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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]  even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried; iridian
    #1

    that day even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried

    It has been a year since he has found his way back to her dreamscape.

    Perhaps longer.

    It’s not that he has not dreamed—he has, he has—but no matter how hard he try, he has not been able to find that wondrous world again. Instead, he had remained trapped beneath the currents of nightmares. The inky black of them pulling him into the undertow, dragging him by the heel into the brackish waters. He slept in the day, usually exhausted from the night, plagued by the sun that finds him no matter where he goes. He wakes fitfully and never fully rested and always dreading the nights that come.

    They have not gotten easier with time.

    Even knowing more of what has happened to him, in theories at least, has not softened the blow. He has, instead, withdrawn further. He avoids his parents and the pack they live amongst. He does not seek out the shifter who had offered to run with him. He keeps to himself, engaging in conversation only when it is simple and convenient. The conversations are light then. The relationships meaningless. He can flirt and seduce and pretend that he is just a young man with nothing to worry about outside of such interactions.

    And, in some ways, it works.

    He loses himself in the day and then runs until the moon traps him once more.

    He wakes with ash that nothing can chase from his tongue.

    Except when he falls asleep this day, there is something different. He recognizes it instantly. The way that the sleeping comes with gossamer and silk instead of the usual hoarse cries. Relief, he thinks. A tsunami wave of it that crashes over him, intense enough that it nearly buckles his knees in this dream world.

    “Iridian?” he calls out, softly.

    Something flutters against his chest.

    Something foreign.

    Something dangerously like hope.

    so you saluted every ghost you've ever prayed to and then buried it where bones are buried




    @[iridian]
    Reply
    #2

    iridian

    Time is a secret that she is not the keeper of.

    There is nothing regular about the dreamscape. Day lasts until night comes, but sometimes it seems to Iridian that night forgets to come at all. Like the sun is a permanent star in a sleeping sky, carved into the blue as though it cannot exist anywhere else. It stays and watches, casts short shadows that never seem to creep, until suddenly, Iri blinks, and the black remains behind even after she’s opened her eyes again. Night, in odd perpetuity.

    She has no idea how long it has been since she last saw Firion, but she knows she will be sad to see him again, sad for him to discover the world they built together has eroded in his absence like a broken promise. She let the details grow hazy, stopped visiting for a while when his absence carved a foreign pain in her chest that she did not understand. When guilt finally chased her back again and one ever-night found her in their little forest clearing, she knew leaving had been a mistake.

    She had stood at the center of it all and looked up at a sky that was charcoal and colorless instead of a deep aching blue. She saw stars that were gray instead of silver, and trees that were wilted and tattered by a heavy wind that did not exist. The shades of everything were wrong, and all the peace had gone from the silence. It was heavy somehow, like a moment of strained anticipation, a held breath never released.

    If there was a way to fix it, she couldn’t remember how.

    Not, that is, until one evening of dusk when she woke beneath a hazy purple sky to the sound of her name on wind created from his breath.

    “Firion.”

    It took only one single beat of her racing heart to find him, to clasp fingers around the thread of his dream and anchor herself there to him. She appears suddenly, standing only a few feet away from him, dragging them both to their place. Their broken place. And at once she understands why it is broken, why the colors are gone and the trees are too heavy for their trunks, why the weight of the silence is breaking her bones as she stands there staring at a boy who is both familiar and now somehow a stranger.

    Pain rises in her chest and in answer the trees creak and sway, the timber splintering in answer to her heart.

    And that had always been the problem, she realizes. She had put too much of herself into this place, too much of her heart, and when loneliness had begun to darken her, it darkened the dreamscape too.

    “You came back.” She says, and she’s trying so hard to mask the pain in her face because she doesn’t blame him for staying away, but she cannot help the way it makes her chest ache. How much it hurts to be alone here now without the dream of ever leaving.

    (She is sure she won’t ever be strong enough.)

    She studies him, and she does not realize that she has changed as much as he has. That she is longer and leaner, still willowy and doe-like but not in a childish way. That the blue of her eyes is several shades deeper, like buried gems or impossible ocean depths. That her chestnut is so red it's nearly russet, and the leopard markings sit like gleaming bronze overtop. Both would seem harsh if not for the patches of quiet white spilled over her like snow.

    Her chestnut wings fold at her shoulders, tucking in close to her back in a way that speaks of the uncertainty she means to hide from him, of this new weight in her he won’t recognize. She takes a step closer, and there is a doe-like grace to the gentle movement as her cloven hooves halt again.

    There are so many secrets swimming in the blue of her eyes as she watches him, studies his face and the way he looks back at her. Someone wiser might try to hide those secrets, but she is young and carved from trust and pain and more loneliness than any one single heart can withstand. So when she finally speaks again it is soft and unsure, and those luminous eyes evade his with quiet care. “You were the last visitor I had.” A pause where she chances a look in his eyes and finds herself suddenly shackled there by the gold. “It’s nice to see you, Firion.” And she has no idea why she is suddenly whispering.




    @[firion]
    Reply
    #3

    that day even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried

    Firion is a creature of multiple faces—masks upon masks. Sometimes he is his father’s son. He is sarcastic, apathetic, his voice a studied drawl with syllables that elongate on the tongue. Other times, he is the rakish prince he might have been once. Born of old blood and old crowns. Arrogant and sneering. Confident in his strength and his youth and his ability to heal. And other times, he is overly exuberant. Hungry for experiences. Overeager to flirt and indulge and race and drown in manufactured good times.

    But here, before her, he is stripped raw.

    He is kind and gentle—tender.

    And the worst is that he doesn’t know which is the truth of him. Not anymore.

    Not when he knows what lies beneath is rotten, decaying, broken.

    His eyes widen slightly when he takes in the world that they had created together. (That she had created, he corrects, because he has no gifts with which to make the glorious world that she had made.) It is grey, dying, and he aches because he feels so strongly that it is a reflection of him. Why would this world not have died when he does that every night? His throat closes up with all the apologies he should say.

    Instead though, he finds himself overwhelmed with her. The way that she has grown into herself. The delicate way that she moves through the dream. The impossible blue of her eyes.

    “You’re more beautiful than I remembered,” he says before he can stop himself, memorizing the lines of her face, wondering if he could carry that with him during the next night. Would he be able to hold onto that piece of himself? His jaw clenches when she tells him he was the last to have visited her. “I tried to come back,” he says quickly, not willing to tell her how difficult it was to sleep these days.

    She was too beautiful, too kind, to know that truth of him.

    He wasn’t sure he was willing to even admit it out loud.

    So he pushes it to the side as he steps toward her, his heart pounding in his chest, the air feeling like water as he moves through it. “I have thought of you every day,” he admits, careful to not lie.

    “You have no idea how happy I am to have found my way here.”

    How happy he is to be here in this world where death cannot touch him.

    To be with her.

    so you saluted every ghost you've ever prayed to and then buried it where bones are buried

    Reply
    #4

    iridian

    She is watching him the moment he notices their surroundings, watching when those golden eyes fall on every broken piece of the world she had made for him, promised him. “I’m so sorry.” She whispers, and there is hurt and shame and so many cracks in the gentle blue of eyes she has to turn away from his face because she cannot bear to see what shade of gold belongs to disappointment. “I didn’t mean to let it fall apart.” And though she isn’t whispering anymore, her voice is still hardly louder than the feathers in the wings shuffling against her spotted back. “It,” she still isn’t looking at him, is too busy looking aside even when there is only him worth seeing, only this face she has dreamed of for so long, “absorbed the dark that was too big to live inside me. I ruined it.”

    And she is so busy being sorry, so busy being ashamed of the way she does not deserve the time he spends here with her, that she doesn’t hear him at first. But then the words settle over her skin, sink into her bones and wander through her veins all the way to the blood that now pounds in the heartbeat of her delicate ears. Her head jerks to face him, her blue eyes so wide and so surprised, so painfully bare to the ache that springs up inside her and threatens to pull her under.

    Beautiful?

    There are a hundred thoughts swimming beside a hundred feelings, and all of them are drowning desperately in the ocean blue of those luminous eyes. She isn’t sure why those words make wings flutter in her chest, why his gaze feels different now as it travels over the lines of her delicate face, but it’s nice and it’s good and she does not ever want to forget this warmth flaring beneath her skin. “Thank you.” She is whispering again, but it is gentle instead of fragile, filled with quiet kindness instead of loneliness.

    Beautiful.
    So is he, but she is too shy to say so.

    “I tried to find you too.” She admits, and when he steps towards her she forgets that she is shy, forgets that it feels bold to reach for him. It just feels necessary now, and so she mirrors his steps until he is close enough to touch, until her nose reaches out to press against his and she can feel the warmth of his breath against her skin. He is so good at saying the right things, so good at making her feel important. Like she might matter. But she is not as masterful as he is, and this blushing heat in her face makes it so hard to hold his gaze, so hard to hold this little smile from escaping to the corners of her delicate mouth. How is he so much more than anything she has ever known, so much more than anything she could have ever dreamt up.

    “Why?” She wonders when she can finally meet his golden eyes again with all that soft, bashful blue. “Why are you happy?” Because she’s too shy to ask why he has thought about her every day. Her wings shuffle, the blue feather tips peeking out from the chestnut as some of the tension slips away from her and a smile manages to escape onto her lips. “I hope you can stay awhile, I want to show you everything.” 

    And it seems just like that, the world is a little brighter, the colors more saturated, and, oddly, there are leopard spots on the trunks of all the nearest trees. This time she has the decency to hold his gaze for at least two whole seconds before the heat creeping up her face steals her gaze away. She is very, very sure he's noticed that their forest is shades of black and gold and beautiful rosettes. "Yeah, I missed you too." Her eyes return to his face again, steady and warm and only the tiniest bit bashful. "You probably couldn't tell because I'm very good at hiding things." A smile, small at first, until it blooms like a flower in the warmth of his sun.




    @[firion]
    Reply
    #5

    that day even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried

    The world around them explodes into life—into color—and he can only inhale sharply in surprise. He can only take in each moment, in the way that she makes such magical things, and then shapes the world to her every thought. It’s an incredible thing, and he is absolutely certain that she has no idea that it is.

    He smiles, sighs just a little, when she touches him softly and he feels something bloom in his chest. A warmth that he was not certain that he knew how to name. Instead he just watches her with his golden eyes, not caring that the world outside of them was bleeding to black. That the monsters would find him, eventually, his decaying body comatose as he traipsed through this dreamworld entirely unaware.

    “It’s better here,” is the only thing that he answers with because every other answer feels too flimsy, too weak, the lie too apparent. He doesn’t want her to know what he is like in the real world. Doesn’t want her to know how his flesh peels away—how his mind leaves him. He doesn’t want her to know all about his weaknesses and the way that his body betrays him. The curse that he is sure that he deserves.

    So instead he steps forward into the brighter world, noticing with a tightening of his chest how the trees reflect him back to him. His gaze slips back to her, something mischievous in the way the corner of his mouth tilts up. “How could I not miss you?” he asks with a laugh, once again dancing around the core of the subject. He doesn’t comment on it further though, instead stepping forward into this haven she made.

    “Show me everything,” he insists, hungry for these pieces of normalcy stolen from him.

    He looks back at her, face brightening.

    “I want to see all of it.”

    so you saluted every ghost you've ever prayed to and then buried it where bones are buried



    @[The Monsters] - let’s mess with his Jaguar mimicry again.
    Reply
    #6
    @[firion] nothing happens to your jaguar mimicry... again. try another time.
    Reply
    #7

    iridian

    “It’s better here now.” She amends, emphasizing now,  and there is such warmth in the sunshine of her smile when she beams at him so shyly, so oblivious to the turmoil of the outside world, oblivious to why her family has not visited. She has no idea that the world is a living nightmare, that death unfolds in every corner and the shadows themselves have been filled with life and made carnivorous by beasts she would never even be able to fathom. She is so safe here, so untouched even in her lonely isolation.

    He speaks again, and her smile only grows, always grows for him, though it is not quite so full of charm and mischief as his is. He leads her so easily around half truths and hidden things, and she follows without even a seed of doubt, accepting these answers that are still missing their pairs. “You’re very nice. She tells him, and there is a strange kind of giddiness building in her delicate chest, a joy that creeps in and pushes all the dark away. If she is the night, then he is the sun making all her dawns bright again.

    When he moves off into this world she calls home, she is quick to fall into step beside him, close enough that her wings brush against his side and she pretends not to notice how the contact satisfies an ache inside her she had not recognized until now. It fills her with so much delight that he is so eager to see everything, so eager to explore, and she wonders if he realizes he is the first to have such a tour of this place that so readily reflects her own heart. She smiles again, turning slightly to hide it from him because she cannot stop it from reaching her eyes and shining there like sunshine behind dark blue glass.

    “Would you like some wings, Firion?” There is mischief in her eyes suddenly, and she bounds a few steps forward and turns again to face him, throwing her own wings open as a warm wind picks up and tangles itself in white and pale blue feathers at the outermost edges. She stretches them wide and tall, and sunshine beads like dew all along the highest tips. For a moment her face is lifted to the sky, and her eyes close as she enjoys warmth and sunshine and the unexpected company of a new friend, the potential for play. Her eyes open again, her chin dropping to fix her gaze on his face and then shamelessly trail further along the sleek angles of his gold and black body, resting where she can already imagine a pair of gold wings so dark they might be bronze.

    None appear though, not without his say so. 

    “I could just take us there.” There, as though there is just one place, one spot instead of a whole world of imagined things awaiting them. “But I think maybe you would love the sky.”



    @[firion]
    Reply
    #8

    that day even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried

    It is so nice to fall into this moment with her. To pretend in these fleeting minutes. To be this charming boy with a quicksilver smile—the one who makes the girls smile and brings heat to their cheeks. The one who has nothing to worry about except for the next moment and the one after that. The one who lives in the warmth and the sunshine, who has everything going for him, but he’s not that boy.

    Maybe he never was.

    But it doesn’t matter when he’s standing here like this with her, in this world that she has made just for them. Because in this world, he can be that boy. He doesn’t have to worry about the setting sun because there is no curse waiting for him with open jaws. He would simply sleep in this world, would only dream.

    “You are perhaps the only one to tell me I am nice,” he says as he turns to look at her more fully, looking at the delicate lines of her face—the brightness of her eyes. “There are plenty of others who would attest to quite the opposite.” But he doesn’t mind that she is the one to see this soft part of him.

    He is glad to share it with at least someone.

    At her next question though, his own eyes brighten and his lips spread into a wide grin. He admires her wings openly, thinking of the ones that decorate his own mother, and he feels the breath catch in a way he had not though that it could in this dreamworld. “I would very much like to fly with you,” he answers instead. Because while the wings would be nice, it is not the thing that he truly wants.

    He wants the freedom in the sky.

    He wants the exertion until his body is spent, the energy drained from him.

    He wants to float alongside her and pretend, for just a moment longer.

    so you saluted every ghost you've ever prayed to and then buried it where bones are buried



    @[iridian]
    Reply
    #9

    iridian

    She frowns at him, something soft and delicate as she shakes her head and tries to understand how that could possibly be true. “I can’t be the only one.” She tells him, and the idea is so far fetched that she actually gives him a tentative smile in one corner of her mouth in case this is some joke she does not understand. But his gaze is bright and steady when it finds hers, and there is an absence of any humor resting there in the gold. “Then they don’t know you like I know you.” She decides, and her eyes are a shade of navy so pale they might be glass, so soft they might be made of flower petals. “You have been very kind to me.” And she says it with a decisive kind of affection, something small and shy and blushing, something that promises his gentleness with her has not gone unnoticed.

    But the affection is something strange and unfamiliar, something that ties knots in her chest and pushes against her ribs until they feel bruised. So she shies away from it readily, abandoning the unfamiliarity for the bright, wide grin he flashes her next. He wants to fly! She feels giddy with delight, but it doesn’t bubble up from her like messy sunshine, it finds her in the flash of an easy smile and a delicate warmth in her eyes. “Okay,” she tells him, and there is no time lost, no warning before a pair of elegant dark gold wings appear at his withers as though they have always been there, always his, “how’s that?” But she’s being modest now, smiling crookedly because they are from a magic she has perfected, from a color she stole from the deepest parts of his molten eyes.

    They are his in every way it is possible for her to make them be.

    She cannot help herself, she surges gracefully closer, reaching out to touch her lips to the broad muscles at the base of the wings where they spring from his shoulders, to taste the sunshine in the gold of the most delicate feathers. They are beautiful, but they don’t compare to him. Nothing could compare to the brightness of the boy she sees each time he claims her gaze with his.

    “Come on,” she says, and her voice is so soft with exhilaration, her navy eyes an eager, fathomless blue as she flings her wings open and leaps into the air as though she is weightless for a moment. “You’ll know what to do, I think, because it’s a dream. I’ve been told dreams always make sense until you wake up.” Then her wings flap hard to push her forward and she banks in a wide circle around him so that he can hear her when she says, “Try to keep up, okay?” But her eyes are brighter than they’ve ever been, brighter even than the smile that infuses her with a warmth like sunshine because there is not a single chance she would ever leave him behind.



    @[firion]
    Reply
    #10

    that day even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried

    He laughs then and it’s one of the few genuine laughs he has given in his life—something real and throaty. Something that explodes from deep in his chest, that burrows into the veins of him as thought it could become part of who he is and then expand. His golden eyes flash light and bright as though he does not shield the darkest parts of him from her, as though he does not keep them tucked in the furthest corners. “You may be the only person who knows me like this,” he says, hedging his answer and not saying that she is the only one who knows him truly—because even he does not know what that means.

    He doesn’t know what it means to know him.

    Does that mean knowing the cruel parts of him that goaded Mazikeen?

    The part of him that hunted blindly at night?

    The part of him that flirts and smiles with Iridian here?

    The part of him that walks quietly alongside his angelic mother?

    That learned to hunt by his panther-father’s side?

    He doesn’t even know which of him is the truth any longer.

    But she knows this side of him and it is one of his favorite parts of himself so he is glad for it. Glad that she knows this and not the darker sides—the parts that decay and peel away and rot in the shadows. So he grins, easily, feeling his breath catch when she touches his shoulders and glorious wings sprout forward. They look like those that his mother carries, although dipped in molten gold instead of dove-white, and he turns his full attention toward Iridian again, appreciation shining through every small angle of his face.

    “They’re perfect,” he breathes, taking a step and adjusting the weight of them, surprised by the ease with which his body adapts. But she says this is a dream and that makes sense so he doesn’t ask any further questions. Instead he takes a running leap forward and then springs off the ground, finding that his wings fling wide and catch him aloft, the breeze running beneath them. Instinctually, he flaps them and carries himself higher and higher, as if he could fly into the sun—as if he could let the heat swallow him whole.

    Laughing, he angles back down, arcing toward the dream girl so that he could follow her once more.

    so you saluted every ghost you've ever prayed to and then buried it where bones are buried

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