"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
She's fading faster than I can believe, a whisp of spun sugar melting in the rain. She should be dead by now, I have no doubt of it, and if she were not my daughter she would be. If she were anything less than mine. Whatever in my blood that has allowed my survival this far seemed to flow in her, whether or not that wa a blessing seemed too soon to guess. Six months old, and hardly bigger than a babe half that age.
We had not moved far from where Castile had deposited us. A sad pair, us. A barely there girl and her tattered, shattered dam. It had been a cool night, ther stars glittering down on us as we lay curled against each other in the dark. One tired wing stretched over her delicate form while we kept our fitful dreams, the broken one stretched out behind me unnaturally bent.
The moon hung fat and mellow in the pitch darkness when I woke. Fragmented visions blurred and melted away, leaving me feeling sick and disoriented. Throbbing wing, burning scars, swollen joints. It was not the plague that riddled me, merely the cost of a violent life catching up with me at last. Humming a half forgotten lullaby to the washed out girl, I worked to regain control over my breathing, my heart beat. I had been a beauty once, and perhaps that's what had landed me here. I had traded soft loveliness for a diamond edge, scars filled in with blood and iron. As damaged as I had become, I felt more real now than I had in years.
It would be easy to walk away. I'd thought about it every day for... too long. What could I win with that choice? It was a temptation that hung at the back of my mind, though I was long past the point of choosing by now. I guess that meant the choice had been made. Laying in the grass, grooming the thin threads of candy floss forelock from my girl's mane, I breathed slow at last. There were many things I'd come to regret in my life, but I could say I had at least done my best by her.
bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze if you must drink of me, take of me what you please
He isn’t sure why he remains in the coastal kingdom, but he doesn’t hurry back—not right away. Perhaps it is the faint exhaustion that tickles the back of his brain or perhaps he simply has a lot of thoughts that he is currently working through, the mulberry stallion only half aware of his surroundings as he walks through the cliffs and rocky shores. He certainly wasn’t living the kind of life that he liked best. He was too involved, too surrounded by beings who had expectations of him, who could demand things of him.
That, paired with the temporary loss of his sister, was enough to drive him to moodiness.
So he doesn’t see the pair, not until he’s nearly on top of them.
He snorts a little in surprise when he realizes that he’s stumbled upon the pair, emerald eyes sharpening as they focus and he’s able to recognize what he’s truly standing before. For several moments, he remains silent, studying them. The mare is more brightly colored than perhaps any other he’s ever seen and the small child tucked into her side is beautiful in her own right, but that’s not what interests him. Such things never are. Instead, he notes the gritty look in her eye, the fierce edges of her, and the pain.
The pain that radiates around them with nearly tangible waves.
Woolf tilts his head, already hating himself for the selfless act he’s about to perform, and slices open his shoulder, gritting his teeth against the pain. Usually, he was able to do it without thought, the small pieces of health he sacrificed for his magic almost negligible, but he was sore and tired and overexerted and it stung. The blood welled to the surface on his shoulder, beginning to drip slowly down the stained flesh and he closes his eyes, letting his magic pool together before he lets it ripple outward in a great wave.
“You’ve had a hell of a go lately,” he says thoughtfully as he pushes the magic forward, letting it work through her. First, focusing on the broken wing. Then on the rest of the pain that shoots through her—the infection and the aches and the agony. When he’s done, he pulls it back into his tired body, although he doesn’t let that show on his impassive face. Instead he just dips his massive head, shifting his behemoth of a body into a more comfortable position, ignoring the twinge of pain beneath the surface.
I had almost drifted off again, another dip into the void of rest that had been flickering at the back of my mind all night. Almost, and then a hoof and a head appeared, followed by the rest of his berry-dark bodice, and suddenly I found myself quite awake. He's a strange man, he'd be larger than me when if I were standing and full of health.
I am not standing or full of health. The ground draws my bones down until it feels that I may never stand again. The most I can do is look up at him, eyes defiant and fragile, waiting for him to know what he's seeing. It would be easy enough to stomp the pair of us out of existence. To rend spirit from flesh until even the truest of magics couldn't put us together again. That's what I expect, and what I wait for. How funny then, to see him turn his violence not on us, buy himself.
In mute fascination, I watch the dully glinting ichor pool on his shoulder (didn't you create something so similar?), watch it drip, drop, fall. I am all prepared to muster something biting at his comment, a stinging retort. Instead what I breath out is a wordless hiss of pain. How remarkable that this is my only audible reaction, when the bones of my wing slid back into place, broke free from their badly healed positions and returning to their native orientations.
Scars crisscrossed my body, evidence of every bad decision I had made this far. None of them had hurt to receive quite so severely as this breaking and healing did. My very blood burned until it felt like there'd be nothing left of me when he was through.
To my surprise and mild disappointment, I survived. More than survived. I could breath again without my ribs aching in protest, tight new skin spanned half a dozen wounds that had been weeping openly moments before. Silvery new additions to my tapestry of scars. Hesitantly, I stretched my neck from side to side, testing newly knitted tissue as it pulled along my spine. Blinking away the tears that had risen in my eyes at the pain, I lifted my head to look better at the stranger before me.
Woolf.
"What the fuck kind of sadistic god decided that healing folk would be best done by cutting yourself open? Sick bastards, giving you a gift like that..."
Not my most gracious introduction, but I can't get the image out of my mind just yet. There are not many who'd tear themselves apart just to ease another's pain. Gods know I'm not one.
My legs feel stronger, but I don't yet dare try to stand. More so I fear what I'll find when my wings are asked to stretch and cup the air. I'm afraid they will not carry me. Still, I could be more civil. Push fear to the side and go forth. My life had been ruined by fear far too long. A bemused expression on my face, I sighed softly into the night air before trying again.
"Hello Woolf. My name is Sabra, and this... this is my daughter, Miela," My voice faltered gently, looking back down at the faded filly. Her barrel hardly moved when she breathed anymore. Swallowing hard, I grit my teeth a moment before going on. "You're not wrong. A rough go, and mainly my own fault." The skin along my crest prickled uncomfortably for a moment, a new reminder of my idiocy. "That's what I get for biting dragons, I suppose." It'd be funny if it didn't hurt so much. It hurt more than I'd thought was possible, in ways I didn't think were possible.
bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze if you must drink of me, take of me what you please
He watches as her body breaks and heals, watches as his brutal magic knits her back together again. He could dull the pain, he thinks, could make this easier for her, but she does not strike him as the kind who asks for much charity and he figures she may bite his head off should he offer.
So, instead, he just watches quietly, a steady and unmovable force, barely reacting when her mouth finally opens and it’s not a thank you that escapes, but a steady stream of obscenities and biting remarks.
The surprise is enough to steal a laugh from him, a rare sound that spills from him throaty and dark.
He shakes his head in amusement, emerald eyes glinting beneath the curl of his mulberry forelock.
“All magic has a price,” he says calmly, a sentence that he has often repeated in his life. “The price I pay is just a little more obvious.” He rolls his shoulders, not commenting further on the source that he draws his magic from, the very core of his being. In a way, he and his sister were formed of sadistic need. Two children taken and created into anchors, bound to the boundary of life and death, a counterweight to the greed of their ancestors. They were a grounding force. A centralizing power.
Given incredible gifts from birth and yet cursed with limitations that required bloodshed.
Still, he has never thought of it much, let alone felt pity for himself. Instead, he just pushes the thoughts out of his mind, just watches the woman and her daughter with the barest shadow of amusement still simmering beneath the surface, hiding in the undercurrents of his eyes. At her confession, a metaphorical brow rises, a corner of his lip creases. “Biting dragons is certainly not the recommended path if you are looking for self-preservation.” His voice is syrupy, the syllables dragged out in the barest of drawls. It is a voice that hints to laziness and belies the whip-sharp mind underneath, the wicked curve to him.
“But you don’t strike me as someone interested in self-preservation overmuch.”
Which suited him just fine.
His shoulder didn’t bleed and his mind didn’t wander because he valued safety.
01-03-2019, 07:58 PM (This post was last modified: 01-03-2019, 08:05 PM by Sabra.)
He laughs, and I want to tear the amusement from his eyes. I want him to fear what he's found. I have blood and acid on my lips, and I want him to regret that laugh. It's a violent urge, and one I regret almost immediately. Who have I become, that I want to strike at the one who's helping me?
The healing took the wind from me, left me sore and lost. The anger that had been seething beneath my skin twisted back on myself, ashamed that I had wanted to throw it at this perfect stranger. I only catch every other word as he comments something rote, prices paid for services rendered. His blood for my restoration.
I had done nothing to deserve his aid, had not even known his name until it had fallen on my ears minutes ago. It was a kindness I was struggling to process.
Pressure was building behind my eyes, the sheen of tears glossing them. I wouldn't cry, not in front of this horse I had just met. For all I knew he'd fixed me just so he could do more damage of his own. Some folk were hateful that way. When he speaks again, I discover that it is my turn to be amused.
"Not very, no. There's no fun in that. But then again, I seem to have very little say in the matter. I survive no matter what I do." A vicious grin split my lips as I speak, tossing the vivid tangle of forelock from my eyes defiantly. They are no longer misted with untears. Instead, I gaze the the verdant depths of his eyes with chips of ice. Breathing a reassuring sigh over the still form of the girl beside me, I gather my courage.
With a slight wince, I pull my legs beneath me, pushing against the earth with a groan. Standing shouldn't be this hard, it really shouldn't. With everything that's changed though, I'm pleased to find myself as stubborn as ever. I stand, wings loose at my side and head high. Not tall enough to meet his eye level, but still an improvement.
"What about you, Woolf? Does a man who spills his own blood regularly bite dragons or fly in hurricanes? Do you tempt fate just by breathing?"Is the line you draw between fighting and fucking so thin it almost vanishes some nights? My thoughts twist and turn against each under the uncaring sky. Im saying far too much, and thinking less than I should be. I'm standing too close, and can only watch our breath mingle in curling clouds of mist between us.
bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze if you must drink of me, take of me what you please
Her thoughts are sharp, jagged things and he doesn’t try overly hard to dive into them. He feels the edges of them in the corners of his consciousness. He can sense the anger and the fury and, if he were to pick up on her desire for him to fear her, he may have laughed again. For everything that Woolf has seen and felt and experienced in this life, true fear has never been one of them. There has been times that he had wished he could feel it—truly experience it—if only so he could know what it is like to be afraid.
What about it drives men to such desperate measures?
What about fear will make a rational man chew through his own leg?
These are the kind of questions he wants the answers to, and if the acid on her tongue was enough to evoke them in him, he may have turned himself over for it. But, alas, he misses such thoughts, and he maintains his distance, amused and interested enough to remain even though his favor is now over.
She comments on her own immortality with a near disdain and he tilts his head in thought, wondering at the kind of life you must leave to hate the magic that leaves you alive. But he doesn’t comment on it. He is many things, but he has never been accused of being a great conversationalist.
But she doesn’t let him off the hook quite so easily, and he is soon faced with the sharp edges of her question. “My very presence hangs off the barest of threads when it comes to fate.” His smile stretches wide across his swarthy face although it is not particularly warm. For a second, his body begins to fade, the edges of it going fuzzy while the rest of him begins to dissolve. It happens slowly, the particles of him beginning to swirl and then collapse onto itself. A thunderclap of a moment later and it all falls, leaving nothing but a small pile of dust where he had been standing, the pieces beginning to blow in the wind.
“But I, too, have little say in the matter.”
His voice blows in on the breeze as the dust begins to gather again, swirling into place, starting at his ankles and then up his body. He pulls himself together slowly, standing several feet to the right of where he had been. The sensation is like it had been when he had floated amongst the cosmos with his sister, when they had been in the heavens, spent and wrung dry. He is thankful for the blood staining his shoulder. For the easy price to pay for such trivial magic, for his own amusement more than anything.
