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+---- Thread: [private] so obviously desperate, rosebay (/showthread.php?tid=28960)
so obviously desperate, rosebay - lumineer - 02-28-2021
Lumineer
It is not in his nature to dwell, Lumineer.
He has soothed himself with the belief that the darkness must be temporary and that his family will someday be restored. He has convinced himself, too, that that day will come soon.
Perhaps he is naive, but this is the only way he can weather this storm of crippling darkness.
He casts no light as he flies, stretching the wings he so rarely uses. He favors the wolf over the wings and they ache with neglect as he soars over the forest on his way to the meadow, the eclipse at his back. He lands roughly, out of practice, stumbling over an uneven patch of terrain bathed in shadow but he feels no glimmer of self-consciousness. There is no tell-tale rush of heat in his cheeks as he regains his balance and folds his wings against his sides again. He has never been all that bothered about what others might think of him.
He wonders about the friends he has met along the way, how they have adapted to this darkness. He thinks of the girl who’d slid out of the river as if the frigid temperature had no effect on her at all and wonders if she has remained just as unaffected by the darkness. He thinks of the winged mare and her companion and how she has fared since they parted ways. He worries, too, about his family and how so many of them have been reduced to bones.
He is lost to his thoughts and he wanders aimlessly through the dead meadow-grass, hunger panging against his ribcage as he goes. He does not want to, but he cannot help but entertain the thought of what might happen to them if the light does not return.
THROUGH THE DARKNESS TO THE DAWN
@[rosebay]
RE: so obviously desperate, rosebay - rosebay - 02-28-2021
In no small way, Rosebay loves the darkness.
She loves the endless supply of it—the way that it hides its secrets underneath the canopy of itself. She loves the way it reflects your own thoughts back to you and then lets you slip between its ribcage so that you can hide yourself too, if you only ask. So she feels no fear when she rises each morning, feels nothing but curiosity and hunger as she strikes out into a world that is suddenly and entirely hers alone.
She is in the meadow today for reasons that she does not quite know, but also does not care to completely dissect. Instead she wanders amongst the dead vegetation, feeling them brush against the ivory armor that has begun to creep over her steadily. There are more pieces of it than before, some beginning to grow down her delicate forehead, others creeping out to curve around her thin ribcage.
It hurts, but she doesn’t mind the pain.
She wonders if maybe she prefers it.
When she sees him, the barest hints of light catching the gold of him. There is a hungry piece of her that is glad to see him and then angry that it has taken this long—that he has not sought her out before this. But she swallows it down, rearranging her face into something simple and sweet. She pauses, looking around her before she folds down to the ground, she takes a deep breath before she cries out, her voice higher than before. “Help!” her voice sounds foreign in her own ears, the breathy helplessness.
Thinking quickly, she solidifies the poison that always lives in her bloodstream to cut its way out of her in jagged slashes down her shoulder. She hisses in a breath, nearly dizzy for a moment, before she throws her head down to the side. “Help,” she cries again, this time her voice a little fainter, a little softer.
but in all chaos, there is calculation
@[lumineer]
RE: so obviously desperate, rosebay - lumineer - 02-28-2021
Lumineer
He squirms beneath the unfamiliar weight of his sorrow.
(Perhaps he has not become as accustomed to as he’d thought.)
He is distracted by these thoughts when he hears the call for help. He lifts his head so abruptly that a few wilted flowers tumble out of his mane and land in the dust at his feet. He searches wildly through the dark for the source of the sound but cannot immediately find it. He moves carefully, lest he stumble over the distressed caller in the shadows. And then the call comes again, quieter this time, but he is able to discern the direction from whence it came.
He moves slow, head low, eyes narrowed until he can barely make out the crumpled figure. And then he hurries, dropping to his knees beside them. Always so eager to help. Isn’t it a wonder that the heart fits in that chest at all? He sucks in a sharp breath as he makes out the steady stream of blood as it streaks down the shoulder.
“Are you all right?” he asks. Such a foolish thing to ask when the stranger is quite obviously not all right. It is only when he seeks out the face that he realizes this is not a stranger at all, but someone he had been thinking about only moments before. “Rosebay!” he gasps, reaching out to touch her neck gently. “What can I do to help?” he murmurs. He possesses no useful magic here save for perhaps the slightly antibacterial properties of the wolf’s saliva.
THROUGH THE DARKNESS TO THE DAWN
@[rosebay]
RE: so obviously desperate, rosebay - rosebay - 03-20-2021
It is always so difficult to pretend like this—to press herself into the mold of someone meek and weak, of someone who needs the assistance of others. But she reminds herself of the grand scheme, of the purpose behind it all, and so she continues to lie on the ground. She continues to lie down, feeling the dirt dig against the curves of her ivory armor, the shadows creep against the thin sides of herself, pulling down. She lets her voice fade slowly, eyes closing as she hears the sound of him coming closer, hiding her smile.
When his voice bleeds into recognition, she pushes more poison through her shoulder until it oozes, looking like the marks that the monster’s claws could easily make if they were to slash down her flesh. She is pleased by the pitch of worry in his voice, by the softness of his touch, and while it takes everything in her to keep that from her face, she manages—instead rearranging her features delicately.
“Lumineer?” she whispers, the faux exhaustion threading through her voice. “Is that you?” She leans a head up before she coughs, spluttering blood as she drops her head back to the ground. She breathes heavily, expanding a delicately armored body into a pained movement, wincing lightly against it.
“I was looking for you…” she murmurs, her voice trailing off, not putting an accusation into the words but letting the implication carry. “I couldn’t find you,” her voice sounds weaker this time, and she closes her pale brown eyes. It was his fault, she thinks, that he hadn’t sought her out, and if this is the lesson that he must learn, then she will teach it to him. She rests like that for a moment longer, eyes closed, her breathing labored. “But I kept looking,” she whispers, opening her eyes and searching his face.
She coughs, poison on her lips bringing forth a froth.
There’s a question in her eyes, but she doesn’t ask it—not yet.
but in all chaos, there is calculation
@[lumineer]
RE: so obviously desperate, rosebay - lumineer - 03-29-2021
Lumineer
He doesn’t know how to help her. He doesn’t even know any healers and it would take him too long to get to them even if he did. His heart thunders something deafening in his head, which has gone suddenly empty. He drops to his knees beside her, nudging her as gently as he can, though his panic makes him clumsy and he staggers to his feet again.
“I’m sorry,” he tells her, “I’m so sorry.” His tongue feels thick in his mouth. This is his fault. It’s all his fault, though he hadn’t thought that she might be looking for him. How could he when he hadn’t thought he’d even registered on her radar? Certainly she had more interesting things to think about than a silly colt she’d met who didn’t know how to keep secrets.
“Oh, Rosebay,” he sighs mournfully, noticing the way she froths at the mouth.
He has no choice but to step back and shift into the wolf. The scruffy thing shot through with gold, flowers gathered around the ears. “This is the only way I can help you, I’m sorry.” He creeps closer, careful, aware that the wolf is a predator and the horse is prey. He dips his canine head, sucks in a sharp breath and begins to lap at the blood oozing from her shoulder, cleaning the wound.
The poison hits his gut like a thousand blades and he immediately recoils, yelping in pain. He cowers, whimpering, blind with agony. The canine stomach turns in a way that the equine stomach cannot and his back arches as he couches and retches against the pain.
THROUGH THE DARKNESS TO THE DAWN
@[rosebay]
RE: so obviously desperate, rosebay - rosebay - 05-21-2021
She is pleased with the way he sacrifices himself. The eager way that he begins to earnestly clean her shoulder, the toxins slipping from her bloodstream innocently and over his tongue. She takes a shuddering breath, letting it end with a whimper as she closes her pale eyes, feeling her body go slack. There is nothing but the sound of broken breathing and his retching, the silence echoing around them.
There is a cruel part of her that considers letting the poison work its way through his system.
Make him pay for ignoring her—for thinking that he could live his life without her.
Her face nearly contorts with her anger, with her fury, but she swallows it down and soothes herself with the sound of his pain. The punishment that he had no idea that she was doling out. She reaches for the poison and twists it like a knife in the gut—drives it further into his wolfish body. She floods more into him and grits her teeth as she lies there, eyes closed and body twitching with what looks like sickness but was nothing more than the illness of her own mind. The rage that blossomed in her own veins.
His whimper breaks through her rage though and she pulls the poison back. Draws it slowly and steadily from his veins so that he can pretend he had expelled it. Pulls it back and lets the stinging sensation of it come home to roost in her once more. When she is certain that she has control of her emotions once more, she flutters her eyes open again, her expression confused. “L-Lumineer?”
She calls out, lifting her head and then letting it drop once more.
“W-Where am I?”
but in all chaos, there is calculation
@[Lumineer]
RE: so obviously desperate, rosebay - lumineer - 05-26-2021
Lumineer
Oh, the agony!
It devours him from the inside. It pulses in his gut, rakes clean the soft column of his throat. Here, the wolf hits its knees as its vision goes soft at the edges. And Lumineer, he is so certain that he will die here, that the two of them will perish here together and he’s sorry that he could not save her from the poison that took her but perhaps there will be some comfort in knowing it took him, too.
There is blood, he sees that. (In this moment, he thinks mournfully of his parents, his siblings. Did he tell them each he loved them? Did he assume that they knew it already?) But he cannot dwell on it. No, he cannot keep a singular thought in his head with how terribly it hurts. He writhes and spasms as it takes hold of him.
Yes, he will die here and he’s so sorry for it.
So the wolf lies down to die, coughing and heaving.
And then, as he relaxes into his fate, it goes. Almost like a physical thing leaving him, like he can feel it retreat. Like his deciding to let it take him has forced it to change its mind. Only when it is all gone does he draw in a shaky, hesitant breath. (Will his body reject this, too?) His stomach turns but he does not retch.
Her voice comes swimming to him out of the shadows and he lifts his weary head, scrambling to his feet. He has no balance, no control over those canine limbs as he staggers back to her side.
“Are you all right?” he asks her, always more concerned for others. “We’re in the meadow,” he says, hanging his weary head. So heavy. So horribly tired. “How do you feel?”
THROUGH THE DARKNESS TO THE DAWN
@[rosebay]
RE: so obviously desperate, rosebay - rosebay - 05-28-2021
There was joy to be had in watching the way her poison affects him. In watching the way that it nearly takes him to the knees—nearly takes him out completely. It’s all she can do to not purr with pleasure, to keep her face lax and the emotion bleeding out of it. To listen as he walks right to the brink of death, the place where she had pushed him, and then walks slowly away from it—with her help, as well.
How she controls all the strings, even when lying on the ground like this.
Her breathing is ragged and hoarse, her throat aching with the effort, and when she stirs and watches him come back, rising to his feet and staggering, she keeps her face steady. “I’m,” her voice is shaky and thin, as though exhausted from the effort, and she closes her eyes as if to steady herself. “I’m okay.” A brave front, as though death too had come knocking for her door and she had not been the one wearing its hood.
“Exhausted,” she lies, rising to her feet and then crashing down. She trembles and shakes, a single tear on her cheek as she lets her armored head rest on the ground, sobs racking through her. “I thought I was dying,” another lie, each one coming easier than the last. “I thought I was going to die here all alone.”
She looks up, light brown eyes wide as she considers him.
“But you found me—you came looking for me.” Her chest heaves. “You were looking for me.”
you and I nursing on a poison that never stung
@[lumineer]
RE: so obviously desperate, rosebay - lumineer - 05-31-2021
She is okay.
She is okay.
She tries to rise and he staggers away on shaky legs, his heart clenching in a painful fist as she crashes back down again. He stumbles back to her side, pressing his cold nose to her shoulder in hopes of soothing her. As if he is capable. As if there is anything in him that is capable of offering her any reprieve at all.
His vision still blurs at the edges but he tries for a shaky smile all the same. Because she is alive, she is okay. They have both clawed their way out of the jaws of death and that is what matters. It will be several minutes before he has the strength to shift back into his equine form, so for now he remains the wolf, its great furred head laid across her shoulder.
Had he been looking for her? He must have been. Otherwise how could he have found her?
“Of course I was,” he says and he means it. He believes it. It is not a lie because he means it with his whole heart. “I would not have let you die alone out here,” he tells her, gently nudging her nose with his muzzle.
Through the darkness to the dawn
@[rosebay]
RE: so obviously desperate, rosebay - rosebay - 06-09-2021
She feels a rush of annoyance up her throat as he staggers away and then back toward her—as his legs threaten to crumble beneath him. It nearly rises to her mouth as a growl. As a showing of teeth and a forceful push of poison down the column of his neck, but she fights it down. Reminds herself that she is patient, that she is kind, and she has taught him enough lessons today—so long as he remembers them.
So she gives him a sad smile, touches her nose to his wolfish fur and tries to not flinch from the feel of it. She preferred him as himself rather than this dog, preferred the gold of him and his handsome face, but she supposes she cannot begrudge him the shape he had worn as a method of survival.
Even if she wanted to sneer in distaste.
“Thank you,” she breathes, her voice delicate and trembling on the edges. “I don’t know what I would do without you, Lumineer,” she whispers, swallowing and closing her eyes. She focuses for a second and a single tear makes it way down her slender cheek before sliding beneath a piece of ivory armor.
A shudder that races through her as she gives him a kiss on his head, feeling the thick fur against her satin lips. She wonders if he would leave her again or if she had placed the hook deep enough. Would the guilt keep him close or would he forget her again? Would he wander away to be snatched up by another?
The thought burns across her belly, possessive and furious.
“Thank you for saving me,” she lies sweetly.
Then another suggestion, “Thank you for loving me.”
She catches his gaze, feeling the enthrallment loosen in her as she lets the lie do the work of poison.
you and I nursing on a poison that never stung
@[lumineer]