"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
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
There is a strange sort of peace in a life with no memories. In an equally unusual twist of fate, he finds he’s not plagued by uncertainty like he might have expected. Why that is an expectation, he isn’t sure, but he finds himself feeling almost free. As though the weight of centuries had been lifted from him.
But it’s disconcerting too. So many times he has found himself staring at something as though he should recognize it. He can feel… something, just on the tip of his tongue. But somehow, it never quite comes. The sensations never fledge fully into words or realizations. And then he moves on with surprising ease. As though an old and forgotten version of himself had once learned to say ‘fuck it’ and leave.
There’s a lesson buried deep in there, no doubt. Isn’t it ironic then, that just when he might be able to learn it, he can’t remember he needs to?
By force of habit, he avoids others. Whatever else he might have forgotten, he had discovered very quickly that he is not a social creature. The immediate aversion he’d felt for crowded areas had been enough, but the overwhelming annoyance when cornered by someone far too happy and chipper had firmly cemented his desire to remain well away from anywhere where that might happen again.
The emotional response over things he couldn’t even remember is one thing, but the fact that he had not even been able to recall his own name when asked had been something entirely different. How the hell he was going to find that out though, he has no clue.
So, in typical Ashhal fashion, he hadn’t tried.
Which brings him to here and now, where he stands absently on the banks of the river in a secluded lee. Anyone who stumbled upon him would find a serene and picturesque scene. Which, for anyone who stumbled upon him and actually knew him, would no doubt be shocking. Not that it matters much anyway, because as soon as the faint crunch of snow reaches his ears, a habitual scowl creases his features as he turns to glare at whoever had managed to find him, completely ruining whatever serenity had been capture in the moment.
i think i'm better on my own but i get so lost in you
She watches him from a place hidden, shrouded in shadow, and artfully placed away from the fading light of afternoon sun. There is a cruelty blossoming in her chest, a sickness whose roots dig into her heart and spread around her ribcage. She recognizes him easily enough, he being just one of the many images she had plucked from her mother’s subconscious when she was younger and perfecting her craft. Ryatah had been the best and the worst victim – frustrating for an amateur, trying to rifle through her ever-changing and fickle heart, but once Desire got out into the real world, truly, hardly anyone else compared. They were easy compared to her mother.
She doesn’t know why the sight of him ignites something that could only be described as jealousy. She does not know if she is jealous of her mother, jealous that her heart breaks apart to love anyone when Desire’s can hardly love one, jealous that men still come back to her even though there was nothing redeemable about her.
Whatever it is, when she steps from the shadows, she has already erected her illusion. A pair of gold-tipped angel wings are held close to a delicate, porcelain-colored frame, and an amber halo rests above her fine head. The eyes are similar to her natural eyes, but softer – still impossibly dark, but not the endless black that hers were. In the shadows, there is the ethereal glow that Desire had never found fitting, but was necessary to complete the image.
“Ashhal?” She asks in a voice that she hopes is similar to her mother’s, though it is warped and almost too sweet. Her face is fixed into a look of concern as she steps lightly through the snow, not quite coming alongside him but stopping close enough. He turns to glare at her, and she does her best to feign a look of mild surprise and a bruised kind of hurt, angling her face down as she says softly, “Sorry if I interrupted you.”
i think i'm better on my own but i'm so obsessed with you
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
She says something as she approaches. A name, he thinks. One that feels both familiar and foreign. After a moment, he realizes she had meant him when she said Ashhal. His scowl deepens at that, but the soft surprise and hurt on her angelic features stir something else too. Regret.
For the briefest of moments, the irritable lines etched into his features are replaced by something akin to confusion. What was it about her that caused him to regret? The answers don’t come, of course, but it does expel the immediate urge to leave.
Shifting to better face her, he eyes her warily, still not quite certain if he should engage or not. For the first time he feels the vulnerability in the lack of his memories. This mare seems to know perfectly well who he is while he knows nothing of her or how he might know her. It’s unnerving, to say the least.
Which says nothing of the emotions she stirs deep in his breast. Emotions he’s not quite certain he wishes to confront.
After another moment of silence, in a low tone he finally asks, “Who are you?” Belatedly it occurs to him that is not actually a helpful question. After all, a name would tell him nothing if he could not remember it. “How do you know me?”
10-19-2020, 03:10 AM (This post was last modified: 10-19-2020, 03:20 AM by Desire.)
i think i'm better on my own but i get so lost in you
Desire watches him from behind this angelic disguise, and truthfully, it is one of her favorite places to be. To be masked as a trusted face, to be handed the key into someone else’s soul, and they are none the wiser.
It is different with him, though.
He does not look at her quite in the way that she had expected. In fact, he does not seem to recognize her at all, and for a heart-stopping moment, she wonders if her illusion has faltered. A glimpse of the gold-tipped wings at her sides reassures her that this is not the case, and her dark eyes look back to him. “What do you mean?” She is mindful to keep the accusation from her tone, her face still one of artfully crafted concern, though inwardly she is agitated at this slip in her plan.
It is tempting to be irritated with him for not falling perfectly into this intricately made trap. She wishes that she could tap into his mind instead of just into his useless heart—fickle, troublesome things that they were. This is not the first and likely not the last time one has let her down.
She steals a step forward, her head still down, and she peers up at him from beneath her long, dark lashes. “I’m Ryatah. We’ve been friends for years.” She laughs, a sweet, short sound, a demure kind of smile pulling at her lips. “Although, I think it would be safe to say that we are—or were—more than friends.”
Desire pauses, catching his gaze with hers, and she is careful to mask her sick curiosity with worry when she asks him, “What happened to you? Why don’t you remember me?”
i think i'm better on my own but i'm so obsessed with you
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
He can feel the knowledge trembling on the edges of his consciousness, just out of reach. Always out of reach. For the first time since he had woken on the blood-soaked beach, it bothers him. There is something significant here, but he can’t quite fathom it. The understanding serves to make him equally irritable and uncertain. Or perhaps it’s the uncertainty that makes him irritable (he’d never been good at defining his own emotions even when he could remember why he was experiencing them).
He doesn’t know how to respond to her assertion that they had been more than friends, so he does not. The only indication he’d understood what she said at all is the way his lips tighten into a grimace. Still, he can’t help but wonder what had possessed such a lovely and angelic creature to be… friends with the likes of him (had he been in a better frame of mind, he might have wondered where that thought had come from, but the mystery of her keeps him too preoccupied to catch such an insignificant slip).
There is something deeper and more visceral however. Something impossible for him to deny. Primordial in its roots, requiring no memory to understand. Though it wasn’t enough to prove she spoke the truth, there is a familiarity that does make him pause to wonder. A familiarity that stays his feet when he might have otherwise turned to leave what was clearly a tangled and knotted web. One he wasn’t at all sure he wished to unravel.
At the very least, it allows him to bare his teeth in a facsimile of a grin and answer her questions, though his answers undoubtedly leave more questions than answers. “Your guess is as good as mine,” he replies, the low growl of his voice losing at least a fraction of its edge. “I remember nothing before waking up on the beach some weeks ago.”
i think i'm better on my own but i get so lost in you
She can’t really tell if he’s lying or not. It seems odd to her that he would suddenly just forget everything, especially a history as lengthy and turbulent as what he had shared with her mother. Desire had never much understood Ryatah’s seemingly desperate need for affection since it was something she herself did just fine without (or so she told herself). Her childhood had been filled with watching her mother’s seemingly endless string of strange romances, but there was a core few she seemed to always circle back to. She knew that Ashhal was one – knew that she shared a few siblings, including one younger than her – and the malicious part of her found it just a little too amusing that he didn’t even remember any of it.
Although, she supposes her mother might not care to learn this anymore. She seemed to be content with her life in Hyaline with Atrox, though Desire assumes she continues the twisted affair with her father since last she had seen Ryatah she was once again without eyes. She forgot that minor detail in her illusion, she realizes, but Ashhal didn’t remember anything anyway, it didn’t seem to matter.
“I guess we just have to start over,” she murmurs to him sweetly, having moved close enough now that she could reach out and touch him. There is a part of her that almost wants to drop the disguise; wants to let the white and gold fall to the ground and reveal the strikingly beautiful galaxy that she truly was, wants to see that look of surprise flash across his face. She doesn’t, though, and it is a haloed head that she reaches forward, a porcelain-white nose that brushes across the slope of his shoulder in the delicate, shy way she has seen her mother do so many times. “I think that you’re worth it.”
i think i'm better on my own but i'm so obsessed with you
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
It is the very nature of their lengthy and turbulent history, the more than century-long spread of his memories, that had made them such a delectable and irresistible meal to the hungry beast that had stolen them. Of course, even that he could not remember. Though he feels the truth of his years somewhere deep inside, he has no true concept of just how many years it had actually been. Cannot hope to recall just how pivotal the angelic mare before him (or rather, the one her facsimile represents) had been to him.
Instead he is left with only the barest bones to pick at. The knowledge she had unwittingly gifted him in their brief interaction so far.
When she sidles closer to him, he doesn’t move away. His dark gaze follows her, sharp and wary even as a hint of hunger begins to creep in. A hunger that feels as impossibly familiar as the way his skin begins to burn with the anticipation of her touch. His body remembering what his mind cannot.
The thought of starting over is surprisingly pleasant. As though he had been stuck in an endless cycle and he had, finally, been given a chance to break free. To truly start over. A foolish thought, but enticing nevertheless. He can feel something in his mind stir, as though it wishes to grasp, but her next words cause it to fizzle and fade.
I think you’re worth it she had said.
“No,” the sharp response is visceral. As unexpected as it is expected. “I’m not.” He’s not certain why he feels it so deeply, but he knows it’s true. And he will not be lied to. Not about this.
i think i'm better on my own but i get so lost in you
No matter how strong her love for games and tricks, her patience was not endless. She could wear the illusion of her mother as much as she liked, but she could not mimic her entirely. The illusion was just that – an illusion. It did not extend beyond the mirage of white blanketing her galaxy-colored skin, or the almost wavering image of a halo above her head and the gold-tipped wings at her sides.
Desire could look the part, but she was even less an angel than her mother.
She lacked the genuine love — twisted and malformed though it was — that Ryatah had, and so when Ashhal responds sharply, she feels her thin patience begin to falter. There is a moment when her dark eyes seem to harden, when the purples and blues and silvers of the galaxy underneath flickers behind the illusion, and it is all she can do to keep from snapping back at him.
But she breathes, an inhale and exhale with just the right amount of a tremor to it, giving off the impression of trying to mask injured feelings. When the last of the air shudders from her lungs into the air between them she has regained her composure and she is again quiet and yielding. She reaches for him again, but this time stops just short of touching him, and murmurs gently, “Don’t be like that.” Her head tips just enough to lock eyes, summoning all of the sorrow and sympathy that she possibly can when she says, “I would never give up on you.”
i think i'm better on my own but i'm so obsessed with you
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
He doesn’t believe her, and he cannot entirely pin why. Is it the determination as she pushes, insisting he must be wrong? The flicker of something dark in her eyes? The hurt lining her features at a truth he’s certain he’s shared before?
Or is it something else entirely?
“Where were you when I was spat on the beach with the memories of a newborn then?” he growls abruptly, demeanor changing with a swiftness that belies the uncertainty he’d felt moments ago. Pale feathers ruffle, shifting with a dozen whispers as his wings flare slightly, the first hint of dormant aggression rousing. “You, who would never give up on me, never fucking bothered to find me.”
He’s certain she could have, if she wanted to. He doesn’t know where that certainty comes from (doesn’t recall the years of running only to stumble right back into her, time and time again). He steps closer, crowding her, dark eyes flinty with dangerous emotion. The fury feels so familiar, yet somehow foreign. As though his fury had never been directed at her.
Impossible.
His jaw tightens as he stares at her, refusing to break his gaze. “Why now?”
What makes this moment so different from the thousands before? He may not know much, but he knows her words are not ones he recognizes. Not in the visceral way he’d recognized her face. Not in the familiar way he’d recognized her name at the edges of his tongue. So what had changed?
i think i'm better on my own but i get so lost in you
His tone turns clearly more aggravated, and she bites back a sigh of exasperation. Briefly, she admires her mother for what must be unshakable, never-ending patience – Desire was being uncharacteristically nice, and it still didn’t appear to be enough for Ashhal. She was reminded of why she was almost never nice, and she wonders if every man her mother sleeps with is this irritating.
She is careful to not let any of these thoughts show, of course. The way her jaw tightens and her heartbeat quickens in agitation remains hidden behind the angelic illusion of her mother, and she tucks the image of the wings closer to her sides the way she has seen Ryatah do when she grows timid. “I’m sorry,” comes her whispered apology, her dark eyes searching his face. “I didn’t know where you had gone, and I didn’t know where to look.” Which was not a lie, coming from her – but she has no idea if it was something Ryatah would be expected to know. She was hoping the stallion’s lack of memory would continue to work in her favor in this sense.
Another sigh, still soft and shuddering, giving away nothing to how irritated she still felt. She thinks of what she would do if she were herself; how she would snap her teeth right at his throat, and see just exactly how far she could push him until he was really pissed off. She keeps herself in check, though, knowing this would pay off far more in the long run if she can see it through to the end. “Please forgive me,” her voice a quiet plea, as she dares to take another step forward. "I'm sorry, Ashhal. I don't want you to be mad at me." She casts her gaze downwards, seeming to be attempting to gather courage, before she lifts her eyes back to his and asks him, “What do I need to do to get you to forgive me?”
i think i'm better on my own but i'm so obsessed with you
