She swirls and sings - any

[Nyxia]

Reality comes back to her in fits and starts. It comes and wrests her from her sleep, an unwanted and unwelcome bed-guest.

It is cold and clear – like ice water or a bitter lover’s silence.
(Like a mother’s touch. If one’s mother is distant and fleshless as a moon. Some mothers are.)

It is not kind – but perhaps it is necessary. She is a child, unborn, in a womb of soft, pastel light and long, agitated whispers. She is overdue, bulging at the seams of her suspended gestation. ‘It’s time to come out,’ she might hear, blinking through the heavy slumber gumming her eyes. Or, ‘you are home.’ The voice – if it is a voice – a mixture of mother and father and sister; the string-quartet drawl of the manticore; the gekkering of springy foxes and the trill of chickadees. Everything, churning like the heated heart of a star.

Calling her.
(Onwards and upwards.)

Nyxia blinks, once and then twice, the blur of grey and green becoming solid in that slow and agonizing way. (Reality.) The softer-skinned trees seem cold this morning – like long, elegant ladies striping to their skin – loosing leaves to the forest floor.
The evergreens, like so many armored soldiers, hold fast.
A squirrel, bushy-tailed and angry, natters from a throne of high branches. Deer, passing like ghosts in their remote and handsome way, try their best to fatten up while the fleeting chance is here.

Behind and between, in slants of young light holding motes of dust, she can see flashes of colour – like sparks spit from a fire, hot and aroused. 
Lions – or things like lions, but with wings made of fish scales; hawks, with diamond eyes, hard and glittering.  Peacock-blue gorillas, standing to pound soft baroque music from their chests.
Colonizing things. Foreign things – invasive species from universal rifts. (Reality.) ‘Home,’ they say, in many languages at once. She wonders, shifting to her feel to follow them through the morning, if it it a statement or a longing.

[Sinner]

He was alone—always alone. Hidden in the dark caverns and corners of the world. The silence had consumed him, swallowed him whole. Slowly he disappeared and rotted away. The darkness protected him though, letting him thrive, keeping him from becoming nothing but another useless carcass like so many have come to pass. He has a purpose, a message from the very fiery depths of hell. He was carved and manipulated by the very essence of evil. Fed by the lies of the devil himself to whisper into the innocent ears. A seed of wickedness planted within the very black, hollowed heart of his. He is a servant to his master, bent to serve to his will alone, and driven to bring anarchy and devastation. A purpose had already been driven into him since birth. It had grown like a wildfire in him, drive by the internal instinct. He had never been innocent, already was he tainted by sin itself. Sinner is what they have called him. He came as an omen, a force that would not be reckon with. --- It calls to him now. The beast within him calls him from the depths. The hunger of the beast is selfish and manipulative. He answers to it without question. The adrenaline it gives him is more than he can handle. It pushes and flows through his beings, shaping and shifting his form, answering to the craving so eagerly and readily. He is a salve A slave to masters that harbor darkness and destruction—a slave to the beast. He is chained to the core. Hurdling and fleeing to escape is not a thought that crosses his mind. He willingly answers the call, lifting from a lung slumber in the depths of the deepest caverns. --- He shifts and shapes into a wild beast, an instinct that is ever nonetheless natural to him. He is black as the night with red and yellow glowing eyes. A hound on the loose—crying out for blood, craving flesh and bone. The sharp crispy morning air fills his nostrils, catching the scent easily of distant yet near deer. He follows the scent, mouth drooling wildly. The hound moves over the earthen ground. Paws carrying him easily over the rocky dirt parts. His pace is quick and precise. Carefully, he moves through the enclosed forest, twisting and turning around the trees losing their leaves and evergreens. With a quick turn, blinded by the trunk of a wide evergreen, it is when he finds her—a pale grey-lavender girl. He comes to a halt, licking his lips from the smell of flesh and bone that are so near. The smell of deer lingering but fading quickly. The hunger fades too, overcome by curiosity and prying to the lavender girl that stands alone—distracted by some other world, perhaps, or the beauty of the world as the young morning sunlight illuminates the world.

character info: here | character reference: here

[Nyxia]

She has loved too many dangerous things.
(The most dangerous thing, he once told her, in an effort to make her feel protected. And it did. He always did.)

She has been between too many worlds; she has felt each of them revile her, pushing her out in yet another uncomfortable and unclean birth. Se mistook hunger for loneliness, once. 
(She pities him, still, to this day because in truth, that man-headed beast had been lonely and hungry in equal measure – and perhaps the way he had sunk his lion’s claws into her had been just as much an embrace as it had been an assault. A way to sate two of the angriest beasts.)
She has faced death – or almost-death – and came back an incomplete whole, mostly there but for the eye she had sacrificed to the unending and physics-less navel of the multiverse.

So it is strange that, after all this time, she is still so naive. Still so willing to mistake hunger for loneliness.

So willing to confuse beasts for the imaginary friends that flit around her periphery. She is childlike in the way she can be both afeared and enthralled at the same time – loneliness itself has grown teeth in her. It is keen and searching, always. 

If he is a hunter, than she is bait, caught in the snare of time and space – a perfect prey.

Her ears twitch. She can hear him above the fray (the nattering, gekkering, trilling, orchestrating) because he is solid. (Real?) Because each paw that rasps the earth does so in a way that none of the colonizers can – it displaces. It marks. He is dangerous sounding – but he is here. Near. Somewhere, near – the scent of dog-fur and blooded-breath sending signals of run! and stay… 
So, of course, she stays.

Silent. Still, but for the heavy, jerking way her quickened breathing rocks her and spreads her nostrils open. She waits. (She is good at waiting – she has been waiting most her life.) There is a way to feel being looked at, being hunted. It crawls across her body in the strange and ominous way that only ancestral impulses feel like – like worms.

His are nascent – fragile – because he is young. And, perhaps, because she makes him feel protected.
Invulnerable.

Her head (one side of it; there is only one side of it) jerks to them, her mouth thick and clumsy, catching for the briefest second that observative (maternal) gold eye with her own. “H-hello,” she responds, her body jittering and stiffening in panic. “I’m afraid,” she mouths finally, almost numb. Almost excited. “Do you feel that?” (Is it real?)

There are so many things to be afraid of.
One day, he will learn, when she is not there to protect him anymore.

[Sinner]

The remaining shadows of the night and forest conceal him, but the scent of him sticks out like a sore thumb. He had never planned on being noticed—only curiosity brought him to a standstill. The grey lavender alone—fragile and easy to prey on—is something he considered too easy. At first he thought of her to be a simple trap, but she is not. There is something the way she holds herself together—something that pieces her together he finds innocent and naïve. He is so drawn to the warm-hearted of those who reek of innocence. Something within him, an innate sense, to corrupt and destroy those who live a life full of love and virtue. But the world is not always kind in that way—there are scars evident or buried beneath that tell the story of times the world has taken its payment. Memories haunt those who know the cruelty of the world, or those who have been a victim of those who brought it into their world. He does not find himself to be a victim to the world in that way, not when he is molded into what darkness already fills this place. He considers taking a step into the morning light, but the new scent of two others entering into the environment halt him. The gold-blood eyes curiously watch as mother and son enter into the scene. A wolfish-grin ever grows quickly on his lips at the way the child plumps forward, full of life and child-like innocence. The hungry tugs at him again—reminding him of what he needs. He ignored it again. Curiosity overcomes all his needs—something deeper is her to be dug at then a simple meal to eat. He has chased at the hunger all his life—finding his father again had proven to be useless. The hound pulls away from the shadow, allowing the morning light to bring him into sight. He knows he is already known. He watched them from the shadows, smelling him—the notion weighing in their eyes if they should stay or go. Most others had run, but these three had stayed. And he wonders why. Why didn’t they run when trouble was near? “What could you possibly be afraid of?” He asks playfully, stalking through the last remaining shadows that cover his body. The wolfish-grin returns to his muzzle, red-golden eyes carefully looking to both the grey-lavender and mother-son group. He considers for the briefest moments if he is not a welcomed guest to their group. The thought does not last there long—he has often been an uninvited guest to many things.

character info: here | character reference: here