"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
07-22-2020, 09:17 AM (This post was last modified: 07-22-2020, 09:17 AM by Livinia.)
l i v i n i a don't waste your touch, you won't feel anything
She liked this body. She liked the illusions of living that being a predator provided. So much so that she’d lost track of how much time she’d spent wearing this borrowed skin.
Eventually, like all illusions, the mystique began to fade. Livinia knew that the time spent in this body was quickly coming to an end - that she had pushed away her friends and her family and all the responsibility that came with for far too long. Solitude was suffocating, even though she didn’t need air to breathe.
She could feel herself slipping away - could feel the shadows consuming all that she was and all that she wanted to be. The mind of a predator was like a drug in her lifeless body - tempting her away from the realities of her life...and everything that came with it. Livinia knew she was teetering on the brink and there was only one she trusted to help pull her back. Jamie was perhaps the only one that could at this point. The silver-grey lioness was still undeniably Livinia. She had the same crimson eyes - the same smoky aura. But there was no discomfort with this skin - this body she’d come to be oh so familiar with. She’d been searching the shadows for her twin. For they were Jamie’s shadows as much as they were their mother’s.
“Jamie,” she called, into the darkness, “Help me, Jamie.”
She couldn’t see him, but had faith that he could hear her, nonetheless.
He comes, just as she had known that he would.
Because the shadow thing has never known love save for the crippling fondness he has always felt for his sister.
Had the face any features, perhaps concern would have furrowed the brow and the shadow thing would have frowned into the darkness at his sister’s words, the way she called to him. Alas, there is merely a spasm in his heart – real or imagined – as he turns that peculiar head in the direction of her voice.
He travels silent through the darkness, accompanied only by the fog curled sweetly around him. And when he finds her, she is not his sister. He would not have known her at all if not for the smoke that bent around her, clung close to the lioness’s sides.
He is slow to emerge from the shadows, spurred into her orbit by her plea. The only thing he ever loved, his sister, and he was some monster but not even he would turn her away. He studies her a long moment. Doesn’t even blink those large yellow eyes, his head tilted at a peculiar angle.
“Livinia,” he wheezes and slinks a little closer, his steps silent. “What’s happened?”
He thinks of Beyza. Of their mother. Of all the ways this could have happened.
l i v i n i a don't waste your touch, you won't feel anything
Her heart lifts at the sight of him - quickening at the familiar melding of shadow and fog. She’d known, deep down, he would come. But that didn’t stop the sigh of relief from escaping her lips.
“I went to the mountain for help,” she admits, her red eyes dropping from his eerie yellow ones to the ground before her. She does not fear his judgment about her decision. They’d grown up shrouded in shadows and magic. For this task, however, Livinia had sought assistance outside their circle. Perhaps it had been foolish, but it was something she had wanted to do alone - to prove she hadn’t needed anyone’s assistance to get what she needed.
But it had been a fool’s errand after all.
“I was given this,” she gestures to her leonine body, lifting a tawny gray paw - the heavy claws stained with earth and dried blood. She understood now that it had not been a gift. It had been a test.
One it had taken her far too long to understand.
“I got lost,” she admitted. There were so few that she’d voluntarily admit such a profound failure aloud. But she had no secrets from Jamie.
This predator’s body was more than she had bargained for. It had become a drug. The hunt had become an addiction, not a means to an end. Even when she didn’t need sustenance she craved the thrill of the hunt. She knew now the bloodlust that others spoke of. She knew its dangers. And she knew she needed help to break free.
She’d had enough of this fix. She wanted her body - her life back.
She drew in a shaky breath, finally lifting her gaze from the dirt, but electing against saying anything more until he’s had a moment to digest what she’s told him.
He doesn’t understand.
Even with the clear memory of the afternoon he’d found her with Beyza and the rabbit. The afternoon when she had beamed at him, delighted by the teeth that Beyza had given her. How she’d said, ‘look, I’m just like you!’.
He doesn’t understand why she would have gone to the mountain when there had been a magician in Pangea willing to help her.
And, oh, he would tear the teeth out of his mouth and give them to her, too.
He studies the lion’s body. The smooth hide, the teeth, how all of these things so seamlessly belong to her. He draws his bright yellow eyes back to her red ones.
He knows nothing of the mountain or the things it costs those who seek help from it. He does not understand the dark forces or how keen the faeries are to take rather than give. He drags in a rattling breath and edges closer, reaches for her. Touches the soft edges of his nose against her shoulder. Still, he feels nothing.
“What will it take to get you back?” he asks, wheezes, pants.
He doesn’t understand how intoxicating the pull of blood. Not yet. But he won’t leave her like this. He takes a pair of small steps backward to meet her eye again, peculiar head tilted.
“Do we need to find mother?” Surely the shadow magician can help.
l i v i n i a don't waste your touch, you won't feel anything
"No!"
She's almost embarrassed at how quickly the word flies from her lips. But the urgency - the desperation - is evident in the single syllable. She knows how badly she's messed up but she'd be damned before bringing her mother into this. She wasn't sure she could withstand that level of shame.
"No, please. We don't need to involve mother." She didn't even want to think what mother would think of this particular escapade. It wasn't their mother's wrath she feared - but the judgment. To be thought a fool by her mother was almost unbearable. She shakes her leonine head - trying to clear away the very thought.
She lets out an exhausted sigh. "I'm a fucking coward, Jamie," she admits. It almost feels good to finally say it aloud. The self loathing she felt at her failure to control the bloodlust and predator's body was overwhelming. But there were questions too. Would this...linger? Would she always have this need to kill even when she didn't need to feed? She didn't have the answers to these questions - and she wouldn't until she returned to the mountain.
She knew, deep down, that's what she needed to do. But as much as she wanted the answers, she feared them. Perhaps that's why she'd been so lost. She needed something - or someone - help get her back there. She wasn't sure if she'd been avoiding the task consciously or on a subconscious level but that ended now. She had to go back.
"Can you just -- can you help me get back to the Mountain? Can you help make sure I, you know, actually make it there..." She was sure it seemed foolish - the mountain wasn't even that far, physically. But she hoped that his affection for her was enough for Jamie to consider this fool's errand.
He grimaces.
Or, he might have if the face were not smooth, featureless. If there had been a brow to furrow.
He grimaces but all that changes is the narrowing of those freakish yellow eyes. The corners of his ink-black mouth tremble, but there is so scarcely any part of him that is not wracked with tremors.
He is not used to the noise, the sharp edge, the hard language.
And it would have been so easy for him to dissociate. So easy for him to dissolve into his darkness and his fog. Because the thing staring back at him is not his sister, though it has her eyes. It is not his sister, though the smell of her smoke curls sweetly in his mouth.
How desperately the shadow thing’s brain wants to withdraw, retreat. It is some valiant war, the battle he wages in his own head. This is his sister, his Livinia, and she needs his help. She says she’s a coward but he knows it’s not true. Of course it’s not true.
They are a strange pairing, no doubt. The darkness and the lioness, their oddly colored eyes locked. And even if he does not know how to read the facial expressions of a feline, he can sense the pleading.
He sinks closer, driven perhaps by the knowledge that should she try to sink her teeth into him she would come away disappointed. He had tried to touch her but found that the change in her had not inspired any change in him. He was still only vapor. So he curls himself around her and lays his weightless head across her spine. Still, he cannot feel her and doubts that she can feel him.
“I will go with you,” he wheezes. “I will make sure you get there.”
He does not know the danger of it. He does not understand the changes in her or the impulses of a predator. He has never eaten, never tasted blood, though he has often had to swallow the urge to sink those shark’s teeth into the meat of a vulnerable throat. Perhaps he understands better than he realizes.
l i v i n i a don't waste your touch, you won't feel anything
“Thank you,” she breathes.
The relief that washes over her is palpable. The anxiety seeps from the lines of her face; the tension leaves her still-feline shoulders. She hates that she has struggled so severely with this task, but she is determined to see it through.
She knows with Jamie by her side she can. She will. She can focus on his presence and not the instinct to hunt, to kill, to keep this form which her mind has grown so attached her. Because this body is not hers to keep. It is time now for her to shed this skin and return to her own.
And return to her life.
She knew she’d come out stronger for this – for she’d certainly learned a valuable lesson. She knows that that was the purpose of this test, she only hoped that the fairy on the mountain wouldn’t be as disappointed in her as she was in herself. She swallows down the anticipation and steps closer to Jamie’s vaporlike side.
And then she starts in the direction of the mountain – keeping pace with her brother. As they draw nearer the hair on the back of her neck rises, but she forces herself to stay at her brother’s side even though everything in her is screaming at her to return to the trees. Until finally, the mountain looms.
”I’ll find you,” she says, trying to pour confidence in to her shaky voice, ”After.” She doesn’t want him to feel he has to stay and wait for her, but she hopes he understands that this small gesture has meant so much more to her. And then she turns and begins her climb.
@[jamie]
no need to respond - we can end this one here and have a real thread after <3
jamie
