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    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


    whatever it takes to drown out the noise, dove
    #1

    you and i nursing on a poison that never stung
    our teeth and lungs are lined with the scum of it


    The first six months of his life were spent trying to master a thing that he was certain could not be mastered.
    It happened at random, painfully, at the most inopportune times.
    He would feel it like a fish hook in his belly as it ripped through him.
    As he shifted from equine to something else entirely.
    Something grotesque, horned, the legs and the gut thick.

    He feels the pull sometimes even now. It stirs at the very center of him but he can fiercely grit his teeth and stave it off. He can fight it now. He is older and stronger and he hates the thick skin and the horn and the sidelong glances. Hates it enough to resist it.

    He has ventured away from the safety and familiarity of his mother’s side. He left with the understanding that he wouldn’t be back. She had smiled her sad smile and watched him go. He loved her, certainly, but there was no future for him in her shadow. He would always be his mother’s son, though, they shared the cosmos, the nebulas on their skin.

    He wanders now, uncertain where he should go. He inherently knows that the world is bigger than he realizes, stretching for hundreds of miles in every direction. There are so many places he could go but he does not stray far. He goes instead to the meadow. He has been here before, some time ago, with his mother. He thinks that, for now, it’s as good a place as any.

    He is proud and grim. He does not smile and there is no delighted glint in his eye as he surveys the bodies that inhabit the meadow, foraging for the grass beneath a blanket of snow. He exhales an impatient sigh, recognizes this as a mistake. Until he sees her and registers the snowflakes on her nose. There is a grin then but it is something dark as he moves through the snow to land himself at her side.

    This must be your doing, then,” he muses with a slanted smirk, nodding then to the snow that stretches out as far as the eye can see.


    stardusted son of despair and astral
    Reply
    #2

    love is really nothing
    but a dream that keeps waking me
    She thinks she had been happy, once. But it was so fleeting and brief that she thinks maybe it wasn’t real.

    She remembers the feel of her mother’s lips against her skin, and how her father had pressed his snowflake muzzle to her forehead and whispered something sweet. She remembers how her twin had glowed in the dark next to her, breath-takingly beautiful but even then she could feel the shadows that twisted inside of him.

    But the four of them had been together, and her newborn heart had thought this was how it would be.

    She had learned fast that the real world wasn’t like that.

    Her family was broken in more ways than one. Her mother could have a sharp tongue, and sometimes the frigid way she spoke to others made her want to disappear. Her father seemed shattered and torn by a heartbreak (or two) that she was still too young to fathom, but she would understand it someday and she would use that warning like a weapon to keep anyone else from getting too close.

    And her brother — her other half, her puzzle piece that fit so perfectly even if he maybe wished they didn’t — harbored more anger and darkness than anyone so young should ever have.

    She kept away from them, mostly. For a long time she had trailed after Draco, but there was only so many of his irritated sighs and not-so-hidden eye rolls that she could take before she felt that rift in her heart begin to spread.

    Alone in the meadow, she had not expected a voice to break the silence. The snow seemed to swallow every sound, and as she had stared upwards, dizzy and captivated by the swirling vortex the falling flakes created, he startles her. Her dark blue eyes snap to his face as she stammers, “Oh! Um….what?” Her mind races to decipher what he had said, her pretty face clouded with confusion until finally it clicks. “Oh…I can’t control snow, actually. Or stars,” the words tumble from her mouth too fast, tipping her head slightly to gesture to the glowing constellations spread across her silver sides.

    She can feel her cheeks flushing hot, and beneath her skin she begins to tingle with the desire to dissolve into fairy dust and disappear from this boy that had showed up so suddenly. This was why Draco hated taking her places; she was shy and awkward and everything came out wrong. “I’m Dove,” she adds quietly, doing her best to keep her fading hope from showing in her voice.
    Dove

    Reply
    #3

    you and i nursing on a poison that never stung
    our teeth and lungs are lined with the scum of it


    It is charming, he thinks.
    That she startles when he speaks.
    That she’d been so thoroughly engrossed in her staring up at the sky that she hadn’t even registered his approach. He could apologize, he knows, but he doesn’t. He has never been inherently apologetic, even when he knows he’s at fault. It is not an inability to take responsibility for his actions, really, more of an inability to acknowledge that his actions have consequences. He has perhaps never stopped to really consider all the ways the things he does affects others.
    So, when he speaks and she jumps, he only smiles.

    She looks from the sky to him and he feels a sudden sense of mourning. Not because he has startled her, undoubtedly spiked her pulse, but because he has stolen her attention away from the sky. It is unclear whether he is mourning for her or for the sky.

    He had been teasing, of course, though he knows that there are those capable of bending the elements to their will. He calls no attention to it, just fashions up that same slanted smile and nods. He shifts his focus then to the constellations and how vividly they glow. He thinks of the astral markings on his own sides, wonders if they’re connected in some way but doesn’t ask.

    Dove,” he says, holds it like a marble on the surface of his tongue, goes on smiling that same placid smile. “I’m Rembrandt.

    He turns then, angles his body so that he is standing parallel to her. He tips back his head and peers up at the sky, mirroring the pose he’d found her in. “Do you think it will ever stop snowing?” he asks, quiet. He does not ask in the hopes that she will say yes, really. He cannot imagine someone with snowflakes branded on their velvet skin does not feel some spiritual connection tot he snow. In asking it, he is inviting himself to stay.


    stardusted son of despair and astral
    Reply
    #4

    love is really nothing
    but a dream that keeps waking me
    She expects him to be irritated by her. She expects to see that flicker of annoyance she has grown so accustomed to, the kind she seems to spark from nearly everyone. There must be something wrong with her, she thinks, to be able to rise that emotion from so many. She wishes she could be as bold as her brother, or as silver-tongued as her mother. She wishes she could be like her father, who can command attention to himself without trying.

    Somehow, she had slipped through all the cracks.

    Where they were fierce, she was mild. When their tongues grew sharp, hers always stayed kind. Everything about her was whisper-soft and shy, and her family were all like grenades with their pins pulled, begging for a reason to detonate. She feels forgotten next to them, all vibrant and brilliant in their own ways, and she learned to be content with being a living ghost.

    But he says her name, with a smile that doesn’t falter from his lips, and she doesn’t realize that she had been holding a breath. She blinks her dark, velvety blue eyes, and watches him with a newfound fascination, wondering why he doesn’t leave. “Rembrandt,” she is careful with his name, like it is one of the delicate snowflakes that tumble from the sky and cling to her lashes and the silver strands of her mane. When he moves to stand alongside of her she is suddenly strikingly aware of each stutter of her heart, the way it flutters like a hummingbird behind her fragile breastbone.

    “It always stops eventually,” her voice sounds loud against the hush of the snow, even though she speaks so softly, afraid that she might push him away if she’s too loud. “But I kind of hope it doesn’t today.” She steals a glance at him, heat flushing her cheeks, not even sure what had possessed her to say such a brazen thing. Maybe he won’t pick up on it, that underyling hint that being stranded in a snowstorm with him wouldn’t be such a terrible thing – but that impossibly timid, shy part of her doesn’t even know what she would do if he did.
    Dove

    Reply
    #5

    you and i nursing on a poison that never stung
    our teeth and lungs are lined with the scum of it


    She says his name as if it was made to fit the shape of her mouth.
    Though he is not a romantic, he cannot deny the magic in the peaks and the valleys when she says it. Like it has some new, deeper meaning. Like it is something worth saying at all.

    And he has never thought himself nothing but he knows, too, that there is nothing overtly special about him. He has nebulas on his skin, stars caught between his teeth, but these things are not spectacular. Not even the shape he takes sometimes when he’s tired and powerless to stop the stirring of all that energy in his gut is all that unique.

    But when she says his name it’s bellsong and he smiles a secret kind of thing.

    It always stops, she says, and he knows that she’s right. Nothing is infinite, not even the stars. Because he’s learned that sometimes they burn out and it takes thousands of years for them to know. Still, the smile remains. A quiet, knowing thing. “I hope that, too,” he says and turns his gaze back up to the sky. There is magic in this, too. The insulated quiet. The way the snowflakes writhe overhead before plummeting to earth. The way they stick on her eyelashes. Long. And beautiful.

    He watches her for a long moment, openly. Unabashed. He feels no shame as he studies her. He could ask her where she’s from. He could ask what brought her here. If she has any siblings, what they’re like. Who her parents are. Instead, he reaches out and he touches her shoulder and asks, “what were you thinking about?” He asks it quiet, as if it is a secret shared between them. “When I interrupted you, what were you thinking about, Dove?


    stardusted son of despair and astral
    Reply
    #6

    love is really nothing
    but a dream that keeps waking me
    She doesn’t think anyone has ever looked at her as long as he has. Dove was far from plain, but she had began to think that maybe she was. Her family was busy and distracted, and they always seemed so ready to brush her off. When it came to strangers, she was not bold enough to insert herself in the middle of it all. And so even though dapples shone like stars across her pale sides, even though silver snowflakes laced her muzzle and a pair of strikingly dark blue eyes tried to catch their gazes, she was left feeling invisible.

    When she first realized he wasn’t looking away from her, she had felt an odd sensation of pleasure. Like a flame growing in the empty, hollow portion of her chest, she felt the warmth spread inside the cavern of her ribs. But it was a brief feeling, and it soon collapsed into insecurity. She was certain the longer he looked at her he would begin to find all of her flaws. Maybe not just the physical ones, but maybe he would see how she can hardly meet his gaze for more than a few seconds at a time, or he would realize that she never knew what to say.

    He would realize how someone else would make for far more interesting company.

    She was trying to not look at him now, with her neck curved and her eyes watching some invisible thing in the distance. I hope that too, he says, and even though she almost dares to think that he is implying what she thinks he might be, she rationalizes that, like most, he simply must just like the snow.

    But then he touches her shoulder.
    With a turn of her head the endless blue of her eyes search his, glittering with confusion. A part of her thinks this might be fake; like it must be a trap. His interest, his kindness – it could not possibly be real. “Everything,” she says quietly, and with a sad sort of smile playing across her silver lips. “But mostly my family. And wondering why I’m not more...like them.” She shakes the strands of forelock from her eyes and blinks away the snowflakes, steadying her gaze on his face. “And you? Why are you out in the middle of a snowstorm to begin with?”
    Dove

    Reply
    #7

    you and i nursing on a poison that never stung
    our teeth and lungs are lined with the scum of it


    Everything, she says.
    And it is not lost on him how she has avoided his gaze.
    He can feel the sadness rolling off her in waves.
    He can taste it on the air around them.

    Even if he couldn’t, he would hear it in her voice. His focus is steadfast, unyielding, and he wonders idly what could have bred such uncertainty in her. He is young, certainly, but he doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything so beautiful. He feels only a distant twinge of guilt when he thinks that her sadness contributes to her beauty. The softness in her gaze, the slant in her smile, the fact that he wonders if he could feel the sadness in her heart should he press his mouth to her breast.

    And what makes them so special?” he asks. “And what is wrong with being exactly who you are?

    He tilts his head and he touches her again, lingers this time, before he pulls away and considers her question. There is a kind of smile playing in the corners of his mouth as he rolls a shoulder in a shrug, turns his gaze up to the sky again. He drags in a steadying breath and exhales it long and slow.

    Where else do I have to be?” he asks but this question is a rhetorical one. “I’ve just left my home,” he admits after a beat of silence. There is no sadness in his tone, no sense of longing or mourning. It is matter-of-fact, really. It had been time to go and, for him, it was really that simple. He presses his mouth into a thin, thoughtful line and he shrugs again.

    I guess I never wanted to be like them,” he muses, quiet, contemplative.


    stardusted son of despair and astral
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