"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
01-27-2019, 07:57 PM (This post was last modified: 01-27-2019, 08:13 PM by Scorch.)
WATCH THE FLAMES CLIMB HIGH INTO THE NIGHT
Originally, her plan had been to go to the river, to use the burble of the stream as a cover for any noise she might making while giving birth; indeed she had even spent a week there, attempting to find the perfect spot. But throughout her journeys, she had constantly been subject to prying eyes and ears, of the equine kind and of others. The life-giving nature of the stream meant that many gathered to it at all times of the day, and Scorch had no control over that, anyway; so, fat with child and sullen with depression, the mare made the last-minute trip from the river to the forest.
Having arrived with just enough time to find a perfectly secluded thicket, complete with a bed of pine needles and all, the mare awaited the arrival of her child. Ironically, the babe chose now to wait, wriggling as though to get more comfortable in his or her position. No, thought Scorch irritably, swinging her head around to impulsively and uselessly bite at the incredibly swollen skin of her barrel. No, don't you dare relax in there - you get out this instant. Though she spoke to the babe in this manner, it was with little to no love; where affection ought to have punctuated her brusque thoughts, only a dire need for haste and for solitude remained.
She knew what she needed to do, whether or not anyone else knew it, or thought her a monster for it. She had made herself a monster enough times over now that this would barely be another infraction upon the list she had made for herself, a list which enumerated each and every one of her sins in excruciating detail. The only catch to her plan lay stowed in the fact that she would have to do it without getting caught; and she would have to do it fast, without getting attached to the body of the child that she did not want.
After all, it was not as if Brunhild had stuck around, or had expressed interest in the maintenance of the life she had unwarrantedly embedded in Scorch's womb. The child would be born of two Amazonian legends, and would die the same, quickly and without ceremony. That or else some other mother would come rescue him or her, and that would be that; as Scorch was raised better by her faux-mother, so too would the child. At least, she told herself as much; told it to herself so often, in fact, that she rarely came to question the soundness of her judgement any more.
At long last, more than a day after her arrival, the pangs of birth began. Dread crept idly into Scorch's blood, with the laziness of any trickster, his fingers toying with the veins leading to her heart as though only half interested in the power he held there. A single tug and he could undo her, could send her back to her motherly nature, could send send her back to being a woman worthy of respect and sympathy. Dread leaned his head back and kicked his feat up on the recliner of her being, watching with slowly blinking eyes and a distracted smile as she went through the birth, unfeeling and determinedly silent.
Standing over top of the wet, feebly kicking child, Scorch took a step towards the entrance of the thicket; but at the last second, dread gave a tiny flick of his finger, and stopped her. Sick to her stomach and almost unbearably calm, the mare leaned down to careful extricate the birth fluids blocking the child's nose; and, careful not to glimpse its sex, she then turned, ghosting into the night without a second look back.
Scorch
Once Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle
@[Brennen] @[Shahrizai] @[Hestoni] @[brunhild] first two I tagged since they expressed interest in stopping this from actually happening, second two are being tagged since it is relevant to their characters and i need people to witness how horrible scorch is because wow she is horrible
feels like December knows me well
He curled close in his mother's womb, squeezing himself into as small a ball as possible in the vain effort to remain here, inextricable from her and her love - if he could even call it that. Truth be told he could not call much anything with the small beginnings of his consciousness, but what he did know was that the body harbouring him held little warmth for him. He felt parasitic, and yet needy, not knowing how to handle the fact that his existence repulsed the body responsible for transitioning him from unborn to born. He did not know how to handle the small reverberations made by her striking him through her skin, except to curl tighter and to hope that he may never come face to face with the monster he loved.
That he may never come face to face with the mother who did not want him.
Of course, he could never squeeze himself smaller than the days made him grow larger; and eventually the one came which would herald his transition from unborn to born. He knew it the moment his home caved in around him, as he faced to collapse of the only nation he had ever known. For a time the child scrambled wildly in the womb, as if in an attempt to claw his way deeper into the recesses of his mother - but she pushed against his efforts, infinitely more powerful and practiced at him in every way. To him, her will was his law; and her will was certainly not in his favour.
The first thing he knew upon exiting the womb was the coolness of the earth. The second was that he could not breathe. What should have taken a moment to accomplish took his mother nearly a minute, leaving the wet black colt to flail miserably on the forest floor, accruing pine needles in the mess of his coat. He should also have felt the way they poked and pierced his flesh, and he should have felt the firm warmth of his mother's tongue cleaning away the afterbirth which covered his small figure; he should have felt many things, but he only felt the snot being cleared away, and then nothing.
He could not even open his eyes or perk his ears for the wetness of it all, and for the hopelessness which bloomed like the flower of death in the slim width of his chest. Trembling, he lay, knowing only the instinctual fear of one abandoned.
so give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light 'cause oh that gave me such a fright
He has become used to the constant feeling of distress from her, and he has been too cowardly to do anything about it. First, it had been that she was pregnant again – not with him, and not with Hestoni. The bay warrior knew he had no right to be upset about that, not right to the acute roiling hurt that it caused in him, but that didn’t stop him from being hurt. In a way he’d always known he was not her “one”, but in the absence of her ‘husband’, he had really thought they had something. Scorch had made it clear that wasn’t so. Then, Hestoni had returned, and he’d kept away, knowing neither of them would want to see him. It was remarkably easy to make yourself scarce when you had magic. He knows as her friend he should have gone to her when he knew that she’d quarreled with her true mate, but his own hurt had kept him away.
Even now, the spike in her distress isn’t enough in itself to make him change his mind, not until the tone of it changes. He wouldn’t admit that he is monitoring her, alert to changes in her, until this change…it scares him. It’s not her. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but simply thinks of the movement of waves and in one moment he’s in Nerine and the next he’s blinking in the gloom of the forest, aware at once of the colt at his feet but also of the faintest of sounds in the underbrush, someone moving away. It’s disorienting a moment, the sheer unlikelihood of this situation, and then what’s happening becomes sharply, painfully clear. The magician lowers his dark nose for the briefest of moments, ensuring that breath rises and falls in the boy’s chest, and then he turns bright eyes towards the gloom and the voice that snaps out of him isn’t one he would usually use with any friend, much less Scorch.
”Scorch!” the single word lashed into the silence is fire covered in ice, and it demands her attention. It’s a single syllable but the threat in it is made clear, and she will not misunderstand. It says, ‘get back over here, or I’ll make you’. It says, ‘I’ve never forced you to do anything and I’ve always been startlingly hands-off in situations like this but I won’t let you do this without facing me first’. Somehow it even says, ‘We’re not in a good place but I love you anyway, and this is not you’. He doesn’t say anything else to her, simply waits with the expectation that if she doesn’t heed his warning it’s not like she can hide from him when he comes seeking her out with that fury still boiling in his veins.
He turns his attention instead to the boy, folding his legs and dropping to the ground beside the newborn with a gentle hum that is in stark contrast to the word he’d yelled. He’s no stranger to birth and babies, and he takes upon himself the job she’d abandoned, cleaning up the boy and offering his own body heat in the coolness of the dark. “Well now, it’s not all that bad. Or, well, it might be but it won’t stay that way. I’m Brennen, my little man, and I’m sure we’ll get your name out of your mother before you have to worry too much about it.”
but I will hold as long as you like just promise me we'll be alright
It's so terribly easy to forget the heartaches of the world, tucked safely on the island as they have been these last years. But the recent violence that had erupted in his home had reminded him that even here they cannot hide forever. Cannot truly forget the world that exists beyond their home.
These thoughts had been much on his mind lately. So much so that when his eldest daughter reaches out to him, he is not nearly as surprised as he should be. It is rare that Heartfire has reason to visit, and so when she does, he knows things must have become desperate.
That his daughter had noticed his mother was troubled tells him he should've gone to visit long before now. He loves Heartfire dearly, but she'd never been the most compassionate or emotive of women, and it would take something dire to bring her here.
So he leaves immediately, without question.
The forest feels heavy and somber, though it is alive with the sounds of spring. It is his mood, he knows, his worry for the mother he has always loved so dearly. The shadows sense his disquiet, curling around him, darkening the moonlight that leaks through the trees around him.
He finds her just where Heartfire had shown him, her gray form disappearing into the dark. The scent of blood and birth permeates the air, telling him there is more to this story than he had known. There is another already there, curled beside the child. His intentions seem good, so Shah turns his attention to where his mother had retreated, quietly following her footsteps.
“Ma,” he whispers into the dark, pleading concern heavily infused into that single syllable. “Please, come back.”
She got no farther then a few yards from the thicket before his voice materialized in her mind, following only the single syllable shout of her name into the open air. It at once built up her walls and tore them down, bringing a sob to her throat even as her steely eyes blinked once, unphased. A part of her screamed to turn and to run to the child she had left on the bed of pine, but another part longed only to continue walking; to where, it mattered not. Into the ocean for all she cared. Into a place where this all would end; where no one could reach into her mind and play the one chord which would bring her to her sense.
We're not in a good place but I love you anyway, and this is not you.
She wanted to throw these words in Brennen's face, to spit on his love for her as she had spat on all the good things in her life. A wordless rage simmered and burned at the edges of her, and she knew he would feel it; would feel all the pent up anger and resentment she felt, not only in general but also directly towards the child. Unbidden, she had transferred all of her self-hatred to the growing fetus during the months it occupied the space of her stomach; it was easier to pin the blame of everything on to something that would die within a few hours, than to face it herself in her immortality.
The tiny sliver that remained true to her prior self cried softly in the deep recesses of her heart. She cried for all that had been lost; and, gently, with the last of the sway she held over the monster that now stood in Scorch's place, she reminded herself that this wasn't her.
The stony facade of her visage faltered, a blurriness overcoming her night vision and rendering her useless.
Ma.
The single word took advantage of her momentary vulnerability, the voice of her most beloved son reaching into the single brick missing from her wall of calloused cruelty to tear down its very foundation. A sob rang grotesquely through the dark shadows of the moon-lit forest, but she expected no reassurance; she had stopped expecting reassurance long ago, when she began to make bad decisions for a living.
Please, come back.
Sucking back her sobs (an ability she has become unfortunately good at, since Hestoni left her), the pitiful excuse of a mare nodded her head and turned to obey. Tears yet slid down her mutilated face, but it was now in silence. She did not know what to say to Shahrizai; the fact that he remained by her side at all in these moments was a mystery she would never solve. Her most well-treated son, here to watch her with her worst-treated son. She had no explanation for why, had no words of thanks - was instead consumed by the emptiness she had created for herself, barely feeling anything at all except for dread's nimble fingers running through her thin, thin hair.
When she returned to the thicket, she blinked and swallowed back vomit. The sight of her lover and best friend laying sweetly next to what she now saw to be her son rendered her shattered, though nothing visibly changed about her. Another sob built in her chest, and it left soundlessly. She hadn't the mind to do anything; hadn't the mind even to apologize for what she had almost done.
Not knowing whether he would support her weight or push her away, Scorch leaned her head into Shahrizai, and heard Brennen mention the child's name. Ironically, and against all odds, the mare had an immediate answer; it slipped from her lips listlessly, the same as a sigh might from one on their death bed.
"Arctyrus. His name is Arctyrus. He is Brunhild's."
She blinked slowly, lethargically, having now fully dissociated from the pain she felt for having effectively abandoned her own child out of pure selfishness. Her fragmented psyche simply could not handle the weight of that, and instead took to the skies, floating high above the scene and only sometimes properly registering what went on down below.
"I..." But she could not finish the sentence, could not admit that she did not think she could keep him. Instead, she looked down at the black babe, without really seeing him.
01-27-2019, 09:01 PM (This post was last modified: 01-27-2019, 09:02 PM by Arctyrus.)
feels like December knows me well
There was yelling, and then silence; the small child bleated weakly at the disturbance, sticky lips parting to emit the babyish sound into the universe. His first sound: one of pure fear and confusion, one which was ripe with need for the mother who had abandoned him. Beneath him, his legs flailed, and then grew still; for a warmth manifested nearby, and somehow steadied his panicking heart.
Well now, it’s not all that bad. Or, well, it might be but it won’t stay that way. I’m Brennen, my little man, and I’m sure we’ll get your name out of your mother before you have to worry too much about it.
Before long, the colt's eyes were cleared of afterbirth, and he blinked them wildly until the world came into focus. Before him laid the large figure of a bay pegasus, one whom he immediately imprinted upon, one whose voice inspired pure calm. A confused smile wriggled its way on to the babe's lips, one desperate to please, one anxious of reprimand; but no such reprimand came, and before long, the boy crawled his way into Brennen's embrace, curling himself beneath the other's wing just as he had in Scorch's womb.
Arctyrus, came a very familiar voice, one which sent chills down the boy's spine. His name is Arctyrus.
Trembling somewhat, the boy peered out from beneath Brennen's inky black feathers, and was struck to his core by the intense, unwavering gaze his mother leant him; he sat as though petrified to stone, unable to move or to waver beneath the stare of someone who was supposed to love him. After a heartbeat longer, the colt burst into shadow; and, wrapped up in his auro of blackness, he found that he could finally breathe.
![[Image: scorch2.png]](https://66.media.tumblr.com/d3f8827d56fd033f445fc5aa8055947a/3778d5ee43303690-eb/s1280x1920/532e323d08dfe066db7c4d27a9277d571bf7cdb2.jpg)
