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  • Beqanna

    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


    we all believe in something that'll rip us into shreds; laura pony
    #1



    The darkness had meant so little to her.
    She would have been frightened of it, once. Would have been out of her mind at the obscurity, the chuffing sounds of things in the distance, the glimpses of them moving light-quick. But they never targeted her, even as she crackled in the dark, the lightning giving her an awful glow. She was visible, yes, but not an easy target, the snapping of electricity warned of that much, at least.
    And now there was light again, and that meant so little to her, too.
    She is still swathed in her electricity, her warning signs, but it is no longer out of fear that she wears it so. Funny, how fear drains away when every terrible thing you could imagine has happened already.
    (Not every terrible thing, of course. There is a whole host of terrible things Cordis has not experienced. But there are plenty that she has.)

    She’s back at the river, this most hated and loved of places. She thinks of Spyndle so often, here – how clearly she can see her still, there in the water. It was the first time Cordis had followed her. She hadn’t known, then, that she would follow her and follow her and follow her until the day that she couldn’t.
    You can’t follow bones. You can try – you can throw yourself into the water, you can scream and cry and bargain – but you can’t.
    She closes her eyes and remembers how the sun felt on her back, how cool the water was. How scared she’d been. She opens her eyes. It’s not the same river. She’s not the same woman.
    Nothing’s the same, now. Hasn’t been for a long time.
    She’s at the river’s edge. She shouldn’t have come here. How often can you salt the same wound?
    But she feels something here. Even if it’s pain, it’s something.

    I’ll touch you all and make damn sure

    Cordis

    that no one touches me

    picture © horseryder.deviantart.com


    @[laura] whoever wants to deal with this depresso
    Reply
    #2

    that day even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried

    Firion knows all about living in pain—in breathing it in until it becomes a part of you. Stitching it unto your very bones until it’s the only thing you know. Until your mind is molded by it and you can’t help but become a mirror image of it. Once, he had been the carefree son of a retired panther and his angel. He had been raised wild and free—never knowing limitations, never knowing agony, never knowing want. There had only been the Hyaline mountains spread wide open before him. Hours of youth and freedom.

    Until the curse had found him.

    Until nights no longer meant chasing prey through the shadows but stumbling half-dead amongst them. Until those witching hours meant a decaying body and rotting mind trapped behind it. A consciousness ripped from him and replaced with a gnawing hunger that he only knew one way to fill.

    The darkness had only exacerbated an existence that had long been anything but torture.

    And when Beqanna had given him magic in return for his sacrifice, it had twisted too. Perhaps he couldn’t hold onto anything pure. Perhaps there was something broken within him that could only corrupt. Because the light had turned into shadow at his side. The magic coiled around demonic energy.

    And he was left with a golden mask that belied the rot behind it.

    It’s this thought that follows him today, setting his predator teeth on edge and his mood blackening with every step. The anger is new, he thinks, and in many ways he prefers it to the desperate agony that he had felt when he had woken from the curse every morning. This was at least a productive emotion. It was at least something he could harness—tapping into it and ravaging every dark corner for the power that swells in his breast now. It feels like a trapped storm, like a hurricane unleashed, and he revels in it.

    When he sees the silver girl by the water, he pauses, perhaps like calling to like or an opposite pulling toward its opposite. The golden glow of him intrigued by the cool silver of her—the electricity that sparked off of her like a living thing even as the coolness of his shadows wound around his legs.

    Curious, he walks toward her, not directly looking at her but instead looking out into the river where the water swirls and the most dangerous parts are hidden under the smooth surface.

    He considers saying hello, but the words don’t come, and he merely exhales instead.

    so you saluted every ghost you've ever prayed to and then buried it where bones are buried




    @[Cordis] OH HI
    Reply
    #3



    If asked, she would call herself cursed, too, though her curse had no real specifics. Was it a curse, to have been seen by Him, to have been beckoned to His lair, where she would spend years dying in every conceivable way, years of being torn apart and pieced together? A curse, or simply bad luck, a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, falling under the gaze of the wrong god.
    Was it a curse, to know a love so profound it rearranges you, only to have her die and you, for all your useless magic, can’t bring her back?
    (Or was it a blessing, to know a love so profound? Can something be both?)
    And what’s the curse, now? This endless boredom interspaced with grief, a pale existence where she wanders and means little to anyone and they mean even less to her? Sometimes she finds scraps (a distant relation, like a hint of gold glimmering in rushing water), but they are gone quickly and then she is back to her Sisyphean task of existing.
    (She’d thought about letting the monsters take her. About dropping the electricity and letting them rend her to shreds. But she’s fought too long to die in such a way. When she goes, she thinks, she will go out fighting.)

    She notices him as quickly as he notices her. He is gold, but brightly so, and dappled in spots. Gold and silver, again, and she sighs. He comes closer and then he sighs, too, and she wonders about him. She can sense something in him, something wretched, and her own skin flares. She does not think he is dangerous – not yet – but he
    could be, and that is enough to make her wary.
    Yet she does not chase him off. Maybe she wants a fight. Or maybe she just wants someone to talk to. Some noise that’s not the awful, familiar sound of the river.
    “Hello,” she says, then, “you look tired.”
    Politeness was never her strong suit.

    I’ll touch you all and make damn sure

    Cordis

    that no one touches me

    picture © horseryder.deviantart.com


    @[firion]
    Reply
    #4

    that day even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried

    The wretched thing in him rises in response to the wretched thing in her—reaches for it, perhaps, in the way that magnets always find their home. Something sizzles in the air like a summer storm and his hair stands up on end. It is invigorating in the way that fear can be—in the way of fury and lust and hate. He drinks it deep and lets it fill his belly, gouging himself on the pureness of those white-hot emotions.

    When she finally speaks, he laughs—cannot stop the way it escapes him so quickly.

    It is deep and rolling and real and he savors that.

    “I always look tired,” he admits with a casual shrug, his gravely voice scraping against his tongue. “I spent a lot of years being dead instead of being asleep.” He wonders why he confesses that kind of truth to her when he barely admitted it to himself, but something tells him that she can take it. That perhaps she has stared into the face of death as often as he has. That she has seen the light go out more than once.

    Silence stretches between them again, pulled taut by each second that passes.

    He stares at her, unabashed and unafraid, studying the sharp angles of her face. The way she seemed to be chiseled out of storm. He feels his shadow companion wind itself around his legs but he doesn’t shrug it off. Instead he lets it slide up his shoulder and come to rest on his back, nearly purring with pleasure.

    “You look…” his voice trails off as he tries to find the right word for it.

    “Angry.”

    He wrinkles his nose.

    “No, not that,” he considers it once more before finally saying:

    “Fractured.”

    so you saluted every ghost you've ever prayed to and then buried it where bones are buried



    @[Cordis]
    Reply




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