"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
Alone again, as I always seem to be. The sky’s still dark. Hasn’t changed for weeks. You’d think I wouldn’t fly at a time like this, but I’m not worried about smacking into mountains or trees. Not from this high up. I’m not even worried about meeting another horse along the way; the apocalypse had done a pretty good job of scaring mediocre flyers right out of the sky.
I thought it was weird enough how everything had started to rapidly adapt to the end times. Wild animals and the weather had been acting out of turn, probably just as confused as the rest of us. Beqanna though… it seemed like the intersected moon and sun had woken up the freaks. This was their time to shine - when it was darkest, and I smiled to myself at the thought, flapping my wings to soar through a bloodred cloud. It looked like a bloody sunset everywhere, the world drenched in black and crimson. The end that never came; a weird reminder that hope couldn’t be found on any coming horizon.
There wouldn’t be a tomorrow. We were all stuck in the eternal present, and I liked to think of myself as the freakiest of all to be so at home here.
But I was getting tired. Tired of flying, that is. I’d been travelling often lately, moving from one location to the next without settling down for much longer than a few nights. Thanks to my b*tch of a mother for displacing me and disowning me, I was a hapless b*stard nomad. I couldn’t just charm my way out of destitution like I’d done when I’d been an orphan. Cute smiles didn’t work with my jagged, arrogant mouth anymore. I didn’t have it in me.
I only had a few moments to land. My shoulders already felt numb and my wings were heavy as rocks on my back. Teetering down from the sky, I circled haphazardly in search of a quiet place to spend a night dead on my hooves, already irritated that the closest nearby cover was a forest. Great, I thought, more woods. I didn’t have a choice, though. The weather fouled like my mood, darkening before bursting out into rain, and I soggily landed among the trees and their quiet secrets.
I lift my head drowsily from the thick leaf mulch I'd been nesting in. Something had woken me, but I'm not sure what. Mother isn't near, I don't think. Her voice carries. I glance at my friends, their empty eye sockets empty pits in bony white faces. "Did you hear something?" I ask them, and they don't reply. Guess not.
I debate going back to sleep, when the sound comes again. A shuffling, stumbling cursing, while raindrops begin to patter on the skeletal trees. I hold my stealthy position a moment, before the need to know gets too strong. Then, I am twisting and slithering from my den, between closely the woven boughs and mounded earth that disguise my nest. I am so practiced at this now, it does not matter that it is dark. It still takes me no time to emerge into the open, and to look for the noise-maker.
I have it in my head that maybe it's a wolf. Or a bear. Something large and furry, that I foolishly think I could subdue long enough to steal its coat. A warm new lining for my den that is always just a bit too cold. A disappointed groan leaves me when I make out the faint shape of a horse instead.
He's not one I've seen here before, and the woods aren't populated enough for him to have been missed accidentally. That means he's new. I stare silently as he plods through the leaf litter, eyeing the wings that lay heavily by his sides. My mother has wings, and she hates that I don't. I don't think I mind, though. It's too exposed in their air, no place to hide.
The soft blue strands of my tail flick, catching on the bony fingers of a brittle bush. It rattles at the unexpected weight, the sudden noise making me jump. "It's only me," I scold the barren plant. It quivers, until I yank the last lock of hair from its grasp, making it shake and then still. "That's better, isn't it?" I ask absently, forgetting that I had been following someone.
It's a good thing my mother has never asked me to be anything. I would not do well as an kind of sentry or spy, I don't think.
I’d barely touched down before the strangeness set in. Should’ve expected it, being in these woods. The forests of Beqanna never were my kind of place, felt like being in a prison all the time. Not that I had anything against trees - they were alright as far as living things went. I just hated the way they crowded in on a horse, made them feel… claustrophobic. I shrugged; useless to get upset over nothing. I was wet and tired, that was all. Needed a good night’s sleep and a plan. Nothing good ever happened when I was irritable and tired.
At least the rain wasn’t so bad down here. I’d torn a hole in the branches descending and let a bit of the worst weather in, but I wasn’t intending on staying in this spot. That was how you got targeted, and I didn’t need someone else’s blood on my conscience right before a long rest. Best to be moving until a secure location revealed itself, and in the meantime I kept myself occupied by picking out twigs from my wings.
There wasn’t much else to see. This place was a dump - overgrown and eerily quiet. Most of the native trees looked alike. They tended to have pale bark, contrasted like sentinel ghosts against the day-dark. I thought I was moving quietly enough for a Pegasus, winding between them and keeping an ear out for trouble, (one way or another we’d find each other again) but how quiet could I really be? I was an outsider; we had a way about ourselves that hinted at our wrongness. Those who belonged somewhere always seemed capable of sniffing it out.
Except this time, I heard the phantom gait that didn’t match time with my own. Drifting off into the shadows, I listened to the high-pitched voice of the horse who’d been following me. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying as I travelled upwind and then doubled back, but the sound faded and then rose again: they weren’t moving anymore. I could’ve probably left right then and gotten away clean, just not by flight. Would’ve been easier, simpler.
I don’t like simple things.
So I doubled back to get a look at whatever was keeping me from my rest, chuckling under my breath to find a little kidd tailing me in the big dark woods. What a joke. I wasn’t about to let this little ant run me out of a good R&R situation.
“You like trailing after strangers in the woods, pest?” I strode out from the shadows, on the opposite side from where I’d been when she first lost track of me. There was little light to see by, and I was already muddy and unkempt from constant travel, but somehow the black on my skin was writhing, alive with activity like a trick on the eyes. Under the grime and grit it moved, spreading out in strange patterns to cover my face until the only thing that stood out under the black tangle were the orange reflections in my eyes. “Don’t you know what happens to little fillies when they stray too far from mommy’s side?”
It's his voice that brings me back to what I'd been doing. Following a stranger, wondering what he was doing in my neck of the woods. It was easy to be distracted though, and I'd been rearranging the fox ribs knotted into my tail when his gruff question reclaims my attention.
I glance upwards, halfway annoyed that my task was only part done, and he'd interrupted me. But I guess I'd interrupted him too, in a way. My eyes, the same crystal blue as all my mother's daughters get, blink up at him absently whilei formulate a response. Mother says I'm slow. Stupid. But I only take so long answering because I can't risk saying the wrong things. Impulse doesn't get you far in these woods, not when everyone here is so calculating. Unless you're my mother, of course.
He's a little older than me, I think. Bigger, anyway, but that's not saying much. I nod once, trying hard to make out the details of his face and failing mostly. "We don't have strangers here." I say at last, and it's more or less true. These woods seem to be avoided by most horses, and I can't pretend to be surprised. Not when I know intimately the kind of creatures that call it home.
So he is unique. Of interest, because of that. I tip my head, a gesture unwittingly borrowed from my mother, and wonder what he's doing here. It's not a nice place to visit. Not even before the sun went out.
His next words turn my wondering into wariness. I can't see his expression very well, but the tone I recognize as something dangerous. Should I have stayed in my safe burrow? Probably. Almost definitely. But it's too late to dig myself in again without giving it away, so I pull myself together and simply shrug.
"They meet rude boys?" I ask, with as much sarcasm as I can to disguise the worry underneath. Silently I scold myself. I know better than to antagonize trouble, I really do. It only ever brings trouble. I don't know what else to do though, when there's no where to run to.
Not a few hours in and I somehow manage to find a tick. A little filly, one who didn’t know how big mouths asked for bigger trouble, and who was starting to get on my nerves. The rain might’ve been coming down gently but it was still coming down, steadily soaking my wings and dragging my hair into my eyes, and the last thing I wanted was to hear snarky responses like ‘we don’t have strangers here’. Which, what even was that? She reminded me of some rejected foal from my den days - a weird one who always stood alone at the fringes and watched the others play, useless and pathetically sad.
That made me feel less-conflicted about using magic against her. I did love the sensation of my power, the way it built up inside of me as a natural charge. Whether it was in the air or in my blood, I could always feel it around me. Magic as present and real as breathing, flowing through me and all around us. The telltale sign of it was on my skin and in my glare. Spiders would crawl out from the black points on my coat, invisible in the dark, and spin their webs over my golden fur in a frenzied panic. I would glare at my target: the little filly in this instance. Then I’d ask her a question, maybe distract her somehow, right before…
I blinked. They meet rude boys? That’s what she thought happened to babies who wandered away from their mum?
She really was a little tick, wasn’t she? A regular parasite. I threw my head up and barked out a laugh, severing my connection with the magic that surely would’ve proven her theory to be lacking in all the most horrible ways, and then sneered back down at the ballsy female. Mares. They were always the same, big or small. “Very clever.” I complimented her. Poor kidd probably didn’t get many of those. With a flick of my tail I turned my back to her and shuffled off again, unbothered if she chose to follow or not. I had bigger problems, and whoever she was it was clear to me that she was less than a threat to my livelihood.
Narcisus
@[Calavera] this doesn't have to be an ender! Just him making a conscious decision not to start trouble, lol.
I can feel his dismissal like a physical thing. Cruel eyes that harden for a moment, before they pass over my shadow-clad face. He was angry for a moment, and that wasn't bad. Angry at least meant I'd registered. It meant I'd made an impression. But then there was that horrible bark of a laugh, and I realized it was too little.
Conflicted, I swayed on my heels as he turned, a last remark on his tongue as he left to find bigger and better entertainment. I hoped cruelly that he would run into Balto. It felt like a trick, what he said. Very clever? My eyes narrowed, looking for sign of falsehood on his hard to discern features.
He was walking into the woods, not knowing what sort of things lived in the dark. Monsters are such a common subject these days, it sort of takes away from the fact that we've always lived with monsters. And this guy, arrogant as he is, hasn't actually done anything to me. I lift my hoof hesitantly, and take a couple steps after his retreating back.
"You ought..." I begin, barely whispering. Clearing my throat helps, and my next try is louder. "You oughta be careful. In here." I say, shrugging in a helpless way. I'm not sure what kind of specifics I can give, if any should be given at all. Just that he doesn't know. And maybe he should.
See, I knew she was an insect soon as I could make out the sound of her trailing me further into the dark woods. What sort of creature defies logic, rolling ever forward toward death with little stops in between? A bug, that’s what. When I was a kidd I used to like the sound their hard exoskeletons made when I crunched them underneath my hooves. I wondered, idly, if her tiny child bones would make a similar-sounding noise when crushed under the weight of a nearly-grown stallion. That made me smile to myself; that, and the idea she was left staring at my wide ass in the dark.
“Oh you’re warning me now, are you?” I mocked her laughingly, flicking my ears as if to flick away the pesky sound of her voice. How lonely was this pathetic thing, to follow around some horse who’d rather treat her like a dog? And yet, what she said did settle uncomfortably in my thoughts, if not on my face. I had literally no idea what could be out here. Being on the ground was bad enough, stuck in this muck weather and under tight treeline cover? Possibly the worst-case scenario I could find myself in.
I really hated the idea, but having a tick stuck to me was better than a monster.
“I think I can handle myself just fine, but thanks anyways.” I stopped walking and looked up, around, not really interested enough to sound especially cruel. I was looking for a specific type of place to hide out for the night, a tight little area or maybe somewhere beneath an overhanging boulder, close to water. Somewhere I could keep my back guarded, but the trees here were all the same. The kinds I had grown used to varied by location, giving away little hints about where to find what I was looking for. Not so, here.
“Hey you know what?” I said abruptly, turning. Had she been saying something? Too bad if she was, I hadn’t really been paying attention. Or caring at all. My wings swooshed at my sides before settling again, and I needled her little obtuse shape in the dark with my eyes, smiling. I mean, was there really a need for her to feel so… blue? Why should she, when I could do the opposite? Give her a small gift, maybe...
I stepped toward her, lowering my nose to her level, and felt radiantly bemused at having her around. If she was receptive, there was a good chance she might feel it too: the happiness that almost seemed to make the air feel warmer, your hooves feel lighter, make a heart soar. I found giving it to others made them more… complacent to my wishes, when I had them.
“You should show me where you like to hide, you know—when you need to be careful. Because that’s what I need right now, and I think you’re the perfect filly to help.” I grinned in the night, poised and ready. Ready for what? Well, that all depended on her answer, now didn’t it?
My voice rings through the trees, a dart seeking purchase. Useless girl, I know she's here somewhere. The darkness cloaks the signs of any horse's passing, but the scents remain. Among the thick odor of rotting mulch and viscous sap, her childish sweet scent clings. This is a haunt of hers, alright.
Wings pulled tight against my barrel, I slink between the close knit trees, eyes searching for the telltale palor of her coat. "Where are you, little weasle?" I snap, then come to a rather sudden halt.
Voices, low in the dark, but there nonetheless. My direction shifts and I emerge on the scene triumphant. "Didn't you hear me calling?" I ask sharply, ignoring the young stallion for the moment. The pale girl shook her head, wide eyes catching what little light there was.
"No, mother," she murmured, stepping uneasily in place. "I was... I was greeting him- um- what... What's your name?"
My eyes roll back in my skull. "Please, forgive my daughter for her incompetence. Or don't." I swing to face the gangly youth, stern and haughty in the dark. "I am Sabra, and these woods are mine. Who are you, and why are you harassing idiot children in my forest?"
My lithe figure is not an imposing one. Quite the opposite. There is an unseen electric current that runs through me though, that is often enough to give stranger's pause. If they don't stop in their tracks at the sight of my eternally bloodied chest, that is.
"You don't move." I growl, noticing in the corner of my sight the slow, careful steps my daughter has been making. Attempting to escape, or to duck into one of the many hides she's created. I doubt she'll fit in them much longer, and then we'll see what she does without that cowardly option.
Fuck. This is what I deserve for getting myself into entanglements with little shit-for-brain foals. I’d expected that eventually the mother of the little whelp I was trying to squeeze information out of would appear, and behold my ability to see the future: she does. At the exact moment I’m trying to pied-piper her kid. Not the best standing for me to weasel my way out of, but I’m quick to lift my head and bury my ears into the dark tangle of my mane anyways with a snort. The little insect looks like she’s about to jump out of her skin and it doesn’t take me long to see why.
Her mother is… well, how do I put this politely? Spawn of hell.
Yea, I could excuse her twit of a daughter because the filly was about to become an accomplice to my hiding undetected here, but now I’m kind of pissed that her presence has created the opposite effect. There’s no hiding the way her mother looks me over, like her eyes have claws and they’re raking my skin into little ribbons. I shiver though, and I try not to look into that reaction too deeply. Mares, always had to be mares.
And this one was wild, I could tell. Light played over skin and crackled with an eclectic pulse I could feel in the air, causing the spiders to recede back to the shadows on my body. They unwound their tangled webs and scurried off into the black points of my skin, and I sneered appreciatively at the way this female could at least back up her bulk shit-talking. The orange halo of color in my eyes disappeared as I blinked, and then it made its way to the obvious protrusion jutting out from her chest. Disgusting, I thought, screwing up my face, I thought I had issues.
“I’m Narcisus, and your little ray of sunshine there -” I tilted my chin toward the filly, “- started it. I need a place to rest and I don’t really care who owns these woods. I’m staying until I’m ready to go.” My own head rose along with the challenge. There was opportunity here, I could sense it, and I wasn’t the type to waste a moment. I still had the illusion saved for the little insect, but it had an equal chance of success with any horse who was slightly receptive: I let the power warp me and hoped that whatever a mare like Sabra was into, (another shudder tickled my spine at the thought) was what those piercing eyes of hers would see.
My daughter, pathetic as a wisp of melting cotton candy, shrinks on herself as my voice cracks over her. Spineless. I wonder what on earth went wrong when she was conceived, to make such a wretched scrap. A waste of a fuck, if we're being honest.
Ah, but then there's the other nuisance now. Gangly, growling upstart. My own ears bury in the pastel tufts of my mane in echo of him, a jagged grin cutting my lips. He's hard to pin down. My eyes slide on his skin, a fragmented image stuttering in and out of view. Imposing, handsome, bony, cruel. Several versions of the youth flicker in and out of focus, and I sneer at them all.
"You're quite sure of yourself for a homeless brat." I commented, voice more commentary than cruel. I approach him with light steps, static building on my skin, enough to potentially arc if we are near enough. I dearly hope we are. It's a party trick, nothing more, but one that stings.
And like the sun breaking through a bank of thunderheads, my mood shifts. I laugh, a silver-bell sound in the gloom. Calavera shifts slightly, a little tension easing from her bow-string body. She is out of the limelight, and the danger is dispersing.
"You're lucky I like a little cheek," I sigh, eyes rolling heavenward. "Calavera," she straightened at the sound of her name, "take care of our guest. Show him around." That he was not to be let out of her sight I assumed went without saying. Of course. Assuming anything with her was asking for disappointment.
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