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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


    holiday party; magnus
    #1
    The evening is bright and beautiful as they walk together side-by-side across a bridge lit somehow from within. She has never seen anything quite like it, finds she cannot name the materials they used to construct such a thing. But it is magnificent nonetheless, boasting of a quiet kind of strength hidden beneath the beauty of the twinkling, flickering lights it wears like a skin.

    Impossibly, the world beyond it is even more beautiful. The beach is still soft, white sand, warm and shifting beneath her hooves, lit with lanterns of soft light made to resemble captured stars. Beyond it though, where sand should become grass, emerald and green and rich, there is only the endless, unmarred white of freshly fallen snow. Ice sculptures leap in moments of frozen merriment from beneath trees, fashioned after animals of all kind, and there are small rabbit-like shapes that race between the trees in a flurry of snow while laughing children race after them.

    “Was that made of snow?” She asks softly, bewildered, watching the snow-rabbit and the children race past not too far ahead of them.

    She pauses beside her golden companion, touches her nose to his shoulder with a soft, hesitant breath. There is some small amount of worry on her face as she looks around at those who have already come, looks back behind them at the bridge to those that are still yet to show. In everything, she has always been careful to try and seclude herself, wall off the wandering of her listening mind from those who would prefer not to be heard. It means that she is unfamiliar to events of this magnitude, gatherings this large.

    And loud.

    But when those wild brown eyes lift to search the quiet, kind face of Magnus beside her, she finds that some of the worry eases, some of the fear fades. Her breathing trips, catching a beat in her chest as she tenses her jaw to mute the reflexive smile that tugs at the corners of her mouth when he looks back at her like that, reaches out to press his lips to the crest of her neck. She leans into him, smiling now but softly, a new warmth heating in the backs of her eyes. “Are you sure you aren’t the one who can read minds, Magnus?” So murmurous, smiling more openly now, though it is still something delicate and gentle, only just barely touching the corners of her dark eyes.

    Certainly just for him.

    “I’m nervous, I think.” She admits quietly after a moment, her dark brow knitted and furrowed beneath the tangles of a dark forelock. “I’ve spent my whole life avoiding situations like this. Crowds, large gatherings.” A life of not being enough, of feeling like not enough. But it’s different here with him, with his patience and his understanding. It doesn’t feel like playing a part for the sake of appearances, filling a necessary role. It feels like he wants to be here with her, for her. Like he’d asked for no other reason than that. She softens again, reaches out to touch her lips to the curve of his jaw, press a kiss there so lightly he might not even recognize it. “Shall we?” Soft, nodding her head lightly in the direction of the festival.
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    #2

    desire consumes me like a fire consumes me

    Magnus is quiet as they walk together, crossing the bridge side-by-side. The evening, now hitting the point of dusk with the soft glimmer of stars beginning to blanket the sky, is filled with nothing but the faint, faraway sound of laughter and the hushed conversation of those around them who make the trek with them. It is surreal, he thinks, and he often glances down to look at the bridge that carries them, its ability to carry the massive weight a feat that he doesn’t understand but appreciates all the same.

    Throughout the trip, he often sneaks glances to the woman by his side—something about her poised and soft and yet as strong as the twilight-bridge beneath them. It’s intriguing and he contemplates it as they continue to walk. When they finally reach the island, when hooves sink into a familiar and yet alien sand, when the sand turns to snow, his handsome face splits with a grin, gold-flecked eyes burning.

    He angles his head, catching the soft wonder on her face as the rabbit races forth.

    “I think so,” he laughs, the sound impossibly warm in his mouth, wonder clear across the lines of his face. They continue forth and it is filled with the quiet touches, subtle and hesitant, as if they are just learning to discover one another. He wishes, for a moment, that he could read minds. That he could see why she accepted his offer to accompany him to the festival. That he could see what she thinks about this at all. What she thinks of him. But he has never been gifted in such ways—never been gifted more than the sweat of his brow and brawn of his back—and he doesn’t fret over it now.

    He would find how she thinks, how she feels, in due time.

    All in due time.

    He reaches over, pressing his lips into the elegant curve of her neck and breathes her in, wondering at the tightening of his belly, of the way she feels like a memory and the future all at once. His inky lips trail up her neck and to the soft flesh behind her jaw where he lingers for a moment, taking a liberty he isn’t sure that he should but can’t stop himself from asking for all the same. “I am quite sure,” he murmurs, whiskey-voice low and gold-flecked eyes bright. “Although I would love to know what’s going on up there just once.” His scarred lips curve in the corner. “What a gift that would be.”

    Another soft laugh as he turns his head toward the gathering, frowning slightly at her confession and pulling her closer into his side. He presses a kiss into her forehead, feeling a surge of protectiveness flood him, a wish that he could mute the world. “It’ll be okay,” he assures her. “And if it gets too loud, we can always find somewhere more…” his voice trails off as he nips her neck just barely, feeling the give of flesh between blunt teeth, “quiet to go.” There’s something a little wicked in his eyes, something a little mischievous that flares but it quiets and he nods. “Let’s go, Isle.”

    And then he walks alongside her into the burst of light and the patterns of snow.

    Where the crowds begin to mill about, and yet he only sees one.

    good shouldn’t need to tempt us above

    [Image: gqYjsHr.png]
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    #3
    He says he would love to know what goes on inside her mind, calls it a gift and in a voice that makes her think he must mean it. But it still feels strange to her that he would care at all, strange that he considers her someone worth discovering. There is a part of her that is still wary and wild, still wounded and flying on broken wings, a part of her that simply cannot believe him. Cannot see in herself whatever it is he thinks he has found. She is not worthy of his attention, not worthy of the smile so warm on such beautiful lips, not worthy of the way he presses a kiss to her forehead until her eyes close and the tension drains out of her.

    But she cannot help but wonder what it might be like to be loved by a man like this one. He seems so kind and so genuine, seems to have more depth than even she can truly fathom, more layers in his history than she can reach with her gift of the mind. But Offspring had seemed kind too, at times. He had loved her perhaps as best he knew how, she just had never been enough to keep that love, never enough to make him stay. It is this part of her past that makes it so hard to be soft again, to put her heart in hands that could just as easily crush it as they could hold it safe and steady. But she feels it again, feels that gentle ache of curiosity in her belly, the magnetic pull that has kept her close to him since that evening on the cliffside.

    Her brow furrows a little, soft lines hollowing in her cheeks and above her eyes, a hint of hesitation in the way she pauses to consider him before she returns the gesture. But in the end she does, reaches out to brush her lips against the lines of his brow, smooth aside a forelock so she can see those eyes that somehow manage to make her feel safe. They are eyes full of secrets, full of a past she has not carved out in its entirety, but they are eyes without lies, without dishonesty. She smiles when she finds them, just a little tug in one corner or her dark mouth as she presses a little kiss to the soft corner of his smiling lips. “Perhaps one day i’ll tell you, Magnus.”

    He pulls her in tight to him, and she is startled by the ferocity of his thoughts, startled by the content. He wants to protect her? Her eyes are so soft, so surprised when she tips her chin up to catch his gaze, when she smiles without meaning to and pushes the bridge of her nose against the underside of his jaw to hide against his for just a moment. He is so good, so beautiful. So impossible, though. Even if there were such goodness in this world, surely it had no reason to come find her? Then his teeth are on her neck, against her skin, and there is sudden electricity thrumming through her veins, an impossible heat that spreads through her belly. She makes a soft sound, like an sharp exhalation of surprise as she leans back into him again, some traitorous part of her wanting more.

    She leans back again in time to catch that glint, that gleam of wicked mischief that drags the reluctant corners of her dark, beautiful mouth into a bemused smile. Let’s go, he says, and suddenly her dark eyes match his mischief, so bright and twinkling when she asks, “to someplace quiet?” She nudges his cheek, rubs the ridge of her face against him again even as warning bells go off at the ache blooming inside her chest.

    Why did this feel so right?
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    #4

    although this world is made of fearsome beasts that bark and bite
    we were born to put these creatures through one hell of a fight

    Perhaps it is the broken pieces of his heart that reach out to her own. Perhaps he senses something in her that mirrors his own sorrow—that grief he has worked so hard to fling off, the losses carved so deep into his flesh and into his heart. He has worn them at times like armor and others as anchor; he has felt them pull him down, fingers around his ankles, and he has felt them keep him away, his smile genuine by his heart kept trapped behind the wild bramble and thorn of his chest. It has only been recently that he has finally shed such things; it has only been recently that he has tried to truly start a new leaf in his life.

    It is not always easy—the nightmares do not stop their constant pursuit—but he is trying.

    And it is easier when he is studying the depths of these wild, wary eyes beneath her forelock.

    “Perhaps one day,” he muses softly, not pressing the subject, and leaving her the secrets that she too may press against her chest. He doesn’t ask her for more than she is willing to give. Doesn’t push her further than she is willing to go. He has not unpacked all of the hurt that she has worn throughout the years. He does not know all of the different ways Offspring hurt her, but he knows enough to recognize the jagged edges of her heart. Perhaps in time she would trust him enough to hold it without causing more pain.

    So he keeps it light today, keeps it a joyful, beautiful moment, letting that familiar fire kindle along his bones as she looks at him with a sudden mischief in her eyes. He is surprised by the sudden hunger that flares in him—that sudden, sharp-edged need that he can barely contain as he looks at her. “To someplace quiet,” he affirms because suddenly he cannot imagine being in the middle of a party with her. Suddenly, he cannot imagine sharing her when all he wants is time with her, time away from the realities of his life.

    He leads them around the outskirts of the party, shoulder pressing to hers and mouth roaming over her neck every once in a while, lingering and then teasing and then pulling her forward into a quiet corner of the island. It is a spot where the winter is thick, the ground so blanketed with snow that it is impossible to tell that it lies atop a tropical paradise. The sounds of the crowd are muffled so that he can almost hear the softly falling snow, the ice of it catching on his eyelashes and melting into the thicket of his mane.

    “Tell me something you haven’t told anyone else,” he whispers quietly, feeling his pulse as a living and rapid thing in his chest. There is but a breath of space between them now, and his nerves are on fire.

    “Tell me what you’re really feeling, Isle."

    magnus

    [Image: gqYjsHr.png]
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