"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
11-01-2016, 11:56 AM (This post was last modified: 11-01-2016, 11:56 AM by violence.)
violence
There’s blood on her mouth. Violence was born with a predator’s mind, no doubt – child of magicians and monsters, how could she not? – but until recently her hunting had always been by proxy. She’d known what it was to kill, had done so countless times while inhabiting the body of her more monstrous father or sister (she envies them, begrudges them their armored spines and feral smiles). She’s never been able to do so herself, the time and opportunity had never quite presented itself. Until. Until everything was stripped away, every piece of her bone-magic, and in its place grew a weapon – a horn, sharp and shiny – and a man came wandering at the right place in the right time. She didn’t know his name, but she knew his blood was warm. She’s left the corpse, and most of the blood has dried to a faint tackiness on her dark skin. She savors the feeling, delights in the thrill of dried blood cracking across her skin with her movements. It almost makes up for not having the bones. Almost. She walks in the meadow like she owns it, proud and furious. Walks and sometimes catches their eyes but they turn away quick, because her fever-brightness might be catching. She’s breathing heavy, too, from excitement and exertion both. Then, a boy catches her attention – the reason doesn’t matter, it’s simply the heave of fate – and she gravitates. “Hello,” she says. She says it too loud, almost shouts it, the word sickened by her own delirium. She doesn’t take her eyes off of him.
may these words be the first to find your ears the world is brighter than the sun now that you're here
If there is violence in his blood, then it is buried deep, hidden within the furthest generations of his bloodline. He wonders sometimes if Heartfire has such a capacity, if his sister is all the things he is not, if she would ever use her abilities to harm someone. She could, it would be easy enough – but, was she capable. Except when he watches her, when he sees her, the dark seems to dissipate until all he can see is the one that is his other half, the life that he is tethered to.
Then, she is just his sister.
Then, he cannot see the way her shadows have come to find him, too.
And it is there, that violence, buried beneath the layers of so many generations. But it isn’t pushed back as far as he thinks it is, not hidden so deep that it cannot find him. It waits somewhere, as it has waited for all of them, festering and rotting in the darkest parts of his heart for something to change him, to ruin him, to break him open so that it can spill over and fill in those cracks and crevices.
It is there even if he pretends he cannot feel it.
It is there.
He shifts uneasily beneath the trees at the edge of the meadow, using their shade to conceal the deep black of his skin since the shadows no longer hear him, no longer swallow him like dark fog as they had since birth. He feels naked without them, vulnerable to the eyes that rove and catch like burrs over his face, over his unease, over those black and white feathered wings. It was easier to be invisible, made hazy by the swell of darkness from his skin. It was easier before.
His eyes sharpen and catch on a black mare, and he cannot help but cringe away from her boldness, from her ease, from the way she is all the things he is not. He turns away fully, ready to let the shadows swallow him, but a voice rends open the silence and he finds his eyes drawn warily back. It is her. He knew it would be, he could hear the wild fervor in her voice, the same that flashed in her eyes and was smeared in red across her body. She drifts closer and he does not move, he can smell the sharpness of iron, the bitterness of blood, and his wariness holds him fast.
Hello. She had said, had shouted at him, and so his jaw softens and his mouth splits to let loose his tongue. “Hello.” He echoes back, but the greeting is hollow, empty. He doesn’t know why he asks - he doesn’t think he cares, but it feels like something his parents would have asked and because they are better than him, better than that dark in his heart, he will ask, too. "Are you hurt?" But he is still hollow.
She would prefer to shed her familial burden entirely, as they mean little to her, especially now. Previously, her father and sister had been vessels, monstrous things she could pilot with terrible glee. And her mother had been a source of magic, though mother had never deigned to change Violence in any way, though she had begged – had begged for Cthylla to make her features sharper, crueler, to make her the kind of beast her father was.
But mother had denied her, selfish and stupid, had plodded on with her dull life of night-worship and shadow-spinning, leaving Violence to carve out her own way.
Of course now, she carves with blunt, useless tools – lacking her necromancy, her possession, she is left only with a gleaming horn and her own wicked smile. It’s hideous, to live like this.
But she perseveres.
And now there is this boy, who is dull and alone, and she is here to change that as best she can.
He asks are you hurt? and she laughs, high and ringing. She shakes her head, half expecting blood droplets to fling from her lips, but it has dried to a lipstick-tackiness and stays put upon her.
“No,” she says, “I’m just fine.”
The blood suggests otherwise, but she stands tall, proud.
“My name is Violence,” she tells him, “who are you? Are you alone out here?”
