"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
Her eyes opened wide, and it made no difference. She couldn't see beyond a pace or two ahead of herself. Couldn't make out the trees until her nose brushed against them, and the roots beneath her feet were a constant hazard. It was unnerving, the way the world so easily dissolved. How quickly their easy lives unraveled.
Her wings were running ragged at the edges, the result of too many low hanging boughs catching on their fragile surfaces. Could she make it to the meadow, and win a few hours of time in the open? The distance had been long enough when the sun still shone. Now it felt like a serious undertaking.
Ama waited a few... She was sure she would have called them days before, but now, just a few sleeps. Decided in the end that she had grown claustrophobia beneath the redwoods, and needed to stretch her legs beyond the same circuits she'd gotten used to walking. There was safety in numbers. She believed that, and it made leaving the children with their family an easier thing to do. And maybe one lone mare traveling would attract less attention than a larger group might, and she could go and come back unaccosted.
She was being reckless, but the Fear in the redwoods was suffocating. She was drowning in the worries of every other resident, and it was leaving her ragged inside. Desperate to breath air that was empty of Fear and Overwhelm. All but her own. That, she couldn't shake.
There was so much darkness now, literally and figuratively speaking. She was doing what she could to imbue Hope into her loved ones, but it was getting harder and harder to conjure an emotion for others that she was having difficulty feeling herself. A heavy breath left her lungs, and she tried to catch her bearings. How long had she been walking? Caught between the dark, and her own troubled thoughts, the little mare wasn't certain how far she'd gone.
Compounding her growing trepidation was a sense that she was no longer alone on this road. It was just a feeling. There was no sound of other steps, no loud breathing or any other sound that would indicate that someone, or something, had crossed her path.
If it had been anyone else, they would have been able to come and go (or not) and she wouldn't have been any the wiser unless they'd wanted her to be. As it was, she almost missed the faint threads of emotion that brushed her consciousness. The awareness brought her to an uneasy halt, in the hopes that whatever it was was having as hard a time seeing as she was.
He was reluctant to call it stalking, though if any had been able to decipher the shadowy figure from the surrounding darkness they would see his movements did have a predatory look to it. His steps were slow despite the fact he had no need to be overly cautious, as they were silent regardless. His head slung low and the shadows of his shoulders rolled like smoke, his movements almost mimicked the way he might walk in his canine form. Today he had chosen to be a horse—or as close to a horse as a shadow could be.
The feral nature of the canine was beginning to wear on him and he was finding it increasingly more difficult to ground himself.
It did not help that the lands were now rampant with all the things he craved.
The eclipse and the night’s refusal to depart had left most of the residents afraid and anxious, emotions that always seemed to be intertwined with sorrow and anger, too. While he had once been elated at this newfound freedom of being able to traverse Beqanna relatively unseen, he now found himself spiraling further into the very madness he had been fighting off. Where once he would avoid feeding when he felt the cravings gnawing at his gut, now he sought whoever he could to sate it. Anything to abate this wretched feeling, and while he had begun to notice that the more he consumed the more it took to satisfy him the next time, he simply couldn’t stop.
So he follows her, for no particular reason other than she exists and she is here, available. He is far enough behind that not even his fear aura could touch her, but were she to turn she would immediately see the crimson glow of his eyes, seemingly disembodied as they bobbed in the darkness. He lets himself close the gap between them, noticing the way she seems to have felt his presence. “It’s just me,” he says to her, as if that is somehow reassuring, the smoke of his voice curling like the very shadows of his mane. He had stopped, assuming that she would turn, and he had left what he thought was a comfortable distance between them. He didn’t want her to run; didn’t want her to be entirely afraid of him, and as always he swallows away the unease at wanting her to feel those things at all. “You shouldn’t really be alone here. Not with the dark the way that it is, I mean.”
02-08-2021, 02:57 PM (This post was last modified: 02-08-2021, 02:58 PM by Amarine.)
Tornados from a butterfly's wing
The creeping feeling persisted. It twisted along her spine like the kudzu vines, impossible to keep ignoring. So she stayed still, a cornered rabbit hoping the hawk will just keep flying, cursing herself for ever having dared to leave home at all. Her wings quivered then, never asking her permission before they did so, and in that next moment a voice sounded from far too close.
Her chest contracted at the words, an unfamiliar voice attached to no figure she could see. Not until she forced a deep intake of breath could she turn her head to look. Another moment before the reddish twin glimpses of light registered as being someone's eyes.
She needed to cough before her throat would work right again. Blood tingled in her legs and at the base of her neck, hot and spiked with adrenaline. It begged her to do something, anything. It was the nothing that was unbearable. "Pardon me for feeling less than reassured," she mumbled, grasping for the ragged ends of Confidence. It was a bright, shining emotion at odds with the world. The version she clutched was a washed out echo, but it helped nonetheless.
Gathering her feet beneath herself with a little more gumption, the petite mare pulled herself to her full height, glaring with as much sterness as she could muster at the amorphous creature. If the monsters that had come with the dark were conversationalists, that was news to her. What that made this, then, she didn't know. The scent that caught on her nostrils was like wolf, thick and musky. And the emotional signature was... unusual, to say the least.
Curiosity was beginning to override fear. Ama tipped her head from one side to the other, wishing for sight for the hundredth time that day. "What- what are you? You don't seem too worried out here in the dark." She asked bluntly. Small talk seemed silly anymore. Just like so many other behaviors that no longer made sense in this new world. She had hated using her talent with feeling against others, but now it only made sense to use whatever tools you had to stay safe.
That was why she so very carefully extended a small tendril of Contentment to the unseen stranger. It was an experiment, as much as anything. She wasn't certain it would work on a non-horse. But if it did, it could only help right now. Content beasts didn't attack for no reason. Content monsters wouldn't ravage a lone mare. She hoped.
He has grown accustomed to the lost way they look for him. They hear his voice and always they turn to search for a face, a body. Something to attach to the voice, and yet all they ever find are the two glowing eyes.
Sometimes he hated the looks that flashed across their face—the fear, the want to run, or sometimes the instinctual urge to fight. It used to sting. He remembers when he had been plain, when he had the kind of face that no one would spare a second glance to. He remembers how badly he had wished to share even an ounce of his family’s affinity to the shadows.
What an idiotic wish.
Now he was something beyond just a shadow creature; he was a nightmare with a heartbeat. He was nothing like he had wanted to be, and when she turned to find nothing and then looked harder and found his eyes and her fear along with it there is the faintest pull of irritation at the pit of his gut. Irritated that she was afraid when he didn’t want her to be, irritated at his situation, irritated that if he had never gone into the hellscape of a maze underground he would have just been a regular stupid boy telling a girl hello in the dark.
“No one ever is,” is his flat-toned response, afraid that if he did not erase all of the emotion from his voice that it would come out harsher than intended. He did not want her to leave because he did not want to have to force her to stay. He hated when they made him have to go to extremes to get what he wanted—needed. He tried to keep his hunger and his own self-loathing locked inside, refusing to let it seep into his voice and turn her away.
She asks him what he is, though, and the question surprises him—confuses him, almost. No one had ever asked, and to be honest, he wasn’t sure. “I don’t know,” he answers honestly, some of the usual depth returning to his voice; the faint smoke of it, the quiet rasp. “It didn’t come with any kind of instructions or name.” His poor attempt at humor, because when he was normal he likes to think he would have been almost funny; charming, even.
There is a strange feeling coming from her, but he cannot quite figure it out. He did not know how to pick up on emotions that were not anger or sorrow, fear or rage. He did not recognize that the contentment was being directed to him from her, at least not enough to outright question it. But it’s there; a strange kind of nagging that wars against his usual darkness, pressing a finger lightly to it. It’s enough to make him tilt his shadowy head, to seek out her crystal-like eyes. “My name is Torryn.”
She searches for a face to match the words that emanate from the dark, and comes close. Eyes that gleam like embers meet her own strange blue orbs. She blinks, uncertain for a moment if she was really seeing eyes, or just another trick of the darkness on her light deprived vision.
It helped, oddly, to know the voice had an owner. That it wasn't just darkness set on unnerving her. Or the yellow-eyed things that had been dogging them all. This was something different, and as each new moment passed where she wasn't attacked, her Confidence grew more naturally from where she had planted it.
"I wouldn't take it personally," she offered after a moment, trying to ease her voice. "I think I'd startle at a bunny if it didn't announced itself first right now." Her lips pursed thoughtfully. There was... conflict, more than anything, that she could feel like unseen air currents. Sorrow and Regret mingling with Fear and Irritation. A whole awful lot of negativity, tightly knit into itself. Into him, she realized.
This was something she'd never encountered before, and it drew her in with earnest wonder. The emotional signitures she was used to connecting with horses were usually fragmented things. A collection of small, characteristic feelings that individuals organized into their own subconscious patterns. This wasn't like that. Curiosity overrode her hesitation, and the little mare took several steps nearer.
She still couldn't see him with her eyes, but it almost didn't matter. Now that she knew what she was looking for... She couldn't repress the gasp of surprise when it came. Every shade of sadness, every flavor of woe was twisted together to fit into the shape a creature should be filling. He was Negativity Incarnate, and that one answer only opened the doors for a hundred other questions.
Like a scientist obligated to discover, she got even closer, her crystal eyes searching for any details her Empathy may have failed to pick up on. There was nothing but shadow that blended seamlessly into the darkness they were standing in. "I'm Amarine," she answered vaguely, wondering if she would fall right through this Torryn, if she tried to touch him. Was he a sentient shadow, only? Or was there substance in the dark.
There is a noise that rasps at the back of his throat, something like a laugh. “The dark can be unsettling,” he says, though he is only vaguely referring to the dark around them. He wonders how he would have felt about the dark if he was not already full of it—if it did not overtake every part of him until it came spilling from his very pores, what would he think of the dark that has befallen Beqanna? “And I wish I could tell you there’s no reason to be afraid of the things that lurk in the shadows, but it would be a lie.”
He could tell her the creatures that have spawned from the darkness are shattered and broken things, like him. She could tell him they do things out of desperation and misery, but he knows to pity them would be unwise. He knows all too well what it means to be consumed by both anguish and greed—to be so selfish in search of relief that he does not care who he harms when searching for it.
His shadowed head tilts as she comes closer, watching her carefully with the ruby-red of his eyes. He does not know why, but he reaches for her with his fear aura, only instead of using it to push her away he arcs it over and around her—just enough to hopefully send pinpricks of fear up her spine, to give her that inexplicable feeling of something watching her from behind, urging her closer. “Where are you from, Amarine?” he asks her, his voice quiet and his stare fixed on her, letting the aura slowly fade away into nothing.
The darkness hangs like a veil over them his miasma of emotion is a nearly tangible aura that thickens as it twists into the core. The net of it shrouds her this close. Like a heavy blanket, the Sorrow weighs on her back, trying very hard to permeate the walls she's spent so long constructing.
It's not her sadness, but it could be. Goodness knows there's plenty to be sad about. More than enough grief and regret to bury inside of until it swallowed you whole. Was this what he felt always? Or did it simply ride him like a cloak, hitching a ride on others wherever he went. It was a conundrum that made his next dire phrase more curious. "It's no good lying to me, anyway," she hums, smiling at a joke only she knew.
When the Fear comes, it takes her by surprise. That creeping, tingling sensation that crawled up get neck, making her swing her head to look over her shoulder. Mouth set in a wary line, she throws an answering wave of outright Terror in answer. She was no fighter. Her best bet had always been to turn back potential aggressors with the only weapon she had: their emotions.
No rustle in the dark reacts to her. No moan of fear or growls of anger. Slowly, her gaze returns to the dark-wrought stallion's form. The dull red glow of his eyes reflects eerily in the glassy blue of her own. "From? I'm sure I don't know. But I live in the Taiga now. And you?" Her breath whispers in the now minute space between them, the sense of danger singing in her veins. Was this what she had really been looking for when she left home today?
The emotions he takes are a curious thing, in the sense that he did not really feel them. The kind that he fed off of—their sorrow and rage, all their anguish—it fueled and energized him, but he did not really feel them after taking them. They seeped into the core of him, thrummed in the shadow of his veins and became his lifeblood, but they are not his.
He has his own angst and self-loathing that knots in his chest, a tangled web of regret and anxiety, all of them so potent that he does not notice if what he takes adds to that, or does nothing at all.
When her own fear rises to meet the fear he had encouraged he feels the familiar pull in his gut, the gnawing want of needing more, but he quiets it. He had learned that if given the chance, he was always hungry. Whatever beast had taken root inside of him was insatiable and impossible to distract once it caught the scent of what it wanted, but the longer he lived with it, the better he came at staving it off.
Not forever, but for now.
The mention of Taiga is perhaps her saving grace. Something in his eyes seems to shift, a new layer of depth beyond just the bright, nearly supernatural glowing red. “Taiga,” he repeats, and though she cannot see it there is a smile on his lips, and it fits itself around the shape of his words. “I was born there.” He had not always been this. He had been a normal boy once, painfully ordinary and dwarfed by the redwood trees and desperately wishing the shadows would love him the way they loved his father. “My family still lives there, but I doubt you’ve ever seen them.”
Another invisible smile, and a shiver of a laugh. “They don’t leave the shadows often.”
