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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


    Oh look, another quest!
    #11

    Jaguars prowl through his brain on the darkest nights.

    Their claws press at all the soft spots, all the memories of home he cannot seem to push aside.  He dreams of the wild tangle of the tropics, the choking vines creeping up the kabob trees.  He dreams of the inexplicable nature of a place where clumsy hippos are made graceful only in the water, where light is leeched by shadows, yet flora flourish – where he had devoted his love and then left.  His dreams are vibrant reminders of all he has placed behind him in order to move forward.  

    The call of a spotted cat sounds, but he wakes to find it is only an echo of the past.

    Here, beneath the star-strewn sky of an altogether different place, Vidar is still a stranger.  His apprehension has only grown in the months since he walked with a set jaw and a head full of questions over the Deserts border.  It is a quiet sort-of-place (mother had at least warned him of it) and he is not always a quiet sort-of-man.  He had grown up surrounded by the Sisterhood, had basked in the friction-heat of strong personalities and their collisions with each other.  It was as constant as blood running like rivers through his veins, a drug cut by all the life and death playing out around him.  There was never a quiet moment in the jungle.  Even if genetics had made him more of his father’s ice than his mother’s fire, environment would have won out in the end; the heat is inescapable.

    It fuels him now, because nights in the land of sand are nothing like the mild nights of the Amazons.  Vidar is alone (as he usually is) on a wide stretch of dune overlooking the oasis.  There is no movement around the cluster of palms – not at this hour – but he makes his way towards it, anyway.  The chance to quench one’s thirst is fleeting here (because there are no leaves brimming and fat with endless rainwater from which to drink – no trees to speak of, either) and he will not miss one.  The blue stallion peppered with grey and white makes to move down the dune with as much grace as he can muster, but still slides most of the way.  The ground isn’t solid; nothing is reliable in his life.  The world is malleable.  He is malleable, waiting for change to come. 
     
    He takes the final step too hard and sinks into the ground.

    And keeps sinking down and down and down to black.

    ~

    The blackness changes into a smoky, hazy grey gradually as his eyes flutter open.  He rises immediately and instinctually.  For the first time in months, his hooves do not disappear into the earth below as he heaves himself to his feet.  No cold sand presses against his legs as he struggles to regain an upright position.  It sets his nerves afire in an instant.  Because instead of finding change himself (forging his own way, as he always knew he’d have to), it has found him.  Taken him.  A cursory glance around his immediate surroundings is all it takes to see that he’s been trapped wholly and securely.  But with the same heat rising in his veins, Vidar does not believe his own eyes.

    Everything in him tells him to fight back, so he does.

    He bucks and spins and kicks until his sides are shuddering.  Nothing gives way around him, despite his throbbing muscles and absolute exhaustion.  But just like the walls and door remain untarnished by his blows, so too does his will to escape the fate he’s found himself facing.   In his total fatigue, his mind races back to the jungle, then, back to his mother’s side.  He wonders what the iron woman would do behind iron of another kind.  She would assess, he eyes the stall again between breathes, more closely this time.  Thinking is less of his forte than acting, but he would need to rely on his weakness for strength.  His flailing hooves had only managed to crush the one thing he might have savored instead: sustenance.  Disturbed pails and soaked food litter the ground. As soon as he spies them, though, fresh food and water appears.  Vidar blinks against this development - magic?
    His heat diminishes until it simmers just below his skin.

    All bets are off where magic is in play, but he will not despair yet (ever).  The stallion gorges himself on the hay and grain, drinks until his belly is rounded by water.  If he is to die in the bowels of the grey-dim unknown, he will damn take every enjoyment he can from it.  He will not protest in hunger or languish in the sound of silence ---  

    A scream pierces through the thick gloom.

    Vidar lifts his head sharply and swallows the last swatch of hay (noticing out of the corner of his eye how it seems to reappear again beneath him).  The air goes still again and he thinks it’s just another jaguar stalking in his head (am I losing it, first the jungle now this?)  But then it sounds again, a shrill note that descends into incoherent cries.  He doesn’t understand, but he knows now that he’s not alone. 

    Time passes slowly after that, each new voice he hears like a weight slowing the progression of the day.  Days?  Even he isn’t sure, as the light remains that grey-dim flat it’s been since he first woke.  He doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t try to call out to the infrequent voices that seem to only talk in the language of pain.  He isn’t fluent, after all, and doesn’t care to learn it for himself.  Not here.  Not in this place of slow time and abundant food, where he laments ever leaving home in the first place.  Not in the shadows of his mother’s certain disappointment with yet another failure for a child.  Not where he can only think and think and think without doing anything about it.  He is useless here, paces endless circles and loops that give him purpose as the hours pass.

    Circle.  Think.  Circle.  Think.  Circle.  Think.

    Stop.

    Still, he thinks, because he can no longer do at all.  Why am I still?  But then he sees why, or who, more specifically.  As the door opens (silent in this place of punctuating screams) a silhouette fills the hole it leaves.  He’s never wanted to act more than in that moment.  He’s never been as unable to stop his thoughts from multiplying more than in that moment.  

            

      

    Vidar

    #12

    Love is friendship set on fire ...
    It happens during one of those rare moments that she spent in the Tundra. Before she can even realise what is happening, she can already see the well-known ice covered lands far beneath her, hooves lo longer touching solid ground. Igni doesn’t know what it is that holds her and neither does she care about the fact that her sides are pressed up against another’s. It matters even less that kicks and scratches those others as she struggles to break free from the unknown hold. Her protesting – and fearful – whinny echo’s through the mountains of her home, as she’s carried away further and further. She’s only a child, only having been born last spring and the next one still had to show itself, and the panic, fear and the strange and unfamiliar situation drives her into a trembling mess before she passes out.

    ~*~*~

    Lately she had been away than home more often and although she loved the icy land, she felt constricted and bound. The blue roan child could be quite rebellious and stubborn, simply refusing to live the life that her parents – or more like her father – wanted her to live. Her mother probably knew of her behaviour and Igni was pretty sure that Roan would see her daughter’s future differently, but the bay roan mare was simply too weak to mingle herself in the tiring battle with her young child. Ever since her birth her mother had been weak and sickish, staying inside the sauna cave most of the time and only going out to get a bit of fresh air. That simply wasn’t enough for Igni. She longed for a challenge, to play freely and roughly with the boys and without the adults stepping in to calm their game.

    That was exactly why she snuck out to the playground. Her parents weren’t the ones watching over her and the other children there and she could play as roughly and fiery as she wanted. She could freely run, race, chase, tag and romp. Nobody would stop or reprimand or scold her. At the playground Igni could be whoever she wanted to be, and she couldn’t at home. Her father wanted her to be a modest and polite girl, who would calmly and pleasantly converse with others, but it was his passion that burned inside her.

    She had just been on her way back home, walking back towards the cave her mother rested in, ready to settle beside her parents for the night. Her hoof prints left a trail in the snow and her fuzzy coat had gotten drenched by the snow that fell from the dark clouds. And then the trail stopped, as she got snatched away. If her parents wouldn’t have already missed her, they sure would now.

    ~*~*~

    Unfamiliar scents tickle her nose, or is it the straw that covers the ground of her small cage? She sneezes before she can take anything else in. Igni sits up on instinct, moving away from the tickling and strange yellowish grass like things. Her eyes are still a bit teary and she blinks to clear her gaze, her confused gaze that is. She doesn’t recognize anything. Nothing she sees, nor the scents and definitely not the pained cries. It took her a few seconds to figure out the sound, but once the realisation hits her she’s up on her feet. And while she spins around herself, messing up her stable and turning it into a mess right away, she calls out for her parents, desperately.

    For a short second she stands still, listening to the cave’s echo of her call, but not long enough to wait until the shrill and high pitched sound is gone. Instead she calls again and starts restlessly walking around in circles again, pressing up against the sides of her steel and wooden cage. She’s too small. Not only because of her youth, but also because of her lineage. Neither Brynmor or Roan was tall, therefor their offspring isn’t either. Never had Igni had trouble with her short height, but right now she would have to rear or jump to be able to cast a clear gaze into the hallway of her prison.

    By the time she comes to a halt her nostrils are wide open and her sides rise and fall with every heavy breath. Her panicked and restless walking has left her tired, but even if she stands still in a far corner of her cage, she keeps looking around skittishly. The white of her eyes is showing, a clear sign of her distressed state – in case the messed up stall, sweaty coat and uncontrollable trembling of her body weren’t already. It is the fatigue that takes away her consciousness this time and although Igni desperately tries to fight it, it’s a battle she loses almost instantly.

    The next day passes in a similar way. With a lot of calling out for her parents and restless walking. The pained cries never die and neither does strange burning smell. The sounds are slightly hushed by the soothing – or at least they tried – of her unknown neighbours and the smell is somewhat diminished by the sweet scent of the hay. She had nibbled on it, she hadn’t touched the grains however. The water had been used plenty, but it wasn’t as nutritious as the milk her mother provided her. She had eaten, but it clearly wasn’t enough to make up for everything she had lost in such a short time. Wasting too much energy on walking around in panic.

    ~*~*~

    It is during the second day that she suddenly isn’t able to move anymore. Her body is trembling, uncontrollably that is. Just like she’s immobilized. Her scared and fearful eyes are on the wooden and steal door that slowly opens. Igni is as small as she could’ve made herself while standing, head dipped towards the ground and ears pinned back. She would’ve been snorting loudly if she would’ve still had full control of her body (and of course she would’ve stood in the far corner, instead of somewhere in the middle of the mess she’d made).
    ... and fire is the burning passion within.




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