"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
but now we're sleeping at the edge, holding something we don't need all this delusion in our heads is going to bring us to our knees
She prefers the night.
From a very young age, she had learned that to be alive for her is to find herself in the darkness, and she makes no attempt to change the course. She keeps to the nights, to the shadows, and she lives in the light of the stars instead of the glow of the sun. This has meant that she has made few friends, has not yet learned the meaning of community, but she feels no great loss because of it. Instead, she finds that she comes alive in her solitude, in the moments where she meets the other creatures of the night—letting their conversations mark her, mold her, carve her into this strange young woman that she is becoming.
In some ways, Aurorae is soft. She is lovely, graceful starlight. She walks through the common lands, leaving no trace of her comings and goings—just smoke that blows through the night. But if one was to look close they would see that the darkness of her parentage has not missed the mark in her. It lives there within her chest, beating alongside her moonglow heart—and she embraces it completely.
It pushes her to find the darkest amongst them.
Find their company and not shy from the blood on their chins, the sins in their eyes.
She molds herself around them and doesn’t worry what it will mean when she is fully formed. She lets it poison her veins and breathes it in deep, lets herself grow warm to the idea of them, accepting of them.
And so she stands tonight, on the precipice of adulthood, with the night reflecting in her eyes.
She pulls the starlight down around her shoulders, letting it shimmer around her, and she tips her lovely head back to stare at the sky that swirls around her in patterns that only she understands.
The darkness will find her eventually, she thinks.
11-17-2019, 04:34 PM (This post was last modified: 11-17-2019, 04:34 PM by tannin.)
Night is favorable for a lot of them, including Tannin. So many shadows! So many opportunities! In their midst, he skulks and is invisible, camouflaged by the shadows that engulf him like a long lost brother. Except he is not lost - he knows exactly where he is and who he lacks tonight. He has left Tallow lying in a glade bathed in starlight, and it is not often that he leaves his other half alone but he fears not for her - their mother has left one of her creations behind to stand watch.
This leaves him free to do as he pleases though he is almost certain she has sent another of her shadow-minions to stalk him. It is a game often played between him and the things she makes out of the darkness that is hers to command and shape. Pleasure ripples through him at the thought of what his mother might have sent out tonight to hunt him. He looks for the yellow eyes, always a dead giveaway that it is darkness-made and unnatural. But Tannin did not count on finding a different sort that night.
He could never make predictions but his camouflage kept him concealed as he cast about for thoughts. Schools of them come to him, like fish to a net: unsuspecting and he sifts through them until he picks up on some that are short and girlish - darkness, starlight, patterns. Tannin pauses in his hunt, curious and awakened in a way that he couldn’t explain. His lips turn up in a grin that is decidedly impish, as an idea forms inside his mind. He does not mean to be cruel but it is a good night for mischief and he can feel it like an ache in his bones.
Hello beautiful, he shoves into her mind, about as intrusive as smoke, dark and curling. He doesn’t have to lie now that he’s spotted her, decorated in the colors of the aurora and bathed in starlight. She practically glows, like a beacon of brightness for all the dark things to find in the forest. Dark things like him.
but now we're sleeping at the edge, holding something we don't need all this delusion in our heads is going to bring us to our knees
They always seem to find her—these creature of shadow and night. She has come to expect it, no longer wonders at what draws them. Perhaps it is the starlight that she wears like a beacon—perhaps it is the way that her very heart is a lighthouse for such things. Perhaps it is merely the hunger the roils in her stomach, that gnashes its teeth, that draws her into the shadows, seeking them out in equal measure.
Whatever it is, she does not fight when she feels the thoughts so obtrusively pressed into her mind.
Instead, she drops her shoulders and lifts her head back, her bright teal eyes closing slightly as her black lips spread into a small smile—the curve of it just a whisper. She is no stranger to magic and the starlight around her glows even brighter in response to her curiosity. For a moment, she opens her eyes and stares out into the darkness, into the shadows, but she is not surprised when she sees nothing, just emptiness.
Her own smile grows as the starlight begins to glimmer and change, bathing the area in its glow and then wrapping her in a minor illusion of invisibility. It won’t last forever, but she feels powerful when she does this—when she uses her gift to simply drop from existence as if she never existed at all.
“Hello,” her thoughts curl in response to his own, no words rising to her lips. ”Do you always hide in the shadows, stranger?” Not that she minds, she finds. It is exhilarating to talk to someone who seems to only exist in the boundaries of her own mind, to someone who belongs only to herself.
11-19-2019, 10:49 AM (This post was last modified: 11-19-2019, 10:51 AM by tannin.)
Tannin has never considered the implications of good versus evil and if he’s taken a side. His mother had explained it to him, of course, but he views it all through a decent amount of murky shadow and shroud. It helps that his lineage is saturated in dreams and shadows, makes it easier to associate with those things. But does that make him bad? Not quite, he is impish far more than malicious but only time will tell the tale of just who he is meant to be.
Her allure remains nameless. It could be all those and more - brightness, beacons, and a darkness in herself that hungers to meet those like her and draw her own shadowy nature forth. Like attracts like, after all. As do opposites, and in time, both of them might learn just what it is that has drawn them together this night of nights. It should suffice that he is there because she is.
But then - he fidgets, loses his camouflage for just a moment, feeling distraction and his sister poke at him from a distance. Tannin feels her awaken and cast a net of thoughts (his name, mostly) into the dark. He tells her that he is fine and she should go back to sleep but they are creatures of the night and she comes for him, also cloaked in darkness. A sigh most audible can be heard, as he knows his mischief is likely to be cut short.
Still, it will take his twin some time to reach them. He has no doubt with her enhanced senses and enhanced night vision, that she’ll find him - then - quick enough. Suddenly, there is a glow that grows brighter and brighter in the clearing. It captures his attention and he realizes that it comes from her. He cannot see the smile on her lips or her closed eyes because the glow is just that bright. Tannin laughs, as she disappears - they all had their own brand of magic and like him, she could vanish too.
Not hiding, he pushes back, a little more kindly this time. I live in the shadows. It is all the explanation that he offers. He likes her thought of him only existing in her mind, of belonging to her even if it is a little myth. Tannin won’t destroy the illusion just yet, that he belongs to his sister, to the shadows, and to himself but for now, it’s a sweet thought and he gobbles it up. You hide too, why?
but now we're sleeping at the edge, holding something we don't need all this delusion in our heads is going to bring us to our knees
Would she live in the shadows if she could?
She has never given it much though—never wondered if perhaps she was meant to find her home within the darkness like these things that call to her do. Would she be able to find solace in the silence and in the spaces between—the moment before the breath? She herself is such a contradiction of herself. She is two pieces cleaved apart and sewn together, two ideologies that live within the same pulse, the same host.
There is the light of her, the joy and the quiet. The pieces of starlight that dazzle and draw her toward the silvery wash of the moon and the stars. And there is the darkness of her. The contemplative and the sorrow, the things that mourn that which she will never have. Will never touch. will never understand.
She is both of these things and she wonders if he would be able to understand.
Could he when she herself does not?
Such things slide from her though as his voice curls within her mind again. “Do the shadows love you as much as you love them?” she wonders in her mind as the starlight envelops and hides her, as she blinks from existence. It won’t last forever, she knows. Her illusions do not permit living in the nothing.
“I don’t hide,” she explains as the starlight recedes and leaves her in its wake. She is still washed aglow with the silvery light of it, but it fades slowly until it withdraws into the night sky completely, leaving her alone on the hill—just a young woman with the night sky painted on her back. “I play with the things I will never touch and wish for more,” a sigh, wordless and breathless.
“What do you wish for, stranger?”
Aurorae
@[Tannin] - this is horrifically late please forgive me <3
