"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
I was still a little....shocked that I was here in this herdland with my family and extended family. Sometimes it caught me off guard the way that my life had so irrevocably changed. Ryss had changed it with her damn lightning bolts and the passion that had erupted like a damn volcano between us. There was blood and bruising and then the soft brushes of lips to soothe. And then somehow I had fallen in love with her, with her spirit and fire, with her heart, with her pain. I had fallen head over heels in love with her until I wasn't sure where I started and she ended. She was my drug, the reason that I breathed now. She was all I needed in life. Her and our son.
I found myself standing atop one of the rocky crags. I stood there with the wind blowing through my mane and my eagle eyes looking over the home that we had started, that we had made with Drow and Zur, Quark and Dara. I smirked wondering if we would be adding anymore males to that list or females, anytime soon. I couldn't wait to see Ryss's face and Drow's if Quark ever brings someone else home...for fun. And the first time Dara brings home someone. Ahaha, I'm going to roll my eyes now at the boys' reactions.
"No I am not going to put her in a box." I say aloud, even though they aren't here. I smile at this. They were a little ridiculous sometimes, but they had somehow crawled their way into my heart, taking a little piece of it and carving it out for theirselves. The bastards.
And Quark, that damn yellow and blue mare. She was there too. Mother in law. Soon to be anyways. After the girls were born.
This sends a shiver of thrill and fear down my spine. It curls there in my gut as I think of all that I should be doing. Their birthing would be soon, just a few weeks away once the winter weather cleared just a little more. They wanted to be born on Quark's birthday she had told me. Their little souls already so bright and prominent and here, even if they weren't physically. They were ready to be born and I couldn't wait for them to be myself.
I could only imagine how Zur and Drow were going to feel once they were finally here.
Fear. The copper taste of it coats my tongue. So much magic. I hadn't delved that deep in ages, not since the last reincarnation of magic. Too much made it come more alive, made it want to burn and break and bleed. I would handle it because I had too, but perhaps I should find Quark and have a little...talk before we get our hooves dirty with this baby girls birthing business.
"Quark, you busy?" I say aloud, knowing my words would find her. There's a tingle of something in the air besides their birthing that makes me wary. Perhaps it was time to add a little bit of defense to our home, something to just at least let us know should someone that wants to harm comes into our home. Something. I would have to think on this.
While I wait, I turn my black eyes to the sun, watching as it moves across the sky and sends its warm healing rays back into my body.
Screaming like a siren, alive and burning brighter.
Another dream with darkness lingering at the edges, flickering in the shadows like a dark candlelight, little tendrils of foreboding filtering in from realms beyond and making me wonder. No. Making me suspect something is coming. I've been restless, snarling, prowling the meadow, sex and violence warring instincts rising to the surface in a way I don't think I've ever quite felt before. Though I suppose, both of them have been thoroughly sated in the past times I've walked these lands. Now, I've no real outlet for either, and they scratch beneath the surface as the darkness creeps around the edges of my perception. Primal. Hungry. Some deep-buried need to prove I'm alive.
And I fucking am. Sometimes I feel like the whole goddamn world died with Nocturnal and I've just been clinging to another ghost. A much bigger one than hers, even when I've finally laid hers to rest. Is that the dark taunting the edges of my perception, the prickling of my skin, the phantom raising hair on the back of my neck with its ghostly caresses? No. Fucking no, the world's still here and vibrant and bursting with vitality and just waiting for me to stake my claim on it. Claw out a place for myself and my loved ones, mark it as mine again and bury roots deep in the rich earth.
Still. Even as I try to do just that, try to settle into Echo Trails with children and grandchildren, slinking along the borders as a jaguar leaving my scent to warn the impulsive or the reckless that This Place Is Taken...something feels off. I am on one such prowl of a border patrol when I hear the call, three little words requesting my attention. Even if I were busy on something especially urgent, I would sit up and pay attention to that query. Another unnecessary patrol definitely doesn't qualify as busy.
Rather than attempting to answer, I turn and run in the direction it came from, reveling for a few minutes in the flex and pull of muscles, the fluidity of this feline shape I've loved since I was young. I love paws. The sensitivity, the flexibility, the wicked-sharp claws, this has always been one of my favorites. So easy to get caught up in the rush, and a small deer I scare up falls prey to my teeth and claws before I even realize I've given chase. Oops. Oh well, maybe—ah. Right. No Nish or Noct to share my kill with, and Drow and Dara are firmly stuck in horse shape here.
Huh.
Maybe Pazuzu would appreciate the gesture.
Since I've nearly reached him anyhow, I grab my kill by the neck and drag it the rest of the way. It's a heavy beast, too, but I carry on, only stopping when I'm close enough that I'm almost laying my kill at his feet like a present. I blink mismatched eyes up at him in silent invitation to join me while I feed, tilt my head in Tycho-like fashion to inquire what he'd like to discuss with me, and then proceed to tear a chunk off the carcass while I wait to find out what's on my almost son-in-law's mind.
No need to stand on formality. We can discuss over dinner, if he's so inclined. He hasn't exactly struck me as the type to squirm at a little blood, after all. And if he looks less than enthusiastic I suppose I could always drag the corpse up a tree and eat it later. I eye a few nearby, picking out a likely prospect just in case. Ha. Not that any local predators would fucking dare steal a kill that smells like me.
Quark had been restless. I don't know how many times I had scented her along the borders. Different forms, although the jungle cat seemed to be her favorite. At night when they were all sleeping and something tingled my subconscious I would prowl the borders my self. It gave me a good chance to get it under control while I assured myself that all was well. My favorite shift was a wolf, a dire wolf really. I would often pad in that form as the moon shed it's light or when it was nothing more than stars twinkling down, shining on us all.
A smile curls my lips when I see her dragging the carcass of a deer towards me. I feel my bones start to shift and my muscles and tendons all becoming liquid as they move and adjust and maybe even grow some more. I look like the guardian that Tycho has, with the eerie green eyes and the insubstantial form but the dire wolf form stands in the place I had previously occupied as a horse. When I smile at her this way, my lips curl up and my teeth show, but my tongue slides from my mouth as I begin to pant.
I see her question and I wait, taking a rather large bite from the deer and chewing it before I pause. "Something is stirring." I say, turning my eyes from the corpse to the horizon as the sun begins to dip down past the treeline. I look there a moment before I turn back to look at her. "Darkness is stirring." Feeling my own rise up in my chest at the thought, physical tendrils of darkness curling outwards before I pull them back down inside me.
I tilt my head and wait to see what she says. I know that I am not alone in feeling this. Perhaps this is why Quark has been prowling the borders of Echo Trails.
pazuzu
**Disclaimer, posting to Pazuzu can result in maiming, torturing, and all kinds of nasty things possibly happening to your pony. If you do not agree, do not post to him or if you do not want your pony horribly maimed, please say so. Most of the time he will just leave some nice new scars, either mental or physical.
07-05-2016, 01:07 PM (This post was last modified: 07-05-2016, 01:10 PM by Quark.)
Screaming like a siren, alive and burning brighter.
When I reach Pazuzu and lay my kill at his feet, I pause to take in the form he's settled into. Wolf, but enormous and built more of shadows than flesh, with the same glowing green eyes he gave Tycho's guardian. I've caught this shape's scent along the edge of our land, patrolling the border and marking out our territory just like I've done, but I hadn't seen it before tonight. With a toothy grin, I claw open the belly of our dinner and then daintily lick the blood off my claws as the tender, juicy organs spill out onto the ground. Well, along with the far less enticing intestines, but waste not, want not.
While he speaks, I nose around and pull out a lobe of the deer's liver for him before reaching in and grabbing a mouthful of it for myself as well. Best bit of the carcass, that. Well, the heart's pretty high up there too, especially if you're in the mood for something a little chewier. Liver, though, that almost melts in your mouth, rich and dark and delicious.
I nod, swallowing down the bite and pausing to savor it for a moment before I meet his glowing green gaze and reply. “Bleeding into the edges of my dreams, shadows that vanish when I turn to look more closely. I thought it was just being back here at first, maybe being a little overprotective of the ones I love when I've seen the world devour people with much more power to defend themselves. But it's been building. For months.”
So has the restless frustration, the claws tracing along my spine. I snarl at the dead deer and tear another chunk of meat off its bones and swallow it down. “I've put out feelers, sought answers in other worlds, in dreams and spirit walks, and all I've found is shadows that vanish when I look too closely. I don't know how to protect them when I don't know what's coming. I can handle just about anything this world could throw at me and make it out alive. You too. The others...at least physically, they are far more fragile.”
My children, so damn strong in some ways, are almost entirely defenseless against the magic inherent in this world and a good share of its residents. They've lived through hell a few times over, but the only reason they've survived is that I got to them soon enough to put them back together and destroy what hurt them. Or stand beside them in the midst of their agony, devoured by it just as they were, and walk through it together. Their children have yet to face even echoes of that kind of darkness, even flickering shadows at the edge of awareness. And three more innocent lives are about to join their numbers.
“I've been their only protector for a long time now. Their only defense against whatever the hell's hiding in those shadows. Against whatever is stirring and setting us both on edge.” I don't think the others have noticed, or at least not enough that it shows yet. They're excited about the girls, eager to welcome three new souls into what is beginning to feel like the line of fire. “I'd almost forgotten what it feels like to have someone else I trust with their lives. I'm really fucking glad you're here.”
I take the liver she offers me and savor it. My eyes close briefly in the taste, a smile curling those wolfy lips of mine before she speaks and has all my attention. The smile fades from my face and I study her. I nod slightly as she described it, thinking it was one thing. I could see that, the overprotection, had I not felt it sometimes too? Something lurking where there was nothing. Was that not why I had created the guardian for Tycho? Although I even had my doubts about that being enough. Ryss had me, and while I might not always be there for her if she needed help, all she would need to do was say my name and I would be there before she could finish it.
And wouldn't the torture of the motherfucker that dared to touch my family be a wonderful cathartic release of this tension that is simmering? For me perhaps. For the idiot that touched them...not to much?
I can only nod at her as she talks of what she has found. I had found similar things when I had send out my own feelers. "This is not going to be good." I say after a long moment of silence. Although I smile at the feeling of not being alone. "Same goes Quark. It's nice to have another pair of eyes." Although I wish that it was not our families in the line of fire. Does it seem like it would always be this way? Perhaps the mixture of our families, their past and my darkness hadn't been the smartest idea.
There would always be someone that hated me. Perhaps even someone that always hated Quark. There would always be someone wanting revenge for what we have done. "Our family paying for our sins." I say, almost to myself but there is no doubt she will hear me. I turn my green eyes from hers to look out at the last of the sun, more of it's rays really as it shines over the trees.
"Whatever happens, we will be ready for it. Whoever it comes for, we will be there first." I say, my eyes narrowing at the thought of it before they slide back to her. "We won't allow them to break or to be broken." I pause. "Or you. I won't allow you to be broken." Because my gut had told me it needed to be said.
Oh Ryss. Ryss would be so heartbroken over something happening to her mom. I aim to keep more of an eye on Quark perhaps after today. After this stirring, this fingernails against a chalkboard that set me on edge.
Screaming like a siren, alive and burning brighter.
“Our family paying for our sins.”
Is that what this is? I shake my head, because that doesn't feel true to me. Oh, I've torn lives apart, ripped souls from bodies, and left enemies in my wake. Not as many as Pazuzu, perhaps, and my kills have largely been limited to those who deserve to die. Or at least don't deserve to live. I've taken the lives of people who have hurt my babies, and it felt fucking good. Watching them bleed. Hearing them scream.
“I don't think that's how it works. This is life, Pazuzu. Darkness and light, joy and pain, danger and safety. And the stronger we are, the bigger those forces grow in order to touch us. In order to change us, and shape us, and push us toward something new. They don't pay for our sins, no. But there is risk in being close to us. In belonging to us. All the more reason for us to be protective, even if it comes off as a bit much sometimes. Life would hit them with darkness whether we were here or not. So we fix what we can, and help them through what we can't.
“Because we can't always fix it, Pazuzu.” I meet his gaze, because the words feel important. Feel necessary. “No matter how strong we are, there are things we can't put back together, things we can't make right or better or fair. Things we can't make okay. Sometimes all we can do is hold the people we love, remind them they're not alone, and stand beside them in the dark until they're able to bear the light again.” I look away and snort, adding, “Even if bathing in the blood of their enemies is more satisfying.”
His next words make me smile, and I step around the carcass and reshape myself 'til I'm big enough to hug him, shadow wolf or no. Just for a moment, because I know he's not exactly comfortable with physical affection from anyone but Ryss and Tycho. Still, that comment has earned him at least a brief embrace, resting my forehead against him, breathing out an appreciative whuff before backing away and giving him back his space.
“Ah, son. I've been broken more times than I can count,” I say with a sad little smile, watching the sunset instead of making eye contact. “It's not the worst thing in the world. Hurts like a motherfucker, but sometimes the breaking is what you need. Don't get me wrong, it fucking sucks. Being that jagged, that exposed. Scary as hell, and it feels like it will last forever when it's starting. But...” I sigh, thinking back. Broken when my mom left me, too scared of who I was to stick around. Too scared my baby brother would be a monster like me to even give him a chance. She made me into an Amazon the minute she walked away.
Broken by some monster in the Meadow, my innocence stolen by a sick old man with sour breath whose touch made my skin crawl. Too naive to know what was coming until it was too late. He made me into a warrior born in blood and pain. I can still feel the weight of him on my back, feel the spines I grew stabbing into him, impaling him the way he'd impaled me, feel his blood pouring down my skin. He taught me the beauty of vengeance, of tearing apart those who seek to harm you.
Broken by the loss of my firstborn, my firebrand, stolen away before I even had the chance to meet him. Broken by goodbye after goodbye, losing friends and family, my mother just as she came back and redeemed herself. My baby brother, fighting to bring my son home. Losing Nocturnal, trying so desperately to put the ash and bone back together and bring her home. Losing Kagerou, the only real mother I had from the time mine left.
Maybe the worst of all, watching my newborn son writhe in agony and beg me to let him die, letting go of him because it was the right thing for him even if it fucking killed me not to make him live. It shattered me, watching the light fade from his beautiful brown eyes. Holding his body as it cooled, digging up the grave where I'd buried Nocturnal and Quantum and resting his tiny bones inside my dark dragon's ribcage.
I have broken over and over, more times than I have ever dared to put a number to. And every time I have come back stronger. “It takes time, but you find a way back to whole. And the whole is stronger for it somehow. No, breaking isn't the worst thing. But there's a line, and it's different for everyone. A line where that breaking becomes something bigger, and the only thing that keeps you alive is love, if you let it. If you want to keep them safe, you love them with everything you are.
“Everything, Pazuzu, the darkness and the light. Because sometimes the dark is what they need. Sometimes the dark is all they can see, and the light does nothing but burn. I know you struggle with it, see the darkness as...as something evil that should never be allowed to touch them. Something that could taint them, if you're not careful. But it's not that simple. And some days they will need the darkest parts of you. My children are no strangers to the dark. Even if their victims are more likely to be themselves.”
Ryss with her self-imposed isolation, Drow with his old habit of tearing himself apart, their darkness ate away at them instead of lashing out at others. Nocturnal's darkness devoured her from the inside. My children watched me burn for months after her death, my own darkness consuming me. They didn't see the years I spent after I left Beqanna, raining death and agony down on anyone I could justify. Bastards who hurt little girls and boys. Monsters who murdered the innocent. Rapists. Violent criminals. Abusive partners. All manner of wrongs, righted by my hand, my blade, my claws. The longer I did it, the lower my bar got, until I was hardly even looking for a reason anymore.
All in the name of vengeance.
A pretty lie I told myself to try to put myself back together after Noct's suicide. That time it took getting my ass kicked by a shaman who knew I was capable of more, getting dragged to the quiet isolation of a little jungle village and getting some sense knocked into me. If he hadn't intervened, I would probably still be on a killing spree, and my son would never have come to the jungle with me and made so damn much progress, and maybe we wouldn't be standing here worrying about bringing three lovely shiny new souls into a big scary world, or darkness stirring and turning its great big head to look right at us.
“Just. Promise me something, okay?” My eyes meet his again; I need to see the truth of his answer, need to read the look on his face and know. “Don't make the same mistake her mother made, Pazuzu. You can waste your life trying to hide it, trying to protect them from the dark that haunts you, you can tear yourself out of their lives trying to keep it from touching them, and they will not be any safer. They will not be better off, and they will absolutely not thank you for your absence. And if Ryss is anything like me, she won't just fucking let go. So don't start down that sins of the fathers bullshit path. I've seen where it ends. So if you think for one moment they'd be better off if you weren't around? Ask Ryss what it was like losing her mom.”
"Isn't it though? Isn't that what Karma is? The Light and the Dark being balanced?" And I agree with her, what she is saying, about the risk of being closer to us. About the bad things getting a little bigger to deal with us, the more powerful we are. I agree with all of that and understand. I realize that not everything can be fixed, but for Ryss, for Tycho I damn well would try. I'd bleed and give them my life if it was required. Would I willingly want to die? Would I sacrifice myself without something in return? Hell no. I want to be there for them. I want to be there for the rest of their lives until they are ....god... nothing more than bones in the ground if I have to let it go that far.
If I have to bury Ryss...I know I will be placing my heart in the ground with her.
My ears flicker as she speaks again and I smile slightly. Again I agree even if I don't like it. I had been there, I do know. Ryss had been my light. She had been the one to guide me there, closer to the light on that fine line of darkness and light. Where they merge and become shadows. So while I'm not wholly good...I'm not wholly evil anymore either. I don't play the games I used to play, with whatever on the line because I could.
I hadn't been broken yet. That would be an entirely new experience and I find myself curious to see how it would be for me. Would I burn? Or would I turn the world to ice?
I accept her hug, even I might squirm a little bit under the touch. I understood exactly where Tycho got his no touching stance. And while I don't mind Quark's hug, it makes me..uncomfortable. We are family, but she is only mine...while Tycho and Ryss are MINE. Affections aren't something...shit...I'm still learning. So while I want to pull away, I don't. I force myself to curl myself around her in response and release a short breath of relief when she pulls away. I smile slightly.
She also called me son.
No one has done that before.
Feelings for another time, for emotions and thoughts that stir.
I smile, turning to look way from her again. Turning to look out across our home and down where our family was resting. I could find them, feel myself mentally drawn to the thumping of Ryss's heart and the steady gait of Tycho as he explored. They would be the only things that keep me here, that keep me from absolutely losing myself.
However...I pause with her next words. My eyes glow a bit with a sudden burning of anger. I have to coil it within myself, tamp it down so I don't burn her or anything else. I cannot meet her eyes, not quite yet and I concentrate on the gentle thumping of my love's heart for a long moment. Finally when I turn to her. "If I am not there...who will put her back together? Who will watch them? Who will keep them as safe as they can be here?" I pause. "You. Of course you will. But you are only one against so many, with so many behind you to protect. Something will slip through. Something will slip through regardless of how careful we are. Balance. Life always craves Balance." I continue to meet her gaze. "I'm not fucking going anywhere."
07-15-2016, 06:26 PM (This post was last modified: 07-18-2016, 01:39 AM by Quark.)
Screaming like a siren, alive and burning brighter.
Pazuzu squirms just like Tycho used to the first few times I hugged him, and I could almost laugh. Oh, barely, just a stiffening of the muscles in his back and the slightest hint of instinctive avoidance before he returns the gesture, and that relieved sigh of his as I let go has me grinning. There's a reason I kept the embrace brief; the kind of casual physical affection my family shares so easily isn't something he's accustomed to just yet. Which just makes me appreciate his efforts at adjusting even more.
Ohhh the last thing I had to say does not sit well with him. I can feel the rage my words stir up, hints of offended indignation simmering underneath a roaring inferno of fury. Good. When he finally turns to face me, I meet his gaze dead on, my expression just as serious and determined as his. “Good man. I would have killed to hear that from her mother, would have torn my heart out and laid it at her feet if it would have made her see...” That we were worth fighting for. That she was worth fighting for. “Ha, or torn out someone else's, otherwise what would have been the point?”
The quip falls a little flat as old sorrow wells up again, and I look away, riding out the ache in my chest and the tightness in my throat. It'll pass. It always does. She gave me everything she had to give, loved me the best way she knew how. And I still wouldn't trade a single day of our time together. Hell, I'd have begged for more, even knowing the pain would be worse. I pull in a deep breath, let it out just as slowly, and ignore the way it shakes just a little. Fuck, that doesn't happen very often anymore and I wasn't expecting it this time.
“Good,” I say, when I know my voice will be steady instead of trembling. “And yeah, I'll do my damnedest to be there for them, to watch out for them, to keep them safe. Of course I will. But I won't always succeed. I won't always be able to be there, and I won't always be able to help them pick up the pieces. Hell, and even when I'm able sometimes they won't let me. Part of being a parent.” I snort. If he hasn't already learned that with Tycho I'm sure he will before long. And I've had just the quietest little dreams in the midst of the darkness that suggest maybe Tycho isn't the only one.
“But it's not the same.” Or at least I assume. My parents weren't exactly the greatest at sticking around. Really, though, I had Kagerou. She was more of a mother to me than anyone else, blood or no. She found me after I was raped, held me and let me fall apart in a way I couldn't with Nocturnal. My pain hurt Noct too much for me to pour it out at her feet like that, to sob incoherently, to shake and scream and let her see how being touched by anyone made my skin crawl. How scarred I was for years. How our first time together I couldn't bear to be female, couldn't bear to be that vulnerable even with her, even a year later. I never said the words, buried the flashes of his face, his touch—my skin twitches, trying to dislodge the train of thought like I would a fly.
So many words I never said. And none of them would have changed anything.
“Yeah, sometimes she'll need me to help her in ways only I can. And I will do everything in my power to be there when she does. But being able to turn to her mom when she's hurting or when life fucks her up is not the same at all. You're the man she loves. The father of her children. The person she's making a life with. I just...needed to know. That you're not fucking going anywhere.” Something settles in my chest, and the restless wariness fades. So something is coming. Let it come, then. We'll be ready.
I know she's almost laughing at me, at the way my skin still squirms beneath her touch. I know that smile that she has on her face is at me and the way that Tycho and I are alike. I smile wryly in response but it has faded by the time she speaks again. That anger had surged to the front of my mind. It was all I had seen for a moment. But....Well, I knew her story. Pieces of it. From what Ryss had told me so when she is quiet I reach forwards to touch her shoulder gently.
I had never went through what she had went through with Nocturnal. Her name was something that wasn't ever really said around here. She was like an illusive ghost. Too canny to catch and too important to forget.
So I touch her shoulder and nod slightly. I understood. She was just protecting her baby, making sure that I wasn't going anywhere. She wanted to make sure I understood and was ...not worth her baby...but along those lines. I wasn't going to duck out when shit hits the fan. I'll be right there. Throwing shit back.
"Whatever comes." I say when she is done. I understand, of course I understand. I've been around long enough to see all kinds of shit. I've done all kinds of shit. Even things like the rape that so scarred her. How many lives had I shattered doing the same thing? How many lives had I broken when I tortured?
Not today. These weren't thoughts for today.
"Whatever comes, we will weather the storm." I say finally. And I shift next to her so our body heats combine and I look with her over our family, our home and watch the sun set.
