"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
01-05-2016, 10:49 AM (This post was last modified: 01-08-2016, 09:57 AM by riva.)
It consumes her the way a wildfire consumes a forest - hot, bright, relentless. Her bitterness does this, burns away all else in the wake of its fierce flames until she is made anew, burnt and callous. She knows that she is forever changed because of it but then, she never stood a chance against being anything but bitter - it was all she had known, was the milk of her beginning and will be the dry dust of her death, and she needed no spiderwebs to tell her that like her mother whom she spares but a brief, cruel thought towards. Riva lays all her blame for what she has become at the feet of her mother like a fresh kill, foul and bleeding - that is her heart, laid bare, stripped and raw, but not aching - she doesn’t ache for what never was, has no dreams left of becoming something else, those too were burnt up in her short youth at Lea’s side and now, Riva has grown strong on the draught of her bitterness, tough as old leather.
She has learned how to fill up on hate, on loathsome things like the bat that flies in the night and feasts on the insects that glow and bite; Riva is satisfied only with the night, black like her soul feels, which could very well be an exaggeration but if there is good left in her, it is small and easily spurned because she will not suffer the same pity she endured at her grandmother’s side, watching the happy family grow swell in numbers while she fell to the wayside. They were all sunshine and smiles, and she was not - she was shadows and hate, brimming with dark revelations that she was the interloper in their family, and in the end, it made sense to her - she was not welcome there, spurned by her own family. That was more her doing then theirs’ but her dark little mind twists it to fit her bitterest hate, making her think they abandoned her because they had, blood to them was nothing when it came to Riva.
She does not know why she is here of all places to be, or what she expects to come of standing amongst all the silly mares and sillier stallions. They make fools of themselves and she merely watches with a grim set of her lips, her eyes dark and unkind with thoughts of how foolish they are, and again she wonders, why here? Better here then there, the Dale and its history, and hate swells up in her breast ready to choke her until she tamps it back down with a sucked in breath and a flurry of footfalls that moves her off the brazen path so that she is less visible, more shadowed and off by herself, staring and worrying the knot of her own pain further until lay tangled and hopeless. Then again, much of this was hopeless - always had been, she just gave it chance after chance to get better in some way but it never did, but Riva is not the kind to just up and end things. No, she nurtures her long-lived hurts and feeds them the fat off her dreams of revenge.
One day, she tells herself, unaware that she has whispered it aloud. One day, and it becomes a mantra repeated in her head as she stares them down and away, left alone to the misery that sharpens the edges of her, makes them knife-bright and harsh - the shadows do not flatter her, though once she could have been pretty before the bitterness thinned her out. One day, she tells herself, one day..
If there is ever a kinship that goes beyond blood and forsworn sisterhood, it is in those that have drunk the bitter draught and let it consume them - for days or months or years, or the entirety of their life. It wasn’t childhood, or the lack of a mother that left an angry tang in the back of her mouth. It was Scorch. It was Scorch and everything about her that made her spit the woman’s name to the ground and trample it into forgotten memory. Who’s name is now on everyone’s lips, while the naked rat lays rotting on the beach? Who will accomplish what Scorch never could? She has no vast family to set upon thrones and no mate to coddle, no one to temper the iron as it is brought from the forge. Only the Sisters and her.
Lagertha.
Bitterness and ambition have been the meat of her meals and the mead in her cup, from the day that Scorch was chosen General over her. She gnawed on the bones and grew drunk on flagon after flagon until fate flew in her favor. Bitterness, she knows. Bitterness and anger, she can use. Someone with a bit of an edge - Smother had taken to the trees and Tantalize disappeared again - someone to file and hone and focus it constructively.
Her tattoos have reappeared, silver lines that twist and twine together in angles and curves down her face and across the bridge of her eyes, falling elegantly to her chest , to spread in a broad chestplate. The rose grows as wild thorny bushes will, looping in and out until it becomes part of the design. This one is no fool, it says, though no words are actually spoken. She watches and waits, searching for the right addition to the Sisterhood. Then this one comes along - all flurried hooves and huffiness, muttering to herself like the disturbed do. Interesting. Her ears prick forward to catch the other mare’s words, and when she thinks she has them, takes a couple steps out of the shadows.
01-08-2016, 09:59 AM (This post was last modified: 01-19-2016, 04:47 PM by riva.)
Riva has nothing but the bitterness to build her up and many reasons for the bitterness to swallow her up. It fans the flame of a tiny ember of hate that has wormed its way into her heart and for now, it smokes and smolders but the fact that it even exists is enough to sustain and motivate her. To what end, she is uncertain, but she rolls the bitterness across her tongue like a pebble and it works up a good amount of promise and planning - she will be their downfall, though the land hardly echoes now with the breadth of their family, a thing she does not share with them beyond the spurned blood in her veins.
The paint is not sure why she has come here; even here, they pass her by and she begins to think they can smell the beginnings of hate on her. Every pair of eyes that looks her way and looks away just as quickly hardens her further until she is volcanic - a hard shell beneath which everything in her is magmic and burning. It is imagined of course, because she is not gifted beyond her capacity to scald them with a scathing look or her caustic tongue, but she feels hot and hard and hateful. Every happy mare and every happy stallion earns a glare from her until she shuts her eyes against all the happiness that sickens her, causing her stomach to roil. They do not deserve their happinesses, she thinks, those small and pitiful moments that make their smiles and their memories.
It is the few in the shadows, glum and shy, that make her stand up even more imperious - there is royal blood in her after all, and a dash of a pirate’s - and regal, but it looks odd on her thin angry body. Into the shadows she looks, and out of the shadows walk a mare more imperious and impressive than any she has thus far seen. Riva cannot help but stare but it is a hard stare, and she reflects on the way the lines and thorns thread themselves through the skin of the Amazon before her and Riva, smart as she is, knows this mare to be their queen. For a moment, her heart quickens its thump as she realizes that she has garnered the brief attention of a queen no less and maybe there is something to Riva after all instead of all this bitterness she harbors inside her, but the moment passes and she comes back to her self with a sharp start and a shake of her head as the Amazon remarks on her mutterings.
“I thought no one would hear me, no one ever hears me.” she says, brutally honest as her eyes meet the queen’s (she knows somewhat of who rules what, having fed herself on the scraps of their conversations and politics when they fed her nothing else - certainly none of their love or learning). “One day, they will regret having ignored me.” The vehemence is knife-sharp and blade-bright in her voice, and it glitters just as sharply and brightly in her eyes.
No one could claim to know him, for he barely knew himself. He wasn't angry, he had never tasted the cup of sadness. His drought had been that of coldness. A grey world full of nothing. He didn't feel like he was anything, he didn't feel that the world owed him a drop. No He was the epitamy of dissapointment. There has and never would be a soul that could come across him and think of him as something more then that. For that was all he had been, all that he would be. People would always want more of him, and yet he would always give less. The more they expected the worse they would receive from him. Not even a queen could raise him without dissapointment.
Ah well, boring day, boring life. What a dissapointment. His ears flick as he passes each group of horses, until he comes across the Amazonian queen, and what seems to be her next cohort. They dont hear, because they are to busy trying to find their own ass. He says it dryly. Humor was not his strong point, if anything his draftly body was his only assest. Even that had been a dissapointment.... I'm Phaedrus, of the Golden Plains, He grunts as the women continue to talk, he wasn't about to inturrupt anything instead he stands there muscles gathered waiting to begin moving once more. Patience, patience, and more patience. He knows nothing but.
He glances from one to the other, chocolate eyes lifeless with no expectancy of being acknowledged. Wings fluttering at his sides, he shakes the blue mane, always it got in the way, always flicking into his eyes, always annoying him. Still this would be interesting to watch.
Phaedrus
DEATH GIVES US SLEEP, ETERNAL YOUTH, AND IMMORTALITY
Riva remembers feeling cold once, but hate is a coal stoked carefully and it warms her until she is practically giddy from the heat of it. She promised to never feel cold and alone ever again, and her hatred is her best company - burning and strong.
Her nostrils flare at the scent of a stallion; he joins them, naturally. The paint mare eyes him; sizes up his large draft-built body, the cobalt blue of his mane and tail (like almost-night, she thinks, not quite enchanted because Riva is beyond the age of enchantment but she likes the possibility of his nightswept color), and the wings that flutter carelessly at his side. She is intrigued as to why he simply walked amongst them rather than flew, thinking he would have caused a greater stir if he had landed mightily amongst them but she supposed he had his reasons and she hardly thought about it all that much - he had wings, so what? Half of the horses here did, it hardly surprised her though she could not say she had ever met one with wings. His humor is dry though but she bites back a laugh all the same, not much for giving satisfaction to others.
“Riva,” she answers him, “Of nowhere yet.” a sly look to the Amazon queen because there is strong consideration for the mare there, even if she has not yet made an offer to the paint, Riva is still considering the benefits of joining the Amazons. Then again… she looks to Phaedrus and considers him again, his night-dark skin and evening mane make such a lovely pair but even she is not easily swayed by his coloring. More like she is thinking of the foals they’d make - lovely paint things with wings and dark thoughts, because Riva always considers her options for revenge and sometimes, it is a dish best served cold, like a little army of flying Amazon-trained babies that could undo her family’s superior lineage and history with their mischief and madness. Riva gives a shake of her head, sometimes, her thoughts are rather ridiculous and since when does she give a hoot about breeding?
Lagertha is a disdaining creature; she has no use for those who do not help themselves, or fail to contribute anything besides smug remarks and a pretty coat. The Khaleesi cannot use smart-assery. She already has a war hammer of a tongue, perfectly adept at quipping back and forth on its own. And as for looks - well if she'd wanted to be pretty, she might have followed down Imogin's path and asked Prague for something shiny and pink. But what use would she have for that? How many warrior queens can be taken seriously while wearing pink?
Lagertha's gaze studies the interrupting stallion with cool detachment. Normally she would do just he expects and ignore him, but since her companion is more polite than she is, Lagertha follows their introductions with her own. "Lagertha. Amazonian Queen." The gray mare doesn't throw around her title often, but when she does, it's to make a point.
Back to their conversation. "And who is they?" she asks Riva, ready to draw out the source of her bitter fount piece by piece if she has to. There is no other way to determine if she should offer the mare a home, or let someone else deal with an all-encompassing vendetta. Lagertha doesn't want a liability.
It has been a long day to say the least. And Phaedrus misses all hints as it is. Today he does not realize just how uncomfortable the other recruiter is with his presence. With a blink he listens as they drone on. Nothing really catching his attention in the least. You have any particular idea of what you are looking for? he inquires of the mare deft to anything that is being commented on.
Otherwise the turn of conversation may have left him a little disorientated as to were the Queens comment had come from. Though he doesn't even notice it, and just simply stands there looking around the land lazily, almost disintrestedly towards the conversation that is taking place. Tired as he is, the weirdo goes and says the most obvious and idiotic of things Nice day out. Way to point out the obvious. Why anyone would ever take him seriously, I have not a clue.
So far he is lucky that no one does. Just the dim whitted loonytoon character that he is. The stallion comes and goes, most often living in his daydream world of nothingness, and empty meandering thoughts. Like about that bee over there that is buzzing happily around. So busy... makes him feel almost groggy.
Phaedrus
DEATH GIVES US SLEEP, ETERNAL YOUTH, AND IMMORTALITY
Riva is a fire in need of careful stoking; she will burn hot and bright beneath the right hand that tends to her or she will fall cold and go out just as easily without guidance to aim her burning passions in the right direction. Her hatred has stripped her of any loveliness she might once have had, she is thin and cruel in her shape, but her tongue is a sharp stabbing sword of whatever brashness falls off it - she cannot help herself, she is a bit of a smart ass and whether the Amazon has need of that or not, it will be up to her to determine and if not, her loss.
The queen seems to be quick to lose interest in all and seems as if there are other tasks at hand; Riva guesses at this just by the way the queen presents herself and throws around her title like a perfect weighty stone ready to be thrown at their heads. She will not be so cowed so easily by the Amazon’s cool detachment and increasing lack of interest, but she is rather blunt in her answer - “My family, or what should pass for family other than a pack of names for me to carry around.” What more can she say to that? She will not spill the dark secrets that each of those names are though if truth be told, Errant was only guilty by association because she no more than saw him fleetingly but Lea and Laiken would come to regret the fact that they simply let her fall to the wayside and raise herself because others were more important, more special and gifted than she was.
That was the crux of it, wasn’t it? That she possessed nothing as fanciful as wings or a horn, that she was plain-born and worse, a pirate’s bastard of a daughter, a stain on the bloodline so carefully kept pure and special.
“No, maybe…” she says slyly in response to his answer. His peculiar remark about the day makes her reconsider her previous thoughts about him - he had beauty but no brains apparently, and despite his questionable intelligence, she is still mildly intrigued by him and why he is there. “Why, what do you have to offer that she cannot?” Why else would a queen come forth but to invite her to the kingdom? Hence the particular line of questioning she has been enduring rather cryptically, but she knows the ultimate goal of Lagertha is to determine if she is a viable candidate for the Amazons or a waste of the queen’s precious time. Still, she garnered the queen’s attention and that is a feat for her since she could never garner much of Lea’s and she had been a queen too, just too busy in the affairs of her heart and kingdom to pay her granddaughter much mind. Is a wonder than that Riva is anything but bitter?
02-04-2016, 03:54 AM (This post was last modified: 02-04-2016, 11:13 AM by Phaedrus.)
He blinks once. Hmm what did he have to offer? Stability, a place to rest your head. You can join a kingdom as well if that is your intrest. Well its not like he would trap anyone within his borders. At least when they needed a respite from the tiresome duties of kingdom life, well at least then he could have something to offer. Company. Warmth. Freedom. And even for those who desired it. Aloneness.
More and more he was finding that the Plains were his home. He was finding that they were growing on him. Even as the land was not stunning, nor breath takingly special. It had a certain warmth to it. Almost as if you were curled up in bed under you favorite blanket with your favorite pillow. Just laying there watching the stars roll by on a warm summery night.
Peace The word slips from his lips, as he once again drifts from the world. Wings flutter and he snaps his attention back to the mare. Drawing along side her leaving her enough room that she could either lean in, or step away at her convenience. So anything intrest you? he almost smirks. His wings hanging limp at his sides.
Phaedrus
DEATH GIVES US SLEEP, ETERNAL YOUTH, AND IMMORTALITY
OOC: OOps sorry Sarah thought you uhad dropped the thread or something xD If this needs edited I can do that.
You see, the thing is that Lagertha is looking for a pet project; while her heart secretly trembles at the disappearance of her daughter, she forces herself to remain calm, except to a select few. The calls for war seem to have died down, and that too, irks her to no end. Every other woman she’s recruited has ended up being a failure, despite their insistence that they are looking for a place to fan the flames. Perhaps the problem ultimately comes down to Lagertha and the type of Queen she is - with standards and expectations and an eternal slew of disappointments.
She’s seen this fire before; she’s stared at it with anger and steel resolve, swearing promises to herself in the middle of the night. The Iron Queen wants it - she is both the moth that is attracted to the flame and the oxygen that can feed it. But she still knows the value of patience, she knows when to hold her tongue for a moment instead of barging full steam ahead. Riva has already mentioned that family is the reason for her rage, and while it’s not something she’s completely familiar with, Lagertha knows a thing or two about maternal resentment. She sighs a questioning sigh in the back of her throat at the remark, but otherwise remains in observation mode, choosing to wait until Phaedrus answers. In her mind, she’s already won. There’s no way in hell a woman with such spirit would settle for herd life. She’d suffocate, her fire extinguished by the heavy fog of monotony.
He talks about stability and peace, and Lagertha wonders if they are looking at the same mare; she can hardly keep herself from rolling her eyes as he attempts to touch her. So she quips in an offhand manner, “You forgot boredom, petty herd politics, and a dick.” That is actually what he’s offering, isn’t it? A place among ‘his’ women where they’re constantly fighting for his affection? Sure, she could technically join both, but she’s never known an Amazonian to be happy in herd life. They are far too complex for that. Lagertha snorts with more than a little derision behind it.
“I don’t promise anything except that the Jungle is never dull. We make our own lives.”
Just look at Rhy, and look at Lagertha. Same environment for most of their lives, and still - two very different outlooks on life. There were as many pacifists as there were warmongers in the humid depths. But no one was ever boring.
