I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray
( ‘That is the second order of interest.’)
For a moment, he had been horrified. Repulsed. His lip had curled as he jerked his chin in towards his chest; thought to spook from it because even the gift-giver has some sense of self preservation left in his lizard brain..
( ‘Don’t be lazy, you insolent thing.’)
Everything about her was wrong.
Her eyes had been so wide – an innocent... and that made her all the more terrifying,
Oh.
But that only lasted a moment.
Everything about her was… fascinating.
He watched with a churning stomach as that golden skin boiled and raised in angry, raw disease – roiling, as if something were trying to claw its way out. He had released his neck and reached towards Harmonia, eyes glinting with the same queer craving that draws him towards maggots in their sheets of skin,
—then they burst.
He exhaled, pinching his nostrils shut to the smell that screamed: ‘death is here! the end is nigh…’. Too foul to countenance. More so than the grave rot, which he had sipped from so frequently that it had become something he could look forward to. (Something he missed.)
But to him, it sounded like silence. Like the eternal, perfect silence of a conquered world.
(Or a well-fed forest.)
He had barely been able to take him eyes off the girl. “Interesting, indeed,” he had muttered, as his eyes dropped to the scales that had popped from her legs and littered the wasteland floor. “Interesting.”
And little more, for she had awoken ghosts. Stirred the silts of distraction.
( ‘That is the second order of interest.’)
***
At night, when he does not dream of his mounds of dirt – those unceremonious cairns in the middle of some silent, well-fed forest – or of a hundred broad-backed titans clashing in the smoke, he dreams of pestilence. He is jolted awake by the phantoms of pain that crawl up his legs and across his eyes.
If they are good dreams, he sleeps soundly, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with this girl in a grey and conquered world. So perfectly silent. Today, he rises from his bed of sandstone well-rested and still harried to by the impulses of sleep. The gift-giver king sets off, across the gnarled and cruel landscape, singularly concerned.
Scenting like a hound.
He looks for the girl.
POLLOCK
the gift giver
@[Harmonia] @[Ajatar] - Whoever you want to send his way, either or both :] I just kind of imagine a bunch of time has gone by (where he was moping and distant/distracted) and so current timeline/age for Ajatar. He basically just muttered interesting, thanks for showing me, bye. and went to think on it. Didn't get Ajatar's name even, but is slightly obsessed.
She remembers the big stallion.
It's a memory of childhood, a time only a year or so ago, but it's a memory nonetheless. She spends more and more time away from her golden mother and her muttering strangeness. The way she has that look in her eye, the fever of needing her magic back. Ajatar is unsure what became of the petitioning but she has a feeling - the way most children do - that it didn't end well for the golden mare. She's a recluse now and Ajatar has freedom at long last to explore.
She doesn't do much with it.
See, those childhood memories are pockmarked with the reality that she's something feral. Dangerous. She closes her eyes and sees the look on her mothers' face when she attacked Deimos, the way her grandfather cursed her. And still, deep in her memory, she can see Rodrik and his promises of control. Of power. She feels the call of her blood just under her skin - a tireless call for power. Always power.
She remembers the large stallion, standing a full head or two above her. At nearly two she is lithe like her mother, small and dainty. If it weren't for her scaled legs she would look entirely normal. A young girl, blooming into a young mare, wide eyed and still so unsure of the world. But deep under her skin boils something apocalyptic. She watches Pangea from a lofty position but rarely interacts. No meetings, no greetings, she travels by night and sticks to the shadows. She is like her half brother Covet in this, forever paying for sins he never truly committed.
And the large stallion is there, staring at her.
"Pollock," she says, pulling the name from memory. She regards him at a distance, unsure what he wants. Interesting. The words puncture her memory just as dark and scarring as Deimos' fear or Harmonia's parading. They point out she's different, they point out she's dangerous.
They point out that she's forever alone.
I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray
He draws his tongue across his dry, dark lips.
For her, he smiles—though it is strange and reptilian, it is all he has.
It is a mimic of paternity, comity—not a good one.
He can only hope she falls for it; he can only hope the wideness of her eyes that day, and the cower from her overbearing mother, meant the girl had been brought up to be naive and pliable and had not yet found someone fool enough to teach her she is better than this place.
(Someone younger than her had fallen for it, many years ago; someone needy and meek, too, found himself in the gift-giver’s clutch.
He is good at this, but he is rusty.)
The things he knows about this young woman makes him want to treat her mildly, not only because she is powerful, beyond measure perhaps, but because he wants her. (He wants in many ways—hundred-headed and thousand-mouthed is his desire; mostly, he thinks of that burnt world, empty but for the two of them, and this sparks with excitement.)
So, he does not bark at her or growl; he does not creep around her to test the give of those scales down her thin legs. Sometimes, strangely enough and much to his chagrin, females do not like being treated as roughly as Sinew does.
(You never know until you try, of course, but for now he stays softened—in his own way.)
“Hello,” and this too tries to be delicate, gravelly and low but bereft of most threat, “I never got your name, when your mother introduced us.” A habit of his, the one thing he cannot seem to learn—never let a weapon keep their name, it makes them stronger.
“I have not seen her around much,” he says, frowning a twitchy frown, “how is she?”
His Fear sings out for her, perhaps attracted to the annihilation she bears, but he keeps it shackled and barred.
Not now, he tilts his heavy, horned head, blinking, now we pry at the maternal.
POLLOCK
the gift giver
[style].ajpic2{background-image:url("http://barbellsandbeakers.com/beqanna/ajatar3.jpeg");width:564px;height:846px;z-index:1;border:black solid 1px}.ajtext2{z-index:2;width:450px;height:360px;position:relative;top:420px;overflow-y:auto;color:#ffffff;text-align:justify;font-family:arial;background-color:#000000;opacity: 0.4;filter: alpha(opacity=60);padding:10px;}.ajname2{z-index:3;position:relative;top:425px;color:#ffffff;font-size:25pt;font-family:times;letter-spacing:10px;}[/style] It is like those paintings rendered of small children, holding the hand of the boogeyman with no fear. Wide eyed, reassured, they clutch the paw of the very beast meant to frighten them and look right into the canvas. That's how Ajatar stands now, no bit of fear in her small, naive body - just the wide eyed curiosity that only a child so close to the darkness can have. She finds his sharp edges soothing, because they remind her of her own. While others would see him for what he is - horns and cloven hooved, the very signs of The Beast - she sees nothing. She didn't know her father, Carnage, but she has an inkling nothing could be worse than him.
Or her mother.
He inquires after her name, and then after her mother. She gives her name willingly, she knows nothing of leverage. "Ajatar," she says readily. Perhaps she'd be more pliable if Harmonia wasn't her mother, but she knows there are snakes in the grass. She just confuses them as something akin to her due to her own snake scales. At the mention of her mother her shoulders roll in a great motion of indifference, though she's not yet learned farce. She cares, if only to keep an eye on her lest she pop up unexpected.
"She has her magic again," she says, a fact she knows but does not truly understand. Magic. What a strange thing, what term with no imagery to her. This is all the answer she supposes he needs, because a horse with her magic restored is whole again. Perhaps he knows this, perhaps he has magic of his own. She suspects so, she can see the flicker of it behind his eyes. It reminded her of herself when she tries to keep it at bay.
"What do you have?" she asks, not failing to notice him reigning it in. Did she upset him? What did she do to trigger it? Anger triggered her, but he doesn't seem angry now.
a j a t a r
I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray
The tension between her and her mother could not go unmissed.
He had a mother once. She had been an unrepentant witch. But he has to give her credit.
Look what she had made;
She had made someone so beleaguer and spiteful that when it came to him, he wielded terror as naturally as Pale Death does his scythe. Because, when he had woken up on the forest floor, his chest full of black, odious pain, make no mistake—he had not hesitated. It had filled his dog-brain with a sense of hunt and kill; it had wrapped itself around him like a better mother’s clutch, and he was whole and grand and he set out to rend.
He felt those horns, heavy and spartan on his crude, unkind head, were more than just ornamentation—a Christmas star atop his skull. No. He knew what they were. He knew what they were meant for, that they were to be his paintbrushes; his world-breakers; his crown.
They had many things in common.
She has so much potential for malice, he can almost taste it. It is heady, magnetic—tormenting, because he can see that she is honeyed, and that will do her no good. He’d have to break that from her, piece by piece, or risk losing her altogether. “Ajatar,” he echoes back, in a gravelly, satisfied grunt, “it is good to finally meet you, more officially. I have been thinking about you.” Pollock cannot suppress a small, twinkling grin as she rolls her eyes at mention of Harmonia.
(This is a beloved pastime.
He loves unbinding the maternal, hooking a claw underneath the skin and picking it loose from the bones. It is a loathsome, insidious force, the mother. It is an anchor that weights; it is a pathogen that infects.)
“Hmm,” he growls, nodding his head gravely, “that is good. Such power....” He wonders how dangerous she becomes, now. Harmonia isn’t soft—she is deceptive and wicked, he thinks. He wonders if Ajatar has yet tasted that lick, one that could be so viciously barbed. “Me?” he tilts his heavy, rough head, there is a kind of mischief in his voice, mutating on his tongue because he cannot help but want to show her. “I can run faster than any normal horse; I can turn on a dime, leap down these cliffs as if they are mere stones,” his muscles tingle, he remembers the first time he felt their heat under his pelt. He remembers the first time he sampled on the fruits of that enhanced movement.
“And I can coax fear from it’s hiding place in the mind. Just like that” He needs nothing to trigger it, they come to him like obedient soldiers, but like hounds, they bay and pace when left chained. “You needn’t worry, I have masterful control of it. And it is nothing compared to you.”
POLLOCK
the gift giver
[style].ajpic2{background-image:url("http://barbellsandbeakers.com/beqanna/ajatar3.jpeg");width:564px;height:846px;z-index:1;border:black solid 1px}.ajtext2{z-index:2;width:450px;height:360px;position:relative;top:420px;overflow-y:auto;color:#ffffff;text-align:justify;font-family:arial;background-color:#000000;opacity: 0.4;filter: alpha(opacity=60);padding:10px;}.ajname2{z-index:3;position:relative;top:425px;color:#ffffff;font-size:25pt;font-family:times;letter-spacing:10px;}[/style] It would not take much to pry a rift between the palomino mare and her small, scaled child. Harmonia did much of that prying herself.
And Ajatar is surrounded by all these big names, these big shots, drinking in the promise of her power, of her abilities. It takes only a few words from Romek and even less from Pollock for her to think of a future -a great, big future. Without her mother. Without her nonsense.
She hangs on his every word as he describes his powers. She can feel them coursing through herself, through her limbs, through her eyes. It makes her scaled legs shiver with intention. She is moving closer, hanging on the words, eyes wide and imploring. He mistakes her, she thinks, as he is quick to remind her he can control it. He has masterful control, even, whereas Ajatar has none.
"I am not afraid," she says - but she means of him. She is afraid of many things, as foals are. But then he says the one thing that strikes her the most...the thought that she is stronger. Her power less contained. That she is...well...
"Compared to me?" she squeaks, shaking her head. "No, you and mother, you're far stronger. What can I do, really?"
a j a t a r
I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray
“No.”
But he knows she could be – afraid, right now. If not of him, then of nothing. Fear for fear’s sake. Or of being alone; of being under her mother’s thumb forever; of becoming what she was destined to be – what she is afraid she is destined to be. His fear can be imprecise, or it can be pointed. He can find weak links and claw them loose, get to the meat underneath. Or, he can simply allow them free passage, unleashed and laying waste, letting the mind unwind itself. Her mind, it seems, is ripe.
In any other case, he’d be implored to unchain them in the face of such resistance; but there are a few special occasions in which he as found himself halted and compelled to hold back. She is the opposite of Sinew, when she was a little girl, Sinew had been bold (as unafraid of him as Ajatar is – they entice him, because they seem to mean it) but so had she been willing. He had let the fear feed on her, and she had fed on it, too. Excellent defenses. Now she is his… something. His yoke and his playground.
Ajatar is different.
He cannot be certain he could peel that defiance back – Harmonia is a scarier thing, by far, than he is. He could try. He would love to try and change her mind, to make himself the boogeyman, because it is what he is good at. It is what he was made to be. But if he did, he could not be sure she would sup on it, as Sinew had. He could not be sure she would break, as many have. He could not be sure she would turn to him like an idol for worship, as dear Rapt had.
He could not be sure that she would not unleash a pox on him.
That is why he holds back, now. He does not fear her – truth be told, when one becomes so intimate with fear, it becomes hard to feel it as anything but a weapon or ally – but he feels his mortality close to his chest when near her.
“Of course you aren’t. Why would you be?” She speaks. Doubts herself, and it is beautiful and unfortunate all at once. “You are special, Ajatar. Your mother must have told you that, or…” he makes a soft tsking sounds, “you must have figured it out on your own by now. I would be surprised if you aren’t even stronger than you have revealed yourself to be.” He looks down on her with stern, dark eyes, “you are made to be feared, not to fear.” His voice is a mixture of encouragement, congratulations and a false sympathy he expects she will want to be consoled with.
“I am a monster. A crude one and I was not always as powerful as I am, now. But you?” He tries, tries so very hard to keep the bright fever from his lips, licking them again, “you are not monster, but divine. You could bring whole kingdoms to their knees. Ahh. The things you could do, to those who have harmed you.”
He never got to kill his mother. Time took her before he could.
( Come to me.)
POLLOCK
the gift giver
[style].ajpic2{background-image:url("http://barbellsandbeakers.com/beqanna/ajatar3.jpeg");width:564px;height:846px;z-index:1;border:black solid 1px}.ajtext2{z-index:2;width:450px;height:360px;position:relative;top:420px;overflow-y:auto;color:#ffffff;text-align:justify;font-family:arial;background-color:#000000;opacity: 0.4;filter: alpha(opacity=60);padding:10px;}.ajname2{z-index:3;position:relative;top:425px;color:#ffffff;font-size:25pt;font-family:times;letter-spacing:10px;}[/style] Perhaps fear is his weapon, his manipulation - but it is something else he lauds over the small girl today. Promise. Hope. Ajatar never had a glimpse of that, even though Romek passed it under her nose on a tray. It was too quick to process. Pollock was different. He was offering promises of freedom, of power, of a future that Ajatar could not comprehend and wasn't sure she wanted. Well, parts of it she wanted - the unspoken promise of getting rid of her mother. Did she want to kill her? No, just pacify her. Lock her up somewhere until she could be reasoned with.
Oh, childish thoughts - as though a creature as vile as Harmonia could be reasoned with.
And Ajatar is ripe for the picking. Perhaps she could idolize or fear Pollock, perhaps his manipulation would break her into a shell of a being, unable to access the power that courses through her veins and pulsates through her scales. Or worse - he could create a fearful child, always unleashing the disease within her whenever the moment strikes her accordingly. Or - is it better or worse still? - she could have complete mastery over her gifts and use them at her will?
The last option is most appealing to her. For now she hopes it could be controlled, stifled, so she doesn't try to kill everyone (though could she kill? She's unsure, she's always been stopped...never stopped herself) in her path. But he's not promising that, is he? He's promising the opposite - she could unleash it with the flick of a wrist, send legions to fall before her in sputtering, pox filled plague. She could wipe Beqanna cleaner than the fairies ever did.
She could. She could. She could.
"I know I can...do things. Make others sick. It only happens when I'm angry though." A temper that both her sire and dam are famous for. Did not Carnage create this land out of spite? Is she not heiress to his poisonous god complex? "Do you think..." she stops herself, mulling over her question. She tries again. "Could you always control it? Your power that is. Do you think I can control mine?" Hopeful, wide green eyes look up to the horned beast.
a j a t a r
I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray
He wants her to want it, of course, not to forsake it or keep it chained.
But he wants her to want it in a way that benefits him – she will figure that out, one day. Whether she figures that out about him, or another; or already knows it about her mother, who had presented her to him like an arms deal. There will always be someone who wants to take advantage of her – this world is rife with beasties and she is a weapon to them, of great value.
(Still, there is a bend towards chaos in him, a sliver that would be tempted to finger the latch of Pandora’s box; to let her loose to take the world – the world entire; his dominion and his blood; all the flesh and rock that stands around them – to bring them all back to their basest husks: blood and fear and the violence that comes when the world is uttering its death rattles. So long as he could be the last one standing, on a pile of bones, finally seeing the world as he has always imagined it is, underneath all the paint and pretty things. Dead and greyscale.
She could return them to the ground.)
Ajatar wants to control it for the better, because she is sweet and she means no harm. Noble. There had never been a time where he did not embrace the Fear. By the time it came to him – plunged between his ribs like a dagger as he fell – he was welcoming. He never had the gentleness she seems to have, not even as a boy. He hardened, mud-covered and alone, because he had to. Somehow, she harbors a tenderness, despite everything. He considers her questions, does not appreciate the way they exhume these old feelings, “I could.” He tilts his head, feeling the friendly counterweight of his horns. “Like I said, I wasn’t always like this. I was born without these horns, these hooves, the fear.”
He submerges, for a few quick, hungry breaths, into the plain of invisibility, coming out of it cold and electrified, “I had only my invisibility to protect myself, against the world and against my mother. The wing, too, I was born with.” He rarely acknowledges the dirty, buggy, sickening thing by his side – is hangs like loose cloth, as if boneless, because the bones therein are shattered and ground down. “I could control that from the start, because I had to. The fear? That came later in life and it never disobeyed me; I never needed to learn it. It was such a part of me.”
That is the problem, isn’t it?
The gift-giver was always a creature of the Primal Cord, Fear.
Ajatar is not like her mother, or her father, at least, not yet. (Maybe she never will be, and that would be such a shame.) She cannot subsume herself to it, every particle in her body rebukes it but for the angry ones. “It felt, stiff, perhaps, at first. I ironed out those kinks in time.”
“I think you can learn to control it, because it is a part of you, too. No matter how you feel about it. But I do not think that will come without effort. I think you will need to practice, to learn how to untangle it from your emotions, if it can be.” He looks at her, black and austere, “you know what that means, right, Ajatar? You will not find it easy, I imagine,” (he always had) “but I can help.”
They can play with pretty things together.
POLLOCK
the gift giver
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