"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
03-07-2022, 03:02 PM (This post was last modified: 04-23-2022, 11:10 PM by Stargaze.)
It is cold, but she is a thing made for winter. Perhaps not as frigid as some, but she is certainly designed more for the cold than she is for the heat. Born with skin that glistened with a coating of frost, and a heart that some might argue is carved from ice, it is no wonder she much prefers the snowdrifts to the golden warmth of summer.
She did not feel the bite of the cold the way some might; not when the winds cut through the trees like a knife as she wandered the wooded path, and not when snow began to gather over the ridges of her back and hips.
Today, she bore colors in tribute to the season. Her coat is a stark white, glittering faintly when the sunlight catches it due to the frost that she never shakes. Scattered across her in a shimmering silver are small markings reminiscent of snowflakes, accompanied by a delicate lacing of swirling lines. Her eyes remain the same vibrant blue they usually are, the contrast against all of her white nearly mirroring the bright blue of the sky against the snow-covered world below it.
Those overbright eyes scan the riverbank from the skeletal trees she winds herself through, her footsteps hushed by the blanket of snow. She watched as the granite-gray of the water carves its way through the snow, and while to some the entire scenery might have appeared dreary and dull—the dark brown of the naked trees, the white snow, and the gray of the water and the stones that line the bank—to her there is something oddly peaceful about it.
She enjoys the quiet that comes in being somewhere that nowhere else wants to be.
Until a movement flickers at the corner of her vision, and she realizes she is not alone.
Angling her head, she fixes her sharp blue gaze on a pale stallion, and for a moment she almost thinks of caving to the ember of irritation that lit inside of her chest at having her serenity interrupted. But then she looks at him again, closer this time; at the hard but handsome angles of his face, at the feathered wings that erupt from his back, and she decides that perhaps company wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
She wasn’t particularly one for small talk, but she was always willing to see where something might lead.
Moving toward him with sure but casual steps, she emerges from the shifting shadows of the treeline and into the sun, the frost her skin shimmering just faintly in the light. She says nothing to him as she slips by close enough that he would be forced to take notice of her, and she lowers her head to drink the cold water that flows at their feet in silence.
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
Winter is the same as any other season as far as Ashhal is concerned. The biting cold is simply something to endure, just as mud is in the spring and heat is in the summer. With his feathers ruffled against the chill, his large, pale wings trap heat against his body. Even here by the river, where the wind whistles freely along its craigy path, he remains comfortable enough.
He hadn’t come here for peace though. If there is peace to be found, he has long since stopped recognizing it. Instead he seeks the quiet. Places where others won’t bring his ever-looming wrath to the surface. Unfortunately for him, it never seems to work out well. Someone always finds him, a plague of unwanted company. Sometimes he wonders what would happen to him if he ever did find a place where he could truly be alone. Wonders if the tension in his chest might finally ease.
Then he wonders if perhaps he needs the release others provide. If it might just build and build and build until he was forced to find an outlet.
Maybe he would never know.
Certainly not today. Much to his irritation, a pale, glittering form wends its way towards him. A female. His dark eyes follow her as a scowl etches itself into familiar grooves on his face. She had blended so well with the snow that he hadn’t noticed her until she approached. If he had, he might have left before she noticed him.
He could still leave, of course, but when she slips past him to sip from the river without a single word, he finds himself reluctantly intrigued. Which is really fucking stupid, but there it is. He had never had someone approach with such deliberation only to ignore him so completely. Hell if he was going to break this silence first though. He should just leave, damnit. Yet he stays, staring at her with a fiercely quizzical glare.
04-23-2022, 10:41 PM (This post was last modified: 04-23-2022, 11:11 PM by Stargaze.)
She can feel his eyes on her, and she cannot ignore the swell of satisfaction that rises in her chest. There is always something especially delightful in executing a plan perfectly, especially when you can't quite guarantee how the other player is going to respond. He could have ignored her in turn, or left, or any number of things that would have forced her to express her interest first.
Instead she had managed to keep him anchored and staring, exactly where she wanted him.
When she tips her head just enough she catches his fierce stare out of the corner of her eye, and she is careful to remove the satisfied expression from her face as she turns to look at him. With a pointed tilt of her head she locks her sharp blue eyes with his, as if she had not just purposely brushed past him and invaded his space and forced his attention onto her. “Well?” she asks expectantly, feigning an almost impatient sigh, as if waiting for him to explain what exactly he wanted from her.
With a graceful crossing of slender legs she turns her body fully towards him, and this time she does nothing to hide the way her eyes trace over him. He’s tall, his muscles hard and his face even harder, with a scowl that shadows his already dark eyes. She wonders if he is as unkind as he appears to be, but not being a very kind creature herself, she is unperturbed.
It isn't always as fun when they're nice, anyway.
“Good thing you’re handsome, otherwise I might be irritated by your staring problem,” and the coy simper that unfurls across her mouth is unmistakable—wondering if he would rise to the bait she laid, if he would snap and point out that she is the one staring at him, after entirely interrupting his quiet, no less.
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
The demanding question that shatters the silence between them causes his hackles to rise, wings stiffening and lifting slightly as his ears flick back in irritation. Despite his almost automatic response, he doesn’t rise to the bait, instead allowing his lips to peel back from his teeth in a silent, contemptuous sneer. It would be all the reply she would wring from him.
Perhaps she would leave, but he finds a part of him doesn’t want her too. If nothing else, she could relieve his boredom. Already he finds himself reluctantly excited despite her irritating greeting. Or maybe because of her greeting. She had issued a challenge, and a part of him - a very dangerous part - wants to respond. He thinks she might actually want his aggression, and a growing part of him wants to force her submission.
She continues without his prompting, though her words aren’t what he had expected. He knows he is not ugly, but he has never taken any care with his appearance either. His pale locks are snarled and his thick winter coat is patched with old scars and fresher scabs. But he is active enough that his lanky frame is cut with muscle despite the angular quality of it. He knows there are enough out there that find that appealing in and of itself.
A low sound rumbles up his chest that could be interpreted as either annoyance or amusement in response to her sharply flirtatious observation. Although, given the harsh, flat lines of his face, amusement is questionable. Either way, the rebuke does nothing to ease the intensity of his stare.
“If you don’t like me looking at you,” he replies bluntly, his baritone voice dry as crumbling bone, “there’s an easy fucking solution to that.”
The rumble that sounds from his chest is like a flint against stone, and though she feels the spark of want that it tries to ignite, she carefully smothers it.
Letting her desires—things that she still doesn’t really understand, since she quells them as quickly as they rise—fog her thoughts wouldn’t do her any good. She did not want him to see anything other than what she allowed him to see; the blatant flirting was part of the act, an important piece to the game-play, but she wasn’t interested in letting someone actually capture her attention. She had been born from love, but she considered her parents to be the exception, not the rule, and so she found her fulfillment in other ways.
So instead she simply keeps her head tilted, eyes locked on his with that same unwavering devious glint.
“I never said I didn’t like you looking at me,” she says with a honeyed laugh, turning now to minimize the distance between them with careful steps. There is space left between them, a buffer to let him know she does not intend to ignore the imaginary barrier his hardened glare has created.
For now, at least.
“My name is Stargaze,” she tells him, and as she does so the previous white of her coat transforms, darkening to the velvet blue-black of a night sky, her mane and tail streaked with thin strands of moonlight silver. Where once she had been covered in snowflakes there are now stars, but the glowing constellation of dapples remains the largest and most prominent looking of them all. Her eyes, still a striking shade of blue, cast a glimmer of amusement when she asks, “Do you have a name to go with that irritated look you’re giving me?”
I tried to sell my soul last night Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite
Where she perpetually represses her desires, depriving them of life, Ashhal does not bother. His entire existence is predicated on his barely leashed whims. The rage and discontent that bubbles so perilously close to the surface often boils over. Not once has Ashhal tried to stem the tide. Delay it, perhaps, but inevitably the reckoning comes. And when it does, he has as little concern for himself as he does those around him who end up the recipients of his wrath.
And Stargaze, dangerous fucking instigator that she is, seems to have no compunction about plucking at the frayed threads of his control. Ashhal can’t quite decide if he likes that about her, or if he despises it. It’s a damned thin line between the two.
When the color of her skin ripples, Ashhal’s ears press flat as he stiffens almost instinctively. After nothing more happens than the changing of her coat from glittering snowflakes to a glinting night sky, he relaxes almost imperceptibly, though he continues eyeing her askance. If he were a more charming man, he might try to comment on how well her new look fits her name, but he is not. Instead he thinks it a little trite, and doesn’t hesitate to sneer his opinion, though his bite is half-hearted at best. “Aren’t you just fucking clever?”
He hesitates a moment before giving his own name in return. “Ashhal.” He grunts the two syllables grudgingly before adding bluntly, “What the hell do you want anyway?”
She sees the way his ears flatten and his muscles stiffen, every line of his posture telling her that he did not like something in the way that her skin changed color. Interesting, but she does not comment on it—though it is something that she takes note of and tucks away, but for what, exactly, she isn’t sure. It was something she had learned from her mother, to pay attention to the way others reacted to things, no matter how small. She had told her others did not often show their weaknesses or aversions in clear signals. They were slight things, usually well hidden if you were not paying attention. The best kind of secrets to collect, Starsin had said, are the ones they never realize they are telling you.
“I like to think so, yes,” she says with a laugh at his sneering remark, letting it roll easily off her back. He was clearly in a bad mood, but it didn’t bother her. Her own moods were prone to swift changes, and she never paused to rein them in, and so she was rarely unsettled when others did the same.
“Are you always this pleasant or am I just lucky?” She doesn’t give him the chance to immediately answer, and instead goes on to say, “I don’t want anything, I was just out for a walk and I saw you. Sometimes I like to kill time by making….friends,” she says, with a lilting emphasis on the last word that implied Stargaze did not, in fact, go around trying to make friends, or perhaps that her definition of friends was not the standard. He didn’t strike her as the type to make friends to begin with, which means they should get along (or not) splendidly. “And I bet you’re great friend material. I can tell by your charming personality.” The cheshire cat smile never leaves her face, though the glint in her eyes is not malicious. She wasn't usually cruel in her games, and so far this man had given her no reason to show her claws.
