"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
your mouth is a revolver, firing bullets in the sky
He is a creature of extremes. Extreme heat. Extreme passion. Volatile. Raging. He is born into the storm of his mother’s love and he thrives there. Thrives amongst his twin of a sister, his equal in so many ways. His young heart thunders in his chest as he runs through the meadow, spindly legs eating up the earth that rises to meet him. He bugles as he goes, a thin sound in his youthful throat, but he doesn’t mind.
There is a small spurting fire that follows him, spluttering in protest, harmless against the spring growth—and the air grows warm as he runs. He does not quite command the summer as he someday might, but he does influence it. Call to it. And it follows him the same as that path of flame. Weak, but only for now. It is the imitation of summer. The echo of it. But in the throes of spring, it is enough for him.
Warm, comforting.
He thinks he can hear the crack of thunder somewhere off in the distance.
It is enough.
He comes to a stop, body trembling from the effort and breathes in deep. It tastes of ash and the air is thick with the promise of rain. He shivers and the cracks along his body tremor like earthquakes, as though threatening to split him open. Instead, he simply glows like a log caught aflame. Splintered and yet whole, kept together with nothing but charred wood and the constant, ever hungry fire.
Pleased, Drakon continues on again—this time at a more reasonable pace.
05-22-2021, 09:18 PM (This post was last modified: 05-22-2021, 09:18 PM by Nekane.)
Nekane had begun to wake in the warm comfort of Ischia and feel something odd. It felt like bile in her stomach and an aching in her joints; an ache that brought her nearly to tears with the desire for more. For something beyond the safety of her island home. The mounting restlessness had grown painful, and the young tigress could imagine herself, with such certainty, suffocating to death within the kingdom.
Though this is not to say she has been mistreated or neglected, tossed to the side with hardly a second thought. Quite the opposite, really. As granddaughter to the island's Queen, she rarely found herself alone. And recently it has only added to the thoughts of suffocation, prompting the young girl - nearly a woman now but not quite - to do something rash.
She had run.
And for the first time, not even Volos knows where she has gone.
She loves her twin with every fiber of her being (and every fiber of every being she cold create when she put her mind to it), but to be free of Ischia and everything familiar for the first time in her life is...
Epiphanic.
Spring in the Meadow is warmer than Neka had anticipated it would be. Much warmer. For good measure, her amber eyes peer briefly towards the sky but the sun seems to hang right where it usually does. A sheen of sweat breaks upon her striped coat, but after a few moments the fleeting heat is gone. Curious, the tiger-shifter unfurls from the long verdant grasses and finds a steady surety in her stance. She transitions from tiger to equine quite swiftly and her attentive gaze latches onto the charred form of a nearby colt.
He appears to glow from rugged cracks that splice his charred body like rivers of lava, and she, the innocently adventurous girl from Ischia, is instantly drawn to him.
“Did you do that?” Her words call to the strange colt over the quiet springtime breeze that has made the Meadow its home today as she tries to catch up to him, bridging the gap that grows warmer and warmer. It's only when she draws nearer that Neka notices the pleased expression upon his face, though another rumble of thunder - this one nearer - breaks her concentration. “Does it hurt?” she asks softly, the words barely finding their way from her lips as her attention returns to the fiery stranger.
your mouth is a revolver, firing bullets in the sky
He rests in the cocoon of his created heat, nestled in the belly of it like a promise.
There’s almost a lull to it, a sweet summer song that his body only knows how to rise to. He rides along each crest and wave, crashing to the bottom and lifting with effortless joy. It’s only when her words reach out to him that he stirs at all. Part of him wants to gnash his teeth at the intrusion but there is an equal part of him that aches with curiosity and a desire for companionship—and it’s this part that answers readily.
His crafted summer blows outward, billowing toward the young tigress with his attention. It casts an even larger area in his faux weather, although the temperature is still mild for what it could be. His pupiless eyes stare upon her, curious and seeing, a bristle of flame riding down his young crest and along his spine.
“I did,” he answers, his voice as young as his face—although there is the whisper of the thunderous boom that it someday may become. He tilts his charred head to the side and the stars that surround him settle into the flickering fire, an ode to his twilight mother. At her next question, he frowns a little, his ashen lips pulling down in the corner as though unsure how to answer. Not even sure what she refers to.
His nose wrinkles a little, a reminder of the young boy trapped within the summer storm, and then it smoothes out as though it had never changed at all. “Nothing hurts,” he chooses a blanket answer, not quite sure how to pinpoint what she might mean and figuring it was better than nothing. He glances back up at her bright face, studying it as though he might have to remember every detail later.
A jarring level of intense study from his red eyes.
“Do you hurt?” he counters, wondering if her question came from experience.
The moment his crimson eyes turn upon her like hot coals, Nekane loses her words and within the confines of her throat, her breath hitches. The echoes of a mild summer wash over the budding girl, offering a reminder of the season that has come to pass and gifting her with the sensation of security ─ it is a reminder of Ischia, albeit a less humid one, and security here outside of her safe island home, she knows, is not promised. I did, the boy is concise and confident in his answer, leaving Neka to feel intimidated by his presence.
Her own turquoise gaze averts as she finds difficulty in matching the intensity with which he gazes upon her, and it's the flame that crackles low and threatening down his dorsal that her eyes decide to linger. The tiger inside her aches to be set loose, to offer young Nekane a predatory exterior to hide the way her heart palpitates beneath the stranger's vigilant scrutiny.
She denies it.
Her second question is breathier than the first, pushed through her soft maw with force. The temporary nerve she feels does its best to linger as the boy's expression turns pensive and his ruby eyes glance away from her, affording the blue and gold-tressed girl a fleeting opportunity to examine the charring across his face and down his structured neck.
She finds it curious that the fire upon his back and the cracks that sluice his skin bring the boy no pain, though perhaps what is is ─ whatever it is he may be ─ functions just the same as her own abilities. The thought makes her feel small again and when the nameless stranger turns her own question back to her, Neka fumbles with her answer.
“N-not usually,” she tells him after a quiet moment, finding it in her to raise her blue gaze to his red, though her words still waver when met with the lava in his eyes. "But I am not made of fire." It dawns upon her that she could very well mimic him, if only for a short time ─ but there is something about him that feels untouchable. Dangerous, even. And where she usually finds the courage to use her replication freely, today she is at a loss.
Another wave of heat emanates from him, causing her to clear her throat. Suddenly feeling quite parched, the girl turns her gaze to their surroundings in search of a pond or a creek only to realize she has yet to introduce herself to the Boy on Fire, a lapse in etiquette that her father would certainly scold her for, had he been here.
“My name is Neka,” she tells him as her gaze grows bolder and returns to him only to be met with flame and brimstone, “Who are you?”
He is perhaps too young to pick up on the nuances of the conversation. To note that she is shy or perhaps overwhelmed by the intensity. He would struggle to understand the idea of overwhelm in the first place. He was born into the thick of it—raised alongside a twin flame by a mother who brought the heavens down with a whisper. He was crafted into summer and set free along the plains, pushed forward by the promise of more, by the inevitability of it. He was always destined to be too much. Too volatile.
Too passionate.
Too hungry.
But he doesn’t understand this and thus cannot curb himself. He can only turn his gaze back to her, studying her with the same unchecked focus of a wildfire making its way down the bank. When she tells him that she’s not made of fire, he snorts a little. “You’re not,” he agrees, but it’s not a haughty statement. It’s merely fact and he tilts his charred cheek to the side. “But you are made of something.”
A flicker along charred lips although it does not quite pass as a smile. More of a ripple of amusement as he nods at her introduction. “Neka,” he repeats, trying the name out for size before nodding, finding that he likes the curtness of it. “I’m Drakon.” A name of equal bluntness—the syllables a bullet from his tongue, firing off with little warning. He takes a step closer, the stars moving as though awakened with the motion, dazzling as they spin up around his head into a loose halo, touched only by the fire that reaches toward them.
