"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
03-17-2020, 04:43 PM (This post was last modified: 03-17-2020, 04:44 PM by cringe.)
how to be a monster: 1. learn the taste of dirt and pain. 2. teach it to others till your knuckles bleed. 3. see if that makes it easier to breathe.
He is bred of a monster, but he does not look it. No, he looks more like his father (or – the one who bore him; the unorthodox nature of his conception makes titles mixed and strange). Pale gold, like winter sunlight, a diluted version of Rapt’s richer tones. He’s handsome enough, though he’s not preoccupied with such things. He is bred of a monster, and this becomes evident when layers are stripped away, when his other abilities are laid out – the dark smoke of the fear aura, the clutching hands of possession. He has not been kind with these gifts, is quick to use them, to possess and to frighten. Sins of the father, they say, but to him, they are gifts. He has tasted the sweetness of fear, of control, and it melts across his tongue. He’s come to crave it, now, which is perhaps why he’s returned. He’d been in distant lands, isolated. It hadn’t bothered him – he did well enough, in such isolation – but what use were his talents in a vacuum? No, he is destined for more. And so the son of a monster and his disciple slips into the forest, skin shadow-dappled and eyes dark and hungry as he searches for someone who might just appreciate his gifts.
03-17-2020, 07:06 PM (This post was last modified: 03-17-2020, 07:08 PM by gospel.)
It is always the boredom – the thick, indelible boredom – that leads her here.
Because there are so precious few of them left in Pangea. Ghaul gone to the Cove (and perhaps she could have followed but she was not built for kingdoms, let alone territories), Draco busy with whatever plaything he could sink his teeth into, and Stave? She ought not dwell on it.
It is the boredom that leads her here but she does not scowl or pout or allow herself even an ounce of petulance. Because the last time she was here, she sunk those viper’s teeth into her sister’s throat and watched death come for her. Oh, precious girl, how sweet the suffering.
She sees him, even in the darkness, because the vision shifts without her having to tell it to. She likes the way he slinks, a creature built for shadow, and she bites her tongue – an age-old habit – just enough to excite the heartbeat as she moves toward him. Emits a low, sultry hiss when she reaches him.
And isn’t there just something about him? Something that stokes a low flame in the cavern of her chest, something that licks sweetly at the strong-beating heart as she studies him. “Hello,” she murmurs, a grossly conventional greeting as she tilts her fine head and fixes that reptilian stare to his face.
how to be a monster: 1. learn the taste of dirt and pain. 2. teach it to others till your knuckles bleed. 3. see if that makes it easier to breathe.
He grins when he sees her, snakelike and strange, moving toward him. He has an affinity for monsters (he shares that trait with Rapt, he supposes, though the exact nature of those affinities diverges, Rapt worships and beds them; Cringe wants to rule them). He watches her, his gaze intense. Some might have turned from him, the hunger of his gaze a warning bell, but she comes forth, unafraid.
He could change that, perhaps, with the smoky essence of his fear aura, leak fright into her like some noxious gas. But he refrains, like a gentleman, for after all, he does not yet know so much as her name.
She greets him, and then meets him with a stare of her own, her eyes dark and strange. His own eyes are plain, equine, but he meets her gaze.
“Hello,” he says, “what’s your name?”
He moves closer. Not touching, but close enough where he could, or she could. He admires the glint of scales, the faint strangeness of her. He looks so plain, beside her, gold with nothing physically notable about him. Like he could be anyone.
“You’re very striking,” he tells her, “I’m surprised to see such a thing out alone at night.”
The delivery is smooth enough, though the words themselves are cliched and even false, for she does not look like an easily taken thing. The point is to set his intention, to see how she reacts, if she might be amenable to the things he could offer.
