"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
There’s a craggy, shale-slick cliff that exists atop Pangea’s highest point above the ocean. During cold spring showers, pebble after pebble tumbles down the hundreds foot drop into the churning water. The usually dull gray stone is nearly black with wet, its shiny slick glimmering with the same kind of danger a knife does. Here above the depthless sea and below the unforgiving sky, Margot can drown out the madness within. Here the wind cuts at her porcelain, each gust more threatening than the last. The fragile woman peers over the edge, releases a piercing Harpy’s cry—then leaves unceremoniously.
The plain’s of Pangea host only a rare manner of life (that rare life lately being an occasional cricket or a hissing rattlesnake). Those looking for some infantile punishment, the wayward, the bewitched and bemused, the cretins and soulless titans—Margot has seen this land bear every type of odd one can dream of. But even the demigods of dark gods find silence within their dynasties and Margot—Margot knew only to prepare for if that day may come.
And come it did, the silence. Stillness blanketed the people’s once riotous land and what followed . . . Margot would not call it peace but it was something akin to it—something that has burrowed beneath her skin and stung her everyday since. You see, to understand the porcelain, clay-spattered woman trekking back to the shadowed canyons she prefers; one must understand the nature of a land like Pangea. How a land can ask so much of an individual that it entirely consumes them. How a land can spit it’s consumption back into the world entirely changed.
Margot has many strange stories to tell, ones of love lost and gained, of betrayal, of lust and murder; but now she only wishes to tell one, to control every narrative her tendrils of sick magic might discover. There’s a clarity to the cold, cruel rain that plinks off of her body. A rare smile curls her lips, a gleam lights the pale colors of her eyes, and a prick perks up her typically turned ears.
The sun dares to peek out between thick, gray clouds as Margot gently lays in a creek bed. She rolls onto her back, allowing the clear water to turn brown as it tugs at all of her mane’s dirty tangles. When she rolls back over, a grand, winning smile is plastered across her face.
02-03-2024, 04:05 PM (This post was last modified: 02-03-2024, 11:41 PM by Severe.)
S E V E R E
She doesn’t put too much thought into the lands here.
She knows they have their purpose; their place in history, the way they can behave like a current that pushes everything forward. So much of what has happened in Beqanna centers around some piece of dirt — fighting over its crown, fighting with each other, fading into irrelevance, sinking, rising. For many their identities are tied to where they are born or where they have fought for, but none of them belong to her, and she has never had much interest in crowns to begin with.
Most of them bleed the same whether they wear a crown or not.
Pangea, though, is one of the few with a history that is at least mildly interesting to those such as herself that have never found themselves in the political sphere. Created with sickened magic, lost to the sea and risen again only to be the epicenter of a plague — all events that had happened before her time, but she heard the stories all the same. She had to admit, it piqued her curiosity, when there was so little happening elsewhere that could.
She has no one to blame but herself when she arrives to find that it is, indeed, as uninteresting as all the other places here. Red dirt and steep canyons, with the only greenery seeming to be what grows at the edge of the river. Even the air feels dry, and the quietness that had befallen the rest of the country does little to add life to an already desolate place.
They really will fall in love with anything, won’t they?
At some point during her travels the thoughts of another begin to slowly interrupt her own, and she follows this until she arrives at a stream. There, she finds a woman — beautiful, especially against such a barren backdrop — and she can feel that wretched heart of hers quicken its beat at the possibilities. She has been so bored lately, she wasn’t expecting to stumble upon entertainment so quickly. But before her mind can decide where she wants the interaction to go she notices something so very strange about the woman before her, and the sound the rocks make as they scrape against her skin, and the way the water seems to roll across her skin like beads.
“Glass. How peculiar,” is all she says, tilting her head with a small, serpentine smile.
INNOCENCE DIED SCREAMING, HONEY, ASK ME, I SHOULD KNOW
02-12-2024, 09:37 PM (This post was last modified: 02-12-2024, 09:37 PM by margot.)
margot
Reticence is always a quality Margot strives for, though she may not always succeed in such mystery. It is not what she feels now—neither shrewd nor secretive—as the sun continues to reveal more and more of itself. Like the blistering star above, parts of Margot she has not addressed in years begin to rear their heads (and bare their teeth and tear into her flesh).
She doesn’t feel reticent as her pale eyes sweep over the demon interrupting her bath.
There is no fear or shadow, no secret behind her bright smile.
“You find me peculiar?” she questions, blinking thrice before tilting her head in thought. “No more peculiar than every other withering creature that calls this place home? I don’t think I could bear to be considered like all the rest.” There’s no real plea in her last statement, no desperation despite the words themselves sounding quite insecure. Margot’s truth is simply different from the world, or so she believes.
Through it all, Margot remains curled within the steady stream of the water, watching. Her smile never fades even as all kinds of thoughts and possibilities cross her mind, even as she drifts pale pink tendrils of magic only she can see toward Severe.
“I would call you peculiar, but you aren’t to me.” The little mare drops her grin just a touch before dipping her head in a more formal greeting, “My name is Margot.”
She knows this place is full of all kinds of oddities. She knows that to some, she is one of them.
The glistening scales and glowing eyes, the twisted horns and the spade-shaped tail all came together to create an image that can only be described as unsettling. She does not entirely look the part of a monster; no sharp teeth or blood-stained lips, nothing terribly grotesque about her. But there is the promise of one there, of something sinister lying in wait; a wrongness that the others always seemed to be able to sense.
To her, it is the pretty things that are odd, and Margot is a pretty thing.
“I do,” she continues, her footsteps taking her to stand right at the water’s edge. “I’ve never seen anyone made of glass.” It feels like a trap, almost. Glass is so fragile — surely she cannot break that easily? She is too brazen for one that could shatter should Severe decide to give her a harsh shove against the rocks, she must be hiding some type of defense mechanism. She enjoys a challenge, though, and puzzling out how this fragile creature survives seems as good a way as any to pass her time.
She does not notice the magic yet, her silver eyes still staring at the porcelain mare. “Severe,” she offers her own name in return, and though the word suggests something harsh it rolls in a lilting way off her own tongue. “How long have you lived in Pangea?” she asks, falling easily into the role of someone that enjoys small-talk, her pointed tail flicking idly like a cat’s.
INNOCENCE DIED SCREAMING, HONEY, ASK ME, I SHOULD KNOW
Margot once found it annoying that every stranger’s greeting accompanied porcelain-fueled curiosity. She didn’t understand then how intrinsic people’s most unique qualities become. How over months and years that which makes you special is so ingrained in you, as simple as breathing.
Now, she meets that fascination with a smile, pale gaze hinting at the secrets of her fragility.
“You’re not missing much,” Margot replies coyly, then scrapes her knee against the ground in such a way that it creates a grating noise. “See?” she asks as she rises to stand, “So inconspicuous.”
A few slight scratches begin to ooze blood down the ivory of Margot’s leg. She sighs in an almost chiding way, then rolls her eyes.
“We all bleed the same, I suppose.”
Margot slowly drifts her gaze over Severe before answering the woman’s question.
“Years now, I think. It’s hard to keep track amongst all the . . . monotony.” She pauses, appraising the demon’s slick face. “I’m a terrible ruler for not knowing how long you’ve been here, Severe. Care to enlighten me?”
She does not hide the way her gaze immediately slides to the bright blood that streaks down the glistening white glass. Severe is not blood-crazed; she is not that kind of monster. Though she does not shy from violence, she is not a shark, either. The smell of blood does not send her into a frenzy, nor does it make her pulse elevate. She can watch Margot bleed and not long to spill more, though the sight of it does satisfy at least one of her curiosities, having been wondering what exactly lay beneath that fragile exterior. How perfect that she demonstrated it for her with so little prodding.
“I suppose we do,” she says, though she isn’t entirely sure she agrees. Their blood may all be the same, but the way they bleed is different — Severe has seen the way some beg for it to stop, and how others refuse to utter a sound as if dying in that way is somehow more noble than pleading for mercy. For her it did not matter how they handled being bled — once she started she did not stop until they were dead.
When Margot answers her question she nods as if she understands, even though she doesn’t. She has never stayed in one place for long. Boredom was not a thing that sat well with her, and she is certain she would make both a poor subject and a poor leader. “Well, in my case you didn’t miss anything. I’ve only just arrived. And how fortuitous that Pangea’s leader is the first soul I come across.”
INNOCENCE DIED SCREAMING, HONEY, ASK ME, I SHOULD KNOW
Margot is not often keen to prove true the words that leave her tongue—seldom does she mean what she says. There is no truth in spoken word, she has found herself believing over the years. There is only truth in action, observation, and nature.
Lies are so easily spoken, fragile as they may be. Margot has never minded when they shatter, never bothered to inspect all the little pieces in an attempt to stabilize her words.
When so little is of worth to her, she has so little to lose.
Margot huffs out a performative, self-deprecating laugh. She bats her pale lashes at the demon and dares a smile that bares just a bit of her true nature. Somewhere between deranged and brutal, the look passes quickly save for a lingering madness in her eyes. She lazily turns her head to watch a faint breeze send dust and burnt weeds across the clay earth. There is perhaps an awkward pause between Severe's last word and Margot's response. She is lost somewhere, so clearly gone she might simply vanish from existence.
But eventually she turns, she smiles, she recalls where her trailing thoughts started.
"I will double down on being a terrible leader. You are not so fortuitous as to meet me. I am merely a guardian."
Margot is dazed, still weaving through the fog of all the other's emotions she must remember. Her control of her magic slips, allowing knife-like tendrils of pink to grasp desperately at Severe. Unaware, she doesn't pull the clawing magic away, despite its persistence potentially leading to discovery.
