"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
get up off your knees, boy
Stand face to face with your god
There is much to learn, even still.
But she is a fast learner, Altar. Diligent.
She does not lend herself to the folly of youth.
Instead, she learns. And she practices.
And she begins to understand that enormous power.
By the time she emerges in the forest again, this time without her siblings, she has learned how to summon the stardust in her chest. It comes in fits and bursts still, but she is young. Just as there is much learning left to do, there is much growing to do, as well. Someday she will make them burn, but for now she merely learns how to manipulate the flame.
She had discovered something else, too. Quite by accident when she left her body one night, hovered in the canopy overhead, and then woke to think it all a fever dream. This is a power she will not understand until she is much older.
She ventures to the forest because she likes the way the darkness sets her stars ablaze. How fiercely they burn in the relative darkness. Sometimes she wonders if one day they will set her ablaze, too. If her youth is the only thing stopping them. As she ages, will the stars also age? Will they burn even brighter until they singe her skin? Torch her thick hair?
There is some dark part of her that hopes that they will.
Some dark part of her that wants to know what it is to burn.
For now, though, she merely moves through the darkness. Untouched. Nebulous wings tucked against her sides, useless still in the most practical sense. Useful only to cast her in some heavenly glow. She is a light source all her own as she lurks there in the shadows, waiting for nothing in particular.
10-22-2020, 01:16 AM (This post was last modified: 10-22-2020, 01:17 AM by fierte.)
FIERTE
I AM SICK WITH WANTING AND IT'S EVIL AND IT'S DAUNTING
In the shadows and caves of Nerine he often crept. Hidden from view, curious, seething, unstable.
It was the monster that changed him, beneath the naked moon and the twinkling stars. He was pale white, pink-eyed, stark against the shadows but still perhaps one of the most dangerous predators in Beqanna. A creature to the core, wild-eyed and hungry, he still sought the sky and her release.
Fierte isn't a monster. Not a monster, not a monster. Fierte isn't a monster, no, but he certainly loses himself. Beneath the white moon and her twinkling stars. He loses himself.
Not a monster.
It's the nature of his blood to seek death. And he often does. From screaming mothers to chittering squirrels, the scales around Fierte's mouth and hooves are typically dyed some shade of pink. When he comes to, he tries to wash the filth from his skin. The pink never leaves, though. In the reflection of babbling brooks and calm puddles, he sees a monster.
Not a monster.
Beneath a moon the same glowing pale as his hide, Fierte wanders, half a mind human and half a mind feral. Growls roll and writhe in the back of his throat, the constant battle of instinct versus morality. Beneath the moon he can't resist is where he finds her, all stars and glory and unlike any predator or prey he's ever seen.
"What are you?" he rasps, roiling eyes hungrily passing over her, "An angel?"
get up off your knees, boy
Stand face to face with your god
She sees him before he sees her.
The reptilian eyes flashing something vibrant as she studies him through the darkness, this thing slouching through the underbrush. The moon arcs overhead but its light pales in comparison to the glow of her nebulous wings, the twinkle of the stars tangled in her hair.
She trusts that these are the things that draw the thing to her. And she does not recoil, even when the reptilian eyes skirt along the shape of his bloodstained mouth. She does not know the meaning of fear, Altar. She does not know the specific taste of it. The pulse picks up in the cavern of her chest, the heart thumping greedy against its ribbed cage, but it has nothing at all to do with fear. How specific this particular brand of excitement.
An angel. “Yes,” she whispers, so sweet. Takes a small step closer to him, casting his peculiar face in that cosmic glow. She tilts her fine head and studies him. How terribly strange and wonderful he is.
“What are you?” she echoes, so gently that she barely asks it at all. All an act, of course, for she is every bit the hunter he is. But there is no need for him to know that. No, let him go on thinking she is an angel.
I AM SICK WITH WANTING AND IT'S EVIL AND IT'S DAUNTING
It's in the darkness that the pale scales of Fierte's hide belong. The shadows have always suited him even as he glows beneath the moon. And when he's at his creepiest, the cusp of monster and human, the flickering shadow of consciousness and blacking out, he is but a rasping, roiling thing. Sometimes charming, so loose he has no inhibitions but not quite fierce enough to lose all sense of tact.
Maybe he could be charming right now. Standing before an angel. Perhaps he could kiss her hand and smile and twist his terrorism into something lovely. Like adventures and conquering demons.
But she charms him and even as the monster tugs, the shadows call, he smiles. Yes, she says. Yes, she's an angel. A star fallen right from the sky just to float gracefully before him. Casting his face in pale, ethereal light. Maybe if she shared her light, he could be a star, too. Maybe he could float into the sky and forget it all, the blood and the filth and forgetting. He thinks that'd be wonder, to forget the forgetting. But curling into the magic and wonder of another has never been a cure, no, and Fierte cannot hide from himself forever.
"I'm a monster," he says, so quiet. He is, even by Beqanna standards. Normally the term tastes like poison but for now, standing before curious eyes, it doesn't feel wrong. "My name is Fierte, Angel," he adds, and the word angel doesn't fall out of his mouth as some belittling term of endearment. He believes her when she says she's an angel.
get up off your knees, boy
Stand face to face with your god
A monster.
She wonders if someone has told him he’s a monster or if he has come to this conclusion on his own.
And what constitutes a monster?
Who gets to decide that’s what he is?
The questions clamber up the long column of her throat but she does not ask any of them. Because angels don’t ask questions like this, they ask when the sun might rise again. They ask about the weightlessness of clouds and the cold of rain. Angels ask only the soft things.
She is not an angel, not really. But the stars let her pretend, the stars say that she came from some place other than this.
She is a monster, too. But she does not look like one.
She drags in a patient breath and tilts her fine head, blinking those big, golden eyes. She shifts closer, his name alighting on her own tongue. Fierte. She touches him, just barely, skims her lethal mouth across the surface of his shoulder. He does not feel like anything she has ever touched before and she finds some delight in this.
His question strikes her sideways and she curls herself away from him then so that she can look him directly in the eye. He is a strange thing, certainly, a monster by his own admission. But he is looking at her like she truly is an angel and there is something intoxicating in this.
She smiles, sweet. Demure. Shrugs on a shyness that does not belong to her and never has.
“Why should I be afraid of you, Fierte?” she asks, saccharine. Bats those thick lashes up at him. She breathes stardust, her teeth are fanged, she is coated in a layer of dragon’s scales. She has no reason to fear him. And yet, there is some thrill in the asking. The pretending.
