"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
05-06-2021, 09:10 AM (This post was last modified: 05-06-2021, 09:10 AM by Reave.)
i am the mace, the map, the fall and the high
The sun has just reached the horizon in it’s downwards arch when Reave finds himself at the edges of the deep forest . Even with the northern moors now his, he cannot quite tame the restlessness of his feet. Tempered perhaps, but never tamed. There is so much in the world he has yet to see, so much he has only recently found to explore, that the wild temptation is far too much for the young stallion.
The forest is as familiar to him as anywhere, though the deepest and darkest parts of it still remain something of a mystery. There are few that dare venture so far in, and while Reave might have the desire, first youth had held him in check, and now the great harpy eagle in the trees above him. The bird (now Rune, they had agreed, but perhaps that would change too) was not nearly so enamored of the dark and cold of it.
With a sigh, Reave idly scratches the exposed bone of one shoulder against the bark of the tree beside him. The blood itches as it dries, though he’s not certain the sharp pain or fresh trickle of blood (now smeared on the tree) are worth the momentary relief he had found. Mother had told him more would eventually break through, but for now only the jutting points of his shoulder plates, hip bones, and the dull, splintered end of his bone mask had surfaced. Looking at Brazen however, he knows there is so much more to come.
He is not looking forward to it.
With another restless sigh, he starts abruptly forward, heading for the deeper woods, only to be halted once more by the sharp cry of the eagle. Lips slipping into a scowl, Reave lifts his head to glare at his companion, the low snort escaping his nostrils the only indication of their silent conversation.
05-17-2021, 09:23 PM (This post was last modified: 05-17-2021, 09:24 PM by galadriel.)
Sour-faced, as she always has been, Galadriel squints up at the sun. Her face is scrunched and lips flattened, just unpleasant enough to make any onlooker think she is hiding a lemon beneath her tongue.
The sun is not necessarily unwelcome to Rel. She doesn’t mind its warmth nor does she mind its guidance; but ever since it came back, she struggles to formulate the visions she so perfectly crafted in utter darkness. Here, beneath sweat and sticky fur, she can’t seem to focus enough on her magic to make the world spin on her own personal axis—and if she is not spinning, orbiting, creating the perfect space, then she is as mentioned above: perfectly sour.
So, Galadriel storms through the forest, pausing beneath every large break of the canopy to scowl furiously at the sun. It beats down on her good-naturedly, and she imagines a massive burning ball with giant fists punching her muscles all while wearing a wide-mouthed grin. Huff, she sighs, stepping recklessly forward into the ball of gas that appeared just before her.
“Oh!” Rel cries, flinching as if the envisioned star might burn her; but instead her head pushes through the intangible sun she created. “Oh,” she repeats, sly smirk curling one side of her mouth upward.
My magic is back.
For a time, yes. Her magic is back. Rel walks with the star that hovers beside her, always keeping pace. Even as the sun goes down and strangers peer at her and her new companion, she simply walks, too afraid to change her thoughts or even her path because the little sun might disappear.
It’s when she stumbles Reave that the star disappears. She looks at him with a decidedly sour frown, eyes narrowing. Galadriel can’t tell if he noticed her already, but that doesn’t matter. He made her magic disappear.
“Why are you snorting so loudly?” Rel demands as she approaches him, gait far too aggressive for an apparently innocent stranger.
@[Reave]
He is pulled from his conversation with Rune by the loud and angry steps of a newcomer. She approaches with the barely restrained aggression of one who has found themselves in a situation they are entirely unhappy about. It is a step Reave recognizes, because it is one he too has made all too often.
Gaze shifting abruptly, his ears disappear briefly in the wheaten strands of his mane before returning with an alertness inspired by her familiarity. For a moment, the memories of their whirlwind encounter as children barely old enough to venture on their own swirl between them. They had fed and fed on their mutual gift until he’d nearly been unable to tell vision from reality. In so many ways, she had been an impetus for him to gain control of his once wild abilities.
“You!” The word is thrust heedlessly from his lips before he can recall it. He moves then, pacing an agitated half-circle before her as he eyes her with an intensity that belies his restlessly youthful energy. Ignoring the troubled fidgeting of the bird in the trees above them, he comes to an abrupt halt so close he could touch her easily if he chose.
Then, he shrugs, an impish smile beginning to tug at the edges of his lips. “It wasn’t that loud.” The tone of his voice brooks no argument, released with the authority of one far more advanced in years than he. He had always been able to pretend with the best of them. After a moment, he slyly adds, “Maybe you just weren’t paying attention.”
His movement had made the armor punching through his shoulders and hips bleed anew, but he ignores it, his gaze never leaving the girl before him. Tilting his head slightly, he eyes her with a mix of glee and burgeoning machinations, already delighted by the potential of what they might do together.
"Me!" Galadriel cries back on instinct, brow furrowing with the might of an outraged girl that too often gets her way. She snorts, lifting her head and molten eyes to stare up defiantly at the stranger. It's then that she remembers the instant push and pull between them, the shared gift. She huffs, clamping her lips together in a slightly-less furious frown - only to have that rage be reignited when Reave begins a circle that Rel perceives as deeply condescending.
A roll of her eyes and a contemptuous slap of her tail is the only response Rel gives Reave when he stops. She offers him that same fearless look, gaze blazing a ferocity and a knowing that traces back to their brief time as children. The smirk on his face is so deeply infuriating that the force of keeping her snark inside herself sends a shiver across her body. Rel has never answered well to authority, and today she'll discover that youthful, presumptuous authority makes her skin writhe with anger and discomfort.
Galadriel doesn't hear the rest of what Reave says because her eyes are wandering to the nice curve and trickle of bone, muscle, and blood. It's quite a combination, crimson mingling with white and clay-red. The ivory bone gleams pure at the tips but drips darkly at the scrambled edges of growth and flesh.
"What's that like?" Rel breathes out, nearly reaching forward to brush her nose against one of the jutting bones. Already she's forgotten her rage, lost in the midst of shared experiences and new discoveries.
She is exactly as he remembers, radiating a furious energy that writes stories in every line of her rainbow-bright skin. As children, he had risen to match her with a wildness that had felt both wonderful and impossible at the same time. Now, though she has grown to better contain it, he can still feel the way it emanates almost intoxicatingly.
But Reave had grown too. And as a boy who had never been told no, never suffered at the hands of world who wished to beat him down (or rather, had faced it with a ferocity that refused to yield), and who had been handed power at such a tender age, he’d had little chance to become something more humble. While she had grown into her rage, he had grown to harness his and use it as a weapon.
It only makes sense that they would now clash, two opposing forces who had found different ways to unleash their own chaos.
Reave stands taller in the face of her resistance, his own skin prickling with the anticipation of the building force he can see rising around. But as are so many things, this too seems to be fleeting. Instead her attention catches on the flesh and bone warring on his lanky frame, abruptly fascinated by the carnage it leaves in its wake. Tipping his bone-masked head in curiosity, he eyes her openly as the ghost of an amused grin flirts with the corners of his lips.
He doesn’t reply immediately, instead trying to find the words to describe it to someone who would never truly know. Finally, almost thoughtfully, he replies, “Painful.” He pauses, then adds, “Like the fury you can’t quite keep shoved inside.”
Galadriel barely remembers what she ate for breakfast, much less the delicate ins and outs of her interactions with Reave when they were children. If she were to know how easily he remembers, how easily he wields his power, she might grow ever slightly demure. Quiet but still frowning, allowing him to have a bit of respect simply because in her eyes, he is one of the only individuals to ever earn it. Alas, Rel does not know how he remembers. Perhaps one day Reave will share with her his version of their mingling, but for now, she merely scowls.
The blood trickles in ways that Rel finds fascinating. She wonders how her blood might leak, terribly unsatisfied with the scrapes and bumps she gave herself as a child. This was much more curious, more satisfying, this bone that managed to protect and destroy the very same being. The girl purses her lips and cocks her head, fluttering lashes rapidly as she tries to imagine what protruding bone might feel like on her torn skin.
Painful.
Hm, Rel pulls back, tucking her chin to her chest. Those deviant amethyst eyes peer up at Reave, flashing irritation that she has to look up at him at all (how demeaning). She breathes out slowly, considering the slightest inkling of admiration she feels for him - but mostly considering how she finds him terribly handsome in that bone mask.
The smooth roll of Reave's voice pulls Galadriel from such a violent revelation. She takes a single uncertain step back, her ever-frowning face now slightly exposing confusion (but still furrowing, always furrowing).
"I am always mad," she states matter-of-factly. "Are you not?"
It is his blessing and his curse to remember. To see the knotted and tangled lines of the past lain out so clearly before him. To find the many ways in which they fray into the future, creating possibility upon possibility for what might come to pass. The strange ability that had begun in his grandmother had grown, found new corners to unleash, new information to reveal as it surged through him. And he can see how in the future, it might yet be so much more.
A blessing and a curse.
They are so very similar in so many ways however, though the both of them would undoubtedly refuse to acknowledge it. But they each sit housed so precariously in their own skin, as though at any moment the wildness might tear through and free itself. If only they let down their guard long enough.
He can almost feel her gaze on his skin, drifting alongside the slow trickle of blood. Pressing against the ragged edges of bone and flesh. Would it disappoint her to know the rawness would not last? That one day his body (and the bones along with it) would have grown to it’s very peak of health and mortality and would cease to age?
When she replies, her brow furrowed in confusion now rather than anger, Reave cannot help the laugh she startles from his lips. “You wear your rage like armor,” he replies easily, the rich tones of his voice now redolent with humor. “Like my bones.” He reaches forward then, thoughtlessly touching her furrowed brow. He is so used to touch it does not occur to him he shouldn’t. “Except your mask is the anger here on your brow.”
When he withdraws to peer at her, his blue eyes are gleaming with a devilish light. “I am many things,” he continues, finally answering her question. “Anger is only one of them.”
Galadriel always feels as if she, or something, is tearing out of her skin. As if her rage is a child and she might give in and die to some bloody birth. And standing here so furiously before Reave, it's not her anger that is scratching viciously at her skin, no. It's not anger, nor sadness, nor some bratty instinct. And yet it has claws just as razor-sharp, teeth just as big, a mind just as quick. Rel shifts uncomfortably with the force of it, chin tilted up in what she hopes is indignation (but is really some flirtatious lilt, a showing of her neck, a tease of how her jugular pulses quickly with her heartbeat). She doesn't know what it means to want something, not like this, but when the thought of pressing her mouth to Reave's exposed bone arrives with serious intrusiveness, Rel can't be rid of it.
And she lives in denial of how she likes the way it feels: crawling up her throat, bursting in her chest, throbbing in her joints.
It's when Reave touches her that the creature finally breaks through.
The attraction starts softly, like a chick from an egg. First a beak, then a single eye, then a claw through a separate hole. Rel feels the numbing, calming sensation flood every artery, every vein, every capillary. Her muscles loosen, her jaw slacks, her eyelids grow heavy. He knows her so well because of their shared power, their crossed paths; and because Galadriel rarely meets someone that so easily matches her strength.
"Perhaps one day I can turn this rage into true armor," she murmurs, tilting her head up again, blinking once, then twice, and offering the ghost of a smile. She feels her pride creep away and curl up, like a docile, napping kitten. "I am many things, too, though too often I am only rage." Rel pauses, looks away, gulps. She isn't sure if she is ready to admit anything else.
"What else are you?" the question just above a whisper, so very secretive, like Galadriel knows she shouldn't be prying. She reaches out, now, spurred on by the lack of sensation in her skin. Reave's bone is smooth on her lips, cool. Rel doesn't want to pull away.
He can feel the stir of her emotions on the breath of space around her, brief, bright flashes of now. There is nothing from before, because she has no other memories tied to what rises in her. It’s a curious thing to watch, knowing a new memory will be made from this. Knowing that memory has yet to be written, that he could help write it. It brings with it a queer sort of satisfaction.
As though his touch had been the key to unlocking that which hid deeper, her smile breaks through. Such a rare thing to behold, and Reave cannot help but be pleased that it is he who had caused it. Watching her now, he can see the lines of her future coalescing, becoming fewer and fewer, colliding with his. Wrapping around one another in a carnal imitation of what the future could hold for them.
And in the face of such a foretelling, a curl of wicked heat begins to unfurl in his belly. He gazes at her in a new light, curious now that she might feel that same prickling across her skin.
He smiles back at her, blue eyes darkening until his expression becomes decidedly devilish. “I don’t think there is any ‘perhaps’ about it,” he replies, though he does not explain further. Nor does he press. She is not ready to admit to more, and he is not ready to press for it. There is too much wild youth in the both of them still. Too much they have yet to discover before they are ready for such admissions.
When she presses closer, her lips find the edges of glowing bone. Reave does not move, though his limbs grow hot and restless. His bright gaze grows curiously shadowed as it falls to her, following the line of her neck and shoulder. The grin on his mouth falters, as though he couldn’t quite remember to keep it up. He leans closer, her question hanging in the air between them. Reave does not answer it immediately, instead bringing his mouth to within a hair’s breadth of the smooth arch of her crest, breath hot and patient against her skin.
“Do you really want to know?” he breathes, his voice suddenly redolent with sin even as the incorrigible gleam returns to his eye. “It might… surprise you.”
Oh, she wants to know. She wants to know so terribly that her chest shivers with the might of it.
Galadriel prays that whatever Reave has to show her does surprise her, for without that shock, she might grow bored. (Heaven forbid a mind such as hers grows bored - chaos will most certainly ensue.) She is admittedly enraptured, both by his belief in her ferocity and future and by the mischievous glow in his eyes. Yes, they seem to be thinking the same thing: together, they could be so deliciously wicked and powerful.
A slow breath of air leaves Rel's mouth as she stretches upward toward Reave's ear, following some deeply ingrained instinct she didn't even know existed. "I think I'll like whatever it is you'll surprise me with," she whispers, then pulls away sharply, charming grin morphing her face into something lovely.
"I can surprise you, too," she states simply, pale tail flicking back and forth as if to emphasize her statement. Her eyelids flutter and cheeks wrinkle as the grin on her face grows.
As the memory of their first encounter begins to grow clearer, Rel calls forth the little version of Reave that lives in her mind. He's not a perfect replica, as her memory is far from perfect, but he's pretty damn close. The girl looks down on the boy, grin lowering to a small smile.
"Where were we? Do you remember?" shes asks, then after a beat moves her gaze back to Reave. "You made me feel understood, even then, as a child."
