[open] at the final breath that is drawn

[Nostromo]

Night had once been her sanctuary. She could blend into it, she was the monster to fear in the shadows and the reason to travel with someone else at night. Travel with someone slower at night, so that you could escape her jaws. But now she is just another figure flinching from the shadows, just another creature with less-than-perfect night vision that must remain alert.

She’s been driven from the forest tonight. The closeness of the trees are oppressive but comforting as well. She can hear someone else coming a little easier if they need to tread over leaves and sticks. But in the shadows there, every time she closed her eyes a branch would snap, or it would twist to brush against her side. Stones would rattle by her hooves.

And forever those lights orbit her, their cool white light a taunt and a reminder of all the lives she’s taken.

They may look like stars but she knows they are souls. Knows it is the ghosts of those she has feasted on who are driving her into another sleepless night, torturing her by shifting the world around her and animating things that should not be animated.

In the open night air near the river, there are fewer things that can touch her. No branches, though some rocks still jitter as she paces. She has lost track of how many days it has been since she has slept and her already splintering mind is being held together by a very weak will.

When a stick slides across the ground like a snake, this black mare that was once a monster shouts in fear and stumbles backwards into the river where she loses her footing instantly and crashes onto the rock-lined riverbed.

NOSTROMO

hello someone please say hi to her

[bolder]

Bolder slithered across the ground.

For the most part, the young shifter moved silently. He had become a rattlesnake, a creature that should hopefully give the nocturnal predators pause (though if it didn’t, he would enjoy becoming something that would), and the copper-and-gold reptile glided over the sandy soil near the River. It wasn’t the most impressive shape - nor his most distinguishable one - but Bolder enjoyed the way that this creature saw the world.

Even though night had come, Bolder’s world was painted in various shades of red and orange and yellow. All it took was a moment of looking and realizing that what he was seeing was the heat coming from nearby bodies. It might prove to be a useful tool if he ever wanted to avoid being noticed, and even more useful because he could keep notice of others.

He kept towards the shrubs, preferring the cover twigs and fallen debris than the open sky. Bolder tried to move carefully, focusing on keeping his motion fluid and glancing around almost constantly, sensing the world around him with a flick of his tongue. The shapeshifter had been looking in another direction, staring at a mass that he could only assume was a weasel or perhaps a fox, when a nearby sound caused him to slither in that direction. He had felt the vibrations from the ground, when Bolder finally approached the riverbed, he was no longer a rattlesnake but a stallion who peered over the edge to see who (or what) had fallen.

It was a mare.

She was nearly as dark as the night that surrounded them (and therefore harder for him to see) - save for a few glowing … fireflies? - and Bolder brightened the glow from the moon-shaped marking on his face so that she might see him clearly. ”Are you alright?” the young pegasus called out, and took a carefully-placed step towards her.

@Nostromo

[Nostromo]

For a moment, she thinks perhaps it is the ghost talking to her. Whichever one had been making inanimate objects move, but then she opens her eyes and she sees the moon.

This confuses her, she looks up to the sky where she sees a similar - but not identical - moon and then back down to the illuminated face. A horse with the moon on their face?

Her entire body aches from the fall and she misses the hard armored body she had once possessed.

It’s been a few moments since his question but she finally replies from her spot on the riverbed. “No.” This mare has not yet learned to lie, even the small white ones that are polite.

She also does not know about small talk.

“I am being haunted.” She informs him in her slow, careful voice as she gets her legs back underneath her and though they are shaky, and she is cold and soaked, she remains upright in the river. The stars still orbit here in the water but she thinks maybe there will be less things for the ghosts to move if she is surrounded by water. Exhaustion weighs on her mind - just a little alleviated a little from the chill of the water and the fall. Or maybe there is just more for her to think about.

The moon stallion, the pain in her shoulder and scrapes on her side, the dampness of it all, the cold, the darkness, the lights, the ghosts. It is all too much.

NOSTROMO

[bolder]

Bolder feels the ground beneath his hooves – and sinks them deep into the sandy the sediment – as he peers down into the darkness. There is somebody down there who is not alright, and the young stallion tenses. It settles between his shadowed shoulders where his wings rigidly sit as he contemplates what to do next. He had hoped to be back in Hyaline by now; the memory of the scars he saw on Malik’s neck only fueled that desire.

But despite the instinct that tells him to go – that the mare got herself into the River and she could get herself out – he begins to move down the riverbank. His upbringing wouldn’t allow him to just leave her there. He drifts to the side with his hind-end swinging out and eventually down to the River itself. A bath wasn’t preferential during this chill hour, but Bolder told himself it wouldn’t last long as he splashed in.

In and out, he reminded himself with each sloshing step he took towards the mare and her small stars. In and out, and then he would be on his way home.

”There are better places to hide from ghosts,” Bolder tells her when he finally comes within earshot. His wings are firmly clamped to his damp sides, doing little to keep out the still-too-crisp spring air. He could shift into something else, something more suited to the water and the cold, but what yet eludes him.
Would it scare her?

”A cave might suit,” he continues to talk and then the young stallion glances up at the dim lights surrounding them. Those might be harder to conceal. ”How do you feel about trees? I can show you a nice, dry hollow.”

@Nostromo

[Nostromo]

The young stallion tells her there are better places to hide from ghosts, but she knows this is false. He offers a few suggestions and she watches him with her sad, dark eyes. “It does not matter, they will follow.” She tells him honestly and gestures to the very lights that surround her. The ones lazily orbiting her, bathing her in soft starlight.

To her they look malicious, no matter how slowly they move or how pretty their light is.

When he looks to them, she does as well - watching them warily as they come close to her, still on-edge even though the lights themselves never touch her skin. It’s what they can do with rocks and branches and sticks that makes her wary of them and there are all manners of small nicks and scratches on her body as a result of their trickery.

Finally she answers his question about how she feels about trees - taking the inquiry very seriously as she does all things. “I do not like trees. More for the ghosts to hit me with there.”

Though she was cold and soaked, this spot at least seemed safe for now.

Thinking that it is only polite to return the question, she asks earnestly. “How do you feel about trees?” She does not understand why she would wish to know this - she just knows that she has heard questions repeated back in forth in conversations and believes that it must just be another thing about interactions she's had to learn very late in life.

NOSTROMO

@bolder

[bolder]

Bolder has no ghosts. Perhaps he should, given the way that tragedy has plagued his line. But perhaps this is what Gale had taken from him that day beneath Hyaline’s lake. The young stallion has very little - if any - remorse. It’s as if any regret he might have had took a shape and then flew away. He had been taken from his family and Bolder holds no anger in his heart towards Mazikeen and Gale for that. His Uncle had even vanished from Hyaline and Bolder never lamented the loss.

So he stands there in the silence, listening to the dark mare speak of the ghosts that will follow wherever she goes, that they will harm no matter what she does, trying to understand.

His head tilts as he watches her, the silver of his moon glowing faintly against the dark night, and illuminating the serious silver gaze that Bolder gives her. Where could she go? Was there even a way to evade, if not exorcise, those malevolent spirits? (After his own experience with the Mountain and the Dark God, he will refrain from mentioning that place.)

"There is a tree,” Bolder realizes, wondering why he hadn’t sought out that entity before. "It's always burning,” he explains, though he continues to carefully regard his companion. His excitement was rising, and Bolder tended to get carried away in the moment. His over-enthusiasm might terrify the mare more than her ghosts. "They say you can see your future in the flames, and that if you petition it, it can offer protection.”

He smirks then, revealing the mischievous creature he is, and begins to stretch out his wings, trying to bring about any kind of warmth.

"Wouldn’t it be fun to give these guys a bit of their own medicine?”

@Nostromo

[Nostromo]

This dark mare did not have much imagination, but even if she did - she likely would not have predicted what the moon-faced stallion would respond to her question with. Her polite expression quickly crumbles into absolute confusion as she continues to stand there in the dark river. Even the orbit of her star-ghosts seems to slow, as though they are equally as confused.

Most of the words he tells her don’t make sense - a burning tree, that can show the future and offer protection? That can give some medicine to the ghosts?

Were they bothering her because they were sick? What would be so fun about healing them?

She looks sideways at them, as though for any clarification, but of course the cool light offers none at all.

So her dark gaze turns back to her companion. There are dozens of questions buzzing around her mind and they help her to forget her fear and the chill of the water she is standing in. Only one syllable makes it past her lips, though, because she has no idea how to begin to figure out exactly what he is saying to her. “What?”

nostromo

@bolder

[bolder]

Perhaps it was because Bolder assumed that the rest of Beqanna knew of the magical entities that existed in Hyaline as he did. It sounds nonsensical. He’s lived in the shadow of the Mountain for years now, and has tried to carve it out for Carnage, the Dark God, just as he’s lived for years with the statue of Starlace, Straia’s burning tree, and the protection that Craft and Anatomy bestowed upon his home.

He's becoming increasingly aware that his rambling makes him sound like a mad-man.

Fueled by the chill of the winter and his own selfish desire to return home, it makes him jump so far ahead that he leaves little time for his companion to follow.

Bolder doesn’t miss the side glance that the dark female gives the softly-glowing lights that surround her. Bolder looks at them himself, peering at them if they might offer some insight to the mystery of their existence. Ghosts, she had deemed them. But as a young stallion who has yet to experience regret, he has a hard time understanding it (Gale had stolen most of them, giving them a shape as a shadow that rarely follows him).

”We have a tree,” he tries again, ”A pine tree that always burns but isn’t…” and then he pauses again, looking at the dimly-glowing lights glinting in a lovely way off the river current, ”on fire.”

Swallowing hard, and realizing that he sounds like a raving lunatic, Bolder adds, ”It can tell the future. Sometimes. It might be able to foretell a way to – help you with your ghosts.” He refrains from telling her it requires blood magic to work. (In typical Bolder fashion, he decides to worry about that detail later.) ”I’m Bolder, by the way, of Hyaline. I, uh, didn’t catch your name.”

@Nostromo