"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
The gods must love to laugh at his expense, because he had been an idiot to imagine he could have a place to call his own again. He had resisted calling it home, and now that it rests under an ocean of water, he knows why. He hadn’t cared about the stupid place all that much, but it had been nice to have a place he wouldn’t be bothered.
Now he’s back here, where any asshole or their brother could stumble into his path and think it a good idea to strike up a conversation. Of course, if his ferocious scowl and pinned ears didn’t drive them away immediately, his harsh words certainly would. And if that didn’t work, well, his other two primary skills were fighting or fucking, so his bases are pretty damned well covered.
Leaning against a tree, Ashhal idly rubs neck against the rough bark, tangling his snarled mane even further as he itches. Not that he notices. Not that he would even give a damn if he did. Despite his unkempt locks however, there is a rough kind of handsomeness in the harsh lines of his features and hard planes of his body. His wings are held loosely against his sides, but even the pale feathers don’t succeed in bringing any sort of softness to him.
His has been a life lived too hard for any kind of gentleness to remain in him. Even in the absence of company, his eyes glitter like slate, the unforgiving edges sharp enough to cut. He prefers it that way
At least, that is what he has told himself his entire life. And after nearly two centuries, it has become the only thing he truly believes in.
02-25-2022, 02:34 AM (This post was last modified: 02-25-2022, 02:49 AM by Ethenia.)
"i don't care for your sweet scent or,
the way you want me more than i want you"
In her past life, she had not been ordinary. Though she remembers little of it, she knows she had been something else. Something that needed to leave. Here, everyone is something else—she thought this would keep her safe. Now, in her respective plainness, she is once again something else. Something weaker. The outsider. Ethenia’s dreams had always been startlingly vivid. Since coming to Beqanna, they have changed, shifted and evolved into something entirely different. No longer flashing images or fragments of memories, now lies a message within, a secret language she cannot decipher. Sweat glistens along her silver body as she wakes with a start. A figure she could not make out was just behind her—wasn’t it? Ethenia hoists herself to her feet, heart thrumming out against her ribcage as she stumbles forward a step, starry-eyed and somewhat dazed. Slowly she regains her senses, remembers she had been with Eadoin—that he agreed to accompany her (to where, they were uncertain). Breathing a sigh of relief, her blurred gaze at last meets the pale grey figure on the other side of a tree. Her heart stills. An endless succession of sleep-encumbered steps carries her deer-like body forward. The mare slowly winds around the obstacle, delicately brushes against him. “I thought I had lost you,” she sings. She pauses at once when she feels feathers. A dream within a dream? Her thoughts swirl around her, she is spinning in space. Eadoin had already convinced her he was neither angel nor demon. She tilts her head and spills the strewn forelock from her eyes; she does not recognize this tangled mane, these rough and feral features. It only serves to fuel to the fire of her confusion. “Oh,” she exhales, not quite knowing true fear or she may have startled backward a measure. Instead, she takes a slow, small step to put space between them, “What are you?” the whisper blooms from her lips in abated curiosity.
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
He hadn’t noticed the figure sleeping near the tree he’d leaned against. But then, he hadn’t been paying a whole lot of attention. Still, when she stumbles to her feet, he wishes with a barely repressed viciousness that he had been. He would have gladly picked another damned tree to scratch himself on.
He could leave, but with her eyes blurry from sleep, she hardly seems a pressing concern. Besides, it’d been a bit of a dry spell. Couldn’t hurt to keep his options open. He can always leave later if she proves too bothersome. Her words as she winds around the tree cause him to stiffen however, a silent snarl coming to his lips as his dark eyes follow her with a weighty stare.
“What the fuck?” he growls, ears pressing lower against his neck, gaze hard. Ashhal is pretty damned positive he’d never seen her before in his life, so she couldn’t possibly have lost him.
Then, as she gets a better look at him, she seems to realize her mistake. Her breathy “oh” eases some of the tension from his muscles, though it does nothing to change the brutal expression on his harsh features. But then she asks what he is and the tension is right back where it had been.
He curls his lip at her, eyes darkly dangerous. “Don’t fucking touch me unless you want to be underneath me,” he warns, his voice gravelly. It’s the only warning she would get, but if her soft words were anything to go by, it would be more than enough. “And what I am is none of your goddamned business.”
03-04-2022, 03:58 AM (This post was last modified: 03-04-2022, 04:23 AM by Ethenia.)
Ethenia
it was an honest mistake
The greater portion of Beqanna remains still unknown to her. She knows it is there, but she has very little notion of what it looks like or what it contains. An abstract concept, like time itself has become. She supposed there is a sort of magic about the place, she knows that strange things happen here unlike anywhere else in the world. In truth, her understanding of these things is at best no more than a supposition. Even her wildest imagination would not compare to what lurks in the shadows, to what the great mountain has spewed from within. And so she does not have the intuition to proceed with caution or be fearful—not in the way that she really should, if only she knew.
Still, she is not entirely a fool. Ethenia watches the snarl that curls his lips, hears the growl that rumbles from his chest. She would stand no chance against him, magic aside. She knows the grey stallion could overpower her with ease. The ethereal mare has been met with very little turbulence. This is how she has survived, after all: tucking herself away out of sight (out of mind). Watching time move and grow and change with no true scale to measure against it.
Ethenia flicks a delicate ear back, noticing the tension in the angles of his body. She wonders if he was crafted for war, a machine in comparison to her—everything that she is not. “I hadn’t meant to offend,” she offers softly, an apology of sorts. He is sharp, quick, deliberate—she is soft, slow, wayward.
She should flee, should not hazard the chance of vexing him further. The need for answers outweighs her better judgment.”I’ve never seen anything like you,” her eyes venture again to his wings, unable to abate the embers of her curiosity.”I’ve never seen wings like this,” she clarifies; cautious, but not quite fearful. She wonders if he can take flight as easily as a bird. “You are not how I imagined the angels,” she muses, inadvertently taking a step closer. A child lost in a kaleidoscope. ”Are you an angel of war?” she seeks to reason, unwilling to accept the possibility that he may be the thing the riddle of her dreams (nightmares) cautioned against. She always did choose to see the good.
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
She doesn’t flinch from him as he had expected, and he is both intrigued and annoyed by it. Her soft-spoken gentleness engendered visions of a creature both meek and mild, easily frightened by bitter, callous brutes like him. But her acceptance of his harsh words without shrinking from him belie that image.
He might have found it intriguing if it did not remind him too much of someone he was trying so damned hard to forget.
Straightening slowly for where he’d been leaning against the tree, he eyes her warily. A part of him is tempted to demand she submit so she can show him exactly why she should fear him. Another part simply wants her gone so he can continue onward in blissful misery.
She is quick to offer platitudes, but it does nothing to soften his features. Her supposition that he had been crafted for war is correct. He had spent the better part of life fighting anyone he could. He had once even been proud of his prowess in battle, though that had been eons ago. Now it is only a way of life, something to ease the monotony of existence.
He might have been content to hold his silence if she had not continued to voice her musings aloud. Foolish musings. His wings shift when she mentions them, brow furrowing as his scowl deepens. As far as he is aware, they are perfectly ordinary wings. A dime a dozen in this gods-forsaken place. Where the hell had she been burying her head in the sand at?
When she asks if he is an angel of war however, every muscle in his body stiffens. His gaze falls flat, a chill invading his expression. He takes a step closer to her, wings lifting with his rising aggression. “I am no fucking angel,” he snarls, taking another step, looming with furious menace. She couldn’t have known how much the mention of angels would affect him, but it would not stop her from reaping the results. “And if you say another fucking word, I will show you just how much I am not.”
Once, she had thought magic was to be created. The kind of magic that could be found in moments: a sunrise, a touch. The lonelier she became, the more she had to create in order to survive. Eventually, she wasn’t lonely at all anymore. Until, of course, she remembered. Remembered what it was like to be seen by more than her own reflection. Remembered what it was like to want something.
Remembering will be the death of her, she thinks. She had found peace, of a sort.
It was not enough.
Ethenia watches the shifting of feathers, repressing the child-like desire to reach out and touch them. As the stallions wings rise higher, she shrinks backward, lost in the cast of his dark shadow (an omen, perhaps). Her brow furrows with confusion and she shakes her head in dismay. Scrambling to put the pieces together, she reverses until she presses into a tree, unable to retreat further. Not entirely out of his orbit, her head lowers meekly (uncharacteristically). Ethenia notes the ice in his eyes, the chill of his angered voice.
In spite of this, she manages to draw a slow breath, to still the heart that beats like a bird against its cage.
“I’m sorry…” she wonders if this is the cost of her curiosity.
“Please, are there others like you?” What could he be, if not an angel? She trembles briefly, choosing to stifle that curiosity. “What else is out here, in this forest?” Naïve, if not brash, she is trapped in a chrysalis of her own oblivion. By now, she has learned to stop believing in fairytales. She has not yet learned to believe in monsters.
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
Where she had found magic in loneliness, Ashhal had only found bitterness. But then, he has lived so long now that any beauty there might be in this world has long since lost meaning to him. He has seen sunset after sunset, dawn after dawn, first snowfalls and budding spring branches. Always the same, a cycle repeated ad nauseum.
The only mystery left to him is that which comes after death. A death he has been denied over and over again, regardless of how many times he has been slain.
She finally shrinks from him as his aggression rises, but whatever satisfaction he finds in it is fleeting at best. It had almost been inevitable. He has seen enough of the world to know that she hasn’t the strength to withstand his unleashed ferocity. She would wither beneath it like snow under a noonday sun in summer.
Her apology does not ease his ire as it is no doubt meant to. Instead it causes him to draw his lips back from his teeth in a furious threat. Still, he might have let it go if she hadn’t continued. Hadn’t foolishly pressed with even more questions despite her trembling. Taking an ominous step forward, he presses closer, invading her space without a second thought.
He can feel the warmth of her body, the tempting shiver of her alarm. As his teeth hover over the unblemished skin of her neck, he offers her two choices. Yield, or flee. “There are none like me,” he snarls, hot breath fanning her, eyes dark with a dangerous promise. “And you’d better fucking run, or you’ll find out why.”
She would get no other warnings from him. If she didn’t heed it, he would show her just how monstrous he could be. Of course, she might discover she likes such savage desires. Though he doubts it, he would enjoy being proven wrong immensely.
04-05-2022, 12:04 AM (This post was last modified: 04-05-2022, 12:04 AM by Ethenia.)
Ethenia
it was an honest mistake
As he moves closer, she becomes suddenly aware of everything she had sleepily dismissed: every inch of her own skin electric, every heartbeat and jagged breath drawn through tensed lips. She imagines this is what it feels like to wake after a long, long dream, the way winter creatures feel once the spring peeks into the forest. The way a deep slumber wraps around, like a warm cloud, before a sudden fall snaps you back into the world of the living.
The teeth on her neck may as well have been razors tracing down the length of her spine. Ethenia’s silver body reacts, through no intention of her own. The plume of his hot breath reaches her skin and she quivers, eyes darting to the side as she comes to the realization that there is simply nowhere for her to go. He is larger than she, and for a moment, he is all there is, all around her. She cannot see past the feathered wings she had longed to reach out and touch—she freezes, not daring to now. Part of her wonders if she could disappear into him, if she makes herself small enough.
Ethenia knows he will spare her no answers, of this is she is now certain. And yet, the curious look in his eyes is something alien to her: a warning and invitation all at once. After what feels like several moments too long, she allows herself to breathe and a soft sound escapes her. Her eyes search to meet his, to read him, desperate to understand. She knows that look is meant to read as a bright read caution sign, but to her it feels something like temptation—the way a child might feel the first time they see a tiger, and yet still hope to touch it. (She wonders what, or who, turned him into something of a tiger to begin with.)
"I see that, now,” she whispers. Overflowing with both wonder and apprehension, the delicate mare finds it somewhere inside of herself to tilt her head, reach out and brush her lips against what part of him she can reach. A fleeting moment of consideration passes through her peacefully as sorrow gently furrows her brow. She imagines that she can feel whatever is trapped inside of him, to take it into her own chest and fuel her own too-tempered flames. The smaller part of her knows that it is no use; she cannot exchange her softness with his strength. He is a ticking time bomb, and she exists here only on borrowed time—too much already.
The delicate mare sucks in a quick breath and slips to the side, leaping as far as her slender limbs will allow. She knows if she stays, he will keep his promise. It is instinct perhaps, a simmering will to survive harbored deep in her bones that contrasts the curiosity in her heart. The primal need to survive wins, in the end, and her silver body disappears at last into the forest.
