[private] but they just can't prove it

[Creatrice]

SNEK

Their words wash over her as senseless as the sea they're standing beside. The Beast's - no, the stallion's - are half-choked with salt and sand, and the palomino that holds firm between him and the shaking red filly replies silky smooth, but too clouded in metaphor for her to understand. Creatrice' breath shivers in her nostrils, by turns terrified and furious, and something in her belly turns cold when her red eyes brush against the blood-and-ash of his skin where something strange and unknown lashed out from her livid heart.

There's a coiling feeling in that cold place inside her. It distracts her at first from trying to follow the stilted conversation, but now when she tries to grasp at it, it slithers away, hissing softly in her ears. This is something new, something that wasn't there before. It's something that the soggy, slimy, stinking, stallion pulled out from some depth of his ocean lair and poured into her like an empty cup. Her gaze sharpens suddenly, snapping out of the middle distance. What has he done? Her reward for the sudden attention is another leering smile that makes the bared muscle of his jaw tweak and flex and makes her stomach turn.

What has she done? It isn't guilt that draws the question to her mind, but she'd be hard-pressed to pinpoint the line between curiosity and fear. Whatever she touched is now lurking beyond her reach, present and quiet but for the faint rasp of scales sliding across one another.  The stallion is testing his limp wings, that unfriendly smile devolving into a sneer as they simply shudder and remain loose at his sides, the ragged tips dragging in the green mud. Broken? Dislocated? The red girl snorts smugly, moving out slightly from behind unmoved palomino.

"Long grass, Little Witch?" The buckskin's voice still cracks when he speaks, adding harshness to the dripping sarcasm that seems to be second nature to him. The shadows curling around him lick at the earth and the air without purpose, "And where do you propose I would find that now?"

Blue-green eyes drift out to the open water where the edge of the Pampas was once visible, and he laughs brokenly.

"All your grass and your plans are at the bottom of the ocean."

A look of consternation crosses the hard edges of his face then, making them sharper, making the blue of his eyes edge with an angry green.

"If you've let anything happen to Marten, Aela, I'll find a way to make you pay for it."

- Creatrice

Photo by Jan Kopřiva on Unsplash

@Aela

[Aela]

The only sign that Aela senses something from the yearling is a carefully-turned back ear towards the girl. There is something swirling within the girl, primal and wild and strange, but the palomino is so wholly focused on the buckskin pegasus that she can’t discern more. Werewolf looks (and smells) as if he has been rotting at the bottom of the ocean for some time, becoming something so repugnant that even the sea had spat him back out.

But regardless of what Wherewolf has been through, he has returned that razor sharp tongue.

His sister stands reading to duel with him, countering ”Did you think I would stay idle, brother?” She says nothing more, instead choosing to carefully watch the way that his shadows curl around him as he continues to speak, snarling one statement after the other. There is fire that threatens to flick at her heels but Aela keeps it at bay, because despite the stallion’s irate temper, she still needs Wherewolf.

There are only the three of them in Taiga - herself, Obscene, and Cheri - and adding another to their band is one more step forward, one more step to returning to what they lost when the Pampas sank.

Wherewolf’s look of consternation is met with a steady (if not slightly annoyed) expression.

”Taiga,” she says flatly, answering his first question of where he might find shelter and grass. Aela loathes the place, but it is a starting ground for something bigger. In his rather coarse state, she assumes that he could use a place to rest. Aela had little more to commend the place to the bitter brute, but it wasn’t Nerine - the kingdom that his mother once ruled - and that was something that might prove to be in her favor.

It’s the weak threat that finally makes her pale lips press tightly together, fitting against her own temper as well as Wherewolf’s. It was the same demand that Obscene had when she had first come across the former Prince and Cheri, and it irked Aela; why did they seem to think that she, with all her gifts and powers, amounted to nothing more than an overglorified watch-mare?

Aela’s mouth finally turns downwards.

”He’s gone,” she spits out at him, just like Fyr and Obsidio. There is an edge to her voice - the only sign she shows of her spite of the Fates and the way that their plans had spiraled beyond their control - before she regains command of it again. ”But I might have a way to find him,” Aela offers, finally remembering the girl behind her by continuing to position herself between the filly and the water-logged beast before them. "Which I can explain after you've had a bath."

[Wherewolf]

Let's be better strangers

He's bristling. More than usual, even the feathers of his wings seem to stand on end when Aela says she has no idea where the colt has gone. Of course, he shouldn't blame the little mare, her powers don't extend so far to plucking lost souls from the hungry depths, but it is easier to blame her than to worry about his own hand in the South's sinking.

He tries his wings again and finds the pain lessened, but they are still limp and heavy. The Mountain's vengeance is persistent and he heals slowly from it, the seams in his skin flushed an angry red where only the barest healing has knit him back together from the pieces that he was. By contrast, there is already scar tissue at the edges of his jaw where that damn red child blasted something at him.

He does not really remember what happened, but the blood that darkens her throat and fills his mouth with its iron tang is hint enough. The dark  stallion pauses, tongue pressed to the roof of him mouth, and he casts a wicked grin at her before rounding again on Aela.

"Taiga!" the empty plain fills with his incredulous laughter, "What a fucking joke, Taiga!"

The very idea of going north again fills him with desperate anger and darkens the edges of his vision. It is not Nerine, but that little favor is very little indeed.

"You should have killed that little island girl of yours and taken the place. At least it would be warm." Then his head tips to one side, "Hey you didn't happen to check if she died, did you? Could still be an option."

Image by Vakrai

@Aela

[Aela]

Aela stands, scowling at Wherewolf.

She watches him lift his wings (and the heaviness of them almost tires her). She watches as he tries to move the limp, nearly-useless appendages through her narrowed blue eyes. There is healing there, knitting the golden skin skin back to the muscles and tendons necessary for flying. Aela considers pressing sorrow into him, grief and desolation so dark that Wherewolf might not want to heal himself.

But she can be kind, when she wishes.

She can be understanding, so long as she keeps dowsing herself in calm.

Taiga, he shouts over the open plans, and it tries her temper. There is a moment where vengeance makes her gaze brilliant, but Aela buries it. She has to. This plan will fail if there are no members in Taiga, and not for the first time since the South was sunk, the former Pampas mare curses this world for being upside-down.

Any other time and she would have lit Wherewolf’s iridescent hide on fire.

”Perhaps you have a better idea?” Aela begins to seethe and the flames do flicker then, a few fires sparking to life amidst the dry grasses of the Ruins. ”The West is ruled by dragons, if you’d like to throw your lot there. Mazikeen isn’t likely to take kindly to anyone associated with the Pampas, especially one who aided in stealing her daughter.” She gives her brother a particularly wicked smile at that, reminding the pegasus of the part he played in abducting their niece.

”Islandres was considered, but seeing as that is a particular haunt of Gale’s, I’ve no plans on going anywhere near there.” Her stare is cold and hard; the girl behind her is forgotten. ”Do you want to find your son?” Aela asks him plainly, all her patience spent. ”We might even be able to find that mother of yours, but all of that help will be in Taiga.”

”Take it or leave it.”

@Wherewolf remember when you used to get rose lilli words? now you get vodka aela words