"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
03-20-2017, 09:13 PM (This post was last modified: 03-20-2017, 09:32 PM by Ribcage.)
”I’ll come with you,” she untangles herself hastily from the slumberous bodies of Rake and Woven, each moaning crossly and hiding their face in the crook of the other’s neck.
The mouth of the cave is brightening, filling with stark, orange light. “I know where I am going.” He is no longer the boy that needed her for every step. Beqanna had reformed itself years ago now, long enough for him to have charted the way from their stone home at the foot of the mountains to the wild commons beyond in his mind.
”Are you sure? The melt… there might still be ice…” “I said no, Lilin,” it rips from his throat like a hot snarl and she knows better than to argue with him. They all know what lays between the lines of those flat, grazing teeth, though none of them think he would ever harm them. She looks at him, startled and ashamed, and she can see the sleek slink of tight, strong shoulder blades; the patterned, orange and black, pelt—she can see that mouth, lined with sharp, ripping dentition. She flushes and looks down from his hulking, black form, hemmed in morning. ”Sorry....”
“It’s... fine. I’ll be back.”
He creeps past the lip of the cave, sure-footed enough, though he cannot shake the age-old anxiety that builds up in his chest—he cannot see; if he cannot see, he is vulnerable. He lives, now, in untempered darkness; a nothing he has long come accustomed to. As a boy, he had grown in that utter black with the help of Lilin, his nose stuck to her blue hip as if glued. (And mother, too, her wet, lewd mouth circling his forehead—cooing gently at him, ‘my boy’—lipping the hollow, leathery space where his eyes never were.)
Mother had gone, shortly after the war that had filled the pinewoods and his furious, capable mouth with blood. Gone to follow ‘Wind’ and the sour, commanding scent of someone’s skin to hinterlands beyond. He had refused to go with her. Ribcage had never denied Aurane anything before. This angered her greatly.
He had pulled back his black lips and flashed his savage weapons—weapons she had used as hers liberally his whole life—and she had acquiesced, leaving him with his brother and sisters. In that duty, the tiger had grown, choosing to relegate the complicated, sanguine memories of his young life in favor of protecting the simple, native existence of his family.
When he walks, he feels the phantoms of that limber, skulking body; that haughty quietness, with each step threatening like a spring pulled tight. He feels those orange, bright eyes moving around, frantically, behind their prison of dark, thin flesh. In truth, Ribcage looks like prey as he enters the cold, wet meadow. The first to be selected by the carnivorous—singled out for the kill because some cruel god had chosen to sew shut his eyelids.
Up with the sun, rising as it did, the soft trilling of birds roused him- he was much like a bird himself at times. It was relaxing, their practiced vocals gently coaxing him from sleep, the first rays of light peeking up over the horizon. It did little to illuminate the forest, just the barest hint of yellow tinted rays filtering through the branches and leaves. It speckled the earth, the cushion of lichen against the earthy floor, leaving dazzling speckles of white-washed yellow- fairy lights.
Kirin didn’t concern himself with the ethereal beauty of the morning sun finding him, he simply woke, stretching his knotted muscles. A yawn slipped past his parted pout, and he blinked his silver eyes, waiting for them to better adjust to what little fluorescence they could find.
Time was not to be wasted, there was always a purpose, a task that must be seen to. This was a task he had trusted only to himself, gathering all the treasures that were still available to him. But he needed more, and he could not laze in the cool of the morning, not when there was work to be done. He must get his hands dirty this time, just a bit, a proverbial dusting if you will and the rest- the rest would take care of itself.
A quick drink, a splash in the ice of the creek that did not flow far from where he rested his beautiful head. Droplets of water sparkled against his feathers as he flicked them, trapping the sun and sending it flying in a shower of diamonds. Then he was gone, slipping out of the cover of the wood, leaving behind the oak sentinels, the pillars of birch that he had grown to know quite intimately. There was always life in the Meadow, that’s where they all gathered too, the lost, those without homes. He needed them to be there, needed them to seek that constant so that he could easily find them.
And the sun is warm on his cold, wet back, evaporating the excess wetness from his skin. Beneath his feet the grass is still cool, dripping with dew and a light fog is nestled against the earth. It is quiet here but the lavender leviathan is not alone, there is another taking cue from the sunrise. His form is familiar, the blackness of his coat, the hollows in his face that Kirin did not take joy in looking at. This one had been in the fire, when the Chamber went up in smoke and natives laid siege to its borders. “Your face is familiar,” he called, trusting his words to slink into the weak spots of his favor. “You served my uncle, did you not, Killdare of the Chamber?”
He had loathed the bay stallion in the end, but he did not need share that, not when he could use his so called ‘family’ to achieve his intentions.
He scents him before he speaks; hears him, passing over soft, spongy earth and grass. Ribcage has remarkably precise senses, sharpening like claws on the altar of his sightlessness, his half-made body had begun to compensate from an early age. He stiffens a bit, ears flicking to orient himself with the on-comer.
Lilin would be able to tell him what was there: dusty purple, wearing arrogance like something lovely on every inch of his body, wet and shrewd and, perhaps, slightly repelled. (She would tell him he’s no good, but Lilin is skittish and meek.) Ribcage is in the dark, turning his savage, unkempt body till he believes he faces this stranger square. His chin pulls into his chest, nostrils flaring to drink every bit of the scent in—he is defensive, every muscle tight and uncomfortable.
“Am I?” he turns his head this way and that, some strange, instinctual habit, as if trying to see him through those empty, leatherlike vacancies. “I do not know you.” The smell is foreign, perfumed and fleshy—erotic in undertone, as if he just recently spent himself. “...Killdare?”
He “looks” to the ground, considering. There had been… something of a kindness to Killdare. Not one the boy could see, but one he could feel in the way he wafted scent to him with those leathery wings. He admired the man, but perhaps the boy was seeking that in anyone he could find.
“Yes, I suppose if you’d call it servitude. I did.” It had been short-lived, though for a moment he felt purpose in the furrows wrought by angry claws and magician’s terror. He didn’t love the Chamber, but it's all he had and the endless haranguing by his mother—‘you don’t owe them anything, it’s just me and you my boy; just me and you’—had driven him into its arms. Enough to fight for it, anyway.
(Enough to kill for it. Then that had been enough for him.)
“Who are you? What do you want?” He gives no ounce of patience or civility. He lives in a world where thing are out to get him and his siblings.
The slow rising sun does not make quick work of drying the wetness from his damp hair. It clings to him, splayed and twisted in odd patterns where it hugs his neck and shoulder. A small shiver races the length of his spine, a ripple flows across his hips but he manages to overcome the chill in the air. Once he would not have noticed the slight difference in temperature, constantly basking in the breeze that blew over the cold ocean. Once it would not bother him so but it does now, and that is where the problem lies.
There was no Cove, there was no home but there could be.
Am I? A twist of the head and those two strange and empty sockets face him. Kirin could taste his mouth water, as if his stomach would soon empty but he swallowed his spit. Not everyone could be as beautiful as himself and in the end that suited him fine- less competition. The ugly ones usually didn’t mind getting their hands dirty either, they could afford a few scars, a stained face. “Was it a wolf that you are, on the inside I mean?” He was wrong but the war had been some time ago and his aerial view did not provide the best place for spectating. There was too much smoke in the way and then there was too much sleet and snow, he had not lingered for long.
“He always spoke highly of his Chamberlings,” Kirin did not lie, Killdare had pressed the knowledge and skill within his realm through idle threats. The two had suffered a stalemate, if one were to die at the hand of the other, then they could rest assured their victory would be short lived. Killdare held too much power in the Chamber and Kirin too much in the Cove, both sets were capable of ruthless revenge- though the forest dwellers might have called it justice.
“My family lost its home in the remake of this world, I wish to change that.” There was certainty when he spoke, the cold leaving him because the adrenaline of such a thought fueled his nerves. “I want them safe again but I must take a home if I am to make one. I would take ten if that meant protection for my children, I’m looking for others who want the same.”
Kirin new the smell of a woman too intimately for the faint scent of it to go amiss. This blind eyed beast reeked of them, children, lovers, sisters or otherwise. All he knew was that this man was not alone.
As a boy, he had little choice. It came to him as necessity, with survival clattering like bells warning of intruders down his spine. In truth, he is lucky to be alive. If it were not for Lilin; for mother, though at times she was unhinged and she would cast off waywardly, following ‘Wind’ and her nose, doggedly searching out her—(mother... or, grandmother; his ties are knotted and blood-soaked, but they are his all the same).
His tiger came to him eventually, but even then, he was an untried and meek cub before the war tempered his claws and teeth.
More than anything, perhaps, it was by the grace of the Chamber that Ribcage is still alive. That hive of bodies and strong, iron pine trees, warding off what ragged wolves and toothed enemies would mean to get at the meat inside those protective bones. His family was safe, if anything, for the caves tucked at the outer edges of that kingdom, deeply-carved and well hidden. The cave he had them stowed away neatly in after the Reckoning does it’s job. He had made sure no animal called it home (had sorely missed his ability to dispense of anyone who thought they did); it isn’t perfect.
It lacks the meatshields that the kingdom offered.
He lacks the claws and teeth.
His lip curls when Kirin speaks again, “dog?” he tilts his head around, “No.” It is a cruel joke, to not be able to show him right now. When he was a boy, he was feeble and vulnerable—mother used to make him bear down on his siblings and on those who she found unsavory—in his other skin, he is savage and dangerous. “Tiger.” (The long he stays in that body, however, the deeper he loses himself in that mind.)
Ribcage cannot see any antipathy that might pass across the handsome features when Kirin speaks of Killdare, or the Chamber. He nods his head, but he cannot imagine a world in which Killdare would speak particularly highly of him. Ribcage was always held at the outer, frayed edges of the kingdom, tainted, probably, by the strangeness of his mother.
The black stallion listens, intent, with the same blank, hollow expression on his half-made face. Kirin’s words stir, of course, and his ears shift and flick, emoting where his eyes cannot. He wears them—dear Lilin, Rake and Woven—like a perfume and their well-being like a sword ever held at his throat. “I see.” He cannot pretend it does not entice him, “I have been...woefully under equipped to watch over my own family,” these words burn, and no manner of calm can quell the acidic disgust in them. “If they will be protected in your new taken home, Nephew of Killdare, I can make sure anyone unwanted will think twice about seeking passage. One day.”
He can feel his claws kneading the dirt at his feet, like ghosts possessing his nerves. “I am Ribcage.” Named for the way his mother had eyed those tiny, bird-like bones when she found him newly birthed and unattended.
misery loves company and madness calls it forth
we can call this done if you'd like, up to you!
say Kirin gave him his name on their way to.. wherever or what have you :]
![[Image: sAxX94g.png]](http://i.imgur.com/sAxX94g.png)
