"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
She is a monster in every moment but these, sprawled in the dark with her flanks damp and her sides heaving. It is the closest she will ever be to the wild brown girl she was meant to be, the girl this world ate up and ruined, took all her broken pieces and molded them into something dark and wrong.
In the emptiness of night she groans and strains, eyes closed to the stars strewn across a velvet sky - the same sky he died beneath. Killdare, her Killdare. It is why she picked this place, a shipwreck of broken bodies and scattered bones, full of ghosts and death and the things that go bump in the night. What better place could there be for monster like her, cursed and thorny and ruinous to everything she touches.
And -
She wants to feel close to him now, remembers when she had given birth to their first, how he had come to her when she thought he would not. When he had another to love and be loved by, someone who would have protected him better than Malis ever could.
But he was always hers, always, and even now, here, she is his.
She groans again, sides heaving, and she can feel the sweat creeping up her neck and darkening her chest to bury her blue in pale white sand. Her legs draw long furrows in the ground, her jaw hollowing out a valley for her face to settle in, and she is relieved by the cold earth beneath when everything else feels like burning, molten heat. Her body tightens and she bites back a third groan, stretching her head so it arches her back when she pushes this small, dark bundle out into the sand behind her.
And oh, he is beautiful. But they always are, aren’t they? Little slivers of the only good she has ever done, come to life in a perfect little miniature bodies. And this one - he is like her, so much like her. The first to share her shade of indigo, the first with galaxies in miniature strewn across his skin.
She is certain the dark god left them there deliberately so she will not forget him.
“Hello, little one.” She murmurs as she shifts to clean him, safe to be soft when there is no one but him to see it. Her tongue sweeps across his face and over his ears, lips working on the downy tufts of his mane - fussing and cleaning until another contraction pushes her back down again. She had known, of course, had guessed by the size of her belly and by the way the birth of the boy had not eased her discomfort. But knowing doesn’t make it any easier a second time.
She heaves and pushes, struggles gently so as not to hurt her boy, her beautiful son as he lay quietly by her heels. Heaves until her body shudders and finally, she is finished. It takes a moment for her to ease up again, lazy seconds slipping past so her body can repair itself. But she is impatient (even exhausted, even used up like this) and she rises with a grunt of effort, moving to where they are so she can clean them.
They are so much alike - and so much like her. One boy, one girl, both blue and beautiful and dusted in his stars. She wonders in what other ways they are like her, in what other ways they are like him. But it doesn’t matter, not yet, they are still too new to be broken, still too perfect and she will kill to keep them this way.
She wonders what kind of a father he is, if he even cares about them, innumerable as they are.
Her lips are soft when she tugs at their little ears and downy manes, huffs warm breaths against their damp necks and coaxes them up to nurse. Presses her mouth to the points of their delicate hips and shoulders, feels the curve of their spine against her lips. It is a relief to find them whole and healthy, to find everything where it should be. “Come now,” she tells them, brushes their forelocks from their eyes so she can see the static stars that spill down along their beautiful faces, “up you go.”
Really goddamn cold. And wet. And completely gross.
And it was all over him.
He was born with a scowl on his teeny face, deep indigo dusted with a smattering of stars. There were galaxies, both known and mysterious, embedded in his skin, buried in his eyes, impressed onto his soul.
Not his heart.
He may not have one.
A voice assaulted him, soft and sweet and terribly melodious, and he turned to it. Ah, yes that's better. He was more welcoming of her when she began cleaning the muck off him. Perhaps she could stay, then. Yes, that was good. He rewarded her with a brief return lick, made his eyes as dumb, soft twinkly as hers were. Just to please her to show that he was pleased.
Good girl.
Then he shifted to the side a little, out of the way of her great, heaving body. Watched as another came. And from the very start he was irritated, though he had no experiences to give him reason to be. Yet there he was, certainly irritated. His little scowl deepened and his eyes shined maliciously. As soon as the littler rat was closer, he'd snap and snarl, his lips curling in preparation.
This was his mother, not hers. Not anybody's.
Just his.
10-05-2018, 08:42 PM (This post was last modified: 10-05-2018, 09:02 PM by atria.)
She has no such qualms about the coolness of the air when it sweeps in to kiss her damp skin. It breathes life into her small, indigo body, draws a finger across the muscles beneath her skin so they tighten and protest and curl her tighter into her own warmth.
But -
There is supposed to be other warmth, she is sure of this. A boy as beautiful as she is, a body that had been tangled with hers since the beginning of time. She fusses softly beneath her mother's soft tongue, blinks open a pair of eyes so pale they are nearly crystalline in their blueness.
The world is fuzzy at first, soft and hazy and filled with so many things she nearly topples sideways as she cranes her neck to see it all. Silhouettes of trees and bushes and leaves that shake and rattle, the blue face of mom who reaches over to catch her before she can tumble too far. Oh and stars! Bright and twinkling pinpricks of light that blink down and watch her, paint her skin in silver, coax the stars on her legs and face to glow brighter.
And the boy.
She knows him instantly, feels the swell of something warm and bright in her chest as she traces his face, memorizes the lines of white where they crash against such beautiful, wild blue. She notices his lips too, the way they pull back from his teeth in such a silly smile at her and she blinks back so soft and sweet, pulling her own delicate lips into a smile to match - though hers is far sweeter. Then she bleats at him softly, reaches her little blue and white nose towards him. I missed you, she tells him in every way she can, every way but with the words she does not yet know.
He's long stopped caring about his children. They are too numerous, too stupid to matter. He’s tried, of course, groomed sons and daughters for greatness, placed them on thrones, given them kingdoms – but always, they disappoint. They fall in love, or question him, or die, and he has long ago learned they are not worth his time.
Still, he favors them over the horses who aren’t of his blood, as much as he favors anything. He no longer mentors, no longer takes them under wing, but he’ll poke, or prod, sometimes. Not always for the good – Warrick had not been, certainly, that had been entertainment, pure and simple.
He is not at the beach for the children. He is at the beach because he loves ruin. He is high off Pangea’s rising – that sick kingdom, sitting like a drowned scar on Beqanna – and he has not lit off for the territories, not yet. He lingers, savoring the victory, and he is curious about what Pangea can, or will, do to Beqanna.
He thinks Malis a corpse at first, dead on the sands, but then sees the things squirming out of her. He’s always found birth a bit distasteful, preferring his blood and viscera to denote death. When she raises her head, he remembers her, the parade of horns down her forehead. These are his children, then – he notes the stars, and smiles, mostly to himself. Marked, then. Good.
He scrambles for her name and cannot recall, so he plucks it from her mind - Malis.
Sounds like malice. Sounds like nothing.
The filly’s touched next, Atria, pretty and meaningless. The boy, then, but when the dark god touches his mind there’s no name, only an undercurrent of anger, a curious contempt bred in the womb.
The boy will fail, of course – they all do. Still. All things need a name.
He makes himself known, no longer the galaxy-strewn thing she’d coupled with, back to his usual gray. He regards all three of them, his two children and their bearer, and then locks eyes with the boy.
“Decimate,” he says to him, one word, and whether it’s a command or a name – or both – he lets the boy decide.
