balto –

[City]

City has always taken to wandering all the pathways, roads and secret alleyways between the common lands. Her favorite by far was always the Forest. She loves to hide and stalk through it mists and broad guardian trees. The freckled old mare practices her shifting, changing from a pale colored jaguar, freckled and blood smears intact and back to her equine body while she walks casually between the trees.

She is underweight in either form and her pale coat dulled with age and malnourishment. Still she stalks the same shadows she has for many years as if she has not aged  ̶  and soon, she hopes, that can be so. Tired, she settles back into her original skeleton, her knees creaking and her long blond tail splashing over her scarred hips.

The pale mare walks under a jagged ridge side, a large protrusion of rocky land hides deep in the peaceful dell and at its feet lay a series of caves. She’s never found much reason to explore them, but she’s wandered this far, so it is natural that her curious mind might want to have a closer look.

She stands at the mouth of one of the caves (or if theyre connected, one of the cave’s mouths), sniffing, and doing her bet to look into it. Darkness is all she could see beyond the first three feet inward and it seemed a terrible idea to go within… She snorts, listening to the echo come back to her.

Hm.

city

in the bleak midwinter

@[Balto] for immortality discussion! thank you :}

[Balto]

i’ve been both a saint & a viper

They come for him. They will always come for him.

In what used to be his most precious and safest place, the demons thrive. The darkness that once was his only cloak of protection they writhe, blaspheming what used to be his sanctuary with their demonic laughter and spitting. Their shadows bounce off the damp cave walls, their howls echoing through stone and stalactites in between the sound of their clicking jaws and drool, snapping their teeth just inches from his flesh, set on tearing skin from bone. Each night is a new scene but the same characters - blood-stained and half-rotten, hobbling towards him with sickly smiles and hollowed-out, eyeless sockets. They are as real to him as his own flesh and bone, yet he knows they are hidden amongst the nooks and crannies of their cave, unseen by others.

Yet he hears them always, champing in his ear and whispering terrible, unfeasible things.

Kill, kill, kill.
Like you killed us.

It’s never ceasing and he screams out in protest, cursing them and throwing them away from his flesh with bucks and pressing his weight into them against the walls until they disappear; but they always return, and always with the same request.

Kill, kill, kill.

So he did.

Black as their own shadows he had come, and with cloudiness in Balto’s gaze, he tore into actual flesh and bone, severing arteries and pressing his forelegs into a shattered rib cage until organs and muscle became nothing but mush beneath his hooves. They cackled and howled with pleasure as it occurred, the walls splattered with rubies of blood and pieces of sinew as he shredded his only friend into nothingness.

The act had gifted Balto with immortality - the demons had told him.

Now you’ll live forever, now you’ll live forever.

They whisper excitedly in his ear and it tortured him even more than anything previously - he would never die, never die.

Never die.

A sound - a real sound, not one in his mind - rouses the beast and silences the demons.

The vines of his cave whisper against each other as moonlight begins to spill inward, a shape creating a shadow at its front.

Kill, kill, kill.

Eyes - glassy and blue as the moon - sharpen and fixate on the unfamiliar shape, remaining hidden beneath shadow and his own writhing demons. He dare not move forward, he dare not listen to the demons that entice him with sickly sweet ideas. “You’re not safe here,” comes the harshness of his voice that trembles with resistance, slick with warning.

Balto

@[City]

[City]

The old jaguar pauses, nothing but her long tail swaying with thought moves in the pitch black. Her eyes glint, their sulfuric yellow shining dimly from the light of a lit sconce on the wall. The eerie blue of a stranger’s gaze shine back, but she cannot see the angles of his silhouette – he doesn’t seem to have one, as if he is part of the cave, or maybe s the cave itself.

“It’s not safe anywhere.” she purrs back to him, still paused in the mouth of the cave. Rain rages behind her, thunder bubbling in the distance, threatening to roar as it gets closer. “But it is raining out and my tired old joints stop working in the cold rain.” she chuffs, licking her lips and padding further into the dark cave, finding a high perch along a flat rock jutting from the smooth stone.

“Are you going to kill an old woman for seeking shelter in the rain?” she asks the shadow, licking at her wet paws as she sinks onto her bony haunches.

@[Balto]

i tweaked it a bit to match the current circumstance <3
sorry it took me forever!