• Logout
  • 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


    to infinity and beyond; margaux
    #1
    Naturally, Glim would gravitate from the field and it’s mess of claiming and courtship to a much less occupied land that only bristled with trees and quiet. 

    She traipsed down paths that only the deer and fox took with her shadow-friend following obediently behind. Glim had made him in a fawn’s image, spotted hide and all! He was a roil of darkness that had changed from pygmy hippo to fawn the moment she’d decided on a direction to head them in. The shadow-friend suffered her ever-changing antics stoically for the most and was content to tag along behind her in a gracefully excited prance while she surged ahead in an ungainly bundle of buckskin spotted fur.  

    It’s deep and dark here.
    You seem rather delighted by that fact. 

    Glim was. 
    Anywhere that the darkness could amass and churn was a good place to be. She didn’t harbor any belief that shadows were inherently good or bad - they just were. All else was up to the one that could manipulate them like she could. 

    The premise of good and bad was familiar to her but she’d yet to decide if she was more of one than the other. This concept of having to chose to be almost solely one and show little of the other was almost beyond her tiny comprehension. Her brain struggled to understand why she couldn’t just be like the shadows did since everyone had the propensity to be both lying inside them. 

    But these were heavy thoughts for little Glim who gave a flick of her stubby tail to banish them from her mind. She set off down a different path with the shadow-fawn in tow and a string of giggles interrupting the cathedral quiet of the forest they found themselves in. She couldn’t say why she felt giddy all of a sudden but Glim didn’t question it. The assumption was made that it just happened to be so because she was in the best company she could be in: trees and shadows. 

    In a way, it was almost like coming home.
    (If she’d ever had one to compare it to.)

    @[Margaux]
    Reply
    #2
    The woods near the playground were a welcome respite from summer's warmth. The pony girl had been trotting about without aim for a little while now, simply stretching out her sturdy legs. The dun lass was nearing her full, if insubstantial height, and the puffs of mane and tail she'd worn as a child now lengthened into red and white streamers that constantly obscured her vision. Bother. 

    Huff puff, huff puff... the trees were thick now, nary a sunbeam reaching the floor. It was almost cold, almost. Cold and dark. What an unusual place to find a child. A child? She paused her rambling walk to look harder. Yes, a child. There in the shadows, as though she were borne of them, instead of a flesh and blood mother. How peculiar. The glowing warmth in her chest intensified as she trotted towards the leggy form. By the time she was close enough to greet the young stranger she felt incandescent, though no light emitted. It was pure and simple happiness, and it radiated like an unseen bubble when she was in the company of others. 

    "Hello!" She chirped brightly, finally near enough to see the unaccompanied child clearly. Pretty little mouse, with her spotted cloak. "Are you lost, sugar cube? I can help you find your folk, if that's what you're after." The rosy female offered. Not that she was certain this was the case. The dappled filly didn't look lost. Didn't seem any kind of concerned at all. The pony lifted her snub head a bit, looking about for others nearby. She might have missed them. Nope. No one else, it didn't look like. Huh. She turned back to the girl, gentle smile still in place. "I'm Margaux, by the by! I live close by." Was added, while she bobbed in place excitedly. New faces were such a joy!

    @[glim]
    Reply
    #3
    Here, the sun couldn’t beat down on her back as fierce as it had. There was some respite to be found beneath the trees from the summer heat. Even though she appreciated the bright fingers of sunlight that would pry the sleep from her eyes first thing in the morning and dry the dew on her skin. 

    But the sun always made her shadow-friend more hazy and insubstantial. Now beneath the closely knit canopy of branch and leaf, he gained a new vigor and became thicker and more solid. Except he was too busy prancing around on cloven feet no bigger than her own, still in the fawn’s shape she had given him. 

    Dim, what are you doing?
    Prancing! 
    Do deer really prance? 
    I don’t know, you made me. How many times do I have to keep reminding you of that? 

    That’s usually how their conversations went - Glim questioning what her companion was doing and the yellow-eyed shadow retorting that it was usually something the animal whose shape she had given him would naturally do. His responses were often met with frowning silence or loud giggles and he could never predict which it would be. Like right now - he could feel more so than see the giddiness drain from her as a frown pulled at her lip. 

    Before he knew it, he was transformed again. This time he changed from a little baby deer into a not so particularly nice or pretty creature. Oh very funny! He hopped about on the ground and flapped his wings. I thought so, came Glim’s smug response as she stared down at the shadow-buzzard. 

    You couldn’t have made me into something fierce? he bemoaned. Glim ignored the frustration and tiny hint of sadness that his tone implied. Keep it up and I’ll turn you into a beetle! She snapped her milk-teeth in his avian face before turning her attention back to the forest. Glim wasn’t really annoyed with him, but this was how their banter and companionship thrived. 

    Dim knew she loved him. Even if she had turned him into something that craved the rotten leftovers of some other predator’s kill. But a buzzard, really? he asked of her without receiving a reply before noticing that she had gone rather spellbound and smiling. Glim?

    She wasn’t listening to him anymore. In fact, Glim was staring at the sun pony that quite literally came out of nowhere. Even the shadow-buzzard finally noticed her when he turned his head and tilted it upward to focus one yellow curious eye on the newcomer to their neck of the woods. The pony oozed a bright smiling cheer like syrup which only reminded Glim of that one time she’d licked the murky amber stuff off the trunk of a maple tree just to satisfy her curiosity. Now was kind of like that except she didn’t like the pony-mare; she just stared at her as a slow half-smile came to her baby mouth.

    “Uh hello there!” 
    God, why did she sound so cheery herself? It’s not like Glim was ever unhappy or balked at being happy - she had moments of both to be sure but this was an unusual cheeriness not common to her that even earned her a strange look from the shadow-buzzard that the sun pony should be able to see quite clearly now. Except Dim made himself more prominent by taking a wing-flapping hop up onto Glim’s small back.

    Now a grown buzzard should probably be too heavy to sit comfortably on a months’ old foal’s back but there he sat anyway, looking smug now himself. Glim seemed to not mind his weight since he was a shadow-made thing and when necessary, could assume enough mass to defend her though no moment in her terribly short life had ever come to that yet. She tipped her head to the side in momentary thought before saying, “No thanks, we’re not lost.” and it flew out of her mouth in a rather quick happy burst followed by an actual smile that was certain to hang about her lips.

    “You live nearby?” 
    Home and permanence always fascinated her. Maybe because she lacked those very things? She had a mother and twin brothers, and a father that knew nothing of how to raise a child like her but they always moved and impermanence was as familiar to her as the buzzard on her back. Who gave her a little peck on the wither with his beak to remind her that they were not quite alone. “Oh... I’m Glim and he’s Dim.” she said with a jerk of her head to indicate the shadow-bird who puffed himself up and ruffled his feathers in an attempt to look important.

    @[Margaux]
    Reply
    #4
    The rosy girl blinked as her eyes finally focused on the filly's phantasmic companion. The eerie shadow looked remarkably like a vulture hanging over her shoulder, watching the unfolding scene impassively. And she wasn't lost, which was a relief. Still, this was an unusual place to find a foal so young. 

    "In a manner of speaking, yes I do. I wander quite a bit, though." She commented, considering how long she'd been on her own. She had been, really. She had no family to speak of. Fyr still followed her around some days, but as the foxling had reached maturity, he'd been more occupied with being a fox. It was a sad train of thought. Manners took over though, when the filly introduced herself and her companion. Truly, this girl seemed content with the shadows. Her best friend seemed to be one. How counter to the sunshine lady's own personality; Margaux sought out sun and warmth wherever she went. 

    Her head dipped in a polite bow, her smile unwaveringly bright. "Well, it is just an absolute pleasure to make the pair of you's acquaintance! Glim and Dim, that is such a sweet rhyme. So where are you two heading?" She asked, glancing at the gloomy trees again. So dreary, so dark. Though little Glim seemed right at home. It took all types, she supposed. 

    This is not what she had expected when she set out this morning. But the warmth in her heart was undeterred by the dark surroundings. It never was, when she was around others. Maybe that's why she was alone. No one liked being manipulated, even if that manipulation was of the warm and fuzzy sort. 

    @[glim]
    Reply
    #5
    Glim is used to the unusual. 

    Her entire existence has been fostered in the unusual since her mother could mutate her flesh into any animal under the sun including dragons. Even her older (half - but Glim doesn’t deal in halves, blood is blood after all) brother could manifest a plethora of diseases that could kill as quick as he could heal them. She could fashion army out of sheer darkness if she wished it but settled for a shapeshifting shadow-friend instead.

    No there was nothing usual about her family except for the brother’s often gone twin and her own father. They could claim no extraordinariness about them but were no less loved because of that. Perhaps being so lacking made them extraordinary in their own right. Family dynamics were strange but fascinating or would have been if Glim had given them greater thought. 

    Basically the point was that Glim is unusual and comes from an unusual existence that leads her to perform unusual feats of the everyday kind. If a young foal barely weaned should not be traipsing through the forest unaccompanied, then she is the one to do it. That probably just makes her contrary more than anything else since she isn’t really all that unusual at first glance. Then again Glim is just Glim.

    and Glim is snapping back to the moment with a peck to her spotty skin from Dim’s beak. Pay attention, he chides gently. I am, she spits back with a tiny stomp of a hoof. It is the mention of wandering that has caught her attention and pinned it fast to the rosy filly-mare (Glim couldn’t really say which she was - the girl seemed neither but somewhere in between) with a sharp dark-eyes gaze of interest. 

    “Where do you wander to?” she asks for curiosity’s sake. Glim wanders as well. That’s how she ended up separate from her mother and her father. She just couldn’t really seem to stay for too long in any given place. There was just way too much of the world to see! Not that she found it necessary to see ALL of the world but enough to satisfy the wanderlust that seemed as much of her as blood and bone were.

    Glim tipped her head to the side. She’s unusually chipper... she said to Dim. It might just be the right amount of chipper for her. he replied back while puffing out his chest-feathers and readjusting his wings against his sides with a flap and a buzzard-noise that left his throat. Glim snorted then realized that it might be rather impolite because Margaux might think it was directed at her. 

    She have an exasperated sigh before fixing the buzzard that had flown off her back in retreat with that a not so very nice stare i.e. murderous. Except she’d just revive the shadow anyway so she seized him with her power and cast him unkindly into the shape of a newt. After that she ignored him in favor of answering the question, “Why, everywhere!” and it came out with a chuckle.

    I feel weird, not usually this... bubbly.
    Dim - not impressed with being turned into a newt - said nothing. 

    Some help you are, she murmured and left it at that.

    @[Margaux]
    Reply




    Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)