"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
05-07-2020, 09:56 PM (This post was last modified: 05-10-2020, 08:41 PM by Neverwhere.)
Hey all you cool cats and kittens
How many days has it been?
The mare wakes in a snowdrift, wet and shivering, and somewhere beneath the haze of the fever, she's surprised that she's woken at all. Her head lifts weakly as she blinks rheumatic eyes, as she curls her neck to laboriously rub those eyes against a damp knee. It barely helps, but some of the haze is wiped away. Her brain feels too heavy for her head and it is slow to interpret what she is seeing.
What she is seeing is not Nerine.
"What..." her voice is a croak in her inflamed throat and it dies away into a whisper that even she can barely hear. Minutes pass, during which she almost doesn't even breathe, her eyelids droop and she begins to fall asleep there in the snow but the feeling of falling sends her into a panic and instead of slipping into sleep, she is leaping to her feet. Like a foal, she stumbles and staggers, her hooves numb from the winter's cold.
Every inch of her is screaming, her coat turned black with dried blood while fresh oozes from the grid he gouged across her. The feeling of scrabbling claws brings a shudder that blends in easily with the feverish shivering. She needs to get out of the wind but barely trusts her unfeeling legs, stands with an awkward, wide stance like a sawhorse, breathing fast and shallow as though that will stop the searing pain that blooms across her skin. Her head hangs low as she sways as flurries drift down upon her, trying to think, trying to remember how she has gotten here, and where here is.
The memories come like wisps of smoke and she cannot grasp them. He left her to die and the shock and adrenaline abandoned her soon after. She had fallen into the mud and the blood and waited out the last of the storm there, alone. She feels her readiness to die, sees him in that flash of lightning as if he is running at her now, but then he is gone, there is nothing but snow and grey rock and trees. She remembers things had not gone as she expected. The memory slips and the mare bares her teeth - the blood there isn't all her own.
Would it have gone differently if she'd held her tongue?
No.
Probably not.
She'd needled him and with that memory comes the flashing of strange, piscine, teeth, long and thin. She does not notice that there is still one broken off and piercing the skin of her shoulder. It's the least of her concerns.
The Forest!
Her head flies up too fast with the recollection and it sends her skittering backwards, but she catches herself this time, barely, haunches aching and trembling. She had hit the River's mouth and traced its western bank until collapsing with exhaustion and fever but remembers no part of the journey. The melted snow has soaked her entire right side, through her thick northern coat, all the way to that torn, angry, skin. The wind howls and she freezes, and she limps, from her snowdrift bed to the wind break of the Forest, trailing the toe of her left foreleg in the dirt .
Neverwhere wonders if this is the place she came with... with... Oh, with someone. It feels like ages, and her memory is like a sieve, her head full of fog thick as Taiga's. Groaning, she leans against a rough-barked tree, pressing burning flesh against it, staining the tree's skin red, and lets her eyes shut against the glare of grey light. There's a faint memory of wolf song in her ears, a distant, long-ago thing. It would be a strange irony if wolves found her, now, but never mind.
and since you’re the only one that matters,---------------- ----------------tell me: who do i run to?
The snow has settled on his back as he dozed, a soft dusting that hardly stands out against his pale wings and coat. It is not the cold that rouses him, but the thick scent of blood.
Pteron’s olive eyes snap open immediately. There is no sound in the still wounds save the distant roar of the river, no motion in the trees nearby. Yet the smell is thick in the air, far too close for comfort. He presses a kiss to Aegean’s cheek and then his belly, and slips away into the early morning light to find it.
Though the tobiano is by nature an empathetic creature, he is mostly seeking out the source to ensure that it does not endanger the antlered stallion in the distance. He follows the indent of hooves in the snow. They have been buried by the same light snowfall that slowly melts from his back, and the blood that had fallen as the creature walked smells stale. It is fresh on the gust off the River though, Pteron finds as he breaks into the open area near the water. His olive eyes cast over the snowy place. There – just at the edge of the forest – a horse stands.
Though it is hard to see her black wings amidst the torn flesh, Pteron has seen few other bald-faced mares with that particular coloring, and he recognizes Neverwhere long before he can separate her smell from the smell of blood.
This is, strangely, not the first time that the dun stallion has found a broken mare in the woods. But Vastra had not been bleeding like this, and Pteron doubts that Aten will appear from the woods to offer them sanctuary. This time it is just himself and Neverwhere, and Pteron knows that he is no help at all when it comes to wounds and injury.
“Neverwhere?” He asks cautiously, hesitant to disturb her even with the way she bleeds all over his forest. “You’ve picked a terrible place for a nap,” he tries, because someone had told him once that humor is the best medicine. The pegasus is not sure how that will help with the strange barb that protrudes from her shoulder or the way she is rent and battered.
05-09-2020, 10:50 PM (This post was last modified: 05-10-2020, 06:56 AM by Neverwhere.)
It's not wolves that come.
For a moment, she mistakes his shape as someone else, and ears that lean loosely to their sides pin flat and trace the contour of her poll. She snakes her neck stiffly and the claw marks crack with the movement, inflexible. Her lips draw back in a snarl of pain and anger and she brandishes her red-stained teeth at him, snapping them in the air, a futile attempt at warning him away.
You'll die this time.
She doesn't know why she isn't dead already. She doesn't know how she pulled herself out of the mud, or how - or why - she brought herself here. She hadn't been sure how she was ever going to make the long journey back north, but now that won't be necessary. The mare turns to face him as he steps through the undergrowth, but, not strong enough this time to lunge at him when he pauses, she remains leaning against the reddened bark of the tree. She waits for him to get nearer, waits for him to close in on her. With the strength of her legs gone, she resolves to pop however many eyes she can, like crushing frog eggs between her teeth, until he strikes her down and finishes what he started.
Her breath growls in her nostrils. Her eyes are still bleary with fever and swelling. A flash of teal gives her pause, the pale, silvery, dun of his skin, but she is already so far committed to believing this is Wolfbane that she barely wastes a moment second guessing. He can change his shape, his color, and yet.. Can he change his scent so quickly? The dappled mare inhales a shivering breath and there is nothing of the shifter's strange smell, no metallic tang clinging to his hairs or claws or hooves. He smells of oakbark and golden leaves and of another horse whose skin he has pressed so close and so frequently against that their scents intertwine.
Neverwhere hesitates. Uncertain, now, she leans against the broad side of her dam for support, hiding from the biting winter winds. the tips of her ears no longer hurt, they no longer feel anything, really, and when her brother nips at them to draw her out to play, she does not feel his teeth, only the tickle of his whiskers in the soft hairs curling out from below. She squeals and it sounds strange and distant. The white-faced filly tries to jump aside, but her mother is there, firm and unmoving, and instead she falls down beside the mare's roots in the pink-stained snow. Rough bark scrapes her side as she sinks, eyelids half drawn over her eyes.
Neverwhere?
Her brother's voice is warm as he calls her name. Sleepy eyes flutter open and she smirks at him. A terrible place for a nap. But she always sleeps at her mother's feet.
"No, no, it's fine," she murmurs, exhausted, her nose pressed against the ground "Did you find my ears yet?"
and since you’re the only one that matters,---------------- ----------------tell me: who do i run to?
She snaps at him, and Pteron freezes despite that wide distance still between them. It is not that he is fearful of her (in this state he could probably knock her over with a single tap of his wing), but rather that he respects the space she demands – even if it is a rather impressively large amount of space. But then she doesn’t move again, and so he comes closer, his head lowered to try and meet her gaze beneath the bloodsoaked flop of her mane.
“Neverwhere?” he repeats. There is no part of her large enough that he cannot touch without bloodying his muzzle, and he doubts she would want him to, even to rouse her. She’s drifting in and out of consciousness, Pteron is almost sure of it. “Neverwhere!” he repeats louder, just before she asks about her ears. The brown mare is certainly not fine, but Pteron is not sure how to convince her of this if she can’t even focus on him standing in front of her.
“Wake up!” he demands, his voice raised against both the wind and whatever keeps pulling her under. “You need to wake up, and we need to get you to a healer.” Pteron has no idea where a healer might be found, and he realizes this as the words leave his mouth. He’d taken Vastra to Day in the Pampas, but how likely is the gifted mare to still live there all these years later? And that seems quite far away, especially if he cannot even wake Neverwhere, let alone get her to walk that distance.
There seem to be few options, but the only one that he is certain of is the one to simply leave her here. That one is not acceptable. He wonders briefly if that choice would disappoint his mother, but he scolds himself for it afterward. She wants the North, not dead Northerners, not even their queen. The stallion leans down, nudges her bare pink nose with his teal one and says: “You have to wake up. You can’t sleep here.”
His voice comes to her like in a dream and it is deeper than it should be, it's the voice of a mature stallion, not that of a child tugging at his sister. It reminds her of someone, not her brother, and not Wolfbane. She is so tired, with cold and shock and the sickness that wracks her body. She struggles to tell what is real and what is imagined - no, she doesn't struggle, she is not even trying to eke out the truth from the fever dream, it blends seamlessly and she doesn't question it. Her name comes to her over and over through a sea of mud and memory and she bends her ears against their voice, reluctant. A blue-green muzzle brushes her own, its velvet lips keeping teeth well-covered, and without the threat she only puzzles over its color. It should be black, not teal. A labored breath fills her lungs and she groans in a moment of clarity, picking her head up to cast a tortured gaze up over Pteron.
Pteron.
Of course. Not Wolfbane, but it explains that similarity of shape. It sets her teeth on edge, anyway, reluctant to accept his help even through her muddled thoughts and memories. She wrinkles her nose with the effort of waking up her slow brain and nods, almost imperceptibly. He's right, she knows he's right, but she's weak and even pulling her forelegs out from beneath the weight of her chest leaves them shaking and her breath puffing in raw nostrils. Her face is red, her eyes inflamed, and she doesn't remember that he struck her face, but who could tell? She remembers the ruin of it painted over Heartfire's skull, and a bitter laugh coughs out of her throat.
"Pteron?"
She blinks slowly, her eyelids clenching down as if to crush the sight out of her eyes, the strange, crawling shapes that jerk out of the darkness at the corners of her vision, black, clawed, hands that grasp and tear, a million unblinking green eyes, but they are there just the same behind those black shades so finally she relents and opens her rebellious eyes. She is a stubborn thing, and though she can't say why she brought herself here, she knows it was by a sheer refusal to do what she ought. She ought to have stayed in that mire and died, but she had snarled and dredged herself free of it, and her wanderer's feet had carried her away to the Forest. How much further might they have gone, she wonders, if her strength had not finally given out?
So she does it again. She snarls and she hoists herself upwards into an awkward seated position and her chest heaves like stormy northern seas when she leans back against her bloodied tree. Her back and barrel and flanks are on fire, torn shoulder to haunch, more obviously than the purple bruising at her throat and poll that blooms like dark flowers under her unclean hair. She can feel the way the hairs stick and clump and pull at one another, and she grins, inexplicably at Wolfbane's son.
"Do you want to know what your father's eyes taste like?"
But before he can answer, she is shaking her head weakly and looking away, the manic grin wiped away, replaced by a frown. Her bear-cub ears flicker, confused, "No-- Don't answer that."
She lets her head fall heavily against the tree, "Sorry."
and since you’re the only one that matters,---------------- ----------------tell me: who do i run to?
Around them, snow begins to fall.
It is soft but heavy, and glittering so prettily that Pteron half wonders if Aegean had followed him after all. But no, the flakes that land on his nose are cold and real enough, and he wonders if they feel better or worse on Neverwhere’s ruined hide. With her not likely to give a coherent answer anytime soon, the pegasus flares his broad wings until the wrists of his wings meet. The two of them are shielded by a feathered canopy, and while the position is not especially comfortable for the dun, he imagines it is far less than the pain Neverwhere feels.
She seems to be waking up, or at least she meets his eyes. They are not clear, he thinks; she looks like she is still mostly asleep. But at least the mare nods and begins to draw her legs beneath her. At her cough (Pteron doesn’t recognize it as a laugh) he steps back, allowing her what space she might need to stand. Hesitant to move too far away lest she need him, the olive-eyed stallion nods to affirm her recognition.
“The one and only,” he tells her with a charming smile. It’s Wolfbane’s smile, but not the many-toothed one he had worn when ripping into the white-faced mare. It has taken him a rather long time to recognize the scent, but when Neverwhere asks if he wants to know what his father’s eyes taste like, everything clicks into place. The smile disappears as quickly as it had arrived, and perhaps that is part of why Neverwhere apologizes so quickly. Pteron’s stomach clenches uncomfortably, but the flood of guilt that might have once overtaken him at the thought of leaving Taiga undefended is now little more than a soft lapping at his ankles.
Not his fault, he reminds himself.
Not his responsibility. He had warned them when he left nearly two years gone that they were unprepared and the news of monsters freely roaming in the north and east confirms they had not heeded his words.
Not his fault.
Neverwhere has managed to stand, though she still leans heavily for support against the blood-marked tree. Pteron takes a slow breath, and glances beneath the fathers of his wings. The snow continues to fall, and the thick clouds overhead promise an impressive amount of accumulation come nightfall.
“Do you think you can walk to a healer?” he asks, forcing himself to focus on the most immediate needs. “Do you know of a healer, even? Rumor says there’s a waterfall hidden in the Tephran jungle; it might be magical enough to fix you.”
05-14-2020, 04:44 PM (This post was last modified: 05-14-2020, 04:45 PM by Neverwhere.)
Neverwhere knows that, most likely, Wolfbane was not always what he is now, what he was even on the day that she first met him, because she has spoken with Lepis, and because there is little left in the creature that would recommend him to the Loessian queen or to Lilliana, these days. And, yes, she recognizes that smile, that charm, but it's gone, and as quickly as Pteron smiles, Neverwhere wipes it away with barbs thrown undeservingly.
Her apology, at least, is sincere.
He had warned them. She had already known, of course, because Lepis had come before. But what can you do against a curse? She had known only how to die, and even that went wrong. Perhaps Brennen could exert some influence over the creature that is now Wolfbane - or was Wolfbane - perhaps not. It occurs to her that she ought to have called the magician from the first moment, but these sorts of plans have never been her forte. It is exactly why she had not wanted this responsibility, and had done little with it, yet her people had also not come to her with an alternative to her free-handed leadership, and so she remained queen of Nerine.
For a moment, on her feet again, she feels a flood of resolve, a strengthening that reaches out, from her belly, to her legs, that clears the fog from her brain with a single breath and the dullness from her pale eyes. He is speaking of Healers and waterfalls and she looks at him sharply, ready to decline all such help, but almost as quickly as it comes on, the sensation fades, though she feels herself less tired than before. The dappled mare can only shake her head again, distracted by the mechanism that has triggered her wakefulness, as a wry expression twists sharply into the dull exhaustion of her face. Somewhere in the fever dream she is connecting dots, black dots in the unlit room of her mind, and the picture they form is a joyless realization.
"It's not a healer that I need," she hisses, teeth bared and angry once again. She wants to bite something, but Pteron has rather wisely moved too far away to be within reach, so she savages the rough bark of the tree, baring the green wood underneath and denting that, too, with the marks of her teeth, and when she has satisfied on that front she at last pulls away from it. Without the support, her legs are weak as a newborn's and her steps lack control. She lurches forward, standing parallel to the winged stallion and reaches out with her muzzle for the scarred place he hides behind his jawbone. She does not touch him.
"Do all of Wolfbane's children do that, Pteron?"
Healing. Wolfbane had healed himself, almost instantly, and Pteron had done it, too. I should be dead, she thinks once more, twisting an ear back in thought. It is not a power that she has ever had, except in the most mundane sense, and certainly, she is not healed now, but neither is she lying scavenged in the mud. Her vision flickers to the cliffside of Nerine where Wolfbane left her, where he changed and fled, without even checking to see if she was dead (had he been so sure of his work, or had he just not cared?) Would he bother with the northern kingdom, if neither her nor Lilli were there?
But, of course, there's still Nashua and Yanhua to draw him back to the Taigan woods. And Ama, whose only crime is being close to Neverwhere - and perhaps a tendency to speak her mind when she shouldn't. Neverwhere looks North and sighs. It's a long way back, like this.
Image by Ratty
@[Pteron] I feel like this got weird at the end, so enjoy
and since you’re the only one that matters,---------------- ----------------tell me: who do i run to?
He waits, quiet, while Neverwhere puzzles through whatever it is that keeps her occupied. Pteron is reluctant to rush her, being all too aware of the sensation of being knocked unconsciousness. Of course, for Pteron it lasts only moments – Neverwhere is less quick to heal, and her angry hiss of a voice is not entirely unexpected. Pteron would not feel very patient if he bled like she does. She rips at the tree, and Pteron watches her take out her fury on the defenseless maple without a word. He even glances away, giving her this moment to herself as much as he can without leaving her exposed. He knows how it feels to have control taken away, how sometimes giving up is the only choice. That Neverwhere points to the scar below his throat at the moment that memory returns to him sends a cold shiver of coincidence down the pegasus’ teal spine.
Without thinking, he tucks his head down to hide the scar left by blue flames
Do all his siblings do that, Neverwhere inquires. Do what, Pteron thinks? Develop a resistance to their magical healing if one spot is destroyed too many times? Offer to help injured women in the woods out of the goodness of their hearts? Definitely not the latter, the dun thinks to himself, the image of the green-eyed Celina with her sharp teeth sinking into the soft skin of Elio’s nose replaying in his mind. His family is falling apart, and Pteron is hiding out in the woods. The guilt rises again, seemingly strengthened by the nearness of the bald-faced mare. He shakes it away, and shakes his wings as well, bending them gently before tucking them once more against his sides. There they disappear, and he is an ordinary looking horse save his coloring.
He’s not heard of her dislike of magic, or else Pteron would not have been so casual used his invisibility. It is only habit, borne of months of patrol in these transient woodlands. It’s better to look boring in these parts, better to not draw the eye. Unfortunately, Neverwhere is likely to draw in all sorts of dangers here in the open. The blood is a beacon for hunters both natural and mythic; standing near her is like placing himself beside a target. But he cannot leave her. It would not be right.
Pteron comes from a different chapter of his parents’ lives, raised in a time when there was far less fear and never any strife that reached the children. They had taught him the values they held: loyalty and honor and family. This chapter in life is far different; they are all of them stalked by any number of dangers and even the unborn seem to quiver in terror. Yet the green-eyed man retains the compassionate heart that he has always exhibited, even when it means drawing Wolfbane’s ire. Leaving her out here would be the safest option for himself and Aegean, but it wouldn’t be right.
“I could help you back to Nerine,” Pteron tells her, “unless there is somewhere else you would rather go.” He looks away from the dark cloud horizon as he says this, his olive green gaze focused intently on the beaten mare. He remembers her words when he had ceded Taiga to Aten. “You are welcome to shelter with us during the storm, or longer if you wish.” Pteron has been encountering a fair number of Aegean’s family of late; perhaps this is the Fates’ way of evening the balance. He’s heard of the boys in Taiga, knows that the thing that wears his father’s skin has been satisfying its need for violence and chaos in an increasingly depraved manner.
That Neverwhere is a victim of such an assault seems clear, but asking seems invasive. Insensitive even, so Pteron is quiet and for the first time laments that he has done so well in ridding this area of any plant that might endanger Aegean and the child he carried.
“If my father learns he failed to kill you, I doubt you will survive your next meeting.” Pteron says quietly. His voice is as calm as if he comments on the ever-darkening sky. “But perhaps if he thinks you dead, you will have time to regain your strength.”
The snow that falls so gently around them hints at something stronger growing, a winter squall that is sure to grow no easier if she insists on traveling north now, today, and every rip in her skin reminds her when she moves that she will not get far from these trees if she reverses her course and tries to go home, but she is slow to turn back to Pteron.
"I think if he cared to kill me, he'd have bothered to make sure I was dead before running off." Is it worse, that he didn't? Not for her, beneath the haze of anger and the pain that flushes her vision, she mostly finds a thread of surprise. But for Pteron, faced with the harm his father has caused? Something in her recoils from his assistance, reluctant to be a reminder of what he has lost, as if his help is solely offered out of some mislaid guilt. She pulls her muzzle back from where she'd left it, hovering near his withdrawn cheek, and unconsciously mirrors his action. There's sense it it, though, in staying. The wind is picking up and though it hasn't reached them yet at the base of the trees, the highest branches are beginning to sway, filled with urgent whispers.
Will they notice that the Queen of Nerine is missing? That her scent grows stale on the cliffs and blows away in the wind like brittle ash from the Isle? Except, of course, from the place where her blood soaked into its soil. Ama will notice, she thinks. She will notice that Lilli is gone, that Neverwhere is gone, and only Eurwen remains. They may not realize she is still alive. Perhaps he's right, maybe they will all think she is dead and she can just go. But she can't, not forever. She had allowed herself to be bound to Nerine, but she would not allow herself to be torn away from it so easily. She is luckier in her enemies than others, Wolfbane had done nothing to betray her, he only shown himself to be what she had already known, and she knows, despite Pteron's warning that she would not survive it, that she would fight him just as readily again. But that's a battle for another day.
"Okay, Pteron. For a little while."
At least until the storm passes, she thinks. At least until she has slept off the exhaustion of fever and infection. And then she will return home again, north again, to whatever awaits her there.
