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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


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    Brilliant Pampas: Round 2
    #11
    Dreaming amidst the field of wildflowers, my legs began to twitch and tremble, kicking against the delicate stems. Heady perfume filled the air and my lungs, dragging me into a dark place. 

    It was a dream, I think. The same field, the same flowers waving in subtle breezes, but the light... I had arrived at dawn, and now stood under a full noon sun. It was hot. Too hot to be healthy for me or for sweet petals. Looking skyward I feel sweat prick at my skin, searching for the heat source bearing down on the valley. The sun looks no larger, but it has gone red. That is when I smell it, the thick tang of sweet smoke filling the air. 

    No sooner do I notice it than I see that the ghostly tendrils are everywhere. Every side of the valley has grown cloaked in churning darkness, filling the air and choking out the sun until it fell as dark as twilight. Instinctive panic began to set in, a desperate need to find an escape route somewhere among the wilting plants. The vines in my hair snagged and caught as I tried to run, dragging on their fellows like fearful friends not knowing they were making our survival a struggle. Heavy feet cut through the earth, heading toward a perceived break in the smoke wall. If I could just be fast enough, I might make it. 

    Eyes streaming with burning tears, I have a moment of euphoric freedom. The moment is short lived. Instead of freedom, I find the fire. Tongues of crimson and gold eat at the earth, leaving a black tail in their wake. I can't see anything beyond the fire, just hungry heat reaching for everything in its path. 

    I'm in the path. 

    Spinning on my heel, I run back to the center of the valley. My eyes scan the horizon desperately only to be disappointed. There is no way out, and even worse, my ring of unburned ground has grown noticeably smaller. There is nothing but the smoke and I, standing in my field of blood red flowers, can do nothing about it but watch. 

    My mane singes and curls into ash, head light with the lack of breathable air. This had been a trick, a cruel trick. They sent us here on a noble mission, and instead it seems they sent us here us here to die. It was faster than the plague, at any rate, I supposed, coughing on a lungful of smog and staring up at the bloody eye that had been the sun. I had loved the sun, and they were killing it. They were killing everyone. Had we brought this on ourselves? Did we have no one else to blame? 

    Laying down, I felt the heat lick at my hips and shoulders, searing the skin from my flesh. A hoarse scream pulled through my blistered throat, burning away as soon as it hit the air. That very air was getting too hot to breath, and I knew it wouldn't be long before I succumbed to it. But maybe, just maybe, I would do some good. Maybe they would later come, and find a mare-shaped patch of crimson blooms had survived the burning. 

    The fire engulfed me, unmade me. My world became a single point of pain, and then it became nothing at all. 

    I screamed when I woke. Drank in lungs full of clean air, eyes wide with remnant fear and shaking with the memory of fire. I was alive, and intact and so were the flowers. The damn flowers.
    [Image: 90aww6.png]
    Twin to Erotic
    #12
    Her fall to the earth is gentle, like a leaf slowly drifting left and right to the ground. The transition is smooth, so smooth (like she did not fall asleep). In reality, Naia is amongst the countless bodies slumbering amongst the picturesque flowers; unfortunately, that is not the reality the appaloosa finds herself in. Her dream begins the second her eyes rest - immediately transitioning to just another blink.

    Naia finds herself standing amongst many equines rising wearily from a deep sleep. She turns her head slowly from left to right, perplexed gaze very clearly trying to understand why all but her have been asleep. Were they not the very same individuals traveling just seconds ahead of her? The girl gulps and takes a single step back, disturbed by the unnatural silence from moments before - and disturbed by the groans of those lifting to their feet.

    Their moans are growing in volume when Naia finally smells the smoke. Her head snaps to its fullest height, sharp brown eyes glistening with controlled fear as they widen. In the back of their meadow is a tree, red and orange and yellow - and black, so horribly black. A soft, panicked whicker rumbles in the back of her throat, tumbling like a rockslide from her lips. Her hooves carry her several steps backward, into another, when she realizes the fire is at each end of the clearing. The combination of their collision and the heat of the fire growing just feet away cause her to whip around on her back legs, lips pulled back in a vicious snarl. The equine she hit is ignoring her, walking calmly toward the fire.

    “What . . .” she whispers just as the mechanical creature puts their first hoof into the flame. “No!” It is a harsh, quiet exclamation, quickly followed by “NO!” This time it is much harsher, fearful, perturbed.

    “No, no, no - what the fuck - fucking what the fuck,” her horror is garbled and rushed as it pours from her mouth.

    Are they reflecting what she was feeling amidst her trek here?

    Naia cannot bear to watch this.

    Suddenly, she leaps into action, galloping to the middle of the clearing and screeching. Her call contains no words, just mortified and powerful instinct. None seem to notice. “Fuck,” the girl says again, choking on a combination of a sob and smoke inhalation. Naia gasps, breathe wavering up and down as she burst into action once again.

    I can still save some of them.

    Just before another equine steps into the flames, the appaloosa darts in front of them and rears. Their only reaction is to take a wide berth around her flailing hooves. The trepidation in her eyes intensifies to searing tears down her cheeks.

    Another is quietly walking toward the now roaring wall of fire. Naia runs to their side, desperately trying to shove them away. When that does not work, she latches onto their tail, only to tug and tug until she rips all the hair away.

    Eventually, amongst the smell of burning flesh and unbearable heat, she sees how it does not matter. They are all surrounded.

    I’m going to die here.

    Naia does go screeching, head to ground, rejecting the pain of resolution. She attempts to ward off the smoke, to see even a tiny break in the flames. Finally, her body is on the ground, succumbing to the lack of oxygen.

    --

    “NO!” she cries, sticky eyes flowing tears as they blink awake.

    It was all a dream?
    #13
    Ironically, as the red flowers coax Panthera and I to sleep, the dreamweaver becomes the dreamer.

    Stranger things have happened, that is for certain; a demon has portalled itself into this dimension from another using my powers as a host, I have transferred a fetus from my body to another's, and a plethora of other things which, in comparison to these, are lost to my psyche. It starts slow, so as to trick me into believing that I am still awake - but I am not that naive, and immediately identify the tale-telling signs of a dreamscape, though they are more hidden than mine were at the beginning of my dreamweaving.

    The arrogant smirk on my face at having figured out the puzzle so quickly disappears rather quickly when I stop focusing on my peripheral vision and actually gaze ahead. Whoever is controlling this dream must have sensed my cockiness, and has cleared sped up the process; this is the point at which I become a little scared, because in my dreams, shit like this can actually kill you. Which is why the tornado which snakes into the sky before me, writhing blackly and angrily, causes me to scream for my cat, half rearing in terror and fleeing to a safer position. From where we are standing now, the pull of the wind nearly catapults us into its hungry depths.

    As the tornado swirls viciously near the center of the Pampas, Panthera and I gallop across the border of the land, slicing inward very narrowly when we sense that we can. The lighting would be bad, but I have dreamt us a light to light our path, and so we maneuver through any obstacles more easily than others might have - not that others are facing the same natural disaster, I realize with a sickened lurch of stomach. I push the thought aside, panic now rising in my breast as the tornado's wind picks up to a threatening howl - but just as I am about to give up hope, I spot it.

    Dashing in unison to our right, Panthera and I slip into a equine-made hole in the ground. Perhaps I had dreamt it myself, or perhaps magicians had come through here; at any rate, what may have been their form of amusement now serves as our form of protection. Once safely tucked into the cramp below-ground space, I shine my light and see that only dirt surrounds us. Taking initiative, I reinforce the top of the ground such that it shan't collapse upon us, and then I ungraciously pack the bottom with lead, so that the tornado's force cannot pick us up. At the mouth of the hole, I place a forcefield of light, such that no debris will enter and harm us.

    It is nice, to be a dreamweaver in a nightmare. I reflect on this with Panthera as we both crouch, listening to the tornado overhead. It's disconcerting, and I believe I will be having more nightmares about this soon; but for now, I clutch my familiar, and pray for the best.

    We awaken sometime later, unharmed but sufficiently ruffled.

    word count: 521
    [Image: kag]
    dreamweaver
    #14
    At first he does not remember. He does not remember where he was or why. His eyes blinking open, automatically searching for his Tithe and Tindalos, reaching for the spots where they would have laid next to him. It did not matter if they were sick, at first he had needed their touches, their warmth, and their love. Now he still needed it, but they had helped him be more confident and for that he would always love them.

    So when they are not there, he blinks quickly, forcing his eyes to focus, to look and search. The grass around him is not folded over as if someone had laid there. Confusion creeps across his brain, awakening it even as his eyes tried to make sense of why they wouldn’t have laid with him last night.

    It was only when he saw the red touch of the flowers did he pause. His eyes narrowing slightly as he lowered his head to take a long look at one of them. Flickers of before coming to him and he smiled slightly (if still a bit confused as to why he had fallen asleep), his lips gently plucking the red flower from the ground.

    He notices the wind next, the gusting, the way it pushes against his body. How had he not noticed it before? It tried to whip the red flower from his lips, only intensifying as time goes on. He looks out towards the ocean, where the wind was coming from, a blue line along the horizon. Fear roots him to the spot as he looks at the dark and angry wall of clouds sweeping in quickly.

    When the rain hits him it feels like shards of glass. The pain jerking him out of his fear. He had come this far. He was not going to quit now. He determinedly picks his way through the flowers, grabbing what he could even as the wind pushes him back and forwards, slamming him into the ground on more than one occasion. He doggedly pushes back to his hooves everytime, blood on his knees, oozing from the scratches along his body. He doesn’t waste any energy healing, needing all his strength just to take that one step, and then another to find the flowers, to heal Tithe and Tindalos.

    The wind and rain blinded him, throwing him from his feet one last time. He feels something sharp pierce his haunch, turns to see the branch that stuck from his body like a spear. He groans, drops the flowers that he had been holding, watching helpless as they whip away from him in the blasts of wind and rain. He cannot see anymore, cannot see anything in front of him, cannot hear past the roaring of the wind and the rain. A tree falls over him, crashing down around him and sticking him again and again with the broken branches. And while it hurt, while he could still possibly die, the tree that fell over him created a tent of branches and leaves that probably saved him.

    And while he could not move, he could stop the bleeding, not worried about the cuts and new scars that would no doubt adorn him, he waited out the hurricane. He felt like he waited there days for the roaring of the storm to end. A loud clap of thunder jerked him awake.

    Again he sat there confused and dazed as he looked at the untouched flowers and the perfectly normal day. Still feeling the lingering effects of the pain from the branches. He looked over his body to see that it was still as it was, that the blood and branches weren’t there.

    So it was a dream then. He turns and looks, blinking and waiting to see what happened now.
    #15
    leliana
    she said “oh, I know that love is all about the wind
    how it can hold me up and kill me in the end”

    It does not take long for the dreams to find her.

    It does not take long for it to slip the wool over her exhausted eyes, a cold hand on her sanity, pulling her further into the undertow. She doesn’t resist—has no strength with which to fight it.

    So the dream that others can recognize as being just that—a dream—becomes reality for her.

    She wakes in this not-world, this world of her dreams and of her fears, and it is as if she is in a fog. Her hazel eyes blink slow, blinking away the sleep she still inhabits. The others, those who had fallen next to her in slumber and remained there still in the physical world, are gone.

    She is alone.

    She rises slowly, the pieces of this reality beginning to fall into place. She doesn’t see the chinks in the armor as everything begins to lock; she only can see the clouds that are gathering on the border. She can only take in a deep breath, the storm coming in faster than she can even realize what is happening.

    One second, she is standing in the quiet—taking in the rest of the Pampas around her.

    The next, the storm is upon her.

    It is terrifying in its strength, and the very power steals her breath away. She gasps, the crimson of her tangled mane flying around her face, curving around her jaw. Her wings flutter and flap and she pulls them in close to her body, turning them from more vulnerable feathers to their sturdier dragon form.

    The only thing that she can think of in this moment is her children.

    Is Dovev

    Is Vulgaris.

    Is Chaol, and Cress, and Exist, and the child Despair she has adopted.

    All that may be here in this moment. All that may be threatened by this same storm.

    The sky is pitch, the storm picking up the bits and pieces of debris and throwing it around. She tries to move forward and finds that she has to fight the very air, the tar of it sticking in her lungs.

    But she has to keep going. She has to fight for every inch.

    Not that it matters, in the end.

    She rushes forward, tears of fear swept away from her cheeks before they can stain, but she has no way of knowing which direction is which. The earth trembles beneath her, as if cowering before the prowess of the storm, and the sky begins to rumble—low, thundering growls that reverberate through her.

    No, she wants to say.

    Not like this. Not here.

    But it doesn’t matter because the sky is electric, illuminating the path before her that is thick with nothing. Just a thick wall of nothing that engulfs her. She cries out, but the sound is stolen from her mouth.

    And then before she can continue to fight, before she can do anything, the sky opens.

    She tips her head back in time to see the electricity crackling through it.

    It rains down and she is illuminated, her body alight with it.

    Her bones are on fire, and her veins spark, and then the darkness takes her.

    She wakes up gasping, the tears once swept from her cheeks now soaking them.

    [Image: avatar-1975.gif]
    the heaviness in my heart belongs to gravity




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