"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
Anastasia’s laugh sounds like smoke. It is night, and the Field is laid open before her like a banquet. Her yellow eyes peer out from her hiding spot, and her lips curl into her personal version of a smile—the result akin to a wolf looking upon a meal. To Anastasia, the world is not the same as it is to others. She is a predator who does not hunger. Her teeth can shred through flesh; her touch can eat through metal like acid. When she moves from the trees, she leaves no scent and her motions do nothing to disturb the silence of the night.
She is a hunter who has been designed by the heavens to perfect the hunt.
And, yet, Anastasia does not stalk prey; she does not feast upon the weak.
Yet.
For most of her life, the shadow-mare had been hidden away by her father in the craggy mountains of the Chamber. The panther-stallion had raised her in the pine forests. He had spent more time with her than perhaps any of his other children—grooming her to fight like a soldier, rebel like an anarchist, and listen to no one (not even him). Atrox had showed her to wield her gifts with balance and control so that she no longer dissolved through trees when resting or ate away at the ground when not paying attention. Even her ability to travel through shadow portals had largely become easy; she no longer appeared standing in the middle of foreign kingdoms, sinking in the sea, or covered in mud.
Which brings us to her current situation. Her father’s farewell had not been an emotional one, but he had never been overly affectionate with her. Intrigued by her gifts, yes—but not by her. He had simply told her that it was time to leave and so she had. Anastasia would miss the smell of pine on the air, the fog winding in the trees, but she knew she had to give herself options. She had see what else was out there. Camouflaged in the true darkness of midnight, it was the first time that she truly felt on her own. The freedom was intoxicating.
Slipping from her spot, Anastasia steps through a shadow portal to appear on the other side of the area and then jumps through another one back to the mouth of the field. She stretches languidly, feeling powerful, eyes bright and smile as dark and dangerous as a shark. Reaching back, she scratches as her side for a moment before she looks out into the mostly empty area. What could possibly await for her in the witching hour?
like the moon, we borrow our light {I am nothing but a shadow in the night}
He doesn’t have to see her to know that she is there. He can feel her, feels the shadows that are her body, feel her move through the portals. Rhynn had been teaching him how to control this new skill of his. How to accept the shadows, and in accepting the shadows, accepting everything he had done to become what he is now. Noah lingers on the outskirts of his vision, and Rhonan has found that in his time alone, he now enjoys the peripheral presence of his dead friend.
Rhonan had been too late too save him. Too selfish to turn around before Noah had. To selfish to dive into the horde to try and stop it. Too late to save Gero from Azula. Too selfish not to vote away the others to be tortured. He was a monster, nothing more. And now the shadows obeyed him.
He no longer fell through the shadows, landing god only know where or on top of Fennick anymore. He could form them into most anything, solidify them, do as he wishes with the darkness in the world. And he could feel them. All around him he could feel the way they moved against the light, could feel them as other manipulated them.
Today, he is not purposefully in the field. He was passing by on the way to the meadow, where he spend enough of his time given his general apathy for working in a kingdom. Maybe he would one day. Maybe he’d just linger in the Valley till they kicked him out. But either way, he feels the mare. Not a horse playing with shadows, but shadows that create a horse.
And he cannot help but be drawn to her.
He wears darkness like a coat, covering his gold and white form. He’s always hated his coloring, so he pulls the darkness around him and makes it look like a part of him. Like he’s always been black, rather than gold. He finds her without much effort. Her eyes are bright, though he doesn’t need those to guide him either. He simply knows where she is. Because she is made of shadow, and he was given the ability to understand the darkness completely. Because there is nothing good or light or kind about him.
Not anymore.
“Rhonan,” he says, and then nothing more. The darkness around them seems to tighten slightly, like a blanket almost. Not a bad pressure, but loving. And he leaves it just like that.
She hisses slightly at his approach, the darkness in her sensing the control that he wielded, her yellow eyes narrowing as her tongue flicked at the jagged edges of her inky teeth. “Rhonan is different,” she says in her throaty, rough voice, taking a step forward, darkness pooling around her and melding into her. They were one, and he was the puppeteer. The darkness did not act normal when he was around, and she could not decide if she liked that or not. It was curious indeed, and she liked things that were a little strange.
But she was not sure she liked her shadow friends falling prey to his strange control.
“Rhonan is shadow?” this time her harsh voice lifted a little at the end, a question—an accusation. She decides that she does not like his control, does not like feeling powerless against it. Ana throws up a portal and steps through it, reappearing behind him hissing like a cat with water thrown on it. “Rhonan is not shadow,” a little more certainty this time as she steps through another portal several yards to his left, “but Rhonan tells the shadows what to do.” She frowns, making a tsk tsk noise against her teeth.
“That’s not nice, Rhonan.” She stalks through the darkness to his side, breaking through the barrier between them, pressing her predator nose against his coat to sniff at him. “Not nice at all.” She breathes out heavily, pushing the side of his face a little as if trying to see him better. She considers letting the acid get rid of him (he is a threat, he is a beast, he is shadow but not), but she holds back for now, instead staying uncomfortably close to him, her breath hot as she paused before spitting out. “Anastasia.”
What a pretty name for such a pretty girl.
like the moon, we borrow our light {I am nothing but a shadow in the night}
It doesn’t take her long to figure out what he is. A puppeteer; a master of shadows. She pops through portals around him, reappearing here and there around him. He does not move, does not flinch. He can feel where she goes through the portals, track her from one place to the next. At first, behind her, and there’s a part of him that’s vaguely tempted to stop her before she throws up a second portal.
He could stop her, after all. She is made of shadows, and he controls the darkness. At least, he thinks he could stop her. He knows, certainly, he could rip the shadow portals away from her. But he does nothing of the sort. He lets her pop around, out of anger or uncertainty or just because that’s what she does, he has no idea. Rhonan’s strong suit has never been reading emotions. He’s no empath, and doesn’t have even a normal horse’s level of empathy.
Though he understands her more than he can understand anyone else. But of course, he understands all shadows. Still, emotions baffle him. Though her dislike of his power is clear enough. He may not be able to read between the lines, but he’s not stupid either. She’s pretty obvious about it.
She’s touching him now, nose to his shadow coat. Still, he doesn’t move. He simply says, “I do not tell. I ask.” Because he cannot tell the shadows what to do. When he tried that, he kept falling through portals and ending up on top of other horses. But Rhynn talk him acceptance, and when he accepted the shadows, they accepted him. He asks, and they listen. It is that simple.
Finally, finally he turns to her. In the darkness, the orange ring in his eyes is bright and noticeable. In the daytime, his eyes are simply muddy brown. But of course, Rhonan has become a creature of the night. “Imagine what we could do together, Anatasia.”
Around them, the darkness takes shape. Not just portals, but animal shapes, solidifying into creatures with teeth and claws, eyes drawn to the shadow mare just as Rhonan’s are. The slink forward, as if waiting for a command. But they do not look to Rhonan, and he does not ask them to.
10-22-2015, 11:41 PM (This post was last modified: 10-22-2015, 11:51 PM by anastasia.)
She pauses, stills, settles, and her eyes latch onto his, shadow-ears perking forward with unabashed curiosity. “What could we do Rho-nan?” his name is clumsy on her tongue, and she stumbles over the emphasis, nose curling in distaste as she finally spits it out.
Her muscles twitch as if annoyed at her for staying in one spot for too long, but she does not move—perhaps realizing that it would not matter how quickly she transported around him if he could block her access to the portal. She is not sure just how much control he had over the darkness, but she was not a dull creature. She knew she’d be affected.
Her tongue flicks against her lips again, and she reveals her inky black teeth again in a Jack-o'-lantern smile, eagerness flooding her features. “We could feast?” she looks down at the ground, delighted at the idea although her stomach did not rumble in anticipation. “Yes, Rho-nan, we could.” She moves toward him this time, silent as a ghost, prodding his stomach with her shadow muzzle. “We could eat and eat and eat until your belly popped.”
She laughs, the sound harsh. “Pop! Rho-nan, pop!”
She giggles wildly at the idea, the girlish noise disintegrating into a hoarse cackle that gets cut off as soon as the shadow creatures appear. Both ears swivel forward so close that they almost touch, and she stares down at them in excitement. Sniffing at the air, she moves forward, attempting to nudge any of them that were close enough to her. They were her, she realizes. Her childish excitement dissolves into distrust, and she backs up slowly. “What is Rho-nan asking the shadows now?” She stares at him, face growing hard.
like the moon, we borrow our light {I am nothing but a shadow in the night}
He’s still figuring out what level of control he has as well. Anastasia probably knows about as well as he does just how much control he has. It’s anyone’s guess still. He’s new at this puppeteer thing. New to the shadows, and newer still to his acceptance of them (and in return, their acceptance of him). It is strange, how different he has become. How quickly. It was not the quest itself that changed him (not so completely, anyway). It was the darkness.
Not that is necessarily made him darker. He doesn’t have some new found desire to eat meat or anything. He simply feels more in control of his life, more capable. Less like a pretty pretty princess, made of gold and white, and more like a prince. A prince of what though? That is the question he has yet to answer.
Does he desire to rule a kingdom? Does he want a herd? Does he simply want to be a prince of darkness, living in the shadows and doing as he pleases?
Maybe he wants to be all of these things. Or maybe, nothing at all.
He wonders briefly what it is she feasts on. Wonders even more if he would, in fact, enjoy it. Perhaps. He won’t know until he tries, and perhaps he will try. But she laughs, pulling him out of his thoughts, yelling “Pop!” And he can’t help but return that laugh, a low rumble more than a laugh though. The idea of popping like the shadows portals she flits in and out of seems really somewhat fitting.
She’s quick to lose the good mood though. Are all women like this? He honestly doesn’t know. He’s never spent much time with girls, other than Azula. And Azula snapped and ate one of their friends, so you know, he’s trying not to judge to hard. Granted, has he really found different company in a mare made of shadows, with jagged teeth? Probably not.
Still, he can’t help but be drawn to her. Maybe even like her. He has no idea. But she and him are not so terribly different, in the one way that matters to creatures of the shadows. “Simply if they would like to play. They chose their own form, and I have not asked them to do anything more.”
“Play?” she asks, the hardness on her face melting with the curiosity that replaced it. “I like to play!” her voice is enthusiastic as she thinks about all the times she had played in the Chamber. Her father had taught her how to play by jumping through the portals; then he had taught her how to play by sinking her teeth into those who weren’t expecting it. Her favorite had been when he had finally taught her to kill.
She liked watching the life bleed from their eyes.
So his suggestion of the play had been timely, and well placed. Her shadowy ears perked forward, her yellow eyes gleaming, as she opens up a portal in front of her, jumping through it uninhibited to the other side. She was still cautious that he may rip the shadows from her, but she felt confident enough to try it—at least for now. They could always deal with the consequences later if he chose to be cruel.
“Let’s play, Rho-nan,” she said as she jumped toward one of his shadow creatures, the motions fluid and surprisingly graceful. If one looked close enough, they may be able to see feline influences in the way that she moved—a product of being trained by a father who preferred to hunt as a panther over a stallion. She had studied the way that he moved and found that she liked the fluidity to it. She may not be able to match the easy way that Atrox was able to move through the mountains, but she could imitate fairly well.
Glancing up at him, her smile was wicked and mischievous, but her attention was short-lived before she saw a small creature race through the underbrush. Acting more on instinct than conscious thought, she leapt through a portal and then was silently on top of the small hare before he ever noticed her. She grabbed it by the neck and snapped its small body once and then twice. Pleased with herself, she trotted over to Rhonan, dropping the limp body at his feet. Looking expectantly at him and then the hare, she made it clear that she was giving him a gift.
She nudged it once with her foot before she waited some more.
She is quickly pleased at the idea of playing, her mood ping ponging back and forth. It’s beginning to make his head spin, honestly. Social skills are not his strong suit - never had been – and this mare is testing him more than the normal horse. Rhonan is very good at simply lurking, listening, fighting when he needs too. He’s very good at simply surviving. He is absolutely terrible at making friends and carrying on normal conversations. This probably explains why he lives in the Valley, with horses like Gallows and Fennick who were far from normal as well.
But the girl certainly likes to play, though her definition of the word is far from a typical child’s definition. Though to be fair, she does frolic. Sort of. He can see how popping in and out of the shadow portals is rather like frolicking. And then she goes after the animal, and that too, is something of a child’s game. Tag. Only the loser dies.
It makes sense though, for them. They are creatures of the darkness. Why wouldn’t their play be darker, just slightly twisted out of the usual? Rhonan has never played. Not really. His brother and he had mostly bantered and bickered and periodically beat the crap out of one another. But they didn’t play. And then Rhonan was sent through his myriad of lives, forced to eek out a terrible existence more often than not. And even when life was good, it always came to some horrid end. What good would play have done him then?
He doesn’t even have time to decide what he should do before Ana is back in front of him, a dead hare in her mouth and then, in front of him. She looks expectant, and then nudges it with her foot. Even Rhonan, with his general inability to read social cues, can figure this one well. Well, guess today he’s going to try something new.
But he stares at the hare for a moment. He can’t help it. Can’t help but see Azula as she tore into Gero’s neck, can’t help but hear the screams. The hare is not Gero, and this mare is not Azula. But Ana isn’t all that different from Azula either, and for what is perhaps a moment too long, Rhonan hesitates.
But he knows he can’t turn down the gift. Not if he wants Ana to stick around. And this is something he does want. Because imagine what they could accomplish together. Perhaps with Rhynn as well. A trio of horses that belonged in the shadows. How powerful would they be together? And at this thought he grins, something a bit wicked, a bit of a new feeling for him. He’s getting used to this though, letting the darkness seep in and take over. There’s something freeing about it.
He drops his head and rips a piece of meat from the hare. It’s warm and chewy and blood trickles off his lips. It is strange and not entirely natural, and he almost spits it back out. But the shadow animals hop and trot and slither closer, almost like they are pleased, like they are encouraging him. So he chews, and swallows, and grins again, looking back to Ana with a nod at the hare. He does have a few social graces, and he knows enough to share. Besides, an entire hare might make him sick. He’s not entirely used to meat yet.
After a moment, he finally figures he ought to actually speak. Words are not his strong suit, and he prefers communicating with them anyway. But still, they are in the field. “So what kind of home are you looking for?”
She is pleased when he begins eating the hare, and she preens slightly as she watches him, ears perked forward, head nodding along with him as if to show that she was supporting each movement. When he offers it to her, she shakes her head violently. “No.” Her nose wrinkles, and she wonders at how anyone can actually enjoy eating—her stomach always felt hollow. Never in her life had Anastasia had the desire to eat anything, and she is perfectly content with that. Still, curiosity has driven her to it once or twice.
“Rabbit is…gross,” she stumbles over the word, happy that she had finally plucked it out of the air, before she snorts. “Tastes old.” When she did hunt alongside her father, she much preferred the taste of big game—they tasted wild and free and strong.
Rabbit always tasted small to her, pitiful. Not that she liked either.
Finally though, they come to the root of the conversation: the whole point. She is not surprised, but she is sightly put out that their play was ending so soon. So she just sighs. “Home? Rho-nan has home?” The Chamber, in some odd way, still felt like a home to her, but not in the way that it felt for most. Instead, she found that the cold mountains were home with the fog rolling up them early in the morning. That was home.
“Anastasia would like to live at Rho-nan’s home.” A heavy pause. “Shadows come too.”
like the moon, we borrow our light {I am nothing but a shadow in the night}
He laughs at her response. Not at her, but at himself. His own stupidity. Of course rabbit is gross. But still, she had seemed rather happy that he’d taken a bite of the thing, and he can’t say he completed hated it. Though he’s also relieved. In the end, he still prefers grass. Unlike her, he has to eat to live, and he really doesn’t mind plain old boring grass. After all, even that had been a luxury in one of his lives, the one where Beqanna burned to the ground. As abundant as grass might be in this life, he doesn’t take it for granted. Not anymore.
Maybe that’s why he’s not completely disgusted by the idea of eating meat. He knows what it’s like to starve, and to watch his friends starve even more than he had. Food was food, and he needed it to live. Though horses’ stomachs were not made for meat, and he cannot imagine making an entire diet of it.
He just shakes his head instead. “Well then,” he begins, pretending to be insulted. Though it’s obvious he’s not even remotely annoyed by being offered a ‘gross’ gift. He’s a terrible actor. And besides, he thinks she meant well. It’s the thought that counts, right? “Thanks?”
But he laughs all the same, something that both feels and sounds foreign on his tongue. He’d never laughed much, in his last lives. Perhaps this life wouldn’t burn to the ground around him, though he didn’t hold out much hope of that. All his lives had. Why would his luck change now?
She looks a little sad when he poses the question, but at the same time she says what he wants to hear. And no, he doesn’t want to hear it because it would earn him some promotion (he’s not even in a caste), but simply because he likes spending time with the girl. They are similar, they are creatures of the shadows, and he finds comfort in surrounding himself with others like him. He isn’t entirely sure how the girl will react to Rhynn, but they’d soon find out.
“I do, sort of. Mostly, my home is in the shadows. But there are many shadows in the Valley. He grins then. “We will bring every shadow we can find. And play with them all. Yes?”
And this is perhaps the most he’s ever spoken. But it’s becoming easier, particularly with her. He’ll probably manage to set her off an infinite number of times, because he’s too clueless to do otherwise. But he thinks he’s getting a little better. And with that, he nods in the direction of the Valley, taking a few steps toward a shadow portal that he pulls into existence. No point in walking, is there?
