"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
Hungry for their thoughts, their innocence; starved of touch and the sound of their rapidly beating hearts, like dove’s wings fluttering against its cage. Too long has it been since he created his own story, weaved himself into theirs seamlessly, became a part of their life that they could not live without, feeding on their desires and dreams - becoming the exact thing they needed (and wished for) the most.
He can only do so much, though - they have to be willing, otherwise he finds it too difficult to wedge his way into their lives, too much work for a reward so simple. He just wants them - is that really so terrible? - and when their mind is shrouded, relentless and unbreaking, he simply moves on. He does not have time to waste with those whose wills are too strong, too unbending. He needs them to be malleable, he needs them to be lost and alone searching for a guide; a stronghold. He could be anything and everything, if only they would give him a chance.
So he searches for chances in the cold mist that circulates ominously beside the river, icy fingers reaching out through the stillness and the silence, searching for a stream of consciousness that fits his needs. He lets his own thoughts drip languidly from his own mind, seeping into the open and into the mind of any nearby that were willing to allow him entry. Sad, lonely thoughts would permeate their own, a beacon to any who may have an empathetic heart. Those tended to be the easier to infiltrate, ones who cared more about others than themselves.
The tri-colored stallion keeps his head low and travels slowly, tracing the river’s edge with careful, quiet steps. The mist from the river dampens the deep goldenrod of his mane, plastering the tangles of it onto the dark evergreen of his neck and shoulder. Molech’s large wings shift at his sides, the chill of autumn settling over him bitterly. The muscles in his jawline are taut with clenched teeth, feeling the frustration as only emptiness surrounds him. He sighs slowly, allowing his breath to seep from him in a cloud of warm fog, curling around his handsome face as he attempts to release the tension there. He tastes the air, a thin and terrible forked tongue flickering darkly from his parted lips - a thin wave of inky black against his golden mouth, and then it is gone, disappearing.
09-26-2021, 09:16 PM (This post was last modified: 09-27-2021, 08:58 AM by flower.)
She knows she is changed, but she does not know what it was that changed her or who she was before she became this. She isn’t even entirely sure what this is. The only thing she knows with any kind of certainty is that there is more history inside her chest than there are memories inside her head. That there is something broken, something missing, something more.
Something she aches for constantly.
What she does not know is that magic tried to fill her. That it poured into her fragile glass skin until she was brittle and teeming with it, until cracks and fissures raced all across her delicate body more numerably than all the stars in every galaxy. She does not remember the way her own body had caved in with the effort of retaining the magic, that when it did finally shatter from her it left her dying and broken and wholly undone. It had healed her as it drained away - and was it remorse or an apology, a gift? But through the fissures of herself she had lost everything, and the magic only returned so much.
Her memories had been irreparably scattered, names and places and faces all gone from her as the life bled from her chest - and when she woke alone beneath the mountain, hurting and bewildered, she had not even known her own name.
It came to her in a dream though, came again in a dozen others before she claimed it for herself and then it never came again.
She wondered how many other dreams had been memories that tried to find her, memories she did not think to keep.
She is standing at the lowest point of the riverbank with her delicate red nose stretched out to touch the moving current of the water's surface. It is cold and loud, and the mist soaks her face and mane until the water beads like crystals over the glass surface of her impossible skin. She thinks she might like the water, might even love it. There is something about standing here that stirs at the dust and cobwebs inside her mind, something that tugs painfully at the strings of her fragile heart.
Her reflection is of someone shadowed and quiet, a face too delicate to belong to anyone strong. There is a galaxy of metallic gold flecks inside a pair of golden eyes that make her want to look away because they are too wide and too sad and so wholly unfamiliar. Who am I? She wonders, and she is glad for the way the current distorts her reflection, the way the pink flowers in her mane blur away into nothingness. Who was I?
When she looks up it is to find someone standing on the opposite bank. He is as unfamiliar as anything else, but he is also handsome. She forgets herself, studies the contours of his face and the places where green and gold meet like forests turned to autumn. She studies the patches of irregular white and feels something pang inside her chest, studies the elegant arch of his wings and feels something critical shatter to pieces inside her. “Do I know you?” She asks, and there is an out of place kind of longing as she takes a step forward so that the water has to split around the glossy red of her delicate legs. “Do you know me?”
Hope is a feeling she does not recognize. It feels like yearning and like pain, like a tangle inside her chest and around her heart that makes it hard to breathe.
He likes to think that they find him - that they are drawn to his aura, needing him so much that their instincts will it, drawn to him like beautiful, dancing moths are helpless to the flame, despite how it will kill them in the end. He never really has to look far; they are there, lost and forgotten, like a broken porcelain doll begging for reshaping. They are so beautiful in their brokenness, delicate and so trusting - these are the most decadent, Molech has discovered. Their need to be wanted and cherished far outweighing any sort of logic and sense, their loyalty unquestionable and undeniable.
They would do anything for him once he has them trapped in their nicely decorated cage.
Who am I? The fabric of someone else’s consciousness pulls him from his reverie, his lavender eyes equally intense and intrigued. Who was I? The thoughts are private, sad thoughts that now flow through him like electricity, igniting each nerve within his body. It is too perfect, he thinks to himself, this confession of confusion and the desperation in it and immediately, the tri-colored pegasus is already formulating his first moves on how to grapple with such thoughts, how to use them for his benefit.
Perhaps he has appeared to her out of nothingness, she may think. She would be partly right, as the water has allowed him to travel silently through it - reappearing in his solid form with the whisper of downy feathers and the quiet dripping of condensation. He is at ease on the other side of the bank, taking in her fiery chestnut form that shines like cracked gems and he wonders if he finally found his true treasure.
She is drawn to him (pushing through the water with little hesitancy, where he matches her movement with his own), like they all are. Her voice is desperate and at the same time hopeful, confusion on that beautiful broken face, and immediately he knows he will quell the anxiety that rises on those sharp planes of ruby red.
He does not know her - not in a way that she is asking - but there is no hesitation in his expression or movement. He falls into the part she so desperately wishes for him to play, concern darkening the edges of his gold and green face. He only knows her thoughts, her hopefulness, and it is enough - for now.
So Molech frowns, sad and disappointed and full of fret, but he makes sure that his eyes are alight with hope, sparkling and almost swimming with happiness as he crosses the river for her, breaching the water with the strength of his muscular chest. He goes to her, an embodiment of darkness cloaked in handsome features and beautiful lies, each step becoming more of what she wishes and obscuring the manipulation from her with a brow furrowed with concern. “You truly don’t remember?” comes his reply, his voice fragile and tormented, stopping just short of her hopeful, crystalline face.
The pegasus feigns hesitancy, as if he had meant to embrace her but now is unsure as if her uncertainty now keeps him at a distance when he would have otherwise bridged the space between them without a thought. His handsome face falls solemnly, downcast and hurt. “I know you,” he tells her after a few moments of bated breath, “perhaps more than you know yourself.” At this, his gaze lifts upwards, the tiniest of sad smiles on his golden lips, insinuating their fabricated relationship had been a close and intimate one.
He steps forward as if he cannot help it, as if it had been so long since he had touched her, as if his lips longed for her skin for countless nights as if only she could soothe whatever turmoil runs rampant in his mind. He doesn’t need her, not really, of course - but he does not mind pretending, not if it gives him what he truly wants from her.
The stallion’s mouth ghosts across her glass cheek, his breath condensing on the coolness of her fractured skin. He wants to kiss her to ensure his place in her forgotten life, to maybe solidify what she thinks with something real and tangible, but he doesn’t - he only lingers there, allowing the tension to build.
“Please say you remember something, anything,” he whispers mournfully. He dare not say his name or even try to pretend as he knows hers - not until he is sure that her mind is a blank canvas for him to orchestrate for her.
She is watching his face when it transforms from something quiet and beautiful to that masterpiece of constructed disappointment. He wears his sadness like a mirror to hers, and in the quiet familiarity she feels no reason not to trust all these cues he shares with her, all these beautiful lies that land in her eyes like broken truths. “I’m sorry.” She says, and she isn’t sure why her voice is a whisper except that maybe it hurts too much to be louder, hurts too much to take a breath so all he gets is this quiet exhale. “I don’t think I know you.”
He is beautiful, truly beautiful, and she is not immune to these greens and golds that remind her of the trees at the edges of the forest. She knows that she likes his face and those kind, worried eyes, knows that she wants him to be a shard of discarded memory now returned to her. But when she searches his face like she is searching for constellations in an unfamiliar sky, there is no sense of familiarity that binds her to him. Still, when he shifts like he might embrace her, there is a flaring of hope inside her chest that his embrace will feel like home, feel like safety, feel like the end of this creeping loneliness.
Instead it feels like falling when he holds himself back and away from her.
“It wouldn’t be terribly hard to know me better than I know myself.” She says again, and that red crystal face is something soft and unsure, framed by wide golden eyes and overly large pink flowers in her hair, a smile that seems out of place on her shy mouth. “I think my name is Flower, but I’m not even sure of that. Maybe I just really like flowers?” Her brow furrows and her golden eyes dim a shade darker with a moment of tumult and confusion. “Is that my name? Am I Flower?” Because he says he knows her and it is so easy to trust this beautiful, worried face.
Her heart is a string of beats that fall clean out of her chest when he reaches out and brushes his lips, brushes warmth, over the strange coolness of her cheek. There is almost a memory in that movement, almost a reflex to smile and lean closer, to tuck herself against his waiting chest. It makes her ache and unravel, makes this pain somehow more poignant because these are echoes instead of memories and she is still so entirely splintered apart.
“I remember..” But her voice trails off and her eyes close beneath a brow so heavily furrowed, so thoroughly unsure. She has to force her gaze to open again, force her eyes to his face and his neck and the curve of those massive wings above his shoulders.“Oh.” Her expression softens, her eyes filling with wonder as she steps forward to touch those glass lips to the nearest feathers - rich green and white below as if shielded by the gold above. “I remember your wings, I think.” But the memory feels wrong, feels slightly off somehow the longer she stares at them. Green and white? Or just white like snow, like bone, like a burning star. “I’m really not sure, I’m sorry. Were we,” a pause, eyes that return to his face again, “friends?”
