"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
Lace me up, lace me up, he sings under his breath, nostrils flared wide and red. The singsong words tumble gently from absentminded lips, stark contrast to the violent influx of oxygen, his breath crashing in and out. The rust-colored sandstone flashes underneath his hooves in a mindless blur, bits of rock and dirt disturbed and dislodged, tumbling down the edge he so precariously races along. One in front of the other, he mumbles, unearthly bright gold eyes glancing down and then back up a moment before he shutters them from the world. A howl rumbles, gathering strength. It mixes and tangles with a roar, reverberating in his chest before pouring out ahead of him. Anger simmers in its folds, clinging to his sweat-slicked body as he leaves the sound behind him, lungs burning, eyes yet closed. A step misplaced by the breadth of a hair would send a mortal to bent and crumpled death some hundreds of yards below. Immortality, and all that has come with it, has fed his inherited sense of indestructible, helping him to walk a line that he only would have dared once, lifetimes ago.
The wind whips into a frenzy as he curls off to the right, sending one last spray of rock off into the canyon, striped hooves finding footholds on a path he’s run nearly every day since spring broke out in the shadowmare’s kingdom. It runs wild fingers through his mane, blocked by the dreads tangled there, sliding like a lover over his drenched hide, only to be left wanting in his wake.
The earth begins to rise, subtly at first, then more dramatically. Here fatigue sets into his muscles, acidic and aching, but he does not curb his pace, does not open his eyes. Muscles bunch and grip, slinging him forward, teeth grit. The edge looms - five, four, three - still he does not slow. Two. His heart pounds wildly with the thrill of it. One.
His eyes snap open at the same moment he reaches the highest peak of all the broken mesas. Empty air yawns in front of him, the wild wind beckons and he does not hesitate to throw himself after her with a triumphant crow. The distinct thrill of free-falling, when you have pushed your body to its physical limits, is a high he will never cease to revel in. Like a rock he plummets earthward, flipping over onto his back before rolling again. The earth seems to rise from her resting place, greedy fingers outstretched, but today is not the day. The itching starts across his shoulder blades, bone shifting, changing, muscles tearing and knitting together again at the whim of he who controls them. He had miscalculated once before, not shrinking enough to balance out the force of gravity. It fucking hurt. Since then, he’s perfected it. His hooves brush the dry earth in a gentle kiss that belies the violence simmering in his lean frame. He stretches, shaking his coat out with a low groan, the now-dried sweat obnoxiously itchy.
isn't it lovely all alone, heart made of glass, my mind of stone
She is a quiet thing, more like a ghost that haunts the edges of the kingdom and the banks of its river rather than a real resident. From her lookouts she had observed them – the new shadow-queen and her impressive duo of monsters, the various array of other residents, and the galaxy-drenched twins that she knew were her newest siblings. To everyone else they blended in with the rest of her father’s starspun brood, but Islas had recognized something in them instantly. There was something oddly familiar about the exact stars and stardust and nebulas on their skin, and it triggered a reaction in her – like a memory trying to claw its way to the forefront of her mind, like Stave and Desire had ‘home’ stretched across their very skeletons.
But the feeling was just that – a flickering feeling, one that extinguished itself just as quickly as it had come. It disappeared into that endless cavern of her chest, that black hole that devoured most of her emotions and left her feeling more like a shell than a living being.
She has grown considerably, having long since shed the softness of adolescence, and blossomed instead into her maturity. She was a mix of sharpness – her face, with those high-set cheekbones and purple-black eyes that swallow any emotion that tries to reach the surface – and femininity, with her delicate curves and the ethereal glow that radiated subtly from her white skin.
And somewhere in the depths of those impossibly dark eyes there is a curiosity, glimmering like a star in a galaxy too far away from anyone else to see it. She watches him, and she wonders, as she often does, what it would be like to have such emotion teeming beneath the skin. She still doesn’t know why she feels almost nothing; why she can’t laugh and smile as vibrant as they do, why she never feels fear or anger or sorrow. She thinks maybe a part of her was still trapped in space, in that far-flung galaxy that the star held captive in the cage of her ribs still cried out to.
“Does it feel like a storm inside of your chest?” She asks him as she draws closer, and though her voice is soft it is hollow, like an echo. He reminds her of the ocean; a dangerous, quiet kind of rage. She wonders if he is trying to keep the anger contained, if it is raging against the confines of his body – or she wonders if he is begging it to leave but it is clinging like a shadow to his soul, knowing the sunlight will never find it there.
12-19-2019, 02:59 AM (This post was last modified: 12-19-2019, 03:00 AM by Set.)
The ravage that riots underneath his skin surges and trembles with need. A primal need to lash out, to flay muscle from bone, to lay waste to a soul that is not his to take but still it thirsts. He closes his eyes at the sound of the stranger’s voice, as if the mere motion could leash his demons. His control is tenuous as of late. Starlace’s return had been more of an unsettling reunion rather than the joyous occasion he had anticipated when they’d broken the veil. But … she has not really returned, has she? His skin ripples beneath the black and white of his hide, as if something living were traversing the space between.
The steadying breath he draws is a pitiful, dusty one and the auric eyes that draw ‘round to meet hers are wild and molten, features etched in a scowl. “A bit,” he snaps, ears laid low against his skull. A magician of capricious thought and emotion (though, aren’t they all such?), few lingered long enough to make such observations - let alone mark them out as precisely as she has. It is an experience that he has not known for some time, the unsettling feeling taking up residence in his chest.
Set’s eyes narrow, head tilted to one side as they leave the captivation of her depthless gaze to ascertain the nature of her interlope. Up and over the jut of her cheekbone, down the length of her neck, tickle-tap down her spine … He frowns, catching the purple-black of her eyes again without prodding at her with his magicks. Something ethereal hums in her flesh; it momentarily soothes the edges of his unwarranted fury, the cacophony faded to a dull roar in light of the curious creature. “Who wants to know?” It’s childish and unimaginative, this question that cracks with sarcasm, but in this moment, he cannot bring himself to care.
isn't it lovely all alone, heart made of glass, my mind of stone
She cannot relate to the way that he seethes, but she wishes she could.
Countless hours have been spent watching the rest of them and memorizing the different ways their faces changed, and learning to match the expressions to the emotions they were feeling. Maybe that is why she reads him so well; because she is practicing nearly since she was born, from the moment she realized she didn’t belong and that she was not like the rest of them. But of course, there are still many things she doesn’t understand. Such as she does not recognize that when he closes his eyes and inhales that he is trying to steady his anger; she doesn’t know that sometimes their emotions can be too much, that the intensity can swell so that they might feel like bursting with it.
Of all the emotions, anger is what intrigues her the most – far more than happiness or love or even hate. She hears him snap at her, and she wonders what it might be like, for her voice to turn sharp like a sword, for heat to blossom in her chest. She wonders what it might be like to feel so impassioned that her eyes spark and her body runs hot, rather than the steady coolness she always feels.
As it is, even beneath the wave of his fury, her eyes maintain their impersonal flatness. She watches him silently, almost studiously, unflinching beneath the way he seemingly critiques her. He appears to be looking for something, and she assumes he is trying to place why she was different. She has learned now that the captive star gives off a vibe – unsettling to some, being a thing that they just can’t quite place, while it calls to others; others that held an affinity to the stars and other cosmic things. “I was a star, once. But I was reborn like this,” she offers him plainly, making it impossible to tell how the notion of being forced into mortality made her feel.
And that, truthfully, was the whole of it.
She felt nothing.
“My name is Islas,” she answers him, unfazed by the sarcasm that bites in his tone. It does not occur to her to ask for his name, and so she doesn’t.
The bite in his reply does not anchor, nor does it spark a flame as he would have expected. She regards him with the same flatness that his father’s gaze once held. Akin to the hollow black of a shark’s, there is no answering emotion in the deep purple of the mare’s eyes. Curiosity floods through his body, deftly and effectively flushing out the rampant anger; the switch flipped on his capricious emotions. He shifts to face her fully now, ears flickering forward and then back again. Intrigued. When she answers his silent questions with all the enthusiasm of a rock, he lowers his head, cocking it to the side in contemplation. A star? He had met a lot of interesting characters in his travels to other worlds and underworlds. Shifters, aliens, creatures and gods of old. Monsters. Ana had borne him a daughter whose touch could hypnotize, and their son is a demon. Never a star, though. He would have thought that, given their brilliancy, they would be wondrously animated.
He has never considered what it would be like to not be rife with mortal emotion. To be fair, he has never really considered what it would be like to be anyone but himself. He has always been self-confident, staying on just this side of arrogance. Impulsive, volatile, erratic. All fine words to describe the piebald stallion.
He regards her a moment more, turning her name over a few times in his mind, examining it for the shine of familiarity. A lone coyote, its ribs sharp against its rough, dirt and sand colored fur, trots past, a tongue-lolling smile for Set, a blank stare for Islas as it drifts off toward the river. The small bats in his mane murmer quietly as they shift and resettle. Gold meets purple. “What is it like to be a star? Why did you have to be reborn?” His tongue holds a myriad of questions but these are the two he chooses first, earnestly. He shifts his weight. He knows what it is like to be reborn, at least, to suddenly inhabit a body that is your own but makes little sense.
isn't it lovely all alone, heart made of glass, my mind of stone
Her eyes follow the coyote as it slips past, noting the way it seems to take a special interest in her companion. She shifts her gaze back to his, commenting idly, “The wildlife seems drawn to you.” Much in the same way she is drawn to those with an affinity for the stars, or the galaxy in general – how despite her inability to really feel anything she had found a strange sort of connection with Astrophel and Ten. He has something special, too, this curious stranger before her, but she isn’t entirely sure what. There must be a little bit of stardust in his veins, she thinks; just enough to pull her in and keep her here.
What is it like to be a star, he asks her, and her brilliant white lips carry the promise of a smile, even if it doesn’t quite reach her aubergine eyes. “It’s like being alive. You shine and you burn, and eventually, you die. But it’s different, being up there versus being down here. You can’t go anywhere, but somehow it’s always enough. You don’t want to go anywhere.” Because being a star was like any other living but still inanimate thing; like the flowers that bloom and wither, or the tide that ebbs and flows. You just are; you have your place in the world, and it is unquestionable, indeniable.
It wasn’t like this. It wasn’t like consciously knowing you were different from the rest, that something about you wasn’t right.
“I don’t think I had to. It just happened. I don’t remember much about being taken, I just remember waking up alongside my new twin sister, and from that day forward trying to figure out why I didn’t belong.” Because her sister wasn’t like her; Islas had noticed immediately, even if it had taken her awhile to figure out why she was different. They were both brilliantly white, like their mother, but Cavern could not control the starlight the way Islas could. She doesn’t think her own mother had even noticed; the circumstances surrounding the conception of most of her children were always so unique that Ryatah paid little attention to how Carnage’s magic chose to mutate.
She never even noticed the star held captive inside her daughter’s mortal heart.
“I don’t know how to be like everyone else,” she continues, her eyes still unwavering as they remain locked with his bright gold ones. “I’ve never had to feel before. It’s still a strange thing for me.”
Set
