03-07-2016, 05:26 PM
And through the branches twinkling fireflies trace their mimic
constellations --
constellations --
She hears the great, low hum beyond.
Sea creatures, wailing their songs.
Somehow – through their queer, suspended body of water and despite the separation of frequencies that exists between them – she can hear, their eerie sounds setting her teeth on edge. She turns and pulls her daughter close to her. She inspects the grey spectacles around her bright, wide eyes and the mess of fade slowly taking away the traces of bucksin from her skin.
“Okay?” she whispers, close to her ear so she can hear over the din of trumpeting and chest pounding.
“I don’t know, mum… what’s going on?”
“War, baby. We’re safer here than elsewhere, I promise.”
And it should be true. Elsewhere, forest are razed to the ground by dragonfire and then reborn like razors from the earth. Elsewhere, great monsters fight in the sky and even farther away, souls are shaken awake from the deepest of sleeps.
Here, elephants surround and circle them. Gorillas pace fitfully and leopards prowl the upper boughs and bare their teeth at anything meaty. They are pushed close together, a roil of raised hackles and upheaval.
She breaths in the scent of singed fur, bitter smoke, meat and the soup of species – chaos. Nature bends to disorder but none of this is nature. This is nature’s rogues watching the world burn.
She looks away from Longear, sweeping over the children left behind in the innermost sanctum of that fleshy storm. They are safe. She counts them, again and again. She tells them to stay close. She scolds them when they stray. They must be safe. Prague had set up such magnificent barriers for them…
Then the demon and his hellhound appear, bursting through their rank void, past all of Prague’s carefully placed defenses. She rattles out a breath, stepping into her daughter. She wants to scream when the creature leaps on Rezska, but it sticks in her dry throat. Desperately, she tries to find that connection to Prague in her mind. “Someone’s gotten through! Someone’s attacking us!”
She fumbles with magic, unsure of its weight and its qualities.
She knows the earth and seeds. The sow and reap of a harvest.
But not magic, despite being sewn from it.
“W-who are you?” The rose grey mare shrinks away as he flashes beside her and Longear. Her ears tuck back against her neck, her eyes showing their whites as she cranes her head desperately away from him – him. Infernal. Made of other stuff. Not the flesh and horsehair she is used to. Not the substance of soul and life. Something else. Something hungry.
When he goes for her, Vineine’s sweet gift from the Mother, Longear shifts. Thank you. For second, relief fills her breast. Then in a flash of her bright white scut, her daughter bounds away, through the thick tangle of jungle understory.
“LONGEAR!”
“Something has to follow her!” she begs, shrill in her mind. From the canopy behind her, a large raptor swoops low, it’s outstretched talons thrashing the air and threatening to nick the eyes from the hellish intruder’s skull. But it has more pressing business and is careful not to get caught by him, or his hound’s gnashing jaws. It speeds away, screeching in rage, after the rabbit.
“W-what do you want?” She turns back around, sidling away from the hellhound, her eyes trying to stick with resolve to the demon. Her heart flutters, falters. She is not made for this. She is made for softer things. For conception and birth; for exploring forest floors and flower petals. She is made of the tender, rosy flesh from her birth mother and none of the iron from her magic one.
-- Amazonian Charoli, mother, daughter of Prague and Elladora
@[hanna] if Eight still wants to kill one of Vineine's unborn, this thread might be the place? if you'd like? :]