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  • Beqanna

    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


    [open]  show me how to lay my sword down; any
    #1

    sometimes I think about the ones that we’ve replaced
    all the millions underneath the burnt and waste

    He is unphased by the dark, unphased by a sky he cannot recognize without constellations strewn across it like distant gems. He doesn't care that the sun has grown tired of shining and now hides beside the moon. It makes no difference whether it is day or night or something mangled in between, or that this winter is the most brutal he’s ever known. He does care that the monsters are made not of flesh but of darkness, though, because even the sharpened edges of his dark beak cannot tear shadow from itself, and he is hungry.

    His bones are a map of inelegant lines beneath his bay skin, leaving hollows along his spine and behind his hips where snow has fallen and frozen leaving him as whitecapped as any distant mountain. But easy prey has gone from here, fled the dark and the shadow and gone into hiding or hibernation for too long, and he is far too wasted to hunt larger game. Besides, what little was left of his morality objected to hunting anything larger than the chittering squirrels that used to fill these trees.

    Though it wanes now, as his ribs spring wider and the sound of his stomach wakes him from sleep, his humanity wanes.

    He hunts, but he has long since lost the expectation of finding anything. All the smaller animals know better than to be near the ground now, and those that remain are picked off by stronger beasts than he. So he finds nuts where he can, cracking them open with a furious kind of frustration to pick at the meat inside, but it is never enough, never, and he can feel himself disappearing.

    Where once he had been withdrawn by choice, by his inability to speak words with a beak too slippery for language, it is a growing madness that alienates him now, a fevered brightness in his pale brown eyes as his dark, horned head turns hungrily towards every sound. He is calculating, deciding, but it is almost always a horse with wide, terrified eyes stumbling through the dark and he is not yet that desperate.

    So he starves, and he is not the only one. He starves and he hunts and unravels into madness. He thinks of his mother and his father, and he is sure he knew their names once, but they are gone from him now. He can only remember their faces, though neither had been muzzled by a beak as he had been, so he pushes those memories away too because it is easier than trying to face the poisonous jealousy that creeps up through the cracks to try and stain him.

    and I get sad because, of course, we’ll be the same

    Auric
    all of history collapsing in its wake --
    Reply
    #2

    i'm told that to be human i must stand still
    you can try your hardest, but i never will

    She dreams of light, of far away lands. She dreams, and when she awakens, she finds herself elsewhere. Finds herself in places she had only imagined. Or rather, thought she had imagined. But there is never light. Not as there is in her dreams.

    She had long ago grown accustomed to curling up for sleep in one place and finding herself in another when she wakes. It has become routine now, to hunt in new places. She had once longed for home and stability, but as time passed, her definition of home had simply grown. Now it is all hers, as much as she could call anything truly hers.

    Though day and night has lost all meaning, she still sleeps and wakes. She still dreams. Today she finds herself in a place she has been to before. And as her form shrinks, fur ruffling and canine teeth replacing equine, her belly rumbles with hunger. But with the sun gone, life has faltered. Foliage refuses to grow and creatures small and large begin to waste away. Even the great carnivores are losing their food supply, stolen by the shadow beasts that maul and leave behind the bones to rot.

    Instead Ferran has been forced to grow clever. To forage beneath the earth where the smaller creatures descended into safety and hibernation. Though they may make small meals, they keep her well when others waste away.

    This is how she finds him - the beaked stallion with his bones protruding in clear evidence of starvation. There is madness in his hunger, in his hunt. Ferran slinks amongst the shadows, avoiding him at first. But the more she watches, the greater her sympathy grows.

    She can understand such madness.

    So she unearths the woodchucks. It is foolish to hunt for someone other than herself (there is not nearly enough to go around), but beneath the feral guise of the predator, her mother’s kindness still beats in her heart. She approaches with caution, flinging the small, limp bodies in his path before slinking back into the shadows to watch from safety lest he think her a better meal.

    ferran



    @[auric]
    Reply
    #3

    sometimes I think about the ones that we’ve replaced
    all the millions underneath the burnt and waste

    He is so lost to his hunger, to his madness, that he does not immediately notice when a second form melts into the shadows nearby. She is small and silent, a perfect predator with those jagged teeth and shining glassy eyes. When he does finally notice her it is only to pin his ears and snake his head threateningly in her direction, letting the fury of his suffering guide the fury of his exhausted movements.

    It isn’t until something lands by his feet that he truly forces his focus to sharpen. His nose names it before his eyes do, and immediately he is a flurry of starving irrationality, charging where she had been as though she needs to be chased off, as though the gift hadn’t come from her in the first place. Somewhere deep inside he understands that this is all madness, that she has no intention of stealing it back or else she wouldn’t have thrown it into his reach in the first place.

    But he cannot stop himself.

    He screams at her, gnashing his beak and warning with his horns, striking outwards with dark forelegs until the smell of warm death is more than he can bear, more than he can resist.

    The boy inside him that had wanted to be good and kind, to be someone his parents would be proud of is mangled and mashed down, wilting at this wildness that roars to life beneath his skin. But this is who he is now, this nearly feral creature. There is no kindness left. He is entirely the broken pieces of his best future, all jagged lines and sharp edges, all ruin.

    He snatches up the first groundhog, though his eyes never stop roving the dark for that canine threat. He can barely hold still, shifting and moving and unsure of where to keep his eyes, but the growling in his gut is what finally stills him and he gulps the large rodents down in mangled bites until there is nothing left and he is sick with his greed.

    He coughs once, his beak snapping in warning again as his eyes once more return to searching the shadow. If he could speak he might ask her why she had done that, what purpose does a wolf have giving up a meal for a stranger. But he is as silenced by his beak as he has always been, muzzled and mute, so the only hint of a question that escapes him is the questioning flicker of one single ear back and then forward again.

    and I get sad because, of course, we’ll be the same

    Auric
    all of history collapsing in its wake --


    @[The Monsters] hello please mess with his beak
    @[Ferran]
    Reply
    #4
    @[auric] nothing happens to your beak
    Reply
    #5

    i'm told that to be human i must stand still
    you can try your hardest, but i never will

    She is no stranger to predatory natures, not blind to the madness of hunger. Though a feeling creature lingers beneath the face of the wolf, she is still a predator at heart. And when the stallion charges her, she cannot quite prevent the low warning growl that rumbles from her throat.

    Sense prevents her from returning his aggressive posturing in kind even if she is not quite equine enough to prevent her own grumbling. Slipping quietly around the trunk of a nearby tree, she pads slowly through the shadows, giving him a wide berth. She should leave, she knows. Should leave him to a lonely meal and inevitable continued starvation. But she doesn't. Can't quite bring herself to.

    When he has finally finished his meal and settled into a more comfortable silence, ears twitching with cautious curiosity, Ferran finally settles as well. A soft and tentative whuff escaping her lips, she slinks forward a few steps. Yellow eyes fixed on him, she pauses a healthy distance away.

    For a long moment, she simply stares at him. Finally, with a slow caution, she settles onto her stomach. It's nearly impossible to count the minutes, but eventually her chin drops onto her paws, gaze still fixed on her new companion. A clear signal that she poses no threat.

    It is undoubtedly foolish to imagine he might accept her help. But she is just foolish enough to try.

    ferran

    Reply
    #6

    sometimes I think about the ones that we’ve replaced
    all the millions underneath the burnt and waste

    He doesn’t know what to make of it when the pale wolf lays down in the grass across the way. It is foolishness, he thinks, regardless of her purpose. So he pins his ears and snaps his beak, letting those dark oily wings unfurl at his shoulders so that he might seem larger than the emaciated creature he has become. The feathers ruffle and the wings lift higher, fall wider, but, for reasons he cannot name, he does not chase her off this time.

    It isn’t gratitude or debt, not kindness. He has none of those things left inside him anymore. He is more like his father than he realizes, and his father had been a man made soft only by the love of Auric’s mother. Love was dangerous like that. Auric could not imagine allowing anyone to have that kind of power over him, to cause that kind of change.

    But it didn’t matter, because certainly no one would try, no one would stay.

    He decides, after so many moments pass, that it is curiosity that tethers him here, and an unhealthy amount of stubborn arrogance. He could no sooner turn his back on her and leave than he could submit as she had - though he hardly trusted her submission. She was clearly well fed and well muscled, his opposite in this nightmarish new world.

    So he feigns indifference, though his cold, dark eyes never wander far from her pale shape. He grooms his wings with his beak, resettling the feathers and laying them smooth again while she watches. He scratches a foreleg with his horns, and when she still does not leave he allows his attention to resettle on her, but his gaze is hard and unfriendly, his blue ears pinned back so far they half disappear into his mane.

    and I get sad because, of course, we’ll be the same

    Auric
    all of history collapsing in its wake --


    @[The Monsters] hello please PLEASE mess with his beak
    @[Ferran]
    Reply
    #7

    i'm told that to be human i must stand still
    you can try your hardest, but i never will

    She remains still for a long while, patient, eyes fixed with the intensity only one truly committed could conjure. He remains distrustful, watchful even when he does not obviously glare at her. But he does not charge her again. Does not turn to leave.

    And that gives her hope.

    It is only when he finally refocuses his attention on her, gaze stony and ears pinned, that she recognizes him as more than just the predator. Like her, there remains an equine nature beneath it all. And she understands then that her goals cannot be accomplished if she lay hidden beneath the guise of the wolf.

    With another soft whuff, she slowly rises from her crouch, though she does not move forward. She stares at him for a long moment before stretching her neck out to shake her entire body, pale fur ruffling. But the ruffling does not stop, instead moving further, growing and shifting, limbs snapping until a dark blue mare stands where the wolf had been moments ago.

    As her pale gaze returns to him once more, her ears too flatten against her neck, a snort escaping her nostrils. She would not be intimidated by him, no matter how good her intentions were.

    ferran



    @[auric]
    Reply
    #8
    @[auric] your beak has mutated into phasing.
    Reply




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