"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
There is a sound like a heart being ripped from a chest (a sucking noise, a divorce from muscle and ligament, a slippery slurp of blood and suction). It’s both sudden and slow, leaking out from the crevices of the nighttime silence like an ancient slug of the dark. In a forested section of the land (somewhere nestled between the meadow and the field yet still far off the beaten path) scarred forelegs drag away from the decaying remains of a tightly-woven bundle of trees.
At first, it is as though the woodland is coming alive (tree trunks slowly put into movement, fallen leaves shifting off a rock, moist soil shifting at a disturbance). Nearby forest creatures scatter as though a monster is coming alive (and they might be right, their wild instincts screaming to run from the terrifying villain) and another heart-wrenching noise disturbs the quiet yet again. This time it is a slow moan, the sound of a jokester waking from a long sleep.
The moving woodland takes a shape (there is scarred legs, a gray face, white lightning strikes against the body, a blue and white left eye, a blue and black right eye, a gangly teenage boy build) as it removes itself from the scenery. Then with a sudden, lurching step, the jokester is on the move. He heads toward the scents of life (musky stallions, sweet mares, the mass of horse bodies converged together like a massive dinner party) with a wild look in his bruised eyes and a desire (no, not a desire – an instinctual need) for chaos.
She is everywhere and nowhere. The forest is her eyes, a buffet of sights that she can feast on whenever she pleases. It takes her but a moment to find him, to see the creature that separates himself from the trees, from slumber, like a great beast shedding its skin.
And she is curious. She is ever curious, thirsty for knowledge in the way drowning men thirst for air.
So she finds him. It is not hard to do. She follows him, the birds and squirrels and lowly woodland creatures serving as her spies. She flits from sight to sight with the ease of practice. Of a woman who knows exactly what she is doing, exactly what she wants.
Her frame is lean and agile, carrying her swiftly through wood and grass until she finds him. Her step is light, her white splashed roan coat sleek despite the chill. She has a rather sharp and angular beauty, despite the gnarled scar gracing her chest. To look at, she is nothing spectacular, nothing out of the ordinary.
No, it is the perceptive gleam in the crystalline blue of her eye, the way her thoughts churn with possibilities, that sets her apart.
”Hello.” She greets the strange stallion lightly, voice pitched low and neutral as she eyes him with open curiosity. ”Has anyone told you just how... interesting you are?”
She has never been one to beat around the bush.
heartfire
i filled up my senses with thoughts from the ghosts
She is relatively normal compared to him (him with his bowlegged and scarred knees, him with his white striped markings, him with his well-scarred torso, him with his bruised eyes, him with his angular facial structure, him with the crumbs of his slumber stuck in his mane, him with his maniacal smile eternally plastered on his lips, him with his miniature sandstorms twirling between his ankles). Lately, most commoners seem relatively normal compared to him. He is a master of trickery, a storyteller from the times of Carnage, a walking history book of his life – he is anything but normal.
But her eyes hold a cunning expression he has only seen every so often. They are smart and thoughtful and deliciously attractive (they remind him of another pair of eyes he once looked into; golden eyes from a Jungle warrior who nearly stole his chaotic-loving heart) and they draw him in. Her question doesn’t steer around the elephant in the room, but rather she identifies his uniqueness outright.
His bruised eyes (left one blue and white, right one blue and black, both swirled with mischief and chaotic glee) match the smirk on his mouth. “Yes, but they usually use the word ‘enchanting’ and it’s normally followed by a moan or two.” He shrugs his bony shoulders, inspecting her as she inspects him. “You look like a Daddy’s girl…” His gaze looks over her a little more intently, a little more perverted, a little more dark. “What’s your name, babe?”
08-02-2016, 12:52 PM (This post was last modified: 08-02-2016, 12:55 PM by Heartfire.)
show them the joy and the pain and the ending
She has seen him, of course, but now she looks upon him with her own two eyes. Studies him with open, undaunted curiosity. Traces the scars, the legs, the swirl of sand. And she smiles, a slow grin full of double-edged delight.
There is an audacity to his words that suits him well. It does not surprise her, men like him always seem to be so very sure of themselves. He is half right, that she will give him. She is her father’s child (no matter that she takes after her mother in appearance). But more, she is a product of her grandmother. She had been named after the woman (long dead now), but she had inherited far more than that from her. Oh, her father had instilled some of his quieter qualities into her, else she might have become far more awful than she now is. More cruel and callous.
He had done his very best to raise a willful, headstrong child. But her temperament is not one given to taming.
”Is that so?” she asks, eyes widening innocently (a contrived innocence, one she doubts he will believe). ”Hm, I cannot say that I see it.” The smile that follows is bright and hard and fierce, amusement lacing the edges.
”Heartfire.” she continues after a brief pause. ”And you? What do they call you, my dear enchanter?” There is a levity to her tone now, the faintest of taunts curling about those clear, humored notes.
heartfire
i filled up my senses with thoughts from the ghosts
As a child, the trickster took after his father rather than his mother. His dam was a once pure soul tortured by the devilish deeds of her rapist (he remembers her shaking in her sleep and then rearing upwards, he remembers her lips stretching into a high scream, he remembers her hooves flying toward his young body as if he were his father). Her duties of parenting were severely misguided and ignored (perhaps that was part of the reason he turned into the personality he is now) and it bled into his ambitious tricking of the woodland creatures.
Nonetheless, the youngling took after his illusionist of a father. Playing tricks on innocent rabbits and squirrels began the lifelong desire for ruthless murdering (something perhaps deeply rooted from his sire). However, the trickster quickly evolved into something completely different from his parents (something neither bred from his mentally-scarred mother or from his mare-torturing father) even further developing his own uniqueness. At this stage in his life, the trickster is a potent concoction bred more from the elements of chaos and bloodlust.
She feigns innocence and he sees right through it. Too often he has seen the faux ‘good girl’ portray their preconceived role with horrible acting. His lips curve up into that achingly familiar smirking grin (thin lips stretching, angular cheekbones becoming even more obvious, bruised eyes brimming with amusement) as he twists his skinny body slightly. “Really? Maybe I’m just getting old. But damn, back in the day, the ladies used to flock to me like you wouldn’t believe.” He tosses his head and paws the ground (stirring the miniature sandstorms around his ankles, as if they were asleep and suddenly disturbed), showing off whatever thin, angular muscle there is left.
He looks more like he’s been decomposing for the past nine years than the handsome, gangly stud from the past.
Her name is a curious one (it tingles at the back of his mind, sounding familiar and yet foreign at the same time) and his bruised eyes look her over more carefully than sexually. “Heartfire, huh? And where’d you get a name like that?” He shuffles into a more comfortable position, tossing his own answer to her question hazardously into the conversation. “Lokii.” However, he is convincingly more interested to hear her side of their words, perhaps simply because his curiosity has been caught.
She is far from innocent. It is not ever something she has pretended to be, before today. She has never needed to. Today, it had been amusing, a test of sorts.
But innocence is something she feels no need to continue feigning. She has lived too long to believe it would get her anything more than a momentary distraction (oh, her body is youthful enough, barely five years, but her mind… her mind is an old one. One that has known love and death and pain and heartache. She has ruled a kingdom across the universe, killed and saved in equal measure).
So she laughs. She laughs, a soft sound, but deep bodied and true, at his posturing, his attempt to relive the glory days. ”Yes, a pity. Age can be so very humbling.”
But then he seems to be caught by her name, the tones ringing some bell of recognition within his mind. She is curious, who he might know. How and why. Certainly her family has not always lived a quiet life.
She steps sideways, moving around him slightly as she tips her head to give him a look of bold consideration. ”Lokii, is it? Well, Lokii, much the same place you got your name I imagine,” she says, a small half-smile teasing her lips. ”My parents named me.”
More specially, her father. But she does not say so. She is too terribly curious, wondering just how badly he wishes to know. The answer would tell her so much about this scrawny Lothario.
heartfire
i filled up my senses with thoughts from the ghosts
The trickster has never been innocent (perhaps in the mere hours following his birth, but quickly thereafter his corruption began). Although he cannot remember it, his mother played a significant role in the darkness crushing the light. It was only hours following his birth (when the sun was perched on the threshold of rebirth, when the early morning lay quiet and drowsy, when the shadows played tricks on one’s eyes) when she first attacked (her mouth screaming, her face twisted in a look of utter fury and terror, her heels and teeth aiming to injure the lookalike son).
He couldn’t have pitied her; he is a replica of his rapist father (a mirror image of the one who scarred his dam’s body and spirit, a lost echo of a torturous night spent in hell, a living nightmare of something that was too real).
The youngster had hidden. It was the only thing he could do, caught between an illusion of a mighty trickster and the shaky legs of a newborn colt. She’d come to her senses when the sun had fully risen, of course (when the birds began to trill and the world began to wake and the sun had pierced her hazy eyes) and moved to lick her son’s wounds (there had been no love or comfort behind the movement, regardless of what she had done to him).
Innocence and pretty, lacy things were never in the trickster’s life and he supposes they never will be.
The look in her eyes suggests she once felt the purity of innocence, but time changed it. Her body is young and supple (his bruised eyes look her over again perhaps a bit more lustfully – it has been too long since he has last been with a woman) but he suspects her mind is far more aged. He isn’t one to condemn the young rising above the old (hadn’t he been only a year old when his long legs waltzed into the Valley?) and he certainly wouldn’t do so during this time.
Her words start up a small fire of anger, smoking just above his scarred heart. She is sly with her words, but he pushes away his desire to know more. She is trying to play games with him (and oh, isn’t he a master of playing games; perhaps one of the bestand he will not feed her amusement. His shoulders roll in a half-shrug, his nonchalance and I-don’t-care behavior settling over his skin like a well-worn cloak.
“That’s soooo amazing, babe.” He pauses, eyes latching onto the slow curve of her lips. Damn, he’s too horny for this shit. “Seems like they figured you’d be a real firecracker. Were they right?” Her answer could go so many places (here, there, everywhere) but he really hopes she follow the trail that leads the direction he wants to go.
