"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
Beneath oceans and mountains, soil and life, dust and bones—
He paces. Back and forth, back and forth, until it feels as if his paws are raw and the stone is worn to his perpetual path. Occasionally a huff or a snarl echoes off of the gray walls, indicating that he is breathing, despite his robotic movements appearing otherwise.
How long has it been since Litotes has seen the light of day? The predator that has taken over his mind begs and pleads to be released from his handmade prison, but the last self-aware piece of his brain keeps him here—
Pacing.
There is a final snarl, one that is a little more frightening and alive than the ones from before. As if wading through water, the pale lion trudges from the pebble strewn and damp cavern to the light of Beqanna’s sun.
Perhaps he has been beneath the ground for too long, for what he believed to be the sun is actually the moon, and even that light is harsh on his eyes. Lie digs long, rock-sharpened claws into malleable dirt. A purr builds in the back of his throat, one so pleased by the destruction of the grass and dew beneath him that he nearly rubs his head against a boulder to his right.
Golden eyes reflect the silver of the moon and stars: Litotes rediscovering the goddess he so worshipped when he first arrived in Beqanna. His lips lift just the tiniest bit as he lifts his nose to the breeze . . .
Prey?
Low to the ground and frightening in his hunger, Lie prowls, hovering within the shadows of leafy bushes and tall grass. Darkness he does not notice rushes to him, cloaks him, protects him—its eager arrival is nothing to him, as is all of his magic (hazy memories of being an equine remain sealed in the back of his mind).
The scent leads and Litotes follows, anticipation building in his empty stomach.
{ and all we are is skin and bone trained to get along, forever going with the flow but you're friction }
She is not sure what draws her to the mountain.
She is not even sure if she meant to come here.
The breeze was cool as it sifted through the feathers of her wings, and her eyes looked at the moon above and then to the mountain below. She would never grow tired of taking in Beqanna from the sky – the snowy peaks of the mountains, the dense tops of the trees, and the glittering faces of the lakes that currently reflected the moon and the stars. It was peaceful up here, where she did not have to remember that she was different; she did not have to struggle to understand anyone, she did not have to worry about losing control of her shattering. It felt safe – but she knew it wouldn’t last.
This was usually when she returned to Sylva, but tonight, she lands on the mountain, but towards the base of it. She stares at it for a long while, her head tilted so that she may take in the very top of it. Her mother had told her her own stories of the mountain – how she had come here searching for a way that she may protect her family, and thus was gifted with shattering (how ironic that Lilt would inherit it, and instead of protecting anyone all she did was hurt everyone), and how at the peak was where Carnage had ripped her parents’ hearts from their chests and sewn them up in the wrong ribcage.
She wonders for a moment if the mountain could help her. If it could take away her shattering so that she might never have to worry about hurting anyone ever again. If it had given it away, surely it could take it?
So distracted by her thoughts and her wanderings she is that she does not notice the lion as he crouches into the brush, but something in the way the shadows move causes her to suddenly whirl around. The silver beams of the moonlight amplify the glowing white hairs that roaned her body, and there is something wildly ethereal about her when paired with the tangled black hair that twists around her face in the breeze.
She hugs her wings tightly to her sides as her heartbeat quickens in her chest, her sterling eyes flicking back and forth between every corner of shadow before she finally says in the painfully quiet whisper of her voice, “Hello?” She asks, even though she will not hear an answer. But she hopes that her voice will at least stir whoever it was out of hiding, and she tries to steady her nerves, for fear that she might accidentally shatter whoever it may be.
Three words ring in the lion’s mind forcing his quiet stalking to a sudden halt. The shadows that had rushed to him now roil and rumble beneath his stomach. Barely, just barely, he remembers speaking. He remembers words that spilled from his lips as if they were tea too hot to drink.
We can’t.
The muscles in his legs tense, so tautly knit together that they immediately ache. We can’t what? Litotes thinks, but the moment of coherency is fleeting enough for the unusual twit of a bird to distract him. His ears twitch, agitated both by his body’s instinctual responses and the call of a bird that should have fallen asleep hours before.
“Hello?” Lilt calls, so quiet and sweet that the predator within Lie grows viciously excited. The tip of his tail twitches out of control, enough to rattle surrounding grass; it is by chance that she is deaf and does not hear. Still, he presses himself even lower to the earth, masked by shadows so desperate to do his bidding.
She’s so pretty, blue and green and purple—glowing like Beqanna’s own walking moon. She’s so pretty, he thinks, but it is washed away by the angry hunger in his belly. The lion does not care if she is beautiful or soft-spoken or deserving of life. All those quiet attributes make her sweeter to the taste.
Litotes creeps forward, topaz eyes steady on her silver ones even as they do not see him. His mouth hangs open, tasting the fall leaves on her skin before his mouth even reaches her.
You mean so much to me. I’d do anything for you.
The shadows drop from the lion’s sides as he rises, so frightened by the voice in his head that he is certain it is coming from another he has yet to locate. When his eyes fix on Lilt’s, when she finally sees him, he cowers backward—the voice finds meaning in her face, in the way she startles.
He doesn’t understand but he drops to the dirt with a low chuff.
{ and all we are is skin and bone trained to get along, forever going with the flow but you're friction }
There’s a moment where her heart stops in her chest, when the blood in her veins runs cold as the shadows drop and reveal the lion.
She thinks of the desert, of sharp claws sinking into her skin and dragging across her; she thinks of the smell of her own blood and they way the lion’s teeth glinted in the blistering sun.
When she begins to tremble it is out of both fear, and her desperate need for control. Because while her instinctual reaction is to shatter this lion on sight, something strange happens when her silver eyes lock with his. The first thing she notices is how pale he is – not the usual dark gold, but instead a beautiful white. He cannot be real, of that she is sure; he must be part of the magic that this mountain is known for, and this both settles and frightens her all at once.
The second is how her heart twists inside of her chest when her eyes meet the topaz of his, and she sucks in a breath at the tightening knot that settles behind her ribs. She doesn’t understand this feeling at all; this feeling like she was suppose to know him, like he was a piece to some puzzle she hadn’t known she was trying to put together.
It was fascinating and frustrating and she can feel the anxiety building like a wave and threatening to silently drown her.
He cowers away from her and she does not know why, but she does not take a step forward, and she does not relax. She just quietly watches him for a moment, her muscles drawn taut beneath her glowing skin, trying to decipher why this hauntingly beautiful thing was placed before her, and finally she asks on a breath, “Are you real?”
Litotes’ head cocks to the right and the round edges of his ears turn in a way that might indicate confusion. His brain fights to understand the mare before him but the claws of his lion remain bloody in his brain.
Something like regret ties a sailor’s knot in his chest. Right in the center it latches on and holds his entire being to the emotion. The lion inhales a sharp and cold breathe, peering up at Lilt’s silver gaze and then over the glow of her coat. Hunger rumbles angrily in his stomach—an ugly reminder of the monster he is—but Lie is so mesmerized by how he DOES NOT want to eat her that the growl is merely background noise.
Little huffs send the grass in front of Litotes’ face back about a centimeter; when he sucks in sharply again, they rub uncomfortably against his nose. He suddenly lifts himself from the ground and shakes his head, then sneezes. It is a small noise, mostly a whoosh—and he looks even more baffled after.
Remembering that Lilt is in front of him, the lion quickly turns his eyes back to hers. He stares for a moment too long, particularly hesitant to move again. Curiosity wins him over, though, and he reaches out to brush his cool nose against hers.
The second their skin touches, Litotes rears back. Memories flood his mind, too fast and too many to make sense of them all. He goes back to cowering, but this time he rubs his head into the dirt and grass, attempting to wipe away the pulsing behind his eyes.
{ and all we are is skin and bone trained to get along, forever going with the flow but you're friction }
She does not understand what is happening inside of him, but she can see the conflict on his face.
He is confused, and she thinks he is confused specifically by her, but she doesn’t understand why.
The worry on her face is visible now, and it melts her eyes until the silver looks as though it could stream like tears down her face. She has always been almost too kind; too soft, too sweet. Her fear was slowly dissipating and morphing with her empathy, and she is too naive to consider that this could be a trap. Her mother had warned her that not many in the world were kind – that most wore a facade, that they pretended to be whatever they needed to be to get what they wanted. She doesn’t realize that her mother speaks from a place of experience; that not many could truly fathom how manipulative others could be the way Starsin did, because she was the manipulator.
Lilt couldn’t help herself; she had been raised in a world far kinder than her mother’s, and because of this, she was not jaded. Her heart saw things, and she wanted to love them.
Even though a lion had tried to kill her before, she doesn’t want to believe that this one will.
Ever so slowly he begins to reach towards her, and she does not dare to move. Her very breath stills in her lungs, and she becomes acutely aware of the strength her heart was beating against her chest. Fear radiates from her skin, and though she desperately wants to close her eyes once he is inches from her, she finds that she can’t.
His nose touches hers, and she does not know if it is static, or something stronger, but something jolts straight into her veins. He leaps back just as she stumbles away in alarm, and without meaning to she shatters a boulder into rubble. She shies away from that too, and with panic reflecting so plainly in her eyes she looks back to him. But she is no longer afraid of him – she is afraid for him. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to – it was an accident,” she stumbles over her words, the volume of her voice wavering between high and low.
The image of the lion blown across the sands of the deserts invades her mind, and she can feel herself beginning to tremble.
She steadies herself, her breath coming in short, soft gasps, as her tear-filled eyes look back at him and she pleads quietly, “Don’t be afraid of me, please.”
What Litotes wants to do is tell this timid creature how he can never be afraid of her. Not because she is frightened or sweet, but because he sees the imprint of her mother’s memories. He sees the first moment they laid eyes on each other reflecting in the moonsilver of Lilt’s eyes. His heart does not swell, but it does race—and the lion cannot comprehend the uniquely magical and self-aware phenomenon.
The flinching he did when the boulder first exploded is nothing compared to the fierce sense of loyalty blossoming in his heart.
Lilt trembles and Lie lifts his legs in a jolting stance of attention. He huffs and twitches his nose against the cool breeze before stepping quietly in the pegasus’ direction. All he knows is that her body language indicates distress and he now needs to battle with whatever threatens her. It does not occur to him that he is the one frightening her, or that she has frightened herself; instead he only draws closer, uninhibited by the second-thoughts of the man he was over a year ago.
The black and gemstone fur of Lilt’s two front legs is what Litotes touches first. He draws in the autumn scent she emanates and then gently rubs his maned head against the skin he just nuzzled. Small, pleased chuffs are the only noises he makes—leaned against her as if her long limbs are not so fragile compared with his lion’s frame.
12-30-2019, 12:28 AM (This post was last modified: 12-30-2019, 12:30 AM by Lilt.)
{ and all we are is skin and bone trained to get along, forever going with the flow but you're friction }
Lilt knows nothing of her mother’s past. She knows that she has two half-siblings – twins – that live in Pangea, but nothing of how they came to be. Starsin never spoke of there being anyone else in her life, even if it had been brief; as far as Lilt was concerned, there had only ever been her father. Even if she had known, even if she had ever heard Litotes’ name, she isn’t sure that she would have made the connection between this pale lion and the man that had once had a confused romance with her mother.
But somewhere beneath his feral gaze he is looking at her like he is supposed to know her, and there is a small piece of her heart that feels like it’s supposed to know him.
It’s confusing and messy and heavy and Lilt feels like she might collapse beneath the weight of it, and if it weren’t for the fact that he was stepping towards her she thinks she might have turned to run away.
He comes closer, and she stands tense and uneasy when he touches his nose against her leg. But then he rubs against her, and she can feel a slow, tremulous breath exhale past her lips. She lowers her head, touching her black lips against the wisps of his mane. She doesn’t understand why he smells familiar, when he smells of places that she has never been before; but something about the very essence of him sinks into her veins, and cannot explain why she is so sure she has smelled him before. “My name is Lilt,” she says softly before drawing her muzzle away from him. She doesn’t expect him to reply, and she doesn’t think she would be able to read his lips anyway. “Come to Sylva with me,” she continues, and she has no idea what she is saying anymore. “You don’t have to be alone on this mountain.”
If the lion could purr, he absolutely would. He cannot quite feel her lips upon his mane, but the indention is there (and her warm breath) and pleasure blooms like a moonflower in his chest.
Lilt mentions Sylva but Litotes has his eyes closed and what words he MIGHT understand are lost in the decadence of this rare peace. He will follow her anywhere, though that is more a sensation than a coherent thought—and Lilt certainly does not know of the loyalty that builds walls around his heart.
Against her legs he builds a home, a castle, well enforced with the fiercest monsters and bravest soldiers—she the country he lives within.
Lie does not know how to show her that he is with her now, forever; but when he walks away, he looks expectantly back at her in the hopes that she will take the lead—for without her he has no direction, this moon and this night and this shadow all no more home to him than the cave that held him prisoner.
