"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
02-27-2017, 04:05 PM (This post was last modified: 02-27-2017, 10:55 PM by Pollock.
Edit Reason: grammar lol
)
Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
It would be incorrect to call the Pangean king incurious.
It depends, really, on what needs to be pried at.
He has, for example, shown great enthusiasm for the equine body. He has studied it, examined it; he has watched many of its different shapes and sizes from afar and from up close. He has inspected the small places between bigger parts, like a physician—the latch of the throat, gently with his lips; the flat plain of the withers, more roughly with his teeth; the bony point of the hip, so aptly made for the clutch of knees; the less visible places, modestly hidden under skin and fat and bone.
Experimented on them…
Everyone has their ‘thing’.
Governance is not one of his, but needs must.
He had, after all, stepped up to the God-king and asked for the crown, perhaps a narcissist’s move more than a rational, carefully considered one. What he had said to Carnage had not been a lie (for, the founding father would have been able to tell if it had been)—he did like Pangea; he wanted her. He liked the way she had been made, so inelegantly and infrangible. For a man who most despised weakness, that wasteland is a wonder. A wonder of violence and domination; an equalizer, in the way she weeds out the feeble and then feasts on them.
Of the kingdoms beyond his own, he knows nothing—he had been decidedly incurious in that regard.
But the clearing and cleansing he had gone through in his time by the ocean had brought him a renewed sense of ‘duty’. He wakes up with stark daylight scattered across the cavernous mouth of Pangea’s horizon, down her limestone hips and across the layers of her sandstone cliffs, and sets off to find Sinew’s painted, expectant body in the dust. “Come. We are going to Tephra,” he says in his grunt, when he does find her, the boys likely not far away.
If anyone else shook loose of the wastes to follow, he would not stop them. He expected—perhaps even trusted—Sinew to understand the nature of the visit, and when she had said she would come he understood it to be absolute.
They were not entering the island to make friends—nor to make enemies, necessarily.
They were going there to… inspect and examine her. Introduce themselves.
The journey is a long, cross-continent one, and by the time they reach the shore of Pangea, the gift-giver walks with a limp that he cannot hide entirely—that suppleness he had given as payment for his glory. He glances across the island, all swollen at her center like a gravid woman; it is lush and dark, so unlike their own pale wilderness.
It is perfumed and brilliant, and if it weren’t for these things, he might have smelled the familiar scent (one he had met on higher altitudes) as they moved nearer to the volcano, coming to stop where the feral island felt most inhabited.
She is less clinical and curious than he is;
About a horse’s shape or lands beyond their own but she has to admit that a king cannot go alone, and maybe she is just a little curious.
Sinew lounges in the ravages of Pangea; it is all rock, rock, rock and more rock. Somehow, she has come to appreciate the barrenness of it and she forgets of those places that are green and deep and reaching. But he comes, beckons her out further into the harsh daylight and she throws a stern look over her shoulder at the boys that linger in their parents’ wake. They’ll obey, but only for a little while longer and then they’ll test their might and mettle against Sinew and Pollock, she can see it in the way their eyes roll and their faces fall into a familiar sulk.
She understands the nature of their trip - neither friends nor enemies; and he has said not a word of either and still she trails him, her nose abreast of his golden hip. Her eyes are sharp, noting the limp that has come into his step as they traverse these new continents that have sprung up across the breadth of Beqanna. Nothing is familiar but nothing is altogether strange to her either - land is land, and they will always find some way to govern them just as he has managed to govern a lot of tricksters and murderers and dead, dead land. Here though, it is lush and this is not lost upon her because it is so unlike Pangea, so hospitable and temperate.
Sinew follows him towards the volcano; she coasts to a stop beside him and casts her black stare about for sign of someone. She glances at him momentarily, but his is the face of a king and not an envoy like hers’ is, schooled to careful neutrality as she offers nothing up in the way of small talk until someone takes notice of their arrival (unannounced as it may be).
Here it comes with no warning; capsize, i'm first in the water
The uninvited always come—scourging without end to fulfill desires that fill their heads with silly thoughts. She has seen them come and go, plundering and ravaging the very things they have come to believe is theirs for the taking. Their hardheadedness has caused thousands to die and kingdoms to fall. Her once home and even the old world of Beqanna is the very consequences of their selfishness and needs.
Lucrezia, unfortunately, is so stranger to the king that now claims the wasteland as his. She first had laid eyes upon him on the mountain top. His hunger for the things that were his had not been forgotten—his greed had reminded her to be stronger and protect the things she loved more this time. And to make the right choices this time for the better.
When his scent fills the air, stronger than the sulphur and ashes of her home, she hunts him like a hound. The champagne mare follows his scent over hot springs and crisscrossing streams of lava. She knows this land more than most—her duty and as Head of Peace now. It was also her duty, and with pleasure too, to wipe away the infestation that was beginning to fill her home.
The mare meets them within minutes of their arrival of lingering at the borders of her home. A smile spreads across her muzzle, warm and friendly but with a hint of mischief. “I expected our paths would cross again,” she greets as her eyes are all on the Pangean king as she stops before the duo. Her nutmeg eyes flicker to the overo mare for just a moment. “I am Lucrezia,” her tone is sweet and warm still. Lucrezia would never forget her manners, especially in her very own home. “What brings you both to Tephra?” However, she draws the line on inviting them into her home for now.
Unannounced or not, few things cross the border without Magnus knowing about it.
His gold-flecked eyes sharpen as the pair makes their way into the land—the mare quiet and obedient, the stallion gold and soot and with a limp he can spot from far away. Still, despite the obvious, even blatant, sign of physical weakness, something twists in Magnus’ gut, something rings warning bells in his head. So he doesn’t waste time in moving himself from his place of elevation along the border; he does not waste time in turning his nose toward the spot where they have stopped, his path following along quickly.
He, however, is not the first to arrive. Part of him wishes that Lucrezia was not so hawk-eyed, was not so good at her position, but only because he is uneasy about the idea of her alone with them. These fears, however, are pushed to the side when he arrives, coming up her side, his handsome face wiped clean of anything when he comes to a stop. He does not know their source, cannot know that they have simply beat him to the punch, and so he only drops his head into a traditional greeting to them both.
“My name is Magnus,” he offers, wondering why any information felt like a weapon to relinquish into their hands. His gold-flecked eyes wash over the both of them and his shoulders straighten. He had no reason to treat them poorly, to abuse them, and so he does not—yet. But it is clear in the scars that ripple across his shoulders, in the steady way he holds their gaze, that he is not someone to be trifled with.
“Is there something that we can help you with?”
Because they did not look like someone who came to their shores without purpose.
out of the blue out into the loneliest place that you'll ever know I carried the world just as far as I could but the damage had taken its toll
i'm not going to change, so stay out of my way. i don't need you to understand that i'm already saved.
The morning had been calm, quiet - but not even the sun glowing gently upon the horizon, nor the resplendence of color cascading across a barren, empty sky could lull her into a false sense of ease. As the midnight blanket pulled back to give way to a bright gradient of auburn and periwinkle, her dark, gold-flecked hazel eyes observed the hardened line where the rich, fertile soil met the sea, uncertainty effervescing within the rounded pit of her belly. Deep inside, beneath delicately woven layers of muscle, there is a stirring – life, growing and changing with each passing day.
Though the sensation of her unborn child stretching against the hollow of her ribcage pulls an unwitting smile to the hardened line of her mouth, she cannot shake the uneasiness that has begun to settle on her nerves, and so she takes to the sky, the broad expanse of her wings stretched out to touch the edges of the sky, blinding white in contrast to the pale powder blue that extends from end to end. With graceful, sweeping motions, her feathered appendages carry her across the dry plain, her gaze sharpened on the gently swaying grasses and the warm, bubbling springs speckled across the land.
Movement catches her eye, and the ridge of her brow line draws together in disdain. Quietly, she descends from her roost in the sky, with her limbs outstretched to embrace the fertile soil below. Her legs, elongated and nimble, catch her against the supple ground, and with a few loping steps to slow her down, she is once again bound to the earth. Her teeth, pallid and blunt, tug and pull lightly at a few misplaced feathers, tucking them back into place before drawing them to a close at the rounded swell of her belly.
A vile stench soon envelopes her; strangers have come, coated in sweat, filth and dust. It is both an intoxicating and nauseating scent; nothing of the sulphur and ash she has become acclimated to, and a quiet voice in her mind reminds her that such an adjustment on her own part may be the precise reason for why the repulsive barrenness of their scent repels her so. A daunting figure, gilded, with pale wings tucked along the broad border of his muscled physique, and an expectant two-toned mare meekly lurking in his shadow – neither appearing as a threat, but there is something uncertain about the endless darkness in his eye that stirs her proverbial hackles to rise.
Gently, the flattened line of her nose presses against the rounded edge of Magnus’ hip as the bristling white feathers of her wings caress his side – soon, she is shoulder to shoulder with him, with a solemn nod and glance given to Lucrezia who stands beside him. Her gaze does not wander for long, though, instead peering warily upon the two that have said nary a word yet.
Diplomacy is far from her craft – Lucrezia (brilliant, bright and warm) is much more suited, and the neutral, gentle words of Magnus are much more of an embrace than any words she herself could speak. She is fierce – made of brimstone and a fire that burns within; her wit harsh, her mind calculating, and her words sharp. Built for war, for discontent, and not for peacekeeping.
Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
Pathetic;
She had called him pathetic once, years ago, on a cruel, barren spike of that larcenous Mountain. Pathetic, she had called him, because he coveted his valuables so—those heavy, spartan weapons curving back from his forehead, the split, flexible toes and the voltaic promise of his muscles; the cold, riveting feeling of invisibility and the single, deboned wing dragging by his side. All the things he had earned; all the things he had to remind him. “Ah,” he smiles, a reptilian gesture, altogether insincere, “Lucrezia.”
The gift-giver has a nasty habit of letting things leave him without first getting their names—rude on their part, in any case, not to offer.
His lips twitch back as he draws his tongue across his dry, dusty lips. Last they met, she had called him pathetic and he had played a game with her. A game which had not been satisfied at its conclusion with a winner, for the Mountain forces ever downwards, and they broke apart from each other’s orbits to find their naked selves below.
But he had goaded her into playing; into bending but not breaking—he is very good at that.
He had not fed her fear (a remarkable mercy), but she had fed him anger and it had been a enough pleasant snack. “Small world we live in.”
He wonders if she found the things she had lost.
(He had, with no small thanks to his son.)
He wonder if she still blames ‘them’; still holds anger in her heart for ‘them’—the nebulous ‘them’ that she had not identified as her family to him—and that’s well enough, it’s best not to arm him with more information than is necessary when playing his game.
He had expected to come here with Sinew anonymously, in truth, but he sets his grim smile and does not waver. He hadn’t hurt her, right? He hadn’t fed her fear? So this kingdom (so far as he knows) is yet unharmed by him. This, of course, is a consequence he never saw his lifestyle dealing him—he had never really planned to play with others, only startle them a little every once and awhile.
He moves to answer her question, but Magnus’ scent distracts him, curls his lip as he turns those flat, black eyes in its direction. The gift-giver knows weakness—he has worn it, like dirt, over his shoulders; he has spilled it merrily and liberally, on the ground. This man is not that. He is not that in the way his body holds hairless, pink-grey etchings—he is suddenly keenly aware of his own, three knots along the underside of his jaw. He is not that in the way he carries himself. “Magnus,” he echoes, gravelly and low, nodding his heavy head.
One final interruption;
(—he watches her touch Magnus, gently. He watches it with cruel, precise intrigue, but does not waver. He wonders if Sinew has seen it, if she notes it too—if she has the kind of brutal brain that twists love as his does; suspects he knows the answer. It is best, indeed, not to give him more information than necessary.) She offers her name, short and sweet. Ellyse.
“What a nice welcome,” his pleasantries are inauthentic, even as a king he does not try. It is a waste of effort, there has never been a time or place in his life where others could not smell the stench on him, whether it be dirt or rot or stagnation. “My name is Pollock, I'm the king of Pangea,” he waits for Sinew to introduce herself, capable as she is, “we are simply here to introduce ourselves, see what our neighbors are all about. Diplomacy and all of that.”Rubbish.
03-06-2017, 02:00 PM (This post was last modified: 03-06-2017, 02:01 PM by sinew.)
They have always been the uninvited;
That is why they are a nation of nightmares, murderers, and thieves (they’ll take your skin, your heart, your very soul!).
She breathes in the sulfur as a mare moves to meet them; her eyes and face seem to light up in recognition of Pollock and Sinew continues to let her own gaze stray across the volcanic landscape. No name is offered, nor reason as to why they’ve come - she keeps quiet, and they think her this and more, like obedient but that is a lie and one that she adheres to for now. Pollock knows she is anything but obedient, and she bides her time there amongst the growing group of Tephrans and their own emergent King.
Sinew is sharp-eyed and slack-muscled in her stance;
They name themselves one by one, and one mare looks peaceful and inviting but the other is harsh in her approach of them - hardened, by battle surely. Their king falls somewhere in between, scarred and wary but not altogether unkind in his look. Sinew redirects her black eyes towards the three of them and spares but a glance to Pollock as he talks.
(She has seen it - that one small touch that implicates so much gentleness and love into one tiny act and in her mind, it is a small insight into the mare that stands so staunchly before them. It is a small opening into an otherwise impenetrable force and she almost - almost - smiles. Like him, her brain does not recognize love as something soft and sweet - it knows only brutality and the ways that love can hurt.)
“Sinew,” she offers at last, as Pollock spews garbage about diplomacy and neighbors in the nicest way possible.
Here it comes with no warning; capsize, i'm first in the water
As much as she is usually hawk-eyed for strangers that come to their home, it was the similar scent of the Pagean king that dragged her quickly and forward. The memory of him was sour milk and smelled like a rotten egg all in one. However, her presence is not completely alone. She is quickly joined by Magnus and Ellyse—Ellyse whom she has noted she must speak and get to know at least. It was important for leaders of any sector of kingdoms or lands speak. Her father had told her once that it was, but he had other reasons more than she had hers about the regards of it all in the end.
Lucrezia is quick to also give her warm and silent greetings to Magnus and Ellyse at her side now. Yet, she has not forgotten to keep one on the one winged, horned king before her. If anything, something deep and within the darkness of her stirs, it yearns to taste the ash of defeat, to end the greed and power that grows within him. She does not forget something so well, something so foul either, so easily—especially when her wings had been lost and his had been returned.
Selfish he was, but rewarded.
Giving she was, but unnoticed.
“Pollock was it?” She asks as her head tilts to the side, keeping an eye on the horned beast. “Indeed a small world it is,” and how she sometimes wishes it was not to the very least for some things. Pollock does not have the same formality that she often has with others when visiting lands or meeting strangers. It was harsh but very well the individual that he was—a king that took and did as he pleased. Pollock, in fact, reminded her of his father in some ways when he was a king.
When Pollock names himself as king, she is not surprised to hear it. He was the very type to seek and greed after power and for what he had wanted. Lucrezia had spotted the very thing she had been trained to be in him, the very thing Rodrik had wanted her to be. However, and with great thanks, she had turned out differently than anticipated. The overo mare, Sinew, introduces herself and Lucrezia gives her a soft nod, before her ear hears worlds of somewhat an attempt—or not even at all—about duties and learning of the new world.
“How far you have risen,” She simply says to Pollock with a warm, but hinting softly of malice, tone. “Tephra is as you see it,” she begins, “We are grand and strong, and it increases every day.” Lucrezia fills her words are stronger here, blunter than she normally is with strangers and others from other lands and kingdoms. However, she does not feel she has to play that part. Lucrezia chooses not to at all. Magnus and Ellyse, she knows, are capable to say what they please as her word is good as theirs—though Magnus outweighs both Ellyse and her overall.
howling ghosts, they reappear in mountains that are stacked with fear
Magnus has heard whisperings of Pangea, has heard enough to know what they are about. Raised from the earth by Carnage, they are no different than the Valley—and Magnus had a historical hatred of that kingdom. Coming together with Eight to create Tephra had been no small feat for him, and while he was working to rid himself of his prejudices, he could not bring himself to ignore the small itch between his shoulder blades when he thought of Pangea. They had been, so far, relatively quiet, but he had lived long enough to know that quiet was only the whispered comings of the storm. He would be ready.
Pollock does not bother to pretend to enjoy this and Magnus does not either. He remains rigid, carved from stone. Gone are the charm and the kind smiles; gone are the friendly demeanor he wore so well. He would not wear these things for them. Here, next to the two mares, he is every inch the son of Atrox and Twinge. He is every inch the soldier and the warrior—the stallion who had died battling Trashlip, the stallion who bled his brother out on the beach. He is dark with sharp edges, his face a stern mask.
“Welcome, Pollock,” his molten gaze moves to the mare, “and Sinew.” The smile that curves his scarred lips is tight and does not bring any warmth to his face. “And now you have seen what Tephra is all about,” he says simply, the steel beneath the words unmistakable. On the surface, the exchange is pleasant, but Magnus recognizes it for what it is. They were nothing more than dogs sniffing at one another, hunting for some spot of weakness. The tension in the air is palpable, but Magnus does not waver, does not bend.
“I had been planning to venture to Pangea myself soon. You have saved me the trip.” He had not looked forward to the journey, but viewed it as a necessity. He had no desire to tangle with Pangea, either to to place his home in harm’s way or to ally with whatever dark intentions they may have, but he knew he needed to brand himself, and this land, in their mind as strong. They were not weak targets.
Perhaps it was best that they came here instead. Let them see the volcano standing guard, let them see the life that teemed, let them see for themselves. Perhaps it was best that they come and see that Tephra was more than capable of standing up against them, of protecting their own. Magnus nods toward Lucrezia, her diplomacy softening the edges of his own, but he quickly returns his gaze to Pollock, holding the Krampus’ gaze steady. “Diplomacy and all that,” he echoes, shrugging scarred shoulders.
“Is there anything in particular you would like to discuss, or see, or was this simply an introduction?”
like a heartbeat drives you mad, in the stillness of remembering what you had, and what you lost
The scrutiny of his gaze is scathing, burning the very sordid edges of her like a flickering flame pressed against the worn, dried edges of an old piece of paper, singeing her core. A swell of discomfort drapes itself over her, setting her frayed nerves on edge and leaving the thick ribbons of muscle taut beneath her golden skin. The golden rim of her own hazel eyes meet with his own, her own gaze steely and resolute – the faintest sneer tugging at the corner of her pale, whiskered mouth. Should either think such a brief, fleeting interaction is an all-encompassing representation of her, or her capabilities, each would be grievously incorrect.
Along her shoulders and up along the length of her withers, her skin gives way to an aching, splitting of sinewy muscle as the rigid bones beneath emerge from the skin in several rows of hard, sharpened bone. Each spike is larger than the next, with the smallest breeching two inches in length – the length of each row ending near the base of her broad, feathered appendages. The muscle along her jawline tenses and her chin raises, her heart pounding steadily against the hollow ridges of her chest.
Her eyes bore into the two-toned female (oh, how she strives to appear as the mindless, obedient broodmare – but Ellyse is not fooled; Pollock does not seem the kind to entertain such company), recognizing the brief glint of amusement that reaches her glowering eye. Her own teeth are soon bared in as a warning, silently challenging her to say a word.
The pleasantries are nauseating, tedious and dull - and there is a longing within the pit of her belly, a yearning to dismiss the mendacious, deceitful pair that stand before them, weaving a tangled web of words devoid of emotion and meaning. It is a pointless and hollow cause – claimed diplomacy; but in the end it is nothing more than a poorly disguised attempt to see how far they can push, how deep the knife can be pressed into the proverbial skin, and how close to the marrow of the bone they could get. It is difficult to swallow the bile building up within her throat, to ignore the biting words that crave a voice.
”You are a poor liar, Pollock,” she says finally after a moment of deliberation, her calculating stare never wavering from the blank, dead stare of his own. ”your thinly veiled pretense is obvious and not welcome within our borders. You should go. I am certain you will find nothing of value to you here.”
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