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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


    Burn, baby burn. [Corvus]
    #1
    She was dead.  
     
    Of course she was dead. She had to be. The rumbling and the waves and lava. Taiga had come crashing down around her ears. Everyone ran like hell. Arete remembers that she had screamed. Leaping forward, she flashes into a large rambling siberian tiger. She clawed at the ground as she pushed as fast as she could. But while the world burned around her, and everyone she knew and loved were scattered to the four winds, she found that that occursed wall that had been erected was far too dense for her feline body to get through. She growled, scratching it at it... And then...  
     
    Black.  
     
    Eventually, she had woken up to blackness. There was nothing. No place to be. No food. No green. The trees were as charred sticks that were just barely hanging to the ground for life. The wolves were howling as they consumed every last living thing they could find. But Arete remained. She did not move. She did not eat. Eventually, her body shifted back to equine, and her fine pelt shrunk and wrapped around her frame. Her cheek bones stuck out and her belly bloated from lack of food.  
     
    She was sure she'd die there.  
     
    Of course she would. She was stuck. The Gods had punished Taiga for their insolence, and she had been the most insolent of them all. The daughter of Romek lowered her head to the burnt ground and wept, and waited for death to take her.  
     
    Except, much to her chagrin, it did not.  
     
    And eventually, the forests grew back, and the wall that had risen at the borders began to fall apart. Arete was far too weak to do much in the way movement, but she had enough to get her to the most removed portions of the forest. She had never felt more alone in her life. And for a girl who was born into a family with such promise—one that had put a rather large chip on the former princess' shoulder—that was saying a lot. She had shared a womb. She had been born with a best friend who was missing... What she wouldn't give to hear Alivia harass her again. What she wouldn't give to see Daddy or Mummy again. What she wouldn't give to hear another voice again.  
     
    So alone.  
     
    She subsisted of bark and tree roots while her body healed, and she grew healthier. The scars that wrapped her body would fade with time, but for now, she walks with an identifiable limp. In pain, she groans with every step she takes, but she needs to get out to the meadow, to fresh grasses and open spaces.  
     
    She was so goddamned sick of trees. 
     
    A growl settles in her throat as the senses of her tiger go on full alert. Her tail twitches, and her ears are spiraling. She is still too weak to shapeshift, but she had learned long ago, those who show weakness become the prey. And a tiger is no one's prey.  
     
    "Come out into the open. It is rude to linger in shadow."  

    Arete
    Some like beautiful, perfect and pretty.
    I see the good in the bad and the ugly.
    Reply
    #2
    .Corvus.
    (yes, I am alone)
    but then again, I always was. as far back as I can tell.
      Taiga was nothing more than a distant memory. Hazy, indistinct, and meaningless. Much like a lot of his youth had been, soiled by the loathing that festered inside of him for a brother that could do no wrong and the mother who chose which son to favor from (what felt like) the first breath. He preferred to drown the thought of it out, to bury it deeply into the darkest recesses of his mind, to never permit to the surface. The woodland had never been anything but a bane on his existence; a tether to keep him tied to a family that had never been family at all – once he finally released himself from his mother and her swollen teat, he rarely returned, instead moving to the furthest edge of the world over.

      The memory of magma wolves and boiling seawater and the rumbling ground beneath him had all been forgotten. Hollow and pointless, those memories were, and it only served to bring frothing ire to the forefront of his mind. He did not want to remember it. He did not want to remember the loneliness, the resentment, nor the deep and unwavering hatred that had found itself inside of him like an acrid bile – like a thick, oozing poison, seeping into his bloodstream and spreading throughout his body like wildfire.

      He did not want to remember.
      And so he would not.

      Venturing into the thicket was simply not an option. Too close to old memories buried deep, he kept along the outer edge, as his hazel gaze searches the deep center of the vast and open meadow, wondering how he had managed to wander so far.

      Rarely did he leave Hyaline (it had become his domicile, his refuge when his wayward, wild blood relatives sought sanctuary elsewhere time and time again). He cannot remember why he felt the incessant need to leave, nor the urge to rise before the sun and head east.

      Alas, there he is – bathing in the waning sunlight, albeit with disdain. The deep emerald of his feathers twitch and bristle in a gentle breeze of his own making, as the stagnant heat of summer is too still for him. His legs carry him forward, with no purpose and no stride. The sun is soon irritating and so he steps into the shadow of brittle pine and wiry birch for shelter from the heat. It is not until he can feel the weight of a stare settled upon him that he becomes as still as summer solstice itself, as his heart thrums forcefully inside of his chest. He knew the intensity of a predator’s eyes, without ever having it see them. He felt it in his bones. He’d felt it since the moment he was born, since his arrogant brother had been blessed with the skin of a wolf at birth and not he.

      ”You are mistaken,” he mutters, staring into the darkness and directly into a pair of watchful amber eyes. you are the one lingering in shadow. Show yourself.”
    I think maybe it's because you were never really real to begin with.
    (I just made you up to hurt myself)

    @[Arete]
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    #3
     
    The voice she encounters is not one of prey. It is not of one known to fear. His voice is clipped--matter of fact. Arete thinks for a moment, and drops her shoulders and steps more plainly into his view. If she could understand him, then he was similar to her. Limping, the scars still stare out as baldly as a beacon. She does not like to show her weakness. And right now, her body unkempt, deprived of food and water, she had nothing to lose by stubbornly staying behind a tree. She was more likely to die even quicker that way.  

    With a grunt, her yellow legs carry her forward to a beautiful example of male flesh. The only boys she'd known were as children, and this was certainly no one she'd known in her youth. Her eyes opened for a second, and she could not help the way her mouth hung open--and distractedly, she stumbled forward on her bad leg. She shook her head, her mind back on her rather dire situation. "This hurts." She spoke to mostly herself, saying much worse things... but a lady does not swear. No until she knows her companion.  

    This would not do.  

    "If you wish to continue within my company, short as our accquaintance has been, I'm going to need you to help me to the grasses... and then some water." She looked up at him, aggravated at her own lack of stability. "My name is Arete, and I am sorry about this."

    The look on her face was dipped in two parts embarrassment and about eight parts frustration. She wanted nothing more than to be as she knew she was supposed to be. To be made whole again. Strength was something she'd always prided herself in, and to need to lean on someone else, let alone a handsome stranger that just five minutes ago she had been squaring off against in the shadows of the treeline--it was just so unbecoming. 

    Her sister would never let her live it down if she ever found out. Thank God for small favors. 

    And then within the same breath, a look of dark sadness crossed her features at the loss of her family--the sick feeling that she was perhaps the only one of them that had survived. She turned to her company, and almost said as an extreme aside...

    "It sucks to be on your own. It really sucks."

    Arete
    Some like beautiful, perfect and pretty.
    I see the good in the bad and the ugly.
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