"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
06-24-2021, 08:12 PM (This post was last modified: 06-27-2021, 10:01 AM by Sickle.)
some Violence and Babies Being Eaten
sickle
One of her blinks works, and she feels her stomach slide around in her body as they move in a way she cannot describe. When she looks around again, they are somewhere else entirely and though there is nausea eating up her insides she forgets it instantly. She does not recognize the place that they arrive in as one of those that he had shown her. There are no canyons, nor any great trees rising above. She is frowning, trying to figure it out, when he explains. Hyaline, his home! Oh, well that makes sense that he’d want to show her his home first.
She’s just thinking about how much she’d like to go plunge into the lake and swim among the stars when the friend with her introduces himself. Gale - and her smile lasts just as long as it takes him to say that final word. Her dad. For a moment, she just stares at him. She’s startled into reverting back to her filly shape, though she barely notices the change.
“My dad?” Sickle repeats in a quiet, almost frightened voice. And she looks around like she’s expecting Wishbone to come out of the trees and explain to her what’s going on. Only they aren’t in Tephra anymore, so her mom is not nearby. Finally some unease begins to settle into the young filly and her distress displays itself as shifting colours across her coat. She looks back to him - the adult here, the one who will have more answers even though he's the one that confused her in the first place. “My mom never… never said anything…” Because Sickle had never thought to ask before now. She'd enjoyed her life with those that she knew and had never questioned that there might be an empty space.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Though the Curse has used its hosts to sire many children, its participation in fatherhood has been minimal at best.
It recalls following the golden twins through Taiga, teaching Celina her brother’s weakness, and the taste of Elio’s blood.
Sickle is already powerful, but she is also frightened, alone, and feeble-minded. A most excellent target, and so the delight shining in his blue eyes is genuine. He dims it some, because Wishbone had been a soft creature, and he is sure she has attempted to make his daughter soft as well. Too much pleasure at her suffering might alarm her, so he manages an empathetic nod and reminds himself to toughen her up.
“There’s probably a lot that Wishbone didn’t tell you,” He says, shifting now to match Sickle, into an iridescent navy stallion with striping quite like her own, and horns just like her brother’s. “She did it to protect you, but you’re old enough now that I thought you deserved to know the truth.”
He’ll tell her the truth, his words seem to say. He won’t hide things from her the way that her mother has.
Revealing that she has a second mother might be too much for now, the Curse decides, recalling how simple-minded the child is. He’ll give her information instead, information that he hopes she’s smart enough to use to answer questions she might.
“Did you ever wonder where your shifting came from?”
The idea that there is a lot her mom hadn’t told her is as uncomfortable as the way her stomach is still twisting after being teleported across Beqanna. But it did sound like Wishbone to protect her, she was really good at that. The truth seemed like a funny thing to be protected from, though, to this young girl that hasn’t yet learned that some truths can hurt.
He shifts, and her mismatched eyes widen a little further - he certainly looks like her and Malik.
To his question, she frowns in thought and replies with an uncertain “Well... I guess…” She had thought it was a little weird that their mom hadn’t been able to join them in some of their shifting games, but she had been full of other wonderful tricks - like when she had closed them in that bone cage - so it had been easy to forget. Plus she had Malik, so it hadn’t really been an issue.
She wishes she had agreed to go get her brother, wishes he was with her now for this. What would he think of their dad?
Sickle’s decided that this must be the truth, there’s too much evidence backing it up and she does not have the capacity to question too much of it yet. He's an adult, he's telling her something that makes sense, so it must be real. And Gale seems nice, if she’s going to have a dad she’d like a nice one. There are, naturally, still some questions though and she peers back up at him, a little of her unease fading away. “How come you don’t live in Tephra with us?”
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Gale looks up at the starry sky, tracing the familiar shapes of the constellations as he waits for Sickle to process what he has just told her. The girl sounds uncertain, and he glances back down at her. Her brow is wrinkled in a frown, and she looks just like her mother.
The realization is infuriating, and Gale grows claws so that he might dig them into the roky earth below him rather than rip it off her face.
He needs to keep her whole, but the restraint it requires turns stone to gravel beneath his feet. That is the sole indicator of his tension. The rest of him is smiling, so it seems perhaps a tic.
Sickle has a question for him, and Gale tilts his head to the side curiously as she does, so that the spinal mane they share tips to that side as well.
“Well...” He begins to reply and then pauses. Hs mouth twists in thought. How much information should he share?
This venture - this keeping the child alive - is rapidly becoming more complicated than he had expected. He didn’t actually want to talk to a child, but he doesn’t want to risk her growing concerned either. They cry when they are upset, and if she cries he’ll have to silence her and then she’ll definitely be too upset to make a suitable gift to Mazikeen.
“You and Malik were supposed to live here, in Hyaline. You are shifters, and you are children of the Pack. But Wishbone is afraid of me, and she tried to hide you away. But I found you, and you deserve to know the truth about who you are.”
The Curse will tell Mazikeen to find a few shifter children for Sickle to play with when he next sees her. Hopefully that will be soon, and he looks up at the dark mountainsides and once more flashes an image of himself and Sickle at the lakeshore to her orange eyes as a summons.
Sickle’s eyes widen when she notices his claws but it’s with interest more than fear. Her two front hooves do the same, and she plays with the rocky soil at her feet - mimicking his movements without really intending or thinking about it. To her, she’s just playing a game - enjoying the feeling of the cool soil - and not trying to pulverize rock into gravel so she won’t rip off a face.
She stops when he answers her question - claws reverting back to hooves now that her attention is elsewhere. It all sounds very big to her, the sort of thing she’s become accustomed to hearing she’s too young to fully understand. Some of it makes sense, though - Sickle agrees that she deserves to know the truth and she nods along to this part.
The filly mulls this information over for a moment, some of her unease fading. She’s not worried when she asks her next question, just curious. “Why is my mom scared of you?” He had seemed very nice so far. Unless it was just because he was a shifter - but that didn’t make much sense. Wishbone had never seemed very scared of her or Malik so it couldn’t be that.
A blazing light behind Gale catches the filly’s attention and her eyes widen to see a phoenix shift into the form of a mare. She has glowing horns too, but they remind Sickle of the volcano instead of Malik.
When the image comes to her, of Gale and Sickle, she first thinks it is a cruel joke or a twisted reminder of how she owes him another child. She huffs to herself, glancing towards the lake - expecting to see him standing there on his own, grinning a wicked grin. But no, there is another figure there with him. About the size her daughter would be now.
Her daughter
Mazikeen never intended to see the twins again, not until it was safe - and that day seems to be slipping further and further away. She explodes in fire, a bright orange phoenix rising from where she stood and flying as fast as she can towards the pair. She lands hard, shifting as she does so she’s her natural self, a pale mare crowned with her horns. This can’t be happening. She catches the filly’s question who’s that and she stumbles on her approach as sadness rolls through her. She knew, she knew what she was doing when she gave them away but having to face it like this - having to look at the little girl and see both herself and Gale, seeing no recognition in her eyes - it hurts.
“What…” Mazikeen quickly becomes vaguely aware that an explosive what the fuck may not be the most appropriate reaction in front of a child. Her eyes are wide and wild and she couldn’t name which emotion she feels strongest right in that moment if she wanted to. Even the glowing markings on her back cannot decide if they want to be present or not and they flicker in the darkness. She had been doing so well, closing herself off from her emotions but her surprise at this encounter leaves everything she is feeling on display.
She looks between the pair as she takes those last couple steps to join them and feels her heart ache, sees pieces of the future she had imagined for them all together. Her eyes sting with the tears that want to fall but she knows this is wrong, no matter how perfect they look together, how similar. She fixes her orange eyes on Gale and hisses out quiet, pained and fierce words as she comes to stand next to him (an instinct she does not have the capacity to think about right now). “Why is she here?” And then right on the heels of that, another question - fear cracking her voice on this one “And where is Malik?” Had he done something to their son? She looks for signs of blood on him, but there are none and Sickle seems mildly upset but surely not as much as she would be if her brother had been… if he had…
She can barely even finish the thought, nevermind speak it, but her fear is plain in her face as she turns and just stares at Sickle, unable to find any other words at all.
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Mazikeen has not come to him since that first night, but Gale has kept his word. He has not sought her out, and not summoned her till this late autumn evening. He’s certain enough that their coupling had resulted in children that he’s never bothered to Look for them within her.
He is growing less certain that Mazikeen will seek him out again, and he intends to use Sickle to increase the odds that she will. Some part of him knows it is Bad to fixate so closely on a single creature. He should be destroying the world, and instead he cannot look away from the glowing mare that comes toward them.
Gale hadn’t answered Sickle’s second question, and doesn’t until he knows that her mother is close enough to hear what he says. “We had an argument,” he tells his daughter, recalling the way it had felt to plunge his beak into Wishbone’s chest and rip out her beating heart. “I hurt her feelings, so she took you and your brother away from me.”
He considers showing the image of the Tephran's death to Mazikeen, but she is looking fearful rather than angry, and Gale scowls. He’d wanted her to be furious, to burn and rage so he might burst into flame as well, and instead she accuses him of harming their son.
“This is Mazikeen,” he tells Sickle, and reaches out to kiss her, remaining near and savoring the heat of her body against his. “She is happy to have you back home, but I think we might have surprised her.” Gale’s voice is light, sounding from where he speaks just out of sight of Sickle’s mismatched eyes.
His expression is the opposite, and he stares at Mazikeen with a furious intensity that says quite clearly: ‘Stop fucking this up.’
“Malik is back in Tephra,” he continues easily, in a manner he is sure will assuage Sickle. “But he’ll get a chance to come back to the Pack soon too.”
The name Mazikeen is familiar to her, though Sickle can’t remember why at this moment. Another friend of her mom, perhaps? The intensity of the mare’s look makes her feel uncomfortable, like she’s done something wrong, and the small filly shifts a little in her stance - glancing away towards the lake when Gale leans in to kiss the mare. Adults are so weird.
She’s more relaxed now, though, the waves of new information not fully settling in her mind. She wonders what her mom and dad would have argued about that made Wishbone want to take them away from their dad. And she wonders how long they’re going to spend in Hyaline before going to one of the other places she had been shown.
The mention of her brother easily draws her attention back and she nods along as Gale answers Mazikeen’s question. “I think Malik would like it here.” Sickle liked it here too, but the idea of staying concerned her and another frown appears - one that matches the look Mazikeen will have given Gale a second earlier while they shared glances in confidence.
She had a mom, a brother, and a friend waiting for her back where her home actually was. This was just supposed to be a visit, wasn’t it? Even if he was her dad, even if she was supposed to be living here this whole time, she didn’t live here now. She glances between the adults, her question quiet “But I’ll be able to tell him about it when you take me back to Tephra… right?”
Mazikeen scowls a little as she approaches and hears Gale's explanation of an argument, and how the twins had been hidden away from him as a result. It's a very simple version of the truth, easily working for both her and Wishbone. So much effort spent trying to hide them away, and here one of them is anyway. Had he stolen her too?
Her mind is drifting in thousands of directions and one of them considers how she’d wanted to find him, wanted to chase what she had felt that night. Mazikeen even had an excuse while it was still autumn - wanting to make absolutely sure that she was pregnant. It was a good excuse, she thought, and one that always started her on the hunt, sometimes a few times a day, but in the end she would force herself to do something else. Anything else.
There’s a small moment, when he greets her with a kiss and lingers nearby, where she wishes she hadn’t convinced herself to stop - where she thinks about how many times they could have met between then and now - but whatever desire there is in his proximity it is buried beneath the weight of everything else. The furious look in his eyes helps keep it down and away from her. She frowns back at him, her glowing markings solidifying - her own anger wanting to rise to meet his.
Mazikeen isn’t entirely sure what he’s warning her about, what her part is supposed to be in this, so she tries to follow his lead. That is familiar ground, at least. So she reaches out to touch him back, a brief, I understand touch (though she does not understand at all) and she finds a smile to erase the pain and confusion on her face. She turns from him to their daughter and forces some lightness into her tone - the same as she had done in Taiga. “You did surprise me.” The words are easy to say because they aren’t false, and neither are the ones that follow. “But it’s good to see you here in Hyaline, Sickle.”
The girl mentions going back to Tephra and Mazikeen’s attention drifts back to Gale, something akin to cold amusement on her expression. She doesn’t want to needle the Curse’s temper in front of Sickle, or anywhere there are other victims, but she makes no move to answer this question - leaving it for him to explain whether or not Sickle will go back to the only home she’s known.
06-27-2021, 12:18 AM (This post was last modified: 06-27-2021, 09:31 AM by Gale.)
Trigger/content warning: baby gets a boo-boo
Gale this is going to break me clean in two -- this is going to bring me close to you
Mazikeen heeds his warning, and the fear in her expression becomes a smile as she turns to face the girl. The child continues to talk, the soft tones of her young voice grating on Gale’s blue ears.
In this iteration, more than any before, it dislikes children.
The Alpha is putting on a very good show of being friendly to Sickle, and Gale watches their interaction with hard blue eyes. They look just alike.
He scowls, because the same hurt has returned at that realization. A sharp pain in Gale’s heart, just for a moment, and then it is gone, swept away by the writhing shadows that wear his skin. Weeks have passed, and he still has no explanation for it, and only knows that being near Mazikeen is making it worse than it has ever been.
His temper is shortened by the girl’s question to him, and by the cold humor in Mazikeen’s eyes in reply. He had wanted her to be angry. He hadn’t wanted...whatever this is.
She feels comfortable taunting him, and the Curse knows that it is because she has not been properly broken.
Gale had promised not to hurt Sickle, and Mazikeen had sworn obedience. If she keeps her part of the bargain when he makes his next demand of her, she will be keeping Gale’s as well, and his smile begins to return at the wonderful prospect.
He leans close again, and whispers a command in Mazikeen’s ear. “I want to see you hurt her.”
