[open] Shadows for Skin [ANY]

[Cheri]

There is nothing and almost no one left from the Southern Kingdoms. Those who remained dispersed, and those who did not certainly perished.

And where was she, the self-styled “Queen” of the Southern Court? The young magician, just finding herself and her powers - ones that could have, should have saved her territory? What had become of her in the in between, after she’d asked the manticore to bed her and keep her den warm? After she’d finally met and confronted Gale, the accursed one?

After the coronation and calamity (having lived through an apparent apocalypse), she met with Obscene by the river and together the two folded themselves between time and space.

They left, essentially. Disappeared into an alternate dimension she’d been to once and knew she’d return to again, with him as her lover and King. In that timeline Loess never fell or disappeared but grew stronger, encompassing the North and seeing her Uncle become Beqanna’s first Emperor. The dream became reality, she and Ob became the lovers they were destined to be, and all was well.

Except for the fact that it was not her world, and the dream wasn’t her reality at all.

And so her powers eventually drained themselves, forcing Cheri to return with Obscene - back to the Beqanna they’d left behind, where she lost him along the cosmic path.

Separated and weak, the female pegasus dragged herself to an obscured covey in the ruinous remains and there she slept, until she was fully sated. Months passed; the seasons changed and she woke again, blinking her weak eyes against a bright, midday sun to find herself overtaken by clinging plants whose roots were settling into the flesh of her dull pelt. She could not swallow or talk. Her muscles had atrophied from disuse, and her body was naught but skin and bone.

Yet her power had been replenished, enough that she could feel the vines flickering lifeforce thrumming in her veins.

An exchange, perhaps? She thought, using the plants to source more energy and flood her body with nutrients again. For now, the sustenance would do. Cheri resolved to stay put and stay hidden, knowing that she was still weak and uncertain of what might be waiting for her out in the wilds, but just as she was determined to wait out a few more days in solitude a heavy cloud floated across the sun, obscuring its golden warmth. The world grew dim, and from her secret location there came a pulsing glow of light - just bright enough that any curious wanderer might pause to investigate.

Ah, yes. Backstory.

[Obscene]

I can see through you, see your true colors
Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me

What had he wanted in the beginning?

To rise above all that had laughed, scorned, and mocked him? To prove to a long forgotten father that he had been worth the effort of staying? To the mother that had abandoned him (that had died for him) that he had been worth living for all those years ago? To place that sickness in his heart into each and every being that he made contact with until they all felt exactly as he did?

He doesn’t know anymore.
He hasn’t known for a long time.

There had been splashes of crimson and stained jaguar spots. A blue magician that was dangerous and clever. Slick black scales and the taste of death on its forked tongue. A place of wildflowers and beauty that no painting could ever give justice to. There had been a mare that had shown him the freedom in falling from cliffs, a fiery woman that had given him a taste of ambition, and a heavy mantle that settled on his shoulders when one called him Father, a weight that was heavier than any crown that ever haphazardly rested on his forehead.

There had been a girl with jade eyes and a tiara of crystals.

What had he wanted in the beginning?

Whatever it had been… That had hardened his heart in the first place to stone until it turned to flame, that had turned him from a lazy incapacitated arse into whatever he was now. Whatever it had been… It didn’t matter anymore.

He had asked her to come and she had. By the river with Light illuminating them both in the dimness. He had showed her the Wisps where he had once found Prayers for the simple reason that she might find them enjoyable. He did not talk of his mother or of Gale. He did not speak of their lands or what was to come. He simply looked at her and she looked at him and then suddenly…

Suddenly Beqanna was gone and it was simply them.

But it was never right, this timeline. He could feel the magic pressing in, always this sense of wrongness. He could never put his finger on it. Memories of a past life were forgotten. There was no snake writhing in his belly, there was no heartache of lost parents or memories of children left behind. All he knew was of Cheri and the life they had together. The world they ruled, side by side. And yet… Something scratched at his brain, an itch he couldn’t reach. It started to show in other ways. Enough that the crystal magician who he spent every waking moment with noticed too.

Was it her powers that released them, exhausted and spent, back into Beqanna or Cheri herself?

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t remember.

A headache is forming between his brilliant crimson eyes as they open against weak sunlight. He’s not sure where he is or how he had gotten here. It looked nothing like the Pampas or the River where he had spent last night with Cheri, showing her the Wisps. There is no sign of Light or of anyone else. It takes him a moment as the fogginess continues to cling to his mind and he slowly rises to his hooves. Where the hell was he indeed?

Looking no different (being Fae has it’s advantages after all) then he ever has, the gold and black stallion rises unceremoniously from where he was curled beneath rough rock. Perhaps he had gone too hard on the flowers again although he hadn’t partaken in them in some time. Hadn’t he? Eyes hardening with confusion, he takes in the formations of ruin and wonders what part of Beqanna he had stumbled into. He had never heard of this part before. Strange but this world had always been strange. It hits him then, the flood of what he had probably inhaled to forget. The loss of his mother, the enjoyment of tasting Gale’s blood on his serpent tongue, that overwhelming hunger that curls around his insides. He is silent, as silent as this strange area he had stumbled into, and then he sets out to go home.

Moving uncertainly, feeling off balance and still light headed, he slowly picks his way through the stones. It is only because of the clouds moving across the sky that he catches the weak golden glow and finds a familiar face. An old familiar sneer, one perhaps she had not seen in a long time, finds its way to his lips as he stares down at where she lays. A brow lifts, wondering how she could look so fragile when she had seemed so strong last night. By the River. Where they must have parted ways and then he had somehow annihilated himself to oblivion. Apparently she must have too.

“You look like shit Cheri. Whatever would your loyal subjects think?”

obscene

[Aela]

YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS

Aela has known what she has wanted from the very beginning. From a beginning that was nursed from her milk-mother, from a beginning that had been crafted along by a Fate named Heartfire (because it had Heartfire who had taken her descendant from Aletta, who might have delivered to another beginning, and brought her instead to Taiga where a different future awaited her). Even from her earliest memories when she had been tucked away against the mist and hidden amongst the titan trees, the palomino had known that she was destined for more.

She is not meant for shadow or obscurity.
She never has been; even the drowning of the Pampas, the possible loss of her only child, and the disappearance of Skandar have not dimmed that desire to be brighter than some dismal existence. The slender mare no longer has the convenience of a title or the protection of a herdland, but her cunning tells her to bide the quiet and wait. Something would come. It always did. Beqanna was inevitable to change as any other facet of living.

There was no alternate reality for Aela.

There was this place. This strange land with its odd markings and odd silence. It was the place that had risen where the South had fallen and the striped woman had lost count how many times she had come here now. She kept coming again and again, determined to find something that might provide some insight as to what she might do next.

Perhaps she might overthrow her brother, and become leader of the North to gall him?
Should she seek out Reave, and see what kind of chaos they might create together?
(And then there was the stray thought in her mind that perhaps she should go to the Mountain and seek out Carnage. Perhaps the path ahead that she means to take involves the Gods.)

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

The uncertainty of it all nearly drives her from the Ruins and back to the Meadow where she has recently taken up residence in the warmer months. It irritates her, and her golden skin twitches against the phantom touch of the wind as it passes her by. It hardly moves her flaxen mane, but something else causes it to move  slightly and Aela glances from beneath the fine silk of her pale mane to see a radiating light ahead. She might use her magic to feel; to learn what the light was but the shine of something else catches her blue eyes. His dark hide is nearly unchanged since she saw him last, and the sneer on his lips is far more familiar. It emboldens her and the slender creature draws forward, not bothering to hide the flash of her wildfire smile.

"Where have you left your manners, Obscene?" Aela chides him lightly, coming to stop not far from the pair, looking at the black-and-gold stallion first before turning to Cheri. "She certainly looks better than most of the Southerners I've encountered," the former Seneschal goes on to say. The edges of her lips lift just a little more, "what was left of them, anyway."

@Cheri, you mentioned backstory and then @Obscene showed up so im blaming you both for this

[Cheri]

One thing she knows is that her poor heart lurches at the scent of him - Obscene - on the wind. It catches the breeze and filters in through a deeply-drawn breath, mingling over Cheri’s tongue in a way that causes the little hairs covering her nose to quiver and twitch in excitement. She frowned, angry at herself. It was upsetting that just the smell of him brought out a little shiver, so she did her best to remain calm and quiet as the heavy thud of his hooves grew closer.

As ever, his tone was both cutting and intriguingly cool.

The jade-eyed mare awoke fully, glaring out at him underneath the shade of a leaning half-broken column, and expelled a dry gust of air. She thought better than to talk, saving what little energy she had so that her body could leech what it needed from the earth. He can’t feel it, she thought, or perhaps he doesn’t remember?

Hell, she didn’t blame him. The fragments of what she knows are more like fantasies anyways. Where and when could be yesterday or a hundred years from now; it was all relative, and they might not know for some time yet.

Lucky for them both, then, that Aela appeared.

“So,” The brittle horse finally spoke, disturbing the vines covering her body, “Loess is gone, then?”

She needed to hear it. To feel was not enough, not this time. And Aela would be the fate’s choice when it came to delivering such news, anyways. Cheri had always thought of the golden mare as a harbinger of uncertain circumstances. It seemed only right that she would appear now, of all times, to confirm the itching suspicion that something was very, very wrong.

The shadowy copse overgrown with climbing plants began turning brown, withering away as the seconds ticked by. Heedless of conversation or company, the leaves dropped one-by-one, revealing a rib-thin pegasus mare. Cheri breathed deeply; her first instinct was to break free of the dry twigs so she did, snapping them apart and shedding them like snakeskin.

Thoughts raced through her mind: Loess overtaken, turned into something foul and evil. Loess razed to ash, covered by the scattered remains of her people. Loess?

It was a question.
Her eyes flashed toward the Seneschal, then back to Obscene.

@Obscene

[Obscene]

I can see through you, see your true colors
Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me

There has been a sense of offness, in a dream perhaps? It intensifies now as he takes a closer look at Cheri. In the shade of the column, he thought she had looked strangely frail. The shadows had been more deceiving then he had realized as a musty gust of breath escapes her. As a sliver of her face catches in the dim light, this piece of her not covered in strange foliage, he finds himself releasing a surprised huff of air himself. Skeletal, decrepit, like a husk.

There is a piercing whine ringing in his ears as he’s about to step closer towards her but it is Aela's appearance that stops him. She, at least, looks normal and her singsong voice momentarily distracts him from his rising unease and anger. Until she adds to it with her cryptic words. What on earth is she talking about? There is a pause, a moment, and then the shade of Cheri speaks of Loess being gone as the withered remains of plants fall away and reveals the shadow of the mare he had only seen yesterday. Nothing registers across his face as the words start to settle. As he looks at this part of Beqanna that shouldn’t exist. As he realizes that Aela’s scent is no longer that of wildflowers and Skandar. That Cheri seems unsurprised despite looking at deaths door.

He had missed something. And the anger that burns inside of him should be enough to raise the snake whose hunger is pounding at his insides but for some reason… For some reason is too weak to rise and control him. Cheri’s eyes are on him but his are not on hers. It is Aela who receives his blazing stare, finely tipped ears laid back against his glittering skull, as he finally speaks. Cold and collected as always. A single question as he pulls on the bond that he shares with Light, a panicked dread weaving between the heat of his growing rage. “Where is my son Aela?”

Apparently the South had been taken, Cheri overthrown (probably by Gale after she had interfered in their fight), his own crown probably given to another. But none of it matter, not even if the Pampas was burned to the ground or the entirety of Beqanna laid under the sea, nothing mattered but the son that had been safely asleep next to his mother amongst the wildflowers he had left behind last night. That he was safe and whole.

obscene

@Aela @Cheri
Sorry not sorry Star 

[Aela]

There is very little Aela misses. She is always watching for smaller, minute details that could be easily overlooked. They can be indications of something: a horse’s health, a glance might reveal relationships otherwise hidden, and even memories can be indicative of mental state. These are all pieces that the Empath needs to put a larger picture together, because what use does weakness serve her?

Aela didn’t need her magic or any kind of supernatural power to tell her that wherever Cheri had gone had obviously taken a toll on her. The Pegasus mare laid on the ground, covered by twigs and leaves but Aela could see that her dark coat was far duller than her brawny companion and she far too thin. Where Obscene looked as he always had – well-muscled, broad-shouldered with a glossy hide – Cheri looked as if she had suffered  Pampas.”a harrowing ordeal while Obscene looked as if he still spent his days idling among the Pampas flowers.

She is still trying to understand what to make of the former Queen – a woman (though Aela would never admit it aloud) who had become a formidable rival over the years – when the gold-and-black stallion begins making demands of her, wanting to know what had happened to Obsidio, his son. And not a thought for Fyr, some part of her angers. 

Glancing sharply away and up to the towering brute to find his red eyes burnings and fine-tipped ears pinned to his skull, Aela merely lifted her pale chin. Her white nostrils flared, and when the striped palomino finally locked her blue eyes on him, she felt the rush of emotions churning beneath his cold façade – a churning tide that went from rage to dread (the Empath picked at that particular emotion, attempting to prolong it a moment longer so that Obscene might remember who he was addressing).

Cheri asks after an empire, Obscene worried for a child, and Aela fought the urge to scowl at them both.

Where had they been when the catastrophe happened?

”Gone,” she says simply, finally looking back to Cheri. ”Most likely drowned with Loess, Sylva, and the Pampas.”

@Cheri @Obscene phone post so please forgive the typos

[Cheri]

Where had they been? Not such a simple question; there certainly wasn’t a direct answer, either. Cheri tried her best to align the memories in a way that made sense, while she mostly paid attention to Obscene and Aela’s interaction. Did it begin at the River, she frowned, a natural reaction to Ob’s worry, or long before that - in Taiga?

Cheri scowled, trying her best to think about what she’d been feeling in those two separate moments. What had she wanted, more than anything in the world?

I know what I’ve done, her ears flicked back. Aela’s unusual tact hadn’t changed one bit. It was actually worse since their last … engagement. However, there was an ironic comfort in hearing the sharp, familiar tone of her voice. I’m just not sure how it happened, Cheri clenched her teeth, drifting in-and-out of the conversation.

Deciding she would contemplate the mystery later, the mare uncurled her bony forelegs and pressed them firmly into the earth, attempting to push herself unceremoniously out of the dirt.

“Will you take us there?” She asked the golden mare, leveling her eyes at the empath. Steadying herself, Cheri shook off any remaining debris.

Unthinkingly, she’d looped Obscene into the trip without asking. It felt only natural that he should come, since they’d spent nearly every waking hou-

That’s right, Cheri reminded herself with a soft grimace. They weren’t in the fantasy anymore. It struck the dark pegasus that she no longer had the freedom to touch him as she pleased, whenever she pleased. One look at his face had her chest twisting in pain; how cruel, because that was exactly what she longed for in this moment: his comfort, and to comfort him in return.

@Obscene

[Obscene]

I can see through you, see your true colors
Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me

"Gone.”

A single word that seems to echo for eternity. There is a strange numbness, a sense of being outside of himself, that he has never felt before. It is a strange sensation, entirely different then the way he usual dealt with these kinds of situations when he would just retreat further and further within himself. When he would pull that hardened shield around himself as if it was a weighted blanket. He had never thought what would happen if he just vanished into himself completely. Did it feel like this?

Aela doesn’t need to show him. He can see it. The faeries and Gods of this land were known to be drastic, to make a statement. They were known to be cruel just as much as they could be kind. He remembers the stories he had heard as a child. When the Fae of the Mountain had stripped magic as a punishment. When lands had been denied to the people before. So what punishment was this for, he wonders. What offense had they taken this time?

He thinks of his daughters grave beneath a dark sea. Where his son now probably joined her. And he simply gazes at them both as the numbness spreads. He should have been there. To save him. To save them all. And instead… He had been with Cheri. Showing her pretty lights floating across the rivers surface.

Part of him wants to break the brittle mare before him into pieces, the same part that wants to be free of this hollowness and let the serpent claim him once and for all and break the world apart until its all under the sea. That part of him that has fought for so long to protect himself and to hurt whoever needed to be hurt before they could get to him first. That part wanted to rip and break and destroy until there is nothing left. The numbness is stronger and it swoops in and settles in his bones, stretches across his midnight skin, buries itself between the golden ribbons of his mane until that is all he is.

Numb. Hollow.

He is barely listening when Cheri asks for Aela to show them. Show them what? Does it matter? He is merely silent, wearing a mask but its not the familiar one of indifference. It is simply… Blankness. There is no registering what is behind that blazing gaze. No tension to his jaw. There is simply… Nothing. Just the cool hard stone of nothingness.

It is some sort of muscle memory that finally brings him towards Cheri. There is nothing in his touch when his muzzle brushes against her neck and he releases the golden glow of healing. He doesn’t catch her gaze, staring at the dull skin of her neck as if he sees right through it. And whenever she has had enough, he simply turns that same gaze towards Aela. As if in a fog, he can feel himself giving a single nod but doesn’t know how or why he’s done such an action.

And through it all… Light never comes. 

obscene

@Aela @Cheri

[Aela]

For a brief instant, the world returned as Aela had once known it. There was Obscene with his ember-hued eyes boring down into hers with a flash of indignation on his chiseled face. Cheri - even despite her current state - managed to flick her ears back and for a moment, there it was.

A familiar glimmer of what once was.

The earth-shaking had taken more than just the Southern Kingdom. The former Seneschal had spent nearly a year in the Pampas playing her part, bringing in new recruits (one way or another) so that there would be something brighter than the Pampas wildflowers. There could have been learning there, wild magic taught and practiced and perhaps even tamed; through that, Aela would have begun to chase a different kind of immortality.

But that was all gone, now.

She would start again. Aela knew that much. She refused to let herself under the weight of her worries for those she cared for, and instead focused on discovering what had happened to the place she had once lived. If Fyr were really gone, if something really had happened to Skandar, Aela would learn of it and there would be blood to pay.

And so that was why she had come here, again and again, even when this strange place reverberated a deep, ancient pain that afflicted even her. To find some kind of answer in the strange rock formations, or in the unusual lay of the almost barren plains. And that answer had apparently come in the shape of Obscene and Cheri.

”Alright,” Aela agrees tentatively (surprising herself, because she had never once imagined brokering a deal with her niece),  ”But I will ask something of you in return,” she continues, ”There are two horses I’m looking for.” Cheri might appear weak now, but perhaps by the time they reached the land bridge, the former Queen's health (and therefore her gifts) might be in better shape. Three horses searching would be far more beneficial than just one. "I'll take you both to the landbridge and tell you what I know of the Baltians, and in exchange, you help me find Fyr and Wherewolf."

@Cheri *road trip road trip road trip*

[Cheri]

Dark energy.

It permeated the air, fouling it. Cheri doubted it was this place, (even if there was a dark undercurrent lingering around these ancient grounds) thinking the pressure came from somewhere else. It filled her nostrils with a rancid odor, leaking from a source she couldn’t quite single out.

Obscene moved, brushing his healing across her torn and tattered body wordlessly. For an instant Cheri thought to speak; she opened her mouth, formed a word, and then let the empty promise die on her tongue. If there was anything to be found at the drowned site - a lingering scent, a magical remnant - there was no guarantee it would lead to finding his son. Cheri kept her false hope to herself, where it belonged, and accepted the Fae Prince’s help as quietly as he gave it.

Alright.

She lifted her head, having nearly forgotten Aela in the moment.

“Hmm.” Cheri murmured.

Was she really in a mood to strike a bargain with the little troublemaker? She could always wait, bide her time without the palomino’s help until she was better, then take a flight and see this “Landbridge” for herself.

But… if there were horses to be found, (Obscene’s remaining family included) then time was of the essence. Cheri may have forgotten the order or reason behind making herself and Ob disappear out of time, but she hadn’t forgotten the life she’d lived before. Her own father was still missing; she harbored a heart that wouldn’t give up hope of finding him again.

“As my cousins would say: there’s many a way to skin a wildcat.” Cheri stood at Obscene’s side, the full view of his gilded profile seen at the corner of her eye, “I’ll do what I can about Fyr and Wherewolf. You have my word.”

@Obscene