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  • Beqanna

    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


    [open]  I could make it better for you
    #1



    Being a skeleton all the time had been fun for the first several days - and then he had been annoyed and wished for his real body back - and now he had circled back around to liking it again. This freaky darkness didn’t appear to be going anywhere so he might as well enjoy it, right? And he was a young stallion in the prime of life, even if he didn’t look it right now. He looked like a creature that had been raised from the dead - except for his shiny opal hooves, of course.

    Too bad he wasn’t as lucky as his siblings or he could be a glow in the dark skeleton. Those lucky bastards.

    He had asked for assistance from the wolfpack to guide him to the meadow but released his hold on them once they had arrived - feeling a little guilty about it when the world was their hunting ground right now and he could see their excitement.

    His stomach was already churning just thinking about what poor creature one of them might bring back for him. Sometimes that happened - once it had been a hare that had been only half-dead and he was pretty sure he had woken up half of Tephra with his scream.

    Tamlin shuffles his wings only to hear the rattle of their bones against his ribs and laughs at himself as he wanders through the darkness - hoping he doesn’t get mistaken for the weird monsters he’s heard rumours of.

    Do monsters have hooves like this? Definitely not.



    t a m l i n

    artwork by space1993


    open to any!
    Reply
    #2
    I crept through the trees of home, and the forest and the fields. Now I'm here, and I don't know what to do with myself. 

    My eyes are adjusted somewhat to the dim. The world is a greyscale now, and I think I would get a headache if all that color came back. Mother says we shouldn't want the sun to come back. That the darkness keeps us safe, and the shadows won't hurt us if we listen to her. That's why I keep looking over my shoulders. 

    Now, I am far from home, far from the trees that creak endlessly in the wind, and the voices and the hungry eyes of my mother's followers. She said not to leave the bounds of our home. That she can't guarantee my safety if I leave. But I don't think she can guarantee it if I stay either, and today I decided to take my chances with the shadows. 

    She's been gone for a few days, and unless I'm dreadfully unlucky, she won't notice I left at all. Not unless They tell her. 

    My slender legs are eager to walk new paths, and I look at every strange tree, hoping if I remember them, they'll help me find my way home again. I have friends in the Sylva woods, I can't leave them behind forever. Just for today. Just long enough to see what lies beyond the trees I was born in. 

    As it happens, there's quite a lot. More than I can see in a single day, and my waifish body is tired already. There's a long way to go to get back home again, and I think I should start going that way soon. Soon, but not yet. I can rest for a while before I go. 

    And like an idiot, when I open my eyes again, time has passed. It's impossible to know how much. The darkness doesn't change, no matter how much time moves on. But there's a stranger here who wasn't before, and I can only stare at them a moment before deciding what to do now. 

    In the end, I can't help myself. I have to see closer the being who's entered my space. "Hello," I say, soft and coaxing, stepping near as I do. "Oh, but aren't you lovely, yes you are. Do you want to come home with me?" Soft as a cooing dove, my voice hardly carries at all, but I don't care. They always hear me. Bones, perfect and clean and all of them together, I bump my nose affectionately towards the nearest scapula. I'm not as tall, and it's so odd to see them standing like this. But wonderful, too. 

    @[Tamlin]
    @[The Monsters] please mess with her Disease Acceleration!
    Reply
    #3

    l i v i n i a
    such is life, such is death.


    Company in the meadow had much changed since the darkness had come.  Livinia perhaps found it more welcoming now than she had before. Gone were the days of idle chitchat and conversations about the weather.  Now there was only darkness and monsters and those unafraid of both. And that suited her just fine.  She found the company to be much improved.  And the sight of the skeletal stallion was more than enough to pique her interest.

    She was intrigued. Livinia was a creature equal parts dead and living - flesh without life. And here he was, bones imbued with life.  So cause for her intrigue was, in some ways, quite obvious.  Like called to like, did it not?

    His kinship with predators made him all the more intriguing. Of course, Livinia had no way of knowing that Tamlin himself did not hunt as a predator.  The girl of smoke and shadow had never lost her predator’s instincts even when she’d been removed from her once-predator body.

    She watched as they bounded away from him - disappearing into the unrelenting darkness.  Curiosity, however, was enough for her to unravel the mist-like smoke that concealed her. She stepped back into the fresh air of the meadow, corporeal again, and made her way towards the stallion of bone.

    But she was not the only one to have noticed him.

    Livinia laughed - a hollow sound pouring from lungs that so rarely held air.  She breathed only out of habit, not out of necessity. “What big words for one so small,” she cooed to the child, before turning her crimson gaze upon the skeletal creature.

    “Will the wolves return?” She asked, curious as to their sudden departure. Wisps of smoke swirled in her path as she finally drew to a halt.

    Drawing Credit



    @[Tamlin]
    Reply
    #4

    my shadow's shedding skin ...

    When they had woken to the darkness, Dretch had immediately turned to him, her face twisted into an all-too-familiar scowl. 'You did this,' she had accused, her young voice filled with willful anger. He had answered her that maddeningly slow smirk and shrugged a thin shoulder. He is not a god. No, his is not the hand who plunged Beqanna down, holding her beneath the surface with a blank curiosity -- how long can she hold her breath? --; but, he will happily go down for it, even if only in the mind of one.

    The filly and her mentor had shifted and disappeared on the wind, leaving the demon to his own devices for the time being. He is restless. He can feel them out there, the monsters who are as ancient, and more, as he. (Or at least as he once was. Somehow he had been pulled into this corporeal body, the result of a union of two black-hearted individuals; something he would resent were it not for the inexplicable bond he feels for said individuals, an unanticipated byproduct of this fleshly vessel). Since the trio had woken to darkness, the days and nights had run together. He, Set, and Dretch woke and slept and hunted with a foreign (now familiar) rhythm. No real purpose, no real ties aside from the ones that bind them to one another ... and the perpetual night. His gaunt form slips through the silence, unconsciously using the shadows to guide his steps as his mind wanders. They shift and swirl beneath his feet, now and again becoming near-tangible creatures no bigger than his hoof, yellow eyes bright and eager as they skitter off into unknown reaches.

    The soft thud-suck of pads on spring-dampened earth pass by him unnoticed as the wolf pack disperses, parting around him in unspoken unison before rejoining one another somewhere on his back trail. It is the rattle of bone on bone, carried on the density of the humid night air, that finally draws him from his evanescent thoughts. There is no need to alter his path as the soft murmur of voices draws him nearer for no reason other than to break up the monotony of his current existence. Slipping through the shadows is as effortless as breathing, even more so now that the shadows have no limit, and it's somewhere between crimson eyes and soft pink. The white of his pupil-less eyes seem to glow because of the black and lightless backdrop, their milkiness belying their perception. A dry tongue drags across equally dry lips, but no words follow its track. A tiny yellow-eyed creature doggedly crawls up his bony foreleg, grasping and pulling with knobby limbs and clacking teeth before nestling into the dreads lain along the dull hide of his neck.

    Reply
    #5
    @[Calavera] your disease acceleration has mutated into health transference. you're welcome.
    Reply
    #6



    Tamlin is still watching his wolf friends depart when the first voice breaks through his thoughts of monsters. It isn’t a monster though - just a young girl he hadn’t noticed in the shadows. He’s trying to remember which of his siblings is about her size when she gets close. He doesn’t spook, but he does laugh at her cooing proposition - not harshly, though he is a little uncomfortable. His laugh is an easy, rich noise as his opal hooves shuffle and bring him to a stop in the grass.

    A mare joins them before he gets a chance to speak and he politely responds to the questions asked of him in turn. First - the offer of a new home and he looks down at the youth. “Actually, I’ve got a home already kiddo!” And a pretty great one too! He definitely wasn’t looking to relocate.

    Tamlin’s gaze moves to meet the white eyes of a third, quiet, stranger. That one, he thinks to himself, could be a monster. It - he? - doesn’t seem immediately threatening and he quickly remembers his eagerness to talk about the wolves and turns his skull head back to the red-eyed mare.

    One of the downsides of being a skeleton is that Tamlin’s smile isn’t capable of being fully appreciated. He's got a good smile, too. It does, however, radiate through his voice when he happily replies to the next question about the wolves. He could talk about his pack forever and he does not get the impression that the (literally) smoking mare is asking because she’s afraid.

    “Once they’re done hunting, they'll be back. Sometimes they forget about me and I need to remind them - but not often.” After nine years of bonding with the same pack and seeing several generations - and almost as many puppies as his mother had given him siblings - Tamlin’s manipulation of the wolves had become pretty basic. Every once in a while one of them would need to be reminded that he was not food

    His fleshless head turns to regard all three of his new companions in turn. He's more comfortable with a crowd, even as odd of one as this - but strange is just part of life, as far as he's concerned. He shifts his wings so the bones rattle against his ribs again just for effect since a wink is utterly useless. “Considering I’m a walking chew toy for them at the moment, though, I don’t think I’m likely to be forgotten today.”


    t a m l i n

    artwork by space1993


    @[Calavera]
    Reply
    #7
    I am pleased when the bony face turns to me, and then my mouth forms an O of surprise at the words he says. "But-" I stammer, my world suddenly shifting on its axis. "You're not supposed to say no. They always come home with me." I'm whining, and I know it, but my world is not working how it ordinarily does, and it feels like a trick. 

    My little objections are quickly overrun by the arrival of others. I can hardly see the lady who speaks, her coat is so blended with the dark. The wolves she mentions take me by surprise. I had missed their presence, had been dozing when they left. The words she directs at me grate on my chest, the way she talks to me like I'm a baby. I push down the annoyance. Talking back only ever gets me bruises. 

    So I subside into the shadow, while the grown ups talk about wolves. I've been denied my new friend, and I'm sulky about it. He seems to have more independence than the bony companions I usually find in the woods. Should have known it was too good to be true. 

    My mind wanders now as I wonder if they will care if i leave. I doubt it. Unless I'm in trouble, it's rare anyone notices if I'm there or not. It's only because I turned to go that I catch a glimpse of another moving figure against the black backdrop. The flicker of eyes, yellow, dart and disappear. New eyes, white this time, gleam unnaturally as they pass over this little grouping. 

    I edge nearer, curious but wary. Balto's eyes look that way sometimes. Cold and distant, and that's usually when it's not a good time to be near him. Maybe it's the same with this shadow, but there's only one way to know for sure. My delicate hooves impress on the damp earth as I look up at it. "Hello," I say softly, wondering if I'll even get a reply, or just a swift bite to the shoulder. 

    @[Livinia]
    Reply
    #8

    l i v i n i a
    such is life, such is death.



    It is clear the stallion is better equipped to handle children than she is. But the girl of smoke and shadow is undeterred.  “Oh, young one, you have much to learn about disappointment,” she purrs, yet again. Livinia learned these lessons early in her strange life. It was perhaps one of her mother’s most important teachings, followed by the task she had been given by the mountain. But her family history was nothing if not complicated.  She trains her crimson gaze upon the girl as she pulls away into the shadows.  She has much to learn, indeed.

    The mention of the wolves is more than enough to draw her attention back to the stranger – the one who had drawn her hear in the first place.  The way he speaks of the wolves as if he were a member of their pack, yet he does not hunt with them.  It is intriguing to her. A mystery that she is determined to unravel, compounded by the fact that the darkness seems to have robbed him of his flesh. “Do you not hunt with them?” she asks, her gaze drifting to where they had disappeared into the dark. For if she had wolves of her own, she would hunt alongside them.  Deep within her the bloodlust stirs, and she moves quickly to quell the impulse lest it get out of hand.

    When her attention returns to the present, the shadows draw her attention. Or rather the creature to which they gravitate. There’s something within her, something deep, that recognizes this strange shadow something as kin. She was born without fear of shadows or things that go bump in the night. Her twin – her everything – had been born of shadow and darkness before he had transcended into something…more. But she’d be raised alongside the shadows, so she does not recoil from this creature now.  She says nothing to it, however.

    She simply smiles that same, wicked smile that her – their - mother had once worn in her youth – before the cold had burned it away.

    Drawing Credit


    @[Niklas]

    @[The Monsters] wanna mess with Liv's Immortality? Smile
    Reply
    #9
    @[Livinia] your immortality has mutated into cracked appearance. you're welcome.
    Reply
    #10

    my shadow's shedding skin ...

    He shifts, shoulders rolling, his gaze drifting lazily from one gathered to the other. The skeleton’s wings clatter along his ribs, his warm voice filled with the laughter that his skull cannot express. Some might think that Niklas, the lanky, macabre creature that he is, might not be one to find the humor in such mundanities as the chew-toy remark … and they would be correct in their assumptions. It is not that he thinks himself above such things; nor is it that he is incapable of being amused. It is only just that his delight is in the more perverse. Affliction and misery – that which the light cannot stomach. The small shadow creature entrenched in the knots of his mane is joined by another, and then a third, invisible in their trek up his shoulder save for the blink-blink of little yellow eyes. He shakes out his mane with a low groan, dislodging bits of dirt and dander, but not his tiny passengers.

    Niklas is a creature of whim. The basest of urges drive him, a mixture of natural and unnatural. It was only the monotony of the darkness – of making Dretch’s life miserable and passing the time at Set’s side – that drew him to the small gathering. At least, that is what he thought at first. His aquiline head turns to address an itch under his flank but instead catches on the smile that graces the fanged mare’s mouth. It elicits a visceral response and he freezes, hind leg still raised. He blinks, once, then twice, and slowly lowers his leg back to the ground. His father’s son in the aspect of maternal affinity, he feels more than sees his mother’s smirk; it is perhaps the only thing the demon has ever been known to yearn for. As far as he’s let on, at least. His dry lips twist upward in a return smile – cold and devilish. “Did she find you wanting as well?” He does not bother to disguise the bitterness that colors his questions, his shadows churning about his legs and feet, but there is no accusation in them. His gut tells him she is family – sacrosanct. It is the lonely young soul with only a hellhound and capricious father to keep him company who wonders – was it just he? Or they?

    She says hello, the pale thing who reeks of sulk and youth, and he straightens, all moth-eaten and dire again. There is a beat, a filling of lungs, before he looks to her. The smile he grants is wide and wolfish in nature, though his ears move forward, an impression of peace. He does not bite without cause – not generally, at least. Cocking his head to the side, he exhales a reply to match hers. “Hello.” Another inhale, exhale, his nose pressed to her neck without qualm. An innocent question follows closely after, his voice unerringly soft. “Should you be out here, alone?”



    @[Tamlin]
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