11-11-2020, 09:07 PM
He blinks.
Avocet blinks and the Beach becomes the Pampas. Where there had been a small gathering of other horses and shadows creeping closer, the Pampas comes sweeping into view with her wildflower meadows. At first, Avocet is relieved and his lanky shape reveals this in a fluid gait. The yearling is seeking his sister. Perhaps Manikin is back. Perhaps whatever... whatever <i>that</i> had been - where he had gone - had claimed Manny, too.
She had come back different - without her talons and her beak. She had come back murmuring the name of the dark God - Carnage (the mere thought of the Divinity is enough to make Avo shudder) - and a story about Death and dying. But Avocet is far too young to be thinking about dying. He is young and therefore invincible. The only thing that could harm him was his mother and that was why he needed to find Manikin; she was the one who had saved him from the wrath of their dam when he had been small. All they had was each other.
(Maybe that was why this false-Pampas didn't unnerve him at first. A thought prickled in the back of his mind that it was <i>all wrong</i> but then most of Avocet's memories are now this way. Foggy like the mist that sometimes rolls in from the sea. Distorted like the bay colt is looking down from the Mountain but the angle is skewed. Something, somewhere deep inside Avocet knows these things are wrong but the lines between truth and fiction have been blurred by his memory-manipulating twin.)
The colt starts to slow because that feeling creeps up his spine again. He looks behind him, half-expecting to find the source for the uneasiness he feels. Avocet had almost thought to see something standing in the distance - a shape, a shadow, anything. He blinks again and thinks he sees it. It flits (<i>a dark nothing</i>) in his peripheral vision and the boy can't keep track of it. He blinks again and there is only the sprawling vista of bluebonnets and lady slippers and several clusters of white flowers that look like clouds. He raises his finely-shaped head and stares out at the miles that roll on and on. <i>There is nothing there</i>, he thinks and dismisses his fanciful mind with a shrug of his growing shoulders. It was Manny's fault. It was all her talk of dying and Magic, he concluded.
But as he turns around and walks ahead, all he gets is a couple of steps forward before that feeling comes back. It crackles up his spine like electricity; like lightning strikes.
Turning around quicker than before (<i>surging with adrenaline and a rampant heartbeat that has started to rise</i>), Avocet sees it. It is not dark and shadowy. It does not look like the rest of this distilled world. Popinjay is as striking here as she in the real world. The little mare smiles - <i>jeers</i> - at her only son and Avo darkens with dread. He darkens with dread and it turns the marrow in his bones to stone. The bay woman flares her darks wings with their red-blazes that burn in his vision like an ill-omen and the yearling bares his teeth at the mare before him. <i>I'm sorry, Avo.</i> He can hear Manikin say. <i>But it was you she hated.</i>
And he <i>hates</i> the way that something twists in him at that thought.
He hates the way that Popinjay leers at him even more.
Lunging forward, he thinks that he will get his revenge for every time she tried to hurt him. There will be vengeance in the leap that he makes and he (<i>foolishly</i>) thinks that he will strike Popinjay - the stormcaller - down where she stands. Like a child, he thinks that an action cast in the present will settle his past and will carry no precedence in his future. Avocet has no concept of how this decision will affect the days that come after. He has no way of knowing that what he does will haunt him long after this shadow world becomes nothing more than a lingering nightmare. The wing that he had been aiming for disappears. Avocet falls to the ground but gets up quickly, rounding back to his mother. He sneers and hurls infantile accusations that slide off her like rainwater. Popinjay just cackles and cackles, like nothing that Avocet says matters at all. It makes him angrier and angrier and soon enough, the anger is the only thing that makes sense.
Where there had been two wings, now there is one. Then there are none. A leg vanishes. Her chest evaporates. Each part of Popinjay that he attempts to attack only disappears into the fog while she laughs and laughs and laughs in circles around Avocet, like there is merriment in falling (<i>fading</i>) apart.
He keeps attacking and shredding, wild-eyed and raging. His head jerks back when the last of his bravado has left him. When the anger that had been his armor falls and the whites of his eyes are showing when he looks upon the floating head of his specter mother as he steps backwards. <b>"Pretty eyeball,"</b> says the bobbing head before him that has a Magpie smile. <b>"I like pretty things."</b>
He blinks.
Avocet blinks and the Beach becomes the Pampas. Where there had been a small gathering of other horses and shadows creeping closer, the Pampas comes sweeping into view with her wildflower meadows. At first, Avocet is relieved and his lanky shape reveals this in a fluid gait. The yearling is seeking his sister. Perhaps Manikin is back. Perhaps whatever... whatever <i>that</i> had been - where he had gone - had claimed Manny, too.
She had come back different - without her talons and her beak. She had come back murmuring the name of the dark God - Carnage (the mere thought of the Divinity is enough to make Avo shudder) - and a story about Death and dying. But Avocet is far too young to be thinking about dying. He is young and therefore invincible. The only thing that could harm him was his mother and that was why he needed to find Manikin; she was the one who had saved him from the wrath of their dam when he had been small. All they had was each other.
(Maybe that was why this false-Pampas didn't unnerve him at first. A thought prickled in the back of his mind that it was <i>all wrong</i> but then most of Avocet's memories are now this way. Foggy like the mist that sometimes rolls in from the sea. Distorted like the bay colt is looking down from the Mountain but the angle is skewed. Something, somewhere deep inside Avocet knows these things are wrong but the lines between truth and fiction have been blurred by his memory-manipulating twin.)
The colt starts to slow because that feeling creeps up his spine again. He looks behind him, half-expecting to find the source for the uneasiness he feels. Avocet had almost thought to see something standing in the distance - a shape, a shadow, anything. He blinks again and thinks he sees it. It flits (<i>a dark nothing</i>) in his peripheral vision and the boy can't keep track of it. He blinks again and there is only the sprawling vista of bluebonnets and lady slippers and several clusters of white flowers that look like clouds. He raises his finely-shaped head and stares out at the miles that roll on and on. <i>There is nothing there</i>, he thinks and dismisses his fanciful mind with a shrug of his growing shoulders. It was Manny's fault. It was all her talk of dying and Magic, he concluded.
But as he turns around and walks ahead, all he gets is a couple of steps forward before that feeling comes back. It crackles up his spine like electricity; like lightning strikes.
Turning around quicker than before (<i>surging with adrenaline and a rampant heartbeat that has started to rise</i>), Avocet sees it. It is not dark and shadowy. It does not look like the rest of this distilled world. Popinjay is as striking here as she in the real world. The little mare smiles - <i>jeers</i> - at her only son and Avo darkens with dread. He darkens with dread and it turns the marrow in his bones to stone. The bay woman flares her darks wings with their red-blazes that burn in his vision like an ill-omen and the yearling bares his teeth at the mare before him. <i>I'm sorry, Avo.</i> He can hear Manikin say. <i>But it was you she hated.</i>
And he <i>hates</i> the way that something twists in him at that thought.
He hates the way that Popinjay leers at him even more.
Lunging forward, he thinks that he will get his revenge for every time she tried to hurt him. There will be vengeance in the leap that he makes and he (<i>foolishly</i>) thinks that he will strike Popinjay - the stormcaller - down where she stands. Like a child, he thinks that an action cast in the present will settle his past and will carry no precedence in his future. Avocet has no concept of how this decision will affect the days that come after. He has no way of knowing that what he does will haunt him long after this shadow world becomes nothing more than a lingering nightmare. The wing that he had been aiming for disappears. Avocet falls to the ground but gets up quickly, rounding back to his mother. He sneers and hurls infantile accusations that slide off her like rainwater. Popinjay just cackles and cackles, like nothing that Avocet says matters at all. It makes him angrier and angrier and soon enough, the anger is the only thing that makes sense.
Where there had been two wings, now there is one. Then there are none. A leg vanishes. Her chest evaporates. Each part of Popinjay that he attempts to attack only disappears into the fog while she laughs and laughs and laughs in circles around Avocet, like there is merriment in falling (<i>fading</i>) apart.
He keeps attacking and shredding, wild-eyed and raging. His head jerks back when the last of his bravado has left him. When the anger that had been his armor falls and the whites of his eyes are showing when he looks upon the floating head of his specter mother as he steps backwards. <b>"Pretty eyeball,"</b> says the bobbing head before him that has a Magpie smile. <b>"I like pretty things."</b>
He blinks.