COTY
Assailant -- Year 226
QOTY
"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
walking on sunshine; balto
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As much as she loved their ragtag band of her cougar-mate and their beloved roan friend, she longed for something else to fill her days. Not that the days of looking on as the babies grew and played and came into their own was not interesting enough. Her own daughter was some prehistoric mix of mother and father that Keeper adored and admired. But something in the wild blue yonder kept calling to her.
So, Keeper answered it.
Not as the lovely dunskin mare with the wind-knotted hair but as the lumbering grizzly bear that she had come to favor so much over her horse shape.
The bear knew what it wanted and sought it: salmon in the river, plentiful and deep; honey in the forest, buzzing hives and happiness; mushrooms beneath the moonlight and a cave that was visited often with vines at the entrance to it. She’d slumbered there once or twice just to be near his scent. How or why it still lingered was never asked just assumed as part of memory and magic.
Keeper covers a lot of ground until the forest comes into view. Her piggish eyes squint as her mouth opens to let loose a happy roar. Honey, and more, lie in this forest and she is happy as can be as she barges into it. There was no grace in this form, just brute strength and little stopped her as she found a hive to bother. She swatted at the bees with a big paw and knocked the hive loose, barreling off with it until she found a clearing near the familiar cave to settle into.
The grizzly sat down and leaned back against a tree with her prize. It didn’t take long for her to get sticky or sleepy, and before she knew it, the bear was stretched out asleep and snoring. The snoring woke Keeper sometime later and she wasn’t all that surprised to find herself back as a horse. That happened often during sleep, the shift as subtle as the blink of an eye. All around her lay the smashed and broken remnants of the hive, honeycombed and a few lifeless bee-bodies.
She climbed to her feet and felt honey on her lips, delicious of course and knew that she’d be just as sticky in this shape. Keeper almost turned her head to go home until she sniffed the air - something on it shook things loose from deep inside her. Before she knew it, she was standing before the vine-covered mouth of the cave with her breath caught in her throat and a single name trembling from her lips, “Balto?”
@[Balto] so I did a thing ❤️
06-01-2020, 03:00 PM
i’ve been both a saint & a viper Balto @[keeper] yay!!! i have no idea what's going to happen but I'm so glad you wrote to me and to Balto! <3 Horse or bear, she never retraced her steps to places she had known before except here. She’d always come down this particular forest path and poke her nose in this particular cave just to sniff the air and think she still smelled his scent on it. It was the one link she had to him besides her memories and those couldn’t be trusted because they tricked her heart into feelings she knew she had but shouldn’t. Then again, Keeper always knew her heart was too big to love monogamously.
She has gone on to be a lover and a mother and settle into the bliss of days that are always the same with a small herd and children underfoot. But that never stopped her from leaving in the dark to run to a place and a time that made her heart palpitate in such a way that the pain of it was exquisite. It was like when she found her mushrooms and gorges on them, or swiped a big paw through a hive to get the delicious honey inside.
He was like a taste she couldn’t get enough of - a wine, dark and mottled with notes of dusk and shadow. Keeper wanted to drink him down as if he was the last drop of pure glacial water running down the inside of that cave that had always been the dividing line between them. She couldn’t explain it and didn’t bother to figure it out; she just felt the emotion and let it control her and refused to think of the consequences later. All of that could be damned, this was Balto! - and his name rang through her like a song that could never be forgotten.
Keeper is unaware of his torment; of the demons that coax and cajole in his ears and plague his spirit. She could not combat them anyway, lacking any magic but the bear inside her and unable to take such pains away from him. If asked, she would do anything she could to make him whole again and less damaged, had she been aware of just how changed he was. She’d had an inkling of it not long after he came back from a quest but never really knew just how different he’d become.
In the meantime, she hangs in the grasp of sunlight and vines at the cave’s mouth; half in and half out like she usually does, never fully intruding on his space. Her ears cane forward at the sound of hoof on stone which confirmed all her hopes and lifted her heart up from its interrupted beat of nerves and fears that it would be someone other than him. It still could be but scent and sound told her otherwise and she chose to believe them, as her senses had not failed her yet. Even the bear gave a throaty rumble of pleasure from somewhere deep inside her.
“Keeper?”
Yes, oh yes! She wants to shout out her joy to him but this cave has always been a place of hush and secrets and she honors that by answering him back with a low whicker of confirmation. Emotion takes hold and chokes her anyway, so she probably wouldn’t have even been able to say all the things that came to mind in the first place. Chiefly a plea to don’t go and a desire to beg him to stay. Except a strange thought occurred to her then - she was always the one coming and going, as if even the wind couldn’t keep her in one spot.
“It’s me,” she finally manages around a thick lump of emotion because she wants to bulrush the cave-mouth and press every inch of her to him until there is no telling where one of them begins and the other ends, just a jumble of horseflesh and them, them, them. Her heart knows better than her brain and she is breaching the vined threshold to be nearer to him, his scent a beacon as she sniffs and blinks at the sudden darkness. Her eyes adjust and she finds him, he looks different but then she imagines, she does too. Time does that but it doesn’t matter to her.
Just him, Balto. She smiles and offers him her nose before deciding that’s too shy and she skims it across his jawline before she can stop herself. “Oh I’ve missed you!” she breathes out, in confession and relief and happiness. Other things come to mind that she wants to say or ask but the timing doesn’t seem right, Keeper has never been one to pry and she just wants to be there, for him and with him. She feels like part of her has come home, and he’s always been a reason to haunt the forest in either shape in hopes of stumbling across him like it was an unplanned accident.
@[Balto] me either but I couldn’t resist! Can’t wait to see how this goes lol. ❤️
She longs to meld her form to his, to make the seams of them fit together in perfect harmony. That one touch wasn’t enough for her and a hunger built for more inside that poked at the pit of her belly, making the sleeping bear grumble just a little. Keeper swallowed back the noise that threatened to leave her throat like a mix of grizzly rumble and equine whicker. It would have been a noise caught somewhere in between a sob and a shout, something that knew of sadness and glee.
Around his smell is the cave air that reeks of stagnation and dampness. There’s stone and moss on it too, and it has never been a scent to curdle the stomach but there’s something off-putting to it now. Almost like a sweet underlying stink of rot like death lurks in the back. It is enough to raise the hackles on the bear inside her but Keeper refocuses all of her attention on the blue roan stallion, on Balto because in the end, he’s all that matters.
None of the things that lurk in the deeper dark scare her. Perhaps they ought to but she has always had an unshakable trust in him that no harm could befall them as long as they were together. That somehow, as a pair, they’d combat all the ills in the world that came for them. It’s probably a silly notion, the kind that fills the heads of moonstruck fillies more so than grown mares but being around him always made her feel happily reckless and outside of the restraints of time.
His hesitation the moment the light touches him is heartbreaking. It makes her wonder when the last time was that he stepped outside the cave. She hopes it wasn’t that night when she coaxed him outside into the moonlight, and at the same time, does hope it was that secret sacred moment that they shared together. But it’s a selfish thought and she has to push it out of her mind because she’s not an altogether selfish creature until it comes to him, then perhaps she is.
She hears him sigh at her coming, at how the dark doesn’t scare her from him and sees the resulting shivers that course across his blue skin from her shy touch. Keeper wants to touch him again, not to make him shiver but to make the shivers stop until her touch is as welcome as the shadows are. She wants so badly to be the light in his darkness and hold the shadows at bay for just a little while.
Then he speaks and she’s lost in the warm disuse of his voice as it surrounds her and fills her up with the familiar sound of him. He embraces her then and she leans back into it, relaxed and happy as her heart gains wings and begins to soar right through her. “Always,” she echoes back with a smile on her lips; it might be his cave but she’ll always be able to find him here or some trace of him to give her unending hope.
She remains close after their embrace, especially as he lurches toward her for more of that comforting closeness as the dark creeps in. Keeper hugs his shoulder with her own so that nothing can between them; their barrels and hips will touch in small intimate brushes of skin to skin so that it will be hard to tell where one of them begins and the other ends. It keeps the smile fixed to her face to feel him this close, to know that she can nose his nose or tug on the inky strands of his forelock.
Her head bobs in laughter as it spills out of her mouth in an exultant rush of assurance, “I’ll always look for you here and I’ll always find you. How could I not?” Indeed, how could she not? The very idea seemed preposterous that Keeper would not seek him out - he was her true north, and like the needle of a compass, her heart pointed her towards him.
Even as a bear, she sought out this part of the forest as if the bear knew the roan stallion and would still love him. Not that she was a stranger to interspecies love, but that she knew even as a bear she’d seek him out because the heart wants what the heart wants. It screamed inside her that it wanted him, beat its wings bloody against her ribcage just to say those three precious words that meant the world to her, that stayed quiet and pent up inside.
“Balto…” she began before trailing off, not quite able to meet his eyes until the grizzly swiped a huge paw through her and she felt the claws undo all the fear and hesitation. “I love you,” she murmurs into his ear because that’s where her mouth has climbed before sliding back along his neck, trailing heartfelt touches and little sniffs of his scent until she just stops, drops her head back to its original position near his nose and waits for which seems like an eternity building up in that suddenly small cave.
@[Balto] omgerd she said it finally! lol
Keeper cannot see the darkness engulfing him from the inside out. She is ignorant of it or chooses to be ignorant of it; recognizing instead, how he makes her feel which is luminous and light like a combination of sunbeams and air dancing together in the dark spots of the forest that they find and try to brighten. That’s Keeper - trying to bring brightness back to him however she can.
He pulls her to him and it feels like coming home. Even the grumbly bear inside her murmurs in sleepy contentment at how he holds them, skin to skin and heat to heat. Like their bodies are two furnaces in the dark of that cave, futilely warming it up or at least, each other. In that moment, he can’t seem to get enough of her like gasping for air and she lets him have all that he wants - every snuffle and touch.
She likes to think she’d never believe him capable of the dark things he’s done. That he treads water in the grasp of demons that oversee all that happens around him and to him, like now - how they hold one another close with unspoken promises to never let go. Keeper would believe anything he told her because he’s never lied to her, no one has. She has no true familiarity with lies.
His kisses though, are the kind of distraction she wants to lay forever. The kind of kisses that linger and make one pine for one more taste of them because the memory is just that sweet. Tenderness be damned, she loved the fierce way he kissed her neck like every kiss was a mark or a warning to everyone else. It sent a little shiver all the way right through her because she liked that notion entirely too much.
His, all his.
All because she has finally said the words she’s been longing to say since that first night together. Or was it morning? Her memory makes the two nearly indistinguishable as there have been quite a few moments together in this cave or almost outside of it. Then, it doesn’t matter as he pulls her in close again, and she fits against him that embrace so very neatly like it’s what she was made for.
He says her name but not in a recognizable tone but the bear inside strengthens her, keeps her from flinching at the dark twist of his voice that slams against her ears and echoes in the cavern dark. He doesn’t say those three little words back. Or cannot, and it doesn’t matter because his love for her is there in the hot desperate kisses and the affectionate touch he gives her. All that says enough despite the words that tumbled from his mouth like ugly stones unwanted.
Keeper doesn’t care; she clings to him like moss on the stone all around them. It would take a lot to scrape her off due to her sudden and inexplicable tenacity but she knows she isn’t going anywhere. Not for tonight at least, and not for as long as she can help it. Unless he asked her to leave but since he hasn’t, she feels a small sense of triumph despite what he’d said - that it shouldn’t be him but it is, it has been, and how could it not be?
She gives him an unshakable smile and a laugh that is light and dismissive of his words; “But it is you and it will always be you!” Keeper is certain of that and her faith in her feeling is like a mountain, mostly immovable because even she knows that mountains can crumble - it just takes eons to wear them down to small simple rock. She’ll love him until the end of time, demons (unbeknownst to her!) be damned!
@[Balto] late but ya know! ❤️
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