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    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


    [open]  save yourself, any
    #1

    If she had known that this is where it had all started, she might have been more careful.
    But she has no way of knowing that this is where her mother met her father.
    Or that it had been just as cold then as it is now. Because her mother had been too tired to accompany her on her wandering, though Elodie sometimes suspected that her mother’s exhaustion had more to do with grief than anything else. And her mother had never told her the story, though she had never been shy about telling the child exactly who her father was, how much he meant to her, how much he should mean to his daughter, too.

    There are still so many things that Elodie doesn’t know. Not only about her mother and father but about the world at large. So, she journeys and thinks that maybe someday she’ll have to find a place for herself. For now, though, she is content simply to wander down to the edge of the river, to test the ice. Foolish like her mother, perhaps. But she never leaves the shore, merely presses a foot against the surface and lets loose a secret kind of laugh when she feels it shift and crack under her weight.

    And then she moves back up the bank, because the water is frigid and there is no one around to save her should she fall through. She hums quietly to herself, quite used to being alone, and moves slow along the river’s edge. It is cold here in a way that makes her shiver, makes her teeth chatter, but it is so much more than she’s felt any place else and she prefers the cold to the crippling heat anyway.

    She does not know that this is where her mother met her father or where her mother learned the true nature of her family. She cannot smell the history here, cannot taste it, so she just goes on humming to herself, going wherever her legs carry her.

    Until she hears the ice cracking and she turns to face the sound, just as her father had once. And her breath is a strangled sound as the ice continues to crack and she does not know what else to say but, “be careful!
    but i knew love as a caging thing
    just a killer come to call from some awful dream
    e l o d i e
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    #2

    It had never occurred to Eugene to think that there was a world beyond the islands of Ischia. Sure, he could see a big coastline but what he could see of it (Tephra) just looked like more beaches and jungles. He had not ever thought to explore past the reefs and sandbars he had come to know and love. Why would he!

    And now, standing with his hooves in snow and watching fluffy white flakes fall from the sky for the first time, he knows he stayed in Ischia because everywhere else sucked.

    The first time a snowflake had touched him, he had nearly jumped right out of his skin. Now, he was a whole 5 minutes older than that naive colt (though he still side-eyed the blurry flakes as they passed him by while he wandered). He was looking for shelter but instead found a river. Only this water looked odd and - when he reached down with his muzzle to touch it - was solid. His skin almost stuck to it, another for the list of alarming instances happening to him.

    Though he was vaguely aware someone else was nearby, Eugene is far too distracted. Armouring himself with the scaled coat he knows so well, he begins to test this solid water by placing one of his dark hooves on it… and when it holds, following it with another.

    Although the cracking did not exactly sound good, he’s not sure he would have thought it was dangerous if someone hadn’t shouted. Really, when it first started he just continued to move further out. But the shout startles him and immediately he scatters back to the shore - as the solid water continues to crack and break apart - revealing a darker, chillier version of the waters he knew.

    Eugene could breathe underwater, but he didn’t fancy even his scaled skin would protect him from that chill.

    Golden yellow eyes find the girl who called out - who looks to be about his age - and offers her an easy grin. “Hey, thanks.” He's grateful, even though he doesn't grasp just how stupid he was being and the danger of falling into the water beneath the solid surface. “What is that stuff anyway. All covering up the water and whatnot?”

    eugene


    @[elodie]
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    #3

    She is shy, Elodie. Soft. Blinking big brown eyes at him, uncertain what to make of his easy grin. The light that rolls off him in muted waves. But she smiles back, a stilted, uncertain thing, as she sinks closer, beckoned by his question. Had he not asked it, she almost certainly would have taken her leave, skittered off into the trees, surrendered to her embarrassment. Because he is grateful but she shouldn’t have shouted.

    She glances between him and the ice, relieved to have a reprieve from trying to decide exactly where that glow was coming from. She tilts her head, blinking down at the splintered ice. Despite the way he’d smiled at her, she feels like she’s being set up. They seem to be roughly the same age and she cannot help but wonder if he knows something she doesn’t know.

    It doesn’t occur to her that he comes from someplace where the water is warm enough to be impervious to ice. She swallows hard and glances back at him. “It’s ice,” she says, quiet, uncertain. She wrinkles her nose then, heat pooling in her cheeks as she shuffles her ordinary feet. “I think.” She is on the verge of learning that she rambles when she’s nervous. “I think it’s because of the cold.

    She meets his golden eye again, her mouth pressed into a thin line. “What are those?” she asks, inching closer, reaching out without touching him. “In your hair. They’re really neat.” Stops just short of touching him, huffing softly before withdrawing, tucking her nose up by her chest.
    but i knew love as a caging thing
    just a killer come to call from some awful dream
    e l o d i e



    @[Eugene]
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    #4

    Eugene is only thinking about how wise and knowledgeable this horned girl is to know so much about the world. He examines the hard ice (just by glancing at it with his golden eyes) and nods at her explanation, instantly taking it as gospel. “Oh. Ice.” He repeats the word hesitantly, making it fairly obvious that he has never heard or said the word before in his life. Eugene does his best to try to explain why he was so confused, though, not wanting this girl to think he was just some idiot that didn’t know what simple things were.

    He is, of course, but he doesn’t want her to think that. Not when he’s going to make a friend! He shuffles one of his dark hooves in the snow and looks down at it with what can only be described as worry. “I’m not sure I like the cold very much. Where I’m from, everything is green all the time.”

    Her question brings forth a smile though and he holds still while she comes close and sniffs at them. If he didn’t know what ice was, it seems perfectly reasonable that she wouldn’t know what shells are. “They’re seashells.” He shakes his neck so that they clink a little bit with the movement, showing them off a little bit. “You can take one if you want - it won’t hurt!”

    eugene


    @[elodie]
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    #5

    This close she can almost smell the magic of him.
    It’s even more than the soft glow and the way he catches the light.

    There is something about the look of him that is almost supernatural. The shape of his face, the slant of his brow. It makes her nerves hum for reasons she doesn’t understand.

    If only she knew how similar their blood was.
    If only she knew that their one common ancestor wasn’t all that distant.
    Perhaps she wouldn’t feel so awkward, plain in comparison.

    But he mentions his home, thoroughly distracting her from her inadequacies, and she perks up. She has lived her whole life in the common lands – moving freely from the meadow to the forest and then onto the river and back again. Her mother had spoken of a place she had called home once, a place she’d left when Elodie’s father had disappeared. Her mother had spoken, too, of how she had never yearned for another home after that. The two of them had made themselves perfectly content in the meadow. Although Lilian had never confessed to her daughter that she’d stayed there simply because it had been where she’d lived with her father, too.

    Elodie has been content but her world is only ever green in the spring and the summer and she wonders what a place that’s green all the time would be like.

    She doesn’t know why she takes it personally to hear him say he doesn’t like the cold. Perhaps her brain, still so young, translates it into something that means he doesn’t like her home.

    She is so easily distracted, though and she blinks at the seashells and the sound they make when he shakes them to and fro. She grins, closed-lipped, and glances between his face and a shell inches from her nose.

    Where did you get them?” she asks, hesitating before she finally takes a step backward. She can’t take his things. “Did your mother give them to you?” 
    e l o d i e
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    #6

    It’s too bad Eugene can’t read minds, or he might try to soothe her nerves and any misunderstandings, and offer to bring her home so she could see what Ischia is like in the winter. All that is going on in his mind is how cold it is - and how cool her red legs are. He’s never seen someone with legs that colour before! And his mom was pretty colourful.

    Speaking of his mom - Eugene’s smile brightens at her question. “YEAH! Well kinda anyway, she has them in her hair too. They just kinda… started showing up there.” When she steps back without taking a shell, Eugene almost pouts but catches himself and just shakes his neck again to make the clinking sound and laughs at himself. “It doesn’t hurt when they get pulled out, my sister does it sometimes.” His nose scrunches up at this thought a little bit, thinking about how his dear sister had probably wanted it to hurt. But that was beside the point.

    “Did you get your horns from your mama?” He asks - his golden-yellow gaze flicking up to admire them. “My dad has horns but I didn’t get them. I don’t know why.” It’s funny, he thinks, how he’s bits and pieces of his parents put together in another body and his siblings somehow look completely different - all bearing other bits and pieces in other combos. It makes him wonder, looking at the girl that knows so much about the cold, what bits she got from her parents.

    eugene


    @[elodie]
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    #7

    She likes the sound they make, the shells. And she likes the thought that his mother has them, too. That the two of them together must make the most wonderful sound. She smiles despite herself, her head tilted as she studies them.

    As if privy to her thoughts, he assures her that it doesn’t hurt when they’re pulled. She blinks once and then, as if buoyed by this, reaches out to touch one. She takes one gingerly, tentatively between her lips. And just holds it a moment, not certain she’d know what to do with it if she drew it all the way out.

    So she holds it a moment and then lets go, wedging a sliver of space between them when she does. He mentions her horns and she turns her gaze upward, though she can just barely make out the gentle curve of them out of the very corner of her eyes.

    No, my mom doesn’t have horns,” she admits and then rolls her shoulders in a kind of shrug. “I think I must have gotten them from my dad but I’ve never met him.” She shifts her focus back to her new friend’s face and conjures up another slanted smile. She has not allowed herself to feel any particular sadness about her father’s absence in her life. “What are your dad’s horns like?” she asks instead.

    e l o d i e



    @[Eugene]
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    #8

    Eugene doesn't really know what to say in response to the news that she had never met her dad - somehow "that sucks" just didn't feel right, even if that was his first reaction. It's easy for him to assume everyone's dad is as great as his own, he has no reason to believe any different.

    But then she changes the subject anyway, so Eugene thinks it's probably best he didn't say anything.

    He has plenty to say on the new subject, however.

    "Well they're black and have so many points on them all branching out like uh... branches?" Eugene had not yet ever seen a deer (or anyone else with antlers) and only knew that Velkan's horns vaguely resembled trees.

    But, then again, they looked about as much like the filly's horns as they did trees (which was: not really at all).

    "Maybe you're the first one ever in your family to have horns! That would be pretty cool. I'm the only one who is this shiny in mine." Eugene shifts his back legs a little to get something of a wiggle going on in an attempt to get his pure coat to show off its shine.

    eugene


    @[elodie]
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    #9

    She closes her eyes briefly, trying to imagine what his father’s antlers must look like. It should not require so much concentration, but these kinds of things -- vague concepts that she had never encountered before -- always felt so wildly out of reach.

    And, while she concentrates, something extraordinary happens. It is a faint tickle at first and her first instinct is to think that a pair of wayward leaves have tumbled out of a nearby tree and fallen on her poll. There is no way for her to know that her own horns have shifted into something else entirely, something more resembling his father’s. Black and branched. Antlers more than horns.

    She shakes her head to rid her mane of whatever leaves had fallen but there are no leaves. Just the horns on her changed from their natural form to something altogether different.

    But she grins, oblivious, watching him shimmy and shake, his coat refracting the light. She almost reaches out to touch him but doesn’t, just watches, wearing his father’s antlers.

    Maybe,” she agrees and nods. “That wouldn’t be so bad, I don’t think. Being the first one.” She tilts her head and studies him a beat longer. “I wonder where the new things come from, if not from our parents.


    e l o d i e



    @[Eugene]
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