"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 love the way that your heart breaks with every injustice and deadly fate
His steps are slow and deliberate as he traverses his way back to Pangea. He breathes deeply of the scent of dust and decay. The scent of home.
He has never been one to settle, never been one to linger in any place too long. He had called he Cove home, but it had been merely a safe place to rest his head. But this, Pangea, he would gladly call home. It might be a wasteland, but it is the creation of his god. The god had made him too, so it is only fitting that he belong in the land He had created.
But still he had left. Shame is not an emotion he has ever felt before, and so he had not recogized it. Nevertheless, it is what had driven him away. He had lost the beautiful gift his god had given him. Nay, it had been stolen from him. Still, he could not be in His presence less than whole.
He had heard rumors though. Rumors that Carnage had gone back to his lair, away from this monstrosity he had created. He had come to see if they were true. And indeed, it seems they are.
His black, mangled form stands easily along one bank of the sluggish river that trickles through the center of Pangea. His eyes, the only part of him not ravaged by a long ago fire, are dull and gray, examining the landscape before him with a deadened expression. For a moment, he attempts to call on the fire that had been his since youth, but still, it will not come.
Instead, he sighs, a small piece of the heart that should not exist within him content to be home once more, even if he still is not whole.
Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
He watches him, for a long time, from atop his stone throne.
Where anyone else might, at first glance, feel pity for his slumped disfigurement, the gift-giver finds it repelling.
At first.
He finds his weakened appearance elicits something feral and cruel in his mind—an ancient boneyard, upturned with mechanic violence, thick with old hauntings.
It is the same way he feels when he sees Famine’s forsaken corpse walking around his kingdom—still walking, to his credit, like a zombie possessed. It is a primordial, base rumble; the song that tells the lizard brain that something like that brings death and ruination, only—that the thing they carry on their bones, heavy and dark and foul, is infectious.
So it must be eradicated.
And then, he began to feel curious;
He relegated survival instinct to the dark place in his mind that had become separated when he fell from the Earth and fancied himself beyond mortal.
Though he despises it, weakness calls to him—but it calls to him like the newborn deer bleating for his mother calls to a wolf.
This man’s darkness, whatever the god-king had woven into his make like some sick and beautiful master craftsman—that calls to him like a brother.
Pollock makes his way down from his cliffside with unparallelled ease, not only because he has been here for so long and he knows every wrung he must march to get down, but because he is made for these rocks. The nimbleness of his cleft hooves; the agility and speed, which propel him like some errant spark down the limestone and onto the waste floor.
He moves to the squalid looking stallion with unearthly speed, a cloud of dust upturned as he comes to an abrupt stop on the other side of the gurgling stream. It is only then that he finds he has seen this man before, his flat, black eyes examining his face, finally. “I don’t remember your name,” he grunts, and he doubts this man remembers his either.
He’d ask him why he thought he was so free to come back, wandering into his kingdom like an over friendly, once-removed family memeber.
But as far as the king is concerned, anyone is welcome to come. And go, if they can manage.
I love the way that your heart breaks with every injustice and deadly fate
He is hideous, more beast than equine. Pangea's king would not be the first (nor would he be the last) to instinctively recoil from the sight of Raelynx. His flesh is thick and charred, a mottled gray and black that reminds one too much of death (he should be dead, but He had not wanted it so). No hair (hair that should have been pure white) remains upon the gnarled flesh of his skin. He might have been a handsome beast were it not for his disfigurement. He is large and well-muscled (with the exception of the one piece missing from his shoulder). His bones are good, his frame solid. Before Him, he would have aged into a magnificent stallion of pure white, with the thick locks and well-proportioned build of his Friesian ancestry.
Alas, it is not to be. He instead is a monster, horribly deformed and bearing the mark of his creator upon the center of his brow for all the world to see.
He follows the path of the creature making its way towards him, far swifter than any normal horse could. He had not expected to go unnoticed. There is faint recognition, though the stallion who has stopped before him has changed. He is correct to surmise he does not recall his name either. Pollock had been unimportant when last they had met. Raelynx had had no need nor desire to remember anything about him. He does not bother retaining things he has no need of.
"Raelynx," he offers in his hoarse, rough voice. A voice destroyed long ago by smoke. "Who are you?"
Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
Pollock likes monsters. Though he finds this one repulsive, he can see as he gets closer, stepping into the gurgling, turbid water, that the stallion is not death warmed over but life imitating. Somehow, despite the way he seems to invite death and decay—infection into that thickened, bald skin—somehow he lives.
Pollock like perseverance.
—he likes ugliness.
He considers him, wading through the shallow water to reach the bank Raelynx stands on, with flat, dark eyes. He wonders what made him this way—what reason that craftsman had for searing him; Pollock is a cruder artist, thought he puts what he has to good use, he imagines this man’s maker is a master, indeed—God or horse. (His eyes pass over the mark on his forehead, and he wonders.)
He comes to a stop far enough away to keep that primal baying at ease.
He is large. More powerful than he looks from afar…
“Hmm,” he makes a low, gravelly, contemplative sound in his throat.
He does not blame him for the offense of not knowing his name, “Pollock.” The gift-giver has spent most of his life in the shadows—would prefer it there to this day if the crown weren’t so shiny. Figuratively.“Carnage is gone, if you have not already heard. He left a long time ago. I am the beneficiary of his throne.”
He shifts his weight and licks his dry lips, “welcome home, Raelynx.” That hard, low voice holds no measure of welcome, thought, truly, he happy to see any of the sons and daughters return to the fold. Pangea only benefits when her belly is full.
I love the way that your heart breaks with every injustice and deadly fate
Death is far too good for a creature like Raelynx. He should be dead, but death had not wanted him, had spit him back like so much offal. And Raelynx, in his simple way, disdains death. Death is for those who are weak, for those who cannot survive the pain and hatred of this world. The charcoal stallion had been birthed in pain, had made it his own. Had made it his mistress (he had long ago decided pain is female. He has only one master, and that is the god who has since fled this world).
It is not perseverance that keeps him around however. No, it is because nothing else wants him.
He doesn’t mind though, he has long been alone in this world. Oh, his family would not doubt accept him back into their fold, but he had never truly been one of them. He had lingered because it had been diverting, because he had had purpose there. But now, he has here. He has Pangea.
He might not stay forever, but he would always return.
When Pollock announces that this land’s god has left, that he had been named ruler in His stead, Raelynx takes a moment to chew over this information. His gray eyes do not leave the golden, horned beast before, instead fixing on him in bland, near-unblinking intensity.
”Pollock,” he says finally in that rumbling voice of his. A test upon his lips. He does not bow his head, gives no sign deference other than the acceptance in his rough tone. He does not feel the need to. Had he refused to acknowledge him as king, he would simply have turned and left. ”For the time. This is my home.”
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