[private] hope is a mistake.

[rend]

She wanders in search of her father, or really anyone who seems similar enough for her to get attached to. Tonight she finds herself curled between the hills of Loess and nestled in the scrub grasses. Sleep finds her easily after a long day of searching despite the constant ache in her eyes. Her cheeks, at least, have grown numb beneath layer upon layer of scar tissue formed by the acids weeping from her now empty sockets. The night is hushed and ideal beneath the full milk-white moon.

Ideal, that is, until a new pain forms along her spine. At first, it is only enough to make her stir and roll onto her other side with a huff. The quiet throbbing quickly builds so a sharp stabbing sort of agony that draws her from her rest. Rend whimpers and tries to paw at the air in the hopes of working the pain out from her back, but this only causes it to erupt over the rest of her body. She snarls and begins to thrash as barbs form down her back. Scales push themselves through her skin as two lumps form across her shoulders. Hooves become talons, her tail thickens and grows spikes to match her father’s.

When the wings split her skin open, she yowls and snaps her jaws in confusion mated with horror. Her blood paints the dirt around her as her rebirth draws to an end. Newly armored sides heave with each breath while electricity crackles over her skin.

[cressida]

For Cressida, night is the time she chooses to explore her new home.

Night is when she walks amongst the valleys and the hills—searching over each corner and every crevice to memorize the map of this place on the backside of her eyelids. It’s a long and arduous process, but one that she takes pleasure in. One that she gladly does by herself and then with her brother when he manages to yawn his way through the evening, stealing hours away from his precious day.

And it is, usually, a quiet endeavor.

That is, until, she runs into the snarling mess that is Rend.

It is the cries that reach her delicate ears first and she flinches away from it—unused to putting herself into pain’s path. But the sound is not one that she can ignore, kind as she is at the core, and though it is uncomfortable, she eventually makes her way toward the sound, although she is timid and slow.

She comes as a deer, the prey’s body feeling more at home in this moment, and her slender head peeks around a tree, blinking slowly as she tries to understand what it is she sees. “Hello?” her voice is nearly as quiet as she, silvery and thin as she calls out to the dragon girl. “Are you okay?” It feels like a strange question to ask when the girl is so clearly in distress, but she has no experience with such things and no other words come to her.

[rend]

and i scream as loud as anyone

When her eyes open, her eyes have changed. The rounded pupils of prey animals have been traded for thin slits like a crocodile. She stares for a while, her gaze locked on Cressida with sweat coating her skin still. Slowly, carefully, she rises onto her new talons and winces at the ache of resting her weight on them. This body is stronger and yet it hurts down to the marrow.

Her jaws part to speak until her tongue finds the razor edge of her new teeth. All sorts of thoughts come gurgling up into her mind as she tries so desperately to understand. She sways, catches herself, and stumbles closer to the stranger.

“I.. don’t know,” she finally whispers. Her tail sways back and forth until a bony spike catches in a tangle of dry grasses. Rend wonders what she looks like now, if there is anything left of the beautiful face her mother had given her at birth. Between the horns and the raised scales, she imagines she must be awful to look at. The thought sends a trail of her tears dripping down her cheeks, where they fall and sizzle into the dirt.

“Mostly, I am terrified.”

but when asked to make a point I tend to whisper

REND

@cressida