"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
Bad grew up in darkness, and now that it is banished, he is unsure what to do with himself. It hurts, at first. He’d grown so used to seeing through the hound’s eyes, relying on its sharper senses, that when the light breaks through it seems to scorch across his vision and sends him hurrying into the trees, to whatever scraps of shadow he can find. It takes an embarrassingly long time before he thinks to shift his senses back, to be wholly horse instead of some hybrid thing. He does so, and it is easier, at least a little, though he still finds himself missing the dark. He pulls fog around himself. It is not the same as darkness, but it is something, a thin layer of obscurity. (He had not known he’d had this power until later. Until he’d been alone in the dark – always in the dark – and the fog had curled around him, and he’d thought move, and it had. He’d felt so like a god, then.) He looks out. It astounds him, how many others there are. It’s different, to see them in such brightness, the myriad of colors and sizes and accoutrement. Disorienting, too. He closes his orange eyes, breathes in, out. Steadies himself. He’s lived like this once before, he can do it again.
The light is still too bright for the sensitive red eyes that had grown so accustomed to the shadow land Beqanna had become. So he still sticks to the tree-line, his dark frame weaving between the trunks as he keeps to the cover of shade and avoids the flares of sunlight that invade through the treetops. He had found another cache of “special” nectar that the fae hadn’t hidden quite well enough. Either the fairies were getting careless on purpose (thrilled with the return of daylight and celebrating surely) or had just stopped caring entirely that he kept getting into their secret stash. A pointless endeavor since he always found it in the end anyways.
Staggering slightly against a tree, his tongue and throat still thick with the honeyed syrup he had imbibed, he makes his way from tree to tree. Wincing against the brightness that manages to reach him, threatening to destroy his buzz. ”Go awayyyyy." He groans to nobody in particular although it’s aimed at the light, as if it can hear him or do anything about being the actual sun. Mumbling slightly to himself, incohesive words that mean nothing. He doesn’t realize he’s tripped into the fog right away although he instantly feels cooler as it curls around his hocks and dampens his overheated skin.
He doesn’t see the guy in the fog right away either, dark with the hint of a galaxy playing across his body. Of course he’s drunk so maybe he’s just seeing things. Just like this fog, maybe that’s not real either. The stallions eyes are closed and he is still. Maybe he’s dead, Obscene doesn’t know but now he’s curious. ”Hey.” He whispers, pauses, tries again. ”Heyyyyy.” Obnoxious as always as he whispers loudly again, a flicker in the depths of his red eyes. “Are you doing this?”
Bad believes in composure. Though his father loved him, and everyone he met as a child was nothing but kind to him, there was a quiet, barely perceptible tension in the air. He did not know its source, but in the way children do, he assumed it was somehow related to him.
(He was right, in that way – Garbage had alluded to Bad’s other parent, but had not given him a name, much less the details. This was for the best. Bad’s existence was a betrayal, of sorts, and his other father, infamous.)
It left him with a certain caution. A certain alertness. That, and growing up in a world where darkness and monsters reigned, left him an alert, cautious boy. He knows he has plenty of tools with which to defend himself, but he also knows Beqanna is home to some terrible beings.
So he is startled when this other stallion, loose-limbed, wanders into his fog with such…carelessness. Bad is not, well, bad, so he does not think he himself poses much of a danger, but he thinks of the other horses who might.
“Hello,” he says, his voice wary. He listens to the stallion’s stallion and holds back a small smile. It feels good, to have his power acknowledged, even if it’s by a stumbling stranger.
“Yes,” he says, “it’s mine.”
To show off, he curls it in closer to them, thick and heady, and then disperses it around them, thinning it out, so he can better see the other. He notes the eyes – red, bright – and thinks of his own orange eyes, bright and terrible in their own way.
For being so plainly mortal with mostly just his wits to protect him (whatever wits weren’t drowned in inebriation), you would think Obscene would be a much more cautious and timid thing. However, one has to care to be concerned about their livelihood. And Obscene was determined (among all things) to just not care. About anything. Anyone. Anywhere. Especially himself. What was the point? Even if he could relate to Bad’s childhood in some ways, he would just sum up that they were both fucked and double down on his thought process.
The dark haired boy hadn’t realized that a perfect family unit was a rarity. It was more common to come from a dysfunctional background and the stages of disfunction varied. Which was worse in this situation? The plain normal kid made from love but starved for attention and affection from distant parents or the special one that was shown love and affection but could feel the underlying distance of an unknown betrayal from his? Children are nothing if not perceptive and both of these young stallions had picked up those subtle threads that shaped them into what they were today. It didn’t matter in the end, whose story was worse. Because only they felt those stinging invisible wounds, so their own pain (their own memories) would always be worse.
In his woozy state of mind, he doesn’t realize that he’s startled him. Doesn’t pay attention to the fact that he may be intruding on someone’s peace of mind. The other stallion (who despite the galaxy fading along his coat) actually doesn’t look much different from him. Both young dark men, one with glowing eyes like a jackolantern and the other with blazing crimson fire. However Bad has this insanely cool fog trick that he now displays for him with a small smile and a little hint of pride.
A stupid grin appears on his lips as the fog comes in thick as if to swallow him, only to dissipate the moment it touches his skin. “That is… very cool.” He finally manages, for once not hiding behind his jealousy with a lie. It was really cool. A slight frown replaces the grin as he becomes almost sulky. “I wish I could do stuff like that.” Something he had never voiced before but thought about constantly. His little fae guardians would be chastising him right about now, about being grateful for what you had and blah blah blah. He can almost hear them in his head, “It’s better to make powerful people your friends instead of enemies since you’ll never be able to use magic.” "You are mortal, boy. It won't take much for your life to vanish into dust. And then who will remember you?" Brutally honest as always. Too bad the little fae had forgotten that unlike them, he could lie. And he could do it well. Enough so that they believed he truly didn't care. Enough to continue to get into their nectar stashes after promising not to do it again. Enough to pretend that he was doing just fine and enough for them to believe him.
