but does it even feel like fire at all?
12-31-2020, 02:39 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-31-2020, 02:43 PM by Aela.)
She is restless.
It makes her irritable and Aela spends most of the night shifting her weight from one slender hip to the other. Some nights she dreams of the world opening up before her like she wished it would and some nights... some nights she just dreams of the way that the ground had swallowed Straia whole.
There is nothing left of the former Chamber Queen (though there are rumors of a daughter or two within the canyon country). Straia - magical entity who had commanded the sky in Nerine - had been reduced to nothing in a matter of seconds, devoured by her ambition. Aela hadn't missed the warning. It put her own existence into a whole new perspective and she had been struggling with it ever since. Heartfire had once said that Straia was an ant compared to Carnage and that made Aela... what?
What was one golden girl against the grand scheme of the cosmos?
But Aela reminds herself that she is more than that.
That she will be more than that and that thought always brings her back to him.
The way that Aela imagines and Skandar creates.
The moon is gone, waned into oblivion and so only a few distant stars remain in the sky above. Hours continue to pass with only the dark for company and as the night spins on, Aela finally accepts that there will be no rest for her.
And since there is no rest for her, she goes looking for him instead.
Aela knows where to find @[Skandar]. It annoys her that she does; where he lingers or how he occupies his time shouldn't be a concern of hers if she does not need him. (But then she soothes herself with the notion that if she didn't know where to find him, there would be time wasted in trying to locate the skin-changer.) Before dawn can come creeping along, Aela walks along one of the common Pangean trails towards where she knows to find the constellation-marked stallion.
In a language that speaks without words, Aela remembers Skandar with unusual clarity. She recalls each extraordinary shift - from lava to stone to ice - and then demands one from the shadows. That he unwraps himself from obscurity and take a shape.
<3
He followed her. Of course he did. He would never admit that to anyone, of course - though if Aela ever found the ability to look inside his mind, she would know immediately that he felt as he had no other choice. He had been thrown into a life of complacency when he was obviously born for greatness and out of every one he has met, Aela is the only one who could see that (or challenge it) and for that reason, the young colt could not refuse her. It irritates him, of course, that this golden girl captured his attention so fully and quickly; but Skandar believes himself wise beyond his years and he knows the path to greatness is led by the silent girl he had met by chance.
Skandar was still learning about Pangea - the territory itself and how it had been formed (Aela knew all the stories of old and politely informed him of all of its former glory), as well as learning the different paths the canyons carry him and which areas were dead ends. He found Pangea itself eerie as if something heavy and unbearable has stretched itself across its terrain, flickering tepidly and only waiting for a single spark to light it. Sometimes the wind would howl through the dusty rock and the colt would allow his spine to shiver from tip to tail as it echoed the entire territory.
She finds him easily (or he assumes so because he seems to always be right where she needs him) and he throws his head upward in a gentle huff, looking for her. He looks himself today - nothing out of the ordinary save for the indigo and burnt orange of his natural skin, winking with the soft sparks of the constellations that paint his skin. Her thoughts are immediately his own (something intimate, he feels, in the way she so easily enters his mind) and he cannot help the half-smirk that cracks across his indigo mouth. He’d never say it to her out loud, of course, but he finds it a compliment that she remembers his ability so fondly.
In an instant, his body shimmers and then his skin begins to peel, flapping against each other like feathers. Beneath the outer edges of purple and orange - instead of the color of blood and muscle and sinew - darkness writhes. It seems to pour out of him, spilling across his constellation skin and outward, wrapping him in shadow. He becomes the shadow in the canyons, dark and pulsing, a black spot that does not belong in the clay of the twisted path he was on.
Skandar comes before her as only shadow, melding into her own that is cast on the ground before taking any sort of shape that would resemble an equine. She would know it was him, of course, as it came rushing over the horizon, sinister and relentless. He whispers her name though he has no mouth, but the smile on his face becomes discernable as he takes shape beside her - a shadow creature but those same, intense orange eyes.
skandar
@[Aela]
but does it even feel like fire at all?
01-04-2021, 08:08 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-04-2021, 08:17 PM by Aela.)
Aela looks at @[Skandar] and sees an equal to herself.
Their relationship (friendship?) is pantheon-made; they are young and so they still play at what they will accomplish. But Skandar is star-born (and therefore god-descended) and Aela knows there is something of the divine flowing in her veins. It runs over, pours through her until it comes out glowing around her gilded ankles.
The dark has stayed, though she is unsure why. If there are creatures that run rampant across Pangea, they attract no notice from Aela. (Could they be much different from the wonders that call this place home anyway?) All she knows is that the light from the twinkling stars has paled and somehow the moon and sun have converged into one dark star, morphed into an endless night.
It doesn't upset her. At least, not yet.
Lonely wind plays through the canyons and ravines. The shadows creep along their walls. There are sounds that she has never heard before and so her delicate ears keep listening, keep waiting for the originator of the sound to reveal itself. There are shrills and trills that she has never heard before. There is the sound of stones scuffling and more than once, red dust has stained her pale nostrils in phantom plumes. Things are out there; their world is stirring.
Though she will never think (or say) it, she is grateful that Skandar is so easy to find.
Despite the dark, she knows he is there.
And despite the dark, she can already sense his half-cocked smile.
Skandar becomes the night itself, shifting into obscurity and Aela's blue eyes look for him. She watches, slightly impressed by the way he melts into nothing. What little light there is (and what dim glow comes from her) offers a small glimmer of the shape-maker and her muted gaze watches him shift into something else. Aela refrains from thinking, wondering what form that Skandar might make for himself.
He manifests into her shadow. His shape lingers there (and Aela can't blame him - she is golden and bright and beautiful. It only makes sense that he would seek to settle in the crook of her shadow. It's a compliment that she allows it.)
But then as aspiring gods were apt to do, he rises and transcends. Skandar remakes himself.
Her slender head lifts, peering through the darkness and trying to see where his next shape would take hold. There's a disturbance out there, a wavering presence that she recognizes. It takes all her social skills to still her face; there is nothing there but a neutral expression.
Until her blue eyes reflect the brilliant intensity of the orange eyes staring at her.
(Flame. Fire. Light. The images in her mind come sudden and beaming, blazing across towards Skandar.) Aela waits before the ghost of a smile haunts her pale lips and the silence echoes a dare: was he bold enough to break this supernatural dark?
In a way that he has yet to discover in the handful of others he has met in Beqanna, no excitement breaches his chest save for when he is beside Aela. He’d never admit it, of course, and though he feels as though the golden girl has some sort of insight into his mind (with her ability to shower him with her own memories), he still would not find it within him to remark on the thrilling chill that travels down his spine when they are both together. He is nearly vibrating, even though he is only shadow and darkness, wondering what sort of plans that she has for them in this endless night.
Skandar is not at all perturbed by the insidious ring that hangs heavily in the sky, nor the lack of stars and light. Why be afraid of something he can easily become? Perhaps a naive thought, but for one as young and powerful as he is, the reasoning is sound - he does not have room in his heart for fear, only for himself and the select few that he silently deems worthy, like the stunning girl beside him. She glances away from his shadowy-body and into the darkness; he turns as well, his orange eyes nearly glowing in the pitch of the night. Creatures are out there, rifling through Pangea (and all of Beqanna) without any hesitation, creeping in the darkness, crawling against the canyon walls with slick, black bodies that seem both fully shadow and fully real.
When Aela turns to face him again, Skandar does the same. He is expectant, patient. She has yet to disappoint.
In a moment, she feeds him her desires.
Fire dances before his eyes, red hot and burning. Light. Though there is no real shape of a mouth in this shadowy-form, Skandar smiles. The dark tendrils of shadow that float out beside him suddenly draw inwards, folding in on themselves. He vibrates and flutters, the sound of wings permeating the still of night as his skin becomes solid and the flayed pieces brush against each other.
The lava of Tephra breaks and cracks like fissures along the blackness of his body. He remembers the lava flows and how their light glows brilliantly against the dark nights, bold and steady and dangerous. His body remains black as onyx, save for the cracks that run like veins across his skin, the orange glow pulsing with the life he gives it. Then, almost unnoticeable with the brilliant magma that flows continuously about his body, his mane and tail burst into flames.
His light illuminates the near-gold of her skin and he looks to her eyes, silent and waiting. Would the creatures be drawn to his light, like moths to a flame? Or are they like roaches, set to scurry away from the brightness? His orange irises glow gently with a soft hum, preparing himself for whatever may come from the darkness, as well as whatever Aela had planned for them.
skandar
@[aela]
but does it even feel like fire at all?
01-10-2021, 04:34 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-10-2021, 04:39 PM by Aela.)
Aela had once thought they might get bored of this game (and perhaps they still might). There were only so many memories that Aela had and therefore only so many shapes that Skandar could take; eventually, they would reach the end. What she hadn't anticipated was this thrill, was the way that they continued to charge their environment with their shared magic.
She can't help but smile a little up at him. His orange eyes are blazing into her own and she likes the way that he is already waiting, already expectant for some wonderful creation. Aela won't deny him that and so she begins a pattern that they both seem to enjoy: she broadcasts light, flame, explosions into his mind. One memory after the other that shines through the dark and then Skandar takes them. (She won't ever admit this to the Creator but this is her favorite part. She offers Skandar a glimpse into her mind and he makes the image into something new, something different.)
There is the familiar fluttering of his shadowy-skin as it shifts. Aela watches, fascinated with the change. Her abilities are nothing like his; but the enchantment comes from knowing that they are both so much more than they appear. Aela had asked for fire and while Skandar obliges, he comes glowing forward as Tephran lava. He changes his skin but it is done with his own flare and that is something that Aela is coming to appreciate (even if she feigns annoyance with a roll of her eyes).
He looks like a demon - with his cracked skin and the magma that illuminates them, the brilliant flickering of mane and tail - the spectacle is all the more terrifying. Aela tilts her head for a better view but the quiet approval is there, glimmering behind her shadowed eyes. Her gaze studies the curve of his shoulder and she briefly wonders what it would be like to touch him. Was he such a burning thing that she would smolder?
Briefly, her mind is a flurry of images. The oil-slick creations that linger in the shadows. The way they made some shape and yet were still without. She looks to @[Skandar] again and wonders what would happen if the skinwalker could replicate their shape. Would he lose himself in the shadows and feast upon the terror as they did? Or would they be drawn to him, understanding that he was a mimic? What would the consequences of that be?
It makes her (regretfully) refrain from continuing their current round. Her mind lingers instead on a tree that Aela had seen once. It was supposed to be as Skandar was now: burning. But since the fall of Straia, the tree remained in Pangea as a scarred symbol of what the price of ambition could be. There are had been rumors though that the magical properties of it still existed even if the former Chamber Queen did not. With Skandar serving as her own personal torch, it doesn't take them long to find it.
When they approach the scorched pine, Aela walks towards it with something akin to reverence. She had liked the painted Magician. It had been a shame for her to be swallowed as she had. Glancing back, she tries to see if Skandar remains in the shadowy distance or if he draws closer as well. Aela enjoys the flicker of his light as it illuminates across her aurelian skin - turning her an almost molten gold - and she thinks it's a fitting tribute to bring fire back to this place.
But like all Magics, this place demands a price. Aela stops and waits for Skander before she reveals it. There are more flashes - the images bright and clear despite the dark - of a deep cut that weeps blood. Of an injury on the flayed flesh of some Nerinian bystander gained during the battle and the blood that pooled below, stark on the iron granite. She looks up then from beneath her flaxen forelock - taking her turn to be expectant - to see if he understood: the tree demands blood.
They both had to bleed.
And in return, the tree might burn again.
In return, it might grant them something.
(Power.)
In the sweltering and brooding darkness (a foreboding darkness, one that even Skandar finds drawing chills up and down his spine), he becomes a beacon for her. She is pleased, he thinks, because he is sure he would know if she wasn’t. It is hard to tell what makes her happy, but he has found that discovering her dislikes were far easier and expected. He doesn’t think that he exactly seeks her approval, but moreso that he desires the subtle way she seems fascinated by him. He wonders, if she had the power, would she literally pick his brain apart to see what makes him the way he is? He doesn’t wonder long, for he already knows the answer would be yes.
Aela’s images that cross his mind are familiar - he had seen them (he thinks) moving within the shadows, more apt to announce their presence by sound than by sight. Their shape is a complicated one, as it seems that each of them is different than the rest and Skandar briefly wonders if they are merely shadow-versions of themselves, dark and twisted demons that are as rare as Aela and himself. He does not know the golden girl’s thoughts on the creatures - only that she is thinking of them - but he (and perhaps it is their length of knowing each other) can tell that her memory is merely that; there is no request within the image and even so, Skandar finds his molten lips twitching thoughtfully. Could he live amongst them, undetected?
In a new breath of a moment, Aela shows him the tree. This, unlike before, is not a suggestion. Without hesitation and with the subtle cracking of his skin, he breaches out to lead her there in the pitch black of this endless night.
Together they stand before the tree itself and though Skandar knows nothing of the previous Dominus or her abilities, he remembers quite vividly seeing her swallowed into the earth. So he eyes the tree intently, tilting his glowing head towards Aela, wondering what it is she has brought them here to do. Only a few silent moments pass before she reveals her intent: blood on stone, feeding magic.
Understanding immediately, Skandar snorts sharply which causes steam to rise from his nostrils while tiny droplets of lava spurt with it.
Perhaps it would make her angry (not necessarily what he thinks to do, but that he hadn’t asked permission), but it did not stop him. He does not think twice - Aela will bleed for the tree and receive her reward first. This thought is accompanied by another: it would be him who does it.
His bright orange eyes deepen into a glowing scarlet, a soft hum vibrating with its sudden glow. The intensity of it makes his lava-laced body pale in comparison as he fixates his gaze on the slop of her golden shoulder. In barely a breath of a moment and with a gentle furrowing of his brow, two red beams of light shoot from his eyes, searing into her skin in one single spot.
When he blinks, the beam disappears and it takes a few moments for the darkened world to adjust once again. Skandar still crackles and burns but it is dim; fading. His lips twitch as the cracks of orange disappear and close, the sound of fluttering skin signaling him reverting back to his star-studded shape. His mane and tail, however, remain flames - small and close to his neck, crackling and spitting.
He watches as the ruby red of her blood drips down her leg, cutting through the gold bands around her knee and slicing through the soft white of her ankles, staining her. He takes a single step to the side, allowing her the space to let her blood drip onto the tree’s roots that grip tightly beneath the grey stone.
skandar
@[Aela]
but does it even feel like fire at all?
01-22-2021, 09:57 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-22-2021, 11:54 PM by Aela.)
It's blood magic, what she is suggesting to the skin-shifter.
Perhaps the most powerful and potent of magics, she thinks. (And it shows how young she still really is, how far she has yet to go in her immortality.) But Aela's blue eyes are brights - almost feverishly so - as she studies the tree that Skandar's fire alights for them. Her head lifts as she glances over the bare branches, the scorched remains of what almost was.
Straia had been Dominus of Pangea.
And then she had been nothing at all.
All those dreams swallowed whole. All that ambition buried beneath the ground like a body cradled in a grave.
She knows that Skandar is thinking of the same things as she. She can catch glimpses of his memories crackling between them like the firelight. It's a lesson learned for Aela and yet it does nothing to temper her own desire to grow, for more. Her mind is almost always dreaming of empires falling and rising, of kings crashing and coronations with climbing crowns that have some connection to her. To them, she realizes as she glances at the burning stallion beside her.
Aela has always known that she is destined for great things - for things far grander than the fog and obscurity than the North would have confined her to - but what that greatness would be was yet to be seen. (But how fitting is it that Aela catches sight of it here, blazing in what had been the tree that foretold so many destinies to those who lived in the Old Lands?) What does Skandar see, she wonders? Does he see anything at all as they stare at the forlorn limbs and the decaying remains at what had once been a symbol of untapped power?
She is still thinking that blood is the highest price that Gods might demand (it doesn't occur to her to yet that there is power in other things, that if Gods really exist that would more than mere mortal blood; that the riches of life are seldom just power and titles; that they might want the love they share amongst themselves for them, that they might one to take everything they held dear to keep those below glancing skyward). Aela knows she will have to bleed and though the flashes that she sends to the constellation-marked stallion come quicky - almost without thought because she is so consumed in the act that they are about to commit - some part of her doesn't realize that he will decide so suddenly. Her blue eyes are looking at the tree before him as his glowing eyes hone in on the slender slope of her shoulder, as the two points fixate and then -
And then she is suddenly burning.
Apart from the single word that she has shared with Skandar (the only one, an unpracticed whisper barely audible above the wind), she has never uttered anything. Their language has always been spoken through their minds; an understanding that comes as a flash of images. But now Aela cries out in pain as it sears white-hot between her shoulders, as it spreads through her as she starts to glow in rage. He had... marked her? Her golden sides are heaving when her head swings towards him, as her blue eyes lock with his, storm-eyed and wind-wild.
She takes one step towards him as the blood continues to run down her leg, as it paints her pale stocking. Skandar's skin is cooling, she realizes, as the stars and constellations start to dawn on the canvas of his god-like coat. Aela slows for a moment, remembering that they needed to bleed for this to work. (But she can't quite get the fire from underneath her skin to still and it is there, blazing beneath her palomino coat.) The fiery mare takes one step closer to the star-marked stallion and then another before she stops a breath away from, hovering close enough that his fire-glow illuminates shadows of her anger burning in her eyes.
(There is blood on the roots of the tree, a path on the ground that leads to him like an offering to an altar.)
Aela thinks that she is glowing; that it is coming from her striped markings, from her pale socks. What she doesn't realize is that she is burning. She might have caught the reflection of the flames if she had looked to the red eyes of @[Skandar] but she is watching the cosmos of his skin - the stars where destinies are written - and she decides that she will write hers on his. She reaches out - fire-skin inferno that she is - and goes to mark him as he had her, to set him ablaze as he had her.
The sound of her cry does not stir anything within him; nothing that can be seen outwardly, nor even recognized inwardly. He is nearly emotionless as his burning gaze sears into her skin, unphased by the smell of singed flesh and hair, mesmerized by the shimmering blood that now trembles down the slender gold and ivory of her foreleg. The dark violet of his lip twitches as the light in his eyes returns to a brilliant orange, fixating on the open wound a moment more before aligning his eyesight with hers.
There is nothing in him that does not suspect Aela to meet his bold action with that of her own - he fully expects retaliation and does not move from her when she comes closer. The air is thick between them once again, the scent of blood and burnt skin amongst the palpitating electricity that shatters between them. She is quite literally a breath away from him, her pale muzzle hovering at his jawline, where his throat pulses with an insidious heartbeat. Can she hear it?
Skandar fails to notice how Aela’s blood has fallen on the stone (as had been the plan all along, right?), far too enraptured with her silent and brooding eyes and the way her breath makes him nearly frozen.
The young stallion’s ears fall to his neck as the heat between them rises, becoming uncomfortable but he did not have the strength (nor the will) to move from her. There is a sharp snort from the violet of his nostrils - a warning, maybe - but it does nothing to stop her from alighting fire at his throat, seemingly to slice the precious artery that thrums there.
The moment is beautiful, Skandar will think to himself when he looks back on it later.
He screams in a way that she had, his skin flickering and peeling uncontrollably as the white-hot pain sears the deep swirls of orange and purple of his neck. Blood flows easily from the wound, bright red and dripping. Skandar nearly believes he will stay in this moment forever, with her burning him until he is nothing but ash and bone - but clarity finds him eventually. He finds the strength to pull away from her (even though the motion is hesitant) so that the blood that trickles down his chest and stains the deep galaxies of his legs now feeds the bone-bare tree that watches both of them silently.
Skandar’s skin flickers as fire dancing beneath the deep starlight-colored pieces.
Now they both will burn.
skandar
@[Aela]
but does it even feel like fire at all?
She is so furious with him.
(Why? Hadn't this been the plan? Didn't they need to bleed to burn?)
And yet he had seared into her striped flesh, had cut something away from Aela (exposes a vulnerability), and blazes in anger. She thinks of all the ways that she will make him burn in return. She thinks of all the way to rend the flesh from his body and how to rip the stars from his cosmic skin.
But as Aela comes closer, as she comes to him all wild rage that she expects he will reflect at her, he surprises her (but doesn't he always?). Skandar doesn't threaten her with his blazing eyes. He doesn't snarl or threaten to turn himself into a terror (he could, she knows, he could turn himself into any terrible thing). The palomino won't notice it at first. She is a wildfire and in the heat of the moment, she doesn't care which way she burns.
It will only be later - after she has gone and he has left - when she recalls the moment, that she will realize this.
It will only be after she has pulled away and left him at the pine bleeding that her memories will reveal this: that Aela had offered to tear him apart (but she hadn't) and Skandar had offered her his throat instead.
|
