It's a long way down to the bottom of the river // Residents

[Sabra]

I am a tapestry of scar tissue, pale skin woven together with threads of lightning and gemstone chips. Beautiful, in the way that broken things are when they haven't been put back together in quite the right way. Missing pieces filled in with improvised materials and make-do ideas. Some of them are just empty to stay, but those holes aren't on the exterior. 

They're in my mind, mostly. One in my heart, and that one has been raw and aching for many years now. It's gotten to the point where I'm sure I wouldn't know what to do if it did heal. What would be left of me? So I'm buried in my moth-eaten conscious, wrapped in a tattered blanket of mistakes and outright damnation. I don't cry for what once was anymore. 

Instead I stare at the present, and pry at the edges of my reality with unforgiving claws. Life has never gone my way. For a mare with simple enough desires, they never seemed to fall quite inside my reach. I'm done asking, now I think I'm ready for taking. For molding the world into one that will be what I want it to be. 

The certainty of this runs cold as winter in my veins. Cold as the wind that rattles the trees and stirs the leaves at my feet. I have never liked the cold, but I am beginning to think of it as more of an ally than an enemy. Allies are important to have. Important enough that I think it may be time to actively seek them out. It's not as if I have anything better to do at the moment. 

So I start small, close to home. Inside my house, in fact. Looking for those dark faces that I have glimpsed but have no names for, or those I do. It's about time we all started earning our keep. I call them, and I count them as they come. 

@dark @Maugrim@"Narcisus"@Balto@"Jackel" @Manikin@"Nexu"@draco and any other monster friends! 

This is an activity check + plot thread. Please respond IC. If you have multiple characters only one post needed per player, just let me know in a note what your other character(s) are doing!

[Manikin]

She is not doing much when Sabra comes for her like a thunderstorm, making her pause in preening the bright chestnut red of her feathers, their edges gleaming like fire in the flickering light and her amber eyes find the mare's strange blue gaze in silence. The monstergirl tips her head to one side, then to the other, measuring, tongue pressed against the rough roof of her open beak. There's a taste like chaos in the air.

Manikin is not a biddable creature, but Sabra's electric disarray feeds her curiosity and some nameless other thing that she does not bother to brood too deeply on. Her first milk tasted of lightning and restlessness and fury, and there is carved inside of her space for just such a creature as the candy-colored spear-bearer. Still, the hippogryph is not eager to follow orders, and so she stays in her place until the mystery of it becomes too great a draw, and then, at last, she stands, and she shakes, and she traces the sharp chlorine scent to where the others are slowly gathering, little clouds coming together ahead of the storm.

Image by ratty

[Balto]

i’ve been both a saint & a viper

The creature wallows in the lake, chest-deep in the stagnant, algae-filled water. He is all bones and stretched-thin black skin made rusted by the dried blood that clings to each terrible dip in his body. He drags his mouth over the surface of the near-black water, tasting it on his tongue but finding it bitter and unsatisfying, unable to swallow. 

The bite of winter does nothing except create a fog from his paper-thin nostril with each shuddering exhale, curling around his sunken face like smoke. It kisses the underside of his throat, where the bright red ‘V’ grips him, as he lifts his large head upwards. His bloody antlers are like twisted spires from his forehead, thin and needle-sharp.

He sighs and it is low and rattling, pulling himself from the waters in the way a too-thin being would do - slowly and carefully, as if his skin would rupture from the pressure of his bones at any moment. There is no call for him on the low whistling of the wind or in the rustling of the ever-fire trees, but he is summoned anyway - he can feel her.

Scents draw him closer, a predator in the way he keeps the shadows, nearly skittish as he trapezes through boulders and branches. He has already eaten but even still, their smell is delectable and intoxicating, bringing him from the shadows of the trees with blood still clinging to his obsidian coat. He positions himself closer to Sabra, already finding his mouth moistening at the thought of her, and grinds his teeth together in an effort to keep the fangs beneath the darkness of his lips.

He says nothing (he has never said much and now, since his transformation, it is much less so), but there is a curious way that his feral eyes turn to the other creature that had also joined them.

Balto

@Sabra

Maugrim is also here but he is just haunting the place, maybe drowning a few, depends on his mood.