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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


    there's only darkness at the finish; any
    #1

    i wanted pomegranates—
    i wanted darkness—
    i wanted him--


    She feels spat out of hell.
    Not in a rebellious way, she is not a particularly wicked girl (she sheds her own blood, not others). More, she once had everything, she had Him (she believes this, at least, having mastered the fatal technique of believing her own lies). But He had told her to leave, to go find her mothers, and she had obeyed.
    She always obeys.
    It hurt, to leave His lair, her castle of stone and shadow. She misses the chuffing of the hellhounds. She misses Him most of all, the ways He would take her apart and put her back together. All that’s left is a brand, His sigil burnt on her crest. It is warm, sometimes, and she knows He is thinking of her.

    This world is too bright. She learns she doesn’t particularly like the sunlight. Her coat – a burnished silver, like her mother – refracts the light, throws her from her side, a sunburst.
    A girl raised in gloom, suddenly made to confront the sun.
    She forgets to eat and drink, at first. He had always sustained her in other ways. She is confused, when her stomach first starts to feel hollow, when her lips feel dry and parched. The first taste of clover is sublime, however, the first drink quenches a thirst she’d forgotten she’d had.
    (She’d eaten Before – before He took her – but she is not the same thing, now.)
    She is not sure how to interact with the others. They are almost a different species, she thinks. She does not know what to say to them. She does not know what she wants (other than to go back to Him, always back to Him).
    But still, she grows lonely.
    She grows lonely and so she emerges into the sunlight, bright and dazzling. She emerges, a smile on her face and a brand on her neck, embracing the sun, for this moment.

    p e r s e
    ------------------------------cordis x spyndle
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    #2



    Born from shadow, the blackness of life's oddities, one is simply transgressed into life as a burden, as a strangeness. Eyes find you, always judging, fingers point and whispers twirl around the air like frostbitten kisses. They burn, the shards embed themselves deep into you, your marrow, your flesh. I have not known anything bar the cold glare, the whispers. Perhaps only from the trees, the leaves as they surround me with their new spring form. The boughs, naked from winter's harsh reign, they bend and they capture me, stopping me from entering the light.

    Never enter the light, for it burns the sins, it enrages the quaint little blanket of shadow that you've always known. So, with those fair warnings from the well-whispered trees, and their wayward tendrils, I had stayed put. Finding a deep cushion of earth, the spindles of bark like a cage, keeping me in. My inky form a prisoner of the dark fortress. I pace, I pace wildly, my young pins churning the ground, my dainty hooves lost within the flurry of growing feathers. My mind is a foray of thoughts; they dance and they twirl like prima ballerinas. All quaint, all dainty.

    These thoughts weigh heavier and heavier until I spot something, more to the point, someone. She enters the light, and my eyes narrow upon her, waiting for her to burst into flame, to melt into sordid ash at her feet. Was the tale all a ruse? Was it fiction? My head shakes, throwing the burdens from my shoulders, releasing the caged thoughts from my mind, and they soar, like free butterflies.

    If she didn't melt, didn't turn into ash. Then I can join in the sunlit dance, could I not?

    The thought tastes strange, even upon my lips as I roll it around, chewing thoughtfully at the idea. I wait again, watching as the silver mare dazzles and glows against the sun's tangerine rays. Yet, she fails to implodes, to melt into the earth's crust. I dare those tales, those whispered lies, I dare them with each impending step closer and closer to the lit world.

    And then, my black frame emerges from the shadows, the prison of bark and trees, of shadow and dust. And I am there, as real as the grass beneath my feet, and as real as the silver mare who glimmers like none i've seen before (which isn't many, as I've not known much, bar my mothers, and my keepers, the trees, the darkness.) My tongue swells within my mouth, wanting to taste words, to feel them roll within my mouth, freed from my lips. But I fear the shadows looming over me, the trees whispering dark tales and sordid truths. So, I remain silent, and yet watchful, eyes following her journey across the sunlit land.

    And watching, is all I can do, for I soon settle back towards the safety of the shadows. My daring adventure failing. The confines of the darkness blanket my inky form, and I feel content once more. Only watching the mare with a salacious eye and a desire in my heart, to do the same. Yet my prison of thrones, of winter boughs, they beckon me, stroke my black hide with the softest of touches. Claiming me as theirs.



    Vaermina;
    drinking by the mausoleum door,
    they found you on the bathroom floor

    chantale x nykeln


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    #3

    i wanted pomegranates—
    i wanted darkness—
    i wanted him--


    To Cordis, His lair had been a prison.
    To Perse, it had been a castle.
    She found nothing confining about the dank walls. She found comfort in the enclosure, comfort in the gloom and shadows. She liked darkness, always had, a rotten cavity in her soul that craved it. True, sometimes there were sounds (the wet tearing of meat, animalistic shrieks, the chuffing of the hellhounds), but she put those out of her mind. The sounds did not come from her (instead, she loved the pain, cherished it, took it as a sign of His love, His devotion), so why should they matter?

    This land is far more a prison, with its strange rules, with the walls of horses packed around. This land is a prison, but there are no guards to guide her.
    The brand feels cool against her neck and she aches for the warmth. She aches for Him to appear and strip the flesh from her bones, rebuild her, own her. This world is not meant for her, nor she for it.

    She doesn’t see the girl, at first. She is not in the business of noticing overmuch, preferring to daydream, as if she could wish herself back into His lair. She is lonely but the creatures around her are so much less than He is.
    But she does, eventually. She lays eyes on the girl, black and wrapped in the bracken. She almost walks on – children unnerve her, remind her of other times, before she was His. But then the hesitates, speaks.
    “What are you doing in there?”

    p e r s e
    ------------------------------cordis x spyndle
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    #4

    love is the red the rose on your coffin door, what's life like bleeding on the floor?

    Velveteen shadows are the comfort, the shield to the world outside. The trees, the sentinels that guard the soft heart of the vessel, this vessel of mine. For those moments, that the sun had touched me, I felt peppered with hysteria, it rove my body in mock gooseflesh and touched me in a way that was both glorious and heart wrenching. The lady out in the light, she glimmers, as though even the sun does not know what to do with her.

    Silver touched eyes glaze over, forgotten, moved on. I blended in well, a mixture of brush and leaves, of ink and bark. Ah, but my confines go unshielded for that fleeting moment and the lady stops, in that split second of indecision I scuttle, flinty hooves a vibrato, an echo against the hardening ground. It is to late to run, to flee into the shadows, not know she has seen me ever watchful in my quietness. I swallow the lump in my throat, a forgotten breath, and I slip outwards once more, a nervy step contradicting my bold action.

    'It's safe here.' The words slip from my tongue, like the velvet of the shadows that drape my hide, and the coarseness of the bark, where their gnarled boughs sway above me in the breeze, hooked fingers reaching out, ready to pull me back into he confines of the darkness, where all is safe, all is safe indeed. 'What are you doing out there?' my fluffed ears twirl, like uncoordinated peaks, they bow and bend and flicker, finding the song of the dark far less enticing than the serenade of the light beyond -- a lark song, is far more melodious than the eerie whistle through the trees.

    My form fidgets, legs stretching, tentative in their strides. I am still getting used to the mechanics of movement, it is far easier to simply stand against a tree, rough bark rubbing against my soft skin, holding me up, keeping me in the prison. But no one can grow in prison, only set free like the larks from winter's cold reign, they, they are not stifled by the darkness. My silver coin eyes turn from the inky blackness behind, and back to the glistening lady. She is not melting, she is still very much a palpable mass. I take the intuitive and step out once more into the glimmer of sun.

    'Vaermina.' for it tastes as bittersweet as the bracken on my tongue, yet as right as the dew on the early morning grass.

    v a e r m i n a
    chantale x nykeln

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    #5

    i wanted pomegranates—
    i wanted darkness—
    i wanted him.


    The sun does not know what to do with her indeed, nor does she know what to do with it. This world is bright, it hurts the eyes. She aches for the gloom, the coolness radiating from stones (you’d think hell would be warmer, and while sometimes the air did stink of brimstone, there was always a chill to the air). She is too much for the light, a woman of burnished steel, a sword drawn.
    (Is she dangerous? Perhaps. She’s never tasted blood – save for her own – but she is property of a god, and perhaps there is a dark heart inside her yet.)

    The foal skitters, perhaps frightened, and she does not know what to do. She has no maternal feelings, the foal is simply a small creature, something Other.
    (They are all Other, to her. She evolved, in His lair, evolved past being equine, surely. A girl reborn in fire, in ice.)
    What are you doing out there, it asks, and she wants to spill the story but she catches herself. The foal doesn’t need to know, wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t care. It is too young and stupid.
    (As she herself once was, following at His heels.)
    “Vaermina,” she repeats, the word curious but somehow lovely, like an incantation in a spell book.
    “My name is Perse,” she says. It is not the name her mother gave her, but rather, the one He bequeathed her some shadow-stricken night, and she’s loved it (and Him) ever since.


    p e r s e
    ------------------------------cordis x spyndle
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