"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
04-23-2020, 01:26 PM (This post was last modified: 05-13-2020, 10:11 PM by kahzie.
Edit Reason: the word hip has been written
)
L E P I S
i turned all the mirrors around
This is not the first time she has had a dream like this one, for all she quashes even the smallest bit while conscious. It fades as quickly as ever, leaving just a faint feeling of breathlessness. Lepis yawns it away, blinking in the late evening sunlight that streams into her nest. It’s almost always the light that wakes her this time of day, when she naps in the afternoon after being up most of the night. The bright directness of the light wakes her immediately, a sharp difference to her slow and well-shaded morning wake ups.
Lepis has made the nest around her exactly as she wants it, a cleft in a canyon wall, protected from the wind and littered with feathers. Most are gold, though there are a few blues, and in a little crevasse there is tucked a rainbow of single feathers: deep teal, inky black, navy blue, blue-green like the sea, firey red, and one downy soft white feather. There are a few shiny rocks too, mostly geodes. She’d lost her larger collection when she’d destroyed Fort Hideaway. These she has found herself, brought back herself and carried up here.
A gust of cool autumn wind from the canyon brings the scent of the creek at the base of it. This time of year it is only a creek, but come spring the water will reach higher, closer to her nest.
Lepis closes her eyes against the bright sunlight, and breathes deeply of the slowly cooling air. Her thick mane is a shield against the light, and when she finally shakes it away (having dozed off again for just a moment) it is warm against her previously shadowed shoulder. The sun now lights a few less inches of her roost, and when the tip of the tall red feather is entirely in shadow, Lepis takes flight. Her destination is the crescent shaped lake. Hot springs at either end feed the saltwater basin, and Lepis lands beside the southern one. This time of day, there is no company to be found, which suits Lepis just fine. Her stomach growls as she searches through the stiff green blades of the plants.
She’s certain that Alcinder can’t have eaten all of the pineapples in this patch she’d showed him earlier today, but as her search grows longer she becomes less sure.
The whispering noise of the breeze as it blew through the stiff, pungent-smelling grasses of Loess was like the sound of many voices at once, all humming without a clear meaning. Wolfbane, sunning himself on a rock hundreds of feet below where @[Lepis] napped, listened to its cadence as it flowed into the rhythmic babbles of the nearby creek. It was as if Nature herself were conversing to him alone, in her secret language that once had just been another part of life, like breathing. Wolfbane had grown up appreciating Nature for the sight of it and how it pleased the senses, but when he flicked his nearly translucent tongue out to snap a hovering gnat from the air, and the sound interrupted what he’d been listening to, well, Wolfbane knew that he could never have hoped to be the same Wolfbane he was before. He was too aware now, of everything.
He swallowed. Then his scaly little legs scurried him away from the flat, warm rock as Lepis’s broad shadow eclipsed the mid-evening sun. From the shadows of the creekstones he waited, feeling the way his tiny, cold-blooded heart fluttered like a bird in his chest, and then when the coast seemed clear he scurried back up again. There she was - he focused his eyesight a bit - headed off toward the East; toward Hyaline. He shifted his skin and shape into something fast and small, followed the scent of her trail in the wind to Crescent lake, and waited until she was preoccupied to shift back.
It was like a very fast domino effect, his shape-shifting. Wherever the transformation began it billowed out across the rest of his body as one giant ripple, leaving him entirely changed where it passed over. And he could manage transforming so quickly now! It hardly took a single thought. Lepis, he could see, was busy entertaining herself foraging and Wolfbane wondered to himself while he switched suits… “Who could hold her company out here, all alone?”
He and the others in his thoughts laughed simultaneously.
“Oceane made me promise,” Castile’s perfect twin growled the lie from behind her, still many yards away but approaching almost reluctantly slow, “to speak with you before I left forever.” He paused, sure that he’d have her attention by now. The light was weakening by the hour but in the soft, buttery light it was still clear who Bane was parading around dressed up as. Everything about the former Dragon King had been replicated immaculately, down to shaping his vocal chords until that same gravely, permanently-irritated voice came out. His golden faceband glinted once when he lifted his chin and clenched his dark jaw. He ruffled a set of matching wings (a deep black) then spoke again.
“I was going to break that promise.” He said sharply, half-smirking the same way Wolfbane had seen Castile do hundreds of times before now. “But I’ve had some time to think, and you know what?” He stepped forward again, closer and closer with each stride. Bane felt calm, never doubting the assurance behind his improptu speech or the believability of his preformance. He was Castile in that moment, or truly believed himself to be. “It turns out I do have something I still want you to know.”
For this thread: Sex: M ◉ Appearance: Disguised as Castile ◉ Mood: Dangerous
Her breath catches, but she is too flustered to realize that the surprise arrival of Castile behind her defies reason. There’s no reason why he should be waiting for her here – or here in Loess at all – but she is so accustomed to his presence that she pushes away the wriggle of suspicion without a second thought.
She knows that silhouette, even in the poor light of dusk. She knows that voice, those silver and orange eyes.
“At least you listen to”…one of us. Her voice trails off as he interrupts. Lepis places a great deal of trust in the opalescent mare. If she’d managed to get him to speak with Lepis, perhaps she’s also been able to make Castile see the error of his ways. Lepis hadn’t expected an apology; she values her pride highly and assumes the same of others. She won’t shame him like that. They’ll just pretend it never happened, he’ll stay in Loess, everything will go on as usual.
When he cuts her off, Lepis reconsiders all of it.
The smirk when he speaks of breaking promises. Hadn’t she just seen that expression? Her temper is not usually so quick to flare with her family, but she does not usually have to deal with an arrogant dragon convinced he’s in the right. She’d wondered if he was going to rub his successful steal in her face. She hopes not, and grits her teeth at the self-assurance in his voice. She will not lose her temper. She’s just hungry and irritable. The dun mare lets out a long, slow exhale, and meets Castile’s gaze.
“And what is that?” Lepis asks. It is not worth the effort to mask her irritation, to replace it with something calmer and cooler-headed. Such projection is becoming less worth the effort in general, Lepis has been finding of late. Mostly in a more positive sense, of course: she does not have to emulate contentment or happiness, and she can sleep without manifesting exhaustion. This is certainly a less positive side effect of her loosening grip, but at least Castile is one of the few horses she is certain she might let her temper flare at without fearing being burnt too badly in return.
Good, old, predictable @[Lepis]. Three very distinct modifiers that Wolfbane - er, I mean, Castile - considered when he saw the way his interruption ruffled the cream-and-gold pegasus, so to speak. Good; she thought he was Castile, then. Her reaction pretty much convinced Bane of his own safety in this skin. She wasn’t happy - but she wasn’t under the impression that she should be on her guard.
Old; the same tone she took with Castile was the one she took with any horse Lepis considered ‘in the wrong’. When she spoke like this, what she really meant to say was: your opinion is not my own, so therefore you are wrong.
Bane had always thought that tone was especially endearing, but as he lowered his head and ground his teeth together for the Queen to see, (even Castile would be irritated by how masterfully she could turn a question into a condescending remark) Wolfbane wondered how he had ever managed to fall in love with such a noisy harpy in the first place. The way she talked! Like claws being scraped painfully over rocks; the noise of it sent a vibrating hum of black rage through his entire being.
He stopped walking toward her. The scenery of the Crescent Pond behind her was like a dream: the water, fed by unseen branches of many other streams, was alive and quietly lapping at the shore behind her. Past the reeds and edible ground bushes, an open area of sandy loam - more clay and silt than anything - left a bare spot at the very edge of the scenic picture. Many horses had come and gone from the water’s warmth through that same beachy area. Castile’s eyes seemed lost for a moment, his mind gone somewhere else while they stared at that small, empty bank, and then they returned to the details of Lepis’ face which had become sharp and distinct close-up.
“That you’re insufferable, for one thing.” He seemed determined to say this, determined to make her hear the words out of this particular mouth even if she refused to believe them. A breath or two of silence passed, accentuated by Castile’s hard, familiar glare, and then he begrudgingly added, “But most importantly, you’re family. My family.” before she could say anything at all.
“I’ve come too close to losing too many horses I considered just that - family. In the end, I refuse to lose another. I know that you know what I’m talking about.” His dark face softened at the non-mention of Gale, and maybe even an undercurrent of the loss she associated with Wolfbane too, if she felt any at all. The gold band arcing over his face glimmered softly when he spoke. “So I came here, but I’m not staying! Just to talk.” Wolfbane-who-was-Castile considered with a hard, throaty sigh.
It was hard for Castile to admit or show emotion aside from the emotion one considered a Dragon King to have. Harder even for Wolfbane, to pretend to have any in the first place.
Predictable; the one thing he could continue to count on in Lepis when she couldn’t trust him as far as she could spit. At her core he knew her, and the one thing she considered more often than the wellbeing of Loess was the wellbeing of their beloved children and those rare, few equines who’d been close to Lepis from the start. Close enough to be family, even if they weren’t. Wolfbane had warned her when they split that he would come for her, if she tried to take Elio or Celina away. He had said, in uncertain terms, that he would do what was necessary to win - even if that meant using the one thing she loved most against her.
For this thread: Sex: M ◉ Appearance: Disguised as Castile ◉ Mood: Dangerous
Watching him carefully, she does not miss the way his eyes go soft, just for a moment. There is very little she misses, not after nearly twenty years of practice, of observing faces. There are some that are hard to crack (she refuses to admit any are impossible), and Castile has never been easy. Something about the dragon, she’s always assumed, the magic in his veins drawing a veil across her intuition. Lepis cannot read minds, but she knows enough to brace herself for whatever it is he might have to say.
‘That you’re insufferable’ is not one that she has heard in some time. Lepis scowls immediately in response, the soft age lines around her eyes deepening in exasperation. Is this not exactly where they’d left off in their last argument? That he says nothing immediately after is all that still hers tongue, though she breathes sharply a time or two just to make sure he knows she’s not pleased. She’s holding her breath when he tells her that she is family, and she is slow to let it out in a sigh as he continues to speak.
Family binds her tongue as he speaks more, and eventually her breathing grows steady once more. He refuses to lose her. Lepis smiles, relieved, and reaches out to him. Her dark muzzle presses against his shoulder for a moment, an affectionate touch. There are some things that she has not spoken of. Castile knows though, somehow he always manages to know. She starts to draw away, and his defensive declaration – that he is not staying! – brings a dry laugh to her throat. She lets her guard down easily, eager to mend this rift in their relationship.
Once more she leans forward, pressing her muzzle against his cheek. "Can we talk about you staying?" She asks fondly while she pulls away. "I do not like when we fight." The dun mare admits, though there is a twist to her dark mouth that suggests she struggles to say it, and she glances pensively at him from beneath a lock of dark hair that has fallen across her face.
Where’d this confidence been when he’d been playing Tipper, hmm? Where the fuck had it been? @[Lepis] had seen through that charade almost immediately, but this one? Each shot he took in the dark seemed to magically hit its mark. He even insulted her and got away with it, because he’s Castile for the God’s sake. Her family. “I could spit.” Lupei growled in his thoughts, but Wolfbane pushed the words out of his mind with an almost forceful mental shove when Lepis reached out to touch him. He couldn’t afford to lose focus now; the other two entities inside of his mind agreed and helped to muzzle the first one.
“Obviously, neither do I.” He grunted passively, watching her pull away from his cheek. The hard edge was gone from her face; this was Castile she was talking to, after all. It made Wolfbane all the more curious, though.
Had she always been so casually affectionate with the dragon-shifter? “But I’m doubtful we could fix this.” He alluded to their fight - the one Celina had told him of. Big and nasty, that argument. Castile had left, she’d said. Not an easy break to mend. The tobiano stallion sighed through his teeth and leaned in anyways, returning the gentle favor of his niece's affectionate touch. His lips came down to rest on the bridge of her nose, where they swept sideways and tugged her overlong forelock out of her sharp, intelligent eyes. “I’m not even sure that we should - if that makes any sense?” The male pegasus struggled to place his words just right so that Lepis would supply the bulk of conversation.
He closed his eyes and shook his head. Sighed deeply.
“I didn’t come to fix things.” He reiterated in that same self-assured tone; the one that sounded final regardless of the future. Castile opened his eyes and glanced toward Lepis, an open invitation, before he strode past her with the same lanky gait he always seemed to have. It ate up the ground when he walked, and brought him swiftly through the high reeds and into the warm, steaming waters. He sank into the murky depths and waited, turning his head around to watch Lepis with a reluctant expression.
“But if you want to talk - really talk, I mean - I think,” He bit off the reply, turning away to stare at the open expanse of Crescent Lake with a false expression of inner turmoil, then quickly his head pulled around again to stare at Lepis while she faded out with the dying sunlight, “I think that I could do that much: I could talk. With you.” He emphasized that last part.
And then he let the silence endure, content to wait and see if Lepis would be drawn in by the bait or if he’d have to try another new, interesting angle.
For this thread: Sex: M ◉ Appearance: Disguised as Castile ◉ Mood: Dangerous
There’s no smoke rising from his nostrils, no smell of ash in the air like a fire just extinguished. Everything about him, from his horsehide to his hooves suggests that he is feeling peaceable, that he is doing his best to pacify Lepis. It is a pleasant feeling, warm and soothing, and she does so want to be reassured.
She does not flinch away when he leans toward her, but she does watch him curiously from her now-unshielded eyes. Castile hadn’t given her a warning, and that is almost strange, but not so much as the way he so easily capitulates. He is doubtful they can fix this? He isn’t sure that they should?
“There’s nothing to fix”, she says sharply, “I’ve made my decision, and it’s final.” Oceane understands why Lepis has done what she has. She need not explain this to Castile any more than she already has.
Castile sighs, and closes his eyes, and repeats that he is not here to fix things. Lepis makes no secret of her displeasure, but it is nothing more then a huffed breath between her pursed lips. He has never been predictable, but she had hoped that he would return to some semblance of normalcy once the Fairy magic had worn off. Maybe it is better if some things aren’t fixed, she finds herself thinking. Perhaps she would be better off without the additional burden of an unpredictable dragon on her hands.
Some things about him are predictable though. Take, for example, the way he ambles away from their conversation, expecting Lepis to follow. (She does, but only because he is family and she is more forgiving than she should be; she certainly won’t do it a second time, lest he grow too comfortable)
“And what”, she begins from the edge of the salt lake, uninterested in another drenching so late at night. They do not all have the comfort of an internal fire on winter nights, she thinks as she watches the steam rise around Castile.
“Would you like to talk about? ” She asks, the sweetness of her tone is a clear indicator to those who know her of what will follow. “How about that you directly disobeyed my orders? Or maybe that you risked escalating things with Pangea, endangering everyone here? Maybe why you offered me a place beside you, but then chose Oceane over me?” She means the throne, of course, and so the emotion is heavy in her throat. It is anger that chokes her, and a sense of betrayal that she has stifled well.
To someone less knowledgeable about the private conversations between Lepis and Castile, however, it might sounds remarkably like romantic jealousy.
“Maybe it's actually better if we don't talk,” she finishes, finding that her heart is racing even from tossing these barbs. This is not a good time, not when she is hungry, not when she is irritable, not when she has a thousand better things to do than argue with a petulant child. “I do not think either of us will like where it ends.”
It was actually a pleasant twilight for a swim. The purple haze of sky overhead was already beginning to twinkle faintly, and the water felt lukewarm against Castile’s spotted skin. He was at home here; not in Crescent Lake but in Loess, and that showed. Every stout muscle relaxed visibly the further he sank into the warm saltwater, and the two of them - @[Lepis] and Castile - talked over the faint chirruping of so many invisible critters hiding among the reeds.
“Pssh, Hah.” He laughed when she chided him for disobeying her, but the skinwalker let her keep talking without fully interrupting. He felt oddly dulled by where things were heading, and like every time before this one where Lepis was involved, he seemed to be letting things get knocked off course. Wolfbane had almost completely tuned her out when she said it: chose Ocean over me, and his head whipped around with a look of utter incredulity.
“Excuse you?” Castile managed to choke out a garbled response, his thoughts racing back through what she’d said while Lepis paused to take a breath or two. “You always had the feeling.” Longclaw snarled in the back of his mind. Bane’s heart began to race too, then. Red crept into the edges of his vision. He drug himself around to face the pegasus mare standing in the marshy grass, hastily. “Why are you so surprised?” Wyrm whispered in his head, soothing. “She was a king-fucker when you married her.” He laughed to himself.
“For once you’re right.” Castile could feel himself shaking as he sloshed noisily up onto the bank. The water trailed in behind him, flooding the spinney that bent away when his hooves came down to crush it. “I don’t think either of us will like where this ends.”
He lunged. It came so swiftly, so unexpectedly. A flash of teeth and then, the sound of his wings beating before he rained down a series of swift blows with his forehooves. Castile himself was a thick-bodied, war-hardened stallion, but Lepis was no willowy mare herself. Still - each attack came with astonishing speed. And how was it that he’d sprung forward so far, so quickly? Impossible. It should be impossible.
For this thread: Sex: M ◉ Appearance: Disguised as Castile ◉ Mood: Dangerous
That he laughs at her correction brings another shake of her head, but he seems to be relaxing in the water, and Lepis suspects that is all she will get from him on the topic. The incredulity in his eyes is unexpected. He must know exactly what she’s talking about, and yet that is not at all how she thought Castile would react. Nor is the way he surges from the water, far too quickly. More than a decade has passed since Lepis had last been forced to physically defend herself. The man who had taught her how to is the one lunges toward her now, and if he had truly been Castile she would have seen the attack coming long before it did. Her Uncle is a great many things, but he is a dragon first and foremost. For him to come at her like this, like a horse, is so uncharacteristic a behavior that it is like a blindfold is suddenly ripped from her eyes.
“You!” She gasps just before it reaches her.
It is wearing Castile, much like it had worn Wolfbane, and Longclaw before him. But Castile is just a disguise it wears – the real man is likely far from Loess like had sworn to be – and though the face is false its hooves are not. Lepis has no inclination to tell the cursed creature that Castile favored attacking with his talons rather than hooves. Instead, she rises up on her own hindquarters, slamming the weight of her knees down on the shoulder he’s extended to kick at her.
She knows that the safest thing to do is to run.
She had known this long before she ever knew of Wolfbane and his curse. She’d learned it in the red forest, and it had been a hard-taught lesson. Running means there’s a better chance you’ll live to see another day.
But survival is no longer her priority, not like it had been then. At least, not just her own survival.
So rather than run, she shifts her weight back just enough to slam it down a second, her weight against its side and her head tight to protect her throat (just like Castile had taught her all those decades ago). Lepis is far from a brawny warrior, especially in this magical world, but she’s never had to be. There are easier ways to defend herself then by the might of hoof and tooth (or talon or tentacle)
Though her heart races, it is from adrenaline rather than fear. She has shoved the fear behind bravery and has no need to pretend otherwise. When they separate from their initial contact, Lepis steps back, her breaths coming heavy from the unanticipated exertion and the scrapes from hooves stinging. It wants revenge, she remembers, it wants to destroy and maim. It can’t be reasoned with, Bane had told her once, and any submission it might be appear to be beaten into would surely be a ploy.
“What do you want?” She asks not-Castile, moving so that she might always face it no matter how much she must move. A gust of warm air from over the salt lake ruffles her feathers, and she takes a deep breath of it, steeling herself. “Tell me, or I’ll make you regret it.” It’s there, just the softest touch of regret, a reminder that she is literal in her choice of words.
Wolfbane hadn’t seemed sure if the Curse was even capable of complex emotion, but Lepis has no intention of leaving any stone unturned in her efforts. Even if she can’t stop the curse, perhaps a mental assault might be enough to slow it down long enough to find a more permanent solution. First though, she means to find out why it is here, in Loess, after all these months. What has brought it here, when all her reports suggest that it has been lurking quietly in the north through the spring and summer?
You, Lepis called him. Just a simple word but it meant so much, anyway. She’d finally wizened up and accepted the truth no other Beqannan had wanted to: that her once-husband, Wolfbane of Loess, beloved father of their children and the ‘Pirate King’ who’d taken her heart for his own, was gone. There was nothing left of him inside the distorted beast that slammed into her, their shoulders and hooves meeting with a sickening crack of bones and the thump of muscular flesh. He wasn’t Wolfbane at all, and it seemed nearly impossible that he ever would be again.
They struggled against one another for a second, both digging their heels into the grass and dirt fed by Crescent Lake’s still-quiet waters, each pushing the other with sheer strength and willpower. Lepis ducked her head and Bane, seeing the lovely curve of her neck so near to his lips, took the opportunity to snap at her.
How many times before this had he held her close and kissed those scars? How many times had he brushed away the blue-and-white mane that fell over them just to see their shapes and remind himself of his wife’s strength and tenacity in the face of horrible evils?
And now he was one of those evils, hoping to leave his own scar. The love they knew - the man she’d borne children to - were both dreams. Had they ever actually been together, once? That all seemed like a fantasy now. There was no one nearby to stop them, and all manner of nightly insects had fallen quiet or fled the scene entirely. It was just them, himself and Lepis, alone with their hate and their wits now.
“Finally.” Lupei snarled in his mind, but the sound carried over and slipped out of his mouth when they broke apart again. The pegasus mare backed away and so did he, still amusingly disguised as Castile, to plant his hooves on the ground again and mirror her movement. They flared their wings at one another, and Wolfbane hissed. “You have to ask?” He taunted her inability to keep up, mentally. Inwardly, the faint touch of her magic reminded him of something he hadn’t felt in quiet a while, and the skinwalker rejected the sadness, flicking his ears back. It came anyway, and the red at the edge of his vision pulsed.
Oh - he felt emotion. That assumption he’d left her with years ago, that he wouldn’t be the ‘feeling’ type, had been somewhat true. When the darkness had started to settle in and the voices sprang up from it, Wolfbane had felt a draining type of pain for a while. As if everything was slowly being covered by a thick, velvet shroud. During that time he had felt nothing. No desire, no lust, no… nothing. But afterwards? Afterwards, the black oil had started to recede and a new sensation - a burning sensation - had taken its place. Now he only felt things like hate and wrath, or malice and insanity to the brink of self-destruction.
He was nothing but emotion. Neither stallion nor beast: simply a curse in the flesh of both.
“Come… closer,” He groaned, raising his head and holding his wings aloft as they burst apart in a fantastic display of his powers. The two dark wings writhed and pulled away like melted flesh, re-shaping to become the same four tentacles he’d already practiced using. Pity that Lepis hadn’t been there to witness the show, but lucky for her, Bane was a notorious repeat-offender. He hoped she liked it as much as Lilliana and the others had. “I only want a piece of what everyone else seems to have gotten,” They shot ahead of him, dark missiles in the night that longed to wrap themselves around her, “Queen Lepis!” He laughed.
For this thread: Sex: M ◉ Appearance: Disguised as Castile ◉ Mood: Dangerous
![[Image: Wolfbane2.png]](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/601918740845559818/696502662816071770/Wolfbane2.png)
![[Image: 3bCHvj.png]](https://img.nickpic.host/3bCHvj.png)