"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
for every tyrant, a tear for the vulnerable in every lost soul, the bones of a miracle
She could have come sooner, or even before she had learned what really happened to him. Her children were her priority, and then, once she knew why Litotes had not returned, anger. Anger that she had smothered in the forest only to have it flare up again as she returned home in the wee hours of the morning.
Kensa has begun to get uncomfortably familiar with that emotion and with the resentment it rides in on. She wears her every feeling on her skin but even her anger has an energy that attracts.
It’s easy to step over the border into Loess, to pull the feline scent of him out of the air and head for it. She probably shouldn’t be here, but she is. She has business. First she has to see him quickly, her pale Lion Man, and then she will find the one who holds his chains.
Her gold and chestnut freckled limbs splash through a cold spring, and carry her through the dusty shrub covered Loess. When she sets eyes on a white lion perched on one of the many rocks strewn over this land she slows down to a canter and worry passes over her pretty blazed face. She doesn’t like when he sticks in that shape, and something tells her he hasn’t left it for some time. His bearing is more feline than it should be, her nostrils flare to sample his scent and make sure its a man she loves wearing that skin.
“Litotes. You left us.” She says it before she can think, or stop herself. Halting a little way away from him even though she’d like to touch him...even like that, run her lips along his long back and make sure he is whole. Her eyes are too bright, and she shifts anxiously, knowing someone will soon try to intercept her and she needs to see a King. Feeling instantly guilty for attacking him rather than telling him she loves him or that she is glad that he is okay. She drops her ears back into her flaxen mane, pawing at the dry earth. “I am going to ask them to let you go.” She doesn’t explain how she will ask this, doesn’t realize that she is more than likely going to fail (refuses to consider it)
She loves him. He confuses her. May one day frighten her, but she loves him with all the passion and stubbornness that she loves anything.
“I need to go. I love you. I hope you remember that.” She turns to leave him, to go alone in search of the King.
kensa
for every dreamer, a dream. we're unstoppable with something to believe in.
@[litotes] Hi! I wanted this to be a real fast one, just a few posts back and forth. Then she is going to talk to Castile.
boy what's normal to you? 'cause that sure ain't normal to me.
The scent the Loessian wind brings comes as a shock. Litotes lurches from his boulder, claws digging into the moss as if it were the flesh of his captor. Surely it is a trick, right? Kensa’s scent may have floated from Hyaline - perhaps she is hovering at the border, hoping he will catch wind and meet her. His feline legs quiver beneath him as it grows stronger, more intoxicating.
Finally, he is going mad.
Hallucinating -
for out of the shrubbery comes the glinting gold and white of his most beloved. She is still so beautiful despite the plague, whatever gift the fairies bestowed upon her truly working in this light. His stance relaxes, previously quavering legs bending into a position to jump down and shift (he must greet her in equine form). Before he can pounce, though, she speaks. A voice that shocks him stops him dead in his tracks.
Litotes.
Accusatory, angry: a side of Kensa the Primarch has yet to experience, even with sharing something as intimate as a child. Pain blossoms in his chest first, then betrayal, then guilt, then anger. Why would she keep this from him until now?
You left us.
The ultimate accusation - everything her tone meant. Of course I left you, he begins in his head - I only wanted to protect you, and rest of the East. His only outward reaction is to balk, topaz eyes glittering with a hurt he has never known before.
The lion watches as her eyes shimmer and ears pull back. A frown is angry and harsh on his lips. Ask them to release him? Castile will never release him to her; in fact, she is putting herself in danger for even being here. It takes all of his might to not yell at her to return home, to tend to Hyaline, to leave him alone in with his dust and bones.
He cannot take this. The agony that will follow this meeting is something he cannot endure alone. She needs to leave now - leave Loess and forget him until his sentence is through.
Before he can process his emotions in a rational way, Kensa is telling him she loves him and turning away. Everything burning within - suffering, solitude, fury, loneliness, stagnation - is poured like a deadly mixture of plastic and gasoline and oil onto his fire. The fumes and smoke blind him - the heat sends instinct down his spine.
Moss flies from beneath his claws when Litotes leaps from the boulder and bounds in front of Kensa. The brush hisses menacingly when he slides to a stop in front of her, leaning down and opening his mouth into a furious roar. The indignation and disgust he should have been releasing on his captors, he releases on his most treasured companion. He does not come to like he used to; instead, he falls into his abyss of feelings, succumbing to the instincts he has felt for far too long.
All of his claws protrude when he stalks closer, lips lifted in an enraged snarl.
“Nothing you do will save me, Kensa,” he snaps, still crouched in a menacing position. “Loess is bitter and Hyaline has nothing to offer.” It is when he finishes that he smells another on her skin. The gold of his eyes darkens when his eyes fall to slits, dragging over his lover’s body in suspicion. He says nothing, though, only allows the thought to pulse loudly in his ears.
“I left you, Kensa, and now you need to leave me. Forget I exist until this sentence is over.”
It is what I deserve.
Whatever pain he feels chokes his words into a growl, desperately trying to suppress the tears that want to rise. There is only room for anger and fire. Litotes presses closer, tail shivering irritably in the air as he attempts to herd her back to the border.
and if i fall would you know that to do? and if i'm caught up would you stay?
Litotes
@[Kensa] this is not...what i expected to come out
for every tyrant, a tear for the vulnerable in every lost soul, the bones of a miracle
She hates the way anger rides her, twisting her stomach into a sickness that flares quickly and fades slowly. Before the last year she had been all easy smiles and infectious joy, so warm hearted and forgiving and certain that everything would work out for the best.
But it hasn’t. Life has spiraled away into a confusing mess that she can do little more than react to. And react she has, and in doing so she has learned new sides of those she has called her friends and family… and they new sides of her.
Litotes’ fury rises to meet her own, but he is claws and fangs and threats in a foreign feline tongue. A flicker of fear passes over her features and she throws her head and stomps, as he whirls in the dust before her and hisses terribly. “Litotes. You really think you can frighten me into obedience?” Her voice wavers, but she snorts hard and bares her teeth, and even still she is wildly beautiful, her angel face like stone.
”Until this sentence is over? It would be like forgetting entirely. She cannot blink, or tears will fall from her shining topaz eyes. Kensa doesn’t have it in her to use her words to hurt him… at least not more than she has to. “There is nothing I can do for you? I am Hyaline.” She steps closer to him, with a heavy footfalls, within reach of sharp pale claws. “You know perfectly well what I have to offer.” Her words fall into the husky breathlessness he knows from long sleepless nights spent memorizing one another’s bodies. She knows even this suggestion is a long shot but she wants to challenge him, wants him to know that she will fight for him even in the face of impossibility.
“Now get out of my way. I need to finish this and get home to my children.” Softly, not trying to talk over his growls but holding her ground even as her muscles quaver with an innate desire to flee him.
kensa
for every dreamer, a dream. we're unstoppable with something to believe in.
boy what's normal to you? 'cause that sure ain't normal to me.
She will never understand this.
The wall between the two lovers collapses into a faultline, vast and dark. Litotes watches as the rift widens and drags them further from each - further from unconditional love and understanding. The snarl on his lips widens into fear and fury.
She will never fucking understand.
What was once just buried anger has morphed into the fury of unchecked predatory instincts: Litotes can no longer discern the line between equine thought and lion thought. His confusion shows in the tense shake of his legs and lack of recognition in his eyes. Even as Kensa’s sadness nearly floods her face, he does not see her pain. He cannot comprehend it.
He is too far gone.
He cannot remember the gentle touch of her lips -
the nights their laughter was the only sound in Hyaline -
their shared joy when their first child was born.
Everything they have built slips from his mind: children’s toys lovingly crafted now outgrown and folded haphazardly into a box, walked up the impractical steps of an attic, spider covered and dust strewn in a corner. Somewhere, beneath that box, amidst the dead skin and lost hair, is a desire to remember (or even feel). The pain of remembering, though, is too great; his most beloved memories remain neglected and wilted.
Thick hair whisks with a terrifying majesty when Lie rears his head at Kensa’s words. She is Hyaline?
“You know damn well I am just as much a part of Hyaline as you.” The snarl from before has yet to leave his lips.
Bells are sounding alarm after alarm in his ears when Kensa steps closer, dangerously within reach of his anger. Litotes matches her step, lion’s claws digging into the dry dirt as if the action might actually calm him. In and out, the points dip into the earth, leaving deeper and deeper holes. His stare is both ice and fire - attempting to sear his counterpart while icing her out of what he is truly feeling.
It is what she says next that finally draws him from his fixation.
Darkness floods his eyes, then his face, then his entire body. Lie freezes in his position, the ringing of that odd smell from moments before replaying in his mind. Slowly, his dull eyes drag up to Kensa’s face. Her voice is soft but he does not care; he cannot understand what she is saying.
He does not think of how their close quarters will affect her when he roars - he simply releases the noise, fierce and unbridled. Sharp canines snap forward, aggressive, unsure if they will hit a mark (or if they even have that intention). As the sound fades, he takes a single step back, a tiny bit of feeling returning to his face.
Hurt. Hurt he brought upon himself - and betrayal. There a second and then gone.
The silence between them is vast and stony.
“Go, Kensa,” he hisses, “I don’t want to see you again.”
His head hangs when he turns, the growl in the back of his throat ominous.
and if i fall would you know that to do? and if i'm caught up would you stay?
for every tyrant, a tear for the vulnerable in every lost soul, the bones of a miracle
The moment she realizes they are lost to one another is not the one an outsider would choose. Someone analyzing the moment might think that it's the flurry of violence that finalizes the parting. It isn't.
His face closes, and even in this shape she knows that this is not just an argument. There is a flat distance in his eyes, and disgust that she has never seen. Regret and fear seize at her heart because there are ten million miles between them in an instant. She has pushed and he has not given in and she was cruel to expect him to. Even in the face of this, knowing that she is losing him, she cannot surrender. Not until she's forced to.
If only love were enough to make her cause and her words righteous and infallible.
Litotes is massive before her, glorious and terrifying. She should not be able to stand her ground before him or even challenge him the way that she does. And she almost falters when the moment happens and he closes himself off to her. She throws her head when he roars in that terrible lion-voice that vibrates the air around them. Kensa doesn't back away though, to do so will surely mean she's accepting the collapse of their relationship. When her lover lashes out, his teeth catch her forearm where it meets her chest and shoulder, piercing and grazing her flesh. Bright blood makes stark tracks down her white leg and the pain is bright as she stumbles back away from Lie.
Go, Kensa. I don't want to see you again.
The words are thick with his leonid accent but she will hear them her entire way home, the only thing louder than her own much regretted words. As he had wished she turns back for Hyaline, her broken heart beating a faltering cadence the entire flight back to her own borders.
kensa
for every dreamer, a dream. we're unstoppable with something to believe in.
