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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


    oh what a tangled web we weave
    #1

    It’s time.

    Belly heavy with child, the old mare picks her way through the bones on the beach. She’s an odd looking thing, pale grey speckled with black, with white eyes, and a pale white marking in the shape of a spiderweb covering the left side of her dark face. She pauses every once in a while, head lowering to inspect the odd cobweb-covered skull, before muttering to herself under her breath and continuing on her way.

    She walks like this for some time, weaving in and out of old skeletons, until she comes upon a little thicket of mangroves - a sign of her nearness to the Jungle. She settles herself beneath them, not caring about the muck at their roots, and soon her body begins a process that she knows all too well.

    Her body begins to shudder and lurch and her voice rises, humming an odd, incomprehensible tune. After a few long moments and one last push, a little winged colt lies in the mud at her side. The old mare rises quickly to her feet and begins to clean him off, nudging and whuffling at the boy all the while. “She’ll be here soon, the bitter one. We must get you ready for her.”

    She nudges at the boy and he looks up at her, dark brown eyes wide in confusion. “Come now, hurry up. She’ll take care of you. She’ll try. Better than I could. Better than I have.” The boy pulls his legs beneath him and tries to stand, legs shaking with the effort. “Hurry, hurry. All the threads converge here.” Finally, still shaking, his body rises up, up, until he stands at her side. She watches as he wobbles closer, and lets him latch on to drink. But after only a few moments she pulls away, leaving the little boy blinking up at her in more confusion. “I must do it you know. They’ll kill you otherwise Lauchlan. She won’t know, she won’t be able to save you. So I must do it. I’m sorry. They’re beautiful but I must do it.” And with a quick, decisive movement she lunges and crushes her teeth about the thin, delicate bone connecting the boy’s right wing to his body. She grinds her teeth viciously until the wing drops away, then she moves to the left wing and crushes its connecting bone as well. When it too falls to the sand she steps back, pulling herself away from the child. The poor boy shrieks and his legs collapse beneath him as he begins to sob in shock and pain. “Mumma?!!”

    The mare ignores him though, white eyes turning to look out across the dark ocean waters. Then, with the blood still on her lips she whispers. “Daughter, I am ready.”


    LAIKEN
    oh what a tangled web we weave


    @[riva]
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    #2
    Riva wakes with a start;
    She is not overly given to nightmarish dreaming, but her dreams had been dark that night and full of spiders. Spiders? A thread of horrifying remembrance uncurls in her and Riva abolishes it with a snort, and a stamp of her hoof against the loam. There is no cause to travel down this trail of thought, she thinks, casting her eyes about for anything that could serve as a distraction. She cannot shake it, like a cowbweb; it haunts her the entire time she spends in the comfort of the Jungle that she serves until restless, she ambles off and finds herself near the mangroves that signify the end of one land and the beginning of another - the beach.

    Riva has not come here to die, she is far too lively for death to lay his hands upon her now.
    She is curious though, now that she is here and here smells like the mare newly come amongst them, talking of bones and other nonsense that she most likely turned a disinterested ear to. The beach reeks far more than the mare did, and Riva can feel an itch beneath her fur that she cannot shake, much like the feeling from earlier. She is careful to pick her feet up and avoid the pitfalls of ribcages and pelvises that seek to trip her up on her return to the Jungle. Riva has had enough of this stinking shoreline and the pinch-claw threats of crabs that pluck the eyes right out of the heads of dead horses that thankfully, are none that Riva knows.

    Laiken should be here, she thinks spitefully; not caring one bit that it is ill luck to think so poorly of one’s own mother but Riva does, she has no love for that pathetic animal that abandoned her. She cannot even think of Laiken as a horse, as a mother - Riva bore witness to Hael’s abandonment too, and recognized this pattern in the spotted mare. The family took Hael in better than they did Riva though, and she was flung aside without so much as a thought or a care. Her bitterness welled up in her, rough like the sea that slavered beyond the shore. She stopped and stared at it for a moment, or for longer than was necessary until the tide crept closer to her feet and she backed up hastily. “Yuck,” she spat, a clump of scraggly mane lying where her hooves had been moments ago. This place was far too creepy for her, so she turned tail to it and began the trek back to the Jungle.

    She comes back to where the mangroves thicken and the fresh water is brackish with salt from the nearby sea. On the edge of it stands a mare, a colt new to her side and Riva is about to pass them by but something bids her to stop, look and listen. She cannot make out the pattern in the mare’s fur, or the way her face is marked in a way that Riva has never forgotten but she hears the mare name the boy then prattle off about having to do something. The bay tovero watches in fascinated horror as the mare attacks the colt and savages his wings from his sides. “Oh my stars!” she swears softly, her tongue thick with the familiar metal tang of blood in the mouth - she must have bit her cheek in shock at what she witnessed.

    That is when the mare turns her head towards the ocean and Riva’s mouth gapes open --
    No! It cannot be possible, not here - not now, not like this!
    She is stunned into silence and stupidity by the pale marking sprawled intricately across that dark face; recognition and hate collide sharply inside of her and she spits the name into the foul beach-wind, “Laiken.” Purpose and passion fuel her now, push her forward as much as the injustice of what she has just seen does. Was it not cruel enough to abandon her, then Hael? But this, this is low even for Laiken! Bitter, she storms forward until her nose is inches from the mare’s nose - the mare that gave her life, pah! Riva is visibly shaken by the anger that shores up her bones, “What have you done?” Her tone is accusatory, spittle flying from her angry mouth.

    “What have you done to him?”
    She is demanding, just as she is decisive - punishment must be meted out and she must be the one to do it, that colt deserves better than this deranged thing for a mother. Riva spares him a fleeting tender look before focusing wholly upon the mare in front of her, she cannot even reconcile it with the idea of ‘mother’ because she never had that. In her hate, she realizes that it is too late for Laiken to save herself - she must die, and Riva gives her no further chance at an explanation. She spins on her haunch rather quickly (but let’s face it, Riva is not a quarter horse) and lets fly a kick with a back leg that is aimed to land squarely on Laiken’s jaw. She expects the old mare to be slow and stupid, too stunned to retaliate, and that is when she kicks out again, having aimed at the chest this time.

    The last blow is the death blow that she deals her, a rear and a hoof brought down upon the crown of her skull. Riva stands over the fallen corpse of her mother (at last, she recognizes her as that!), blowing out heavily from force of her hate and the assault. It seems forever before she can catch her breath and turn towards the colt - “I’m sorry you had to see that. It wasn’t right what she did to you.” She nudges him up, encouraging him to stand and follow her. “Come, you are mine now.” Her mouth is tender against the torn places in his shoulders where those beautiful baby wings used to be; her tongue soft against the ruin as she licks it from him, smooths back the upright tufts of mane and champs at his rump gently. “Come little one, we cannot stay here.”
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    #3

    Here lies Laiken
    Daughter of Errant and Lea
    Mother of Riva, Hael, Layton, Locklyn and Lauchlan

    She's lived a long, hard life, and now it's finally time for her to find peace in the afterlife.
    She does not blame Riva for what she did. She's seen this end coming for a long, long time.
    She leaves no goodbyes but this - "I am so sorry for all the pain that I have caused."

    LAIKEN
    oh what a tangled web we weave
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