"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
That wildness in her heart never disappeared, even when her poor decisions buried the creature she is at her core. She can feel that pulsing in her chest when she is spit from the Mountain; and days later, it stills breathes and dances like its own crazed entity at the bottom of her belly. It is like life is combing her hair and washing her face and telling her, “This time, I’ll take care of you.”
Jude walks with a skip, like she is the happiest of accidents—like clouds cushion each of her wandering steps.
A deer crashes in the distance and Jude merely continues to observe the berries before her (such disruption is just a day in the Forest). She wraps pale, delicate lips around a lingering summertime blackberry and closes her eyes. The midnight snack will be perfect—perhaps even exquisite—
The crashing grows closer, ending with a thrashing, bloodied deer and the frenzied silver eyes of a predator.
Initially, Jude is frightened, her body stiff and head held high to attention. Sochi does not see her, not yet. The pegasus thinks it must be safer to step back inch by inch but . . . something in that wild heart of hers begs to differ. She craves the adrenaline that being taken by magic gave her. It is the first thing to make her feel alive in years. She—
Craves that ferocity in the tiger’s jaws.
So, she steps forward, twigs and leaves crunching beneath her hooves. Sochi’s head snaps up, but the racing in Jude’s chest isn’t out of fear: the cold rushing through her veins isn’t because her life might end. It’s Sochi’s eyes, the way they feel; it’s the blood on Sochi’s mouth that quickens her breath.
Still, transfixed by the very last set of eyes she might see, Jude quiets her lungs.
“Beautiful,” she calls, drunken smile curving her face.
Sochi understands the strange gravity that can pull you toward the thing that you knows may be what kills you. She knows what it is like to have your entire life orbit around the thing that you don’t understand, the thing that pulls you closer and closer into the heart of the sun. So she would understand the way that Jude’s heart races at the sight of blood and the sharp teeth—the death that drips off of her chin.
A pink tongue touches her lip and she tastes the copper again, shivers violently.
She considers shifting into her equine form, considers stepping forward, and even considers what it would be like to become fully predator—to snap her jaws at the throat of this mare the same way that she had snapped her jaws at the deer that now lies at her feet. But instead she does nothing. She just stands there, feeling the bite of the autumn chill, the moon washing them both silver in its glow.
At the singular word, Sochi glances down, nearly carelessly at the carcass in front of her. Her nose twitches slightly, whiskers moving just slightly, as she takes in the sight of her kill—the feel of the hunt not yet having faded from her. She could bask in the afterglow of it forever, she thinks. She would gladly let it rise up in her chest and wrap around her throat. She would gladly reduce her life to just this.
“It is,” she affirms, not caring if the mangled deer is what Jude thought was beautiful.
It is beautiful to Sochi because it is logical, it is easily understood. It is life.
She smiles lightly, to herself more than anything.
Because it is death, too. Perhaps that is what she likes most of all.
well, I can try to get you closer but I know you’d break your neck just to see the stars and if we don’t dare to hold it then this reckless wandering love was never ours
I was less than graceful, I was not kind
be out watching other lovers lose their spine
They have death in common—of course they do. Sochi, wearing death like a cloak upon her back, facing off with Jude, chasing death as an ouroboros. Both women tangled and feral in their own ways, matching grace with gluttony and vice versa.
The moon casts pale light and beckoning shadows. The silver dapples sway and blink as the wind rushes past the branches of the trees. The hiss of the leaves pairs nicely with the flicker of light floating back and forth across Sochi’s face—Jude knows that she will remember all of these little details, every individual hair and twitch of her nose. It is like love at first site but a little off, bloodied and misunderstood.
How do I become like that?
There Sochi sits in all of her beautiful certainty, opening the door to an entire second life. To a magic Jude craves.
“May I come closer?” this she murmurs even as she delicately picks her way to the tiger. Her voice tilts up and down in its reverence and sensuality. “What’s it like? Being a predator?”
The other mare looks at death with a reverence Sochi can understand. It is one of the simplest things in the world for her to understand—to truly know. In some ways, she’s carried it with her for her entire life. She’s worn is heavy across her shoulders. Felt the weight of it in her chest like stones. She’s known what it means to battle with it, to give into it, to command it. She has known all angles of it, to become it.
She no longer fears death the way that she used to.
Neither does she worship it.
Still, she understands that which flashes across the mare’s face and when she asks to come closer, she gives a brisk nod of her head—nearly dismissive in the casual way that she flicks her chin. At the question, she laughs, although the sound is not as dismissive as the motion. It is throaty as she rolls her feline shoulders and then, finally, shifts back into her equine form. The blood still runs down her chin and the feral look does not dim in the silver eyes anymore than it had in the yellow eyes of the tigress.
“I’m not sure you need me to explain it,” she finally says, the husk of her voice, her eyes moving to Jude’s and holding the gaze steady. “I am no less a predator like this than I was before.”
Sochi learned long ago that she did not need the heavy paws of the tiger to wear the title.
“You do not strike me as prey.”
well, I can try to get you closer but I know you’d break your neck just to see the stars and if we don’t dare to hold it then this reckless wandering love was never ours
I was less than graceful, I was not kind
be out watching other lovers lose their spine
Jude decides that the silver in Sochi’s eyes mocks the tranquil silver of the moon. The equine that stands before is just as fierce and as frightening as the tiger. She likes that—that control, the way Sochi tells her story with a feral essence she embraces and handles. Her magic is ale and Jude is positively drunk.
“You’d be right about that,” the pegasus muses, swishing tangled curls against her the back of her legs. Prey is vulnerable and frightened. Two emotions Jude swore she would never feel again, which is exactly why she offered her exhilarated neck to Sochi’s tigress. When she dies, it will be on her terms; she will welcome the afterlife even if her demise is brought on by the wrong footing on a cliff or forest fire she cannot escape.
This life is hers, all sweet and ripe and delicious for the taking.
Jude leans in with a secretive smile, lavender eyes twinkling with some sordid mischief.
“Though you might be the first to realize it,” she whispers. Her heart thrums wildly in her chest when she asks, “If I wanted you to cut me with those fangs of yours, would you do it?”
They square off and even though they are not entirely the same, they have similar threads that run through them. She recognizes it, responds to it on some primal level, but she manages to hold back with the barest of restraint. She uses silver threads of control to tie herself back, to keep herself from sinking into the absolute pit of her hunger from which she may never return—a hole she may never crawl out of.
The other mare agrees that she is not prey and Sochi only makes a noise of agreement in the back of her throat. Something that shows that she, too, knows what it is like to be thought of as prey and to know within her heart of hearts that she is not. To know that there is more to her than meets the eye.
But she doesn’t rise to the bait that the mare lays out so temptingly.
(Although she considers it.)
“No,” she says with a sharp smile, her teeth flashing behind her black lips, white and stained on the edges with her latest meal. She has never been one to be goaded into attacking if only because she doesn’t like the feeling of being ordered to attack. Sabra had tried it with her once and she had similarly dug in her heels. Something about being told to hunt took out all of the allure of the hunt itself.
Still, she doesn’t turn to leave or completely rebuff the pale mare.
“Although I would if I wanted to.”
After all, she always did what she wanted in the end.
she said a war ain't a war before both sides bleed
I was less than graceful, I was not kind
be out watching other lovers lose their spine
Jude would frown if the exhilaration was not sweeping her off the ground. She has neck stretched for the taking but this predator won’t be her demise, even if Jude finds it to be worthy one. A smile is what she offers instead, though this one is quiet and thoughtful.
“You’d make a beautiful murderer,” she states bluntly, a sliver of her wonderment still present in the phrase. “If you ever take it up, you should find me.” Jude’s smile turns into the ghost of mischief, and her lavender eyes glitter with the reflection of the silver moon. “Though I think I’d rather hunt by your side than die by your teeth.”
An exhale and a blink later—Jude studies the star-studded and scarred woman before her. She thinks for a moment that she REALLY sees her, sees the emotion that mingles so perfectly with the predator. Envy is green and sickly in Jude’s chest as she realizes what perfect harmony Sochi’s chaos and peace create. They spin together like yin and yang, and Jude’s chest seizes with the longing to be nestled between such balance.
“Where are you from? Are there more wild women there?”
Jude thinks she wouldn’t mind being swathed in beautiful, terrifying women.
Sochi hardly ever feels herself in perfect harmony. More often than not, she feels herself spinning out into the unknown—content to let herself live within the spaces of her chaos, blind to whatever damage she may be causing herself by ignoring it instead of simply dealing with it properly. Perhaps she’s always been this way. Perhaps she simply learned to bury things deep within her when she was a young girl pretending to be a normal horse instead of one who preferred the feel of fang and meat to root and grass.
Ever since then, she has learned to live in the tangled mess of her life.
Harmonized or not.
“I have made a beautiful murderer,” she replies simply, her lips pulling into a smile although there was little warmth to be found within it. “Although you will find the murdered don’t always see it that way.” It felt odd to frame it in those terms—murder—but she knew she had done more than just hunt. In Carnage’s quest, she had felt that mare go down beneath her jaws. When he had called again, she had been one of the first to answer, the first to let Rhonen’s blood flood her mouth.
It wasn’t a clean hunt; she did not try to lie to herself about that.
Still, she makes a similar noise of agreement again when Jude mentions that she would like to hunt at her side. She had only hunted with a few others—the first being Daye—but she wasn’t against the idea. She wasn’t against finding a partner who could walk alongside her; who could feel the same thrill as her.
“I was born in Nerine, if that’s what you’re asking,” she muses, although it has been more than a decade since she called the kingdom her home. “I don’t know where I currently live.” She rolls a shoulder. “I guess Loess.” Although it was getting murkier and murkier what the future held for her.
she said a war ain't a war before both sides bleed
I was less than graceful, I was not kind
be out watching other lovers lose their spine
“Nerine, huh?” Jude wonders aloud. She thinks that if a woman like this can come out of a barren land like that, then perhaps she should give it a try. Jude’s head cocks slightly to the left and a teasing smile lifts her soft, pale lips. The image of Sochi’s tigress stalking along the cliffs of Nerine is pleasant, but the foggy aesthetic is dried up at the mention of Loess. That, too, makes sense—though it will surprise Jude if she ever finds out Sochi uses her magic for some brash kingdom’s political gain.
“That’s not a particularly eager response, darlin’. You seem bigger than kingdoms, anyway,” Jude replies, toothy grin on her face. She thinks of Nerine and its singing winds, thinks how beautiful, dark Sochi must look with her mane so tousled. “I have to go now,” she says abruptly. “To Nerine.” Jude does not offer that Sochi is the deciding factor in where she might live next, but she does look quizzically at the tigress.
A soft sigh and a genuine, sad smile follow her contemplation before she adds, “My name is Peregrine Jude. I hope to see you again . . .” Jude pauses to turn away, then looks back with a wink. “Maybe in Nerine?”
The shadows swallow her as she leaves.
i've been blossoming alone over you
@[sochi] just a quick closer! if you're ever feeling it i'd love to thread them again <3
![[Image: sochi.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/rs3xFJR0/sochi.png)
