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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


    o dark dark dark. they all go into the dark; any
    #1

    what turns up in the dark


    It is alone.
    It does not know how to be alone because it is Hers, it has always been Hers. She is the only thing who can speak to her, making her own chirps and trills. She is the one who finds meat, who turns the meat loose so it may hunt.
    (it is hungry but She is not here to show it what meat and She has said some meat is Bad and it does not know which but Bad is a dark words and when She says Bad it is frightened)
    (but it is so so hungry)
    It is alone because She went away and She had clicked softly and touched Her muzzle to its carapace and said something in the other words, the ones it can sometimes understand but not always, the noises are soft and mushy and stupid, it prefers the sharp noises, the trilling calls, the ones that mean yes and go and hunt.
    Hunt is the best word because it means there is meat, good meat, it means it can run and chase and feast.
    (sometimes it tries to say those words the way She does, the way the meat does, but its teeth are so so long and its tongue is so so long and what comes out is garbled and She laughs)

    It misses Her because it has no purpose now, nothing until She comes back. It wonders who is guarding Her.
    There are smells everywhere, meat-smells, and its tail twitches anxiously against its sides while it waits and waits forever for Her to come back and talk to it, trill out loudly and say hunthunthunt.

    CTHULHU

    reference here
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    #2
    Her breathing barely exceeded a whisper. Ebon vixen looked up from her drinking spot to behold this intriguing sight. He was like nothing she had seen before so she stands dead still. The scent coming from him wasn't familiar to her; was he from this world?
    What was he waiting for? Or more to the point, who?
    She noticed him twitching and he seemed on edge for some strange reason, like he had somewhere to be- something to do. Yet something was missing. What was missing?
    She watched him quietly, concluding that her scent had been picked up. Yet she stood still, no fear to be found in her, just curiosity. So White Noise stayed at her good distance, watching with interest..
    There is no fear in love... Because fear restrains us..
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    #3

    what turns up in the dark


    It is not alone.
    There is another, black like Her but not-Her. It does not acknowledge that the mare is lovely, dark and solidly built. It has little capacity for beauty, its brain tends much more towards the reptilian, the need to hunt and move and live. There is another need, the one magicked into it, the need to protect Her, follow Her, but it cannot do that now, it cannot, because She is gone and it is – was – alone.
    It wants to hunt, its belly feels hollow and empty but the meat is watching it and it is wary. The meat would make for a good hunt. It can smell the sweat and heat and oh it would like to hunt, to suck marrow from the bones.

    Instead it tries to listen to what She said as she whispered goodbyes against its carapace. So it does not hunt, not yet, it does not tear flesh and taste blood and sink its poisoned tail into soft lovely flesh.
    Instead it trills out, a birdlike chirp, meant to startle, meant to greet.

    CTHULHU

    reference here
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    #4
    since WhiteNoise quit (I believe) this thread is open Smile
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    #5
    Oh look, oh my star is fading
    She should probably be afraid.

    But then again, she shouldn't have a reference for this kind of thing. She shouldn't have in her memory the kind of creatures that had swallowed her inside the stars. She shouldn't remember too-tall running-things filled with mouths. She shouldn't remember tentacles that oozed with acid and crunched between her teeth. She shouldn't have still-healing raw wounds on her belly and her knees from a chase for a mare that she should never have known.

    She shouldn't, and yet, she does.

    She is wary, but she is not afraid. It doesn't seem to want to hurt, not the way the things in that dying world had wanted to hurt. There had been no doubt, with them. But with this creature, there is doubt. She can feel it, see it, hear it in the gentle way that it trills. It could hurt, she doesn't doubt it (indeed, ability to hurt is written in every line of its body, quite literally from head to tail), and yet, it doesn't.

    And so, against what some would call better judgment, in violation of every instinct she should have (and doesn't), she approaches it.

    There is nothing especially beautiful or graceful about her, unless perhaps you consider innocence and trust to be beautiful. She is simply bay, simply a filly, small for her age. Her eyes are a swirl of rainbow color, amorphous, shifting and coming together and changing colors like an iridescent cloud. The wounds on her barrel and her knees are mostly healed over, mostly scabs now. It's only inside that she's so very strange – inside her head the voices of the dead keep her company, an army of the young dead, now turned into an army of friends. They walk with her where she goes, a constant chatter in the background, but even they are silenced by the thing she now approaches.

    Maybe it's that she's seen death and is not afraid of it. Maybe it's that her heart is so pure that she insists on believing in love. Or maybe she's just got a few screws loose from all of that travel through space-time. Whatever the reason, she approaches it without hesitation, and she stops in front of it, at a reasonable conversation distance.

    "Hello." she speaks, and her voice is as soft and light as a feather.
    wrynn
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    #6

    what turns up in the dark


    It does not know fear. Its brain is more reptilian than equid, it is a predator and they are meat.
    (She is not meat, She is the one who brings the meat, who tell it to hunt, but it does not know where She has gone.)
    It was made to protect Her, made to hunt, and without those purposes it feels strange, like it has been hollowed. It is a monster but it is not like the Great Old Ones, it is instead something lesser, a monster but not a monster-god.
    (It serves a goddess, but that word is too long and tangled for it to use overmuch, instead, She simply is.)

    The meat comes closer and it can smell where the meat once bled. But the meat smells of other things, too, strange things and worlds it does not know of.
    (It does not know this meat – this girl - was an acolyte of the dark god, the one who would have Her dead in a moment, a long and storied history built between them, a tale of night magic and eclipses, of bones long sunk in the earth.)
    The meat makes a noise, a greeting-sound it has heard echoed in the land (one it has tried to repeat before She laughed and told it no).
    The meat is still too far away to catch but it thinks that as fast as the meat might be, it is faster. It is a hunter.
    But it does not hunt. It watches. Its jaws click together and trill out a noise, half-greeting, half-inquiry. But she does not respond to the noise.
    (Meat never does, expect perhaps to run, to begin the hunt.)
    “..el..” it says, the words mushy and strange and frustrating in its elongated jaw, “…lo.”

    CTHULHU

    reference here
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    #7
    Oh look, oh my star is fading
    When the creature responds to her, you might as well have told her that the underworld had burst open and all the dead foals would be spilling out back into the world. She is joyful, ecstatic even. If she were human, she'd clap her hands and run in circles.

    But (thankfully) she's equine, and so she settles for a peal of ringing, bell-like laughter, an expression of pure glee. Her eyes, rainbow-clouds, shift from color to color as she smiles at the creature. "El lo to you too." she says with a smile that would be infectious to a horse, but probably means nothing to the creature that stands before her.

    The creature's success with those two syllables makes her realize for the first time that it may not be able to talk so easily. She is quiet then, for a moment, simply watching it as her brain tracks back. Her thoughts catch on the trills, the things she'd mistaken for being something else, for being perhaps simple breathing, or the kind of unconscious gurgling that seems to be the hallmark of most living creatures.

    She looks at the creature, still remarkably without fear. "You didn't learn to talk, did you?" she asks, realizing almost immediately that it's a foolish question. How could it answer her if it couldn't even understand the question? How could she ever really talk to it if they could barely communicate?

    The voices in her head are silent on the subject.

    But in her infancy (recent as it was) she'd not known language either, and had found that there were other, better ways to communicate. And so softly, gently, watching for any kind of negative reaction from her new friend (and yes, she does consider even this strange creature a friend) she reaches out with a tender muzzle, aiming for a gentle touch on the creature's armored shoulder.
    wrynn
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    #8

    what turns up in the dark


    It is not a Great Old One, but perhaps there is a resemblance.
    It is not tentacle, nor has it devoured stars and spit out universes. It is a strange creature, certainly. An alien creature, certainly.
    But ultimately it is not divine in the way the gods are (or were, or will be – whatever the timeline is).
    If it could grasp such concepts as deities, it would call Her its god. She, who is dark and beautiful and dangerous; She, with glass-cut cheekbones and a way about her that summoned shadows to wrap about Her elongated legs. It was bred – made – to protect Her, to serve Her, to keep her safe in the daytime when She was weakened and needed to sleep.
    And in return She gave it meat, She spoke with it. She gave it purpose.
    But She left it.
    And so, strange but not divine, it is left to speak their mushy words and try to ignore the hollering ache in its belly.

    The meat’s face contorts and it follows the motions with slit eyes. It is keyed to movement, a sight hunter more than anything else.
    It says something else, something too quick and strange for it to comprehend. It understands talk, knows that means the slurry noises that come from the meat’s lips, the ones it has tried to emulate through a scaled beak meant much more for birtdlike chirps and trills.
    “..’an’t…” it says. Can’t, it means, but the consonant is too shrewd for its maw.
    Then the meta moves – comes closer - and its head is thrown up and the high alarm noise is trilled out, part confusion, part fear.
    It is not used to the meat approaching, only to it running away.

    CTHULHU

    reference here
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    #9
    Oh look, oh my star is fading
    She is not a great anything. She devours nothing but grass, and spits out nothing but words, sweet as only children can make them. She does not understand gods; she does not even understand Carnage, the living god who had sent her reeling through strange worlds and meeting strange monsters. And she certainly does not understand the creature before her, so foreign and yet so clearly trying not to be.

    Strangeness is not merely a product of one's shape. Strange is the girl who shouldn't exist, who was created by a magician and almost disowned by her family.
    Strange is a girl with rainbow eyes whose first word was an apology for something she couldn't even name.
    Strange is a girl whose best friends are ghosts but whose world is a smile.
    Strange is a small filly and a large, beaked creature meant to hunt her, not to chat.

    Strange is the noise that it makes when she reaches out, strange but clearly not positive. She recoils immediately, concern in her eyes. She's a smart thing, and she's figured out that talking does little good – and that complex talking does even less. She settles back on her haunches, drawing away, and looks it in the eye. Her face is etched with concern. "Sorry." The voice is soft again.

    "Not. Hurt." she says, wondering if it will understand any of what she's trying to say. Unsure if her message gets through, she decides to try an alternative tactic. Being from the jungle, she's encountered some of the animals that live there, and some of the noises they make seem closer to the noises her new friend (yes, she's decided they're friends) seems to be making. Some of the birdsong has always seemed soothing to her, and she tries to replicate a delicate purring trill. But she's as poorly suited to this noise as her friend is to human speech, and so all that comes out at first is some strange breathing, as though she's trying to lift her tongue from her mouth like an airplane.

    But after a few tries she manages something between blowing a raspberry and a hum. She looks to her new friend curiously, trying to catch her (his? Its?) eye. She makes the noise again, and this time it sounds a little bit like a breathy purr. Perhaps it's not exactly the right language, but she hopes, perhaps, it's somewhat close.
    wrynn
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    #10

    what turns up in the dark


    There is a history in its bones, and it doesn’t even know.
    Its sire – Her mentor – was a magic woman, of the same night-magic as Her. Machine second in the line of strange priestesses, and she had been the one to meet Carnage in the desolate place of his wasteland. She had been the one to fight him, to match him. Even as dawn came, as she waned. And then an eclipse had come, a night made fresh, and she had killed him (for a time, of course, but it had been the longest time, and when he walked again he walked as bones, a skeleton king).
    Cthylla (its Her, its queen, its master) knows this story, knows it well, but has not imparted it onto her pet, for she had no need. She does not think it particularly bright, but rather, as a guard dog – a companion with sharp teeth and claws.

    It might have understood the story and it might not have. Sometimes it thinks it is getting smarter – sometimes their mushy speech can be formed by its strange protruding maw, sometimes it feels like concepts are there, winking in and out of its blurred thoughts.
    Not Hurt the she-meat says, and it knows those words. It knows hurt - sounds like hunt, its favorite word. Is the she-meat speaking to it or of herself?
    It wants to hunt but it is no longer sure if the she-meat is meat, there is more talking and the she-meat looks it in the eyes and it does not know.
    (It would know if She were here, She would tell it yes, hunt or no, don’t hunt, but She is not here and it is forced to figure these things out on its own with its aching hollowed belly and stupid mushy words.)
    The she-meat surprises it by trying to make a noise. It’s a stupid noise, but it can see she is trying to imitate its trill. Nothing had tried that. She can speak to it, of course, because She is magical and strange and can speak in its head, make it understand.
    It doesn’t know humor, and wonders why the corners of its maw try to pull back.
    The she-meat is strange and it makes its head hurt trying to figure it out.
    “Muh…” it begins, “eeat?”
    It does not know if the meats identify as meat. It has never cared before. Meat has always been a mass, all the same, scattered across waiting to be hunted.

    CTHULHU

    reference here


    (imagining their entire interaction in my head cracks me up im not gonna lie)
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