01-08-2020, 09:54 PM
<link href='https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Herr+Von+Muellerhoff|PT+Sans+Narrow' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'><style type="text/css"> .luath_container { position: relative; z-index: 1; background: url('https://i.postimg.cc/CKVNVYbf/luath-bg.png'); width: 600px; min-height: 600px; border: solid 1px #000; box-shadow: 0px 0px 15px 1px #000; } .luath_container p { margin: 0; } .luath_image { position: relative; z-index: 5; width: 600px; }.luath_text { position: relative; z-index: 8; width: 520px; margin-top: 40px; margin-bottom: -200px; background: #000000b8; border: solid 10px #04010042; box-shadow: 0px 0px 15px 1px #000; }.luath_message { z-index: 8; position: relative; font: 12px 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; color: #54696d; padding: 30px; }.luath_name { position: absolute; z-index: 10; font: 150px 'Herr Von Muellerhoff', cursive; color: #54696d; bottom: 40px; right: 100px; opacity: 0.9; text-shadow: 0px 0px 20px #000; }.luath_quote { font: 11px 'PT Sans Narrow', sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase; background: #04010042; color: #54696d; padding: 20px; letter-spacing: 2px; }</style> <center><div class="luath_container"><div class="luath_text"> <p class="luath_quote">this would be a fantastic place to put a future quote</p> <p class="luath_message">The sense of exhilaration is strong – he looks down at the lonely ground, and wonders what would happen if he flew away. Could he leave the dream, and maybe wake with the wings? The desire is so strong he doesn’t notice her, watching, but when he looks back down at the ground in consideration, it’s no longer empty.
Luath has healthy attachment to a few – there’s his mother, his twin, many of his half-siblings, his father’s current lover. He isn’t nearly as attached to them as he is to his father. With unchecked enthusiasm, he folds the wings in a way he’s watched his sire do a million times, dropping with another surprised yelp, and then scrambling to snap his wings open, arrest his descent and glide forward – and change direction suddenly again, to avoid the red light. As his hooves scrape the ground, the young stallion struggles to catch his balance, stay on his feet. The new wings are still a little awkwardly held out to the side; it isn’t instinctive yet to tuck them in. Grounded, he turns to Brennen. <b> “Papa,”</b> he begins, tilting his head, searching for an explanation, but all he can manage is a grin, lifting the wings a little to show them off.
Luath doesn’t move quickly enough when the bay pegasus charges him, because he still doesn’t understand. Brennen himself had warned him, the dangers of these things, but children aren’t always listening.
The impact lifts him off his feet, throwing him backwards, teeth scraping his neck. Appalled, confused, he struggles with takeoff, trying harder than before, and with the help of his momentum he gains the air before his father can slam him into the red light. Staring upward, he looks desperately for a crack but the dome is uninterrupted, and the rustle of feathers beneath him reminds him that his new wings won’t give him distance from his father. Luath skirts the roof, not liking the heat of it on his skin, and looks down. Gold eyes meet gold, but he doesn’t recognize the expression.
Brennen’s wings are too large for the space. He’s not maneuverable enough. For a couple of breaths, they play a demented game of cat-and-mouse; he singes himself several times on the red light when he forgets how to turn, to stop, to rise and fall, but Brennen lands no more than bruises and scratches on his son. There’s a surge of hope in the red-and-blue boy’s chest as his father pulls away. He turns back already prepared with a sheepish apology. This was a reprimand, a reminder <i>not</i> to go running off chasing magic butterflies; Brennen will let them land now, the red light will go away, and it will be over. It’s no rougher than they’ve trained before, the General insisting his son be able to defend himself against creatures of land and sea and air.
But like the cat, the magician was doing little more than entertaining himself. This is not his father, and this is not a training game. Out of nowhere, a wind rises inside the dome, buffeting Luath off course and it slams him into the wall before he can figure out how to get out of its hold. His head is ringing, his left wing crushed between his body and the perimeter, and the boy falls. The ringing is like screaming (or maybe he’s screaming?) but he forces the wing open against his body’s protest, pain like fire rushing across his skin. But it serves its purpose – he slows enough to make his crash-landing painful, not incapacitating. Angry now, the adrenaline dulls the pain as he climbs to his feet. Left wing – dragging. Right fore – not quite weight bearing. Teeth still strangely dull, flat, not that that stops him from rising onto his hind limbs and snapping his jaws closed around whatever part of Brennen that he can reach as the magician swoops low, coming away with the sharp tang of blood in his mouth.
His kelpie traits might be gone, but you can’t remove three years of satisfaction at that taste, at the first sign of a successful hunt. Restraint gone, the boy growls, a feral sound, and lunges to snap at his opponent again, finding quite a bit of pleasure in the fact that flesh still rips under his jaw, even if he has to work harder at it. The pegasus is slower on the ground, his reflexes shoddy, and he seems to have forgotten about the red light himself. Luath’s third lunge drives them into it, and this time it’s Brennen who shrieks in pain and defiance. There’s blood smeared on both of them, and the boy presses his advantage and strikes out with both front feet, but everyone has a limit on fair play for fair play’s sake and as fast as he can strike, the magician is gone; he’s on the other side of the circle, and then he’s in the air.
There is no fair play, when there’s magic.
There’s water welling up from the dusty plain, contained by the red light. His new wings won’t hold him, and he’s stuck as it rises: knee deep, belly deep, soaking the ends of his mane and he’s swimming to keep his head above water. Where all his life he has been naturally buoyant, with a flick of the magician’s dark face Luath’s feet are mired in deep sand, and it hardens around his feet to prevent him from moving.
Illogically he’s not afraid of drowning. He can’t summon fear of the water even as it reaches his jaw, closes behind his ears as he lifts his face. Or maybe it’s because he doesn’t know fear. That’s what got him into this situation, isn’t it? <b> “Come and beat me yourself, you coward,”</b> he snarls it just before the water closes over his head, making breathing and talking impossible, though his body still quivers with the attempts to thrash free, until he’s unconscious.
</div> <div class="luath_name">luath</div> <img class="luath_image" src="https://i.postimg.cc/SRKdtrCT/luath.png"> </div> </center>
Luath has healthy attachment to a few – there’s his mother, his twin, many of his half-siblings, his father’s current lover. He isn’t nearly as attached to them as he is to his father. With unchecked enthusiasm, he folds the wings in a way he’s watched his sire do a million times, dropping with another surprised yelp, and then scrambling to snap his wings open, arrest his descent and glide forward – and change direction suddenly again, to avoid the red light. As his hooves scrape the ground, the young stallion struggles to catch his balance, stay on his feet. The new wings are still a little awkwardly held out to the side; it isn’t instinctive yet to tuck them in. Grounded, he turns to Brennen. <b> “Papa,”</b> he begins, tilting his head, searching for an explanation, but all he can manage is a grin, lifting the wings a little to show them off.
Luath doesn’t move quickly enough when the bay pegasus charges him, because he still doesn’t understand. Brennen himself had warned him, the dangers of these things, but children aren’t always listening.
The impact lifts him off his feet, throwing him backwards, teeth scraping his neck. Appalled, confused, he struggles with takeoff, trying harder than before, and with the help of his momentum he gains the air before his father can slam him into the red light. Staring upward, he looks desperately for a crack but the dome is uninterrupted, and the rustle of feathers beneath him reminds him that his new wings won’t give him distance from his father. Luath skirts the roof, not liking the heat of it on his skin, and looks down. Gold eyes meet gold, but he doesn’t recognize the expression.
Brennen’s wings are too large for the space. He’s not maneuverable enough. For a couple of breaths, they play a demented game of cat-and-mouse; he singes himself several times on the red light when he forgets how to turn, to stop, to rise and fall, but Brennen lands no more than bruises and scratches on his son. There’s a surge of hope in the red-and-blue boy’s chest as his father pulls away. He turns back already prepared with a sheepish apology. This was a reprimand, a reminder <i>not</i> to go running off chasing magic butterflies; Brennen will let them land now, the red light will go away, and it will be over. It’s no rougher than they’ve trained before, the General insisting his son be able to defend himself against creatures of land and sea and air.
But like the cat, the magician was doing little more than entertaining himself. This is not his father, and this is not a training game. Out of nowhere, a wind rises inside the dome, buffeting Luath off course and it slams him into the wall before he can figure out how to get out of its hold. His head is ringing, his left wing crushed between his body and the perimeter, and the boy falls. The ringing is like screaming (or maybe he’s screaming?) but he forces the wing open against his body’s protest, pain like fire rushing across his skin. But it serves its purpose – he slows enough to make his crash-landing painful, not incapacitating. Angry now, the adrenaline dulls the pain as he climbs to his feet. Left wing – dragging. Right fore – not quite weight bearing. Teeth still strangely dull, flat, not that that stops him from rising onto his hind limbs and snapping his jaws closed around whatever part of Brennen that he can reach as the magician swoops low, coming away with the sharp tang of blood in his mouth.
His kelpie traits might be gone, but you can’t remove three years of satisfaction at that taste, at the first sign of a successful hunt. Restraint gone, the boy growls, a feral sound, and lunges to snap at his opponent again, finding quite a bit of pleasure in the fact that flesh still rips under his jaw, even if he has to work harder at it. The pegasus is slower on the ground, his reflexes shoddy, and he seems to have forgotten about the red light himself. Luath’s third lunge drives them into it, and this time it’s Brennen who shrieks in pain and defiance. There’s blood smeared on both of them, and the boy presses his advantage and strikes out with both front feet, but everyone has a limit on fair play for fair play’s sake and as fast as he can strike, the magician is gone; he’s on the other side of the circle, and then he’s in the air.
There is no fair play, when there’s magic.
There’s water welling up from the dusty plain, contained by the red light. His new wings won’t hold him, and he’s stuck as it rises: knee deep, belly deep, soaking the ends of his mane and he’s swimming to keep his head above water. Where all his life he has been naturally buoyant, with a flick of the magician’s dark face Luath’s feet are mired in deep sand, and it hardens around his feet to prevent him from moving.
Illogically he’s not afraid of drowning. He can’t summon fear of the water even as it reaches his jaw, closes behind his ears as he lifts his face. Or maybe it’s because he doesn’t know fear. That’s what got him into this situation, isn’t it? <b> “Come and beat me yourself, you coward,”</b> he snarls it just before the water closes over his head, making breathing and talking impossible, though his body still quivers with the attempts to thrash free, until he’s unconscious.
</div> <div class="luath_name">luath</div> <img class="luath_image" src="https://i.postimg.cc/SRKdtrCT/luath.png"> </div> </center>