"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 feels a strong compulsion - blood calls to blood, but it is not of the matriarch of their line, Scalped’s blood does not beckon her forth. No, it is something far more sinister than that…
The chestnut overo climbs to her feet, shakes the moss off her back that has collected there. She has slept longer than she is accustomed to as of late, and dreamt for the first time in a long time. Her dreams are tucked away carefully in a cobwebbed corner of her brain, pushed back and far into forgetfulness, but strange noises still ring in her ears (the left is a tad bit shorter than its twin) until the quiet of the night calms them. Tarnished will be mad when he finds that she is not in his forest, that she has escaped it for a few hours but she looks forward to the punishment that comes of her disobedience - it forces him to focus on her for once, instead of the madness that drives him, it will drive him to concentrate on her and she shivers happily at the thought of how he’ll hurt her this time (the scar on her neck throbs in remembrance, delicious and achy).
But blood and defiance fuel her, and she leaves the redwoods at a run - blood calls to blood!
She runs long and hard, heedless of the branches that grasp at her fur and draw thin scratches against her skin. Rivers think to stop her, for a drink or a fast current, but they are no match for her relentless pace and she is driven over and through them until at last, panting with exhaustion, she comes to the edge of another forest. Trees seem to be a theme for her; the forest is dark in menace, and she pauses to sniff the air for anything that might a scent familiar to her. There is none, but the smell of rot hangs thick and heavy on the air. Hm… she muses to herself, rot? Her mother told her in brief detail about the stallion that helped make her, he reeked of the grave - like what she smells now.
Sinew tracks the zombie-stallion down; he is truly hideous! A sight to behold from talon to ear-tip and she has never seen anything so despicably beautiful (besides her mammoth-horse pet, besides her telepathic daughter with the burning owl-wings, besides Tarnished), that her mouth gapes open - not impolitely, but in awe of him. “You,” she manages to murmur past the wonder that crowds her tongue, “are my father, I think.” Him, in all his maggot-infested gape-fleshed glory is the thing that rode her mother’s pale immortal back and made her, Sinew. She smiles shyly, flattered to have found him so easily that she overlooks the putridity of him as it clogs her nostrils, and comes closer - probably closer than many have ever dared to come unless begging for their death at his teeth and talons.
He is so beautiful, so cruel to look upon that she has to shut her eyes against the sight of him even as she savors it. Looking at him is the equivalent to biting into a plum that has gone sour, and Sinew finds that once she opens her eyes, she cannot look away from him.
How long has it been since it last fucked and saw a product of its acts? Children are a figment of its memory ever since the twins that murdered their mother. It wonders if its children and grandchildren are still running rampant somewhere, watered down by lowly bloodlines outside its own. It wonders if there is still a legacy left in the Tundra or the Chamber because it certainly hasn’t scoured Beqanna to see for itself. While there was potential and greatness in them, very few of its children upheld their duties and made anything of themselves; Infection scoffs at them and mentally disowns them. They’re worms.
Its spine rolls in an awkward stretch as it stirs beneath the shade of an old tree. The soil is gauged by its claws, the air poisoned by its putrid, rotting stench. It only really knows solitude and thrives in what silence it holds until there is a crack and a rustling that shatters that delicate balance. It turns slowly, never in a hurry, never afraid of what’s to come. The girl is young, curious. She looks at him with her mouth agape and her eyes wide enough to wholly drink in the sight of him. A wretched creature he is, chewed and spat out by the bowels of hell and yet she seemingly admires him for a reason that she quickly admits. It inches forward and closes the space between them. Her body heat unfurls across his mangled flesh, kissing its face and reminding it of what it once was like to be young and mortal. ”Cute,” it growls with its lips curled in a snarl, ”and how do you come to that conclusion?” Once, years ago, women wanted to be had, to feel a relentless king on their back, but now they are repulsed by the maggots and blackened holes of its body. Now it rarely breeds and spreads its chaos across Beqanna.
The girl is not old enough to have been conceived during its prime. She shows signs of a more recent birthdate and it wonders which masochist mare wanted to press against a befouled, has-been. Although still powerful, still dangerous, it doesn’t carry the tales that it used to.
infection
infection by aeris | html by insane | picture c darkcloud013.deviantart.com
She understands that he views her as young and silly -- they all do; it is a mistake that is continuously made but it favors her, allows her to appear to them in the flush of innocence and they think no ill of her.
But she is immortal, and has died a thousand times over in her dreams each night.
He tries to menace her, and she holds back the laughter that crowds her throat. Tarnished was the first to try that, she remembers fondly. He had changed his shape for her and made his eyes go black as the space between the stars, and she had been unafraid then, just as she is know in the face of his snarling stench and mangled flesh. She takes his question as a challenge and her own teeth are bared in a smile; “Because my mother smelled of it - the grave-rot, like you do - for weeks before my birth.” Sinew could tell him the mare’s name but he is not loath to remember it, Scalped had never been much for recognition of any sort.
Scalped though, knew to pick the best stallions to sire her sons and daughters, and even in his state of perpetual decomposition, she had recognized that spark of greatness in him. Sinew knew the origin of herself better than most did, knew even that her mother was rank enough to attract the queen’s attention and become a recipient of a magic-made rainshower and she starts to tell him as much; “They said she smelled so bad that the golden queen of the land conjured a rainshower just to cleanse her of your filth.” She means no harm by it - it is truth; he is filth in the flesh, his rot is like a plum that blackens over time, grows shrivelled and fat with worms that tunnel in and out of holes in the flesh of it, just as they do him. She should be repulsed but she isn’t; he is far too beautiful to be reviled and yet, revulsion clings tenaciously to her gut, making it roil even as she never takes her black eyes off of him.
“Who else could smell like this?”
What she means to say, is who else could smell like you - of death and life that should not be, but is?
“You gave her your name, whatever coin that is in these lands.” but Sinew does not name him yet, for all that his moniker slithers across her tongue, vile and dry. Instead she says, “You were a king once, were you not?”
