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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


    [open]  the day hell broke loose
    #1
    In her eternal solitude, only the shadows have given her comfort. They have no choice in the matter, of course; she pulls them to her without their permission, twisting them across her body and making them become extensions of herself. The slender darkness of her legs are feathered with the shadows she draws from, almost finger-like in the way they trail just behind her fetlocks as if they had meant to be there all along. Tendrils of her mane and forelock end in wisps of shadow; darkness coming alive as it swirls around her head like steady and silent vipers, wearing a silhouette of foreboding like a crown. 

    All she knows is silence; her own voice is foreign to her, save for the clicks and whistles that she associates with her monster of a mother.

    The need to hunt is instilled within her - a predator through and through, undeniable in those shining eyes and the way her tail flicks pointedly to and fro - but is unsustainable. Nature had not meant for her to exist - a twist in balance, a being meant for hunting but tortured with the inability to find satisfaction in blood and bone. She had watched her mother take down prey for them, finding that it would turn sour in her gut. In this way, she learned that she is more horse than a monster but even so, the young girl still tries to prove her willingness to become what her mother’s blood demanded her to be.  Her father had been barely a memory to her, though his brief passing through their lives was poignant and remains vivid somewhere in her brain. He had tried to drown her, she remembers, and now she makes sure to stay far from water, lest he is within it waiting for her to let down her guard.

    The forest has been her home for quite some time. She moves between shadows, disappearing and reappearing through copses of trees that are now bare and cold, illuminated by the equally dark winter’s sky. Her wings are as black as her skin, wrinkled and heavy against her lean sides. There are no feathers that cling to the bones that are folded there, merely leathery skin would seem more like claws when outstretched from her sides. They are surprisingly soft, however; supple, smooth, and warm. Her eyes are a deep juniper - dark and listless and feral - as they scan the silent stillness, a mournful howl of a wolf somewhere close by. She shivers involuntarily and shadow spills towards her as she pulls further into the forest, drawing the darkness up beside her to stand like an ominous sentinel. The shape is undefined besides the piercing yellow eyes that remain unwavering within the depths of its shadowy body, its large form seemingly malevolent as it moves with a groan deeper into the woods, lumbering in its bearlike form.

    She is alone again, but she knows she never truly is.

    maylene

    there’s a devil sitting on my shoulders
    and he’s been talking to me


    Reply
    #2
    Moths are prone to the shadowy night, flickering to the lights they can't have. It was a self destructive tendency that Nelle wanted to think she'd avoided; that she was insectile only physically. Still she found herself drawn to the darker places, where the soft green light that bloomed in her wake shone. 

    This forest was a harsher thing than the one she'd been born in. The trees were rough barked and shorter than the redwoods of the Taiga, muted and dense. There were no glittering flowers or luminous fungus tucked in the corners, no hungry monsters buried beneath her feet. 

    It was similar enough to home that she felt brave enough to venture deep inside it. Different enough that she didn't find herself looking for lost family behind every tree. That was the biggest relief she could offer herself, when her heart struggled with it. 

    Her papery thin wings weren't much good for keeping her warm. The thin veins that ran through them were barely enough to keep the dusty things from freezing, after all. As she'd grown though, the hair on her chest and legs had thickened into shaggy wool. More than warm enough to make up for the lack of feathers. Good thing too, when the darkness of the woods cancelled out any warmth the weak winter sun might have offered. 

    Like a misplaced fairy, the nimble moth girl stepped between mounds of snow that had made it through the canopy, pausing occasionally to scrape her teeth on young trees to snatch a mouthful of sappy bark. Not her favorite food, but it was enough to keep her going. 

    Grinding one such mouthful, her antenna began to quiver, half a second before the pulse of Loneliness swept through. It wasn't very well defined, like an unfinished thought pushed aside before it could be spoken. Still, it was warning enough that Nelle had passed into the range of a stranger. The mouthful of forage was swallowed thoughtfully, as she considered turning back. 

    Back where, though? It was cold and it was late, and she was a sucker for Loneliness. It smelled like damp caves and stagnant water and whoever had felt it, even just in that moment, might be interested in talking to her. 

    Or maybe not, she realized, as the shape of the one she had felt came into focus. Had she been standing there this whole time? Tail swishing with uncertainty, she let off a few notes of bell-like sound. An announcement of her own presence, as it were. The being she'd come upon seemed mostly equine. About as much as she herself was, really. But where a tail might be expected a long and jagged looking appendage stretched instead, and... It was odd, but Nelle couldn't quite focus on her enough to tell much else beyond that. Details were obscured in darkness that seemed to cling like a second skin to the little thing. 

    "Hello," she said, hoping it wasn't a mistake. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" A few steps brought her within not-yelling distance, a pleasant, if cautious, expression on her gilded face. 

    @Maylene
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    #3
    His home is in the dense forests of Taiga, a place where light cannot abide and darkness thrives beneath branches heavy with the broad, long needle-like leaves of the redwood trees. Like many of his relatives, it is this absence of light that suits them so. The shadow clan is a vast one, and so many of them have been touched by some kind of darkness or another, made to suit the night in a world that remains half-bright. A few of them are like him, made of living shadow and with golden lantern eyes, predator eyes to match the predator teeth like jagged mountain ranges in his mouth. But there are others who are more, others who are less, though there are none like the girl he has been stalking through this unfamiliar forest.

    She is so much like him. Dressed in the living dark that bends and breathes and unfurls around the gravity of her solid silhouette. For a while he had thought she might be the same as him, made of shadow and silence and the secrets better taken to the grave. But when turns and glances about he notices that her eyes are entirely mortal, entirely normal, and the color is a rather disappointing shade of dark forest green. As colors go, it is a nice one. A shade that reminds him of Taiga, even. But, just for a moment, he had already begun to imagine her with his same glowing yellow gaze. Anything else now just feels like less.

    Still, he is content to watch her, still curious of the way the dark hangs from her like fog in a way that is satisfactorily familiar. She may not be like him but she is like his shadow clan, like his deep forest home.

    He is as silent as her shadow where he follows her wanderings through the forest, content until she pauses and shadow builds beside her in some hulking shapeless mass he cannot readily identify. He pushes ahead to study at a different angle, slipping through the trees in her periphery without a single sound. It is only when that creature lumbers away and he catches a look of those yellow lantern eyes that the predator beneath his skin awakes.

    Erebos follows it, loping like a panther on feet that make no sound in the crushed leaves and dirt of the forest floor. But when he draws into its path to face the creature down, he discovers it is strangely lifeless, without spark, and continues lumbering past.

    When he returns from the deeper parts of the forest to find the winged girl again, there is another with her. This one is her opposite, all things soft and bright and sparkling where Maylene is built for the darkest parts of forgotten caves. He joins them silently, an apparition of dark prying itself from the shadows as he turns that lantern gaze on the girl with the shadows but answers the question of the second who had joined her. “You are.” He tells Saturnelle, though his accusing eyes never leave Maylene’s young face. And then, his voice still an unpleasant hiss like wind through dying leaves, “Who was that?” But he does not even gesture in the direction of the shadow creature that had just disappeared into the distant forest.

    EREBOS

    like fists unraveling, like glass unshattering,
    i want to be astonished



    @Maylene
    @Saturnelle
    Reply
    #4
    The musical notes that drift into the air in a twinkling sound is enough for Maylene’s green eyes to darken with shadow, pulling the darkness into her skin until she is invisible amongst it, hidden and shrouded from the other. The invisibility only lasts for a moment as the night becomes illuminated with the softest, gentlest green light Maylene had ever laid her eyes on. Curious, the folds of shadow pry away just enough to show the green-blazed face that matches the darkness of her keen eyes.  The light is brighter than it feels against the obsidian of her face and Maylene blinks to adjust to it. Still it is only the frame of her face that is shown to the glowing girl, nearly hesitant and unsure in the presence of a stranger.

    She is speaking to her, but Maylene merely blinks in response. Her throat tightens at the thought of speaking in the way the girl is speaking, wondering if she would be able to create any audible sound that is more than the clicks and whistles in which her mother communicated. She is not frightened, not in any way, but lacks the knowledge in how to interact with a beast that speaks, let alone one that is so very different from her - with light in all the dark parts, even in her eyes.

    Maylene’s voice comes into the night air as a misunderstood series of clicks and chitters and might even be interpreted as simply the sounds of the forest. Maybe she would attempt to speak then, but she loses focus and turns her eyes to a third. The Shadow, what should be hers to control and should remain incapable of speaking, shares its voice with her. It only takes a few blinks for her to completely unravel the darkness around herself, revealing an equally dark coat and the aggression in the flick of her sharp tail behind her haunches.

    Her ears fall into the thickness of her onyx mane, confused by such a creature. He is like her Creations but she knows immediately he is not; they do not speak nor do they disobey her. Maylene lowers her head, champing her mouth as her viridian gaze never leaves the familiar yellow of his own. She then throws her head back, a disgruntled snort leaving her flared nostrils. Something like the whistles of her Family emerge from her throat and then she pauses, taking a deep inhale before giving him a choked, gasping reply: “It is...you?” Darkness spreads from her feet and reaches out like ghostly, black fingers. She attempts to wrap her shadow into his own, curious and wondering a question she cannot speak - what was he truly, if not hers? The glowing girl is caught in the crossfire as Maylene’s darkness only knows to spread and would attempt to grasp at her as well - besides, isn’t dark always drawn to light?

    maylene

    there’s a devil sitting on my shoulders
    and he’s been talking to me



    @erebos
    @Saturnelle
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