"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
She has come to realize she is above them. She is no magician like her mother, no monster like her father, but she carries about her a sort of wicked cunning, and inside her she carries other things: the ability to speak bones from the earth, the ability to creep inside their minds. She prefers the former, and has a talent for it. She prefers bones to rotted flesh, pulls them from the ground and creatures great creatures, things with the skull of a horse and the body of wolves or pumas, gives them horns and teeth and claws. She keeps these creations as companions, makes them walk beside her, the clacking of bones soothing. One such creature stays beside her now. It’s almost instinct, now, keeping it animated and walking – easy as breathing. She walks in stride with a monstrosity, head high, proud. She is given a wide berth, for even if there are creatures more powerful than she, there is a certain feverish glint in her eye that makes her easy to be avoided. She’s half-grown, two years now, body not quite filled. She lacks the sharp angles of her mother, is far more equine in her mortal body (a fact she bemoans, and even though she begs mother will not make her a monster, so she does what she can). She’s tried to find a skull that fits over hers, like armor, but has yet to stumble upon anything fitting. So she is forced to be plain – well, plain as one can be walking alongside a strange bone-thing with an endlessly grinning skull. She grins, too. She grins when she sees the girl – younger than her – who has been left alone. “Hello,” she says, “would you like to meet my friend?” Behind her, a bones clack and clamor.
I’d stay the hand of god, but war is on your lips
remember in plots we said they were gonna meet i finally got around to it <3
Stoney loves the dunes that lay like the backs of great humped beasts against the sandy floor of the Deserts but they are all she has ever known and an explorative itch begins beneath her skin, prickling and irksome to the point that more and more, she looks towards the horizon.
Her eyes flirt with the curve of land that shimmers green with a rind of grass and a promise of something more.
Scalped has never let her go there, but has also said not to and therefore, Stoney grows curious - impetuous even, in her youth. She does what she thinks is best and that is an exploratory little trip to the Deserts’ edge and there is more grass than she has ever seen. A path unfolds amidst the sand and the grass, and looks ever so inviting! So much so, that the bay pintaloosa does not take a second look back after the first initial glance around for her mother and off she goes, with a crowhop and a kick, and an eagerness that becomes her.
Her eyes are bright with all the sights she sees; it is almost a sensory overload with all that she sees though she is sure to avoid the more fantastical of the creatures that she sees - horses with horns and wings, and a great many odd other things. It is a natural baseborn fear that keeps her apart from them, a healthy reaction that her mother has neither encouraged nor discouraged in her and might be something that trickled down to her from the blood of her father. Little does she know that she could be counted amongst them though she displays no outward mysticism like they do; hers’ is in blood and bone, a quirk of genetics that leaves her immortal except that she is unaware of it (who tests their mortality on a daily basis to make such discoveries?). She is beginning to become overwhelmed and seeks a spot of normalcy in which to enclose herself within, and she is delightfully alone and that might have been the problem after all…
It was the odd clacking that made her take notice first of the girl that approached her before she even said anything with that awful grin - the kind that said this is normal for bones to follow a girl not much older than her, and even then, Stoney should have run but she was stopped dead in her tracks by sheer fright. “Wh-what is that?” She is not given to stuttering until now as she stares are the gruesome construct of bones that makes entirely too much noise and causes the pintaloosa to shiver where she stands. It is unnatural, she thinks, looking from it to the girl and back again. Friend? She wonders, shocked as her mouth starts to gape at such a thing. “How can this be your friend?” she asks timidly, in a tone greatly hushed by the fear that lays thick on her tongue. “It is vile and offensive,” she blurts out, backing up a step before eyeing the older girl with the beginnings of distrust.
(i don't know what this is but better late than never! i still wanted to mess her up before i begin posting her again <3)
The girl’s fright delights her, so in response she makes the creature’s mouth gape wide, as if mid-scream. She wishes she could make it scream, but she doesn’t have the power to make the bones talk, they lack certain necessities, like vocal cords, or lips. She could likely do it with the fresher corpses (though she finds them ultimately distasteful), though she has yet to try.
She makes the creature rear up on its hind legs as well, waves them piteously in the air (it’s not fearsome enough, she notes, and promises herself she will redouble her search for bones).
Finally it settles, skull-mouth closed and still, and she steps nimbly around it, stops to kiss it on its head. It’s her creation – practically her itself – and she does love it, loves every iteration of it.
“You’ll hurt its feelings,” she says, voice drenched in mock despondence, “and hurting feelings is rude.”
She looks at the girl, dark head cocked, and considers. She’s younger, though not by much. And stupid, clearly; boring, unable to appreciate the beauty that Violence has laid out before her. She wonders what the girl’s mind is like, if it is soft and pliant, able to be piloted.
(They fight her so, when she slips inside them, her mind in theirs, intimate in a way few know.)
“I could make you love it,” she says, and whether suggestion or threat, it was hard to tell.
“Let me in, and I could make you love it,” she says. She hates that she has to ask, or give warning – but she knows from experience that she is still weak in her possession, that jumping in unannounced makes them startle and kick her back out, makes them more resilient to her.
The bone-creature’s head cocks, as if listening for a reply.
She reacts frightfully, from blood and instinct, at the walking skeleton that should not be.
Stoney has never seen such a horror as this, never dreamt of something so terrifying, or ever been so petrified in her life.
The bone-magician made Sinew seem like a shadow, paler in comparison to the grandeur of the full night and all its terrors.
The pet grotesquerie rears up and shakes its front legs about in menace or mockery, she isn’t sure which but the trick satisfies its intent in scaring Stoney further. She backs up into herself, accordian-like, and folds into a laughable mess of fright; by now, she is sitting on her rump with her front legs straightened out in front of her and splayed, stiffened even, as if to shore the rest of her up from swooning completely into a dead (haha punny!) faint as the creature performs for its master and her audience. It is hard to swallow, and why is there a haze dimming everything at the edges of her eyes, like a strange mist that promises to take her away from the horror in front of her…
Her mouth drops open as the older girl chides her about the creature’s feelings. Feelings? What feelings can it possibly have?! It lacks a heart and a brain, and she knows that it feels nothing and she almost pities it because it does not know it is enslaved or that it is a poorly made puppet. She lacks the bravery that is commonly found in her mother and older sister - they were so fearless, so used to dark things, so unlike Stoney who thought her heart might stop at any moment like a hare frozen in the hunter’s shadow. Her lips draw back in displeasure as she told she is rude and she wants to be so rude in that moment! So very, very rude and tell the older girl it wasn’t nice to scare others or nice to make someone’s bones jump about at her beck and call; those bones were once a horse, maybe a king or a queen, or likely some unknown broodmare or a wayward bachelor.
“How can you love a thing like that?” she is aghast at the very thought! Spurred into ruder speech by the older girl’s subtly veiled threat for that is how Stoney perceives it - threatening and terrible, so very terrible. Curiosity though, gets the better of her and she clambers back to her feet and takes one tiny timid step towards the gruesome pair; “What do you mean let you in?” she says suspiciously, her mind perfect for the taking (or is that raping?) as it opens, expands, surrenders to the very idea of being forced into something or almost forced - she is not possessed yet, not fully understanding that is what the girl seeks permission for. Still, it speaks to some curious part of her that once again opens her mouth in foolish challenge - “I doubt you can make me love a thing like that.” and her fate, poor Stoney, is sealed!
“Because they’re beautiful,” she says, and her voice is a coo, as if the creature could hear her, as if it could care.
Truth is, this is all she’s ever loved – these creations of hers, her masterpiece menageries of bone.
She loves them for their horror, for the way they are so uniquely hers: hers to wield, and control. Hers to make dance or pray or open mouths in a laugh, or a scream. This is what she thinks of love – that there is a master and a puppet; and that she will always, always be the master.
The girl asks the question - what do you mean, let you in - and it’s so delightfully innocent, Violence can practically sense her defenselessness, her vulnerability. Like a babe stranded out in the middle of nowhere; and she, the wolf at the door.
“I’ll show you,” she purrs, with the same low coo she’d used for the bones. She is beginning to see the girl like that, a puppet to be had.
She slips her mind out, reaches for the girl. It’s as easy as turning a knob, and she opens easily, and then Violence is in her mind, a strange and febrile place, and for a moment fear wraps around her like tendrils but she shakes it off, she doesn’t let herself get drenched in the girl’s piteous feelings.
Instead, she focuses on the bone creature, which stays, swaying. It looks horrific, from the girl’s eyes, strange and alien. Violence makes her blink, refocus. It’s beautiful, she thinks, and the bones become more what Violence is used to – a masterpiece of the macabre, a subtle artistry in the way different bones are made to slot together, all from different species that had lived in no such harmony. Beautiful.
Fresh horror spills over her in wave after wave.
Love them?! The very idea is ludicrous!
Beautiful?!
Hardly! They are skeletal horrors to haunt the brain and the flesh, and she is sickened by it all.
Stoney can feel her disgust thicken, it sits deep and heavy in her gut and then - nothing, nothing at all.
She feels an alien presence in her mind, taking her over and she tries to rebel but she is weak, so very weak and then it is all over - she, is taken over, possessed and her eyes blink, bringing the bone creation back into stark relief against the grasslands.
It’s beautiful, she thinks.
Strange, the thought is hers but not, and then she doesn’t question it.
It is beautiful, oh so very beautiful!
Her eyes move along the bones, noticing for the first time how they are not only equine in nature but a plethora of other creatures merged together. Oh how intricate! She thinks, delight replacing the horror, as a little laugh spills from her mouth. Stoney can see the mastery in the bone-weaving, the time and attention to detail, and the very love that went into remaking it into something that moved and talked in a language of bone. “Please dance,” she asks it, sucking in a ragged breath, still deep in the throes of possession.
ooc: nope, it was perfect! feel free to powerplay her further to fuck her up even more.
She revels in this, in the bogs and swamps of the girl’s mind. It’s different than Charnel, and Violence likes it, likes switching her emotions, likes changing her view until she sees what Violence sees, until she is made in Violence’s image.
(Not that Violence fancies herself a god – but someday, someday.)
Betters still is that the girl is so willing to be shaped, that she is pliant clay beneath Violence’s eager fingers.
She doesn’t ask the bones to dance – the girl does. And oh, how Violence smiles!
But there are bitter, sullen limits to her power – she cannot possess the girl and make the bones dance all at once, she lacks the omnipotence of magic. So she thinks one thing to the girl - be good, be good for me - and then slips back into her own mind. Power surges back into the sagging bones, and then they are complying, they are dancing, moving gracelessly.
“Touch them,” she tells the girl, “admire them.”
She is not in the girl’s mind but she will be, should she not comply. She’s getting the hang of this.
How?
Her perception has changed - it was subtle, so very subtle and almost skillfully done! - but changed all the same.
Be good.
It is a tender benediction, a kiss from a god to behave and then the bones begin to shake and shimmy all over again. Her eyes grow wide; instead of fear, there is admiration in them and maybe the beginnings of love for all things skeletal and strange. She has done this, the She that cajoled in sweet murmurs to look and love and Stoney does, poor silly stupid Stoney: she looks and she loves, and she is forever changed and remade in Violence’s cruel image. There are no poppies and poems here, only bones and death and Stoney sighs dreamily as she takes a step forward, still doing her mistress’ bidding.
Touch them.
The pintaloosa is close now, and closer still. Her nose is outstretched and her lips ready to kiss the gleaming white of the skeleton and she balks! Her hesitation cements her in place and she quakes, knowing she will feel Violence’s backlash at her inability to obey and a shiver of delicious anticipation curls down her spine. She flicks her gaze to the black girl and utters, “No.” Really, it is a plea to break her further if she thinks about it, but some part of her still looks towards light and happiness and is not wholly broken. Break me, her eyes suggest, break me fully.
She sighs.
She would have liked for the girl to have touched them of her own free will, an indication that Violence’s will would persist and linger like a virus in her pliant mind, but alas. Instead, the girl balks as the bone-creature’s head tilts as if wondering why she’s stopped.
“Then I’ll have to make you,” she says, and it’s all the says, all the warning she gives, before she slips back into the girl’s mind. She slips in lightly, this time, as if dipping a toe into a shallow pool. She cannot fully immerse herself in the girl and make the bones do her bidding, but she can lightly steer her, and she thinks it might be enough.
In the shallows of the girl’s mind Violence focuses once again on the bone creature, reaches Stoney’s – her – muzzle out, brushes her lips against the tapered point of the skull that had once supported its snout.
The bone-creature accepts the kiss, then rears back, and for a moment it seems like it’s grinning. But it’s a skull, and they are always grinning, and there is no warning when the wolf-teeth tear into the girl. Jaws that hadn’t tasted meat in meat in years grow sweet with her blood, from the tears. Violence feels her pain like an echo, but does not flinch from her – pain has never frightened her. Nothing has ever frightened her.
Instead, the sight of blood pattering onto the dry earth fills her with excitement, at the knowledge she has done this, had made the girl bleed for her defiance. She steps out of her mind like one steps out of wet shoes – cautiously – and returns to her own body to watch the girl in the aftermath.
“I told you to be good, and you weren’t,” she says, simply and slowly, as if speaking to a child, “now you’ll listen, won’t you?”
All she can see is the bone-creature as it looms before her.
She is not herself any more; her muzzle begins to move and some dim part of her thinks she should balk at this too, but she doesn’t - not even as her lips brush the tapered point of skull in a kiss. Oh! Her mind blossoms in thought; it is lovely, hard and sharp - sharp enough to slit a throat on, my throat, she thinks wonderingly. She is slow to respond when the bone-thing rears back, too deep in the throes of Violence’s possession to react.
Her cheek is cut to ribbons; tatters of skin that bleed and ache, as pain takes the place of her previous thoughts of such lovely, lovely bones. Violence warned her, and she did not heed it, and takes her punishment with a bowed head as the blood runs down past her mouth (she can taste it, copper and rich, and feels it collect in the corners where smiles used to sit and wait - now there is only blood, hers, and she likes the sweet taste of it) and drips onto the earth in small red spatters. Even the earth seems to drink her blood up greedily, she thinks, having grown meek in that moment as she is cowed by the violence that Violence (so aptly named now, she knows!) has shown her.
“Yes,” she says, naught but a shade of herself as she stares down at her own feet and the bloody earth before them.
“Yes,” she vows, as her eyes climb back up the skeletal legs of the bone-creature and come to rest on the always grinning face.
She knows her cheek will scar, will throb with the memory of this day and her subservience to Violence and the bones.
She knows this is the day her love of bones and all things unholy, begins.
Most of all, she knows that Violence is her master now.
ooc: shall we wrap it up or should we have Violence somehow teach Stoney that she is immortal? lol
