"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
After the long, long, looooong trek to the Chamber, during which she got quite hungry enough to try eating the ground like everybody bigger did—which was disgusting, by the way. Dirt was not appetizing, no matter what the worms thought and no matter what grown-ups thought. It was the most revolting thing Anni had ever tasted, and she had licked a dead beetle once just to see if it was crunchy or slimy or what it tasted like. Grown-ups were gross. They liked gross things. She hoped she wasn’t as disgusting when she was older. Oh, and they DID gross things too! She’d found out how she and Maul had happened, and it sounded fucking nasty. No boy was ever putting anything in HER butt, that was for sure. And she was never pooping out a baby, nope. Kind of squicked her out to think Momma’d pooped out her and Mauly. She didn’t remember being covered in poop, but Momma’d licked her clean, and the idea of licking her own poop off a baby? No thank you!
Oh god. Oh god, what if she liked that when she grew up? Ew! But poop and dirt weren’t so different, and—nope. Gross. Ew. Never. There was a point somewhere, right? Oh. Right. She’d gotten hungry enough to try eating mud, and it was revolting, and she was probably just going to have to never get bigger was all. And she had figured out that maybe, just maybe, she should go not quite as far as two whole days away next time she wandered. So when the tiny tortoiseshell girl found herself at the edge of the Jungle again, she eagerly bounded across the border and resolved to stick closer to home this time so Momma and Daddy wouldn’t be so mad.
That resolution lasted all of five seconds, ‘til she got distracted chasing a butterfly, and then stalking a frog, and then frolicking with a fox cub, ooh, and then chasing a baby deer, and then splashing in the ocean on a beach covered in bones, and it wasn’t until she realized she was hungry that she looked around and noticed she had no idea where she was. “Oops.”
Okay. So. Navigating. Uncle Nish had been teaching her, what with how this sort of thing kept happening. And she was supposed to…probably go south, right? Except what if she’d gone south leaving the Jungle? Then south would get her farther away! Umm, there had been a beach she remembered a beach. Beaches were sand, right? So she should find sand!
Anni set off in the direction that felt like it would be the most likely to have sand, based purely on the fact that it felt like a good way to go and logic dictated there would be sand there eventually, right? Probably true. Sure, why not. Uncle Nish had said—probably something important, but her belly rumbled and distracted her, so she just set off in the direction she’d picked.
She’d picked the wrong way. Or at least not the way back to the beach full of dead things, anyhow, because she didn’t see that at all. She did, however, come across people again in an awfully familiar-looking meadow. This time she was too tired to go climb people, and besides she’d gotten thrown halfway across the meadow last time she tried climbing someone who wasn’t family. Apparently with people who weren’t family, there was a good chance they were dicks. So that was good to know at least. Still, she’d had fun and found out about the Chamber and played the lying game, and it had been good. So this time probably would be too, right?
Cheered up immensely by the idea of making new friends and playing new games and learning about new places, Anni bounded up to the first stranger she came across and chirped, “Hello! I’m Annihilate! Who’re you?”
There's a song in your lung and a dream in your eye.
She had seen her briefly when leaving the jungle. She had noted her because of her odd coloring, but beyond that, she had given the filly little thought. She had bound off in another direction, intent on chasing something or other. Joscelin had headed towards the meadow. The trees and vines littering her home are not particularly conducive towards flying, and this morning she had really just wanted to feel the wind against her skin. She had leapt into the sky, taking a rather long and circuitous route to her destination. But eventually she had arrived, landing lightly on a grassy knoll.
She isn’t entirely certain why she is here. Boredom, most likely. She wonders briefly if there might be anyone interesting around. Something to relieve the tedium of the day. She isn’t paying any particular attention when the little filly stumbles across her. Golden gaze settling upon the dual-toned girl, she recognizes her immediately from the brief sighting she had caught of her before.
She is bubbly and outgoing, no doubt intent upon getting herself in trouble. Joscelin had been much the same when she had been young. She clearly recalls her first trip to the meadow. Apparently felling a rather large oak had been cause for concern (or at the very least, interest). She had garnered something of a crowd. Her brother had also tagged along without her knowing, always the protective and level-headed one. She had probably taken ten years off his life when that tree had nearly fallen on top of her.
But then life had happened. Things had changed as they always do. She had grown and made foolish decisions. And now she knows many things about life that she could never have imagined on that long ago day. Her body, once perfectly unmarked and lovely, is now covered in hundreds of cracks, carving stories into every inch of her flesh. Her skin had been quiet, mostly dark except for the occasional flicker, until the girl comes up to her. The cracks come alive then, bright sparks of light flitting along those dark fissures.
Her metallic eyes are steady, quietly assessing the filly (Annihilate, as she had announced herself). After a moment, she speaks, answering her question.
”Joscelin.” Pause. "You’re from the Jungle, aren’t you?"
Joscelin
Tiphon x Elysteria
html c insane | picture c mikanicole.deviantart.com
Always watching, almost never interacting. This is how Zeik lives his life. It’s a personal choice, more than anything, because he can’t find it in himself to be bothered with whatever it was they were doing in the world down below. He had his own agenda to live by, and it’d been serving him well thus far. On blue-grey wings he drifts quietly down to the meadow, circling for a moment before finding a suitable hiding spot. The tall grasses obliterate him from view, as if he were just a normal falcon probably descending on prey, but in the blink of an eye there’s no longer a falcon anywhere, only a hearty blue roan on his belly in the grass. He blinks, finding it hard to adjust to his ‘normal’ body, but he rises up and stretches out his back before plodding away to find something to occupy his time.
There’s murmurs everywhere. Beqanna is an ever-changing world and the amount of gossip one can pick up just from passing phrases is almost shocking. But Zeik finds these things tarrying, almost disgusting. He can’t ever seem to associate himself with the others, or their miniscule spats. In fact, he often forgets that he is a horse, and not a creature of the air. So he bypasses them all until he thinks he’s reached the end of the whispers. Out here though, there’s two rather different creatures. One is a foal, still young but bright-eyed. She’s got a fascinating coat and a loud mouth. The other is a mare - stoic, but with intricate designs all along her body that glimmer and draw the roan in. How unusual.
“Ladies.” He calls, from some feet away. No need to push himself upon them and receive some sort of backlash. His eyes, a rather usual shade of mahogany, flicker to the elder mare. He’d caught her name, but he wasn’t quite sure if he wanted her to know his. “I’ve heard some fantastic things about your Jungle. Mind if I join in?” He flashes a quick smile to the filly, and waits for a reply.
