"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
12-31-2019, 06:18 PM (This post was last modified: 12-31-2019, 08:21 PM by Cassi.)
When death comes to Beqanna, she is hopeful.
There are tales of horses returning, and she listens to all their names, hoping to hear one, specifically. She doesn’t, of course, and she should have known better, but hope is a pathetic and determined thing, even in creatures so worn-down as she. She aches from her, the virus of hope in her body, and she tries to heal herself of this sickness, goes on about her own life, mundane as it is.
Part of the mundanity is wandering. She knows the nomadic lands of Beqanna well, frequents them often when she is inside its borders. She moves and looks for faces she recognizes, and rarely sees anything there. The world is full of strangers, and though their eyes land heavy on her - bright sliver and crackling with electricity, she is a sight to behold – she turns away.
She looks, yet she knows her search is in vain, she knows the cold truth of it – that the things she loves most are all gone. That she, Cordis, is alone, a magician with no meaning and with two hearts beating in her chest, a souvenir of her grief.
She moves through the forest, walking brisk even though she is ultimately directionless. This was a lesson she had kept to for years – to always move. The pace had slowed, in the years, from a run to a walk, but she moves nonetheless, moves away from one thing and towards another, even though, if asked, she couldn’t tell you what those things were.
c o r d i s
I’ll touch you all and make damn sure
that no one touches me
There are many things Haunt has yet to know. Many experiences as foreign to Haunt as Haunt is to many. They are many things, and somehow too few. Both simple and terribly complex. The shadow has spent very little time contemplating such things however. There is too much headache, too many questions that have no answers inside those thoughts.
Still, Haunt would have to be entirely dense not to notice the ways in which they are different from everyone else. The ways in which the world does not seem to know how to box them neatly.
Not that the shadow tried terribly hard to fit. They were not made for boxes.
No, they were made for the darkness. And where the darkness touched, so too did Haunt. But there is something dangerously intriguing about that which Haunt could not touch so easily. The light might burn, but curiosity is a fickle beast, and Haunt possibly more so. So when the mare that echoes light from every surface of her body passes through, a peculiar gleam crosses yellow eyes.
Perhaps it is more than that drawing Haunt in. A shared sense of aimlessness. Or perhaps it is merely the fickle nature of the creature. The very nature causing them to refuse to examine their life too closely. Whatever the case, the electric magician gains an unexpected shadow as she passes through those haunted trees.
She might not have noticed the thing, if she had not spent years being chased.
When she’d first escaped His lair, things had hunted her – she called them hellhounds, though she never caught sight of them, not directly. They were flickers at the corner of her eye, hot breath on her heels, snarling yelps and howls, all indistinct things that she could never pin to a form. Still, she knew, with a heartbreaking acuity, how to look for them, and though, at some point, the hellhounds ceased to pursue her (He found other ways to hurt her, of course, as her heart opened to a golden woman, a weakness made living), the instinct stayed. She is alert, constantly, a woman who was once confined too long, chased too long, that she will never forget the feeling.
She is safe, of course – when she was last pursued, she did not know the extent of her magic. She did not know that there was a horrible sweetness in causing pain, that she had within her the capacity to hurt, to maim – to kill, even. She never wants to hear those hounds again, but should they come baying, she thinks now she would turn to face them.
This is not such a case, of course. Cordis does not hurt indiscriminately. Yet when the flicker of shadow catches her eye, and she freezes, alert, trying to pinpoint the sound. Her electricity crackles, an audible sound in the stillness, a reminder to the unseen thing that she is untouchable, unless she should deign otherwise.
“Show yourself,” she says, and her voice does not waver, although her heart beats faster as she stands in the trees, surrounded by the dark.
she said it was a mistake to let them burn her at the stake
Cordis
(and she learned a lesson back there in the flames)
Haunt had been born a nearly perfect predator. Of course, this assumes Haunt had the will for such predation. Perhaps it does linger deep inside the creature. A beast waiting for it’s perfect time to rise. But, fortunately, Haunt had not been raised to heed such things. They had never been taught to hunt or kill. Never been taught the full extent of their abilities. It would have been an easy path to tumble down, had Haunt’s parents been of a different ilk.
And maybe it is as equally unfortunate as it is fortunate, the depth of that untapped potential.
Of course, at the moment, that is neither here nor there. Haunt had not tried particularly hard to remain unnoticed. Despite the lack of scent or sound, doubtless the unusual ways in which the shadows seem to cling to Haunt were a dead giveaway. Especially in the presence of such unusual and intriguing vibrance.
Yellow eyes blink as the shadows shift unnaturally. Shadows that were, in fact, Haunt. A brief gleam of teeth is the only indication of the fleeting, delighted smile that crosses dark lips. In a swift, unexpected movement, Haunt flits forward, closing the distance between one blink and the next. Though they do not come close enough for that bright skin to burn, they flirt with the edges of danger.
“Are you scared, pretty lady?” Haunt asks, voice low and breathy, as though imparting something of great import. “Or is it that you didn’t know shadow’s speak?” Suddenly, Haunt grins, eyes bright in the vague shape of their form. “Be careful who you whisper your secrets to, hmm?”
She had not known that there was a desire to hurt in her, not at first. She had thought herself entirely the victim – trapped for some nameless period of time in His lair, pursued by hellhounds, ruined by a woman she loved with everything she had (sometimes purposefully, sometimes not so). But there had been mistakes, revealing moments – a boy who had listened when she said come closer and whom she had hurt, had maimed.
A prophetess she’d killed for telling of a future Cordis could not stand to witness.
She certainly looks it, with the wildness of lightning on her body, with her sharp gaze and tight-held breaths. She is a tense thing, on a hair-trigger.
She watches, on this trigger, as the yellow eyes gleam and the teeth glint, as the shadows manifest into a creature, equine but not. It looks dangerous enough, but Cordis knows how light can burn away shadows, so she remains standing, watchful.
“Should I be?” she asks. It’s bold, perhaps could even be viewed as a taunt. She does not mean it in such a way – she doesn’t think so, not consciously, at least – but she is ready.
She doesn’t respond directly to its other comments, turns it around.
“Do you hear many secrets, then? Skulking about in the dark?”
It’s that wildness that calls to Haunt. There is too much of the uncivilized in the shadow creature not to be drawn to such a thing. Of course, they know danger when they see it. But that’s the ultimate lure, isn’t it? To flirt with danger and come out the other side feeling so much more alive?
It’s a heady thing. And Haunt had never been one to deny those baser desires. After all, they are, ultimately, the basest of creatures.
Haunt cannot know about boys disfigured by lightning and treacherous prisons and love lost in heartache and betrayal. Still, there is something of it written on her face. An age-old weariness perhaps, that speaks of too much and not enough. It is equally intriguing and repelling to a creature like Haunt. They do not have such stories to tell. But there is a hunger to know all the tastes of life.
She has tasted much of it. And Haunt hungers.
Like her, Haunt does not answer the question she so boldly poses. After all, Haunt could not decide her fear for her. But her next questions stir the shadow. Yellow eyes blink, tilting as a showy head tips curiously. “None I’ve cared about,” they quip, followed by the brief gleam of a smile. Then a sudden, surprisingly lyrical laugh. “Yours are the same, no doubt.” A faint, almost unnoticeable waver, and suddenly Haunt is on her other side. “Is your heart broken? Broken hearts love the shadows. Your dearest love left you, or they never loved you at all, is that it? Or maybe they died.” Pause. “That one’s always my favorite. It’s so bitter.” Another blink, and Haunt is in front of her. After a breathless moment, they ask with a nearly serious sincerity, “Do you think that’s awful of me?”
Do you think that’s awful of me, the creature asks, and Cordis doesn’t know how to answer. She herself does not know how to process other’s pain, outside of a small circle. She cares – cared – for Spyndle, of course, though she had hurt her, too. She cares for her children, though they are scattered to the winds and do not seek her out, and she does not blame them for this, for motherhood was never her strong suit.
Is it awful, then, that the creature knows of broken hearts, that it sees hers, too, whether it’s written on her face or simply intuited, and loves it only for the bitterness? Cordis thinks, unprompted, of the poem she’d heard somewhere - I like it because it is bitter, and because it is my heart.
“I don’t know,” she says. She is not the one to pass judgement on how the creature values secrets and misfortune. She has too much of her own, and yes, they are uninteresting – what’s another doomed love story in a world full of them? – but they are hers, and to her, they are sweet and terrible, and they are what’s shaped her.
“What’s your name?” she asks them, pulled by some curiosity she doesn’t understand. Or maybe she simply wants to change the topic, does not want to dwell too long on thoughts of broken hearts.
01-15-2020, 01:05 PM (This post was last modified: 01-15-2020, 01:05 PM by Haunt.)
we scream our very souls free
It’s almost disappointing, in a way, that such callously spoken words produce no effect. Or perhaps Haunt was simply wrong. Either way, it passes as little more than a fleeting thought, easily banished by a creature as wayward and ephemeral as Haunt. There would be no lingering on past thoughts or perceived emotions. Their attention is too short to sustain it anyway.
Of course, Haunt’s callousness is not purposefully presented. They have come to understand everyone seems to taste the world very differently than does Haunt, and that is both intriguing and confusing. Still, they could hardly be expected to remember all the nuances expected in polite society.
Yellow eyes crinkle briefly as amusement flirts with the edges of Haunt’s nearly indefinable face. She changes the subject so abruptly and so easily that they suspect there is much left unsaid. Maybe she had tasted that bitterness after all.
“Haunt,” the shadow replies almost merrily to her question, the threads of their humor knotting the edges of the syllable. A faint shifting of the shadows herald Haunt’s sudden movement as they push closer, golden eyes eerily intent, fixed unblinkingly upon the bright mare. “What do you know then, silver lady?”
She knows –
She knows what it feels like to die over and over again, to beg for this death to be the final one as He looks on, deciding how next to undo her. She knows what it is to run for your life, hellhounds snapping at your heels. She knows what it is to fall in love, so deeply and impossibly that it consumes her whole.
She knows what it is to kill, both in defense and senselessly. She knows the crack of bone and how hot blood can be when it spurts fresh from a vein.
She knows so much more, wonderful and terrible things. But she is not one to share, not much, she’d lived too long behind walls she’s built.
So, she goes with the obvious.
“My name is Cordis,” she says, though the creature hadn’t asked. She can share this much.
“What do I know?” she repeats the question, thinking. A smile curls on her lips, small but there.
“I know magic,” she says, and as if in response, her lightning crackles across her skin, her own private storm. Truth be told, she doesn’t use it much, is less refined in her magic than the handful of other magicians in Beqanna, but it doesn’t matter, what matters is her silver skin reflects the lightning, and she can stay untouchable.
If asked, Haunt is not certain they could tell anyone what their true purpose is here. What they wish to gain or elicit from this conversation. That is so variable from moment to moment so as to be almost entirely irrelevant. Certainly it is nothing so simple as words can describe.
Each passing thought and fleeting fancy is truly that. Little more than a decision of the moment. And so, where this conversation leads, even Haunt could not say.
Tongue clicking against the roof of their mouth as she offers her name, Haunt does not respond, instead merely offering a faint tilt of shadowy features. The smile draws one from Haunt however, though this one gleams with sharp, quickly hidden teeth.
“Magic.” Haunt hisses out the word, though it is on a thread of intrigue and curiosity rather than anything darker. As the lightning sizzles against silver skin, Haunt eyes it openly. Not with envy, but something akin to objective examination.
Is that it, your magic?” Haunt asks abruptly, yellow gaze rising to hers, eyes crinkling faintly the pitch of their features. “Will you break the world with your static electricity?”
