"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
The girl - laced in fire and smoke - has not once thought that any one would think of harming her.
There is no doubt in her mind; no anxious thoughts, no fear. She wonders even what fear possibly means, or what it feels like, for even in the womb she had no knowledge of it. Even now, roaming the rocky shore of the raging river, the onyx girl - marked with gold in the sharpest places of her obsidian skin - she does not even begin to think of what lurks in the darkness behind her.
She is more terrifying than anything the dark may hold for her.
And how could she be afraid of the dark when her light shines so boldly for all to see?
The sound of the river draws her nearer, the water reminding her of her tropical home. Of course, she has never been fond of the ocean that laps at its shores and now it is quite the same - she stares into the clear rush of water, her golden eyes narrowed around black eyelids, har gold-tipped ears flippantly cast into the thickness of her equally golden mane.
With a scoff, she sends flames from her near-black hooves, sizzling and hissing as they meet the water and become steam in an instant, the heat permeating the air around her and blatantly sinking into her narrow chest and slightly curved neck.
The sound of another - thoughts, maybe, but she hadn’t been paying attention - bring her ears further into the curve of her sleek neck. The water at her hooves forgotten, she threw her head over her shoulder with a sneer, staring into the darkness behind her with fire in her golden eyes.
She says nothing into the empty space behind her, merely scanning her surroundings with a bristled look that only becomes more fearsome with every passing second - only because the flames at her hooves are now growing higher despite the soft lapping of the river’s water against her.
Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one
It’s time to wake up.
Vadar opened his eyes, instantly awake. He forgot what he’d been dreaming about, but those hollow words lingered after the warmth of sleep wore off. It was the dead of nighttime in Beqanna and the silver-black stallion waited a moment, breathing in the quiet. He was posted up against a large tree, one whose trunk was squat and wide at the base, leaning against the solid oak just listening for an interruption that never came. Minutes later he snorted, disgusted with himself for being naively hopeful and annoyed with the universe for its meddling.
He wasn’t central to this world, so why the hell did it keep sparking his interest? Until this second he’d been content to fade into the background of society, almost happy to fill the void of existence by simply being alive, and now this? With the voices and the sudden memories of her-
Vadar stopped that thought, irritated already.
The night was a waste, a total waste. He renounced sleep altogether and clopped away from the one tree into a sea of thousands more, eager to be moving. Short in stature, the pony stallion had few characteristics to distinguish himself from the masses; among them were his facial markings: strange spots as diamonds over his eyes, one long swipe of pale white over his lips like a permanent smile. In the dark, his eyes gleamed red-hot. Not particularly tall, but stout - his neck was just one thick, curved crest of muscle with a pale mane to accent its shape.
The years had been good to him. The company of others had not.
He crashed through bushes with very little concern for whomever else might be sleeping as well, determined to spoil everything just like his night had been spoiled, heading downhill until the River’s roar was unmistakable. There, he spied a flickering light in the distance and turned directly for it - darkly surprised that an outlet for his misplaced anger would appear so suddenly out of thin air. The next domino to fall in a succession of endless dominoes; that’s all Vadar thought of the mare on fire.
She was a means to an end. Nothing more, nothing less.
Approaching Sunlight exactly where she’d expected him to appear, Vadar trod out from the darkness in no particular hurry. He flung one leg in front of the other, trailing dirt and debris in the tangled locs growing wild down his limbs, and flashed his eyes briefly at the mare filly before snapping his foreteeth together with a loud click. Strike one.
“I’m not in the mood to babysit, so piss off.” He muttered a thinly veiled threat, giving the child her one and only ‘out’. “Now.” He commanded.
10-03-2020, 12:45 PM (This post was last modified: 10-03-2020, 12:45 PM by Sunlight.)
Fortunately for Sunlight, her abilities make her privy to danger. Unfortunately for Sunlight, her abilities also give her the very dangerous notion that no one would dare hurt her - she would know their intentions well before it occurred and would not hesitate to burn them until they are but ash and dust.
The young girl hears his anger only mere moments before he comes into the clearing. It is enough to give her pause, to glance into the darkness with a look that turns sour because of the thoughts that she interprets in her head. She bristles, turning from the water and facing the darkness - and only a few seconds later, does the stallion finally arrive from the treeline.
Her gold-tipped ears flick back into her neck as he approaches with such lackadaisical movement, Sunlight nearly wonders why he hadn’t come careening through the trees and slammed into her. She hates that her age makes her appear to be someone worth shoving out of the way and so after his greeting, the sheer look of rage on her face is nearly equal to his. Her jaw goes slack in disbelief, shifting her weight slightly in a silent and a quite visible way of letting him know that she has no intention of “pissing off”. Unless, of course, he was suddenly about to be boring.
She had a feeling that wouldn't be the case.
“You don’t really want me to leave,” she retorts with mischievousness in her eyes, leaning back onto her haunches slightly with a look of incredulity on the sharpness of her face. She deems herself untouchable, unrelenting in the way that her flames dance menacingly around her feathered feet. And so, she pokes the bear.
“If I leave, you won’t have an outlet for all that rage, which is what you want - right?” She pauses, thoughtful, her glimmering eyes watching him carefully - listening to his thoughts, waiting for sudden movements so that her fire could ignite wherever she pleased on his dark skin. “What exactly were you hoping to do?”
Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one
If she’d been looking for a reaction from him to equal her own ridiculous expression, she was going to be sorely disappointed, whoever she was. Vadar allowed her to make the wrong choice with a mild widening of his eyes, and then he relaxed as well. This was going to be a horribly interesting exchange; he could already tell. From the bright fire licking at her heels, Vadar could see a few patchy markings on the overgrown filly’s coat. Now and then, her knees would catch the half-moon’s watery reflection and glint silver in the darkness, belying their natural color. It was obvious to Vadar that this little mare thought highly of herself and her abilities, or else she would’ve taken his threat to heart and moved on instead of drawing out the inevitable, but for the sake of wasting time he sat back and let her speak. The most idiotic of horses always had something useless to say, and Vadar was more than ready to hear what nonsense came out of this particular mouth.
I want you to make you suffer, He bristled inwardly, an automatic response to her first accusation. That arrogance... The eerie way she’d echoed his thought process, as if she’d heard him thinking aloud… Could she? He pondered until Sunlight verbally confirmed that very thought.
If there’d been any semblance of good humors to be found in Vadar before Sunlight had questioned him, they were suddenly gone now. She’d nailed her own coffin shut, in his opinion - exposing her filthy ability to him as if this were a game - as if she had the trump card in this particular situation. His lips hardened into a dead smile that insinuated an emotion much, much darker than false humor, and for a moment or two he let her silly little question go unanswered. The seconds ticked on quietly, marked only by the crackling sound of Sunlight’s deadly flame and the whitewater rapids behind her. Vadar’s compact body rooted itself to the path; then he spoke to her on a level she might understand best, since her infancy was showing itself in her poor choice of words.
“Such a pretty, pretty thing you are.” He thought, eyeing her lasciviously. Did she scream as pretty as she looked? He hoped so. “You know what travels faster than a hungry flame?” He considered quietly, slapping his silver tail noisily against his hide. He waited; he wanted her to think this one through very carefully, because the answer was many things. One of which he possessed and had used before to subdue a victim for his sick pleasure. The other was not as quick in the draw, but Vadar had subdued the last mind reader he’d come across with his gift of golem creation. Starsin had been a worthy opponent - deserving of his strength. In the end she’d screamed pretty for him, too.
The thought is poignant and intrusive, malicious and unsavory as she plucks it from his mind for her own. Her reaction, however, is that of interest - curiosity - and her expressive brows rise slightly while the gold of her chin tips upwards just so. She doesn’t voice his particular thought to him, keeping it to herself this time. Perhaps one day she will learn which thoughts to keep secret and which to use for her own advantage, but for now she is young and everything is fueled by impulse.
When that fantastical and terrible smile graces the interesting pattern of his lips she feels her stomach flip. A riveting feeling, one that she savors as the seconds tick by. She could feel every muscle in her being tensing, something like adrenaline beginning to pulse in her veins. He felt dangerous and, by association, she felt dangerous as well. It was a glorious feeling, this tiptoeing between fear but unable to swallow pride, and she cannot stop herself from indulging all the more.
He calls her a pretty thing and if she had been older she might have recognized the term of endearment isn’t exactly said in a way that is complimenting. But she is pretty so she doesn’t feel the need to tell him that he is correct, but only continues to watch him with those large golden eyes, all lit up with the crackle of the flames beneath her. His thoughts are delicious, despicable and ones that she is sure her father would not want her to hear. It delights her all the more to hear, even if it is distracting her from the very-real threat that is before her and the very-real way he will act on those thoughts. He is already so unlike any other man she’s encountered, she cannot help but linger - test him, encourage him - just to find out what will happen.
All the while, the fire at her hooves no longer dance - they are still and barely moving, as if the wind around them does not affect the flames. His question causes her to tilt her head, the firelight matching her movement and shifting closer to him, burning brighter but still stagnant - for now.
“Oh, so we are playing a game.” Her voice lilts as if she is asking a question, but she certainly is not. At the sound of her voice, she allows whatever is flammable beneath their hooves to begin to ignite from the flames by her hooves - little sparks of dry twigs and leaves crackling, fueled by her. “I don’t really like games all that much.” Not ones that aren’t controlled by her, anyway. They’re no fun, especially when she already knows the answers.
She blinks at him innocently, feigning thoughtfulness over his question but lacking the want to truly mull it over. The question bores her, because she finds that the thinly veiled threat beneath it is obvious, but he seemed quite excited about his answer so she decides he will play his game, for his sake. “It’s probably whatever it is you’re being very clever about hiding from me.”
