"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
Once, Israfel had to convince herself to leave this forest - it had taken so long to get up the courage and finally she had been drawn out with the help of a friend. Someone who had grown to mean quite a lot to her because of it.
And now she stands before the trees and is trying to convince herself to go back in. Not forever, she just wants to know - wants to confirm the growing thought that she wants to be in Nerine. Where the moors rarely offer enough shadows that she turns invisible and she can remain her golden self, where she isn’t simply a ghost waiting for her life to begin like the filly that had grown accustomed to the shadows that sheltered her.
The hesitation that this young mare feels when she stands before her former home, unwilling to go inside of it, should be enough of a sign - shouldn’t it? She finds her eyes drifting to the nearby water, where they had confirmed she didn’t camouflage with everything - just shadows. And her mind drifts back to the path that would take her back to the oceanside land where she could stay in the open for the rest of her days.
Israfel gives the autumn-coloured trees a small smile as she takes a step backwards, away from them and the anonymity that disappearing into them would give her. She’s grown to like the way the sunlight catches on her metallic coat, as it does now, and she does not want to give it up.
He never knew someone could ever feel this hungry. It seems that the more he devoured, the deeper this need grows. Bible’s memories had only left him wild with a need for so much more. Of course, Rosebay had kissed his brow and tried to ease his nerves with promises of more dark games, and he’d smiled. But now he slips from her side in the dead of night. Crowns knows killing his lover a few times will do little to salve this aching. He has to feast.
He’s been watching Israfel grow and spoken not a single word to her. Their memories tasted more pure and refined without any of his influence on them, he found. He stretches a leg forward and it grows, thickening and snapping as scales erupt from his skin. A sharp exhale leaves his lips in a cloud of steaming breath. Another step and the rest of his body follows suit, contorting and changing into something long and serpentine. His body winds between the trees until he finds her.
There, just at the edge of the forest, she stands golden and beautiful, just like their matriarch.
“Israfel,” he breathes.
Innumerous orbs of blue fire hang in the air around him as his glowing eyes lock on her. Crowns reaches out and traces her cheek tenderly with a single claw. There is something like love for her there in the haze of hunger that envelopes him. After all, they are family. Shouldn’t he adore her in some capacity?
“I need your memories. Give them to me,” he commands, smiling as sweetly as he can manage.
Israfel’s second step away from the trees is when she hears her name, and her golden eyes widen at the creature that emerges from the forest. She had spent the better part of two years beneath those limbs and had never seen anything like this.
She had certainly never met anything like this, so how could it know who she was? She was sure that only two others in the whole of Beqanna knew she existed - her mother and Reave.
A shiver runs through her when that claw traces her cheek and she stands there, unsure of what to do. She is not a fighter, not a warrior, but maybe if she can run into the forest she’ll disappear. She can run like a deer down familiar paths and hide among the shadows she once knew so well. If only she can get her legs to unstick from where they are locked.
Golden Israfel can feel her panic rising, the same feeling she had felt when she had disintegrated the bird in Nerine, but she tries to fight it. She doesn’t know that this serpentine creature is a threat. Maybe he just wants her to tell him a story? Those are all memories are, anyway. Hers aren't particularly interesting, but she could tell them anyway.
She clings to that thought as she takes a step away - and as feeble of a hope as it is it keeps the panic down for now. They are not far from the trees and she is so sure she’ll be safe if she can just get to them (just temporarily she tells herself as her gaze slides between the trees she believes will save her and this stranger that seems to know who she is).
“What memory would you like to hear first?” Israfel tries for casual, both in the question and the next step she takes, but she has begun to shake and she is suddenly unsure if she tries to run if she'll even manage it.
09-08-2021, 08:33 PM (This post was last modified: 09-08-2021, 08:33 PM by crowns.)
CrownS
His eyes bore into her, unblinking. They are glazed over with wild, ravenous hunger that gnaws clean through his spine from the pit of his stomach. The fear in her face is obvious but when she takes a step back, he takes a hulking one forward. His breath is spilling over her now. Crowns’ jaws hover before her face. With one bite, he estimates he could sever her head clean from her neck with little thrashing.
But he wants to put her back together in the end.
He only needs a little fragment of her to be happy.
So, gently, he reaches out and hooks a claw of his magic into her. He teases and tugs with a feathery touch at her heartstrings to see if she comes stumbling to his chest. “Begin at the beginning,” he commands, each syllable rumbling from deep in his ribs. Then he puts on his best smile despite the rows and rows of pointed teeth that make up the expression.
By now, his body is slowly coiling around her in the shadows of the trees. The immeasurable length of him closes in, closer and closer, until his scaled tail rests just beneath his chin. But he leaves her space to move around and even cower from him if she pleases - he is not interested in crushing the life from her beautiful eyes.
The unblinking gaze of this creature is difficult to look away from. Her fear pulses through her, causing her heart to race and her breathing to increase. Though she has not been a stranger to fear, what rises up when his breath spills over her after he closes the space between them again tastes different than the fear that kept her in this forest for so long.
Israfel feels the tug on her heart and she stumbles forward into him before scrambling backwards. He answers her question but she is distracted by the smile and again she wishes to run. To disappear into the forest where eyes cannot find her.
Except, once she is there - once they are there - she has no doubt he can still see her somehow as she takes another step away as though not feeling his breath anymore will enable hers to come easier.
Her golden skin has faded away but the way his attention is on her tells even this foolish mare that she might as well be glowing. Her fragile hope splinters inside of her and a nearby rock disintegrates with a popping noise and then a shrub follows, powdering the ground with green and grey dust.
Whatever memories she might have shared rise up in her throat and lodge there. She cannot get a single word out but she backs up away from his head only for the back of her leg to collide with the length of his body. A shudder runs through her body and some of the leaves by her hooves disintegrate, causing her to jump in her invisible skin and look down, away from the actual threat.
