"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
***Her sense of smell is keen. Through the scent of fallen leaves and drying plants—earthy, and ever so slightly bitter—she follows it. Feline. Sleek and warm; floral and sweet. Foreign, but it speaks of home. It reminds her of things that time had naturally regressed: a small, pink, damp babe at the foot of a smiling woman, out of breath and glad for it. Too long ago. A mind too simply formed, not yet ready to consume and process the deluge of stimuli. The caw of a vibrant parrot, the soft slink of a constrictor—the immense world of the understory.
***When that scent runs cold, another takes its place. Familiar, but only slightly. Not nearly as much as she wishes it was. Only because she has just tested it, at once suddenly so close and providing. Now weaving like breadcrumbs through the meadowgrasses and wild roses. Guiding her, even in absence. Pulling her with some invisible string to the place where she belongs. ***Or so it always seemed to her. A logical conclusion, one written long before she was ever birthed onto that dark floor.
***She had her doubts. Always there. It is why she hadn't come sooner. Why she had settled elsewhere to raise two children and blossom. Because the inevitability of it scared her, and because it was so incongruous with the way she understood nature to work. Nothing is forever, nothing is inevitable but death—and not even that. Not here. Not equally. So she had let it go, to grow or die in her breast as it would. But it had not died. It smolders like a star, and she is following its constellations. Guiding her.
***All she knows, and she knows it all well, begins to thin out. Replaced by fan leaves and giant trees; white orchids and bright red passion flowers. She stops to look at these things, the quiet observation abating the nervous churn in her gut. A black and yellow beetle; various butterflies; and a vivid red and teal tail father nestled on the ground. ***Her golden brown eyes move methodically. Wholly taken by her inspection, she does not notice the increase in hoof traffic. The padded dwon floor. The stronger equine scent. The epicenter, because this entire place was too wild for them to have it all. She stops, looking around anxiously. She feels small, it is a comfort.
*magic-borne daughter of Prague and Elladora ****‘...Herself in the Heavens, her beam on the waves.’
She spends less and less time in the Jungle as a horse. It doesn’t feel right to her anymore, though she doesn’t entirely know why. So many things have come together to change her, and she doesn’t like the darkness creeping into her heart. It isn’t her, not really. But it is. Oh, of course it’s her. She’s electric with claws and teeth, and she’s already dead. What does she have to fear? Why does she insist so constantly on peace, on the right side?
She could be so much more than that. But does she really want to? Does she want to be Straia, gaining power through fear? She could. Oh, she certainly could. But is it worth it? The problem is that part of her thinks so. And the rest of her is screaming.
As a lioness though, these thoughts simply disappear. Her feline self doesn’t care about politics or the impending war or anything else. She simply slinks through the Jungle, running into various other (native) cats now and again. And sometimes she even finds the Jungle spirit, and she’s pretty sure the jaguar has taken to watching Rhy somewhat cautiously. The mare is becoming less predictable, and certainly, the Jungle spirit knows this.
No one else knows though. Not even Lagertha. Rhy doesn’t let on, doesn’t let it show on her face. So when she spots the stranger in the middle of their home, she shifts back, and her nicker is friendly. Rhy, unlike Lagertha, doesn’t treat trespassers quite so harshly when they don’t smell like another kingdom. “Hi, I’m Rhy. Can I help you?”
When you come from a land that age does not kill you, one may look at it that way. However the land is littered with demons that can transform from prey to predator, that can manipulate physical matter by blinking, that can spark a fire by the flick of a tail. Death is much more of a reality now than it ever will be in a moral world.
And at least in a moral world, you can choose to go humanely.
I bake myself in luxury on a dark mahogany tree when the smell of unfamiliarity wafts onto my fluctuating tongue. Hiss. I am not welcoming of strangers, of those who do not smell like home. I don’t appreciate their trespassing or their unknown intentions.
Only a fool would be nonchalant about an alien.
She seems harmless enough.
They always do, Turkish.
She is a female, small.
Easy prey, Turkish.
I refuse to indulge in any controversial meat.
Your spark has dulled in the light of the sun.
Ours always will, Smother.
Hmph.
I slink down the ebony trunk, my body contracting and squeezing to hold myself to the wood. To the unknown I seem eerie, but elegant. Every movement holds a purpose, every inch I move must then follow all eleven feet of me.
By the time I reach the ground, my body is already pulling and squeezing itself into a more respectable frame. As I have gotten the hang of my transformation, my accuracy and timing has improved as well. No more long shifts and wasting my time, I have become a master of my own trait.
I emerge from heavy green bush and my blue eyes set on no longer only one stranger, but a familiar face as well. We haven’t had the pleasure to speak, she runs in a far more friendly circle than I, but nonetheless we are sisters and that must not be taken lightly.
After all, Lagertha wanted someone worthy and I can only be worthy if I play nice with the neighbourhood.
“Hello,” I nod to the fellow amazonian before my warmth turns into a bitter cold. I watch the stranger, “a little bold to wander into a kingdom without permission or invitation, wouldn’t you think?”
I hear the soft twitch of blades as my fellow friend, my daemon, my familiarity wanders to my presence and begins to slink up my leg. He has become a priority to me, a permanent company and his body does nothing but warm my interior. To others, he is a twelve foot python contracting around my neck. However to me, he is a very versatile scarf.
12-21-2015, 04:25 PM (This post was last modified: 12-21-2015, 06:15 PM by Vineine.)
***She believed that once, too, that death was an inevitability. What every mechanism and breath was meant for — death and copulation, measured enough to sustain. Enough to reach equilibrium. These things move populations; and these things, out of control, burn them to the ground. A prime tenant of nature. And one day she would die. She has seen death, on her birth-mother, with the expected infestation of larvae at the foot of a beech tree. Her children would die, hopefully long after her, but not necessarily. These woman around her, as well.
***But Prague? Dear Marley? Long ago she had stopped trying to understand everything that the Mother created. Why She created, and how. It is not so simple. ***Demons and predators be damned. There are higher powers than all of that here. Life has been reconstituted. Recycled. Renewed. Everlasting. The Mother is so full of surprises. She is one herself, apart from all that seems right — unnatural in her quickening, two sisters fabricating life from a mighty, expertly wielded power. She had struggled with this for a long time. With differing so wildly from the conventional origin story, but here she is. Flesh and bone and thoughts.
***This world is complex. Unimaginably so. She only hopes to soak up enough before she dies to have made a dent.
***Her ears swerve. Maybe catching the slink of a serpent. Maybe the transition. Maybe just a rustle of the canopy high above them. And then the far more familiar sound. Hooves on soil, a voice, not unkind. She nods her head, returning the nicker with one characteristically soft. “Rhy. It's nice to meet you,” The pinkish mare smiles, perhaps a tad nervously, but there is excitement there, too. There is customary kindness, and erudition. She senses danger here much like when she met the young black woman. It is a queer, internal panic, stilled by what the eye can see. A feline scent, but presenting a decidedly equine form. The Mother has many surprises.
***She wants to ask everything, but she can only mouth a syllable before they are joined by another. And Vineine cannot help but be amused by the foreign scent on her — not feline at all, but not wildly unfamiliar. The Mother had concentrated her surprises here.
***This woman emanates a quiet kind of ire. It is off putting, and Vineine steps back a step, and she smiles. She smiles because she always does. Because she is okay, and this mare assumes too much too soon for the sake of her kingdom (perhaps). And Vineine cannot fault her for that. Some things are worth being cautious for. Her golden-brown eyes watch the serpent wind its muscular body around her... gently. ***With her gaze never leaving the snake, Vineine huffs a small laugh from her throat, shaking her head, and does as she was instructed just hours before: “My mother sent me.” Finally. “Prague. And a very fine young mare named Naga. Considered me a worthy recruit, I suppose.” She turns her head to the side a bit to get a good look, blinking slowly, “That is a beautiful animal.” With guarded fascination, she watches the way its individual muscles twitch. “I have never seen a snake quite so big. Not where I grew up. My name is Vineine.”
*magic-borne daughter of Prague and Elladora ****‘...Herself in the Heavens, her beam on the waves.’
Death is inevitable. Don’t argue that one with a girl already dead. Well, half dead. She walked between the worlds now, knew what death felt like. It wasn’t all that different from life, really. It’s not that hard to cross between the worlds. But even if you never die, live some immortal life, pieces of you die every time a loved one leaves or plunges into the ocean. Pieces of her heart live in the afterlife with her parents already. Another piece broke off and disappeared with Kratos, wherever that asshole had gone.
In the end, everyone dies in some way or another. Living forever is a joke, cruel and terrible, that Beqanna plays on them. Rhy wouldn’t die, but one day she’d probably simply decide to cross into the afterlife and never come back. One day, she’d be entirely done with politics and fake smiles.
It isn’t long before they are joined. Rhy know who the mare is. So far little more than a pretender to the Jungle. She lurks, certainly, but Rhy had seem the mare do little and less to serve the Jungle so far other than laze about in the trees as a python. Not that Rhy could tell which one was Smother all the time, but it seemed irrelevant when the mare wasn’t doing something for the Jungle.
Rhy turns to face the girl, not necessarily unkind, but a hair of her usual smile slipping away. “Sometimes bold is okay.” Lagertha was enough of a bulldog against people walking into the Jungle. There’s a reason Rhy is Lagertha’s second. Rhy is a little more reasonable when it comes to these things. More to the point, she’s very certain any intruder wouldn’t get particularly far. Any of the sisters would see to that.
Then she turns back to Viveine, who to her credit, takes Smother’s greeting in stride. Good girl, Rhy thinks. “Welcome to the Jungle Vineine. It’s a pleasure to have you. Do you have any questions for us?”
