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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]  in all chaos, there is calculation; skandar
    #1
    Rosebay

    Rosebay likes the forest.

    She likes the way that it is both silent and loud at the same time—the sound of others muffled as she walks deeper and deeper into the trees but the sound of wind and leaves and animals amplified against the backdrop of quiet. She likes the promise that lives within the hushed atmosphere.

    If she stumbles a little today, weakened by the continual doses of poison she gives herself, she does her best to not show it. Even here amongst the solitude of the forest, surrounded by the nothing around her, she does not feel comfortable letting such vulnerability show. She has no desire for anyone to pass her by and see the way that she trembles, the way her pupils are just a little too diluted, the dried blood at the corner of her lovely mouth. So she does the only thing that makes sense: she goes further in still.

    When the trees have grown so thick that the little light remaining in the day becomes blotted out, she takes a staggered breath, shuddering as she comes to rest against a large tree.

    She feels the sharp edge of ivory pressing into her side and she winces, just slightly.

    Exhaustion claws at the back of her eyelids as they close and were anyone to see her, she would look like a subdued young girl. They would not see the cruelty and sharp, manipulative mind. They would not see the calculations that she is constantly running or the ideas that simmer constantly.

    They would see her as she could possibly be.

    How she would never be.

    Not truly.

    but in all chaos, there is calculation




    @[Skandar]
    Reply
    #2

    Winter grips itself tightly around him, angry and biting into the deep violet and burnt orange of his skin. The cooler months are still something he is learning to survive within - the heat and smoke of Tephra had housed him until recently and the young boy did not find the frost-covered forest as welcoming as he could have hoped. It is quiet and still, however, and though the chill sinks deep into his bones, there is a certain awe in the ambience around him. The bark of the pines are damp with moisture, pieces of its surface broken and fractured by layers of ice. Frost sparkles like crystal in the leaves while chunks of old snow remain stuck between the gnarled roots of age-old trees.

    Without thinking it into reality, his whole body shimmers and flutters suddenly with movement as if there is something within him trying to set itself free. The indigo color of his skin fold and flip, the noise most unpleasant as he likens himself to the frosted wood by adorning a thin sheet of ice across his entire body. His mane and tail that once billowed freely now nearly are encapsulated into stillness by the frost he mimics, pointed downward like foreboding icicles. The strange color of his skin is still seen through the translucent of the ice if only muted by it.

    It is then that his violet eyes fall onto an auburn girl. Skandar does not notice she is actually resting against the frostbitten tree until he has taken a few curious steps closer, a slight tilt to his head. The stiffness of his mane crackles terribly against his ice-covered neck with the movement, scraping uncomfortably. The star-strewn and ice boy halts a few paces from her (unafraid, for is he ever?) and snorts gently, a cloud of condensation rising from the warm air that blows past his nostrils. He eyes the pieces of ivory that jut from her skin - it isn’t something he’s seen before and though he does not have use for it yet, he studies her quite carefully now, committing that armor to memory.

    “You’re an interesting creature,” comes his smooth voice, as if he wasn't one himself.

    Skandar only gave his attention to those who kept his interest. He often became bored and he idly wonders how long it would take this time. He tilts a back hoof and with a few studious blinks, he has a feeling that she might hold his attention far longer than he expects. 

    skandar




    @[rosebay]
    Reply
    #3
    Rosebay

    The sound of crackling ice wakes her quickly, pulling her from the half-doze that she had entered upon closing her amber eyes. Her expression sharpens in that moment, pulling back too fierce to be gentle and too present to be meek, but she does her best to wipe it away quickly—leaving her soft and sweet once more, pushing the truth of her away from her features nearly as fast as it had risen to the surface.

    “Oh?” she says with a simper, angling her head into a nearly demure position. Pushing off from the tree, she stands straighter, noticing the slight weight from the brambles that have caught in her lengthening tail. Without saying anything else, her gaze flickers to his neck and the frost that covers it, the cold that rides down the young muscle of him. She notes lightly, as if in disinterest, even though she feels anything but.

    Were she to know that she was being judged for how quickly she could hold his attention, she would gladly do everything in her power to do the opposite. She would become as boring and dull as possible, hiding the calculating sheen in her eyes and the coy smiles she loves so much when she plays pretend.

    But she does not know and thus she can only be that which she is.

    So she takes a step forward, looking into his orange eyes for a breath too long. Searching them, finding the molten core and then holding on as she feels that familiar sense of enthrallment.

    “Tell me, stranger, what makes you think I am so interesting?”

    She has no real need to hear the answer—after all, she herself has a wonderful idea of what makes her as interesting as she is—but she still likes to hear it. More so, she likes to know that she can compel someone to tell her should she want. That it is a weak control. That it is short-lived means little to her.

    In the end, it’s the control that matters.

    Any control.

    but in all chaos, there is calculation

    Reply
    #4

    He watches intently at her reaction to him - gauging in the brief seconds he has before her face falls into a softness that brings a half-smile to his indigo mouth. He has not witnessed much in his youth, but he has at least the notion to be wary of mysterious girls in the dark; it is easy enough to assume she is how she appears, but with Skandar that is never the case, and he wonders if that is what he has come across. He snorts softly, warm air dispelling from his nostrils in a cloud of vapor, still unsure if he has come across a poised viper or a frightened doe.

    Skandar matches the tilt of her head, his own intense orange eyes meeting hers without waver. The nameless girl steps towards him, pieces of what he assumes to be bone glinting dully in the low levels of light. The soft brown of her gaze holds him completely without hesitation, almost as if she may be searching for something more in their burning depths. His smile quirks with a thought of his own, his own pulse quickening as he realizes that she cannot begin to imagine what burns like embers at the back of his eyes.

    There is no inkling of her presence forcing his hand (not yet) for he is a rather forthcoming individual who finds no reason in hiding anything.

    The ice-covered colt purses his lips, the crystalline of his mouth crackling from the movement. “Have you not seen yourself?” Skandar’s breath hitches as he pauses, briefly considering sprouting the same pieces of armor that she wears across her body - to mirror her before her very eyes. He decides not to (not yet) and instead sheds the ice from his skin with a gentle toss of his head. His once frosted skin peels and flutters as if shaking the ice from each piece of him, before settling into the deep swirling of indigo, orange, and violet.

    “You’re an enigma if I’ve ever seen one.” A smile, warm yet elusive.

    “I’m Skandar.”


    skandar



    @[rosebay]
    Reply
    #5
    Rosebay

    She has learned how to look meek—to look gentle—but it is not without cost. It hurts her pride to do so, and she finds that it is uncomfortable the older she gets. It is uncomfortable to pretend that she is lesser than she is. To pretend that she does not know how to manipulate most souls like clay, applying pressure and molding them beneath her palms until they take the shape that she wishes from them. To pretend that she does not hunger for more, that she does not know she has the wits and the strength to get it.

    But, most days, she is able to remind herself that this is but a game.

    And playing doe to hide her viper teeth is a strength of its own.

    So she continues to simper sweetly, continues to look up from behind her lashes, playing at bashful as he asks if she has seen herself. “Not recently,” she breathes, her laughter coming a few seconds later at the right pitch as though to cover up her nerves. Of which she has none. “I am not much to look at.”

    This, in some way, is true she knows. She is a pretty thing, but she is not exotic or beautiful. She does not have silver eyes or a body made of pearl. She is not exotic or strange. In most ways, she is perfectly ordinary. She has plain brown eyes and a body made of browns, whites, and black. It is only the ivory armor that sets her apart at all and in most lights, it looks merely like bone creeping from under the skin.

    Her powers are what lie below the surface.

    “An enigma?” she replies, her eyes widening just a little, as though caught off guard by the assessment. Internally, she thinks it an apt descriptor, but she prefers to keep that to herself. Instead she smiles, playing at both amused and flattered when in reality she wants to tell him it is an obviously correct answer. “I have never considered myself one.” She nods. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Skandar.”

    She does not bother giving him her name.

    Not yet at least.

    but in all chaos, there is calculation

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