"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
She had thought of that girl, since. She didn’t know her name – had not shared hers, either. It itches at her, sometimes, the hesitant familiarity of her, and then that noise – not the same as the ones her father and sister made, but close. Enough that she felt an irrational moment of jealousy.
But that had been all. She should have forgotten about her by now. That’s how she works, Violence – she forgets many of them, discards their conversations and moves on to the next. Some stand out, of course – those who bend to her, who yield, who open their minds and even bodies to her.
Those, she remembers. She savors.
But this girl had done none of that. So why does she think about her?
She isn’t thinking about her now, as she moves in the forest. She is looking for more bones – the monsters had left many delightful things behind – but today her search has yielded little. Her bone creature moves alongside her, her constant companion, the gentle clatter of its bones soothing to her.
And then she looks ahead, and there she is again. That dark not-sister, so clearly not a monster, but with some grasp of the language. That nameless stranger.
Violence moves faster, almost rushing to her. In her vanity, she has no doubt that the girl will remember her – she is quite memorable, after all – with the bone-thing stumbling after her.
“You,” she says, “who are you?”
She will find out, this time.
There has been no pleasure to be found in the return of the sun for this mare. It has disrupted the small balance she has discovered in this strange new life. In the shadows it was easier for her to disappear, easier for her to go long stretches pretending she does not exist.
And then with the sun, strange things began to happen. It started out small, twigs and rocks moving in the corner of her eye. And then lights began to appear, twinkling around her - shifting and moving around her.
It took a few days for her to figure out what they were. They looked like the stars that had returned to the sky but their fleeting yet ever-present nature began to frazzle her mind. She was being haunted.
She was trying to lose them in the forest when a familiar stranger stops her. White-rimmed eyes are more focused on the lights around her, which were not lost, and her voice is strangled when she spits out a response in a newfound instinct. “Akari.” She gives the name that found her - and though it does not feel right, it is at least something. She does not know how to discover whether she had been given a name when she burst free of the egg she had incubated in. If there was one, it has been lost.
Those black eyes slide first to the bone-thing and then the mare - trying to ignore the lights that seem to purposefully flicker in her periphery. “Who are you?” She replies, parroting the other’s inflection almost perfectly - asking not because she particularly cares to know but because she’s become aware that this is something that is asked.
She doesn’t recognize the name, but does it matter? She does not have her family tree memorized (such a thing would be a daunting task indeed), after all. What matters is her instincts tell her there is something about this mare, and that is enough. She thinks of her sisters, how they yielded to her, how her own father yielded.
(Mother was the only one who did not, and to whom Violence did not attempt. She and mother did not get along.)
“Akari,” she repeats, “what an interesting name.”
It’s an unfamiliar word, unlike her own name, which she is eager to share with the mare.
“My name is Violence,” she says, then, although the mare didn’t ask, she gestures to her bone creature, “and this thing doesn’t have a name.”
She’ll give it names, sometimes, try out different things, but nothing ever fits for long. Her creation is ever-evolving, so why shouldn’t the same go for its name?
“You seem unhappy, Akari,” she says. In truth, nothing is particularly off about this mare – and besides, Violence is certainly no empath – but she knows, as a rule, many horses are unhappy, so it’s a line she’s cheerful enough to go with. She steps closer. Just a little. Just to get a closer look, to better see what she may have to work with.
he recognizes the word that this mare goes by, but she had not known it to be a name. She knew it intimately, that word, though she has only recently realized there was something to call the way she had lived her life.
Violence.
Violence is what brought these souls to haunt her. And just as she thinks it, some leaves begin to move around her hooves in a way not quite what you'd expect from the wind. They skitter like insects towards her and she dances where she stands to avoid them, shying away from the leaves just as she shies away from the question that is asked of her.
She does not know what it means to be unhappy because she does not know what it means to be happy.
But she does not possess the ability to try to explain that thought. The response that comes is slow and she shakes her head as she speaks, eying the leaves that are currently still - to near her hooves as though they will come alive and bite her. The stars around her seem to be blinking a little more now, as though they've been stirred by her frustration and though she starts and flinches from them she cannot escape them. “The souls… they’re… they’re…” Fear is a new emotion, and she cannot say she cares for it over much. The way it chokes her as she tries to look at Violence, at the strange creature with them, and anywhere else beside those damn lights. “They won't go away.” She finishes in a quiet voice, flinching again when one of the stars moves into her line of sight.
NOSTROMO
@[violence] I'm only like 50% sure this makes any sense at all
