things i wish i had not said, any

[bethlehem]

bethlehem
sometimes i wonder, will god ever forgive us for what we've done to each other?
then i look around and realize, god left this place a long time ago.


He comes from a long line of nomads, men with no place to call home.
(His grandfather, of course, a king once but only for as long as he could convince himself to stay).
And Bethlehem has lived so long at the edge of the river that it pains him to leave it.

He does not know what possesses him to walk, to abandon the comfort that the deafening roar of the river brought him. But walk he does. For days, it feels like. Until his legs ache and his head swims and he is plunged again into darkness. It resembles the forest at the edge of the river, he thinks, but the trees are bigger and stronger and taller. The sun, which he inherently knows is looming high overhead, is powerless in trying to filter through the thick canopy overhead.

This is as good a place as any, he thinks. So he loiters there in the half-darkness at midday. The fog curls sweetly around his ankles and he stands there, exhaling a hot breath as he surveys his surroundings. He feels no sense of trepidation as he waits. If anything were to trouble him, it would not be the fog or the half-darkness or the idea that any number of vicious things might be lurking in the shadow, it would be the impenetrable silence. It would be the way he can hear his own pulse and the long, slow pattern of his breathing. 

[Wolfbane]

ALL THE DOUBT YOU'RE STANDING IN BETWEEN

Taiga was suffocating under a humid cloud. The wetness clung to everything and thickened into a soup that hovered over the damp, soft ground. Dew glistened on prehistoric fern leaves, so many of them in some places that the forest floor was completely obscured by their overlapping shade, and Wolfbane found himself standing within them quietly meditating. His eyes were peacefully closed against the already dim light, seeking darkness. This was one of the few times he’d gotten to spend alone since Celina’s birth and he’s using the moment to practice with his new powers.

Since eating the heart of another horse had done this to him, it’d been a slow journey of self-discovery. There were moments like this when he felt relaxed and capable, close to feeling like his old self, and then there were moments when the magic basically fucked him over and more or less took control. When that happened, there really wasn’t a way Bane could curb the outcome.

The latter of the two moments happened when Jakub recently surprised him with a visit (thinking about it broke his concentration and made him grimace,) which, sad to say, wasn’t the first time Wolfbane let the strange manipulation-ability have the upper hand. Today he was trying as best he could to focus inward and get a feel for his personal magic, to better understand how he could manage it in the future.

It would come as a welcome relief to not have to constantly fight himself in order to achieve desired results.

He inhaled and began again, only to be interrupted by the knowledge that a new scent on the heavy breeze meant a new-comer. Opening his eyes, Wolfbane bit back a deep sigh and rolled away from the secluded ocean of ferns. He trotted briskly away, wings bouncing along and sweat gathering in every crevice, hoping that it wouldn’t be another curious Easterner come to ‘see how things were going’.

“Oh good.” Bane muttered, appearing suddenly and quietly as if he’d been there the entire time, expecting Bethlehem. No twig snapped or hoof stomped to announce his approach, nothing out of the ordinary silence at all. He was just there, and the bay stallion could puzzle over the how any way he liked. “A wayfarer on my doorstep.” The odd pegasus jeered indifferently.

WITH WOUNDS THAT NO ONE ELSE HAS SEEN

WOLFBANE

@[bethlehem]

[bethlehem]

bethlehem
sometimes i wonder, will god ever forgive us for what we've done to each other?
then i look around and realize, god left this place a long time ago.


In all his wandering, he has become mostly immune to the strange and fantastical.
So, beyond the faint stirring in his pulse at the sound of Wolfbane’s voice, he barely reacts at all.

His expression betrays no profound fear or trouble as he swings his head toward the sound of that voice. He blinks passively, the mouth pressed into a thin line as his eyes further adjust to the murky darkness here. The stranger cuts an impressive figure and the tone suggests that Bethlehem is not welcome here. He casts a glance over his shoulder in the direction he came, fashions up a slanted smirk as he reorients his focus with the pegasus’s face again.

“I didn’t see any signs,” he muses.

Perhaps he has misinterpreted Bethlehem’s intentions. “It’s not my intention to be an interloper,” he says before pausing to swallow his mounting irritation. Irritation at himself, primarily, for feeling any urge at all to leave the edge of the river. Irritation for allowing it to convince him that a proper home is what he needs. This less than warm reception is almost enough to send him back to where he’d come from.

“I was hoping to make my home here.” He grits his teeth then, exhales a long breath and loathes himself for what he says next, “that is, if you’ll have a lowly wayfarer.”

[Wolfbane]

ALL THE DOUBT YOU'RE STANDING IN BETWEEN

Dry humor for dry humor, their first exchange is met with a tolerant smirk from Wolfbane as well. The optimism in his distinctly clear gaze as he listened and watched the newcomer suggested a hint of appreciation at how one could manage such resolve. By now, Bane considered himself something of an expert at spitting out insults thinly veiled by sarcasm. A quip about signs in a world inhabited with very few opposable thumbs was good, though. The bay stallion held his own.

Did his best to try at least. When your inner ear can transform at will into any living or prehistoric creature, and when that ability is more or less acting on its own, swallowed globs of spit and grinding molars make plenty enough noise above the quiet. Not surprisingly, all the extra ability in the world wouldn't make a difference anyways. Wolfbane could gauge the reaction if he’d been deaf, dumb and blind. He really should’ve felt guilty for grinning wider when he did, for saying, “When you put it like that, how could I possibly say no?”

Imagining for a moment that someday this kind of fun would be the death of him, Bane dialed down the intensity and settled on a more austere, unenthused look again. Whoever the self-styled vagabond was he had pride and a robust portfolio of witty comebacks, something Taiga lacked in excess. “I kid.” The blue-and-gold creature muttered, raising both brows of his unique fask mask to show he meant it. “You seem deceivingly harmless under all those manners.”

There he went again. “Congratulations,” The border patrol stepped aside in one fluid, silent motion, “You’re free to enter at your own peril. I have a daughter your age who would kill me if she knew I was busy chatting up such a handsome young stud.” Wolfbane cautioned. He stood sentry and kept a glinting eye on what had come to blow through the Redwoods for Eyas sake, in case his equally odd daughter happened to be 'watching'.

WITH WOUNDS THAT NO ONE ELSE HAS SEEN

WOLFBANE

@[bethlehem]

[bethlehem]

I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.

He anticipates some dark repercussion.
Some consequence of the barbs on his tongue and the bristle of irritation in the network of his veins.

But, rather than cast him back out into the forest, the pegasus merely smirks and that is all it takes to drain him of whatever tension had taken up residence in his muscles. His jaw relaxes and the thin line of his mouth reorients itself into the soft slant of a smirk.

Deceivingly harmless, the pegasus says, and Bethlehem rolls his shoulders in a sort of noncommittal shrug. He rakes that ordinary gaze – nothing about Bethlehem is extraordinary, after all – through the fog that shifts and gathers around them. He supposes it’s true, though he has never felt any inclination to make himself seem anything other than harmless. He has never had reason to fight – nothing and no one worth laying his life down for. Neither a home nor a heart worth defending.

And then, just as suddenly as he’d appeared, the pegasus steps aside. Bethlehem considers him a long moment, his attention hinged on the other stallion’s words before the smirk deepens and he tilts his head a fraction. “Ah, I’m older than I look,” he says. And it’s true. There is immortality flowing in his veins – though none of it belongs to him, none of it will save him from his eventual demise but he likes to think that it has delayed the inevitable just enough. “Your daughter is probably significantly younger than I am.”

He moves to edge past the pegasus, to venture deeper past the boundaries of the land but he gives pause. Swallows what little pride lives in his chest. “I’ve never done this before,” he admits, his gaze shackled rather securely to a massive tree in the middle distance, “had a proper home, I mean. Is there anything I should know?”

BETHLEHEM

I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.