"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
04-15-2019, 09:58 PM (This post was last modified: 05-04-2019, 10:43 PM by Vadar.)
Vadar
Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one
“Hey,” The black stallion called out in a stern voice, “don’t get too far ahead.”
He wasn’t in a rush. There wasn’t a particular place he had to be or anyone waiting for his arrival, but the animal golem he’d recently created seemed eager to run ahead and nearly out of his line of sight. The pockmarked male sighed deeply and rolled his dimmed, red eyes. Children, he thought. What can you do about them except try your best?
Up ahead, the creature made from stone and clay paused to look back. Its hollow eyes glowed red like Vadar’s, and carved along its narrow, stony side were strange runes. The small golem’s master narrowed his vision and tried a tight-lipped smile before jerking his head silently, a clear indicator that the animated mass of earth and rock should get back here right now and obediently it turned tail in order to return to his side. “Good boy.” Vadar told it, the white line across his mouth growing, “Or girl. Whatever. You don’t have a gender, do you?” He cooed like an enamored pet owner.
Quietly the creature wagged its foxish tail.
The two kept on and soon enough the day wound down to dusk, a wet fog rolling in from the west where Vadar and his creation where heading. Only Sylva remained to block their path, her dark crimson leaves looming ominously in wait for the travelers. It would be easier to avoid detection altogether, he reasoned, and just take the long way between Taiga and the southern territory, but he’d rather not be stuck out here past dark. He’d heard what lurked in the shrouded woods and he didn’t want to tempt its attention by lingering too long where he wasn’t wanted.
His obvious sickness and ill-health were unwelcome nearly everywhere. “Whatcha think?” He asked the golem, whose eyes shone through the hazy mist. “Risk it, or play it safe?”
Without a word the fox-like creation bounded forward again, cutting right past the nomads trail and into the dark, orange-gold woods. The nearly hairless horse harrumphed with very little surprise and shook his broad head before following after. It didn’t make much sense but despite the warnings, something about Sylva drew him in. If there were secrets about his lost memories here, maybe a shortcut was necessary to figuring them out.
and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.
She isn’t sure, but she thinks she is on the verge of imploding.
The recent discovery of Ophanim’s infidelities were weighing heavily on her; more than she cared to admit. Finding one child of his had been shocking enough, but finding two led her to believe that it didn’t end there. She realized she had been foolish. She had put what meager amount of trust she possessed into him, only to have it tossed carelessly aside. Of course, she did not linger too long over the fact that she was, partially, to blame. From the day they had met she had been distant, she had disappeared whenever the feeling struck her, and she had been sure to keep him at arm’s length. Of course he had looked elsewhere, but it didn’t make the taste it left in her mouth any less bitter.
With her fury nearly reaching a boiling point, she left Loess.
Weaving through the crimson and bronze forest of Sylva, she is hardly paying attention to her surroundings. The cool fog trails its fingers across her skin, subtly dampening the strands of her nearly black mane, and relieving her fever-hot skin. She had made it nearly this entire duration of the plague without showing so much as a symptom, and seemingly overnight she was stricken with a fever and a wretched cough. It spasmed in her chest, forcing her into such fits that blood was spat from her mouth.
She was tragically lovely, with the stars that glowed along her sides and the blood-stain of her silver lips.
The strange little creature is the first thing she sees. She almost ignores it at first, thinking it to be some odd looking fox. It wasn’t until she realized it was not made of fur and bone that she let her steps falter, her cobalt blue eyes narrowing just slightly. But it is the red-eyed stallion following that brings her to a stop, her eyes piercing through the haze to level with his. “Vadar,” and almost instantly she is again cool and poised, all thoughts of Ophanim vanishing with a smile perching so perfectly on her crimson tinted lips. “It’s been awhile.” Taking in his own ill state, and seemingly ignorant to her own, she coos with a tip of her delicate head, “The plague didn’t treat you well, did it?”
starsin
it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted. ( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )
04-18-2019, 10:02 PM (This post was last modified: 04-18-2019, 10:17 PM by Vadar.)
Vadar
Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one
She glows like moonlight when there is none.
With red eyes like a beacon in the coming dark, Vadar sees the distinct halo of light Starsin carries along with her long before she comes into focus. His creature is lucky enough to find her first, circling around her without sound or warning, and then he comes to greet the constellation girl hesitantly. His face is a mirror that reflects her surprise equally, but not because of who she is. There’s nothing (at first) about her that would signal any sort of recognition on his end, except the way her bruise-colored eyes level with his and how she fashions his name like an old friend.
He’s… confused. Initially. She knows me? And she does; something seizes him at the core and refuses to let go. The shadow memories he’s forgotten flash in hazy color. Those stars he thinks, glancing down from the confident tilt of her warm smile to follow where they swirl across her shoulders, down her belly, and past her hips. Her lips are something he remembers. No - something he felt, once. His head begins to ache.
“How the fuck would you know.” He blurts out, angry though he doesn’t understand exactly why. The way he was speaking felt dangerous to him. He swallowed hard and could feel the clay-fox stumble as if it were drunk. Stones fell loose from its side, one of its misshapen paws crumbled apart. I’m just trying to be your friend; the words pound like a drum in his skull, echoing over and over again. The blood on her lips. Something about the blood on her lips. “I know you.” He says uncertainly at first, and then, “I know you.”
One of his skinless knees jerks forward and at the same time, his eyes flash. A shudder of pain rips through him, his sides convulsing for a second while the clear memory sweeps over him and drags him back. It takes him to the Meadow, back to when they were together and her face had been the same. Back to when he’d been weak against her advances. Vadar steadies himself and breaths softer now, blinking away the headache to glance up and give her a raw, very unbecoming smirk of his own.
“Starsin.” He hums, the golem forgotten where it lies as dirt once more. The corners of his eyes begin to prick with what he thinks is water, but instead blood leaks over the sharp lines of his cheeks. “I wanted to give you something. Looks like I’m too late.” Vadar sighs, acutely aware of how she poises herself so beautifully. His ears flick back and forth, gathering the silence around them. They seem to be alone, and the idea of their seclusion causes that dangerous feeling to surge to the forefront of his mind again. He wonders idly how she might feel with his teeth grasping her mane, this time around.
He wonders if she would squirm against the feeling of his open, sore skin pressed on top of those pretty, pretty stars.
“Doesn’t matter.” He laughs, fresh tears flowing crimson from his pulsing, red eyes. “I’m adaptable.” The stallion murmurs, uttering something unintelligible beneath his breath afterwards. He doesn’t need the fox anymore but he dreams of something larger, something that grows from the earth behind the gray mare and gathers boulders to itself like fists. It’ll hunch in the shadows and spread its dead-branch arms out to block escape, and loom over them to brush its formless head on the now-black canopy of Sylva’s woods. “Can you guess what I’m thinking now?” Vadar challenges her softly.
and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.
She is confused, at first, since he does not seem to remember her. She liked to think that if her ever so charming personality wasn’t enough to leave a lasting impression, that the scattering of constellations adorning her lithe curves would make up for it. But he is perplexed, staring at her as though she is a stranger, and for some reason this angers him. There is something about the way he verbally lashes out at her that coils that cheshire cat smile into more of a smirk, as she listens to his plague-ravaged mind try to pin down how he knows her. She would have reminded him, had he not come to the conclusion on his own. She would have ran her lips down the arc of his now bare-skinned neck, just the way she had before, would have curled into his side like her touch could bring the trapped memories to the surface.
But, she didn’t have to. Her silver-bell laugh is like raindrops from her tongue when he finally remembers, and she purrs her approval as though he is a child finally solving a difficult problem, “Good job. I was almost offended.” She is closer to him now, slipping through the mist, her dark blue eyes vibrant and alive even though the light of the moon cannot reach through the thick canopy of trees. “You wanted to give me the plague? Something everyone else has? Don’t you think I’m worth a little bit more than that?” She reaches forward, unabashed and uninvited, brushing away the blood that slides down his face. “Don’t you think I deserve something...unique?”
She is smoldering alongside of him, and she isn’t sure if it is the heat of their fevers radiating from each other, or if it is the anger and the feeling of being betrayed that she was keeping locked inside. Unbidden, she thinks of Ophanim – how he touched others the way he had touched her, how she had so stupidly given him a loyalty that he didn’t deserve. She was not a stranger to lust and desire, but her modus operandi had always been to just lead them to the brink of want and insanity, and never give them what she so coquettishly teased. But right now, she would love nothing more than to go off script.
His thoughts are dark, but mingled with something else, and again she touches him. This time, the glow of her side presses into the curves of him, and when her lips trace the curve of his cheek her voice is hushed, even in the stillness of the night. “You’re thinking you’ll have to keep me from running,” her heart is a thunderous beat in her chest, as her teeth scrape lightly against the bare groove of his throatlatch, “but you’re wrong.”
starsin
it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted. ( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )
04-22-2019, 02:35 PM (This post was last modified: 04-22-2019, 03:24 PM by Vadar.)
Vadar
Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one
So soft and simple, yet the touch of her stained lips on his face brings back more unbidden memories. Vadar feels rooted to the spot by this sensational mixture of lust, anger, and sadness while the color of her eyes wash over and through him like dark poison. Before all of this she’d wondered if he’d been afraid of getting sick when, in earnest, he should’ve been afraid of her and the sickness she’d always carried around. Starsin was so fucked up, and so fucking confident. And so fucking beautiful he couldn’t stand it; the one half of him struggles to resist tearing into her, while the other half resists tearing away from her.
She deserved to feel the way she made others feel, but she was always one full skip ahead of whoever followed. “I think…” He murmurs, the sound reverberating through the link of her mouth against his throat, “I’d like it better if you did.”
Jerking violently free from her grasp, he lurches forward. That brief surge of energy shifts their proximity to one another, propelling him to move ahead and leave the glowing girl exposed and alone somewhere behind him. There’s a second of time for her to avoid; a brief moment where their sides were rubbing gently as he took those steps to force their separation, but after that she’ll be left to take the brunt of a down-swinging Sylvian boulder shaped just like a hard fist.
I think I’d like to see you suffer for a bit he doesn’t say, hearing the soft woosh of a wind behind him and not looking to see if the golem has swept her quite literally off her feet. Vadar only smiles and glances gently left to right. There are plenty of trees here to break her fall or catch the large stone, if it misses.
“Come now Starsin, it’s like you said.’ He laughs softly, pivoting around to find her again. “You deserve something unique. What good would I be if I couldn’t make this experience exactly that?” The sickly male asks her, wanting her close again but not wanting to see her so positive, like before.
and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.
She listens to his inner struggle, and it’s nothing that she hasn’t heard before. Everything about her was undeniably beautiful, from the dark slate gray of her coat decorated with stars, to the intense blue of her eyes that glittered behind a veil of almost-black forelock. But she has always been a little fractured, never quite able to make that honest connection with others. To most, she was unlikable. She was an acquired taste, that most seemed to always find bitter. She listened to their thoughts, heard their displeasure and their insults and their dislike, and kept them harbored inside of her like some sort of twisted treasure that she refused to let go of. She used them to water her bitterness, to keep twisting her into the mean, untrusting creature she continued to become.
She was beautiful, but she wasn’t likeable.
Her mother hadn’t liked her. Her supposed lover didn’t like her enough to be faithful.
Vadar’s thoughts are nothing new.
When he jerks away, she flinches, briefly irritated at being left before being perplexed by his final thought. She doesn’t know why she knows to dart to the side. Something about the way he had glanced back for the briefest of seconds, something about the word suffer in his mind. She can almost feel the rush of wind left in the wake of the hurtling boulder, her shoulder scraping roughly against the bark of a tree in her haste to move. The ground shakes with the force of the boulder as it plunges to the ground, leaving a small crater where she had once stood.
Her sides heaving with the sudden exertion, and the adrenaline surging wildly in her veins, her eyes flash to his with something that is between anger and admiration. “Did I strike a nerve with you?” She doesn’t know why, but she laughs, even though her legs tremble and blood streams from her nose. “I just have this strange feeling you don’t like me.” Her eyes narrow, and for perhaps the first time, all her poison-honey and mock cordiality dissipates, leaving behind a frigid voice that is somehow hollow and weighted all at once, “Join the fucking club.”
She steps towards him, and even though the tension continues to hum beneath her skin her muscles remain lax. There is a blankness to her stare when she watches him now, and she is far too calm when she says, “Go ahead and kill me, Vadar. I won’t even move this time.”
starsin
it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted. ( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )
Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one
Starsin seems very fond of asking rhetorical questions. Her answers seem as hollow as her intentions, as if she could possibly evoke any sense of pity from someone who’d just been a passing fancy in her revolving-door life. How is it that Vadar barely knows her and yet he feels compelled to convince himself that she deserved this sort of retaliation? He may not be an empath or capable of mind linking like she was, but he knew her character. Her type were always the same; playing the game until someone came along who played it better.
He’d gotten what he wanted from her anyways, now. There’s no mistaking the illuminated roll of his eyes when she steps forward with a dramatic flair. “Shut up.” He sighs, closing the distance between them to press his nose overtop her own. The feeling of her body is like stone, and he smiles to think of it that way. Pressing further the black pushes his lips up and along the soft curves of her jaw, and then they circle gently on the flat, gray plane of her cheek. “You’re not that special, and my strength is draining.” Vadar admits with a short, somewhat pleasant laugh.
To know that she welcomed death at his whim was enough. It soothed him. He finds that his teeth are past her throat and exploring the feminine curve of her neck, enjoying the unique smell of her skin. “Don’t fuck with me anymore, Starsin.” The sick horse warns her, “Not like that. Not when there’s a better way of fucking around with me.”
He laughs again, pushes closer.
In the shadow of the canopy above his golem doubles over slowly. The calm around them goes undisturbed as it loses shape. His creation makes very little sound while it shrinks, leaving the boulders in new resting places as it goes. Meanwhile Vadar’s mind is as clear as its ever been, and he wants her - wants her so badly. Whatever flash of anger he had is gone, replaced by the urge to show her just how unique he could be if she let him. “Say yes.” He tells her, more of a request than a demand (though the edge remains.)
05-03-2019, 02:11 AM (This post was last modified: 05-03-2019, 02:12 AM by Starsin.)
and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.
It was strange, for her to be so calm. It was different than her usual composure. There was hardly anything roiling beneath the surface; not the harnessed energy she usually radiated. Just a flat, eerie calm as her intense blue eyes refuse to move from his bright red ones. Oddly enough, she had never toyed with him to the extent she had others. She had been, in her mind, kind to him – at least, in comparison to how she treated most. She was used to being disliked; she was used to be snapped at, to being insulted, and to reading anything but kind thoughts about herself. But more often than not, she could see it coming – she could pinpoint exactly what she had done to push them over the edge, she knew every barb she had placed inside their soul.
But Vadar caught her off guard. She still isn’t sure what, exactly, she had done to spur him to this.
The fear from before seems to have already disappeared from her, as she bristles visibly at his command to shut up. Her ears flatten immediately, becoming lost in the thick mess of her forelock and mane, and her head snakes to land a bite of her teeth against his soft skin near his throat. “Then why the fuck are you so upset if I’m not that special?” There was nothing sweet in the way that she spoke, the words a heated hiss as they leave her tongue.
There is a short, mirthless laugh at what he says, and yet she doesn’t pull away from his touch. She lets him explore the curve of her throat and along the arch of her slender neck, her own satin-soft lips barely brushing against his bare skin. Something about his touch was filling her, slowly eradicating the emptiness and warming the frigidness of her veins. “I don’t see a difference between the two, to be honest.” The hollowness in her voice was once again filled with her usual sweetness, and the words are a soft, breathless whisper along his shoulder as she presses close into him.
He wants her, and it ignites a spark inside of her – a spark of desire, and also a spark of doubt. She has never let anyone other than Ophanim touch her. But that never stopped him, she thinks, and she remembers why she had fled Loess in the first place. She swallows away the fury and hurt that she can feel threatening to bubble up inside of her again, and when she roughly pushes her svelte and glimmering body into Vadar’s she is again a burning, twisted, chaotic creature. “Make me beg for you.” The words are spoken into the groove of his jaw, aching and trembling, trailing her touch up his cheek and to his throat. She is letting him have the upper hand in this kind of situation – just this once.
starsin
it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted. ( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )
Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one
It’s not exactly what she’d done that’d spurred him in this new direction, (though giving him the plague should count for something) but Starsin has been a centerpoint of awakening for Vadar. Her existence in his life caused anguish and confusion, always. The sting of her teeth clamping down over his flesh is a sweet one, the source of confusion when it concerns his feelings for the star mare. And she wonders bitterly why he dislikes her! That question draws out anguish like venom when he considers it.
I’m upset at the world. You just happen to be available. He thinks, hating himself for the lack of control around someone who can understand the most intimate places of others. Now her lovely mouth is soft when it touches him again, a ghost of a sensation that he grinds his teeth against but succumbs to anyways. Starsin reminds him of his origins and simultaneously his worthlessness. Whether that crime is justified or not Vadar doesn’t care. He wants to violate her in more ways than she can imagine.
So his skin betrays him, shivering under both her words and touch. The black swallows his hesitation and turmoil, eats up the way she physically pushes into him, and returns it with a shove that could send her sideways. He wants that slender, glowing body braced against the smooth bark of a nearby beech tree and he won’t ask for permission anymore. Wordlessly, Vadar steps forward and plunges his head underneath her hip like an eager foal - but he’s no child and the way he explores her is neither courteous nor especially sweet.
He’s ravenous for her, coming up for air and snaking his neck across her croup to pull it closer to his chest. “I’ll show you the difference.” He snarls, sliding around behind the delicate curve of her haunches. How, he asks himself, can she possibly be this stunning? It gives him pause to contemplate admiring her for a moment longer, even though one leg is already raised in preparation.
If there was something holding her back, anything that would stop them from crossing this place of no return, Starsin had better say it now.
Vadar had already decided: he would make her beg.
and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.
If there was a part of her that knew to be afraid of him, it is currently failing her. All she knows is that she wants him to touch her; wants him to take her in whatever way he saw fit. She wanted to know exactly what it was like every single time she had been betrayed – wanted to imagine how Ophanim had pressed his body into that of complete strangers (or maybe not strangers), not just once, but several times. And what she wanted more than anything was for there to be a way for him to feel every lingering and unforgiving touch Vadar laid across her body. If there was one thing Starsin was good at, it was revenge – but she had never thought Ophanim would be who she sought it against.
Vadar’s thought is almost enough to make her falter. Just as before, just as when they had first met, she had had a hard time toying with him the way that she did others. It was far more enjoyable to tear down someone that had built themselves up in their head; it lost some of its appeal when they were doing it for her. There is a question sitting poised on her tongue, but she doesn’t ask it. She wants to know why – why is he so angry, why does everything about her seem to fuel it, as though she is constantly dousing gasoline across his already raging fire.
But then he is responding to her hungry touch with an even more aggressive push of his own, and she is forced sideways several steps until her shoulder connects with the bark of a tree – the same shoulder where the skin was already bruised and scraped from when she had evaded his earlier attack. The feel of her already tender skin colliding against the hard surface causes her to inhale sharply, but the pain is quickly forgotten when he is suddenly touching her. He is not gentle, but she doesn’t need him to be. His exploration leaves her trembling and wanting nonetheless, with a low, quiet moan seeming to shudder all the way through her.
She doesn’t resist when he stops to pull her closer, and instead she willingly presses back into his chest. “Then show me,” And even though there is still some of the same sharpness to her voice, she cannot control the way the words come in a tremulous tone. She is, if only for this expanse of time, his, and she wouldn’t fight him. Her glimmering body was nearly trembling with the anticipation of him, and with a slight angle of her delicate head, her piercing blue eyes trap his gaze as she says softly, “I’m not stopping you.”
starsin
it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted. ( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )
