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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


    Like the moon we have our phases // Wit, Any
    #1
    Saturnelle, because her mother had a fondness for extravagant names. Ones that held weight on the tongue, stuck with you after you said them. That did not stop her siblings from finding shorter ways to call her by. Satin, Nellie, Nell, Snail. A variety of words that all meant her. 

    She was little, compared to others of her birth range. She'd been born later in the year than they had, though she hadn't been late, per say. The going theory was that because of the way her dam had travelled life and death, it had paused her gestation. Slowed the growth of the fluttering little life until things had stabilized long enough for her to develop properly. Little Nell, all legs and oversized wings, ran as hard as she could to keep up with her elder siblings. 

    They were scattering now. Cheri, beautiful Cheri, had left them for real. To big and full of life to be happy in the sheltered woods long, she'd escaped as soon as she could, and Saturnelle couldn't wait to follow her. Big brother Reynard was a slower paced soul, a watcher, not a doer. But he was a good listener and a good sport when she wanted his attention, and always had a moment to spare her. Memorie was as pretty as Cheri, but in a more natural sort of way. Approachable, where Cheri was otherworldly. It had been a little while since she'd seen the coppery sibling, not long enough to worry. And then there was Wit. 

    Only a bit older, but already so much stronger. It took everything she had to keep up with him. Huffing and puffing little clouds of mist, the bay little girl trotted with increasing frustration through the towering trees. He was hiding. She was seeking. And seeking. And seeking some more. Maybe getting a teensy bit suspicious that her half brother had wandered out of the zone they'd agreed on for their game. 

    "If I have to burn down all these trees to find you, I will! She muttered to no one in particular. It wasn't as if she had any way to really follow through with the threat, but it felt good to say it. 

    She paused, nose quivering uncertain as she looked harder at her surroundings. Nothing obviously out of place, but her spidey senses had started tingling. Was that twig bent wrong? She approached it to look more closely, but no, there wasn't anything notable about it. That supposed hoofprint in the moss was just an uneven spot on the forest floor. 

    She grunted, annoyed. These spidey senses were less than reliable. 

    @[Tweak] ?
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    #2

    genius always finds itself a century too early

    Wit was starting to worry. He had wanted to make the game a bit more challenging. But was it too much? Judging by the frustration in the emotional residue left behind by @[Saturnelle] as she passed by relatively close, perhaps it was. But he was getting bored. Truth be told, the game had always been way too easy for him, since he could pick up on emotional residue left behind by others, which often led him to find his companion way too quickly. Their father had attempted to teach him to block this out, but gifted as he was with his echoes, blocking them out was not something that came easily to him. At all. Arguably, he could also be accused of cheating when they played hide-and-seek, too. But his half-sister seemed to enjoy the game, and he didn’t have the heart to tell her any of that and ruin it for her. So instead, he had taken to making the game more and more challenging. But today, perhaps this was a little too much.

    He watched behind his dark blue eyes, eyes that matched his mother’s, as she passed by only a few feet away, close enough for him to hear her muttering under her breath. He can’t hear exactly what she is saying, but judging by the strong sense of frustration he can feel coming from her and the image of fire that accompanies the emotion, he imagines it has something to do with burning him alive

    For a moment, he lays still, wondering if he should reveal his position, but at the same time, she was so close! She was practically breathing on him when she stepped forward to examine a little twig and what could have been a hoofprint. He was smarter than that, though. He wouldn’t leave obvious traces to his position. Part of it brings back the thrill of the game, though. At least hiding had its perks.

    Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that this was now more frustrating than fun, and the whole point of the game was to be fun (at least for Saturnelle). She grunts, a sign her her annoyance, and he shoves up from where he had been laying, practically beneath her. See, there had been a massive pile of leaves here all winter, withering and shrinking, but still large enough to hide his big figure, and they were leaves! Which meant he could manipulate them as he pleased. So he had simply shifted them around so he could hide beneath them and rearrange them back on top of him so he would be completely camouflaged.

    “BOO!” He yells at her through a spray of leaves that rain down around them. He laughs jovially, though inside, he’s a nervous wreck, hoping she would forgive his lack of decorum in hiding so well. He throws himself up onto his hooves so that he is standing once more, trying to hide the anxiety boiling just beneath his surface, and he grins instead. “I thought this would have been obvious,” he says, sounding a little sheepish.

    wit

    Image by Katie Moum
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    #3
    Discordant notes fell through the air as the girl jolted to the side, startled. "Wit!" She shrilled, the agonizing tension broken amid a scattering of leaves. The papery green wings flared from her shoulders, eddying the only just-settled leaves again. 

    "You're so good at this," she grudgingly said, kicking at the mulch. Her own kind of emotional gifts were much
    much broader than his. Like her mother, she felt everything, and she hadn't enough experience to sort out her own feelings from the ones others felt. It was easy to lose herself in the emotions of others. Less easy to rein things in when her temper flared because someone else was having a bad day. 

    Still, she couldn't miss the Boredom hanging in a contained cloud around her brother. Her heart sank slightly. Okay, well, he'd been playing with her for most of the morning now. She smiled up at him, a tiny chip of green glinting from the tip of her nose. 

    "Whatcha want to do now?" She asked, puffing a breath of air to shift her downy forelock from her eyes. There were few enough children in the woods, enough that she knew if she ran off Wit, she'd be on her own the rest of the afternoon. It wasn't a prospect she looked forward to, so compromise it was. 

    @[Wit]
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    #4

    genius always finds itself a century too early

    Disappointment colors his half-sister’s mood. He can see it in an image of her that she unwillingly gives off, and it makes him feel guilty. He should have done a better job of hiding his emotions, especially since he knew that @[Saturnelle] shared Amarine’s gift of empathy. And even though she senses his boredom and says that he is so good at this, he still can’t bring himself to tell her why he was so good at it. So instead, he nudges her softly on the shoulder, having to reach down to do so. Sometimes he forgets how small she is, especially as he is growing bigger and faster than her every day.

    She asks what he would like to do, now, and he has to pause on it for a moment. They were too young to leave the shelter of the redwoods. Both of their moms would likely lose their minds if either of the foals went exploring elsewhere, especially with all the stress that had come from the Eclipse and the incidents directly following. Still, the allure of exploring new places is tempting. Even so, he can’t imagine putting that kind of stress on their mothers after all they’d been through, so he decides not to even bring it up. That still leaves them with nothing to do, though.

    He doesn’t have to think on it long, though. The ground beneath a massive, dead redwood stump shifts and seems to come to life. The leaves flutter and fall away as a mound slowly grows from a hole in the ground, and a leg pokes out. Wit, startled, looks over at the mound with a look of shock on his face that quickly turns to horror as another leg pokes out. And another. And another. Until there are eight legs that shake the leaves from its massive body, a body easily as large as his own, and quite possibly twice as large as his half-sister. From beneath the leaves that now fall casually to the earth, a pair of beady, black eyes pop out of the shell, splintering the light.

    His jaw drops at the sight of the massive creature that can only be described as something akin to a wolf melded together with a spider. He had seen the wolves around the redwoods a few times, and his mother had repeatedly told him to avoid them, and spiders always sent a cringe down his spine. So this thing was something out of his wildest nightmares.

    Wit almost forgets about little Saturnelle standing there, probably just as shocked and horror-struck as himself, but always the caring big brother, he remembers her just before he bolts from his spot. He turns toward her, horror obvious on his little face. “It doesn’t matter now. RUN!”

    He shoves his shoulder into hers, pushing her in the opposite direction from the wolf-spider-thing, and just in time, too, because where her little body had been just a second earlier, a leg now descends.

    wit

    Image by Katie Moum


    Lol. I couldn’t think of what they could do, so I improvised a Canis Aranaea attack. Hahaha
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    #5
    She hadn't meant to disappoint him, but she had. She wasn't sure how, though. That was the problem with a family that could read each other so supernaturally well. There were few secrets, but emotions were the opposite of rationale. They didn't need a good reason to be, they just were. 

    The pixie-ish girl moved to bump her face on his shoulder, an apology for not understanding, but her movement was cut short. She was watching Wit's copper brown face, not the earth. "Wha-" she began, only to bite the words off short. A wet growl answered her unspoken question. 

    Her head snapped to find the source, gaze landing on the broken earth first. Funny, how that's what she focused on. It was easier to process than the disturbing creature emerging from it. Clots of black dirt stuck to scraggly fur, light caught on ropes of saliva dripping from oversized canines. All in all, it was an ugly beast, and Saturnelle was equal parts horrified and intrigued. 

    That ratio swung sharply in horror's favor as the monster scuttled forward. "Oh no, oh no, oh no," she groaned, stumbling as her brother's shoulder collided with her's. It was a sharp burst of pain, but enough to break the spell of fear holding her in place. One spindly clawed leg struck the earth where her body had so recently been standing. One spider wolf was one thing, but they were rarely alone. 

    She was now quite a bit aways from that point. Her twiggy legs were pumping full speed through the trees, adrenaline fueled. Sunlit patches of forest floor scattered beneath her staccato hoof-falls, and a sound like wind chimes in a gale echoed each step. Through the trunks, she caught flashes of her brother's coat, the florescent green comet's tail that streaked behind herself. 

    She didn't stop running until the trees thinned to scrubland, and her lungs felt ready to collapse. 

    @[Wit]
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    #6

    genius always finds itself a century too early

    He senses the discomfort in her knowledge that she had disappointed him and once again feels disappointed in himself. This time, though, he ensures that he keeps this emotion locked within him, not floating into the ether where his empathic sister would pick up on it. The last thing he wants to do is disappoint her with his disappointment, and he’d already done that just now. All he ever wanted to do was ensure others’ happiness.

    He would have smiled when she reached to bump his shoulder had it not been for the events unfolding behind her. And then there was no time to think about any of it as they are forced to plunge deep into the forest, to try to outrun the massive wolf-spider beast and its companions. Unlike his sister, Wit had not noticed the little details on the massive spider. He had been too busy grappling with the abject terror that had gripped him for half a second before he was able to react. Even now, he hardly pays any mind to the forest around him as he barrels through it, choosing to be mindful of keeping his sister close so he could try to protect her if need be instead.

    Eventually, he comes to realize that they are alone. There is no presence of emotionally charged memories from the wolf-spider creature. He slows his pace. Perhaps @[Saturnelle] had sensed this herself, or was following her brother’s cue, or was running out of stamina, but she slows as well. Wit throws his head over his shoulder to look back to confirm that they are no longer being followed before he stops completely, though.

    His breaths come in gasps. Faster than he has ever breathed in his life. His limbs are burning. His lungs are burning! He feels like collapsing right then and there, but instead, turns to his sister, eyes wide, only able to keep himself standing with he adrenaline that still courses through his veins. “What–” he gasps, “was–” another gasp, “THAT?!?” He looks back the way they had come, searching for an answer as if the trees would provide them.

    It is then that he realizes he does not recognize where they are. He turns back to his sister, another sort of terrified expression crossing his features. “Saturnelle,” he whispers, “do you know where we are?” It was definitely not any place in Taiga, that was for sure. They had been to all corners of Taiga already, exploring as far as their mothers would allow, and Taiga did not have any scrublands.

    wit

    Image by Katie Moum
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