"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
A breath, fine like mist. The knotted tangles of her forelock swirl around the chipped edge of her horn. This place was foreign to her. It was like being birthed anew.
How long had she been asleep? Not asleep, perhaps, but hidden away in the bramble and brash and mire? The shaggy little mare takes each step with purpose, regaining her strength. Her head lifts a fraction, green eyes like polished emeralds stare out across the meadow. Above the moon hangs with a crooked grin, his eyes sliding over the sharp plains of her rust colored body. Dirt clings to fetlock and flank and the smell of the earth holds tight. It fills her to the brim and she feels close to bursting.
A shiver runs down her. She trots across the open meadow towards a group of trees. She could smell the other horses一almost taste the sweat, the uncertainty, the fear. Their mortality. It was acidic on her tongue. Citadelle moved into the trees, slowing down to a walk. A crawl. She was not tired, not like one might think after so long.
Her hooves crunched against snow and fallen branches. If someone heard her, she didn’t care. Let them come, she thought, let them see what has come from the depths of the ground.
how to be a monster: 1. learn the taste of dirt and pain. 2. teach it to others till your knuckles bleed. 3. see if that makes it easier to breathe.
Such a dead world, and how he delights in it!
There are hints of waking, though. Scattered voices, where there was once nothing but wind. The scent of opportunity in the air. And so he, too, emerges - a golden, lovely thing. Handsome, almost, and he knows this, uses it when it suits. He is stronger than ever, feels power crawl through his veins - the power to see what they fear, manifest it, the power to control their minds.
(He thinks he is stronger, at least. It has been a long time since he has exercised such things.)
He sees her first, and there it is - opportunity.
He does not know her, nor she him, but he approaches her as if he does, his shadowy wings folded to his back. He moves easily, catching up to her as she dips into the trees.
“Well hello,” he says, and he smiles, though the smile itself is a thing gone rancid, “it’s good to see someone else after such a long time.”
A step closer. He is tempted to touch her, to push her, to sample her fears, but he knows he cannot do such a thing. Not yet. It is easier if they are willing, or otherwise made unsuspecting, and so he will be polite, will be charming (or, some semblance thereof), and she will see what she might have to offer him.
Like acid rain or wood ash, she thinks. It makes her nostrils itch and she can feel the tiny hairs begin to raise. Not in alarm but in fascination. She was built, after all, to withstand.
And withstand she would.
This time,
the next一
A thousand times over. But the little strawberry mare could not be sure, it was a hunch. It was simply a twinkling in her mind, a soft glimmer like a shiny shell at the bottom of clear waters.
His voice grates against her like bark, catching and snagging her. She notes his smile, greasy and unkempt and Citadelle lifts her chin a fraction. How long it has been since she last heard a voice other than her own and even now, looking at him, she can’t be sure it isn’t her mind.
Maybe she was tricking herself into him, the idea of him. Her delicate ears flick from him then behind her. If he were an illusion (delusion, whatever, she snorts) then she would figure it out sooner or later一figure him out, figure it out.
“Much too long,” Citadelle coos at him, her face tilted to the side exposing her shaggy cheek to this stranger. “Where have you been hiding? Where have you been sleeping?”
Her own voice feels thick and strange to her. Citadelle stares at him with her burning green eyes in the gloomy trees. She feels his bitter heat coming towards her and she embraces it, in her own way. “What woke you up? What roused you to walk? Tell me,” the last is not a question but a demand of him.
Citadelle pulls away from the stranger, she flutters her stubby eyelashes. Her lower lip sags for a moment, comfortable but not relaxed. “Excuse me,” her voice is slick like the snow and cold, “I have forgotten my manners. I wouldn’t want you to think I’m …. ”
She trails off, eyes roaming the lines of his sharp face. How he is so very like a vulture and she is no more than carrion, perhaps.
“I wouldn’t want you to think I’m impolite,” Citadelle finishes giving him a smile like rotten fruit.
how to be a monster: 1. learn the taste of dirt and pain. 2. teach it to others till your knuckles bleed. 3. see if that makes it easier to breathe.
Is he, too, a thing built to withstand?
We cannot know, not really. Cringe has not really known hardship, or nothing that he might consider hardship. He had been loved, born of magic to his father (the worshiper, the devout) and a monster (the god, curl-horned and cruel, the one Cringe has to thank for most of his powers). He’d known only the father - the monster, by then, had been gone, done with the brief and terrible union - but Rapt had loved him so. Would no doubt embrace him now, were their paths to cross again. Rapt would open his mind, would kneel, would be whatever the prodigal son needed. Pathetic.
Cringe himself has not known attachment. He’s loved nothing, and this has given him nothing to lose, nothing to mourn. He does not care that the lands crumble or rebuild, for none of them whisper home to him.
But that - that is not strength. Not really. Maybe he’s just a boy with a few party tricks who could crumble under the right sort of pressure.
But never mind that, for he is here, and so is she, this pretty red mare who peppers him with questions like birdshot. He tilts his head, intrigued by her, ponders his answers.
“I left Beqanna, for a time,” he says. The days had all been the same, swirling into one another, and he had met few other living things and spoken to fewer still.
“It’s a blur, mostly. Not a lot for me out there, so I thought I might as well return to the motherland.”
(Says the man without a mother.)
He takes a small step closer. He inhales her scent, the sweetness of it, of another creature this close. He wants to press at it, to touch her mind and feel for those fears, but he cannot have her run, not yet. He walked alone so long, he can surely be patient still.
“I think,” he says, voice calm, deliberate, “that you’re the very epitome of politeness. The only company I’ve had lately is myself, and I can’t say it’s kindest.”
“My name’s Cringe,” he adds, “what’s yours?”
She feels him close. He is like ink or pine tar. She knows it will take quite a while to get him off her skin, if she ever does. The thought sits there at the front of her mind.
Beqanna was not like she remembered. It had changed and altered and eaten itself up. Whatever refuse it spat out was not what she had been born into一
“She is not herself,” Citadelle says, perhaps too quiet to hear.
The little strawberry mare shifts her weight gently, moves her head enough to catch with one emerald eye as he comes closer. She smiles when he calls her polite. It’s charming, she thinks, but naive of him to assume. Citadelle laughs and it sounds like ice cracking beneath the weight of spring. If she learned anything from her cynic of a father it was to distrust everyone.
Life had not been easy for Citadelle but her father had made it tolerable. Some might say Everclear spoiled her. Rotten fruit. She was moldy on the inside. “Citadelle,” it comes out with a snort and she rakes her broken tipped horn against one greenish knee.
“The stallion Everclear was my father,” she doesn’t know why she’s telling him, “but where he is now I do not know. He is a memory to me now, much like most everything.”
how to be a monster: 1. learn the taste of dirt and pain. 2. teach it to others till your knuckles bleed. 3. see if that makes it easier to breathe.
She murmurs something and he half-catches it, hears herself and little else. He does not wonder overmuch about this, but he likes that she mumbled something. It’s a hint of unease, but he can take that unease, augment it into something delightful, if he plays his cards right.
(He thinks himself so much more practiced and worldly than he is - a boy playing at wickedness, but who has not yet fully tasted it.)
She shares her name - Citadelle - and he thinks of fortresses. She does not seem so impenetrable, though. Citadelle keeps talking, sharing parentage that means little to him.
“I’ve lost my family, too,” he says, playing at empathy. It’s true enough - he couldn’t tell you where either of his fathers were, he’s never even met his half-siblings, and he has no children of his own - but he does not mourn this loss. Indeed, Rapt would have been at his side still, had Cringe not orchestrated their departure.
“Are you alone, then?” he asks, looking about, as if her absent father might come strolling from the woods, “it can be so terrible, being alone, especially among all this change. So frightening.”
A step closer. He wants to touch her, to examine the pace of her heartbeat. But ah, he has only just learned her name, this woman. He does not yet know how to breach such a fortress.
cringe
ate an edible b4 i wrote this so if it's incoherent im sorry
