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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


    hello darkness, my old friend. || keeper
    #1
    silence, like a cancer grows

       At last, he is alone. Within the thick blanket of darkness, he has finally crept away, his sinewy muscle and growing limbs carrying him off beneath a starless sky as he slips past the icy barricade that has become his imprisonment. The brisk evening air soothes his pounding, beating heart as he glances behind him with dark eyes, peering into the shadows behind him as he listens closely for anything - anyone creeping behind him. Alas, he is secluded, left alone to his own devices - and a deep, weary sigh is breathed heavily from the depths of his fragile chest. He does not pause, nor does he hesitate. This is his moment - a moment to breathe; a brief reprieve from the suppression of his insufferable parents and siblings.

       He adores them, deep beneath the simmering resentment and anxiety that dwells within the pit of his too-weak heart. Yet, he has grown tired of the constant affection, of the lingering worry within their eyes - none of them look upon him as an equal, but a lesser. He is a burden - flawed and broken; something to fret over. Someone to pity. He has never known the freedom of exploration, of adventuring. He has been kept captive, protected and sheltered from the danger of what looms beyond the icy barrier that surrounds his birth land. He cannot blame them. He understands why - he is fragile; a danger unto himself. Too weak to flee peril and too broken to fight it off. 

       Finally, he has descended from the very peaks of the mountains and the depths of the forest, and as the sun slowly peeks from beyond the horizon, his alabaster and obsidian pelt glimmers with pale yellow and soft periwinkle skylight. He is bathed in its beauty, awed by its unrestrained glow. His breath wafts before him, but the icy chill of morning hardly disturbs him. It is nothing in comparison to the frostbitten dawn of the tundra. He admires the frost that clings tightly to dying blades of green, which will soon be buried beneath a blanket of snow. An altogether too familiar sight for the grown prince. He presses his nostrils to the thick brush, inhaling the faint scent of pine and dirt that linger. He savors the way it tickles the bridge of his nose; he revels in the way that it bends to his will.

       And suddenly, with his painted cheek pressed against the taut branches of a thicket, he stops. The sweet breath of another overwhelms him and he startles, dark brown eyes wide with uncertainty. His heart pounds again - badum, badum, and then it skips, as it always has - and he studies the figure lurking within the shadows of morning. 

       "I'm sorry, I .. I didn't see you," He stammers, suddenly uneasy as his confidence wavers.

    ARGO
    the fragile ice prince.

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    #2
    throw me to the wolves & i will return leading the pack.
    Keeper has kept to herself, even as a foal following at the flanks of her family.

    She has kept to herself like a secret, quiet and small.
    She knows secrets; the hush of predawn that scratches her back with fingers of pale light.

    The Forest gives her up; the trees thin out around her as grass takes over - long swathes of grass brimming with cicada and dew. Night yields to morning, chill and grey, hushed in the absence of birdsong. A small shiver seizes her; it scampers down her spine and slides between her ribs making her dunskin fur dance along her sides. It will be a cold winter, she thinks as she tilts her head up to eyeball the sky. Winter might come early and Keeper will hunker back down in the Forest.

    Right at this moment she is weaving her way through the dense brush and spies a darling little thicket that begs exploration. She pushes through the tightly woven branches in hopes of finding deer (she likes their wild grace, their small bodies caught in mid-leap, and the way their large liquid eyes seem to say we know you) but there is only the faintest trace of them - days’ old and fading and she huffs out a breath of disappointment. Keeper is content to remain in their growing absence; feels the same void open and empty inside her own heart - her family never understood, she wasn't like them, plain and ordinary and far too quiet.

    A branch in the thicket quivers; she pays it no mind - thinks it is the wind’s doing though no wind has come to dance along her skin, but she supposes the Meadow is no less eldritch than the Forest is. She blows out a sweet breath that comes out as more of a sigh then she hears someone stammering out an apology and turns her head to regard him with a long quiet look. Keeper says nothing at first, then - “I'm sorry too, I thought you were just the wind.” Her blackberry-dark eyes trace the curve of painted cheek that has lain along the branch, fixating on the bark-roughened fur there in a way that Keeper’s eyes rarely fixate on anything but sky, forest, or deer.

    Keeper

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    #3
    silence, like a cancer grows

      She is unlike anyone he has ever seen; her eyes have endless depth and her skin is painted the very same lustrous, shimmering gold of wavering wheat on a warm summers' day. His breath is caught in his throat, and for a long moment, time stands still, trapped as the gears of his shifting mind begin to churn. 

       Speechless, he feels immensely small beneath her heavy gaze - it is not often that he feels that someone can see through him, and in those quiet moments, he feels as if there is little between his flesh and his heart. He is exposed, though cloaked by tissue and muscle, and somehow she strips away the security of his bone structure with one simple stare.

      Finally, he voices his voice to break the thick air once more. "I might as well be," He says rather lamely, a faint uptick of a humorless smile pulling at his whiskered lips. "wayward and aimless as I am." He shifts and allows his dark brown eyes to fall to the ground, which remains moist beneath the weight of his dull hooves. Gently, he sifts the damp dirt beneath, uneasy in the way he can feel her watching him still. He glances then to the left, and once to the right, but finds solitude has sought them out.

      Something grips at his very existence, harnessing his wildly beating heart and rooting his weary legs to where they each stand. Loneliness often plagued him, and the soft treble of her voice and warmth of her breath reminds him of what he has left behind, of what he does not and cannot deserve to keep. Finally, he draws his curious gaze to hers once more, observing their depths and wondering how deep her soul is buried within. "My name is Argo - what is yours?"

    ARGO
    the fragile ice prince.

    Reply
    #4
    throw me to the wolves & i will return leading the pack.
    Keeper stares, and cannot stop.
    She knows it is impolite to stare, and stares anyway.

    That bit of roughened fur on his cheek is impossible to look away from; she wants to smooth it down with her tongue, as a mother would do to her newborn. This is not how she looks at him though. Her eyes are dark, and see more than she believes is really there. He is white hairs on black hairs to make fur, and beneath that, muscle and bone that flesh him out. Keeper sees dark wind, moony night, and snow falling on stars before she is sucked back into herself with a single breath.

    Oh where are her manners? She could swear that manners have been ingrained in her heathen self, but that is only a half-truth. Keeper spent more time staring at the slant of light in the trees then she did listening to the things her father tried to tell her. Eventually he gave up, and she ran wild - ran right into the forest and surrounding meadow, right behind the elusive deer and right into him, almost. She still thought him some made-up thing of wind and shadow, oddly handsome in a way that she has never thought of a stallion before and a faint heat burns underneath her skin, a hot flush of embarrassment as she ducks her head away from his eyes.

    How is that he can see right into her, too?

    “Maybe you are,” she answers him, curious as to why there is no humor in his smile.
    He seems terribly sad to her; she longs to fix that in him and put some happiness back into the corners of his mouth where they seem too pinched together and tight. But if he is terribly sad, then she is terribly serious despite even the bit of laughter that piggybacks onto her words, causing them to be lighter than they feel when coming out of her mouth. Both of them seem to look everywhere else but at each other, careful to keep their eyes from meeting but that too, is impossible despite how careful they are. She tries to keep her heavy gaze averted but it still finds him, and she is shocked by the curiosity that she discovers there in them.

    Why should he be curious about her?
    She is staring back at him, but this time his eyes are more intent on uncovering things than hers’ are.
    Keeper, like a secret, pulls her eyes away from him and looks everywhere but at his face. His black fur is quick to become stippled then splashed with white; like the spot on his neck, belly, and the high stockings on all four legs. He was more minimally and beautifully marked than her brother, and not obstructed by wings that fit better on a bird than on a horse. She realizes that he is saying something and tears her eyes away from his legs to meet his gaze, easily ensnared. “Keeper,” she admits, because it does not sound as exotic as his name, one that she tumbles around in her mouth like a pebble before repeating it back to him - “Argo, a pleasure.” His name becomes treasure in her mind, valuable and hoarded - she keeps it, that is what she is - a keeper, of his company and she smiles a little shyly at him.

    Keeper

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