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    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


    [open]  In every tree a black bird
    #1
    Snow fell on Hyaline long before Autumn came, turning its high peaks to whipped sugar, glittering and beautiful and deadly. Popinjay spent more hours exploring the territory on foot and on the wing than she did on watching how quickly her children grew but Raum never much noticed the lack. On this day, his mother patrolled the jagged skies with her veil of lightning and her track could be seen easily by the trail of light that followed her as she wove her way between the mountaintops, coasting on thermals that would freeze him through if he tried to join her.

    Wingless, he could not, of course. The boy's interest was not on his mother's skies, however,  but on a pool of shadow spillt across the rocky wall above him. The ledge he'd climbed up to was a narrow and precarious one, but he had his mother's sure feet and fearless nature and thought nothing of making the dangerous climb up to it. His reward, a fractured bit of mountainside stained red and green-gold with lichens, and silver-black with the ice reforming as midday's heat faded back to evening chill. Somewhere behind him, a pika cried out its shrill alarm, but the golden-feathered boy only flicked an ear contemptuously at the little creature and peered more closely at the darkness tucked beneath the cracked rock face. There, the darkness and the ice mingled so densely they seemed to have never seen the sun. It was the deepest shadow he had ever seen and pictures danced across it sharply. 

    The shadow theater lived everywhere that the downy-soft paws of darkness tread.

    The colt shook his head. That description didn't quite fit the darkness in front of him, black as velvet but hard as a knife. It smelled of nothing and of eternity and of a thousand things a boy his age could only imagine, and he - tactile, like his mother - stepped forward hungrily to press his nose against it, but found instead nothing at all. Empty space loomed ahead of him. Pressing the tip of his pink tongue against a sharp tooth, he snorted and stamped and squealed into that impenetrable darkness that was so full of the whirling dervish on his premonitions; color and light projected on their opposite by the magic that filled his ruby-bright eyes. His own voice answered him from a thousand open throats.

    "Hello?"

    hello hello hello hello hello hello
    Raum*
    in every bird a black thought


    someone please come help Raum find trouble  Heart
    Please tag ratty or Raum* (<--with the asterisk) in threads!
    #2

    you pour the water —

    Baptiste did not often choose to do her wanderings within the confines of Hyaline—it was too close to her home, both proverbial and not—and she felt it like a specter on her back. Perhaps that is why she summons her own to walk alongside her this day. Two ghastly creatures that stand several hands higher than her, their eyes bluish and their lips pressed into a tight line. Contradictory as they may be with the halo that tilts innocently above her head, she takes comfort in their presence.

    Perhaps they are a mirror where everyone else sees opposites.

    Perhaps they are an anchor to a place where she feels more at home.

    Regardless, they are a soothing presence and she gladly walks between them, her oil spill wings tucked over her slender back, rose gold eyes surveying the land around her with a cool indifference. She finds that the physical activity, the movement, is enough to keep the gnawing darkness at bay. The hunger and need and yawning loneliness within her kept just far enough back that she feels a sense of control.

    The movement of the demonic boy grabs her attention and she pauses, both of her sentinels closing in on her as if trained by her father (perhaps they were, she thinks—perhaps they are lost souls of his old Chamber soldiers). She makes a nose in her throat and it is enough for them to ease, to give her a berth so that she can move toward the boy and the darkness that reaches for him desperately.

    “Hello,” she replies, an echo, but says nothing more, tilting her head in pure curiosity.

    — I would haul the stones



    @Raum*
    #3
    Hello.

    That voice came from behind him and Raum yelps, spinning around to glare at the trio with all the ferocity he can muster, baring the bright ivory peaks of his teeth that so crookedly mirror Hyaline's skyline. There was little rhyme or reason to where they sprang from his jaws and the alarmed crown of black feathers at his crest perfectly centers attention on his face so as to give the girl and her guardians plenty of time to study the mountain range of his mouth.

    A girl.

    But not Anath, not Parish. Not any of the horses he knows. The high, childish, growl in his breast dies away with his surprise, stolen by the whipping winds, and the feathers lie down slick against his neck once more. The shadows have shown him a thousand different futures for the faces that he knows, but they never showed him her, black and gold and feather-soft, has she always lived here? 

    "I never Saw you, before," he muses, frowning, the emphasis on 'Saw' soft and easy to miss. His gaze flits from side to side at the girl's Shades with a flat, unspoken, challenge. Raum has no subtlety, but more than his share of audacity. Not a breath later, his grin returns, resolved to ignore the dead things entirely, and his feather-curled ears lift away from his poll. He looks tothe haloed girl againand steps aside, an invitation for her to look more closely at the narrow, ancient cave he's found. If she wanted (and who wouldn't want to?)

    "What's your name?" 

    Raum*
    in every bird a black thought


    @baptiste
    Please tag ratty or Raum* (<--with the asterisk) in threads!
    #4

    you pour the water —

    There is something strange about the boy that calls to the something strange in her own heart. Something about the demonic presence that echoes in the souls that stalk her sides, the shadows of them nearly growing faint as though they might fade in the shadow of her inattention. It is comforting and she is not yet self-aware enough to discern whether it is normal to be comforted by the things that might deter others. She merely knows it strikes at her curiosity like flint to steel, burning in the depths of her eyes.

    “I am very good at going unseen,” she offers in explanation, not picking up on the emphasis on his version of seen and glazing over it as one might expect. She does, however, note the challenge in his eyes when he looks toward her sentinels and she approves—even appreciates the bravery in facing down the undead. But she does not call them off. Instead she summons them closer, the two moving from the shadows to come stand near her side, leaning over the back of her as if arching in protection.

    Her smile lifting in the corners of her mouth, she moves forward at his invitation. She steps closer to him so that she can peer into the cave that he guards, the souls rankling by remaining behind her.

    “Baptiste,” she offers without a second thought, eyes narrowing as if she might see better.

    “Who are you?”

    — I would haul the stones

    #5
    The cave is deep and dark and no doubt cold, and like so many caves of its sort, full of ancient ice and ancient water. When he follows her gaze into its depths, he sees the futures where he leaps into it, though he can sense no floor far past his own toes; he sees futures where they both leap, and ones where they do not. There are more possibilities than he can imagine and there's a giddy rush in guessing at which is the Truth that will come.

    "I'm Raum," he offers lightly to the too-full darkness, then turns to her again, black-tipped ears eager, "What do you see, when you look in there?"

    Looking at her brings the Shadows to his attention again, the souls lingering close to her, leaning over her. The boy lets his gaze soften as though looking through them into the distance, and he wonders if it is possible to insult the dead without wondering if it is wise to do so.

    "I know it's dark, but I can barely see the shadows through the pictures." Raum's grin falters slightly as he struggles to explain. The images come all the time, he has so little control over them. His visions play in every simple shadow and across the starry sky until it is never night at all but a world of imagery he barely understands. He struggles to turn the magic off.

    "There's a lake in there that never freezes, not even in winter," He says, plucking his future out of the void, and then he licks his lips as if he can taste the salinity of the water, "You wanna see if I'm right?"
    Raum
    in every bird a black thought


    @baptiste
    Please tag ratty or Raum* (<--with the asterisk) in threads!
    #6

    you pour the water —

    She doesn’t understand him but she desperately wishes that she could—wishes that she could know exactly what is unraveling in his head. At every detail that is unspooling as he tries to piece together the images that he sees and the future that lives only within him. She smiles faintly as he peers forward and when he directs the question at herself, her eyes widen only slightly, the shock registering there.

    “I just see darkness,” she feels a faint sweep of embarrassment at not being able to give him a better answer, at not being able to tell him something fantastical or thrilling. “It’s just shadows.” Her mouth pulls down in the corner, as she studies him and yet misses the look that he gives her sentinels, her mind beginning to wander to all of the secrets that she harbors and all of the thoughts that spin outward.

    “What pictures do you see?” she snags onto the statement, head tilting as she considers what he could possibly mean. “You see something else in there?” She looks back as if she too could see what he is describing, but only the darkness greets her—nothing rising up to take shape in the endless dark.

    But he dangles something in front of her that she cannot resist.

    Taking a step forward, she nods, glancing back at the souls by her and nodding. They step back reluctantly once more and she looks back to her new friend. “Show me?”

    — I would haul the stones



    @Raum*




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