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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


    litotes
    #1
    Winslow

    As with most orphans, she is too young to be alone like this. Her sides are thin and her bones are prominent, and it makes her lack that soft, innocent roundness of childhood. But in a world where plague has touched everything - the land and the trees and the many inhabitants, Winslow does not feel strange. Fever has been her constant companion, and she is used to that wet pressure that sits like a blanket over her lungs until she is gagging and coughing and spitting up globules of blood she wipes impatiently across knobby knees. It is all she’s ever known and all she’s ever seen, so when suddenly the plague lifts and the cure spreads like a balm over a wounded world, she is bewildered.

    Frightened.

    She follows the retreating dark as the light pushes it back, races along on legs that feel oddly strong and lungs that don’t suffocate her when she gasps for more air. She feels panicky, that bubble of fear sitting so cold in her belly, the stutter of her pulse when her heart thumps erratically in her chest. How can the world be changing like this, and so suddenly - and why!

    It is strange how she clings to the sick, how desperately she hunts to rediscover the dark.
    But it is all she’s ever known, and in a short life of belonging nowhere and being so unwanted, it is terrifying to lose this steadying sameness.

    She does not notice the moment the frost-covered grass gives way to hard, red clay, does not notice that the landscape around her is suddenly so unfamiliar. She is too distracted by the swell of churning darkness in the sky ahead, the way it swirls black and ugly like a bruise on the day. She moves closer, as close as she can on willowy baby legs, until she is at the edge of the crater and peering down into its belly.

    She shifts then, limbs shortening to something more sturdy, tail suddenly long and dense and fleshy as it lashes uneasily behind her. Her small, feline face lifts once to peer uncertainly at the landscape around her, ears unhappily flat against her robins-egg blue skull, and then she tips into the crater with a soft, wary grunt, bracing those blue paws as she slides through loose earth towards the bottom of the hole.

    She feels dragged here by something dark and nameless, a fear of not knowing where she belongs in a world that is suddenly so beautiful when she is still so ragged. It isn’t the plague that had made her so gaunt - though certainly it hadn’t helped - and even though her fever is gone and her lungs don’t hurt, and the only blood on her pale blue fur is old and crusted, she is still wrong. Still a scab on a healed world, and it draws cracks along the surface of a heart that tries so hard not to break.

    It is so much easier to hide brokenness in a broken world.

    So the little lion cub curls up in the red clay near the belly of the crater, her little nose tucked against her toes and her tail wrapped so tight around her body. She doesn’t even move when the sky opens up to cry on her, and the rain soaks through her powdery blue fur until she shivers against the bite of cold air. She’ll just sleep for awhile, safe in the shadow of the plague-cloud, safe in the belly of the crater because it is the only place she belongs.

    the devil in my arms said feed me to the wolves tonight

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    #2

    boy what's normal to you? 'cause that sure ain't normal to me.

    Most days the Archon is alert enough to notice when a stranger steps into his home. Hardly a soul wanders into Pangea, so when one finally does Litotes is sure to address their purpose. That is, when he is not wrapped in a tangled mess of brooding thoughts. Moody he is, as moody as he usually is, probably moodier than usual. The scowl furrowing his brow and creasing his lips gives him away.

    Rain is strong on the wind: a clean scent that even in Pangea cannot be erased. The Archon lifts his carefully carved skull to the sky and allows the gray clouds to reflect in his golden eyes. They darken as the storm does, deepening from cool topaz to earthy brown in a matter of moments. He drops his gaze down to the dusty soil beneath him, recalling the last time water dampened the dry dirt beneath him. Starsin had rushed into a shadow-wrapped cave, and the two had parted even more confused than before. The star-studded girl had rushed from his touch with a sputtered excuse, and they have not spoken since. Lie almost regrets his vulnerability with her - almost.

    It is that same warm gentility that encompasses him when the downpour begins. Instead of rushing to his home behind him, he turns to the outskirts of Pangea to patrol. His eyes are melancholy and his steps heavy when he goes, a lonely hum muted by the rain the only thing to keep him company.

    Quiet and reflective solitude is rare for the cremello. He questions if anything he has done over the past two years leaves even a little dent in the universe; he questions his own meager and resolute existence. Ever since the quest, since reuniting with Kensa, since discovering his warmth for Starsin - he sits in the bitter realization that not much of anything matters. Perhaps he is depressed; or rather, he needs the next chapter of his life to be written. Too much uncertainty has tainted his confidence, but at least it has quieted his arrogance.

    The crater Litotes happens upon is no stranger to him, though he cannot say he has ever been terribly keen to crawl inside. It is the masked feline smell that gives him pause and turns his head, equine ears flicking erratically to attempt to pick up sound amongst the pattering of the rain. The scent is off: not only is it diluted by the water, but it also mingles with distinct scent of an equine child. A shifter? A foal? The Archon’s throat tightens at the idea of a babe stumbling into the dark only to never come out. With that image in mind, he shifts and slides down the red clay of the crater.

    What Lie sees before he fully makes it to the bottom makes his heart drop: a little blue lion cub curled into a ball. He swallows, instantly wondering if he is discovering yet another one of his children. Still, his heart aches for the little oddity and ragged blue fur. Most days, the Archon would either nudge her awake or grumble until she moves; yet, it is not most days, and he cannot quell the keening of his heart.

    Winslow is cold when he curls around her, quiet steps unsure if she will startle away from him. He curls his paws beneath him and holds his head above her to lessen the rainfall.

    “Little one . . .” he murmurs, then rumbles out a few chuffs.

    and if i fall would you know that to do?
    and if i'm caught up would you stay?

    Litotes

    @[winslow] <3
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