"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
05-30-2015, 12:46 PM (This post was last modified: 05-30-2015, 03:15 PM by Nyryn.)
Grey. Everything was Grey. Her heart, her soul, the skies, her outlook on life. Everything was cold, right down to her bone. She'd been bitter. Cold and bitter and lost and alone. It hadn't been a great life after leaving Orange County. She remembered fondly now, how Hakeem had been a caring and astute steed to her mother, how he had been a fatherly figure to her growing up. But it all came too much, she grew bitterly twisted as the seasons changed from winter, to spring, when the leaves fell in autumn on the County, she had disappeared. Alone. Far away, but never far enough. She saw all but said nothing. Was cool and calm, but inside a tempest rage boiled.
The blue roan mare wandered the meadow; as vast and vacant today as her mind. She had her wings stretched out but lazily dragging on the ground as she walked, each footfall seemed to take an eternity. She wondered if her mother's bleak outlook on life was hereditary, but often pinned her ears at the thought.
She was never going to be like Locket. she couldnt. She wouldn't.
But part of the blue lady thought that maybe, maybe she was half way here. But whereas Locket would die eventually. Nyryn was cursed to live on and on.
Such a bleak existence, an ageless and bleak existence. She was unsure whether or not the Forest Frontiers was a permanent fixture or a temporary boarding, but she needed space to think, space to contemplate.
And contemplate, with the world on her shoulders, Nyryn did.
• charon x locket • wings, immortality •
html by charmx, image by fallenangelgirl on deviantart
OOC: The joys of roleplaying with yourself -- Feel free anyone to reply also! The more the merrier!
kiss my eyes and lay me to sleep
Like most of Locket's children, she too had been forgotten, discarded, unwanted. Like a doll upon a shelf, tossed aside when the fascination wore off. For Lye, there had never been a fascination. Her pumpkin coloured eyes had looked upon her mother and had seen her horror, her fear. Automatically she had been tossed aside, unwanted. Attacked. Attacked for being born? What sort of mother did such a thing? Lye was a troubled young girl, she wore her heart upon her sleeve. And spent a long time of her life roaming The Beach. the stench of death she had found becoming, almost comforting. But there comes a time in a girl's life when she needed to escape the salty air, the sand in her coat. So the Meadow, it was.
Like a raven she flew through the snow, her canter as fast as the snow could let her go, and her unsteady right hind could allow. But she went, she went with a blinded fury, a cascade of ivory splaying around her limbs in a furious flurry. She had no brakes, no intention of stopping; it was the entire meadow or nothing, but she needed to run. She needed the escape. the flashbacks of her past, she ran from quicker. Her stride lengthening, nearing a full gallop, she closed her eyes.
If she hit a tree, she would lay there, stunned. staring up at the darkening sky and would make a wish upon a falling star.
But she didn't. instead, she came across a very familiar blue roan mare; it was the raven wings that gave her away, and the two toned eyes. As forlorn and lost as Lye's own. The black mare careered to a halt, a flurry of snow flying at her face, knotting in with her long mane. Unkempt. Forgotten. There was a beauty there, somewhere, hidden behind the pain, the turmoil. But her orange eyes lit up a little, a better memory taking hold.
Watching Nyryn fly around the grove of orange trees, knocking down the juiciest citrus fruit from the top. It was perfect, for a while, but the doubt, the pain, it came back and crept like needles behind her eyes. But Lye was back in the here and the now, the present could be a wonderful gift, if one stayed in it long enough. She extended her muzzle, breathing erratic and sharp breathes, her lungs filled with the icy air of winter, her breath holding in her throat. Nervous, anxious.
"Nyryn? is that really you?" her word is a hoarse whisper, through almost gritted teeth. Lye breathes deeply and hoarsely and lowers her head, low and low to the ground where she feels the most doubting lie touch her mind. The blue roan was an illusion, a trick of her lonely mind. She was just thinking of the past, the little good times she had. It was inevitable to get lost in her mind's tricks.
"No, my mind's playing tricks again. It can't be."
But maybe, maybe it was.
• busted x locket • orange eyes, immortality • no one •
this will never end, ‘cause i want more, more, give me more
You know what else is gray? Lagertha, the Amazonian General. She’s not like a cloudy-day gray or a winter-gray… more like a steel and iron gray. A metal-hard gray, that some might say penetrates to the very center of her heart.
It isn’t true, of course. Lagertha has a red, fleshy heart like everyone else. She does, however, tend to frown upon emotions and the sort of things that allow one to be weak. Or maybe that’s just an excuse she uses, because she just hasn’t met that special someone yet.
Today, Lagertha decides she needs to feel the cold air on her skin. It helps to clear her head, leaves her senses more crisp and awake than the dull, heavy heat of the Jungle. She loves that blanketing, all-consuming heat, but just like someone leaving the sauna, that first breath of freshness leaves her tingling and awake and alive. Today, the General isn’t doing much of anything. She should be doing something, of course - stealing or battling or what have you - but Lagertha doesn’t feel the need to prove herself at the moment. Maybe later. Maybe when Spring comes.
The first thing she sees when she enters the Meadow is some silly mare running at breakneck speed (literally, she could trip and break her fucking neck) with her eyes closed. She knows she should intervene, but something else in her assumes the black woman has an actual, active death wish. Lagertha’s gaze follows the mare’s progress, and when she finds that at some point, the mare has opened her eyes and does not, in fact, fall and break any number of limbs, she follows, rightfully curious.
And then there are three - the two who seem to know each other, one blue and one black - and the tattooed, thorny General. She bears the vine and rose in a twisted, Nordic pattern on her chest, as a sigil that they may or may not know. It doesn’t take a genius to identify the morose, contemplative expression on one, and the careless state of the other. She too, carries twigs and leaves in her half-Andalusian mane but it is because accumulating such in the Jungle is inevitable. Besides, it makes her look a little more wild, don’t you think?
So. Two not-so-happy mares and Lagertha. She interrupts them shamelessly, commenting on the general state of things as she sees it. Is is such a very Lagertha like thing to do. “You two seem like the antithesis of happiness. Throwing some sort of pity party, are we?”
OOC: Yay something remotely interesting ? please forgive terrible emo girls here, they need a big bunch of flowers each.
The darkness in her heart crept and spread like a slow working disease, like the rust on a polished metal keepsake, when forgotten and lost, tossed out in the cold, it rusts and grows mould. The blue mare could feel her bones numbing from the cold, her joints ceasing her in place. She'd make s fine statue, the winged mare stranded in the meadow, stuck in the in between. A form of purgatory.
But there was movement in this purgatory, and Nyryn was reminded she was alive. Her senses got the better of her, ears alert and pointed at the incoming obstacle, eyes piecing together parts of the scene through the cloud of snow flurries. It was her nostrils that caught the memorable scent, it's the blood within her veins. The tarnished blood from their mother, she'd recognise that anywhere.
Nyryn used her wings to detract the oncoming mare's speed, she arched them in such s way to protect herself, but she ended up covered in s fine dusting of the ice. Her pupils dilated, transfixed upon the black painted mare. It's the eyes, always the eyes, as orange as sunset, but as dead as the last rays of twilight.
"Lye?" her mouth twists and contorts, the name becoming a rotten taste in her mouth. Her mismatched eyes looked at the black mare, her sister, younger, finer, still lost, still unkempt.
"No, you're not imagining it, unfortunately. " her tone changes instantly. Cold, bitter like the strong winds that pulled at the gnarled trees behind them. When you can't hate yourself no longer, your hate seeps from within and burns others, blistering like lava. Nyryn is ready for another retort but someone else appears. Iron and silver on the dying light. A crown might as well have been placed crookedly stop her head as she spun a tale of fancy with every step she took. Her cool words crept to her ears and automatic reactions kicked in. The blue mare turned her head, her eyes away from her sibling and upon the new arrival. The winged mare's tone was clipped, sardonic.
"Perhaps you'd want front row tickets. Angst sells pretty well, right? Everyone loves watching the misery of others." a long, deliberate pause. Ears tucking low against her poll. "Who are you? Some voyer who gets satisfaction from watching others feel pain?
• charon x locket • wings, immortality •
html by charmx, image by fallenangelgirl on deviantart
OOC: forgive me for this one, I don't even think she knows what she's doing. I love Lagertha by the way, she's something else
kiss my eyes and lay me to sleep
Her flanks heaved with ragged breaths, more from shock than the exertion of the run. It's not everyday you come across family members you hadn't seen since you both were all legs and weedy bodies. Lye watched her sister, noticed the signs. She hasn't changed, a little grey around the eyes, the temples. But she was still Nyryn. At least the raven mare haphazardly guessed. She reeled slightly, as her sisters wings unfurled. A few buckled steps and Lye managed to regain herself. This just is s nightmare. She's on the beach now, laying in the cove surrounded by bones and lost souls. She wasn't reslly here. Not hearing the bitter undertone in her sisters voice.
That cut deeper and harsher than the ice in the wind. Which crept along her moth eaten skin like spider legs, crawling, unwelcoming, uncomfortable.
Lye turned her attention to the sudden appearance of another; a strapping mare adorned with markings, drawings that stood out. Lye narrowed her gaze, studying then, analysing them with a silent scrutiny, her feathered ears bowed sideways, hearing the mare's assumptions. The usual happened then, like it would have back in time. The blue mare answered first and foremost. Forgetting the shadow beside her, the black mare with the strange orange eyes. When the air was clear, no undercurrent of disgust, no bittersweet song reminding her of the beach's lost souls, she put a foot on the ground and cracked her tail against her hocks. An innocent and paling look in her eyes.
"A party? I never saw an invitation." her words cut close to the wind, her voice potentially lost in the air. So she said again, but moved closer, her neck snaking out and teeth snapping closed. Perhaps the long years of solitude made her insane, or maybe it was living with the ghosts and the bones, but the black mare was certain she made absolute sense, even if she wasn't.
"No one ever invites the strange kid. Their the ones in the corner. Thinking up ways to murder their neighbour, whilst maintaining the sweetest smile." and so the bare did, put on her brazen smile, scarily it was all teeth and nothing sweet about it.
• busted x locket • orange eyes, immortality • no one •
this will never end, ‘cause i want more, more, give me more
Ugh. Lagertha is so misunderstood. Though she doesn’t know it, Ea thinks she’s a little stupid because she doesn’t know how to manipulate those in power - which is wrong, she’d just rather not lay down her viper of a mother. Some of her sisters think she’s power-hungry, which is true, but the ultimate reason is because she doesn’t think Scorch is a good Queen. She thinks the mare is more concerned with advancing her own growing tribe of children than doing what’s best for the Kingdom. She thinks Scorch will always be like that, because of her Mommy issues.
And then there’s these two, who answer her sarcastic words with more angst and bitterness. Oh, ladies… Lagertha may not have much of a visible heart, but she’s no sadist.
Their reactions amuse her, as they assume so much. They answer with each other’s names, and so now Lagertha has the advantage of mystery. “No, I’m not a voyeur. You wear your emotions on your skin. I’m Lagertha, General of the Jungle.” With her title on her lips, she sidesteps out of reach of the Lye’s snapping teeth. She could have just as easily sprouted her thorns (or even worse, diamond spikes) as a deterrent, but she is not here as the aggressor. Anyone in her position would try and offer some sort of remedy in their Kingdom - and wouldn’t that just be perfect? To bring in two (maybe just one? who knows?) new recruits and build up her “side” of the Amazons.
In helping herself, she helps others.
Besides, have you ever heard of the mad Grim Reaper? Her blood runs through Lagertha’s veins, and so i suppose there must be some predilection to insanity in the gray General as well. Either way, she is unphased with Lye’s words, simply rolling her eyes a bit at the dramatics. “Strange or not, you seemed to have some half-formed death wish, running like that in the snow and ice. So what’s wrong? Come out with it, both of you.” She uses her ‘mother talking to a child’ voice, which is only a couple of steps down from her ‘General talking to a soldier’ voice.
Black tipped ears twitch, shifting like twin peak radar, they listen, they hear all, but they only pick out what they want to hear sometimes. She was deaf, the sort of deafness you put on when you only wanted to hear good things, the things that complimented you, the things that defined you and made you think, "Oh, I'm not that bad." No, she was being deaf this time because she was blocking out the past, the pain that clung to her like some disease to a tree. Black and imposing, it ate away at her insides until they were like jelly, a mass of nothing but a grey oblivion where her soul would have been.
The disease was her family, what little it seemed. The black mare before her, her orange eyes staring right through her as though she was some figment of a nightmare, a dream. She was a disease, or more like a broken arm. Given time, it would heal, but first you needed to sort things out. Sorting things out here, Nyryn thought, was completely removing the problem. Only then could she move on, not feel such a heavy weight upon her shoulders. It was doing terrible things for her back...
Nyryn's nose twitched, lips twisting into some sort of a smile, but then decided against it, and kept a plain, neutral mask. A facade of a brilliant little actress. She turned to the iron lady, with a new intrigue, her shoulders completely turning with her. There was no Lye. There was no history, there was just now.
"Lagertha. Of the Amazons." her tongue tastes, it swallows her name, storing it in her mind. An Iron lady with a face strong with authority, a tone that bore down like the General she added to her title. Nyryn cast a quick stare Lye's way and her two-toned eyes narrowed upon her. She was a lost little daydream, a night terror in the evening. Her mind addled with problems, her orange eyes a stark reminder that she was never wanted. Nyryn wanted to shake her then, grab her by the withers and give her a good shake, ridding her of that selfish notion. No, they were all forgotten, and they were never wanted, she was not that special little snowflake that was cast aside because she was different. They were cast aside because their mother was the problem, not them. A bitter pill she swallowed then, perhaps it had taken too long, but the blue roan had finally managed it.
"Ignore her. She nags like some fly, demanding your attention. I'm sure she just needs a good swatting." The winged mare shook her head, her dark mane curtaining her face, so none of them saw the darkness creep in her eyes. "Leave, Lye. Go back to sleep. Go back to where you've been hiding."
And she does. The black shadow of the mare retreats, her orange eyes like slits, but her head was low. It's a wound that her sister had just poured immeasurable amounts of salt in, and now, she was standing there with the coldest of glares, rubbing it right in. Oh she'll remember this. She'll remember that look, she'll remember those words. She'd imagine that her mother's words would have sounded the same, if she had ever been able to speak. Cold, like ice, grabbing her mind and never letting go. Lye vanishes then, an unsteady limp in her hind, hardly the most magnificent of exits, but it doesn't take long before the trees engulf her.
Nyryn watched her leave, the chill from the winter's breeze embracing her, but clutching at her cold little heart. It made some sort of a spasm in her chest. Guilt? She was uncertain, but she knew that this was the start of unburdening some of the dreadful baggage she was accumulating over the years. Her eyes find Lagertha and as if the black mare had never entered the meadow, Nyryn answered.
"I've had some unnecessary baggage weigh me down over the years, Lagertha. It seems I feel a little lighter now." there was some sort of admission there, some sort of hidden meaning, as to why she sent the mare away. The winged girl casts a quick glance back to the shadows, the broken boughs of trees. She'd been hiding in there, the orange eyed one, cold and lost in her own little nightmare -- she'd live, she'd survive. The sad part was that that was it, she would live, she would survive. A curse immortality was. A real kick in the teeth, when you despised the world you were allowed to live forever in.
"I'm Nyryn." for a moment she had an image of Orange Country, a flash of the painted Hakeem, then the warmth subsided and flashes of the steed that approached her in the field. Her stay at the Forest Frontiers was inevitably temporary. She was not the grandest at interaction, especially with a man that was strangely flippant. She didn't know where she stood, and that was saying something of the mare that drifted along the breeze. "Of nowhere."
• charon x locket • wings, immortality •
html by charmx, image by fallenangelgirl on deviantart
this will never end, ‘cause i want more, more, give me more
Lagertha does not understand how one can so easily disregard family. She has none. They are all long gone and dead, and she herself, some sort of magical miracle. Her story is long (though she tries her best to keep it simple and short) on the front end and short on the back end, and all you need to know is that aside from around a thousand nieces and nephews of varying ‘great’s’ and all those half-siblings on Carnage’s end, she is completely alone except for her son and her sisters. Grim Reaper once had a brood of children, but they are all gone now, their bones eroded and dust scattered to the wind - their flesh used as miracle grow for tall, tall trees.
She would kill to have a sibling, a cousin, a something.
She does her best not to judge them… much.
For all her silent judgement, she does nothing to stop Lye from leaving - if she is so easily moved by the other, the General will not stop her. She’s looking for someone with at least a little bit of backbone. They can have all the angst and sadness they want, but a little backbone is necessary. “Well that’s… good… baggage is so unnecessary.” Her gaze wanders back towards the retreating figure of Lye, and then semi-questioningly to Nyryn.
“Well, Nyryn of nowhere… do you want to be of somewhere? Or at least want to take a walk with me for a bit?”
She doesn’t know where they’ll go a-wandering. But she’s a decent listener.
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