly addicting or entirely disgusting? Can he stomach her?
The fawn’s quick and efficient death draws the black beast towards him. It is chilling; the feeling of her slowly coming up beside him, her towering frame in the shadow his peripherals as he continues his work, a steady breath stuttering from his nostrils. Whether she takes the offering or not, Maugrim had only been doing the doe’s offspring a favor - life without its mother would soon bring it to its death no matter what, and he was there to ensure that the suffering was quick and nearly painless. Dying of starvation is possibly one of the most cruelest ways to die.
The shining obsidian of her armored shoulder brushes his, a croon of what he could only assume was a pleased sound, his dark ears flickering backwards slightly into the tangled mass of lavender and emerald. Dark, abysmal eyes watch as her willowy form moves forward to quickly bury the body, carefully inspecting each movement as if it would somehow give him insight into her inner thoughts. He’s unsuccessful until the gleaming black of her own eyes peer down at him from beneath the smooth crown across the bridge of her face, the blood from her kill no longer dripping with wetness but now colaguating onto the onyx of her hide. Her mouth touches his neck and for a moment the stallion is frozen beneath her touch, imagining the many rows of teeth that lay just beneath the surface that must desperately wish to lay claim on the soft, supple flesh of his body. The touch is brief, but enough to make his blood run coldly in his veins.
Maugrim is expressionless as she turns away from him, but he knows when he is being summoned.
Without hesitation, he follows her. She had chosen him (whether it be simply because of animalistic curiosity or because he was to be her next meal), and Maugrim was not about to say no. They come to the darkness of a cave, one that looks much like his own, though no trickling of water or idle black lake frames its opening. Instead, vines cover its mouth like gnawing teeth. There is a sound that trickles from her mouth, though it is lost in the wind and between language barriers. There is a smell that he recognizes almost immediately, and a low nicker vibrates in his throat as he steps through the vines behind her, his hooves clicking on the smooth and damp stone of the cavern floor.
His eyes take in her trophy room, his gaze wistfully roving over each skeleton that lines the dripping floor. It is more than he could imagine for himself, where the corpses of his own cavern are rotting away with flesh still pressed against bones, muscle still intact and eyes beginning to sink into their cavities. There is no expression that shows distaste; only a mere look of expectation finds the sharp angles of his face - for what else would a predator such as herself stow away in the deep darkness of her cave?
Maugrim’s foreleg lifts upwards, pawing gently at the damp floor. He snorts sharply, turning his dark eyes to her wordlessly, bobbing his chin a few times before placing it against the musculature of his pearlescent and evergreen chest. He is satisfied, knowing that the creature is a skillful huntress as well as the primal beast he had thought her to be. A powerful being, despite her lack of words.
She senses it in the way his muscles grow startlingly still under the touch of her mouth. It reminds her of the fact that he is still Prey, even with the desire to kill she sees swarming in his dark eyes. It only further encourages that drive inside her (to reach with her teeth into the cavity of his chest and pull out the pulsating muscle of his heart and press it firmly between her jaws) and she turns away from him perhaps quicker than she would have before.
Despite the savagery of her soul, she doesn’t wish to hurt him.
Not yet.
He follows her, despite the tension she’d seen across his shoulders, and it only further encourages her wish to leave his skin unmarred. So too does the expression in his dark eyes as his gaze scans across the skeletons (wistful and jealous, laced with a look that proves he is both impressed and longing that the collection had been his doing) cause her to shift closer to him in the shade of her home.
She is grateful for his silence. While he snorts and paws, his mouth does not open to speak those slippery words. He understands, in ways that the other Prey do not. He is willing to walk into the forest and then straight into the darkness with the devil’s monster despite the apprehension of the situation. And she knows he cannot understand her either (though in time perhaps they will be able to communicate together) and thus when he prances and cranes his head, she does not twitter back.
Instead, she moves closer.
There is a different atmosphere in the close-contact shade of her home. It provides a bit of something that electrifies along her spine, tingling down to include her flanks and the tender curves of her neck. She can’t quite identify it — both with the unfamiliarity she has with this something and the youth of her mind — but she runs toward it without much regard.
So, when she steps closer, she touches his shoulder again. Will he still under her touch, like he had done before? Or will he turn toward her? She wonders what his soft mouth would feel like on her armored ink. A low noise drags from the back of her throat, soft and nearly purring, when her mouths touch his supple skin (there is no desire to tear into his flesh now, as strong as it had been only moments before) and then she is winding away, circling around to the other side of him and sliding her dark sides against the opposite side of his.
She’s confused with her own actions (the purr in her throat and the desire to touch him again) and the vibe in the air (the something that seems to fall over her body even heavier than before and the way the shade casts handsome darkness against the angles of his face) and it shines in the depths of her oil-slick eyes.
credit to fangs of bearbones.
@[Maugrim] / ope, nexu's gettin' frisky even though she doesn't know what that word means <3 :/
In the swathing and comfortable darkness of her cavern, the black beast shifts closer to him, the sound of her breath in her throat captivating him. He continues to allow the bottomless color of his eyes to shift over the corpses and bones, the sickening sweet smell of death and rotted flesh not at all preturbing him. He remains poised and without relaxation, however, feeling incredibly small and somewhat helpless in her presence - the fact that his flesh has not been ripped from his bones are merely a miracle of her own doing. Something about him - something that comes naturally to him - keeps her interest piqued, allowing him to sustain breath in his lungs.
Maugrim has never been one for many words. As a child, he had grown solitarily and angry, chasing away any real opportunities for friendship and socializing. He had been viewed as strange and terrifying (rightly so) when he had taken to murdering small animals and flooding obscure areas of the meadow and playground, misunderstood in his awkward silences and brooding, disturbing eyes. Only recently (the bond of the kingdom, perhaps, or merely maturity) had the pearl and evergreen stallion truly allowed his thoughts to be expressed, learning from others in the way that they spoke to one another and mimicking their social cues in attempts to ‘blend in’. It worked, and many victims had fallen into the trickery that has become his feigned charm, which is the only reason he continues to practice it. He is able to move through the ranks and to receive orders that are what he truly desires (taking them, making them his, destroying them), with the power of a kingdom behind him.
But with her, there is no need to pretend, no need to flourish with pretty words or assimilate into the hierarchy of what a kingdom truly is. There is only nature and instincts, purely primal and animalistic. Nexu shifted closer to him (he can feel her presence swaying beside him like a living, breathing shadow) and her mouths find the musculature of his damp shoulder once more. He is frozen beneath her power, buzzing with electricity at the idea of the unknown, the sound of her guttural purrs suddenly giving him the ability to move. Maugrim shifts his weight into the coldness of her armored lips, his own nostrils flaring as the sound of a deep and throaty nicker reverberates in his throat as a reply.
He turns towards her slowly, the splashed lavender and algae-green of his neck curving to view her with gleaming black eyes; yet, she is already moving. She circles him and Maugrim straightens, then turns his neck to the opposite side that she now grazes herself against. This time his face meets hers, the blinking blackness of his eyes meeting the cunning irises of her own, his skin twitching fervently. He reaches towards her slowly and deliberately, soft huffs of air leaving the pearlescence of his mouth as he returns her previous gesture, his velveteen muzzle making the briefest of contact against the black and shining armor of her neck. His ears flick cautiously, listening for sounds of displeasure or of encouragement from her, all the more curious with each passing second.
There is something about him that she likes. She can’t identify it yet — it could be the sacrifice of the fawn, it could be the shadow of ill-will in his eyes, it could be the fact that she already ate before he approached her — but something has continually stopped her from pressing her teeth against his throat and ending the precious breaths he takes. Perhaps in time it will evolve into something she can name (something crafted among quiet embraces in the night, among the fresh meat he brings her on a watery platter, among the shadowy corners of their home where they finally manage a few words between each other in a significant yet unique language) but for now she chooses to ignore those musings.
He is nervous.
The thought arises again when he stills under her touch. Yet this time is different; she does not cling to the not-so-subtle reference to his Preyness, but rather envelops herself in the fact he has not run (whether from fear or because he truly doesn’t want to leave, she isn’t sure). And then — surprisingly — he is leaning into her touch, pressing himself closer to the death that lingers just inside her mouth.
Ahh, yes.
His nicker surprises her — this unspoken language is much easier to interpret from their slippery and dotted words — and she chirrups in response (it’s a flutey, light sound that nearly brightens the room with its contrast from shadow and smoke). The tension that surrounds them (or perhaps merely him) dissipates as she circles him and then his mouth (soft and supple compared to her armored, heavy mouths) is touching the ink of her neck and a deep purr slides from the back of her throat, entirely unintentional but entirely well-reciprocated.
Just as he had done before (she is attempting to learn him, after all, to understand his behaviors and how they might communicate), she is leaning into his touch. A soft exhale pulls from her lungs at the same time, sounding relieved and relaxed all at once. She is content for once, nestled among the shade of her home with the skeletons scattered in a corner and his soft mouth against her nape.
He is not nervous anymore.
He is not emerald-Prey anymore.
He is Partner.
