i sit at a banquet for traitors
placed between a thief and a liar
The tendrils of nightfall drape around him like a cloak, hugging tightly to every crevice and hollow slope of his muscled body, melting into the black points of his legs and the thickness of his mane and tail. He stands at the mouth of the cavern opening, a listless reminder of the horrors he had befallen in a similar catacomb, now forced to relive the nightmare day in and day out - the darkness of the cave once called and crooned to him, but now their voices are unfamiliar and icy against his flesh where they had once been inviting, now soaked with demons’ moans and blood-curdling screams that ravage his eardrums. He had come out unscathed from the tomb within the mountain, with nary a scratch on his blue mottled hide, but the wounds that fester within him are not of the physical sort - darkness, once his ally, is now his undoing and now haunts him to the very core, a terror most inescapable.
The blue roan stallion peers out into the moonlit forest, the vines that once draped the cave’s mouth now growing brittle and dry with autumn’s chill, crisp and gritting together in the icy howl of the wind. Somewhere in the listless blackness that opens up into nothingness behind him, there are tunnels and caverns that he knows like the back of his hands, despite the utter blindness he takes on within its depths. He and his companion have yet to explore them all, and before the mountain, he had been eager to see where each tunnel took him. One, they have found, leads to the torrent river that rushes through all of Beqanna. But now he is reverent and hesitant to explore them once more, plagued with visions of darkness and blood and demons waiting within the damp darkness.
He can feel a fingerlike stroke on his spine, cold and malicious in the way it draws across his flesh. It is not real, he tells himself - his mantra for when the hallucinations feel like reality. It is not real, he thinks again, as he feels the bated breath of putrid breath on his face, closing his eyes tightly so that the vision of elongated teeth and open jaws will fade away, but it does not - it never does.
Even with the cold autumn’s air blowing through the cave, the stallion is damp with sweat and anxiety, his heart rate pulsating as it quickens beneath his skin, the throb of his jugular nearly visible as his pulse pounds incessantly. He remembers the pain in his side just like it was yesterday as the demons dug into his chest cavity, intent with putting his heart within their jowls and swallowing it whole. The memory causes the place on his ribcage where they had dug into him throb wildly, and his breath catches in his throat as the white-hot intensity of his once-cleaved chest pains him once more - it’s not real.
Oh, but it is.
--
once the king of beasts but now they feast
on thoughts beneath his vacant crown. |
@[Nikoline]
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts
he thrusts his fists against the posts
and still insists he sees the ghosts Since the bad time,
the hours (years?) spent int he cave,
since the demons had nibbled long jagged marks across her legs,
since it all faded to black...
Nikoline had been along in the forest.
She collapses every night with dreams of fire. The brilliant colors lick along her skin, singing and stinking of burnt hair. She screams and screams and screams. The red and orange tongues close her paper-thin throat till the screams are just a gargle...then she wakes in a cold sweat.
But every morning under the thick streams of pastel pink and soft yellow, tiny flowers bloom in her mane and tail. They weave themselves tightly into her wounds and heal her with their gentle felt petals. Niko can only dream of pain despite the way she her thick cuts seem to heal nearly overnight. It only takes a few mornings before she feels whole, the zig-zag of scars of only a delicate shade of pink along each leg like that of her primitive ancestors.
The mare does not understand the gift of her torture until she manages to wake stiffly one morning and her body feeling foreign to her. The hazel eyed mare rises from her place of sleep, the moss ringing her body and cushioning it in a soft nest that she has become accustomed to. She had been alarmed the first few nights but now? No, it was simply a trick of the forest...till the day she notices how the very soil beneath her hooves begins to grow lush and green. Had it all been a mocking joke by the bastard demons?
Was it her angel?
The days pass, her body is pained by the cold, yet the green glow of healthy seems to stay with her always. The scent of gardenias and lavender seem to waft around her despite the perpetual cold of an oncoming winter. Time passes, nights filled with horrific fire torment her endlessly. It seems so painful, so bleak, despite the way the flowers bloom and the trees bend...it is all too much to live with. The ring of moss, the whispers that flood her ears, her beautiful angel lost and gone from her? His memory fades more and more everyday till she can barely remember his face...oh the cruelty of it all!
Niko aims to finish her story with an exclamation. She would not live without his memory!
Then that night, the dreams of raging fire are suddenly gone as she contemplates her own death but then...then the pale glow of her angel cools her brow, his lips meet her cheek as he whispers his love for her, placing a small lily in her hair and he tells her to live with him, not without him in her own suicide, that he could be with her in the forest...he kisses one last time as she wakes.
The dryad has replaced the painted mare. She knows all, sees and understands now. Her angel is the forest. His is every small seedling, every sacred bloom in her hair. A soft content smile lips the edges of her pale lips as an aura of calm surrounds her. Her angel would be with her now and always.
Thin bark-like legs move her steadily over the ground when the trees whisper of a stallion. The dryad is nearly silent as she moves to seek the unfamiliar face. The concern for such a broken thing is across her immortally beautiful face. "Hello." The dryad speaks gently like the sound of cool spring waters over smooth stones. She tilts her cherry blossom antlered head, curious of the other and his ailments, shying away on thin legs till she is comfortable close to an old oak that leans to touch her skin. "Are you real?" The soft river-song of her voice dancing like a warm summer breeze as the grass grows lush and bright against her feet. The mare tilts her head curiously, inclining it towards him as she listens for his answer. Was she awake? Was he truly here?
nikoline barret x syntyche
i sit at a banquet for traitors
placed between a thief and a liar
Within the faint glimmer of light streaming through the entanglement of dried out vines, his glacier blue eyes fasten on movement that is far beyond where he stands, squinting as he peers out from beneath wisps of black forelock. He focuses intently on the shadow roving within the darkness, gladly welcoming the distraction. The sounds of demon yowls and their bated breath on his neck extinguish as his mind focuses on anything else but the raging storm that is his mind, the brokenness that lay within nowhere close to being mended. He quietly takes a few steps forward into the chill of autumn’s night, his blue mottled body glowing orange in the harvest moon. The pain in his ribcage subsides as he searches the depths of the darkness, curiously stepping out into the open air.
His ears pitch forward, expecting the sound of brittle branches and plants breaking and snapping as the being crosses through the foliage, but hearing nothing except for the forlorned howl of night’s cold wind. At first he thinks it is perhaps Keeper - or someone like her, anyway - that has found the quiet of night to forage for food and other sources of nutrition, a nocturnal animal simply strolling upon his damp cave. But the silence it brings preturbs him, and for a moment his blood runs cold within his veins, his stomach coiling at the idea that something out in the forest seeks his flesh, just as the demons did. The stallion freezes, the whites of his eyes showing as he rolls them fearfully, trying to pry the form of the silent being as it maneuvers through the shadows, though he is unsuccessful.
It is not until the being wished to be seen that he is able to make out its shape, and though fear traces through each delicate bone and each sinew and muscle in his body, he waits patiently for it to step into the moonlight so that the glow of the moon will illuminate the beast that shrouds itself in darkness.
What stands before him is not at all what he expected, and though caution still fabricates through his very being, the surprise is easily shown in the widening of his blue eyes and the rising of his brows. She is other wordly - laced with cherry blossoms in great trunks that protrude from her neck and head, a white and pale figure of ethereality, dappled with soft greys and pinks that fade into the darkness of her legs and muzzle, her dark yet all encompassing eyes fastening on his. Yet, despite the regality and sheer awe that comes with her prowess, the fairy-like mare is just as cautious as he (if not more) and shies away to hide beneath the trunk of a massive tree, allowing the shadows of its branches to play finger-like patterns on her pearlescent coat. Balto is enthralled, his cool gaze following her as she leans shyly into the tree, demure in her expression as her eyes once again rise to meet him.
‘Hello,’ she had said to him, her voice twinkling like sea glass on the shorelines of the most pristine beaches, ‘are you real?’
Balto is still unsure why the angelic being before him still remains in his presence, a broken and shattered thing, dark and dull against the brilliant beauty that stands before him. When she asks him if he is real, as if she is confused with his presence within the forest, he tilts his head slightly and narrows his eyes in thought. Am I? he thinks to himself for a moment, the darkness of his lips tightening into a thin line as he presses them together. “I think so,” he whispers to her breathlessly, his robust voice nowhere near as musical as hers had been, and as he finishes saying it, he quietly and hesitantly takes a few steps towards her, his head lowering as he peers up at her from beneath his ebony forelock. “But I feel as though I may be dreaming.”
Reality and fantasy have been melded together since his time in the caverns of the mountains, and he can never decipher what was real and what wasn’t - and even if the cherry blossomed woman before him is only a dream, it is the nicest dream he has had in an extremely long time, and he desperately hopes he does not wake up any time soon.
--
once the king of beasts but now they feast
on thoughts beneath his vacant crown. |
@[Nikoline]
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts
he thrusts his fists against the posts
and still insists he sees the ghosts The darkness of her eyes do not leave the other as she hugs close to the old oak tree with it's enduring strength and stability. She almost acts like a shy child attempting to blot out a stranger's presence by hiding behind the leg's of her parents. She is nervous but the quiver that gently sways cherry blossom petals around her pale form was not from fright but more because of the dropping temperatures. The dryad mare had yet experienced the bone-chill of an early Beqanna winter in this new, strange body.
The horse, most definitely male, stands near the gaping mouth of a strange dark cave. It looks hungry in her eyes and she could nearly mistaken the sun kissed skin of the animal at it's tongue. The last of the sun fractures between the trunks of the nearly naked trees but Nikoline can not take her eyes from the stormy grey-blue of the stallion and his cave. Small ears collapse against her smooth poll but lift again when he takes a few paces closer. The nymph responds by moving from one side of the tree and poking her head around the other, narrow chest breathing deeply in the anticipation of his words. "I think so." His voice is overwhelmingly strong against the sensitive nature of her ears. She had listened to the silence of the forest for so long that she almost feared the sound of his voice would be enough to break her into splinters...but it doesn't.
The man, etched from rare marble wrung by thick sinews, takes a few paces closer with a lower head as though he were praying. Nikoline does not approach but she does not stir from her place next to the oak. The way his dark hair falls across his eyes captures her attention, clutching a breath in her throat. "But I feel as though I may be dreaming." The words are nearly a whisper and she must lean forward from the protection of her oak. The mare steps away from the trunk, her thin legs drawing her only a pace closer but she does not bound away from his advancement. "I thought I was too." She replies back in the same hushed tone as the moonlight spills across his skin in a silver pied pattern. The dryad edges another soundless step closer though her body is stiff and the throb of her heartbeat nearly deafens her.
Large dark eyes flicker to the seeping darkness of the cave with the half expectation to be torn limb from limb by the creepy crawlies inside. Death would not come this day though unless it was in the form of a broken mottled creature with pain in his eyes. The forest nymph listens as the sleepy trees whisper to her. They tell her he has been 'marked' just as she. Nikoline takes a pace closer to him as her own head tips downward. "They say you were there too." Her voice is a soft sound of chimes teased by the love of a warm summer's night. "The demons hurt you too." The confession falls from her pale lips as the tall redwoods with their all seeing treetops fall silent.
nikoline barret x syntyche
i sit at a banquet for traitors
placed between a thief and a liar
He watches as the pale, ethereal woman clings tightly to the trees, masking herself beneath its sturdy branches and deep shadow. He did not find the act strange; to press so closely to something, to use it to cloak yourself and to make the world seem a little bit safer - he savors the darkness within his caves, despite the haunting howl of cold wind against stone, and even with his turmoil in the darkness of the mountain, he still searches for the blackness of his cave for solitude. There was a time when he wouldn’t ever leave the comfort of the damp and bleak darkness, comfortable with its soothing nothingness, but a doe-eyed creature had eased him out into the open, and the pale woman who stands before him now reminds him so much of his Keeper.
The stranger is shy and demure as she tucks herself into the tree, peering at him from the other side with wide, dark eyes. They are both caught up in a dream - so real, so vivid - that neither one is sure if their meeting the other is reality. Balto is dying to hear her voice again as it once lilted on the thin and cold air - and within the stillness of their silence he creeps forwards a few steps more, curious. Her eyes become distracted as the wind filters through the trees, a soft whisper in the night as her ears turn to listen intently. Her gaze fixates on him once again and the solemnity in their irises cause him to pause, a single forehoof lingering above the brown pine-needles and brush of the forest floor, his brow furrowing above his bright and sad eyes.
‘They say you were there too. The demons hurt you too.’
Her voice is as enchanting as it had been before, and silence engulfs them. Even the wind is now still, and crickets are no longer chirping, and he only stares incredulously into her gaze with an unwavering look of disbelief, of shock and of pain. She should not have been there - she did not deserve the torture that she obviously had endured; such a beautiful and angelic being such as herself. Balto, on the other hand, is no stranger to sin and had been ready to atone for them in the pits of hell with demons clawing at his flesh and limbs, deserving of the most unruly and painful death imaginable. Even now, he wonders why he remains alive and whole (though is he really?).
Soon, a muffled sound comes from the cave mouth that is not far behind him, and his eyes widen with distraught - the howls and laughter of demons haunt his mind, cackling madly within the darkness as they wait for his return into the blackness. A chorus of their whispers float to him within the stillness, coaxing him back into his nightmare that torments him when he is both awake and asleep. He shudders, his forehoof finally coming to rest on the forest floor as he begins to step closer to her, desperate for the goodness and light that radiates from her entire being - she is pulsing with magic and it draws him to her like a moth to a flame.
“They shouldn’t have touched you. I would slaughter all of them if I could.” he whispers bitterly, the frown on his charcoal lips broadening - he can only imagine what horrors had befallen this lovely creature, and his heart twists violently, wishing that somehow he could have been there to help her, to free her from the fate that apparently they had both met within the mountain. Silence engulfs them once more, and after a long moment of him trying to ignore the sneering and maddening jaws clacking in the distance, he closes his eyes tightly. “I can still hear them.” Feel them.
--
once the king of beasts but now they feast
on thoughts beneath his vacant crown. |
@[Nikoline] <3
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts
he thrusts his fists against the posts
and still insists he sees the ghosts The had always bothered her. Nikoline can not recall a day that it did not. Every winter, despite the length of hair that grew on her body, she would tremble as icy caresses tangled and knotted her pale mane. Except now, the cold does not seem to penetrate this skin and the grass at her hooves, er- stems was a lush and vibrant green. Dark eyes move to look at the ground as the rustle of decayed brown leaves blew into her aura and suddenly returned to a healthy green again before blow off from the tangle of her soundless feet.
The dryad lifts her gaze, dark and shining, as she meets his eyes. They are glassy and wide and she can see the way they are dimmed by the horror they have witnessed. The pale woman studies him as though he were the alien creature with the ever approaching step drawing her slowly towards him but able to leap off he should prove to be malicious.
...but he is not and the rawness of his soul lay flayed on a slab. She would be able to deem him unholy and measured him in sins but he is a broken thing, pieces together with harsh black cord and empty promises. She knows he is marked just as she. He is impure in this cathedral of the holy righteous Beqanna. They have been touched. A tear, sweeter than honeysuckle, breaches her doe-like eye and falls to dampen her cheek a soft rabbit fur grey.
She wants him to approach, willing it silently but frightened nonetheless. They had taught about their tricks. Their gnashing teeth and wagging tongues. Their stink of excrement and decay soaking to her bones when she had awoke in the forest. She was ashamed of her folly. Broken puppet of a woman with her strings plucked until they snap and she lay in the dust to be forgotten.
His response was gentle but the sheer ferocity is enough to make the world quake. She had never felt anything as great as another willing to help her, sacrifice their own blood for a thing like her. The dryad woman, shrouded in her pale glow beneath a starless night, goes to him as she can feel his soul splintering. Niko is edged close enough that she steps to close the gap between their physical forms and wraps the length of her smooth neck around his in an embrace.
She does not know this man. She does not know is name but sounds of the voices, the tree's wisdom, whisper that he is a good man and beckon her to him. Niko grips him rightly to warmth of her slender form against his own as cherry blossom petals fall around them like pale pink snowfall.
nikoline barret x syntyche
i sit at a banquet for traitors
placed between a thief and a liar
There is something about them that draws the two together - and though they both experienced the same thing on the mountain, there was something before that realization that caused them to find one another. Perhaps it is one broken soul calling for renewal, or one lost mind in search of stability; whatever the case, the shadowy-stallion and the ethereal mare have found each other this still night.
She strides towards him gracefully, like a pale haunt within the darkness of the forest, the blackness of winter rejuvenating itself at her touch and becoming like spring again, blooms blossoming with her very fragile breath on each dead stem. And despite her beauty, her power, Balto can find the sadness in her eyes - only because he has the same sadness in his own, a gentle and solemn sadness that perhaps will follow them their whole life through.
He desperately wants to be near her, wondering if her ability to bring the dead world back to life could work the same with him, if only he could get close enough to her - if only her breath could warm the coldness of his blue mottled skin, he would be alive once more and the horrors that plague his mind would fade away...just with a touch. But he does not ask her to come to him, nor force her, and neither does he attempt to bring himself to her. He is afraid to frighten her, to scare her away, and he cannot fathom not being able to find her again. It would break his heart all over again. So instead he waits patiently within the darkness, eyes steady on her approaching frame and the way her legs fade into branches and trunks - a forest goddess, she is. She had to be.
As she comes to him - silent and still in each step - the pale glow that radiates from her skin begins to thrum against the shadows of his own, chasing away the darkness that clings to his hide. He breathes shakily, inhaling and exhaling as slowly as he could, but finding that his breath would keep catching in his throat, and with a rasp it would leave him in a quiver of his chest. The greatness of her crown is more alluring as she comes closer, the blossoms falling around the wintery world in stark comparison. He holds his breath, his eyes wide with awe.
She embraces him, this nameless being of the forest, and the warmth of her touch is electrifying. He can feel the glow of her skin as it pulsates against his, pink blossoms falling into the blackness of his mane and forelock as she curls her neck around him in a tender hold. He dare not break away, but with a rattling whisper he asks: “Who are you?”
--
once the king of beasts but now they feast
on thoughts beneath his vacant crown. |
@[Nikoline]
|
