Beqanna - Forest

the art of catching sunlight [COLBY]

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 19:04:29 -0400

SCHOLAR

The days grew increasingly long, each ray of sun clung to the heated air and refused to loosen its grip. Tighter and tighter they fastened, reaching as far as the eye could see. He watched them spread their fingers against the recesses of the trees, spilling their light into the break of the treeline until it fell along the forest floor in flecks of dappled gold.

A stray breeze coaxed at his chestnut coat, though his hair remained unmoved against such a light pressing. It lay frozen in careful strands across his neck, along his forelock, spilling down the length of his legs. Scholar liked the tepid air, relaxing in the sunshine as it fell along the forest, where the trees and the grasses met. He took a deep breath of the heat, letting it fill his lungs, blinking his amber eyes before letting them rest for a moment.

It was a fine day, a fine day indeed. He let his breath out in a steady stream of mist, the cold of his ice gifts mingling with the steamy weather.

”Wonderful day, isn’t it?” Scholly said aloud to himself, and to no one in particular. The sun caught the edges of his mane, sending prismatic colors splayed across the earth, dancing until the winds coaxed a stray cloud to silence the sun. Fleeting moments, to be sure, but wondrous all the same. Even he had a difficult time looking away, watching the rainbow bend its way along a blade of grass before it disappeared once more.

Weir x Eira

way down we go -- [Limb]

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 21:23:31 -0400

The warmth of summer finds him like a moth finds a flame, heating the length of his backside and sending his tail into steady swaying patterns to ward off insects.

Even now, as the seasons change, shape the world and relentlessly hover above him—Caster marks a path to the river. A tepid breeze at his back brings mild relief, and he stops to sigh in gratitude before pressing his course any further. At least the air is moving around him; at least his night had not been filled with sleep terrors, nor endless trails that led to shadowed profiles of faceless bodies.

A length of tall grass brushes against his patchwork side, trailing its fine fingers along the pattern of dark meets light. He’s roamed these U-shaped lands once or twice before, noting the meadows, the thin copse of wood, and even still he finds something new or unusual about each visit. With a heavy breath, he scents the air and finds a thread of a memory misplaced—strings frayed and scuffed like worn fiber.

Still, there was a pressure building, or perhaps it was the steady rise of the river’s chanting rapids. Their promise of cool respite, a cleansing drink to wash away the weight that began to drag him down even as his thoughts had, for a moment, become placid in the longing heat. Dark hooves stumbled along stones as he reached the edge of a riverbank, lost in his contemplations so deeply that the pass found him long before he expected—swaying as he regained his footing and steadied his stance.

It occurs to him that he might do a better job at watching his step, allowing the cooler breeze of the riverfront to clear his head, and with it, the plague of possibility that forever lingered along the fringe of his thoughts.

“Who’s there?” he calls, blackened ears tugged forward, swiveling to the side earnestly before standing at attention once again. Such a novel, imperfect way his ears moved, following a distinct disturbance that fell quite differently than the rhythm of the water thrashing against the riverbed.

Caster searched for shadows, but he hoped, prayed for another living creature.

CASTER

Corridor x Praytell

[a vignette] in a different light --

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 16:25:34 -0400

KNIGHT

KILLDARE X MALIS

Night brought with it a blanket of stars, constellations imprinted in intricate patterns, each one twinkling in white-hot light from the heavens. The clusters coaxed, the loss of sunlight lulled, and quietly the wood found sleep until all beneath the indigo sky submitted to a dozing heaviness among the nightsong of bark and sedge. A triptych of brothers found themselves captured by the dark, standing quiet in the weave of wood, watching the fireflies blink in and out of sight; they listened to the call of crickets below, and when the silence no longer served them—the youngest broke the stillness with an attentive request.

“Tell me about Dad again, Ivo.” The mulberry male lifted his head, ears flicking attentively toward a bay. Ebony ears shifting woven tendrils of black with each restless movement.

“That’s all you ever ask me,” Ivo blurted, snorting his annoyance and turning his sapphire eyes on his younger brother with a look that said not this again. Before continuing, he lowers his head, indigo lips mouthing at a cluster of grass beneath his hoof, chewing slowly when he does catch a bite but silent still while he takes his time unraveling a tale.

“Oh, come on now,” Knight goads, “just one story.”

Just one story, but it never was just the one, was it? Knight had been turning his ear to his siblings for years, hanging on each word they ever released, and wondering still—was there more?

“Father was a great man,” Ivo began, instilling the importance of their sire with a single statement, standing straighter as he spoke.

“Father was a good man,” Mortal corrected, finally turning his own dark head from where he had curled up upon the earth. His great bat wings glittered with transparency, tucked carefully around his ebony body, while his lime-tinted mane fell away from his equally vivid green eyes.

Ivo tensed, if only just, sweeping his gaze across their collective, landing with irritation against his older brother.

Mortal returned the stare, slowly blinking back with a disinterested challenge. He knew Ivo was all breath and no bite.

my eyelids are the door, my mind is the coffin; Colby

Mon, 05 Oct 2026 18:16:50 -0400

Darkling

There is something approaching ethereal in the sight of the golden unicorn standing amongst the shadows, faint dapples of light shimmering across the summer-bright skin and elegant twists of his horn. Yet, it is a lie, the thin veneer of a young girl’s fairytale poorly masking the beast beneath it.

For that is what Darkling has become, a beast. In so many ways, he has changed little. In many more ways, however, he has become the creature he was always meant to be. Still, one could not see it simply from looking at him. After all, who would imagine such an innocuous vision could hide even more unimaginable depths?

As he steps forward, a small creature leaps from the branches overhead, small hands gripping the flaxen strands of his mane as it scrambles forward. It stills between golden ears that flick occasionally, prehensile tail curling forward to wrap around the horn.

Darkling does not react to the small primate, disregarding its actions with the practiced ease of familiarity. The only sign he is even aware of the shadow creature’s actions is the slight twitch of his mouth. A simple action that betrays his affection for his oldest and most favored creation. It makes no sound, gives no indication of life, or even of its existence beyond the fact those with sight could undeniably behold a void-dark outline and glaring yellow eyes.

This is an undeniable boon. After all, anyone who could perceive its existence beyond sight would quickly learn why this would be such an undesirable outcome.

An army could lurk in those shadows with none the wiser of its existence, commanded by a capricious general who holds no allegiance and possesses only a twisted sense of morality. Perhaps it is fortunate, then, that Darkling contains little desire to command, much less lead. He seeks only that which will draw his mirth and sate his fickle desires.

And, as it turns out, he is on the hunt.

you're burning up the sky, you're a constellation
I think that I could die for this revelation

i'm addicted to the 'if only', illum

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:10:47 -0400

Ryatah

WHEN I WAS SHIPWRECKED I THOUGHT OF YOU

IN THE CRACKS OF LIGHT I DREAMED OF YOU

I knew someone who looked like you,she had said to the star-spun stranger. She had looked at her from behind her blinding angelic light, and been reminded of a man colored like the darkest of night skies, remembered the way he had whispered the sweetest things into the heat of her skin, how he had loved her in a way she never once deserved to be loved. No one had ever been able to love the wrongness out of her, but she had loved letting them try. Illum, she had thought to herself, his name breaking through her daze, and yet she had ripped the stranger’s heart out anyway. A twisted kind of poetry, maybe, a reminder that it didn’t matter how much someone loved her or if she loved them back, there would always be a dark god and his control over her wedged between them.

Letting go of Illum had been maybe one of her only selfless acts; to let him live a life free of her and her thoughtless heart and all the hurt that it would cause. To let him go before they inevitably imploded, just as all her other relationships have done, because it’s unreasonable to expect someone to stand by and watch as she destroys herself over and over again.

And so she had stayed away, for years.

She had slipped back into her life with Atrox, and never once gone back to Illum. Not under the guise of friendship, as she so often did with the others. Not when a rumor floated back to her that he had found companionship with Este and she had been forced to sit with the envy and guilt (because how can she be jealous of her beautiful daughter, who is far kinder and far more honest than Ryatah could ever be) that that knowledge lit in her chest. Not when she thought loneliness might eat her alive, because even though she always had someone, sometimes she just didn’t want to beg. She wanted to be revered, she wanted someone to look at her the way she looked at them; the way Illum had once looked at her, as if she were the one worthy of being worshipped.

She had stayed away, until she couldn’t.

Something in her had shifted that night in the Ruins, when she had left with another’s blood sprayed across her skin, with a still-warm heart cradled in her magic. It was the aftermath—after Carnage had gone again, as he always does—when she was alone, the coming down from the high that left her crashing. It all felt wrong, even though she had done exactly as he asked. And maybe that had been the wrong choice; maybe that had been the safe choice, and her obedience would become too mundane, and she had shed blood for nothing.

All she knows is her skin feels electric, like there is a current in her veins, humming and errant and in danger of getting loose. She can’t remember the last time she felt like this, like her heart is a bomb and all she needs is for someone else to pull the pin.

All she knows is every time she closes her eyes she sees blood and stars and then Illum’s face.

The forest is quiet at night as it often is, the shadows cool even in the summer air. It did not feel so different from when she had found refuge with him in Taiga, when she had let herself pretend that they had a forever instead of an ending. Her chest tightens at the thought, the way it does when she knows she is about to make a beautiful mistake, chased away by the fluttering pulse of her heart.

She finds him, and the way her halo-lit eyes lock with his and there is no surprise to be found on her face it is evident that she had been looking for him. She does nothing to hide it, makes no show of pretending to be startled to have stumbled across him. He is there because she had known he would be, just like she had ensured before she found him that Este would not awaken until after sunrise. She stands there before him, looking as she always had—golden stardust spilling from her wings, an amber glow radiating from her ethereally white body, and impossibly dark eyes that can’t look away from him, wistful and sad and unsure. His molten gaze feels like a blow to her ribs, and when she speaks her voice is a whispering, breathless gasp. “I’m sorry,” she apologizes, because she has no right to go looking for him. She had forfeit her right to him years ago. He wasn’t hers, and she is not deserving of being his, but the way her wretched heart beat the same thrilled, broken beat at the sight of him said otherwise. “I just needed to see you.”

AND IT WAS REAL ENOUGH TO GET ME THROUGH —
BUT I SWEAR YOU WERE THERE

rewrote my faith--

Sat, 19 Sep 2026 18:39:37 -0400

’Do you remember the names of the stars, my child?’

The memory comes back to her now, gentle questions from the faraway voice of her Sire. That voice was his only tether, while his eyes forever strayed to the accumulation of silver-spangled night once the sun set beneath the horizon. His own far-off place, his own remnants of memory bleeding through each careful collection of mythos.

Fade lifts her eyes to the narrow strips of sky caught between spindly oaken branches, a canopy like clutching fingers that dare not let the first clusters of starlight spill too far from the heavens. Though few have emerged, she searches the soft beginnings of night for the ones he taught her to name. A shooting star blinks across the bough above her, a breath of breeze sending a dry leaf spinning into her pale mane. She pauses beneath the rustle, dark wings settling against her sides, and allows a curious tension to unfold beneath the oak.

’Fade,’ the voice comes again, firmer this time, if not impatient in its own right.

‘Stay with me, little star.’

The words grow dim, leaving as whispered as they had come, and her hooves guide her further towards the break of the treeline. A clear view, an expanse to gaze upon, and a stretch of sky she can nearly name.

Beyond the trees, the sky opens wide enough to make her stop, the cloy of nightsong mirroring her now scattered thoughts. Fade searches the indigo night for a familiar shape, tracing one star to the next as her Father once taught her. A name nearly rises to her tongue, flaring brightly before it slips away with the quickness of a snuffed candle; a flame that burns too brightly for tired eyes. She draws a quiet breath, folds her wings close, and begins again.

FADE

let our walls cave in; any

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 23:25:08 -0400

There had been a time in his life when the forest felt dangerous to him, a place of mazes and menace and ancient misery. He hadn’t seen the way the trees loomed above him, ancient and aching, bent with age. But he had felt their fingers in the feathers of his piebald wings, sharp and gnarled even with their covering of autumn leaves. Had felt the way they curled in the frost of his dark mane, the way they pried his forelock back from his eyes as if to show him what they were. See? They seemed to say, and he might’ve wondered if the trees were disappointed with what they found, such empty eyes swirling with the gray and silver of sightless frost. He might’ve told them to be patient, had he known.

It wasn’t until many seasons later that he had discovered the magic of the gift his mother had passed on to him, a way to see through eyes that weren’t his, and then many more after that before it became something that felt as easy as breathing. Felt his in a way his eyes had never been. It was a nuanced gift, though when he had first discovered it he had used it out of fear like a bludgeoning weapon, taking instead of sharing from a doe that had been racing from the same danger as he. With her eyes he had escaped, but with his resounding darkness she had not.

He knows better than to take now, knows the value of being gentle when he presses his mind to anothers. When he is gentle, they do not balk at him, not the rabbits or the russet deer, not the birds or the gray squirrels that scamper up into the trees. When he is gentle, they unlock his cage of darkness, of sameness, and show him what the world looks like for those who live in these ancient woods. It is most strange, he thinks, to open his eyes to the day and see himself standing quietly beneath the autumn wreathed branches, to see sunshine brushed across the feathers of his wings and the lines of his back, sparking in the frost across his eyelashes.

He tries not to see his eyes though, dislikes the way that soft swirl of gray and silver frost makes him look so empty.
He doesn’t feel empty.

Dusk finds him in his favorite place beneath the wide, reaching branches of an oak tree that is home to a family of decidedly nosy gray squirrels. They seldom hold still, but even as they bounce along the branches above him, disappearing in and out of the leaves, chittering and arguing, he catches flashes of life going on around them. A handful of brown sparrows like a constellation against a blue and sunset sky, a doe and her freckled fawn who each lift their heads, tails waving cloud-white at something further off. There is a prickle of awareness then, a realization as he notes the way the creatures around him have all noticed something, the way they melt into the shadows between the trees.

There is sudden darkness, and though it is by choice he is sure he will never shake that split second of eeriness he feels when the world becomes so abruptly small and dark again – the size of the space behind his irises, soft blue before the glittering frost hid them.

He turns, the dark and white of his wings resettling above his shoulders, his ears flicking beneath the tangles of his dark mane as he tries to decide if any of the sounds around him are out of place. His brow furrows, though the movement is as hidden as his sightless eyes are behind the curtain of black forelock as he drops his head lower. “Is someone there?” His voice is the sound of soft silver, of the frost that clings to the black and white of his sabino body, to the cobalt blue that runs like a vein through the seam of either color. “Or is it just the squirrels again.” But there is the hint of a smile in his voice, a lift to the corner of his white mouth because he is certain now that someone is here. Even as he thinks it, his mind reaches for the nearest pair of eyes from the tree above him.

LUMOS

it's an empty world up here; colby

Mon, 07 Sep 2026 23:43:26 -0400

He wakes suddenly, and for a long moment he cannot tell if the thunder in his ears is that which persists from within the cage of his own chest, or the residue of a dream that has been his constant companion since childhood. His mistake is in considering the dream at all, as if acknowledging the thing is all it needs to sink those spindly fingers into the tender of his roiling gut.

There will be no more sleep tonight.

Tension tightens in the dark of his mouth as he heaves himself away from the tangle of deciduous trees, only looking upwards for the briefest moment to note the indigo black of a star strewn sky straining to find him through the branches above. Where once he had marveled at those tiny sparks of light, the same ones spilled over so much of his face and legs, he pretends they mean nothing to him - and maybe that is true, now, when the one he traced constellations with is forever sleeping beneath such violent fathoms of sea.

He flinches, blinks once too slowly, disappears into the black of deep forest where the stars can’t find him.
Where the dream, now fully awake and watching him, can’t show him the things he would otherwise prefer to lose to the blur of time since passed.

He thinks the dark is safe, these places of deep forest where the moon can’t spill silver over the curve of his glittering spine, where there are so few faces that turn to watch him as he pours like shadow through the roots of ancient trees. But he is not paying attention, not hearing anything but the thunder inside his own chest, and so he does not notice when the burbles of a quiet stream start to whisper in the dark.

Does not notice until his hooves touch the waters edge, lap at his heels.
He is not thinking when he pauses and allows his eyes to fall, to find the mirror of a face looking back up at him with such dead, dark eyes.

“Do I know you?” He breathes, wonders at his own reflection, at the trails of bright gold stardust along his face and over the tips of his ears, spun into the strands of his mane and illuminated at the ends. He examines the points of glowing lights on his chest, a constellation of seventeen stars though he isn’t sure which one it might be.

But it isn’t until his dark gaze settles on the thick curve of golden, glowing light tracking beneath each eye and over the curve of a clenched jaw that he truly comes undone. Guilt explodes inside his chest, breaks each rib until he feels like gagging on it, until he is sure that the storms buried beneath his skin will consume him - until he is afraid that they won’t and he will be left to fester like a wound. He inhales raggedly, just once, grasping at control while the metallic scent of ozone stings in his nose.“No.” He groans, so quiet - and even he cannot tell if the sound is trapped inside him like the thunder in his chest or the arcs of lightning in his eyes.

OBSIDIO

A Brand New Day

Mon, 31 Aug 2026 21:19:04 -0400

The morning arrived comfortably warm, the rising sun still unyielding to the arrival of autumn. Still, time marches on, as was evidenced by the gilding around the edges of the leaves that rustled in the comforting breeze. Birdsong rode the gentle wind, a medley of voices that intertwined into the rest of nature’s backdrop.

The young prince rubbed against the rough bark of a tree, letting out a final yawn as he began his day. A dark ear flicked, and he found himself absentmindedly naming the species - a warbler, a mourning dove, a flicker - and could occasionally make out a message within the chortle. His granddam had spent his first year teaching him about the birds, giving them names and what to listen for. He still had a long way to go to call it communication, however certain words stood out from the rest. . . . Berries . . . Stream . . . Fair winds . . . it was enough to point him in the direction of breakfast.

As he began to amble through the unfamiliar forest, his mind wandered to what had been. He was named after a bird, his mother had told him. A rook is a black bird, a relative to crows and ravens. He had arrived to the world jet black, a mess of feathers and long limbs with white ticking on his face, immediately unafraid. Though he had greyed out to roan, his mother had never stopped calling him her “little bird,” much to his dismay in front of the other colts and fillies. Even on the day of his departure, she had mussied his forelock affectionately, wishing her little bird a beautiful life.

That journey, which had only started a few months ago, led him here. A strange new land, no friends or family, and countless opportunities. At the very least the birds here did not lie, which was a benefit to him; he arrived at a crisp stream and dipped his head to drink before moving over to a bush still heavy with fat sweet brambleberries.

And so, our little bird’s story begins.

|| OOC: Here goes nothing! I’ll make this post pretty at some point. Open to anyone who wants to meet the newest addition!

swear i'm awake...

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 18:28:12 -0400

it's not a prestidigitation

The aching was deep.

The rattle of his own skull and clinking of golden teeth echoing in his piked ears as he opened and shut his jaws, body searing with pain as he heaved himself off of the ground. He craned his neck and tipped his heavy horned head for hollow sockets to gaze at the dark fleshy wings that protruded from his sides. He strained as he stretched them in and out, feeling the awkwardness of sharp splayed finger-like limbs that helped to stabilize the sensitive leathery membrane between them. The cool air that brushed against the exposed skin made him cringe; he had never felt anything like this when he had his perfect feathered wings.

He hissed in a shaking breath as he remembered the events prior to his waking here...the price he paid for that gold. "Goddess be damned..." he snarled as his gold teeth clicked with the words that rumbled from deep within his chest. The sound a horrible clinking reminder of what she had done to him. Distorting him into this monster...he didn't care he had stolen from her. All he cared about was himself and what she had done to him, and he would never forgive her nor forget it either.

Porthos surveyed the forest around him, dark and filled with the heady scent of decaying leaves and damp soil. He had no idea where the goddess had sent him, and he knew this sure as hell was not the home he once knew. Slender black legs carried him forward at a slinking walk with his piked ears swiveling to take in the sounds of the forest, alert to the sound of potential company. Be it benevolent or malevolent. At this point he didn't care who he ran into, so long as they could tell him where the hell he was. Following a slender trail of brown and reddish leaves, he weaved through thick forest for what seemed like hours with seemingly no end in sight. He would fly if not for the thick canopy of the trees making it impossible to access the skies above. As well as the intense aching pain his body felt with each movement he made.

He had no idea if it were day or night with how dark it was here, and he wondered if this was some sort of never-ending forest the goddess had sent him to wander for eternity... the thought making his rage begin to boil. His silky black tail swished irritably, catching stray strands upon the grabbing thorny clutches of thorn bushes as he passed between them. Would this trail ever end?

porthos

image by myself

Word Count: 438

is it still grave robbing if you only take bones?

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 23:17:06 -0400

ABRUS

Abrus allowed time to continue to pass by him as he cycled between the now-familiar woods of the Forest and Chamber. He was still trying to learn how things worked here in Beqanna and the environment had been a much easier puzzle to solve, thanks to his affinities, than that of the population. It seemed peaceful enough, though he suspected that meant there was a bloody past.

He doesn't remember if there was a time where he had been good at conversation. He doesn't remember his youth, what he had been as a child, or even his parents.

Sometimes this is troublesome, but Abrus doesn't bother trying to delve into any of that. If he has forgotten something, he reasons, it was for a reason.

So any lessons on how to start a conversation have been lost, encouraging the grullo stallion to get creative.

It's late afternoon in the forest, the shadows under the trees growing cold as the sunlight begins to slip away. He finds what he is seeking by the base of a cluster of pines, the needle-litter sending up wafts of fragrant air as he disturbs it with his hooves. The branching, wooden antlers he usually sports are small today — and they twist and bend to avoid getting tangled with any branches as he moves about. His companion rests on a low, dead and broken branch of one of the pines — their eyes a matching glowing white as they share their vision.

Abrus does not need to see for this but he finds he wants to anyway.

He is not too deep into the forest, and finds that he is hoping someone will come along and wonder what he is up to as he reaches down into the soil with his magic and begins to tug on the bones he finds there, bringing them up to the surface.

who am i to complain, sleaze

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 18:43:49 -0400

i finally got sewed up
Set a time and i showed up

Years have passed.
Decades, perhaps.

And yet Isakov remains, has always remained, quiet in the way he has lurked. A thing made for love, not from it, he has understood that his place is in the shadows. He’s known it in the way he has only hurt the things he himself loved. Sigrid, darling girl, has gone. She had always been more fond of Sleaze, as though she’d understood that there had been something dark about Isakov.

Has he changed all that much? He has not fashioned himself into anything more fanciful than a star-touched bastard in so long he is not certain he’d be able to if he tried. The illusion had come so naturally to him, once.

But it had not all been an illusion, had it? No, he had known what it felt like to love something honestly. It had not all been for show. It couldn’t have. He’d loved desperately and he’d let it destroy him. He’d let it chase him into the shadows.

He emerges now only because that color, that deep purple, it is as familiar to him as his own skin. He catches only a glimpse at first and thinks it must be Sigrid. But it is not Sigrid.

It is Sleaze.

And Isakov, old Isakov, he smiles, relieved. Sleaze, he calls, only to find that no sound has left his mouth. He has only thought it. He does not rush in his approach, only walks purposefully until their strides match and he settles into an amble.

“Sleaze,” he finally says and the shape of the name on his tongue alone is enough to relax muscles that have been tensed for decades.

isakov

I've lost the foreground watching the horizon; any

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 18:14:14 -0400

I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife

He longs for quiet, but not this kind of quiet.
He wants a quiet of the mind, of the soul – not of the world around him. It is not the stink of abandonment, but the gentle pressure of the quiet
(the dark)
inside.
Instead, he has this – a forest that feels bereft of life. Some things stir, sure – the susurrus of birds’ wings, the subtle shifting of leaves under a beetle’s foot. But mostly, it feels so goddamn quiet.

He does not know what is becoming – or has become – of him. He knows he is different, now, that something thrums under his veins. But he is so used to changing, see! His body has never truly been his, not for a long time. His body has too long been distorted at the whim of the dozen strange worlds he has been thrust into.
So how is this any different?
So what if the world seems to be falling apart?
(He never knows if the things he’s witnessed were his doing, or if they were even real at all. Things burst into flame, sometime. The rocks turn into tigers. A cackle screeches out into the darkness, emanating from nothing and everything at once.
But there is never anyone else around to react. And Sleaze does not trust his mind. He does not trust anything.)

He is hopeless in his movement, trudging along a path that has begun to disappear back to the forest. He feels a strange pang of sadness, then, and whether it is for the disappearance of a once-loved trail or for the new growth he crushes beneath his feet, I could not tell you.
(He must not be entirely hopeless, then – for he moves still. He moves still.)

Sleaze

I haven't written in a million years

hate me today, hate me tomorrow

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 14:12:02 -0500

dropping little reels of tape to remind me that i'm alone

playing movies in my head that make a porno feel like home

He creeps through the overgrown trees quietly. Branches and leaves catch in the ratted tendrils of his mane and tail, pulling and tugging as he pushes on. The glow from his skin momentarily lights up the bark of each tree as he passes by. It has been some time since his mother abandoned him along a creek in some strange, seemingly abandoned land. He wasn't sure what he had done wrong in the short time he had spent with her. He fell asleep as a newborn, awoke suddenly older and watched her walk away. Ghoulish. was the only thing he had heard her say.

Unfortunately for him, he drew a short straw in the game of life. A dark god as a father and a narcissistic leech of a mother left him with nothing and no one. Life is not kind to everyone, it is a hard, painful lesson learned young when dealt those cards.

The young creature stopped when he came across a small clearing. He leaned against a tree, scratching his glowing yellow green skin against the rough bark. Slivers of daylight speckled the ground through small openings in the tree cover. He turned his orange eyes towards the sky, wondering exactly what time of the day it was. He lost track in the depths of the forest where no sun shone through. It was quite apparent when night did fall, though, as his skin would rot away to leave patches of death and decay only to knit itself back together like nothing had ever happened when morning returned.

Perhaps that's why his mother didn't want him. A rotten, radioactive looking child with a skeleton painted across his body. Who could blame her?

He hears a rustle and crackling of twigs and flinches. Ears pricked up as he turned his head to watch with glowing orange eyes. Was his mother returning for him?

ghoulish

Image Credit

nightmares are our memories

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 00:36:27 -0500

harrowed

Harrowed had woken to the sound of a scream in a copse of trees that he did not remember stumbling into. By the time his red eyes open there's no one around and an unsettled feeling rises up, coating his body in an uncomfortable coolness that cannot be shaken.

It remains as he stands. His body feels… different. Like he is still inhabiting another shape that isn't his own.

When he tries to shape shift into the canine beast, nothing happens. There isn't even an emptiness, really, and he would have expected there to be one if he were somehow no longer a bodach. That was who he was — who he had always been. It was part of his identity. He was a bodach.

Perhaps he is just too weary? Even that short nap hasn't made up for the hell his body and mind have gone through in… well, he no longer knows how many days it has been or for how long he was trapped inside that other world.

There is enough energy, at least, for his brain to remind him of all his worries about his family. He needed to know if those were just echoes of them used to torment him or if they were trapped somewhere too. So he makes his way to the forest, knowing Torryn can often be found haunting here. It's as familiar to him as the Dale and the comfort of the shadows does a little to soothe that chill clinging to him.

It feels foolish to call out loud when just wandering will do the trick. Either he'll pick up Torryn's scent or his dad will pick up Harrowed's. The white stallion is trailed by a bank of shadows, though this is not entirely out of the ordinary for him, and his expression is sour with exhaustion and anxiety.