[private] bury me and fade to gray

[draco]

It was when his hooves split that Draco had finally had enough.

He was on his back in the dust of Pangea, rubbing away the last bits of fur that itched and itched until he felt completely mad. The numb sensation that washed over him was soothing, almost entirely calming, as the furious energy of his changing seemed to finally melt away. Draco's newly forked tail whipped against the red clay, stirring up endless particles of dust. Red, pupil-less eyes stared thoughtlessly into the floating dirt that glittered in the late afternoon sun.

Crack!

A gasp, the noise more choking than frightened, escapes Draco's lips. His eyes go wide and seething: "FUCK!" Blood spills out of the tears made simultaneously in each hoof. "Fuck, shit, fuck, shit," the demon hisses, then closes his eyes, feeling the so much anger and untamed power making his heart race. "Fuck," he whispers, just a hint of genuine worry for himself laced into his tone.

After a moment of consideration, Draco rolls over, lurching to a stand before he can second-guess the ache. He peers down at his now cloven hooves, then heaves in one furious breath before racing forward and leaving a small trail of blood in his wake.

It's nearly sundown when the demon reaches the river. He flies into the water, only coming to a stop when he can feel the rush of the liquid pull against his chest. Draco dips his head to gulp water and remains there, feeling as if he'll be thirsty for the rest of his life.

art by dozymare

@[ratty] <3

[Enthrall]

The child is a strange thing. She is small, ungainly, with long legs and knobby knees and a coat full of curls, but these are not the things that make her strange. She is dependent on her mother as most children her size are, and is never far from the mare's pale flank, pink muzzle pressed there like a lifeline. Of course, none of those things themselves make her strange, instead it's her stubborn insistence to remain this exact shape and never waver, never age, though nearly two years have passed. Starlust must wonder if the Eternalchild will ever grow, ever leave her, but the filly has no plan to do either of those things.

In truth, she does not know anything is wrong at all.

The magic crawls through her skin and bones, shaping her into what she isn't without her knowing. Even before she was born, the pallid girl felt her mother's fear, and the magic has trapped them both - one in frailty and dependence, and the other with unending commitment. How many times has Starlust tried to sneak away? How many times has she crept off, only to look down and find the ghostly filly looking up at her again with those dark, innocent, eyes? Did she ever guess that her fear of waking the child is exactly what woke her?

But sometimes - sometimes - that consciousness breaks through and those dark, empty, eyes fill with confusion, fill with multitudes. Sometimes, the magic grows weak - when she is very tired - and it falters. In those moments she knows there is something more to her existence, but she falls so easily into the trap of thinking that she will consider the strange feelings burgeoning in her chest when she wakes up because now, she is so sleepy, too sleepy to make sense of it all. 

She is napping at the riverside when he arrives and everything about him is in turmoil. Perhaps this is what distracts her enough that she never feels Starlust drawing away from where her daughter is curled up in tall grass like a white fawn in its nest. Instead what wakes her is the foreign flavor of the fear he draws with him. Is it his own fear, of the changes tearing him to pieces, or simply the aura of his magic? Impossible to say, but the strength of it is intoxicating, and plucks at her heartstrings as if he were a master puppeteer. Enthrall wakens, still the child, not knowing to take another shape, not knowing how, and finds her feet. The demon-stallion is not far, and she approaches him as if he were not a stranger to her at all. 

And he isn't, in a way. Fear has always been her friend.

Enthrall

The only thing to fear

@draco

[draco]

It is lucky for both Draco and Enthrall that Draco has always taken to the strange. A childhood spent in Pangea, reared next to monsters, taught the demon that there is only beauty in bizarre and chaotic. It seems to follow him: the bizarre and the chaotic, as if simply by existing he sends out some signal to call the strange to his side.

(Or, perhaps, he seeks it out - desperately; because he is odd and full of rage and it grows terribly lonely to suffer at the hands madness, even when it is contained.)

Initially, Draco doesn't notice the filly's approach. Too entrenched in wetting his dust-bowl mouth, his head remains dipped and his ears pinned tightly to his mane. But the child approaches him as if his fear means nothing, and the lack of fear will always hold its merit to the demon.

(Little does he know, Enthrall is fear itself, the embodiment of fear: a better wielder of fear magic than Draco. Perhaps he'll take to her more because of it, or perhaps he'll feel such jealousy that he'll spurn her or attempt to devour her power.)

Draco doesn't startle when he finally notices the child; instead, his head suddenly pops up and his gaze zeroes in on the girl still glowing pale in the dying light. "Hello, girl," he greets, stepping curiously closer. He approaches until he is peering down at her, snake-tongue flicking in and out. A fanged grin beams down at the filly. "Where's your mother? It's nearly night, you shouldn't be out here all alone." The words mean nothing, though, as the demon is already planning on bringing this fearless child home with him.

art by dozymare

@[Enthrall]

[Enthrall]

Think.

She knows the answer to this, surely? She knows why she shouldn't be out alone at night. The child has always depended on her mother so heavily, has never let the pale mare out of her sight until now. Now. She is silent, tilting her head to the side at the scaled stallion peering down at her with a mouth full of sharp teeth and that forked tongue splitting the air. Her dark eyes are unreadable, empty, innocent, as if they have not seen a year and a half of darkness and horror and of the triumphant sun.

She is new, those wide, dark, doe eyes say, blinking languidly, uncomprehendingly, at the demon.

But something is scratching at her belly. Not right, not right, it says, and behind the falsness of her innocence the magic scrambles to catch up. It is slow, unpracticed, and his own magic confuses it so terribly. Starlust had been easy to read - open like the sky over the river, stretching wide and blue and the storms so easy to see as they roll in from over the meadow. Draco is like trying to see the sky from the darkest depths of the forest, where hungry branches choke out the sun shining in.

Silently, Enthrall comes closer, hiding the confusion by pressing velvet lips to those black scales. It comes like a flash when she touches him. It comes like drowning in some northern sea, icewater filling her lungs and her veins, but her bones feel like fire. They don't want to change, this shape is comfortable, familiar, and the girl groans softly, wincing away.

Too late.

Awakened, the magic works quickly, though it feels an eternity to the girl trapped inside it, to the girl whose lazy bones crack and lengthen, aging, aging, until she is not a child but a lithe, willowy, woman grown with skin pale like the sun shining across a clouded sky, dappled with starlight and snowflakes and the brightest blue eyes. And the blood. Oh, there's so much blood, like scarlet rain pouring from those clouds ripped asunder by unknown teeth. The sclera of those eyes is dark with it, and it spatters a fine spray across her lips when she speaks his name like a dying breath.

"Draco...?"

Too much. It's too much detail and the magic flares like a flame burning too hot, exhausting itself, but when it flickers out, she is a child again and still not the shape that she should truly be because this is the one her body knows the best, this child. What would she be if not that? Eyes that should be dark are still bright blue when they seek his again.

Where is her mother?

Running.

Enthrall

The only thing to fear

@[draco]

[draco]

The last thing Draco is thinking is that this small, phantom of a child is a threat to him. He stares down at her, pupil-less eyes unblinking and bemused. He doesn't think to read her thoughts immediately because those fawn-eyes are so wide and unseeing that he can't help but to get lost in them, even just for a few moments. Rarely is the demon at an entire loss for what to do but Enthrall has effectively cleared his mind.

When the demon does eventually slip into her brain, when he sees that something is deeply, deeply wrong, it's already too late. Enthralls lips are too warm on his scales, disturbing only because of how the child's empty mind mingles with the wetness she leaves on his skin.

A blink and Dove is standing before him.

"What the fuck?" the demon exclaims, taking several rapid steps back into the water. He's seen enough magic to know this isn't his sister, read enough of Enthrall's mind to know that whatever is actually lurking behind those doe-eyes cannot be Dove.

But the sight is enough for him, being a creature not easily frightened. When the fear comes, it washes like an angry sea. Frothing and ravenous and cold, the saltwater splashes over his intestines and ties them in knots. He splutters, choking as tide after angry tide clogs his throat.

It's when the blood on her face splatters onto him that Draco grows angry.

"Enough," the demon snarls, stalking forward to end whatever monster thinks it easy to toy with him.

But it's the child standing before him once again. Enthrall's tiny form gives him pause, and he stops, standing entirely still and merely staring at the little ghost.

"Can you speak?" he finally concedes.

art by dozymare

@[Enthrall]

[Enthrall]

Enough, he says, but really, it's too much. The magic isn't used to changing so abruptly, it isn't used to changing at all, because the Child was the thing that the Mother had feared already. It had been simple to just keep that shape all the time and this thaumaturgical outburst leaves it weak, fatigued. When she blinks again, the blue eyes are gone, returned to their normal darkness. The demon is stalking forward to strike her down and the girl smiles at him, her head tilted to one side, and she matches his forward movement as if it's a game or a dance.

The coal in her chest that tells her something isn't quite right is burning again, but she doesn't know how to fix it. Becoming the pretty mare with the blood hadn't fixed it, but perhaps Draco can. She knows, from her many months in this shape, that children cannot do a great deal, that her mother had to find them food and safe places, and that it was Starlust not Enthrall who was tasked with navigating the Nightworld and its monsters. But now it is Draco and Enthrall and she beams up at him with shining helplessness as if she had not a moment ago worn his dying lover's skin.

"Speak." She repeats, and, "Draco."

And then her curled tail wags triumphantly as if this is answering his question (and it does, but not in the way he means.)

"Mother, out. Alone." The girl continues, confusedly, repeating the stallion's own words back at him in a disjointed attempt at communication. Speech had rarely seemed necessary to the magic when she was with the white mare, it had not paid much attention, only collecting words like seashells and parroting them back when needed. Now, weary but clear-headed, the child-that-is-not-a-child feels the disadvantage of this, and it makes the burn in her chest flare hotter, makes her squirm under the red-eyed gaze.

"Can you hello girl?" This sentence makes her face twist, some piece of it is wrong, but she isn't sure how, or why, only that the feel of it is strange on her tongue. small ears turn back but this doesn't help her. She's missing too many pieces.

Enthrall

The only thing to fear

@draco

[draco]

A thought strikes Draco as he watches the child attempt to form sentences. He dips into her mind again, finding it similarly thoughtless and disconcerting to moments before. He frowns, allowing her stuttered, jumbled sentences to fade into the background.

The demon has never tried telepathy before but a hunch urges him to try. It would only make sense if the new magic strengthening him empowers his skilled mind reading. What . . . he tries at first, then brings his eyes back to the girl to search for a reaction. Then: Are . . . Another moment of searching, then: You . . . He stands entirely still, statuesque, tail arched upward as he strains to control magic he has never used before.

What are you? the demon finishes with, combining the words into a full a sentence. Perhaps it was the clear mind disturbing him that made him do it, or his own selfish desire to control the changes happening within in his body; it didn't matter anymore. Now he can only wonder if the intrusion will stoke a personality out of the girl.

Being a strange creature himself, Draco finds the smallest bit of affection for Enthrall burrowing determinedly into his chest. Whatever she is, he doesn't think she can be any worse than the worst the East has to offer, so he acts on that little seed of paternalism.

"Come with me," he states firmly, then gestures in the general direction of Pangea. He turns around then looks back at the girl, wondering if those empty doe-eyes won't question the lead of a stranger.

art by dozymare

@Enthrall

[Enthrall]

The girl feels him in her mind like a heavy thing, like a weight. It makes her small head dip on the thin neck, as if the thoughts here are more than she can carry. Maybe they are, she has never thought a great deal, only reacted, only sensed, and never, ever, paused to examine the great dark expanse of her own mind.

Head low beneath the heft of his intruding consciousness, she smiles that blank and innocent smile up at him and blinks too many times in a row. What is she? That's a question for a philosopher, a question well beyond her capability, but he recedes suddenly from the pathways of her mind, confused, frustrated, and she lifts her head again, dark eyes bright as polished obsidian. Her mother gave her a thing once. She will give it to him.

"Enthrall!"

It's her name. Pale ears dance among pale curls in something that looks very much like delight (but which does not quite root itself into her heart or her mind if he is still paying enough attention.) The strange, empty, girl bounds forward at his beckoning with as little thought as she has given anything else. It is not for her to worry about the terrible things she may meet in the East.

"Come with! Draco!"

Enthrall

The only thing to fear

@draco