[open] You know I'm the one who put you up there - Printable Version +- Beqanna (https://beqanna.com/forum) +-- Forum: OOC (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=24) +--- Forum: Archive (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=81) +---- Forum: Lands (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=98) +----- Forum: Brilliant Pampas (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=103) +----- Thread: [open] You know I'm the one who put you up there (/showthread.php?tid=30192) Pages:
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You know I'm the one who put you up there - Obscene - 09-06-2021 I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
”You’ve been useful.” It shouldn’t have stung at all. But it did. The land grows cold and he freezes with it. The little pieces of shrapnel that had exploded in his chest had only grown sharper after his conversation with Aela. Had hardened with his encounter with Skandar. And then they had ran shallow grooves against his insides after the death of his daughter, firmly implanting themselves within the barbed wire of the armor that he buried himself within. To anyone else, nothing had changed. He still spoke to the golden Seneschal often enough (mostly regarding what to do with Sickle and the ever changing playing field they found themselves on) but he no longer followed those well-worn paths on her golden skin when they traded razor-edged jokes and shared schemes and ideas. The Pampas flourished despite the new covering of snow over the fields of flowers. In a few days he would set off for Loess. On the outside, everything was fine. But on the inside…. How he burned. Burned like the petals of the flamed flowers the jaguar colt had presented to him (how had this child come to know the magic his father once wielded?), burned like a brand in smoking flesh, burned and hungered for some craving he couldn’t satisfy. He doesn’t recall the last few nights, doesn’t even remember when he had shifted fur for scales and fangs. There’s a hazy recollection that he had once known, had once at least been able to remember when he lost control. In his firm decision to not care, he seems to lose even more pieces of himself. The more he loses, the crueler he becomes. Still, he seems to hold back slightly for the children. Regardless if it’s Fyr or Sickle or whatever lost child they swoop up next, he dulls the blade for them. There is a shame that slips through the cracks every day he spends watching over them, every time his red eyes flicker with approval as they begin to develop into themselves. He had not seen Revelrie or his son since he had lost control. Since he had failed from the very start of fatherhood. Her last words had been heard despite what the broiling hunger had tried to keep from him. It is not the children he is with today though. No, it is another being whose presence he had not seen much of as the influx in fire wielding equines increased in the Pampas. Steve had been hard to find this winter but the elusive grass mammoth had eventually been found, curved into a hill until one could not tell where the land started and the beast ended. He had brought the berries, had asked the question, but the grumbling nonsensical response he had received back had only sent new scales to scatter along the golden smears of his shoulders. Steve retreats and he is once again alone, the hard lines of his face unreadable as he falls deeper into the dark brooding shell he had made for himself. obscene Open to any! RE: You know I'm the one who put you up there - Cheri - 09-06-2021 @Obscene RE: You know I'm the one who put you up there - Obscene - 09-07-2021 I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
Her face is the last one he expects today. It’s the last one he wants to see. Familiar venom rises in his throat but it is not him and he cannot help the snarl that he greets her with as his red eyes flash hungrily at her, scales encasing him in a shining plated armor that matches the cold bite of the cruel one he usually wore. He grows still and silent for a moment, simply glaring at her as he fights against the rising instinct to shift. She is bold as she always is and comes closer, so the serpent fades back as he loosens the tension from his body and exhales sharply. How long had it been since he had drank his beloved nectar or inhaled the sweetness of pollen? It had been weeks. Months? It seemed nobody had noticed, not even him. Gods, no wonder he felt so dreadful lately. “That’s the best idea I’ve heard in weeks.” He says sharply, a familiar smirk twisting across velvet lips. He doesn’t ask her how he found him this far from the heart of the land or even what she had seen on her approach. If she had overheard his questions to Steve. As the sub-kingdom had grown and flourished over the years, his presence as Fae had influenced it as well. He finds a regular stash in a small alcove to the coast, as if produced on the whim of a wish. He wastes no time in shoving his muzzle into the honeyed wine and gulps it down with a reckless swallow. He steps back to allow room for her and moves further out into the open breeze of an approaching winter storm. He waits for her to join him before glancing at her with that same dark hard expression. “What are you doing here, Cheri?” He asks her blatantly, raising a brow in her direction. Surely she had better things to be doing, preparations and all that for that new fancy crown she was about to wear. He no longer doubts her validation to wear it, making it all the more suspicious that she was here with him. Alone. He wants to spit something sharp and hurtful at her, to continue to burrow himself into the darkest parts of himself until he felt nothing at all. That brightness in her seems to find it’s way to that piece of himself he had laid down for her, finding a place to slip through and dull his tongue. “If you’ve come to pay that favor, that’s on my terms. Not yours.” He says with a small flicker of wickedness before fading back into the brooding storm he was carrying. obscene @Cheri RE: You know I'm the one who put you up there - Cheri - 09-07-2021 @Obscene RE: You know I'm the one who put you up there - Obscene - 09-07-2021 I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
She doesn’t bat an eye at his scales and he can’t remember the last time she has, if she ever had. He has made her cry, he has made her doubt herself, but he can’t ever seem to chase her away. No matter how hard he bites, she fails to break apart the way he had once thought she would. No, it is him that has been fractured and left questioning who and what he was. She soars where he falls and he finds himself laughing at the irony of it all, how quickly the roles had reversed. Then again he can’t remember when he had ever been whole. It was easy to shatter something that was already broken to begin with. She steps beside him and assures him of not breaking their pact and he snorts with a roll of his red eyes. No, he hadn’t thought she had come here for that. Not when the changing of the guard was to happen so soon. She is goading him, he realizes, baiting him with her cheshire smile and glimmering green eyes. As if she can sense his rising ire and the tumultuous storm in his breast that matches the rising waves along the dark coast. He doesn’t take the lure, his lips curving slightly into a small frown. Once it would have been easy to accept her trap, to let himself fall stupid beneath the amber haze of nectar and play pretend with her like they had done years ago. ”You’ve been useful.” He figures that’s why she’s here too. Useful. A distraction from her rich fulfilling life in Loess. A distraction from her rise to grace while he tumbles down the steps of hell back to where he belongs. The warmth spreads from his throat deep into his chilled bones and he suddenly steps to her until his chest is almost pressed against hers and he is glowering down at her much like he had done years ago when he had still thought he hated everything about her. “You may be a Queen but I am not your jester.” He growls at her, his tone sharp and cutting as his red eyes glitter with animosity and something close to desperation. “Find someone else.” He snarls into her ear before slowly pulling back, taking the scent of her (desert rains and lilies) with him. He had once said that she had reminded him of Aela and when it comes to their ambition, their strength, their refusal to bend and break… He still sees it. But her heart is open where the golden mare’s had been closed. And the shriveled thing within him is still looking for that place to settle and it reaches out uncertainly as it brushes tentatively against hers. obscene @Cheri RE: You know I'm the one who put you up there - Cheri - 09-07-2021 @Obscene RE: You know I'm the one who put you up there - Obscene - 09-07-2021 I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
There had been a violent part of him that had hoped she would step back up to him. For all his wickedness and cruelty, he wasn’t foolish enough to think that she couldn’t hurt him if she really had a mind to. She could cut him and they would both know he had deserved it. There is a moment of familiarity where it seems she just might do so and give him the release he seeked. But then she steps back and he can see the smoldering look in her eye fade into something worse. Concern. He moves away from her with a huff of disgust but there is no missing the muscle working along his hard jaw. Or the sudden conflict in his darkening gaze when she apologizes. There is a memory of Revelrie apologizing when he had been the one who had done wrong and how similar that is to this. Cheri was not the object of his anger. Nor was she the one who should be saying sorry. The silence doesn’t last long when she asks what was on his mind, what he was doing by himself out here alone. For a moment he feels like erupting again but surprisingly what comes from his mouth is cool and flat and the opposite of the hungry emotions that writhe in his stomach. “I was trying to fix something.” He mostly admits although its not the entire truth, just part of it. He expels some of his frustration with a snap from the long black and gold threads of his agitated tail. What he was trying to fix remains a mystery, his list long and winding. Although a few things were falling lower and lower on the scale of importance and a few more of them, he realizes, he no longer wants to fix at all. “Has your magic ever failed you?” He suddenly asks her unexpectedly, turning his handsome face to her with that same strange unreadable expression, his lips pressed into a thin line as he considers her. If someone had told him he would be standing on the coast and asking Cheri of all people for answers he would have laughed in their face before finding just the right word to slice into the heart of them and make sure they never thought of speaking again. Yet here they were, standing together as if they were friends in a world that was constantly tipping the scales in and out of their favor. He is silent when she answers, his fiery gaze still turned to the sea and it is an effort to force the truth from his thick tongue. “I have a son.” He says quietly, his voice somewhat strained beneath the thunder of it. “There was a daughter too.” And it hangs in the air around them. Was. The weight of his words bringing a cold hard mask to settle across the storm sweeping over his gilded face as he pulls the biting edges of his armor around him. As if that would keep out the grief battering against his walls. obscene @Cheri RE: You know I'm the one who put you up there - Cheri - 09-08-2021 @Obscene RE: You know I'm the one who put you up there - Obscene - 09-08-2021 I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
Every power had its limits. He had forgotten that most important lesson of magic only to rediscover it when it had been far too late. He looks out at the churning sea and remembers when he had been mortal, how cautious he had been. He had turned cruel as a defensive measure and tended to avoid any sign of magic, partly out of fear for his mortality and partly out of green envy. Since he had become immortal, how that vigilance had flown out the window. The Fae in him had a natural affinity for trouble and mischief and with Aela the possibilities for that had seemed endless. He had pushed the memories of what it was like to be afraid into a heavy box and while he held on to suspicion, he threw caution to the wind. It had taken him to heights he had never thought he could reach but the slope was slippery and had not been without its casualties. That was the cost of ambition, why he had never wanted it. Still, he can’t deny that he is rather good at all this. The political power plays and even the tedious tasks that come with running a kingdom. It was in his blood after all. The sky finally breaks apart and a freezing rain lashes across his gold smeared frame, seeping into his skin and sliding off his scales, turning his dark coat into something oily and slick. His dark gaze finds hers and he is surprised by the range of emotion he finds there. There is still the lingering concern, the nauseating compassion he knew was coming… and other things he hadn’t expected. Is that… anger he sees flickering behind her eyes? He means to ask why, what she could possibly be upset for, but then she speaks and chases the question from his mind. There had been three questions he had asked Steve. There had been one riddle he had gotten in return for all of them that made more sense then what the creature usually said but had pissed him off all the same. He hadn’t been in the mood for a puzzle today but when she speaks he merely nods, finally understanding the answer the mammoth had given him. What belongs to us, what does not? There was no repairing what was never his, there is no fixing things he had no control over. He can feel the cold of the rain stealing the little warmth the nectar had provided but he doesn’t flinch from the onslaught of weather. He never has when it came to a storm, especially hers. The sharp pieces lodged into the fiber of his being remain but there is a clarity in the glittering red eyes that had been missing before. When she speaks again of dark paths and her insistence of traveling down them by his side, he merely stares at her. Why? After all he had done to her, why did she still stand beside him? Perhaps he had been asking the wrong questions to all the wrong people. “We are already on a dark path.” He finally says through the icy droplets that falls on them from dark gray clouds above and closes some of that distance they had mutually made, angling himself to take the brunt of the wind for her so that she can hear him. “We have Gale and Mazikeen’s daughter.” He holds her gaze, waiting for the fire of her anger that he’s sure is to come but he speaks before she can spew it at him. He tells her of what Gale had done to Aela. Of the broken mare in the North. Of the deal he had struck with the indigo stallion in Hyaline. How Gale had been uninterested in sparing the whole of the South in his plans but agreed to sparing the Pampas. And how he had not returned the child because he was certain it was all bullshit to begin with. Aela had wanted to hold out for a better deal but deep down Ob had a different reason for wanting to hold on to the girl, knowing that whatever deals were made could easily be broken. “If they come then their focus will be on the Pampas.” Not on you or Loess. Not on anyone else but me. He searches her face and smiles in his devilish way at her, momentarily pushing back that sharpness in his chest as he glances past her to the home he had made here. The once quiet wildflower meadows that now sung with life and death and everything in between. He doesn’t ask her if she will provide refuge for his people should they need it. That compassion he had seen earlier speaks for her. His court is a slippery one, filled with ghosts and tricksters and those that think themselves gods. He doesn’t doubt that they would all land on their feet and find their escape, that Aela could find somewhere new to hide Sickle, that they would not scramble to save themselves. In fact he counts on it. If given the opportunity, he will give them all the distraction they need. That slithering thing inside him has grown stronger in the weeks of emotional turmoil he had been under. If he could take the magical abomination (familiar hatred flaring a fire around his blackened heart) down with him while sparing his court when he lost himself to scales and fangs for the final time then he would accept his fate with open arms. obscene @Cheri RE: You know I'm the one who put you up there - Cheri - 09-10-2021 @Obscene |