"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
I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
”You’ve been useful.”
It shouldn’t have stung at all.
But it did.
The land grows cold and he freezes with it. The little pieces of shrapnel that had exploded in his chest had only grown sharper after his conversation with Aela. Had hardened with his encounter with Skandar. And then they had ran shallow grooves against his insides after the death of his daughter, firmly implanting themselves within the barbed wire of the armor that he buried himself within.
To anyone else, nothing had changed. He still spoke to the golden Seneschal often enough (mostly regarding what to do with Sickle and the ever changing playing field they found themselves on) but he no longer followed those well-worn paths on her golden skin when they traded razor-edged jokes and shared schemes and ideas. The Pampas flourished despite the new covering of snow over the fields of flowers. In a few days he would set off for Loess.
On the outside, everything was fine.
But on the inside….
How he burned. Burned like the petals of the flamed flowers the jaguar colt had presented to him (how had this child come to know the magic his father once wielded?), burned like a brand in smoking flesh, burned and hungered for some craving he couldn’t satisfy. He doesn’t recall the last few nights, doesn’t even remember when he had shifted fur for scales and fangs. There’s a hazy recollection that he had once known, had once at least been able to remember when he lost control.
In his firm decision to not care, he seems to lose even more pieces of himself.
The more he loses, the crueler he becomes.
Still, he seems to hold back slightly for the children. Regardless if it’s Fyr or Sickle or whatever lost child they swoop up next, he dulls the blade for them. There is a shame that slips through the cracks every day he spends watching over them, every time his red eyes flicker with approval as they begin to develop into themselves. He had not seen Revelrie or his son since he had lost control. Since he had failed from the very start of fatherhood. Her last words had been heard despite what the broiling hunger had tried to keep from him.
It is not the children he is with today though. No, it is another being whose presence he had not seen much of as the influx in fire wielding equines increased in the Pampas. Steve had been hard to find this winter but the elusive grass mammoth had eventually been found, curved into a hill until one could not tell where the land started and the beast ended. He had brought the berries, had asked the question, but the grumbling nonsensical response he had received back had only sent new scales to scatter along the golden smears of his shoulders. Steve retreats and he is once again alone, the hard lines of his face unreadable as he falls deeper into the dark brooding shell he had made for himself.
Logically, Cheri should be home in Loess right now preparing for her ceremony. She and Oceane had talked it over months ago while Ledger gave commentary or jokes when needed. The atmosphere surrounding the entire ordeal felt anxious, but every time the mood swung into treacherous waters her guides counseled Cheri back to calmer shores. Tarian had also been a useful outlet in the weeks preceding her coronation ordeal, training Cheri and keeping her mind focused on the art of making war instead of peace. She surprised herself by learning to love the burn in her lungs, preferring the ache in her muscles a day afterwards when the sparring had been good.
Time rolled forward, inevitable. She went north and proceeded home once again, the end of her long journey marked by an unexpected appearance in the Brilliant Pampas just days before her ascension.
What she longed to find here, Cheri wasn’t at liberty to say. Her heart wanted a particular outcome, secretly yearning for the appearance of a certain black-furred fae Prince, but her wits kept themselves ready for any horse outside of those expectations. This was the Seelie court; chaos ruled here and Cheri knew to keep her hooves steady on the path ahead. Instead of concerning herself with disappointment, she crafted a mostly-believable reason for lingering among the off-season flowers. Not that she needed one - for now this land was her own, by extension of Loess.
She intended to enjoy her royalty-earned freedom as long as that fact was true.
The day wore itself out sooner than she expected, and the hours spent wandering through the winter-bare hills yielded nothing of interest to Cheri. Her practical side took stock of the new faces she passed at a distance, and at the end of her hike Aela’s threat came to mind. Cheri had to admit: the golden mare had a healthy measure of frightening determination.
“But does she have it all?” She couldn’t help but wonder, finding herself far away from the crowds. This far south she could smell the ocean breeze lingering on the stale, winter breezes. Her wings unfurled a little as she topped a hill, balancing the set of slender legs that usually trailed behind her while she flew, and the vantage point from up top revealed Obscene’s private spot. Cheri paused, familiar enough with the black stallion now that she could see when he was clearly on edge, but she’d come too far to turn back without at least saying hello. Besides, he probably already knew the sound of hooves approaching from behind.
Her gliding strides made short work of the distance between them.
“Want to drink some nectar and warm our bones?” The Loessian Princess tempted him. “I have a feeling tonight’s going to be cold.”
I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
Her face is the last one he expects today.
It’s the last one he wants to see.
Familiar venom rises in his throat but it is not him and he cannot help the snarl that he greets her with as his red eyes flash hungrily at her, scales encasing him in a shining plated armor that matches the cold bite of the cruel one he usually wore. He grows still and silent for a moment, simply glaring at her as he fights against the rising instinct to shift. She is bold as she always is and comes closer, so the serpent fades back as he loosens the tension from his body and exhales sharply. How long had it been since he had drank his beloved nectar or inhaled the sweetness of pollen? It had been weeks. Months? It seemed nobody had noticed, not even him. Gods, no wonder he felt so dreadful lately. “That’s the best idea I’ve heard in weeks.” He says sharply, a familiar smirk twisting across velvet lips.
He doesn’t ask her how he found him this far from the heart of the land or even what she had seen on her approach. If she had overheard his questions to Steve. As the sub-kingdom had grown and flourished over the years, his presence as Fae had influenced it as well. He finds a regular stash in a small alcove to the coast, as if produced on the whim of a wish. He wastes no time in shoving his muzzle into the honeyed wine and gulps it down with a reckless swallow. He steps back to allow room for her and moves further out into the open breeze of an approaching winter storm. He waits for her to join him before glancing at her with that same dark hard expression. “What are you doing here, Cheri?” He asks her blatantly, raising a brow in her direction. Surely she had better things to be doing, preparations and all that for that new fancy crown she was about to wear. He no longer doubts her validation to wear it, making it all the more suspicious that she was here with him.
Alone.
He wants to spit something sharp and hurtful at her, to continue to burrow himself into the darkest parts of himself until he felt nothing at all. That brightness in her seems to find it’s way to that piece of himself he had laid down for her, finding a place to slip through and dull his tongue. “If you’ve come to pay that favor, that’s on my terms. Not yours.” He says with a small flicker of wickedness before fading back into the brooding storm he was carrying.
Ah, she was right. Obscene was upset, but Cheri’s intuition on the matter kept her from being too surprised at seeing him turn scaly. The hissing was also a nice touch, but she was finding that the sound no longer disturbed her like it once did. In fact she thought it was an apt reflection of Obscene’s inner demon - another thing Cheri was finding no longer disturbed her like it once did.
This was all just a part of growing older in their world. Magic had been originally gifted to them by the fae, a controlled source of chaos connected to Obscene by ancient ties, and like so many others in their bright and fanciful land he was changed because of it. Cheri had changed too: from a little filly who nursed the broken things into a glowing mare that was steadily learning how to control weather fluctuations. She could bind and stitch a wound without blinking an eye now, and wherever she went the winds favored her.
Change was hard and unexpected, but it didn’t have to be sailed through alone.
She followed him with an electric smile down to the coastline where Obscene’s stash of nectar was tucked away and helped herself to a quenching gulp once her guide was finished, joining him afterwards to watch the storm roll in with the tide. His face was the only thing that had the same effect on her as it always did, and maybe that was because no matter how hard he sneered at her the hard lines and subtle flickers of emotion couldn’t disguise how disgustingly handsome he was.
It seemed so wrong that such a creature capable of cruelty could be so equally good-looking, and as his wandering eye arched in her direction Cheri had to work hard at suppressing the flutter of wings in her stomach. She loathed that he could do that to her with a single look. She also loved it, and that was the source of her problems.
“I’m not here to try and break our pact.” She assured him. The liquid coating her tongue had made its way into her belly, warming her bones like she’d wanted. “I came here looking for a little fun before the responsibilities kicked in, and I assumed you were the one most capable of providing it.” The pegasus shrugged her wings, noticing how their glow had finally dimmed and snuffed out. Every time she touched down the light would fade, revealing a full set of tangible, downy-soft feathers if she kept grounded long enough.
“I am speaking to the Fae Prince, aren’t I?” Cheri prodded him with a scathing look, offsetting the harsh words with a demure sort of cheshire grin. She could manage to look impish herself when she wanted to. “The one renowned for a good time?” She asked. Did that name ring any bells for him? Her eyes flashed and out to sea a lone bolt of lighting cracked down to touch the surface of the dark waves. “So c’mon,” she smiled without saying, licking a bit of the leftover nectar from the corners of her mouth, “show me a good time.”
I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
She doesn’t bat an eye at his scales and he can’t remember the last time she has, if she ever had. He has made her cry, he has made her doubt herself, but he can’t ever seem to chase her away. No matter how hard he bites, she fails to break apart the way he had once thought she would. No, it is him that has been fractured and left questioning who and what he was. She soars where he falls and he finds himself laughing at the irony of it all, how quickly the roles had reversed. Then again he can’t remember when he had ever been whole. It was easy to shatter something that was already broken to begin with.
She steps beside him and assures him of not breaking their pact and he snorts with a roll of his red eyes. No, he hadn’t thought she had come here for that. Not when the changing of the guard was to happen so soon. She is goading him, he realizes, baiting him with her cheshire smile and glimmering green eyes. As if she can sense his rising ire and the tumultuous storm in his breast that matches the rising waves along the dark coast. He doesn’t take the lure, his lips curving slightly into a small frown. Once it would have been easy to accept her trap, to let himself fall stupid beneath the amber haze of nectar and play pretend with her like they had done years ago.
”You’ve been useful.”
He figures that’s why she’s here too.
Useful. A distraction from her rich fulfilling life in Loess. A distraction from her rise to grace while he tumbles down the steps of hell back to where he belongs.
The warmth spreads from his throat deep into his chilled bones and he suddenly steps to her until his chest is almost pressed against hers and he is glowering down at her much like he had done years ago when he had still thought he hated everything about her. “You may be a Queen but I am not your jester.” He growls at her, his tone sharp and cutting as his red eyes glitter with animosity and something close to desperation. “Find someone else.” He snarls into her ear before slowly pulling back, taking the scent of her (desert rains and lilies) with him.
He had once said that she had reminded him of Aela and when it comes to their ambition, their strength, their refusal to bend and break… He still sees it. But her heart is open where the golden mare’s had been closed. And the shriveled thing within him is still looking for that place to settle and it reaches out uncertainly as it brushes tentatively against hers.
No, Cheri is not like Aela. She could admit to certain similarities, but there are some things Cheri won’t do and crossing personal lines is one of them. It was easy to imagine how the golden mare, lovelier than any other flower in Obscene’s collection, might’ve said something to make Ob believe that he and the world were all one big laughing stock anyway. Cheri could even imagine herself doing it, because he had the impudence to crowd her space and try to frighten her into submission like he was used to.
And if she had - Oh, if Cheri had shown him in that moment exactly what she knew: that she wasn’t capable of being frightened anymore, especially not by him - then maybe he’d be right to think she was using him.
But she wasn’t, and she never would be Aela.
“Hey,” she murmured, giving him a minute or two to stretch his legs and put some space between them, “I sensed the tension earlier but I didn’t really respond to it well, did I?” Cheri asked. He wouldn’t have to look to see that her wickedness had smoldered into concern, it was obvious by the tone of her voice that Cheri hadn’t come here with the intention of pissing him off any further. “It was actually because I missed you,” she knew.
The timing felt off, so she didn’t say it. Instead, she told him she was sorry.
“What were you doing out here all alone?” She felt brave enough to ask afterward, turning her head out to sea as the storm rolled closer and the lightning strikes came more frequently. The wind picked up, chopping waves at the sand and tossing Cheri’s brightly-colored hair out beside her. “You looked like something heavy was on your mind.”
09-07-2021, 03:06 PM (This post was last modified: 09-07-2021, 10:42 PM by Obscene.)
I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
There had been a violent part of him that had hoped she would step back up to him. For all his wickedness and cruelty, he wasn’t foolish enough to think that she couldn’t hurt him if she really had a mind to. She could cut him and they would both know he had deserved it. There is a moment of familiarity where it seems she just might do so and give him the release he seeked. But then she steps back and he can see the smoldering look in her eye fade into something worse. Concern. He moves away from her with a huff of disgust but there is no missing the muscle working along his hard jaw. Or the sudden conflict in his darkening gaze when she apologizes.
There is a memory of Revelrie apologizing when he had been the one who had done wrong and how similar that is to this.
Cheri was not the object of his anger. Nor was she the one who should be saying sorry. The silence doesn’t last long when she asks what was on his mind, what he was doing by himself out here alone. For a moment he feels like erupting again but surprisingly what comes from his mouth is cool and flat and the opposite of the hungry emotions that writhe in his stomach. “I was trying to fix something.” He mostly admits although its not the entire truth, just part of it. He expels some of his frustration with a snap from the long black and gold threads of his agitated tail. What he was trying to fix remains a mystery, his list long and winding. Although a few things were falling lower and lower on the scale of importance and a few more of them, he realizes, he no longer wants to fix at all.
“Has your magic ever failed you?” He suddenly asks her unexpectedly, turning his handsome face to her with that same strange unreadable expression, his lips pressed into a thin line as he considers her. If someone had told him he would be standing on the coast and asking Cheri of all people for answers he would have laughed in their face before finding just the right word to slice into the heart of them and make sure they never thought of speaking again. Yet here they were, standing together as if they were friends in a world that was constantly tipping the scales in and out of their favor.
He is silent when she answers, his fiery gaze still turned to the sea and it is an effort to force the truth from his thick tongue. “I have a son.” He says quietly, his voice somewhat strained beneath the thunder of it. “There was a daughter too.” And it hangs in the air around them. Was. The weight of his words bringing a cold hard mask to settle across the storm sweeping over his gilded face as he pulls the biting edges of his armor around him. As if that would keep out the grief battering against his walls.
Every time they spoke it felt like their dynamic was changing. At the beginning there’d been fire between them, now it feels like a strained friendship. Cheri thought that their conversation in the meadow had done them some good, brought them closer to one another if only for the purpose of burying old bones, but in honesty she wondered if Obscene’s tolerance of her only extended as far as her debt. She owed him an immeasurable sum and Cheri wasn’t sure if she’d made the right choice by doing so; regardless, she was a mare of her word.
His answer broke her train of thought. “You were trying to fix something?” She wondered, “well aren’t we all.” Cheri kept her mouth firmly shut. That was not the response he wanted.
“Every power has its limit.” She offered her wisdom, since he’d asked. More directly she could’ve said no, that she’d never encountered a subject she couldn’t heal, but the number of horses or creatures Cheri hadn’t tried to save were significantly more than the number of horses or creatures she had fixed. There was always room for doubt and failure.
Again, she assumed that wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear, and what he tells her next is something Cheri could’ve gone without knowing as well - but looking back on this moment she’ll be grateful for it. His honesty, that is.
“Twins.” She whispered. A common occurrence in Beqanna. Cheri was actually a twin herself; she tried to imagine her life without Reynard in it and the false reality she concocted left her feeling a miniscule fraction of the pain Obscene must be living with constantly. It wasn’t pleasant. To lose one’s child… to watch it happen and feel powerless to do anything about it. “How utterly heartbreaking.” Cheri swallowed.
She didn’t want to, but she was sympathizing with Obscene. Of course there was the backlash that came with it: Obscene was a father - that stung. Did that make Aela the mother? Cheri doubted the palomino had a motherly bone in her body, even if miracles existed. So another mare, then?
Anger, confusion, compassion and melancholy; all of Cheri’s emotions blended together like the storm coming in on the horizon, and the sky broke apart into winter’s rain as she tried to control the turbulence roiling inside of her. “Every time,” she thought, “every time I think good of him, he reminds me why I shouldn’t.” Her expression darkened. Obscene’s personal problems were not hers to fix, she should leave this place and only return on official duty, but when Cheri moved to try and get out from under the rain and out from underneath Obscene’s cloud of despair she found her body unwilling.
The better side of herself refused to be ignored. She wished it were dead, this kindness in her heart that made such a fool out of her time and time again.
“Obscene… sometimes there are things even magic can’t fix.” She tried to speak reason into his head, though she doubted he would listen. A grieving parent’s love was no match for sanity, it defied logic. “But if you’re wanting to go down some dark paths, then I insist you let me help.” Cheri muttered through the rain, pulling her wings tighter to her sides to keep the warmth from escaping her body.
She told herself it was in her own best interests to help keep the Pampas Prince out of too much trouble if he was (as she assumed) looking for ways to raise the dead. Loess had grown accustomed to her southern neighbor and replacing him would be impossible. She told herself that helping him was not only her sovereign duty but a necessary evil. It was not because she cared about him, Cheri reasoned with her conscious.
I can see through you, see your true colors Cause inside you're ugly, you're ugly like me
Every power had its limits. He had forgotten that most important lesson of magic only to rediscover it when it had been far too late. He looks out at the churning sea and remembers when he had been mortal, how cautious he had been. He had turned cruel as a defensive measure and tended to avoid any sign of magic, partly out of fear for his mortality and partly out of green envy. Since he had become immortal, how that vigilance had flown out the window. The Fae in him had a natural affinity for trouble and mischief and with Aela the possibilities for that had seemed endless. He had pushed the memories of what it was like to be afraid into a heavy box and while he held on to suspicion, he threw caution to the wind.
It had taken him to heights he had never thought he could reach but the slope was slippery and had not been without its casualties. That was the cost of ambition, why he had never wanted it. Still, he can’t deny that he is rather good at all this. The political power plays and even the tedious tasks that come with running a kingdom. It was in his blood after all.
The sky finally breaks apart and a freezing rain lashes across his gold smeared frame, seeping into his skin and sliding off his scales, turning his dark coat into something oily and slick. His dark gaze finds hers and he is surprised by the range of emotion he finds there. There is still the lingering concern, the nauseating compassion he knew was coming… and other things he hadn’t expected. Is that… anger he sees flickering behind her eyes? He means to ask why, what she could possibly be upset for, but then she speaks and chases the question from his mind.
There had been three questions he had asked Steve. There had been one riddle he had gotten in return for all of them that made more sense then what the creature usually said but had pissed him off all the same. He hadn’t been in the mood for a puzzle today but when she speaks he merely nods, finally understanding the answer the mammoth had given him. What belongs to us, what does not?
There was no repairing what was never his, there is no fixing things he had no control over.
He can feel the cold of the rain stealing the little warmth the nectar had provided but he doesn’t flinch from the onslaught of weather. He never has when it came to a storm, especially hers. The sharp pieces lodged into the fiber of his being remain but there is a clarity in the glittering red eyes that had been missing before. When she speaks again of dark paths and her insistence of traveling down them by his side, he merely stares at her. Why? After all he had done to her, why did she still stand beside him? Perhaps he had been asking the wrong questions to all the wrong people. “We are already on a dark path.” He finally says through the icy droplets that falls on them from dark gray clouds above and closes some of that distance they had mutually made, angling himself to take the brunt of the wind for her so that she can hear him. “We have Gale and Mazikeen’s daughter.”
He holds her gaze, waiting for the fire of her anger that he’s sure is to come but he speaks before she can spew it at him. He tells her of what Gale had done to Aela. Of the broken mare in the North. Of the deal he had struck with the indigo stallion in Hyaline. How Gale had been uninterested in sparing the whole of the South in his plans but agreed to sparing the Pampas. And how he had not returned the child because he was certain it was all bullshit to begin with. Aela had wanted to hold out for a better deal but deep down Ob had a different reason for wanting to hold on to the girl, knowing that whatever deals were made could easily be broken. “If they come then their focus will be on the Pampas.”Not on you or Loess. Not on anyone else but me. He searches her face and smiles in his devilish way at her, momentarily pushing back that sharpness in his chest as he glances past her to the home he had made here. The once quiet wildflower meadows that now sung with life and death and everything in between. He doesn’t ask her if she will provide refuge for his people should they need it. That compassion he had seen earlier speaks for her. His court is a slippery one, filled with ghosts and tricksters and those that think themselves gods. He doesn’t doubt that they would all land on their feet and find their escape, that Aela could find somewhere new to hide Sickle, that they would not scramble to save themselves. In fact he counts on it.
If given the opportunity, he will give them all the distraction they need.
That slithering thing inside him has grown stronger in the weeks of emotional turmoil he had been under. If he could take the magical abomination (familiar hatred flaring a fire around his blackened heart) down with him while sparing his court when he lost himself to scales and fangs for the final time then he would accept his fate with open arms.
Things were exactly as she had feared. Worse than what she could’ve imagined. Cheri knew that for some, it seemed like her head was just as full of crystals as her face was - that was their assumption. Once upon a time she was certain Obscene had thought the same thing. But they weren’t there during the days she built herself into what she was now. They hadn’t seen her craft a reputation brick-by-brick, stone-by-stone until her bridges spanned a continent. She wasn’t an idiot to assume that every high road she took led to better outcomes, but Cheri had chosen her path carefully. Not run down it full steam ahead, like some.
Maybe it was the way he’d said it: so plainly, like talking about a nice bath he’d given himself last full moon or something. We have Gale and Mazikeen’s daughter. Casually, very straightforward. As if harboring the child of Beqanna’s most notorious criminals wasn’t highly dangerous and cause for instant, vengeful retaliation. Maybe that’s why she cracked.
Or maybe it was because Cheri realized that all it took for her years of hard work to come tilting sideways was one moronic stallion.
Her bones began to quiver.
Obscene just kept talking, though. It was as if his confessions were pouring out like the rain, unstoppable and constantly pelting against their hides. One word after the other spewed out of him and the more he talked, the more Cheri could feel the vibrations expanding out from the core of her being. She was trying not to, but she couldn’t stop from feeling absolute fury at his repeated mistakes, all done underneath Oceane’s nose. Queen Oceane - who’d harbored and allowed their antics with dreams of bringing something fresh to excite the Southern court. Now Cheri was learning that instead she’d invited vipers.
Her body shook. The rain pelted slower and slower, Obscene smiled his broken smile and hid his fears behind a well-intentioned glance towards the hazy winter fields beyond, and Cheri was busy controlling her breath. It didn’t help; fury won out in the end.
For just the fraction of a second the rain stopped entirely, frozen in midair all around them, and then it very slowly reversed. Countless, tiny, perfect little droplets all rising from the ground and rolling up into the sky instead of down, until even the water soaked into the earth and absorbed into the sea started falling backwards as well. Meanwhile, Cheri’s eyes filled themselves with an eerie green light and the air around her faintly hummed with dangerous energy. The colorful strands of her mane and tail, soaked through by the unexpected downpour, lifted from where they hung and floated up too, ghostly vestiges of her increasing surge of power.
“Fool.” She boomed. “You would gamble the lives of us all against your ego.” Not a question - a fact.
Up and up the rain poured, while at the center stood Cheri. The pegasus mare with a forehead full of stones looked terrifying in her glory, surrounded by an aura of pure light; it seemed her fury had manifested, thanks to Obscene. Like Sorren, he too had triggered a response and the result was just as radical and uncontrolled as every other random event that had begun to occur to her. She wasn’t at will to stop it, nor was she entirely sure she wanted to. Inside she felt terrified, thrilled. Outside she looked like a vengeful demigoddess.
“You better not have split a single hair on that child’s hide, Obscene.” The spirit mare warned.
![[Image: Obscene-Pixel.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/fTkjKh9Q/Obscene-Pixel.png){kind=tracking}
