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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


    [open]  i've never fallen from quite this high; anyone
    #1
    finger trips across my cheek----------------
    ----------------kiss me until i can't speak


    Several hundred feet in the air, Pteron balances on a limb barely wider than his own nose.

    His wings are outstretched for balance, much as they had been for the last hour. The setting sun has reduced the visibility, but he places each hoof carefully, remarkable stable in this odd activity. At least, he was remarkably stable, at least until the grow shadows hide a bit of slick wood, and he is suddenly falling. The stallion’s feathered wings curl in toward his body, but not before they crack a few times against branches wider than he is. There is no catching himself, not with these tight confines, and the fall to the ground seems to take an eon.

    When he does finally crash down, one white wing snaps beneath him and the other collapses to cover his head and neck. If anyone were watching, that might save them the rather gruesome sight of a skull split open and oozing, though Pteron most certainly feels it. There is a long moment of silence, and then a low groan that can’t possibly come from a throat as crushed as his had been. And yet it does, as does the muffled “Fuck,” from behind the feathers. A breath raises his sides, and there are a few muted snaps of ribs reconnecting, and then the softer ones of his vertebrae rejoining as he rises to his feet.

    Pteron’s olive eyes blink rapidly as he looks around at the twilight woods, but he does not see anyone at first glance. Good, perhaps he’s avoided that embarrassment. The wing that had been pinned beneath his is the last to heal, and there remains a sharp ache. Hissing quietly, Pteron turns his head to get a look at that joint, and sees that it’s been pulled from the socket. Grumbling to himself, the tobiano stallion walks toward the tree from which he’d fallen. He lines his shoulder up with the solid trunk, and gritting his neck, forces the wing back where it belongs. The twinge of healing muscle tells him that he’s been successful, and Pteron lets out a long sigh.

    The bruises from that won’t fade till noon tomorrow, he knows from experience, and the soreness might last days. 

    Best to walk it off, he thinks, and heads out into the woods

    -- pteron --

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    #2
    Kildare doesn't know whats happening a few hundred feet above.

    If he did, he might have told Pteron that he knows what its like to skirt dangerous edges, to feel that adrenaline pump into your blood and to feed a soul starving for... what? That had been Kildare's problem from an early age. He had known he had wanted more but what exactly more was has eluded him thus far. His father had gone the traditional route - more responsibility, Malachi had said, would ground a traveler's desire. So the black colt had been raised in much the same manner of Legacy foals before him - lessons in duty and honor and commitment, an endless tirade of stories where all the wrongs of the world seemed to right themselves.

    Except theirs. And perhaps the worst part was that Kildare didn't mind. 

    In the end, in his mind, everything had worked out for the best. His father had taken his mother and the twins to Liridon, Elaina and Lilliana had ventured off to places unknown together and Kildare got what his wandering heart had wanted: his freedom. However, it had come at a cost and that price is what brings him back here for the second or third time (he never ventures too far into Taiga's woods). When the North has finally softened to the warm embrace of spring, when her rivers and cliffs and trees are finally freed of their frozen burden, he tries again. 

    First Taiga, he thinks, and then on to Nerine to find Astana. To make sure that whatever a Heartfire was - irritation still rises at the dreamy way the stargirl had said her name - had kept his former traveling companion in one piece.

    Taiga, despite the constant state of half-light that seems to perpetually darken the place, doesn't seem so bad. It is no Culloden and it is certainly not his mountaintops but there are worse places. His green eyes rove the woods, go up and down the massive trunks as he treks carefully on the forest border. It certainly doesn't possess the current fire hazard of Loess. And that realization makes his stomach know - his home, his home where a child of his will be born soon.

    His stomach turns into a burden of knots, nothing that he can untangle as he comes back to this thought time and time again. The only assurance he has, the thing he tells himself most often, is that Mary has been a mother before. She knows what she is doing. 

    It's his ignorant self he has to worry about. He frowns as he walks and it deepens his already dark mouth, a firm line that shadows downward. How do you not ruin a child?

    For the most part, the forest is quiet. There is a spring breeze that rustles the branches, that makes the ferns shiver as it blows past and most of the chill has gone. Kildare continues to walk quietly, each swiveling as he tries to make out any sounds. (How is this forest so quiet?) There is nothing besides the wind and he can't even tell what whispers on that anymore, if there might be anything to learn. If.. 

    There is a loud thud through the forest floor. It seems that whatever lull the Taigan wood was under wakes under the embrace of the noise and Kildare unknowingly walks further into the forest. He passes one massive redwood, then another, several as he weaves around the hooftrails that lead to a pale figure briefly suspended by light and shadow. The dark stallion stops and the figure moves off into the woods, almost gone and leaving Kildare behind until the stallion calls, "I truly hope that wasn't your graceful self." 

    He briefly looks up, the canopy is several hundred feet above. Had he.. fallen? What would tempt Kildare into a grin only presses a thin line on his face, a look of concern and perhaps bewilderment warring between themselves. His eyes come to rest on the wings - winged horses always tended to have their heads in the clouds.

    @[Pteron]
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    #3
    finger trips across my cheek----------------
    ----------------kiss me until i can't speak


    Despite the near-instantaneous healing, his regeneration is far from painless. Pteron is limping, favoring every leg but especially the left fore (snapped in at least three places), and he is barely away from the scene of his fall when he hears a voice.

    It is not one that he knows, but he hurts to much to turn quickly, and instead makes a slow half circle so as to not bend any part of him too tightly. The speaker is a black stallion, a little difficult to make out in the shadowy woods. Pteron comes closer, his ears pricked curiously. He’d usually have a smile for a stranger, but there’s a shallow cut across the delicate skin of his nose that give a bite to any attempt at movement. Still, he can’t just stare wordlessly at the unfamiliar man, not when he is attempting humor that doesn’t really sound mocking.

    “Didn’t anyone tell you to watch your head in Taiga?” He asks with faux innocence, as though the warning is commonplace. “You’ve got to look up. Never can tell when a horse is going to fall from the sky.”

    It’s worth the sting, the dun stallion thinks, stopping now that the two of them are near enough for a conversation. The proximity brings with it the scent of Loess, and it is a good thing Pteron is not smiling widely. It surely would have dimmed at the reminder that there is something of his in Loess, and as it is his half-smile fades to just pleasant interest. Pteron has avoided the southern land – though he knows that is abandoning his duties as well – since the night he had found Reia with her belly growing wide. His own concerns over fatherhood are not so terribly far from Kildare’s, though perhaps the black stallion does not spend late nights thinking how he might steal away his child from its mother and spirit them both away to a place that will never be found. Pteron does not like these thoughts, does not like that he can even think them, and he brings himself back to the stranger in front of him with a mild shake of his blue mane.

    “My name is Pteron,” he tells the other man. “What brings you into Taiga tonight?”

    @[kildare]

    -- pteron --

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