"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
don't look too hard, might hurt yourself known to give the color red the blues
There are many that would claim life is dull (his father is one of them, though he’s never met the man to know this about him). Clearly though, those many had never had the fortune to meet Cassian. Maybe from the outside, his life doesn’t look like anything too special. But that is where you would be wrong. After all, life is what you make it. And Cassian… well, Cassian makes it interesting.
I mean, for starters, who else can turn randomly into sand? Or rather, could. It hasn’t happened in a while, which is a little disappointing. The disappointment had taken him by surprise. After all, it could be a little frustrating to be in the middle of a conversation one moment and decorating their coat or stinging their eyes the next. But it had also been the very opposite of boring.
Even if he had accidentally made a few horses mad. Or gotten his leg chewed off (or his whole body ripped apart, but who’s counting?) when it refused to function at a time that would’ve actually been helpful.
In the end, it’s neither here nor there. Cassian had never been one to dwell on the past or the could-have-beens. Which has always served very well in keeping Cassian, well, happy.
A rarity in these parts, that’s for sure.
He isn’t quite sure what had brought him here today, though he’s certain he’ll know soon enough. Of course, it had likely been nothing more than whim that brought him here, but good luck convincing him of that. Even his much more serious (and greatly put-upon) twin had never managed to successfully instill a great deal of practicality in him. And she had tried, much to Cassian’s eternal dismay.
So it should come as no great surprise that anyone who happened to stumble on him at this precise moment would find him idly straining to reach a dry brown leaf still clinging tenaciously to an otherwise bare branch, gaze focused and lip wiggling impotently just a few centimeters shy of it.
09-12-2020, 06:00 PM (This post was last modified: 09-12-2020, 06:01 PM by Beryl.)
Beryl's life has been a series of disasters and it shows in the serious lines of her face. She comes to the forest because her shadows love it here, but like those shadows that dim the path, drifting between the trees does little to lighten her mood. She is lost in thought, and even though it has been so long, she cannot help but flick through her Shadows for impressions of that flaxen girl she remembers running terrified along the river, golden-red and glowing. Guilt squeezes her heart.
Aela.
She remembers. The name is burnt into her memory. The lost child, swallowed by Beryl's own shadows in an ill-fated rescue mission.
She remembers and fails to watch her step, but the shadows have never tripped her the way she has seen them do to others. They eddy at her feet like cool water, still but for the ripples she makes as she passes through them, and so when one of them does not move out of her way, she stumbles awkwardly against the dark wall of it with a grunt and an affronted "What?" Her curled ears lace back and for a moment she wonders if it is another shadow-spinner playing tricks, but it is not that at all.
No, instead her flashing eyes fall on the broad back of the dark stallion that she has stumbled directly into, bouncing off his side like a beetle throwing itself against a tree, or like an acorn dropped from the trees around them to ricochet off the ground. Probably more like the acorn, it has less purpose.
"Oh!" She retreats backs hurriedly, irritation giving way to way to embarrassment, then leaping back again to puzzled irritation.
"Why are you standing across the trail like that?"
don't look too hard, might hurt yourself known to give the color red the blues
He grunts when she tumbles right into his broad barrel, head snapping down as he is abruptly distracted from his idle attempts to reach the leaf. His gaze jumps to the creature that had blundered right into him, confusion and surprise giving way swiftly to amusement as he registers the pale golden features of a young mare.
Her own surprise and irritable dismay is worn openly on her lovely features as she quickly retreats a few steps. Cassian, largely unfazed by the unorthodox interruption, offers her a wide, brilliant grin in response.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he quips easily back. He’d never been one to take things very seriously, and truth be told, he didn’t really have a good answer anyway. “I didn’t realize I blended so well with the scenery though.”
He can’t help the way his dark eyes gleam with humor as he studies her, teasing grin tugging at his lips. “Maybe it’s a little late to say this after how close we’ve already gotten,” he pauses briefly to smother a laugh before continuing, “but I’m Cassian.”
Aela isn't her only ghost. Nerine no longer smokes, but parts still show scorches in the rock, and there will be no fixing the inlet-turned-bay where she dredged ancient darkness from its place sleeping beneath the rocks. She still has not found Brennen, and this failure weighs on her as well, the grief making her short tempered and defensive. The ebony stallion grins and it infuriates her. What can he possibly have to be so happy about. She returns his grins with a snarl flavored by leonine canines curving dangerously against her grey lips and glinting in the faint gleam of light.
"Cassian." She hates him immediately, if only because she dislikes herself so deeply, "You are in my way, Cassian."
It's easier not to like him, though, than to admit her mistake. Easier to focus the anger and hurt and disappointment on him, especially when he answers her so glibly; easier to find a reason to make this his fault. He shouldn't have been standing across the path, and maybe she should have been watching where she was going, but some horses can't see at all and might have been injured. The longer she muses on this, the duskier her coat becomes, layer upon layer of darkness coming to cling to her skin as it always does when anxiety makes her heart pound and her mind race, and in the cool shadowy embrace of her magic, and the inflammatory wandering of her thoughts, she becomes quickly convinced of her own interpretation of events. Rather than go around or ask him to move, she blunders into him again, jaw clenched and ears set back and the lion in her belly snarling to be let out
He will move, or she will claw him to pieces, she decides without realizing she has decided it, and shoves her golden chest against his hip as though to bulldoze him from the trail.
"You could have hurt someone, do you even care? Get. Off. The. Path!"
don't look too hard, might hurt yourself known to give the color red the blues
He can’t seem to help the amusement that bubbles inside his chest as he watches her struggle with her temper. He had known far too many irritable women to be overly concerned about encountering yet another one. In any case, he’d learned long ago they were rarely irritable because of him, but rather some mysterious internal ailment. He’s not quite certain what her ailment is, but he’s pretty certain responding in kind would serve no purpose.
Besides, he’s not made to be irritable anyway.
“I’m always in the way,” he responds blithely, barely suppressed grin causing his lips to twitch. “A bit of a curse of mine, I suppose, but it usually ends up being the right place.” He pauses then, consternation flashing across his features before muttering, “Well, I don’t suppose getting eaten was really the right place, right time, but.” He brightens swiftly, eyes gleaming with his perpetual good humor. Live and learn, am I right?”
A sudden laugh bubbles up as she quite deliberately barrels right into him, her words punctuated by her own fury. He stumbles sideways beneath her assault, but that doesn't phase him much.
“Do you care?” he counters easily, turning the rhetorical question back onto her. He may not be the quickest fish in the sea, but he knows enough of equine-nature to know that her foul temper hadn’t originated because of some theoretical, hapless stranger who might stumble into him and hurt themselves. No, this definitely had to do with one hapless stranger in particular who had already stumbled into him.
“But if this is your way of asking me to move, I have to say…” he continues, voice dropping in suggestive amusement, “you’re giving me the impression that you were just looking for an excuse to touch me again. Not that I object, but if you want to continue, you could at least give me your name before we do.”
She's in no mood for self-reflection, as evidenced by the notably unhorse-like snarl that curls in her throat, by the way the shadows clinging to her skin lash out angrily. Always in the way. Yes, she can fully believe that this man spends his entire life in someone's way, with a cocky smile and a flippant remark, and, she thinks, barely listening to what he is saying, that it's a wonder he hasn't been killed long before now. And unfortunate, because then he wouldn't be here to stop her on her search for her missing Magician. Remembering how the grullo mare blinked and sent Brennen away without a word reawakens the icy panic in her belly, with its cold, cold tendrils that grip at her heart and her throat and makes breathing so hard.
She's drowning again, in a sea of rage and guilt and hate, and she slaps away the life preserver @[Cassian] throws her. Her pride will save her, and her spite. Of course she cares. If anything, she cares too much, has thrown herself against giants and immutable rock faces over and over, and if every time she's failed, well, it isn't because she didn't care, it's because she wasn't fast enough, wasn't good enough. For him to even suggest otherwise...
Her anger is almost enough to melt the ice in her breast and even though he's let himself be shoved roughly to one side of the road, she still considers pulling out her claws and tearing his black skin to pieces purely to soothe the wretched bitterness she is nursing with his blood. Perhaps only a few stripes. She steps towards him again, intent on the shift, when his voice drops suggestively and his words freeze her in place.
What?
"What?" The word hisses out before she can stop it.
Is he-- What exactly is he suggesting? Furious and scandalized, Beryl bares her teeth, brown eyes wide. "I-- What? Aaargh!" She reels back from him, with a growl that becomes a squeal, consternation written across her face and in the mad snapping of her tail.
"Before..." She keeps the facade of outrage like an expert, but her voice catches, rattled. She had been prepared for him to fight back, she had been prepared for him to fall away in the face of her excessive aggression, but she had not, somehow, been prepared for his insinuations. And perhaps she should have been, yet somehow Leilan's adopted daughter managed to grow up without a sense of humor. When her eyes find Cassian's, fury has been replaced with horror and the darkness ripples close to her again, making her nearly invisible in the dappled shade where they have stopped just off the forest trail. Her pointed teeth are still bared, clenched like prison bars, her name trapped behind them, unspoken.
Perhaps she won't kill him, won't touch him again. Perhaps she will just go. And she certainly will not be giving him her name.
don't look too hard, might hurt yourself known to give the color red the blues
It’s strange, but underneath it all, there is a sense of familiarity here. He can’t know the source of her fury, but if he could, he could have sympathized. Could have understood. He’d spent his life in the shadow of much greater things than himself. Spent his life never being quite good enough, or quick enough, or powerful enough. It’s undoubtedly the reason he had developed such irreverence towards life (especially the larger things in life). But when one has a dragon for a sister and an angel for a mother while being particularly and spectacularly normal and uninteresting, what else was one to do?
He has spent his entire existence walking in the wake of greatness, and she is no different. It’s as plain as the stars on her shoulders that she houses great power. A power he will never understand. A power he could never hope to match. He is nothing more than a bug in the face of her speeding windshield.
But that’s what he’s always been. He’s smashed upon so many of them. Honestly, it would probably serve him right if he died yet again at the hands of someone with far more power than he. Not that it would change him. The last couple of times certainly hadn’t. Might as well have fun in the meantime though, yeah?
Her absolute horror at his insinuation sends a wave of laughter through him. He can’t help it. She’d probably never imagined someone so insignificant would ever have to balls to suggest such a thing. And there’s something improbably amusing about watching her struggle with the concept that it’s not fear she had inspired in him.
Her final statement (”Don’t be disgusting,” she had spat) draws another guffaw deep from his belly. With a faint cough, he clears his throat quickly before replying over his laughter. “Are you implying that wanting a cuddle is disgusting? You’re the one that kept… pushing for it.”
He blinks at her, brown eyes surprisingly guileless despite the crinkle of laugh lines. No one could expect her to know how often he’d had to play at daft innocence throughout his life. Enough that he’d gotten pretty good at it. Besides, he was rather curious to see whether she’d choose to step back or push it to its logical conclusion.
Anger and embarrassment do her no favors, and she can feel the way the darkness hisses at her touch, mirroring the emotion that clouds her way forward. She should leave him here with his half-spoken insinuations and the impertinence that dances across his face. She should turn and go but hidden in her breast is a volcano of bitterness that threatens to crack her flesh like earth splitting to vent the pressure within. Her brown eyes are full of smoke and lightning.
A voice in the deep, a quiet one she can barely hear above the roar in her ears, whispers softly that this isn't her, but isn't it? Didn't she destroy hundreds of lives in Straia's dream? Doesn't Nerine's youngest sea-cove bare the scars of her hatred, and of the desperation and guilt that feed life into this fury like breath over red coals?
You're wrong, she whispers back, and even in her head, her voice is the growl of a lion.
There's a coldness in her, and when the heat of the eruption in her chest meets it, she loses herself to the skittering whine of ice and fire clashing. There's no room in her mind anymore for finding common ground, there is only anger, and hunger, and a bright flash of red that blinds her. Still the golden mare, she steps back, shaking her head so that the shadow-darkened tendrils of her white mane fly in the air like seafoam at dusk and hard grey hooves tread on the long train of her tail, grinding the ends of it into the dirt. Then the air around her shivers and the slick gold of her skin becomes sun-ripened wheatgrass instead, and it is the lion throwing itself at him. The forest disappears as walls of solid darkness spring up, blocking them from view, blocking escape. She is claws seeking the flesh of his chest and shoulder, she is wicked, curved, teeth seeking the thin skin of his muzzle, seeking to tear the grin from his lips by tearing the lips away entirely.
Was this the choice he was hoping for?
This could be who she is now. She could be someone that happens upon strangers in the forest and tears them to pieces for no reason other than they were in her path, or they were not in her path but she did not like the way they smiled. Yes, this could be who she is now.
Except... There's still her mother's voice; she recognizes it now, whispering in the dark tunnels of her memory. It's her mother that reminds her how sick she was the first time she killed a hare on the Isle, still more horse than lion, and who wipes the red haze from her eyes so that she finds the stallion's gaze as her crushing jaws find their mark. Her stomach turns at the taste of blood (she isn't even sure if it's his, or her own,) and the cat falls away from him with a sob, falls away from her in another shiver of light that leaves a golden mare crumpled on the ground.
She doesn't look up, and she doesn't speak, and she doesn't tear her walls down.
don't look too hard, might hurt yourself known to give the color red the blues
In the split second she transitions from furious embarrassment to marauding lion, there is no time to consider how his life choices have led him to this. No time to regret (not that he would have, but we can pretend). No time even to raise a defense.
It occurs to him belatedly that he should one day actually learn how to fight. That maybe this would be much less of an issue if he had bothered to learn already. But this revelation does not occur until well after the wheaten visage of the lion has already overwhelmed his vision. Well after claws dig into his flesh and teeth find the unprotected cartilage of his nose.
The weight of her forceful attack sends him tumbling. He hadn’t been prepared for it, leaving him no time to brace against the impact. Root and stone dig into his shoulder and hip even as claws and teeth drive deeper. The moment is both eternal and somehow instant, a brutal reminder of the endless seconds before his limb had been ripped from his body by an alien jaw, finally allowing him to find the oblivion of unconsciousness.
Surprisingly enough, he is not nearly as afraid as he should have been. It seems that it doesn’t take long for death to lose its luster.
To his surprise however, it is not death that awaits him. Instead she seems to regain control of herself, wresting herself away only to crumple beside him, once more a lovely (if distraught) golden mare. For a moment only the sound of harsh breathing breaks the air between them. Cassian doesn’t try to rise, instead laying sprawled, blood dripping from his nose as he stares at the canopy in a strange sort of wonder.
After a moment, he finally manages to mumble, “Well, imagine that.”
The laugh starts low in his chest, but he can’t seem to contain it as it bursts in a bloody bubble from his lips. Seems like maybe he does possess a bit of luck after all.
01-14-2021, 11:48 PM (This post was last modified: 01-14-2021, 11:54 PM by Beryl.)
For one brief, terrible, moment, there is nothing between them but thick silence and she stares at the ground as if she could disappear into it, beneath it, be swallowed up by the loamy soil of Beqanna's old-growth forest, but for all that Beryl has a particular talent for digging holes for herself, this is not where the strength of her magic lies. She refuses to look at him, the taste of his blood still fills her mouth with a metallic tang, the bright red of if still colors her hooves where claws had been. A stiff black hair stuck between her teeth stings her tongue and is the only thing that keeps her from dissociating entirely.
Everything about her body feels too heavy. Dark walls pulse thick around them, belying the exhaustion the ripples across her skin and tunnels into her brain like weevils.
And she's so tired.
What have you done? She can't bear to look up at him, and the blood that must be staining his shining coat. She can't bear to let go of the walls that are keeping him trapped, that will let in the light and the world that she would rather escape, and instead, she stares; at the ground, at his feet, at the shimmering stars running down her forearm. And @[Cassian]?
He laughs
Perhaps he's right to do it, the shock of being alive, of being whole and relatively unharmed when moments ago a lioness held all the threads of his life between her teeth and her claws. Perhaps laughing is the only reaction left, but it shatters the last of her grip and the shadowy walls melt back into the forest. Her muzzle jerks up, startled, coffee-brown eye ripping loose of the earth to find his, to find the bleeding grooves left behind by his teeth, and to burn with the shame of it. As fast as she finds his gaze, she turns away.
