"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
It turns out that Tamora can do… quite a bit. All she has to do is put her mind to it. Literally.
It’s difficult at first, every effort making her break into a sweat, until her skin is dark and splotchy and she feels like she’s run across half the length of Beqanna. She sticks to the simple tasks; lifting rocks and branches into the air, hurling them away from her and then pulling them back in. How fast can she throw them? Stopping an object in motion isn’t quite as easy, though she finds that she can slow a bird down as it flits from bush to bush. It was easier, because the bird was red and stood out against the browns and grays of winter She’s even tried to see if she can affect her own qualities, and though the answer is yes, all it got her were some skinned knees and sore muscles. Flight isn’t an option yet - the potential ramifications of dropping from such heights and being unable to control her fall could (no, would) be deadly.
And that’s a big ‘ol nope. At least for right now.
Today, Tamora wants to dig a hole. Just for funsies, and because she’s never done more than scrape an indentation into the ground with her own hoof, which can only go so far, particularly when the ground is frozen.The little chestnut mare does not shiver in the brisk air, though she stands so very still, her head lowered towards the ground, and her eyes trained studiously on the earth. Slowly, but surely, a pile of dirt begins to appear, as if someone were hollowing out a wooden bowl, and the wooden shavings were piled on top of the rim. Or perhaps a team of ants were working at the speed of light, creating a home in the fraction of the time it normally took. Either way, it doesn’t look as if the dirt-piling going to stop soon, and the mare has no intention of moving.
idk what this is, or why the html isn't workinb. but better late than never.
The necromancy had come easy, like breathing. She’d been rattling bones since she was all but a newborn, the power a flood inside her. She was meant for such death- magic, meant to play with the dead.
(Mother didn’t like it, the rattle of bones, Violence’s incessant nature. Mother was frustrating – all the power, yet doing nothing with it.)
Possession was harder, still a thing she is refining – she needs to be stronger, needs to be able to control them for longer, control the stronger ones. But other people’s heads are a chaotic and terrible place, full of wailing and memories, and Violence finds it somewhat distasteful, has not yet learned how to quiet their cries.
She much prefers the dead.
Her creature is still beside her, walking like a companion of bones and sinew. It’s gone unnamed, but she likes the company, likes the sound. The creature is easy to make, easy to puppet about. Besides, it’s a constant practice, keeping it like this, upright and rattling beside her.
(And not many enjoy her company, enjoy the brash way she’ll throw herself into their heads, or the way she’ll throw the bones.)
The stops and watches the girl, watches the whirl of dirt appearing seemingly from no effort. But the girl’s intense stare, the particular tightness of her stance, betrays some sort of connection.
Intrigued, Violence walks forward, slow, but sends her creature out in front of her. It rattles forth in a run, stumbles towards the growing hole.
“Hello!” she shouts as the creature’s jaws move, pantomiming talking. She is still far back, possesses no sort of ventriloquism to adequately throw her voice, but the game amuses her all the same.
Her own mother wouldn’t know what to do with power if it turned belly up in front of her. Whatever it was that ran through her blue-blooded veins had either skipped a generation or been graciously bestowed (ha! If only she knew) from her mystery man of a father. Kerowyn doesn’t talk about him. Ever. When they were little, she and Marigny used to make up stories about their sire, pretending he was some gallant knight that was killed whilst defending their mother’s honor, or some devilishly handsome scallywag who broke their mother’s heart, because he couldn’t curb his wandering ways.
They are the daydreams of naive children; no more the truth than it would be to say the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.
The click-clack-click-clack of bones knocks on the edge of her concentration, an unexpected guest that rattles her concentration. The chestnut mare looks up, and while the dirt pile slows considerably, it continues to grow. A disembodied voice greets her, and then she truly does put her exercise on pause. Tamora’s ears flicker around, trying to locate the source, though she directs her question to the creature in front of her, because she feels a tad bit silly speaking to the open air. “Bones don’t talk. Who’s out there?” The voice isn’t familiar. Marigny might have been able to raise and assemble bones, but Tamora knows her twin, she can feel when her bay sister is near. This is a stranger, not a prank.
She can’t be sure that whomever controls the skeleton isn’t a threat, so she abandons the hole completely, focusing on a nearby, decently sized rock. It floats up from the ground as she waits. The truth is that Tamora is only half-concerned about the bones’ master or mistress. If they’d wanted to attack her, they could have while she was absorbed in her hole. But it’s best to make herself seem like she could be dangerous. Just in case.
Mother was a magician, but an impotent one – who sat in the shadows, murmuring quietly, who was useless in daytime. It drives Violence mad, watching her (and the fact she can’t enter mother’s mind only infuriates her more). Father, too, is grandiose in his own way – a monster with ridged back and a trilling, bird-like language that is alien, that Violence cannot speak unless she is in his mind, piloting him.
(Mother frowns on that. Mother frowns on a lot of things Violence does.)
Bones don’t talk the girl says. Violence scoffs.
“That’s because you don’t listen,” she says. The creature’s bone-mouth clacks, a moment too late. She’d been distracted.
Sighing, she slips forth, walks closer until she stands beside her bone creation. She makes it bow, dramatic, swipes the front leg-bones out from under it so it almost crashes to the earth.
(She has never played nice with her toys.)
“Violence,” she says – a name, a declaration of want, “who are you?”
