"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
03-20-2018, 06:41 PM (This post was last modified: 03-20-2018, 06:41 PM by Hestia.)
There is a lightness to her step, a sudden pep that has her almost walking on clouds. A heady sense of hope and eagerness cloy the air around her. Today, yes, today is the day. Today is the day things will get back to normal! She is so sure of it, her green eyes might as well twinkle. It’s no sooner that she hears the words in which someone can help her then she is off like a bullet. One thing on her mind, only one thing that she can focus on. She knew that name, it echoes in the back of her mind. She’d already met the girl, already knew who it was. She didn’t need anyone to show her where to find the child, they had had a few run ins over the last year and Hestia remembers her well. A sweet young thing, with a bit of attitude. Sweet and sour, that’s what she should call her, now that the black hag thinks of it. She would have never guessed, but it comes to no surprise, so many hold precious gifts and keep them a well-guarded secret.
What could come as a surprise for her? Well if someone said humans were taking up residence in Beqanna, but outside of that? Probably nothing. Beqanna holds too many surprises now for anything to really be considered surprising now. She picks up her pace, frustrated with out long its taking her to get to where she needs to go. She can feel it in her bones something will happen this time. This will NOT be another dead end. It can’t be, she doesn’t know how many more dead ends she can take.
Its just across her border, she reaches the border point between the two lands practically shivering with excitement and nerves. She’s never had to ask for anything in her life. And now this? Its so important to her that she thinks nothing of it, thinks nothing of swallowing her pride, she’d beg if she had too. Anything, anything to get her children back. She lets out a high call to Kag. Shifting her weight. It’s done, now all she needs to do is. Waiting, its such a difficult thing to do. Waiting means, one is out of control, that there is nothing more you can do. The fate you seek is no longer up to you, and it matters not if you’ve done your best, its up to another to decide. She can only hope that their meeting hadn’t been so terrible as to make the girl want to say no.
Hestia huffs out, its taking so god damn long! Hell it could have been only five seconds that have passed could have been a day, she’d still think it was to god damn long. Another deep breath to settle before she turns her eyes to the trees waiting for the colorful girl to make her appearance. As soon as she sees her Hestia perks Hi, it’s been a while Kagerus. Her tail switches uncomfortably. How, where to begin. This is usually so easy for her. But this time its so different, she’s not sure she can pull it off. She searches the others gaze for any sign of anger on her part. Pull yourself together, the voice bites out, even it is feeling her tension.
Out with the golden we sew, and the lower past that crawls.
Now, to the doorway you run, to the girl that's not lost.
It's my first time crawling back to Hyaline from the river, from my... Family... If you can call it that (if you can call a man's agonized cries a family, if you can call a child named after the void a family, if you can call a conflicted mother in a suspension of abandonment a family.) My pace is slow, legs aching, mind shattered, and in truth, I do not know what I am even returning for.
I shouldn't be alive.
She calls my name on the wind, and for reasons I cannot explain, I must reply. My feeble frame approaches the caller, recognizing her as she grows nearer: Hestia, Queen. Even in my after-birth haze (though it's not my own, no, no, it's Rapt's), my brow creases and I have to wonder at her presence. After all that's happened to me this year, why is Nerine's Queen calling for me alone.
I suppose I'll have to find out.
"What do you want, Hestia?" My voice croaks, eyes sitting desolately on hers. She looks uncomfortable, nervous, and perhaps a part of me is curious, but moreover, I just want to lie down. I am exhausted at having shifted my child into another's body, I am exhausted at not knowing how to love a child I developed but did not birth, I am exhausted and there's no guarantee that Hestia can help. That anyone can help.
I am purposeless. I shouldn't be alive.
Kagerus
sweet nothing
idk what this is but don't be discourage, she's still down to clown
@[Hestia]
Hestia waits, not patiently, not as she normally waits. She thinks she can’t wait any longer. She’s so tired of waiting, it feels as if that is all she does these days. Wait, waiting, waits some more. When the brightly colored mare shows up, and she doesn’t have the same fire that she had in the field Hestia flicks her ears around. She wonders if the girl is okay. She feels the urge to ask. In fact, she is about to but the first words out of Kagerus’s mouth are abrupt and disconcerting.
Hestia shifts, her green eyes roaming over the lithe frame in front of her. What had happened? And yet did she have a right to care? A right to nose into the others business? It’s not as if they are friends. It’s not as if she had known the girl all that well. They were passing acquaintances knowing each other in passing. Each dedicated to their separate kingdoms. Hestia almost does ask, then she clenches her jaw working it, waring with her pride until she beats it into submission. Her words come out strained from the bitter taste she has in her mouth. Kagerus, I came here in search of my children. Caw informed me that I can find you here. That you can help me.
Her stomach turns at these words. Her gut wrenching at the idea of having to ask for help. She swallows deeply, cotton filling her mouth taking all saliva and ease of speech with it. Please, I need your help. She’s a queen, she shouldn’t say please. Yet here she is ready to fall on her knees if she must. Her children are lost somewhere, and they need her. They should have come to her by now. They haven’t, and she is afraid she will never see them again.
Could they help each other, could she help Kagerus as Kagerus helps her? The black hag decides this would be a good way of finding out if the other is okay. I’ll do anything, anything you need or want I’ll get it done. Just please, help me Kagerus. She’s a queen, what can she NOT offer her? Nerine has a mage, a fickle one, but still a mage none the less. They have safety, warriors, access to several kingdoms. Surely, she can do something for the girl.
Hestia doesn’t notice the change that has come over herself either. More expressive, less steely in her harsh ways. More womanly in her curves. She looks like the ocean with her tussled mane and tail. She feels calmer, less likely to reflect on the past. The voice comes and goes, ebbing with the tide. It does not bother her as it used to. She knows who it is, has always known.
It’s herself, her that was stuck as a ghost, the part of her that wasn’t completely pulled from the afterlife. She’s a person stuck in elevator doors, mostly here, but another peace that is still there. She looks healthier. But Kagerus, she looks as if all hope has been destroyed in this world. She appears older, wiser, more like the old Hestia. The Hestia that found joy in other’s suffering. The black mare is still a bitter old hag, always will be. But she is not the bitter Hestia who had nothing to care about. The old hag looks into the girls eyes searching for anything remotely related to the girl that she’d seen in the field that day.
.
HESTIA
The devil whispered in my ear, you’ll never survive the storm I whispered back, I am the storm
Out with the golden we sew, and the lower past that crawls.
Now, to the doorway you run, to the girl that's not lost.
Her green eyes go over my body as if she has a right to me, a right to my pain. Before, I would have shown her the same fire as in the field; but as I stand before her now, feeling the loss of my child without having actually birthed her myself, I can only stare. Listen to her plea. Listen to the whistle of the void as it courses through me, around me, until there's nothing left.
"You lost them in the first place," I deadpan. "Why involve me." It's a statement, not a question. As she stands there, seeming softer than last we spoke, I wonder if she can see my hardened edges, the razors that now combine to form my whole exterior. And yet as I watch her watching me, as if there's hope, as if this life isn't meaningless, a part of me gives. A latch somewhere, deep inside, clicks; and the razors unravel.
"I don't know what I want yet. But you'll give it to me when I do."
Taking a shaking inhale, I step closer to her, feeling the exhaustion of the past day dragging us closer to the realm where we may glimpse her children. Our proximity thickens the air around us. Eyelids drooping, I reach out to touch her, but pause, realizing that she'll have no idea of what's to come. No idea of what's about to become.
"I'm taking you to another realm. You'll be able to call up an image of your children, to converse with them. Perhaps you'll learn something. I am simply a... medium. I will bring you there, and hold you there, but it is you who will find your children. Not me." Gazing at her heavily, I take one more breath, and close the distance between us.
What feels like hours pass before the world begins to form around us (and perhaps it has been hours after all - hours of true sleep as my body and mind regroup, checking to see what has been damaged or lost in the trauma before pulling together to transport us one step further than sleep). Her neck is moist beneath my lips, and I nudge her gently, waking her. I cannot distinguish the world around - no, that will be for her to see.
Kagerus
sweet nothing
@[Hestia] Have fun love, you have 100% creative control over what happens next.
03-25-2018, 01:26 PM (This post was last modified: 03-25-2018, 01:26 PM by Hestia.)
Her words are sharp, they cut through Hestia like a knife. If she wasn’t so desperate the girl may have seen the anger and contempt the queen holds for almost everyone. But she clenches her jaw, and doesn’t say anything in reply to her barbed remark. They continue their back and forth, Hestia desperate enough to offer a bribe rather than a threat. When the girl at last agrees the black queen sighs in relief. Anything, she almost whispers under the weight lifted from her shoulders.
She explains what will happen and Hestia nods in acknowledgement. They proceed to arrive in a void and Hestia looks around before delving into her memories. They conjure around her as ghosts forever haunting her, all the emotion associated with them rising to fill the emptiness around them. They are jumbled not in any type of order. The Jungle burns around them, the scent of burning flesh and wood too pungent for her to breath; the heat crackling suffocating the two dreamers as the sisters scream their agony. Off to the side the sisters gather around for the bonding that ties her to the land and the Jaguar speaks words meant only for her own ears. On the other side of her an angry queen tries to sever her bond, and the pain of being rejected as a sister rips through them anew. The bitter voice reverberates around them denying her access to the Jungle. She watches her queen die in child birth. Watches as the sisters’ march through the land. Many more things, both painful and joyful bombard her until the sounds of her first night with Fennick take shape, and the quietly whispered words of adoration surround her. The world around them focuses in on him, what was it she was looking for again? All the others fall into the backdrop, the laughter of pollock as he dances on her face. The crunching bones she doesn’t realize is hers until it’s too late. The yanking of her soul back into the real world leaving her cold and untied to the land. The screams of the dying as the world turns in on itself. Her days in the Valley with laughing foals chasing one another. Foals… her attention turns to them. Suddenly everything comes rushing back to her diving into her all at once making her stagger and gasp.
So many memories, so much good and yet the bad is so painful most of the time it overwhelms the good. She looks to the laughing foals in front of her. The true joy of her life. They kick at one another playing silly games that leave them breathless. Iona took after her, more lithe, smaller in stature; where Kryten took after his father, thick and tall but he has one thing in common with her, the greenest eyes she’d ever seen. Greener that her own, which is hard to do. She smiles at seeing them, calling their names, yet they don’t respond. Kagerus, do you see them? Aren’t they beautiful? Her words are whispered and she presses her head against the girls. They are only memories after all. They are not the real thing. Something warm slips close on the opposite side of her than Kagerus is on. Her ears flick, but her eyes cannot be pealed away from the sight of her children.
He’s been watching them, two little females. The one he knows intimately, he watches her terror, drinks in her passions. She is the sweetest. His dark gaze travels over her frame, lingering on areas that he’s desperately missed. A smile cracks his lips. He is the darkness that surrounds the two, enveloping them in his embrace. She is still as black and beautiful as he remembers her. Hestia, you’ve come back to me. His voice echoes around them snuffing out the memories that torture the females. But his gaze is only fixed on one of them. Why so soon my love? She searches him for the source, but finds none. Confusion painted on her face as plainly as the emotions that pulse from her being.
Scents of salt, and tangy grasses lay thick around her. a frown pulls at his moody void. What had happened to the fresh perfumed scent of Beqanna and her lovely Jungle? She finds her voice once more, the bewilderment so obvious he almost takes shape for her. But no, it would frighten the other. She would not understand as he does not remember her as one of his regular visitors. He’s had many visitors, many who rest in his embrace taking solace from the pain that the fairies and Beqanna inflict on them. He cannot understand these gods they speak of. Why torture those that they could easily sooth into compliance? Ah well, the more they torture the more they come to him. And that is really all that matters, that they come to him. Share their world with him. Fill his emptiness and bring something more into the void that he is.
Words come from her mouth, but he doesn’t pay attention. To enraptured by her form and emotions to concentrate on her words, it’s most likely the same old same old. Who are you, why are you doing this, etc, etc, etc… Instead of responding he distracts her by nibbling down their spines hot breath blowing moist air with the intent to make them shiver. Whether that’s in fear or lust is up to them. Either would sate his appetite. tsk, tsk, tsk, my love. You promised me last time that this time would be forever. I’ve missed you, he growls in her ear climbing atop her surrounding and consuming her in the passions that can only be enjoyed in this place. She begins to open herself to him and allowing him to tether himself to her until release is found for both.
She is lost in a darkness, lost to Kagerus and all that she knows to be real. This is her safe place. She’s come here so often through the years, when not in Beqanna searching for this missing piece of herself. The void is alive and pulsing with a fullness that consumes her. She finds relief in this being. Thoughts slip from her mind, emotions and all that makes her Hestia slowly dissipates leaving her in peace. It’s so easy… the voice trails off before completely disappearing.
A faint sound far away fights its way through the void. Thoughts begin to form once more, emotions coming back, her body taking shape. NO! the power of the voice reverberates around her leaking into her bones. No, she has people to live for. Nerine, Murc, her children. The anger is suffocating, pressing against her skin until she once again remembers what fear is. Kagerus help! she screams into the darkness.
HESTIA
The devil whispered in my ear, you’ll never survive the storm I whispered back, I am the storm
Out with the golden we sew, and the lower past that crawls.
Now, to the doorway you run, to the girl that's not lost.
As the black moves away from my gentle nudge (silently, as if she thought we arrived her instantly when we've truthfully been locked in sleep for hours until now), I tilt my ears back and settle back to watch the world that she builds around us. But her memories are too painful, too hot, and I cringe; knowing that I could easily end our voyage but that I have made a deal, my chest widens with air as I steady myself in the wake of her horrific memories. Even still, as queens die and sisters march, I find myself drawing even further back from the scene. As Hestia explores her dream-land, I dissolve into a black mist, expanding and contracting like gaseous shadow-lungs, hovering and watching as her scene plays out.
Kagerus, do you see them? Aren't they beautiful? "I see them." My voice comes like a whisper to both her ears at once, the same tone as one's inner-voice, more of a thought transferred to her mind than spoken word (for I have no mouth with which to speak in this state). The shadow that is me shudders violently as a warmth slips across my side, and I turn to gaze without eyes upon what approaches -- and dread disperses over me.
As soon as I am aware of his presence, I struggle to return to an equine shape, to protect Hestia - but my vaporous being remains, and panic sets in. His sickly sweet presence sends tremors through me, and I gag, but there is no sound - the being silences me, chaining me against the wall to be witness to the horror he is infinitely bound to administer to Hestia.
I watch, as he rapes her.
(Oblivion).
There is no where else to look.
As his powers over me dwindle with the chaotic sexual release, I muster up all the strength I can, calling every particle of shadow together, struggling against the bonds he has placed around me until at last, at last, they shatter, and I am once more a mare standing next to Hestia.
NO!
"Yes," comes my voice, as loud as his, causing ripples in the void around them. "Leave, and never return." Shafts of light burst from the nondescript earth, cutting through the nothingness and causing the oblivion-creature to scream, for all his worth sounding like one whose chest is being ripped open rib by rib. The beams of lift curl and flow to my whim, swirling until they envelope us, banishing the unwelcome presence from the dream.
Destroying the nightmare.
The blinding white light slowly fades from our eyes then, as her cries become less and the earth beneath us solidifies, the long grasses swaying against our legs, the moon high above us although she had arrived at mid day. My head is lowered to the grass, sweat covering my hide; the leopard-print markings glow even more than usual, reminders of the dream we have faced. In the wake of the nightmare, I am almost able to forget reality: Abysm, and Rapt. Clutching to the dissociation state, I groan, lifting my head to gaze at the queen.
Time stops, and a sharp exhale mars the silence that grows between us. The grass at our hooves no longer tickles my ankles; but the hairs on my shoulders rise in terror.
She looses herself to the sleep, and just as sleep does if feels as if she just closed her eyes when she reawakens into the empty world around them. Kagerus responds yet Hestia can’t find her, and she’s to afraid to look away from the children to find her. Her heart fills at the sight of her children. Yet she doesn’t see nor feel the same fear that Kagerus does. To wrapped up in what is before her eyes to notice what is happening.
Yes he is the place she goes to visit when not in Beqanna, but she would not remember him, nor anything in this realm as his name suggests, complete oblivion is all that here is. It is impossible to comprehend one while in the other, and the other while in the one. Once again she spots Kagerus a brightly colored blur before disappearing to the blackness again. This time it’s a different sort of darkness. She can hear the mare distantly talking to someone… something. She doesn’t know. Can’t wrap her head around much of anything at the moment. She’s completely focused on him. His gentleness with her like that of a lover. She doesn’t realize that he is leering at Kagerus from his position inside Hestia. He toy’s with them drinking all the things they offer. They take him to the edge. Bringing him as close as he can be to more than nothing. A frenzy takes over him. She takes in his emptiness, herself disappearing, ripping apart at the seams with each moment he lingers. But then, then he suffocates her with his anger spilling all that makes him oblivion into her. She screams unable to handle this, screams until a light consumes all that is around her. Ripping the darkness from her, tearing oblivion from her body. Until a different nothingness overtakes her. The black mare feels his scream vibrate through her searing pain blinding her eyes as she grimaces under the terrible thing that shatters to ash in the wake of the light. When she opens her eyes once more they are in Beqanna.
At first she looks to the girl a silence lay thick in the air. She looks to her and sees that she knows. Knows all that Hestia’s been through. And all the secrets that she’s kept hidden away. She’s seen all the monsters tucked away in the black hag’s darkness. And Hestia feels sorry that the girl would have to know that suffering. No one should need to bare it. Just as she is about to speak. About to think of something to say in the face of the rawness of what they experienced. Instead, a groan escapes her lips. She cannot orientate herself to know where the pain comes from. It’s there, but nothing makes sense. Not at first. Another moan that her jaw clenches against. The sweat dripping from her glistens against the noonday sun. She turns her head blinking her eyes several times to try and see straight. She can’t see straight, it looks as if her sides are swollen to bursting from where she is. Kagerus, she groans out breathing heavily. Her sentence broken, filled with a pain she’d forgotten about. Green eyes flash open fluctuating against the light. Searching for the mare that was supposed to help her. What the fuck is happening?! She bites out the words in an angry whimper hearing the girl whisper something.
She curses over and over trying to stay on her feet, but another rush of pain and she snaps into focus. No fucking way. She drops to her knees unable to stand any longer. The putrid smelling shit that the thing spilled inside her clings to her tail, dripping slick and hot down her legs. She’s to sweaty to notice this, and then it happens, her water breaks, it washes out all the horrible slimy filth that she didn’t know she’d been covered in. Her tail drenched in the crap, fouling the air around her.
Finally, she drops to her side in and out of focus. Unable, or just simply not wanting to bring herself to wrap her mind around what is happening. The hours pass by, she focuses mostly on breathing and trying not to wrap her head around what is happening. Horror fills her eyes as she looks to Kagerus. What the hell can they do? It takes too long. Too long for a normal birth. Hestia loses track of time, eventually the stars come out. The crickets are silent this night, and birds hide away. Something dark and ugly is coming into this world tonight. Something that isn’t meant to exist here. It’s as if Beqanna can sense this.
She looks to Kagerus wondering if she will survive this birth. Or if this time death will greet her with open arms. She lays there in a pool of blood and filth waiting for the thing to separate itself from her. Finally it does, finally there comes a push that severs her connection from whatever it was that possessed her body. She closes her eyes her sides heaving mane matted in snarls against her neck. She is glad no one can see her now. No one except Kagerus that is. If she is still there. Hestia looks around disoriented as the world spins around her. There’s a new scent in the air, something revolting and not completely from Beqanna. She can’t find the energy to look over her shoulder and see the beast that came from her. But she knows it’s there. It’s presence in their minds a gentle soothing whisper. Kagerus, Hestia, Her eyes snap open muscles trembling. Shit.
HESTIA
The devil whispered in my ear, you’ll never survive the storm I whispered back, I am the storm
Which is the true nightmare? The horrific dream that you have in your sleep
This world it is just as dark as my own. There are some differences. Some that seem familiar from what visitors have told me, and others that are beyond my comprehension. I do not think it is strange not to have a mouth, I am nothingness after all. I do not believe that there is anything odd about my form, I am Oblivion, and not seeing, speaking from my mind. Hearing others. It’s all a very normal part of my existence in the other world so why should it be any different here? I have no hunger, there is no bleat of grumbling pain that most may expect. I see no need for these things, so in a way I do not complete my transformation. There are just a few minor differences. Ones that I do not like. These legs, they feel strange and uncoordinated, clumsy even.
My head turns towards the warmth of bodies, as if I can see from my lid covered eye. Ears cannot flick in their direction as I have none to speak of. What I do have is a very dangerous tail split in two, slippery scales that drip in Hestia’s blood, there is no hair on my neck to be tangled and irritating in its presence. They believe I have a stench, but I only smell the sweet air of fear surrounding me. My head quirks to the side. what is wrong? I ask them when I hear Hestia’s ’shit’. After I figure out how to work my new legs I walk over to the mare, the one that was so bright and pretty in all her fear. I think that mounting her would be a pleasant experience. A sickly smile would spread, but it cannot as there are no lips for it to paste on. She was so… delicious trapped there in my darkness, watching me as I took her friend.
Instead of any facial reaction I face her my nose sucking in wonderful scent of her. Just to taste her once as I have Hestia. I missed that opportunity before she left. It’s here that I notice the lack of a heavy swollen heat between my legs. I laugh in my mind. Even if they cannot hear it, not everything is for the purpose of others. I’ve always wanted the experience of a female. The ideas that tumble around in my head… I’m eager to begin. What do you say my pet? Are you into girls? The words drip with the residual lust from the last bout.
I slip my legs against one another eager to feel the slick between them to understand what the females feel, but when all that comes of it is the sticky residue of blood; an anger overtakes me because of this. I feel that I could pop a blood vessel. She’d taken me out before I could complete myself. My tails whip against my flanks. I’ve yet to realize my size, I am not male, I am not female. I have no way of changing this, nor do I have any way of getting back to my world. I’m stuck here now. Something happens. I’m not sure what. But sudden exhaustion, a feeling I’ve never experienced before overcomes me and the world blackens around me. I can hear Hestia speaking before I’ve completely slumped into a mangled pile of sleeping foal. What do we do now? That sweet, sweet terror.
Or the dissatisfied reality that awaits you when you awake
Out with the golden we sew, and the lower past that crawls.
Now, to the doorway you run, to the girl that's not lost.
She calls to me, asking me questions that I haven't answers to, as if it were my fault, as if I could do anything more than I did. As the mare crumples to the earth to struggle against the demon inside of her, I drop my head to the earth, completely disjointed; her cries fall on deaf ears, for truly I am done. Within the span of thirty hours, I have not birthed just one being that should not truly exist, but two. My psyche lays at my feet like shattered glass, and my hands are bleeding already; I haven't the energy to begin collecting the pieces. I haven't the life to save myself, never mind her.
Its voice is what awakens me to reality once more; calling my name in its slippery mind-tongue, causing me to jolt upright with hate and disgust at its sounding. My ears press back upon sighting the hideous creature, its nostrils outstretched towards my skin. Snarling, I lash out towards the newborn, the hate inside of me overriding the motherly instinct that tells me to clean it: but this demon is no child, and no, I am no goddamn mother. I birthed nothing. And I will be no mother.
The corner of corner of his nostril (the only part not scaled enough to resist my fanged-teeth) tastes like ash, where there ought to be blood. But in the end, she is not here to kill what she brought into Beqanna; perhaps one day, but as the thing leers at me with its voided sockets, I gag. Vomit courses through me and onto the earth; my vision blurs; he's got control of me again. Even in reality, I cannot escape him: or perhaps, I cannot escape myself.
What do we do now.
I look up, barely seeing Hestia, barely able to recognize any particle of this existence. "Leave." It's all I can bring myself to say. Shattered, my body collapses to the earth, and there I lay, deaf to whatever they say to me: drowned by my own worthlessness.
Kagerus
sweet nothing
So Kag got fiesty, feel free to not include the maimed nostril in his character development, but Kag felt the need to do something mean because she hates the world rn hahaha. Plus a scar would be badass. @[Hestia]
![[Image: 345k45w.jpg]](http://i65.tinypic.com/345k45w.jpg)
![[Image: kag]](https://78.media.tumblr.com/2e8039018ce4dff6112c167ec23e886a/tumblr_p72zjit7wC1s5a0qvo1_100.png)
