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  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


    I'm bad behavior but I do it in the best way; any
    #1

    violence

     
    The bones have always been a constant.
    She loves them; as much as she has or ever will love anything. It is her masterpiece, this craft, this menagerie of bones from a dozen different creatures. She touches it sometimes, gentle, the velvet of her lips on the white skull of a horse who lived and died long before Violence ever was; she’s traced the stag-horns she placed on its head, rearranged the crown of mouse skulls she encircled it with. The bones are hers, they have always been with her – making this creature had been easy as breathing. Like a thing meant to be.
     
    And she doesn’t think of them, not overmuch, the way one does not think of breathing, when she is relocated – violently, by invisible hands – to a mountain that is crowded with other horses, packed like a slaughterhouse. She weaves through them, and the bones follow. She leaves the mountain as quickly as she came, while the earth still trembles with aftershocks.
    (She does not know what transpired. She does not care. Let every kingdom fall and crumble.)
     
    But when she walks down the mountain, past some invisible line, the bones do not follow. They crumble behind her, and for a moment she doesn’t realize it, unless she suddenly realizes she is empty, aching, missing.
    She turns her head, and there they are, her bones, crumpled on the ground in a heap. She shakes her head, disbelieving, and tries to put them back together, but they don’t so much as twitch.
    They are no longer her bones. Now, they are just bones. Just trash.
    She tries to move back to the mountain, but invisible hands push her back. She is cast out.
     
    She feels pressure in her forehead, and a horn, black as obsidian, sprouts from her. It’s sharp and terrible but she’d break it off in an instant to bring back the bones.
    Instead, she cries out, a savage, hurting cry; furious without an entity to be furious at.
     

    I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips

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    #2

    They don’t have much besides each other. But they cling to one another as if their lives depend on it (and maybe they do). Malfunction leads their little band, Smear provides the heart, Skid the brains, and Wound has become the one who keeps them together. They each hold an important piece in their sibling-machine; they each remind the other that they are not monsters despite how the rest of the world views them. They are simply different. They don’t rely on friends or tricks or homelands or religion. They rely on each other and the company they share.

    The scream that fills the air alerts them. They’d only traveled so far up the mountain thus far, but the lack of proper oxygen and the rocky path had made it difficult for them to travel much further. Wound’s fast, thin breaths had ceased their journeying and so they had paused beside the trail. The pretty filly (pretty aside from her undeveloped right foreleg, complete with a hoof yet lacking the length to reach the ground) is now collapsed at the feet of Smear, her doe brown eyes closed in sleep. But at the sound of the screech, she wakes. Smear’s head jerks upward, the sound startling him from his dozing.

    Malfunction’s mouth tightens and he glances at Skid. The sound could be dangerous, and the four of them can’t move very fast. Among the group, they only have thirteen capable legs when they should have sixteen. Predators are a real thing, especially to the slow-moving herd of messed up siblings. Taking a step in the direction of the trail, Malfunction glances toward his siblings.

    “Smear, Skid, stay here with Wound. I’m going to go check it out. If I yell, run as fast as you can.” With a tight mouth and even tighter muscles, the silver bay stallion makes his way up the trail. He breathes in heavily, but the air is thin and it clouds his mind. For a brief moment, he hopes he won’t have a seizure. Rounding the corner, Malfunction spots a mare. He guesses the sound came from her.

    “Excuse me, ma’am. Are you alright?”

    MALFUNCTION, SKID, SMEAR, & WOUND
    hover over names
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    #3

    violence


    She does not expect her cry to be answered. Did not want it to be, for now, empty as she is (and it feels empty, without the bones, without the constant of keeping them erected). Others are no fun unless she can make the bones dance around them, unless she can prod into their minds (some of them are so delightfully open, she recalls the mare whom she had made fly from the cliff, who had landed with a twisted neck and a curl of blood at the corner of her mouth).

    But there are sounds, a distant murmur of voices she can’t make out and then a stallion appears, silver bay and framed by trees. Usually, she would send her bone-thing to greet him, a wolf-fanged mouth open in a macabre grin; a thing to test the waters on if they will interest her or not.

    Now, there is no such test, and she only looks upon him dully.
    “No,” she says simply – she is not all right, she is emptied, poured out in a pile of bones left on some invisible threshold, then adds, “I had something taken from me.”

    I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips

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    #4

    They have never felt the heart-wrenching pain of losing something they hold close to them. They are bound together in sibling love (it twines between them like the tendons holding bone to muscle, it is sewn with iron to keep them strong, it weaves along their hearts and ties them together) and nothing else anchors them down. They do not condemn themselves to the soul-binding love of things that can easily leave – such as traits or bone-dancing or flight. As long as they have each other, they are immensely content.

    Malfunction’s brow furrows with worry. Despair and frustration is an emotion he has felt before, and he does not wish it on anyone else. He takes a step closer to the mare, concern etched into his features. “Can we help?” He says ‘we’ although she can only see one. But, having been eavesdropping the whole time, the other three appear around the corner as if beckoned by a master. They are jumbled and roughened and incredibly defective, but the concern and willingness to help is written across their faces in plain ink.

    MALFUNCTION, SKID, SMEAR, & WOUND
    hover over names


    incredibly short i am so sorry D:
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    #5
    I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife


    It is the anguished cry that draws me.

    The culmination of aching, lashing loss, it seeks the grudging comfort of the air surrounding. My ears twitch with the sound; it wakens something in me. I blink - once, twice, perhaps three times (I am suddenly aware of this motion, having once prolonged the time from one to the other, finding the resulting sensation displeasing). The unearthly keen fades into the cool winter's air and I draw my gaze to its point of origin. Shaking the snow from my coat, one hoof in front of the other - there was a time that it did not matter, that I would have simply appeared beside her ...

    My nostrils flare wide, natural senses sharpened by the loss of those which I've depended on since birth. Three scents, all strangers to me. Another lingers, further than the others. I shift so that I am downwind of them, careful thought given to every step, but now they are moving away. I am sure that they've not yet detected me and so I trail quietly behind their grotesque parade.

    They ask her for help - or is it she that asks for help? I ache to slip into the girl's body, her short and shriveled limb beckoning, begging me to slip into her skin. My throat is dry; parched. I sniff, muzzle pinched, attention shifting to the black mare. Have we met before? I smile, slowly, the gesture odd, uncomfortable on my mouth but there nonetheless. "That was you," I state simply. I study her for signs of anguish, hiding the eagerness from the lines of my own face. There is some there, perhaps not as much as I like, and my lips and ears twist in consternation. I mull over the notes of the cry, poking, prodding, vibrant brown eyes meeting dulled, anguished ones. "Is there life beyond it?" I eye the elegance of her throat openly, wonderingly.

    Niklas
    Hybrid, Black, Set x Anaxarete, Demon
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    #6

    violence


    She isn’t sure that she wants him to be close – isn’t sure she can keep herself from hurting him, if he is close, because it is in her nature to hurt. Because she is hurting, and it is a new experience, a unique one, and one she wants rid of, one she wants spread to them, the way a virus leaps from host to host.
    “Do you…” she trails off. She does not ask for help. She does not.
    But, she is lost. She is changed. She is without her bones.
    “Do you know what happened?”
    There had been a decree, on the mountain, but she had not listened. She has never been very good at listening.

    But before he can answer – before she can question that we, said by a man alone – another comes forth. He has a strange look in his eye – lost, like he does not know his own skin. She knows it – a primal part of her recognizes it.
    Loss.
    She does not know him (though had they met earlier, as whole beings, she would have delighted in him, would have tried to jump into his skin and know what demons do).
    “Who are you?” she demands of him, for he is close, and she flattens her ears back. She does not know him. She does not know he might have enchanted her, had they met on different terms.

    I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips

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    #7

    Another creeps up (stealthy, silent, stalking) and they don’t notice until he is practically on their tails. They should have been paying closer attention, but the distraction of the forlorn mare had them focusing on the forward rather than the backward. Skid and Smear move, guarding Wound as carefully as if she were a precious gem. To them, she is. The filly sighs heavily, resting against Skid, innocent to the danger surrounding her.

    Malfunction’s mouth works into a frown at her questions. They’d noticed Beqanna’s tossing and turning, just as everyone had. Some of their usual haunts had disappeared into a fine mist they couldn’t venture past, while some of them remained just as they had always been. It was curious and confusing and contradictory, and it had partially led to their curious exploration up the Mountain.

    The other (the stallion who causes Malfunction to inch closer to his siblings) speaks casually yet it sends chills down the brothers’ spines. Wound is too preoccupied in the fatigued daydreaming to notice much else than the rocky soil beneath her feet and the comforts of her brothers. Smear’s ears pin in a split second, disliking the tone of voice the stallion spoke in. Malfunction still takes a step toward the mare, noting the way the other looks upon her neck as if he might tear it out.

    “I do not know what has happened.” The eldest moves closer to the mare, and his eyes plead a silent warning. “But perhaps we could walk down the Mountain and find out together?” He keeps a watchful gaze on the stallion (with his creeping eyes and licking tongue and lustful mouth) and then glances toward his siblings. “It’s too thin up here for my sister, so we’re walking back. You’re welcome to join us.” Run, pretty girl. Run before he gets you.

    MALFUNCTION, SKID, SMEAR, & WOUND
    hover over names
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