"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
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT & SATISFACTION BROUGHT HIM BACK
[ Late autumn/early winter because Sii is a slacker ]
His nightmares have ceased, at least on the nights that he does not have to sleep alone. Ellyse's presence, even while she dreams, relaxes him ─ and the nights that he is alone have become few and far between. Today, he has awoken feeling more rested than any other morning in months and his immediate thought is to find Scyla so that she can see that he is slowly returning to his old self. To the brother that she knows.
He had seen her last on the shoreline, where she and Smoak frequently ran off to when they thought he was not paying attention. The black beast smiles at the thought, pleased that his sister has become so close to his and Ellyse's son. The boy needs mentors, needs to learn from as many different minds as he can in this point in his life. Scyla's methods may be... unorthodox, but she is a product of Desole just as he is and he knows how her mind ticks. The raven shifter has the utmost trust in his sister and it only stands to reason that Smoak will grow, or has grown, to have that trust in her, too.
The steel and ice mare is hidden behind a rocky outcropping but Dahmer finds her with a smile as his hooves sink comfortably into the sandy shoreline. "Scyla!" he calls to her warmly, brilliant blue eyes focusing on the mare's frame as he draws closer. It takes him a moment, but when he sees it ─
Blood. Tattered skin. The dejected sway of her back.
The Commander's chest tightens in fury as he comes to a quick stop in front of her. "Who did this?" he nearly demands of the mare, his ears flat against the top of his mane and his dark pupils narrowing as he gazes at her. "Who did this?" he repeats, his blunt teeth clenching together in his growing rage.
I'm an invisible monster,
and I'm incapable of loving anybody.
You don't know which is worse.
The past nearly month, Scyla had been hiding from nearly everyone. She was embarassed that the whole event had taken place, that strangers found her in a half delusional state. That she was now pregnant. Although she did not show it yet, the surge of hormones through her body made her suspicious that life was being created from a heinous act she could barely deal with. She had lost weight, eating enough to get by, and her daily wading into the salt water was slowly helping to heal the wounds she had sustained. At least the physical ones.
The rocky out cropping was a place so few ventured she felt like she'd be safe there. Invisible to the world. Whispers when she did venture into the more lush parts of Tephra revealed that Offspring had stepped down, had perhaps found love and forsaked the love of country for hormones and lust. Weak. (Although perhaps that was more Desole's voice echoing out than Scyla's). Ellyse had taken his place, the lover of the brother that had desecrated sister. She wondered if the new Queen knew of her lovers indiscretion. It didn't matter. Who would believe an invisible monster? No one.
She stood shivering in the cold, wings held tightly to her sides despite the sting of sea salt when pressed. The voice on the wind made her wonder if she was hallucinating, destined to relive the horrible night over and over again until it made her nauseous and terrified. Those dark chestnut eyes scan and find that if her mind was hallucinating then it was doing a very good job of convincing her. She started backing up, her ears held back, the whites of her eyes matching the white of most of her coat. "Stay away from me!" Terrified, her voice was high pitched, and no where close to the strong warrior that she had been before.
When a hoof slipped off the side of a cliff, she caught herself and her wings raise up to make herself bigger and revealing the full extent of her wounds. Flight feathers were missing, scrapes and bite marks along her whithers, her ribs, her barrel. Barely scabbed over. "Please...please stay away. How could you? I thought you loved me...please." Terrified, and too exhausted to put up much of a fight she teetered on the edge of the cliff. It was very easy to see who she was terrified of, and it was the blue-eyed creature she loved the most.
(I'm not sure if I have the timeline right...buuuuut here we are!)
@[Dahmer] @[Ellyse]
Don't say I'm out of touch with this rampant chaos; your reality. I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge.
Her wing had mended, at last.
No longer was she grounded – forced to traverse the island with little else but the long legs that carried her. The small bone within her wing had healed, and though it still causes the subtlest of aches, she can flex once more with ease, and so she is above the drifting haze as a deep and rumbling storm presses close to her, enveloping the island. The remaining sunlight presses deeply into her skin, and she is warmed by it, soothed by the way it weaves through each carefully preened feather. The tide below is low and mellow, lapping lazily along the shoreline, drawing away particles of loose sand and rhyolite with it, while a frigid gust of wind carries through.
She can feel it surge beneath her, and the sensation is enough to make her feel whole, if only for a moment. It had been so long since she had taken to the sky. Since her life had been turned upside-down; since the day she and Dahmer had been swept into a hell of emotional, physical and mental torment. Since the day Ledger had lost his mind – since the day her heart had betrayed him for another; the day her heart revealed itself to her in a terrible, awful and deceitful way.
When her hazel eye does finally cast itself along the distant, jagged edge of the precipice lining the volcanic island, it is settled upon Dahmer – and a frightened, trembling Scyla. She had made herself sparse with her, and knew little of her but the stories Dahmer would tell her of his youth, of a youth he and Scyla had both experienced (endured, seemed a more appropriate word). Smoak had learned much from her – perhaps more than she, herself, preferred him to know, but such is the way of a mother to want to guard her children from her own demons as well as the wayward world. He loved her, as did Dahmer, and that was enough for Ellyse.
Quietly, she glides along the drifting wind, tucking her feathered appendages closer to her as her legs touch the soft and fertile soil. Moving closer, her cheek is tilted, listening closely – if it were a simple spat, she had no desire, nor any place interceding, but there is something within the frightened posture of Scyla that does not allow her to pull away, nor to leave. Wings outstretched, tattered and plucked apart, with remnants of still seeping, barely mending wounds covering the length of her body.
She remembered feeling so torn apart herself, not too long ago, but the quivering dread and panic filling the otherwise broken and dejected rust-laced eyes of her lover’s sister is another thing entirely. She does not come closer to Scyla (worried she might slip; she might fall if urged any closer to the edge), though she does come alongside Dahmer. Her gaze hardened; uncertain but concerned beyond that of a Queen, that of the Head of War.
Stay away from me. How could you?
She is broken, bent – falling apart into pieces. What had Dahmer done?
The Dahmer she knew – he could never be capable of the way her body is ravaged. Torn apart.
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT & SATISFACTION BROUGHT HIM BACK
Scyla turns her dark eyes on him and Dahmer is greeted with fear. It pushes him back a step, punching him in the chest and forcing a low exhale from his ajar maw. "Scy?" the black beast asks quietly, confused and hurt and now terrified as one of her hooves slips from the cusp of the rocky outcropping. Every muscle yearns to go to the steel and ice mare, to inspect the damage that has been done, to coax her away from the edge of the cliff. Her wings look too tattered to bear her weight in flight, and the Commander is not willing to take that chance ─ not when he seems to be the source of her terror.
His legs quiver as he suppresses his forward momentum, bright blue eyes wide with his concern and anger. When Scyla's wings open, supporting her frame on the edge of the cliff, but barely, his gaze is drawn to the additional wounds on her sides and in her feathered appendages. His stomach turns, hot and acidic in his rage and confusion. In his fear that his sister could think that he had done this to her. "Scy, I don't... I don't understand..." he whispers, hoarse and full of scared agitation. What could have happened? Who could have convinced her that these wounds of hers were a product of her brother? The black stallion is distraught at the thought of it, so much so that he has not noticed Ellyse's presence until her questioning voice breaks through his panic.
He looks to the champagne mare, his scared blue eyes colliding with her bright hazel one. "I don't know... I don't know!" he pleads in his confusion, his gaze turning back to Scyla as she speaks out to him again.
I thought you loved me.
He expels another incredulous breath, blue eyes rimmed with red now as they threaten to spill tears. He refuses to move closer to her, doesn't want to encroach on her space when he knows that any child of Desole would rather jump to their own death than risk capture. So instead, he drops to his knees, letting them collide painfully with the rocky landscape. "I do love you, Scyla, I do," his voice catches and he looks back to Ellyse fleetingly, hoping that at least one of them would believe him ─ "I would never hurt you. You know that," he begs of his sister, "It's you and me, Scy. Against Desole. Against Dog-Face. Against the world. Always."
I'm an invisible monster,
and I'm incapable of loving anybody.
You don't know which is worse.
She can feel the wind in her feathers, and knew that the wings would not support her. She had tried it days earlier. There would nothing that could save her from the bashing of the waves or the sharp rocks beneath her. She takes a step forward if only to save herself. Despite the occasional dare-devil, risk-taking nature of Scyla--she was a survivor. She would survive this too at some point, but today was up in the air. Death wasn't looking that bad today. She knew what it would be, the peace, the silence, the end to aches and pains in her joints. To the sting of the salt water on her wounds. But she couldn't. Hadn't they promised each other that they would never leave each other>She put her wings down, her eyes still wide with the fear, but defeat coming through like a kicked dog or a tortured animal. Her wings fall flat against her sides, she doesn't bother to fold them against her. What would be the point?
Scyla watches as Ellyse glides down. Ellyse had lost an eye at some point. The way she adoringly looked at Dahmer told her that she didn't know. Scyla felt her stomach turn, nausea sweeping over her in waves. She watches as her brother feigns innocence. As he pleads with her, and falls to his knees. A good play by a better actor. "No! NO!" A spark, a flicker of the warrior within it. Her eyes narrow at Ellyse and then fall back on her rapist. "Did she not please you enough this season? Did she deny you?" Accusing, and vicious, hatred on her tongue as the words spilled out. "I didn't think you were at the party...and then...and then..." She fractures, her voice shakes and she falls silent.
After what felt like an eternity she squeals in frustration, in pain, and in fear. She half rears and tries again to make herself bigger, to keep them at bay. "I'm carrying your child, Dahmer! How could you after everything? After Dog-Face? After Mother?" Scyla thought she would feel better after confronting him, but there was still fear. Fear that she did not know her brother the way she thought she did. That he would lash out now that she spoke the truth in front of his beloved Ellyse. "Is that what your love is?" Defeat, her voice barely whispering it. Scyla was exhausted, and defeated without any further defenses left.
Don't say I'm out of touch with this rampant chaos; your reality. I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge.
Her faith in him does not waver.
While accusations fly, filling the already uncomfortable, densely humid air with a tension that cannot be shaken, she is quiet. Her gold-laced eye glances between brother and sister, one torn apart by the flesh while the other is torn apart by the heart, each becoming broken, fragmented pieces of what once was with every moment that passes. An implication is made, and forged meticulously into a charge that she can hardly wrap her mind around. The imagery of Dahmer, pressing to the skin of his sister, marring her and carving into her while taking her for his own – it cannot quite formulate within her mind; she cannot imagine it. Her gaze is averted, if only for a moment. Pushing the thought far from her mind.
Too well, she can remember the way he had caressed her beneath the starlit sky – tender affection laced with each kiss. How could such intimacy ever be given from one capable of such impiety? She cannot believe it. She will not believe it. Her mind is rampant, moving tirelessly, grasping for some sort of explanation, for some sort of truth beneath the darkness pushing Dahmer to his knees, turquoise eyes pleading while unshed tears teeter along the precipice of his eyelids. Beneath the darkness stirring terror and trembling trepidation in the defensive posture of his sister, voice shaking and festering with a heartbroken rage she, herself, had known herself a time or two.
Her ears flatten across the tousled ringlets of her ivory tresses at the insinuation of dissatisfaction. Assault was never about pleasure, but about power, and though there is a gentle ache in her heart for the blood spilled and for the purity taken from Scyla, she cannot suppress the frustration rising within her chest at the sharp, scathing inquiries. To insinuate that somehow, beneath the blood, the perplexity, the heartache, she - Ellyse! – was to blame, for somehow not sating his need.
Her nostrils flare and a snort emerges, but that is all.
Barely, she is able to bite her tongue.
But then –
Bacchanalia, she realizes, her heart heavy and dropping into the pit of her stomach. The autumnal celebration in Sylva. The very night that she and Dahmer had joined under the pale light of the moon, lost to the hours spent in the afterglow of intimacy and the raw ferocity of softly whispered confessions. She hadn’t gone to the celebration ( she was hardly the type to; she preferred action to word and socializing had never been her forte), and neither had Dahmer. The memory of his lips along her withers and his weight pressed upon her is still vivid in her mind; he was with no one else but her.
”Scyla, that isn’t possible,” she says at last, a deep frown settled across her pale lips. ”Dahmer did not go to the celebration. He was .. with me,” she utters more quietly, discomfort evident within her fleeting gaze. She is not embarrassed of what transpired; she does not and would not shy from how her heart felt for the black beast – but she is fiercely private, and to have to confess it meant vulnerability. She loathed the feeling. ”all of the night. Neither of us went to Sylva.”
And then, a confession of conception! And the ache inside of her chest is suddenly larger.
Scyla was pregnant. But it couldn’t be Dahmer’s.
”Offspring said that when he found Tantalize, she had been under the impression that he had already been there – that when he found her, she thought that he had already left her.” Her mouth is dry, as her roving hazel eye is met with turquoise, and then a deep, soulful brown. ”Her brother, Gryffen, veiled himself as Offspring to hurt her. To break her.”
There is a festering rage beginning to grow and fill the hearth of her chest, making her feel full and heavy with loathing and anger. The timing, the placement, the circumstance. It all made sense. ”It had to be him.”
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT & SATISFACTION BROUGHT HIM BACK
Each spat word is another blow to his chest, each worst than the last, but even from his knees he will not let her spew her venom at Ellyse. "Do not," he demands through tightened throat, "bring her into this, Scyla." The tone is clipped and yet there is still a quiver in the depths of it, perhaps only perceptible enough to the two that he currently shares company with. He'd seen Scyla this terrified only once before, at the hands of Dog-face, and it threatens to tear him in two, but that does not excuse her attitude when she turns her barbs on the champagne mare.
He hears the snort beside him and knows that Ellyse's own restraint is due only to his relationship with the steel and ice mare. Had the circumstances been different, the one-eyed champagne would have attacked first and asked questions later ─ Dahmer gazes back at her fleetingly with red-rimmed eyes and only wishes he knew how to convey his appreciation for her. Scyla's terrified and angry voice draws him back to her, renewing his confusion. "Party?" the black beast questions incredulously, "Why would I go to a party? I command the Guard, Scyla. Duty over fun. Mother taught us that." His confusion and fear cannot be masked, even in the terse words that fall from his lips.
His two-toned sister half rears, her tattered wings splayed, and the black beast rocks himself back to his hooves, returning to Ellyse's side and giving Scyla just a bit more room. His champagne lover comes to his defense and he presses his dark hip to her gently, so thankful that she is here to offer witness to his... whereabouts the night of Sylva's party.
Dahmer's heart breaks at the confession of her pregnancy. His first niece or nephew, her first child. A product of rape. Of heartache. The black beast's tears spill over and he shakes his head in frantic denial as Ellyse takes the lead, offering facts beyond what he can offer to his sister, and he is so thankful (so relieved) that she remains beside him, steady and unfaltering. Gryffen. Dahmer had heard the name before, knew of the infamous individual attached to it. His rage soars again and he stomps a hoof against the rocky ground. "I would never hurt you, Scy. I need you to believe me. I need you to believe me so I can hunt him down."
