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  • Beqanna

    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


    Something's got a hold on me || Wishbone ||
    #1
    Winter again. Snow and icy winds curling around shivering horses, confining them to their homes until another bitter season passes. Wolfbane (who no longer goes by such a name - too many equines know it, too many suspect him as an outcast or outlaw) has left Taiga in search of temperate climates that suit him better, though he no longer assumes any one gender or the other. His safety and anonymity lies in his ability to be fluid and ever-changing. Since he’d ravaged the northern woods and made himself known for trouble, the shape-shifter had come close to enacting a sort-of revenge on the inhabitants of the northern section of territory. Izora Lethia… Aten’s “mate”. She’d come as close as any horse to feeling his untapped power.

    But he hadn’t hurt her, though he wanted to. Honestly he’d really wanted to. Blood or gore, her suffering sprinkled with some anguish along with the knowledge that Aten couldn’t be there to save her; all of the above would’ve been pleasing to him in that moment but instead Bane had just sneered and left. He was good at that, good at leaving behind things that mattered or made sense.

    Blame it on the inward rebel, blame it on anything you want, in the end his target wasn’t large enough to satiate his desire for mayhem. That final meeting could’ve gone horribly but it didn’t without an explanation why.

    No one aside from himself could make sense of it and he wasn’t the kind to explain. Childishly he’d longed to understand what Longclaw, his sire, had gone through during those last phases of insanity. Now he knew and it was more convoluted than anything conceivable. Or maybe it was so simple that the answer evaded him. Either way he knew what it was like, now. He knew the sensation of being overwhelmed and taken over. He knew what it was like to lose himself and not regret the loss. Lepis, Lilliana, Noah, Heartfire … an ensemble of complicated relationships torn asunder then tossed away. The past merging with the present, always. Was he young or was he old? Who was he?

    In the present, it slumbered and awoke. Blinked into the light of a grey dawn and shivered as it rose from the refuse of the dying Meadow grasses. It was recognizable: yellow slashed through with blue stripes. That infamous mane bristling and tight as a sentry at the ready, standing tall and pale white in an unbroken row of hair that jutted out from between his quizzical brow to run the length of a strong, muscular neck before it ended at the withers.

    Wolfbane uncurled himself from the snow and shook his body, blinking bi-colored eyes at the figure quickly coming into focus as it neared him.


    @[Wishbone] here is a crappy, crappy starter for you
    [Image: Wolfbane2.png][Image: 3bCHvj.png]
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    #2
    take my soul & make it undone
    be the one, be the one to take me home and show me the sun. i know, i know you can bring the fire, i can bring the bones. i know, i know you'll make the fire, my bones will make it grow.
    As Wishbone breaks past the treeline, she thinks about how absolutely uninformed she is. The wall between Life and Death had not allowed her the advantage to watch from the stars as some might think (she did not know of the marriage or divorce of Wolfbane, the sickening lull of Nerine, the burning of Tephra, or any of the politics in between). The faces of Beqanna’s current politics are not the same as they were before, something she is aware of as she begins to mingle with the early-risers in the Meadow.

    She chuckles quietly to herself as the darkness of night slowly rises into winter dawn.
    Her own face is not the same as it was before.

    She is taller, longer, and leaner. Her strides eat at the ground in a way she is still growing used to; the trip from Nerine to the common-lands had taken a shorter amount of time, though the number of times she had tripped over her new legs is slightly embarrassing. Despite her new appearance the same amber eyes of her original body look out from her onyx-and-gold face, scanning the mostly-empty Meadow. Patches of snow remain from a warmer yesterday, though the majority of the field looks rather dead with stringy yellow grass.

    It is from one such bundle of grass that a familiar shape rises. Whether the same heart or a new one, Wishbone feels the familiar quickening in her chest at the sight of her old friend (boyfriend? lover? best friend?). She doesn’t wonder whether he will recognize her or not — an explanation and the fire of her personality would probably convince Wolfbane enough. Her lean figure draws close to the gold-and-blue stallion, a smile already working at the edges of her lips.

    “Bane,” she says, and her voice is exactly as it had once been — roughened by the smoke of Tephra, laced with the thickness of feminity. Wishbone pauses, oddly unsure of what to say next. There is time in between them, so much time that she can practically feel its thickness lying between them like a slumbering beast. His face looks both the same and different, the structure the same as their childhood but the edges crafted by maturity. A soft sigh leaves her dark nostrils just before Wishbone speaks again. “I don’t know what to say… It’s me, Wishbone.”
    credit to eliza of adoxography.



    @[Wolfbane]
    Reply
    #3

    I believe I'd die if I only could

    I sure feel strange, but it sure feels good

    Awake and certainly not feeling ready for small talk, Wolfbane’s mind was a cacophony of thoughts that weren’t his own. Initially the feeling of a fleshy body being struggled over by cursed spirits was annoying enough that he stood momentarily frozen and blank-faced, trying to reorient himself and settle on one dominant entity or the other. The chill of a quiet late winter’s morning stung his nose as he inhaled and stared behind glassy eyes out into the waking world, a horse made of stone.

    Had Wishbone circumvented him or kept her distance, Wolfbane would’ve as well. The stallion she remembers so fondly and quickly approaches wouldn’t have done the same for her, if he’d noticed her movement from afar.

    The new coat is partially to blame; even the old Wolfbane couldn’t have guessed who it was that was making her way on long legs toward him. But mostly he would’ve ignored her because, well, these days that’s just how he functioned. He lives with simple rules: no needs or life above his own, no old acquaintances or new connections. It was the only way to keep from falling into one or another archetypal behavior, since he carried about four alter-egos around (not including the biggest: his own.)

    But her curiosity and ignorance of everything that’d conspired over the handful of time since their last meeting leads her comfortably nearer to him and ever closer to a monster. Bone has changed on the outside; Bane has done all of his changing underneath the skin. She utters his name and in return she’s greeted by the jerk his head as he turns to stare her down. There’s venom in that look - she knows him and therefore she breaks a rule, but before he can retaliate a voice from within himself gives Wolfbane reason to pause.

    “Hold up.” It warns him, ascending to the forefront of his mind while the rest of the voices quiet down. “We know that voice.” And Wolfbane agrees. That rasp… as if she swallowed fire and drank smoke.

    “My little @[Wishbone]?” The golden-blue stallion replies incredulously, expressing surprise through Wolfbane’s eyes and disbelief through the tilt of his blue mouth, but saying her name in the tone of a father looking lovingly down on his grown daughter. A tone of authority mingled with too-warm recognition at last. “Well well…” He breathes charmingly, coming to life and shuffling easily to get a look at her from both sides. “I’d have to say black suits you, darling.”

    The swagger of his rolling shoulders and haunches, the way he seemed almost lazy when he moved yet aggravatingly confident meant that the voice inside of his head - the one who knew both Bane and Bone, the one that watched them grow up together - was the one settling into eager control over the body Wishbone had desired once upon a time.

    For this thread:  Sex: M  ◉  Appearance: Normal  ◉  Mood: Indifferent

    [Image: Wolfbane2.png][Image: 3bCHvj.png]
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    #4
    take my soul & make it undone
    be the one, be the one to take me home and show me the sun. i know, i know you can bring the fire, i can bring the bones. i know, i know you'll make the fire, my bones will make it grow.
    It isn’t the unnaturally stiff way he holds himself before he moves closer that ends her smile. Nor is it the tone of his voice, as though he were a sickly-sweet parent receiving a long-lost child. The true reason that her smile drops off her face and a cold stone drops into her belly comes from the source of those not-Wolfbane behaviors… It’s the look he gives her before she speaks. It’s a look she’s seen before, in the eyes of Bane’s blue-toned father. Wishbone recognizes it immediately — the poison that brews in his irises, the vehement rage, the shark-eyed absence of anything good — and she has to take a deep breath to settle the cry from rising in her throat.

    It’s a look Wolfbane spent his entire childhood running away from.
    It’s a look they both ran away from.

    In personally experiencing Longclaw’s deterioration, Wishbone can spot the symptoms etched on her once-best friend. The amber of her eyes fades from mingled hesitancy and delight into a blend of sorrow and determination. It’s an expression that might seem questionable on any other face (gloom and courage make a driving yet difficult force) but fits perfectly on Wishbone’s dark-and-gold one. They hadn’t found a cure for Longclaw, but they hadn’t known the nature of the sickness either… Not until it was too late, anyway.

    Even as Wolfbane moves closer to her in a way that is familiar, she decides that she will try to save him, if she can.

    She isn’t scared of him, despite what Longclaw’s story may tell. How many times had she seen the blue stallion lash out? How often had she felt herself flinch away from his hooves as she tried to rescue Bane from his abusive words? If Wolfbane is anything like Longclaw, she will have to tread carefully. Wishbone steadies herself in the moments between his comment and her expected response. When she replies, her voice is as steady as ever. “I wasn’t expecting to come back from the dead in a brand new body.” She steps closer to him in one smooth movement, allowing her familiar eyes to travel across his muscular frame. His face had often been on her mind in those days of Death and her gaze lands on his angular face when she finishes her inspection.

    “You seem… different from the last time we’ve seen each other.”
    credit to eliza of adoxography.



    @[Wolfbane]
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    #5

    I believe I'd die if I only could

    I sure feel strange, but it sure feels good

    Because they’re friends and they know each other intimately, not as lovers but as something with much deeper roots, Wolfbane sees the light in her whiskey-stirred eyes fade and the determination settle in just as clearly as @[Wishbone] sees beyond the mask he wears so unfashionably well. She recognizes the sickness immediately and for the first time in nearly two years gone by, Bane can feel the slightest warmth of hope springing up underneath the muck and slime inside. “We all succumb to the curse,” the others whisper to him, those wanton spirits of his ancestors left empty and hollow who taunt, torture, and even rule his physical form, “so must you.” They hiss. They don’t desire the same thing Bane had when he’d eaten Wyrm’s heart; they lusted for the specific revenge of having another spirit added to the tally.

    And yet, Wishbone doesn’t recoil from him. She stands her ground and sets her heels in like she always has, and her calculated silence after Wolfbane’s comments feeds that seedling of hope deep, deep down in the empty caverns of Bane’s waning soul. “She won’t give up on me.” He thinks against the silent jeers and cackling laughter. He had watched her dive precariously into much more dangerous situations and even saved her from a few, but Wishbone always followed through.

    “Hmm.” The bulky male seemed to laugh, lower in his throat and with his lips closed. Most who end up dead never expect to come back to life in the first place. Wishbone had done that and come back slightly upgraded, sauntering into life again dressed in a svelte evening gown with golden markings a horse like himself could obviously appreciate. Boldly the two appraised one another, making quite an interesting scene. Horses nearby had paused to glance up and take in the sight of her (who wouldn’t?) edging closer for a dangerous look. Wolfbane ignored them in favor of memorizing the new lines of her gleaming face, remarking quietly to himself on the beautiful proportions and tribal-esque veneer she wore.

    “Funny.” He murmured, “I feel more alive than ever. I guess I am…” He paused for effect, glancing away to the horses who’d gone back to their own business, “Different.”

    His gaze returned, the eyes staring back at her fading into a rich emerald hue.
    In that split second a thousand possibilities roared into his head: “Grab her, choke her” - “Kiss her” - “Lead her away somewhere quiet”
    Those thousand ideas brought a thousand emotions with them, so much feeling that Lepis herself might feel overwhelmed by it all, since before this moment he’d felt nothing and empty.

    “You act like you aren’t happy to see me, Bone.” Her oldest friend breathed heavily, the accusation a pure mockery of genuine hurt. He could feel the pressure of his canines as they thickened and grew, sliding out from under his upper lip to gleam wickedly. “Did death change your feelings toward me as well as your looks?” He shivered, trying his best to keep the hounding desires at bay for as long as he could.

    For this thread:  Sex: M  ◉  Appearance: Normal  ◉  Mood: Indifferent

    [Image: Wolfbane2.png][Image: 3bCHvj.png]
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    #6
    take my soul & make it undone
    be the one, be the one to take me home and show me the sun. i know, i know you can bring the fire, i can bring the bones. i know, i know you'll make the fire, my bones will make it grow.
    There had been times when they had experienced Longclaw’s internal torture together. Her childhood memories are bursting at the seams with gutsy, definitely-not-Wound-approved missions to distract Wolfbane (and herself, if she’s being honest) from his father’s erratic, hurtful decline. While the adventures were also for the purpose of Wishbone’s own reckless pleasure, she can remember almost boiling herself in lava or jumping too high off a rock or swimming too far out just so the darkness clouding her friend’s olive eyes would hide for a few lifesaving moments. There were times when Longclaw’s effect would be too much to cover with dangerous antics… When the pair of them would curl close to each other beneath a low-hanging frond and feel the quickness of their fearful breaths and the pounding of their rapid heartbeats as Longclaw raged somewhere in the tropics. When a father would whisper loving advice to his son in one breath and then shout unforeseen criticism in the next.

    Longclaw hadn’t told them of the voices in his head, but Wishbone can remember seeing signs of something deeper and darker brimming behind his eyes. As Wolfbane’s gaze roams across her gold-painted face, she can imagine he is experiencing much of the same things. She wonders if there are seething voices whispering for him to hurt her or destroy that or say this. Most of all, she wonders if he recognizes the darkness in himself. She wonders if the true Wolfbane is still there; if his calls for help are muffled beneath the control of a predatory ancestral curse.

    Wishbone continues to move closer to him as he studies her new features. The wandering eyes of strangers linger on the pair, but she has learned to both feel and ignore the weight of outside curiosity. When he speaks again, they are close enough to touch. The obsidian can feel the warmth of his breath drive away the bitterness of winter, even as a breeze picks up to whisk strands of her dark mane against her cheeks.

    Wishbone produces a similar noise to the one he had made almost moments ago, low in the back of her throat. “Hmm.” She knows he is smart. He is smart, too. She might prod subtly at his striking differences since their last meeting, but the underlying message that she knows he will pick up is brutally obvious. Wishbone wants to tell him that she sees him, that she has caught him in the act of a game extending through generations of his bloodline. She wants to tell him that she will try her damn hardest to drag him away from that game, even if it means he comes away kicking and screaming.

    One of her dark eyebrows raises at his sweet-and-sour comment. If Wishbone hadn’t already experienced the effects of the familial curse, she might have been offended. She might’ve scoffed at him and come back with a verbal attack that could have smoldered against his confidence. For a sincere moment, grief and pity swell in union against the walls of her chest. She keeps the emotions hidden there, revealing none of the softness that might provide another target for his arrows.

    Yet Wishbone cannot deny this dangerous Wolfbane appeals to her reckless side. He taunts her with his harshness and the skin along her shoulders ripples with a sudden desire for dangerous abandonment of all things mannerly and domesticated. While she’s been able to harness self-control in specific diplomatic situations, Wishbone has always been a poor master of that skill. And so she steps even closer, even while she sees the familiar glint of his primal canines emerging. Her dark mouth slowly finds a spot on his jaw to touch, every second of her movement calculated and patient. Wishbone has just been released from the arms of Death and yet she cannot help but dance with It once again.

    “Quite the opposite,” she murmurs against his golden skin. Another small step brings her chest flush with his (and the rolling waves of her side and back lies spread out for him like an ocean beneath a cat-claw sliver of a moon) before Wishbone wraps her neck across his withers. They stand like yin and yang — gold and black. The way her body feels on fire, each muscle and nerve and blood vessel anticipating his next move, makes Wishbone feel more alive than she has since before the twins. “You know how I feel about you, Bane.”
    credit to eliza of adoxography.


    @[Wolfbane]
    Reply
    #7

    I believe I'd die if I only could

    I sure feel strange, but it sure feels good

    His fault had always been that Wolfbane was a good-natured stallion, even behind the roguish charm. Not as reckless or careless (depending on who you asked) as @[Wishbone] clearly was. He’d looked up to her, felt that understanding only two horses who lived like family could know and feel, and together they’d shared everything - everything - in the way of traumatic childhood issues. When they grew up and separated themselves by fate Wolfbane never forgot that it was Wishbone who’d seen him at his lowest and most exposed. How could he? Later, in his desperation to grow a sort of adult love for her, Bane always did his best to halo Bone in some sort of untouchable light. Something like that same type of ‘goodness’ he’d always emulated himself.

    But that hadn’t been what she wanted, had it?

    “Not at all.” He knows without having to say it. Her golden-black lips caressed the sweet spot of his cheek and Wolfbane knew better now, radiating under the warmth of her unexpected kiss. She stroked the egotistical part of himself, the Longclaw part who felt there was hardly anything better than the way she felt right now as Wishbone stepped closer, pressed harder into the unyielding planes of his rippling chest. “A pity I’ve never satisfied those feelings,” He couldn’t help but lip at the feathering of dark, layered hair streaming down the length of Bone’s graceful neck. Now and then the dull pressure of his fangs would scrape against her part line or nudge the flesh underneath that glossy mane, “better late than never.” Bane mused just above a whisper.

    At the same moment his sentence faded, his wings unfurled and rose to curtain them both from prying eyes behind. He dug his heels into frosty topsoil and ripped the grass with a soft, wet popping sound when the blue hooves twisted and gave him leverage. Bane’s head recoiled and he pushed his bulky weight into the slightly taller mare, his forefeet just rising up for an infinitely slow second or two as he readied to strike.

    The bare winter sun glinted like shattered light over a stained-glass scene: Wolfbane using his power in a show of surprising and unexpected strength to try and overwhelm Wishbone in the heat of their reunion, suspended there in a blinding minute just before his prickly fangs would come down and sink into the rolling waves of her body spread out before him.

    He felt glorious. He felt the same fire she felt, perhaps in a different but necessary way. He wanted to ravage every part of her but keep her pristine, and that was only the beginning. He understood now; he should've taken her as his own lifetimes ago.

    For this thread:  Sex: M  ◉  Appearance: Normal  ◉  Mood: Excited

    [Image: Wolfbane2.png][Image: 3bCHvj.png]
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