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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


    [open]  your twisted thoughts like snow on the rooftops
    #1

    but you’d never get hit without earning it
    and i only hit you first ‘cuz i deserved my own hit too
    still it comes the time to call you out
    since i’m the one that you should be about



    There is a dimness that hangs over Litotes’ head, overcast and deepening in its wrath by the second. The hot summer air no longer refreshes him but suffocates him, filling his wracking lungs with what feels like metal. Blood pools and curdles on his bottom lip as his ears press so tight to his skull it appears as if they are not there. This is not like him (at least he does not think so): the sadness stripped to its barest and dirtiest, wretched and decaying bones - anger so repressed that it festers and rots like an open wound in the sun.

    The fever shakes him, forces paranoia down his throat like bad medicine. Shadows quiver in the corners of his eyes, hissing ominous spells and wrapping the long black fingers of demons around his throat. There is nothing like this feeling - so lonely in its gut-wrenching fear, not a soul near that understands the mind as it swallows itself whole. This is one of his darkest days. Plague and seasonal depression mix together like the last drink the bartender shakes before one is cut off. He is drifting, moving much more slowly than he realizes, wavering from side to side just as the heat waves create an illusion of a rolling landscape.

    Lie coughs, spattering blood across the shimmering silver of his nose: a mixture that would be beautiful were it not so terribly morbid.

    Suddenly he stops, lifting his head as it shakes. He stares at a tree, eyes glazed and broken, watching the bark as it jiggles and jives and dances in place. I am not here, he thinks - interrupted only by Rune as she desperately tries to make sense of the mess of his head. The sand cat runs back and forth between his legs, scared for her companion but almost completely helpless. Even his dearly loved companion does not matter - for he is not here.

    Anger roils in the pit of his stomach, black and perpetual, spinning hurricane-force circles that tie his intestines into knots. It travels like a snake, slithering up his organs and into his throat, solidifying there (choking him . . . killing him). The tree before him changes, the bark drawing his father’s face, and Lie cannot control himself: he is coughing up endless amounts of near-black blood but unstoppable, slamming his head into the trunk like he could kill his father then and there.

    Litotes



    cool so his fever + his depression have created a mental breakdown n he's kinda dying :~) open to anyone
    Reply
    #2

    Novel



    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,


    Plague does not concern ravens. Even if it did, Novel is hardly paying attention anyway. So she does not run for safety like so many others do, instead continuing to live in blissful pretense. Truth be told, she knows. Ever curious the raven girl, she sees, spying from the safety of her tree tops. But she simply cannot be bothered to care, even as they shiver from fever and cough their lungs onto the earth, she only watches.

    Just like today.

    She might never have taken more than a cursory glance at him had he not stopped before her tree. The cat that paces between his feet does not disturb her. They are silly creatures that she likes to taunt, but no true danger to her. This one would not reacting to her teasing though, she thinks. It seems terribly anxious, twisting and curling around the boy’s legs like that. Too focused on this sick horse to be any amusement to an easily distracted raven-girl.

    When the pale stallion does not move on, instead staring at her tree with a feverish gaze, she tilts her head curiously, watching him from her lofty perch. When he suddenly rams his head straight into the trunk, she hops backwards in surprise, wings flapping wildly as she lets out a loudly disgruntled squawk.

    Leaping down, she flutters to the ground, her body already shifting and morphing before her feet touch the leaf-littered loam. Her ears pin against her nape, a delicate, sunset mirror of his irritable expression. “My tree,” she announces petulantly, her voice rising from a croak as she tries to remember how to use equine vocal chords.


    Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before.


    Reply
    #3

    but you’d never get hit without earning it
    and i only hit you first ‘cuz i deserved my own hit too
    still it comes the time to call you out
    since i’m the one that you should be about



    In his stupor, he does not see the raven; or perhaps, he does not care. She is perched, content, avian eyes barely studying the cremello as he melts beneath his fever. Lie is beside himself, head pushed cruelly into the bark, when the whispering of startled feathers and a bird’s cry morphs into the rebuttal of his father. He rears back, realizing for a moment that he is attacking a tree, and maybe it should not be talking back to him. Litotes stares at the tree, squinting and un-squinting his eyes, the world swirling like a cyclone around the edges of his gaze.

    My tree.

    My tree? The General steps further from the bark while desperately shaking his head, as if literally jostling his brain will clear the haze. “Whose tree?” he thinks, the voice in his head warped, words he said aloud that he thinks are kept private.

    Finally, he notices the blue and orange woman to his left: a startled jump and a rapid blinking of his eyes. His brain is not totally clear but the events finally piece together. Litotes stares at the shifter, mouth partly open, realizing the noises were her shifting and the words her irritation. He presses his lips together, forming a tight frown. The surprise is not long lived for his topaz eyes darken back into his initial irritation. The petulance is returned, a comical tenseness that brings the two together in their ridiculousness.

    “Oh! Your tree? Would you mind showing me where your name is on it?” he snaps back, pinning his ears so that he is an exact (much paler) version of her. Quickly, though, he realizes who he is and where he is at. The anger still vibrates his body in anxious shivers, but he lifts his head and swallows.

    “I did not mean to disturb you,” he grumbles, “but you can’t have the tree.


    Litotes


    @[Novel] meet lil bitch lie : )
    Reply
    #4

    Novel



    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,


    His mind seems tangled and scrambled, not quite able to focus on reality. Of course, she is the last judge. She is not always fixed in reality either. She has spent too long as a raven, not enough time as a horse. In her quieter moments, she knows the equine is her truest form, but she doesn’t care to dwell on it too often. It’s easier to lose herself in the bird than reality. Easier to forget a lonely childhood with a cold-hearted mother and an absent father.

    It shouldn’t be strange then, that she had turned out so odd. That feverish horses battling wayward trees stirs no more note in her than a distinct possessiveness. The spirit of the raven shining through, as it so often does. Inquisitive and acquiring.

    Whose tree? She snorts, chin lifting slightly in obstinance. “Mine!” she insists to his delirious rambling, uncaring that he can likely make neither heads nor tails of her assertive claim.

    She narrows her eyes on him as his head seems to clear a bit, a hint of sanity leaking back into his gaze. She presses closer, head tilting curiously as she extends her nose slightly towards him. Close, but not touching. Not yet. Her gaze flicks briefly up to the tree in question, her lips firming into a stubborn moue. “It’s written on the leaves, can’t you see?”

    Let him examine every leaf on this tree to try and call her bluff.

    Just as he pins his ears at her, she does the same, her skin shivering and lightening until she is a smaller, more feminine version of his pale cremello and aggressive posturing. She is a raven, the ultimate mimic, even when she is a horse.

    She only relaxes when he does, her gaze brightly curious as she snorts once more, pale mane fluttering and shimmering beneath her movements. But she is a stubborn creature, not so easily swayed. And most certainly not by men who quake with illness and delirium. “It was already mine,” she declares in response to his nonsensical assertion. Let his fevered mind make sense of her riddles. “Therefore, I already have it.”


    Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before.


    Reply
    #5

    but you’d never get hit without earning it
    and i only hit you first ‘cuz i deserved my own hit too
    still it comes the time to call you out
    since i’m the one that you should be about


    The blue of the mare melts into cremello, her ears pinned to make an almost exact replica of Litotes. For a moment he just stares, then shakes his head as they both relax. Her next words are just as perplexing, but most of the fog has cleared from his mind; now, Lie is just exasperated. Riddles are of no consequence to him: let her squabble on about her name written in the leaves. Feeling mildly less feverish certainly helped picking nonsense from sense, but even in a most feverous state her words would have only infuriated him.

    His tail slaps against his rump over and over again, irritation hissing with each too-loud snap. “I’m sure you carved your name into each leaf. Have your fuckin’ tree, I’m sure you can’t shift again and fly to another,” he snaps, admittedly more agitated than a reasonable person would be.

    The General opens his mouth to tell Novel he is leaving when a wave of nausea shuts his mouth tight. He stares at her for a long moment before leaning against the tree they are both so stupidly adamant on claiming. In the back of his mind, Lie hopes she will knock him out for touching the tree again (at least then he might feel better once her wakes). Instead of continuing to snap, the stallion lays down his sword - only because he thinks he may be here a while.

    “Tell me, why is this tree so special? It wouldn’t happen to have healing powers, would it? Because in that case I will have to fight you for it.”

    A weak smile is the only sign of jest he offers Novel.

    Litotes


    @[Novel]
    Reply
    #6

    Novel



    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,


    She matches him, down to the very snapping of his tail, long pale strands stinging her flanks in a curious echo of his. She snorts, tossing her head as he sarcastically rebutts her wild statement. Her eyes narrow as she stares at him before she takes a small step backwards. Lifting her head, she swings it absently, hooves lifting from the earth briefly, tapping back down. Lifting again, until she can reach up, stretching her neck until she snags a single leaf between her teeth.

    When her feet land heavily back on the earth once more, her eyes are fixed upon him yet again. Challenging, with just a hint of impish trickery. She lifts her head, leaf between his lips, as though she might offer it to him. Instead, she bites down, the bruised greenery disappearing between her lips as she chews. Swallows.

    She grins then, brown eyes twinkling like the raven’s, curious and teasing and slightly quixotic. She doesn’t bother to answer his bitten-out retort, instead eyeing him quite openly as he leans against the tree. Exhausted and ill and barely removed from delirium.

    She finds it rather interesting, actually. Probably why she is still here, rather than flown away as he had so irritably suggested. Besides, there is a challenge here, and she could never resist a challenge.

    She tilts her head slightly when he continues, his madness giving way to faint amusement. It seems without the wild influence of the plague on his brain, he is a rather normal horse after all. Less angry, certainly. She wonders what it is in his delirious imaginings that had so angered him. Wonders if she truly even cares.

    “It’s just a tree,” she replies, her tone more mild and even now, less of a croak. As though it is not at all odd she would be so willing to fight over a very plain and ordinary tree. But then, that is the raven for you. “Why were you so angry?”

    Well, it seems she does care after all.


    Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before.


    Reply
    #7

    but you’d never get hit without earning it
    and i only hit you first ‘cuz i deserved my own hit too
    still it comes the time to call you out
    since i’m the one that you should be about

    The challenging way Novel peers at Litotes no longer ignites an irrational flame in his chest; instead, he stares back with notably less curiosity. A tired attempt to find humor dangles between the two, but it does not stick. The avian shifter seems to have omniscient eyes, killing any joke he may think of, a thought that the cremello finds he does not mind.

    She asks about his anger.

    The stallion’s eyes go dark once again, this time more pointed and less wildly plague-induced. He considers the mare with as much of an analytical gaze as he can muster. Somewhere, deep down, is an appropriate answer. Will he offer one? Certainly not.

    A sputtering laugh is his initial response, then the bitter words: “Would you take plague-ridden hallucinations of a shitty father as an acceptable response?” Lie does not smile. This feels less and less like a laughing matter to him. He wishes she did not ask, but resigns himself with a broken sigh and a need to change the subject.

    “Why do you ask?” his tone sarcastic, smile wry. “I’m perfectly rational.”

    Litotes


    @[Novel]
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