"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
IT ALL ADDS UP TO THIS: THE HOLLOW CHEST, THE BRUISED NECK, THE SHAKING HANDS.
YOUR BODY, THE TRIUMVIRATE OF UNHOLY THINGS
If you’re ever going to be great, his father once told him, you’ve got to be hungry. He’d said the words through pointed teeth that glimmered all like cursed pearls. The lesson had frightened him as a child after his brothers and sisters told him their father devoured some of his young. Vulgaris had been the youngest back then, all knobby knees and bird chest, trembling in the coolness of his parents’ shadows. When the curse took root in him, he thought he understood what Larva had meant by hunger, as it became all he knew anymore. The juvenile serpent had feasted on his prey and licked them from his lips. He’d filled his palms with the sticky honey of his half-loves and left them to fend for themselves. When all this failed, he raised a child of his own and whipped her into a perfectly obedient machine.
Still, the hunger did not subside in the slightest.
As the summer sun burns across the midday sky, so too does he burn from within. He knows that autumn is looming on the horizon and some twisted part of him wishes Shiya would come within his reach. Still, there are others he could have, if only to occupy his time. Until then he decides to delve into the meadow and see what wonders it offers up to him like a banquet. There are such wondrous things to behold here these days that range from simple glimmering wings to slick black monsters. His bright green eyes skim over each one in delight as he tries to pick just one to approach.
His scales all shimmer across the handsome angles of his face and the slope of his broad shoulders. Vulgaris stands taller than most, though he does not loom over them like some giant. Still, he could rest his chin across another’s crest and comfortably bask in the summer’s sweltering heat. (How divine such closeness would be to him now.) Each step is certain of itself and he does not hesitate to pass others so close that their shoulders kiss for a fleeting second. If they are offended or intrigued then he is delighted either way.
His course slithers onward until he finds himself at the heart of the meadow and he is certain he has seen all worth seeing. The trap is set and waits to be sprung.
VULGARIS
THERE WAS NOTHING MORE DIVINE THAN HAVING SINNED WITH YOU.
06-05-2018, 07:10 PM (This post was last modified: 06-05-2018, 07:13 PM by Titanya.)
The last fight still hasn’t drained from her bones.
At night, she dreams of the violence. She dreams of bodies clashing, the rain-sound of her blood splattering the ground (quenching the everlasting thirst of the hungry, hallowed Plains). She hears the melody of staccato grunts and drawn-out groans play over and over while she sleeps. She feels her ear being torn and the flames that ate and burned away her flesh. War is happy for these memories that warp her dreams at night and keep her restless. Its’ seal purrs inside of her when her eyes close and the moon rises.
But come sun-up, it grows hungry again.
Titanya tries to satiate the hunger on a more normal diet of grass rather than blood and guts and battles. A girl’s gotta eat, after all. But she finds herself growing leaner all the while. Nothing can compare, the Horseman seems to goad her from the Beyond - or whereverthefuck he was vanquished to – as she takes another tasteless bite of summer greenery. You will wither away to nothing. War is my birthright, and now it is yours. Use it like a muscle, like your heart, or you will surely -
“Piss off,” she says, loudly, in the middle of a lot of horses who suddenly make themselves quite absent.
~
Days go by like this as she haunts the meadow like a living plague.
Age is finally catching up to her. Or maybe it’s the stress of having the best thing in your life taken away and waiting to see if you’ll get to play again. God, it was better than all the sex she’s never had (and doesn’t plan on having – mind you keep your fucking distance, Rando Meadow Man). Anyhow, grey hairs creep along her muzzle and up the white splotches of her belly. She thinks she must look tougher and grizzled for it. That combined with the unexpected outburst keeps the others away from her. Which is mostly fine. But sometimes she admits to the slightest tinge of loneliness.
She misses her weird little family.
But the timing isn’t right to go back to Taiga and find Terran and his pack. The dark mare is in no frame of mind to see pretty Jinju or her somehow-older-than-her son, Ander. Mostly, she isn’t ready to face her brother after her last admission. Hell, it’s the main reason she entered the Alliance. To prove to him that she was still honorable even after The Lie. To show him that she could take care of their strange, wild crew, that she could protect them all. She’s never had much more to offer. It’s stupid, probably, but she thought maybe she had found her purpose –
Bump
“Are you kidding me?!” Titanya had been listlessly lipping the ground when he bumped her shoulder with his. Her blood runs hot instantly as her head shoots up. Without thought, she snaps a bite at whatever part of him she can reach. He’s tall, but so is she. In the next second, she sees that he has scales. Fun! Probably an assortment of other attachments and powers he can try on her, too. He’s facing away from her, so there’s really no telling what she could be in for. All the better. “Maybe try using those eyes to see where you are going, assuming you have any.”
IT ALL ADDS UP TO THIS: THE HOLLOW CHEST, THE BRUISED NECK, THE SHAKING HANDS.
YOUR BODY, THE TRIUMVIRATE OF UNHOLY THINGS
It would take all the hounds of hell to make him admit his loneliness, even to himself. His hours are spent in the pursuit of anything and everything to fill the void in his life but he will never breathe those words aloud. The serpent is a solitary creature, after all. (Though he had taken some secret comfort in hugging Cellar close to him when the lightning and thunder terrified her. His daughter was only a tiny, trembling thing back then.) The hunt is typically as close as he comes to company anymore.
But Vulgaris is still rather young. He has always preyed on those smaller, slower, weaker than him without ever knowing the true taste of battle. To say he has earned the blood that has drooled from his chin would be a lie no matter how many times he says it to himself. This one has ripped her triumph from others and held it tight to her breast, though he wouldn’t know it. When he feels teeth across his scaled hip, he turns his dark head abruptly and freezes in his place. Dreams of burgundy and crackling bones fill his thoughts.
But then she speaks and he hears only a challenge.
The ink black slits in his eyes narrow for a moment as they examine her – older, female, plain. He is arrogant in his assumptions but God knows that youth is an all-knowing, boastful fool. His lips pull back into a calm grin to reveal all his pointed teeth lined up and ready to strike. “Maybe you should have gotten out of my way,” he says as he turns his body now to face her. His voice is smoldering embers in summer. Any manners his father had tried to instill in him have faded and left only a careless beast in their place.
He takes two, then three steps forward with his head held high. There is enough space to afford him a reaction time if she chooses to lash out at him, but little more than this. “What is your name, bitter woman?” he asks with a tilt of his head. His black forelock falls from his face and he doesn’t seem interested in offering up his own name just yet. His green eyes creep across her face until they spot the gold along the edges of her ears. A tinge of envy pours through him but he does not allow the emotion to show in his expression. Rather, he focuses on her eyes instead. They are like most others and he reminds himself of that. Hadn’t Pond called him beautiful, after all?
VULGARIS
THERE WAS NOTHING MORE DIVINE THAN HAVING SINNED WITH YOU.
