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    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


    [private]  followed by the ghost of what you can't absolve
    #1

    elio

    Deep within the shadows of the Forest, a clearing stained by Elio's blood shines silver beneath fickle moonlight. He is there, now, in his mind. Where his hooves actually take root is merely a border, one he longs to cross but can't find the will to.

    Or, ability, rather. Will isn't the right word when what holds him quiveringly still is the bloodied memory of his body breaking.

    Why am I here? he thinks. Here being halfway in and halfway out of the river that lines the Meadow and the Forest. It is an uncharacteristically chilly night, the first whisperings of Autumn forming little susurrus on the breeze. Elio shivers, waves of gooseflesh rising and falling on the top half of his body. Water rushes powerfully around his legs, the consequences of a rain-laden summer.

    Why am I here? he thinks again, taking one more step into the deepening water. Because I can do this, he answers himself.

    "Because I can do this."

    Why return to the scene of his near-death? One might ask him, where they to know what he struggles with outside of the obvious rushing water. Elio doesn't know why; and--if faced with such an inquisitive stranger, he might figure himself out.

    But to know oneself is to allow others to know one and . . . He won't be seen anymore.

    Not after Taiga. After Nash. After Celina. After his father.

    The pegasus continues to battle with himself, occasionally falling to shadow as the cloudy night hides what light the moon provides.

    i don't think i could stand to be
    where you don't see me



    @[Anonya]
    [Image: elio-by-dozymare-ddo34i6.png]
    Reply
    #2
    when you're dreaming with a broken heart
    Night falls, and she finally moves from the meadow. She follows the moonlight when she can, and then the river when the clouds  cause the silver trail to go into hiding. She has always found a kind of solace in the night, ever since she was a child. She used to think it was because of the stars, because what young girl didn’t love looking up into an endless expanse of glittering lights? A sky full of wishes, a sky full of dreams. It’s hard to believe she had ever been that innocent.

    Now she knows it’s because in the dark she does not have to pretend to be anything.

    She does not have to pretend to be alive.

    She does not have to pretend to not be broken.

    In the dark she can unravel, she can splinter and shatter, and she does not have to rebuild until dawn breaks and sunlight finds her again.

    She holds herself together tonight. For now, at least. She keeps herself trapped in a safety net of numbness, refusing to fall apart until she knows she is entirely alone. She holds herself together by the same thin threads as always, but after her encounter with Plume she is hyper-aware of what other ghosts of her past might be out to haunt her tonight.

    It’s why she almost ignores him when she sees him. If the moonlight had not caught the red and gold of him she might have not seen him at all, but instead a beam is cast upon him like a spotlight. Colored like a sunset, in the dead of night, with the river surging at his knees.

    She stops at the edge of the bank, her own skin unnaturally pale in the moonlight, the flowers woven into her mane and tail curled closed. “Hi,” is all she says, her quiet voice further hushed by the sounds of the river. She doesn’t say anything else; does not ask him who he is, or what he is doing standing in the middle of the river. She just watches him, silent and waiting.
    the waking up is the hardest part
    ANONYA


    @[elio]
    Reply
    #3

    elio

    The stranger is like him -- filled to the brim with an unspoken sadness. Maybe they'll drown together, in the rush of the river, clinging to the only certainty they've ever known: disappointment.

    Elio's heart breaks for the race of the river, the glow of the moonlight, the rustling of the trees. It breaks and beats and bleeds as powerfully as the nature around him. If only he were weak enough to sway, to bend to the earth's will, to fall to his knees and succumb to the weakness his father gave him.

    A weakness he was birthed into. Crippled by a father he wanted so badly that it aged him. Disjointed now, walking on underdeveloped limbs and brittle bones.

    A monster, perhaps. Thinly veiled by loose, underfed skin.

    The stranger mutters her small greeting and Lio lifts his sparking, vibrating eyes. "Hello," is all he says at first, casting the keen gaze of an anxious being over her pale frame. Not a threat, he thinks, but that stark white reminds him of the glimmer of Celina's stripes. Like prey smart enough to disguise themselves as predator, Anonya makes Elio twitch with a jolt of unease.

    But she is beautiful: beneath the silver beam of the moon she looks like a star that just finished rolling in a field of wildflowers, and Lio cannot resist such an image. He steps closer, closing the distance so that they might comfortably hear themselves over the water.

    "I'm hiding from something," he blurts, tucking his chin to his chest. "Are you?"

    i don't think i could stand to be
    where you don't see me

    [Image: elio-by-dozymare-ddo34i6.png]
    Reply
    #4
    when you're dreaming with a broken heart
    He asks her if she is hiding from something, and she isn’t really sure.

    If she could hide from anyone, it would be herself. If she could hide herself away from her pain and her hurt and mistakes, she would. But if there is anything that she has learned at all over the years, it’s that all that pain, it follows you. It followed her into death, it followed her into the strange dreamscape afterlife (where she is still not sure if that was dream or reality), and it followed her back here. She was revived with an almost new body, but the same broken heart. The same memories, the same pain, the same weaknesses.

    “I don’t know,” she answers him truthfully, wavering and unsure. She watches him from beneath dark lashes, lashes that have collected countless tears, and she stares at him and wonders what kind of pain he has felt. It was something she had started doing after she had been thoroughly broken — always wondering what kind of pain someone else was harboring. Her mother had always been the kind mask it, to cover up heartbreak with anything else she could find, but Anonya had never managed such a skill. She wore it all on her sleeve, in the haunted depths of her eyes and the soft lines of her face, in the sorrow that laced every word and shadowed every smile.

    “My name is Anonya,” she offers him, and while he doesn’t know what a worthless thing that is now, he will soon learn. “What are you hiding from?”
    the waking up is the hardest part
    ANONYA


    @[elio]
    Reply




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