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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


    [private]  dear wilderness, be at your best
    #1
    She can find no escape from this dark that lives inside her chest, no reprieve from this ache that feels like fingers wrapped around every rib and pulling softly in a dozen different directions. It is worse that she is the sun, that she is made of molten brightness and morning rays, that every part of her burns like a beacon in the dark. But nothing reaches what lives inside her, nothing can salvage the heart that beats only to fall apart, the way it tries every single day to fall out of her chest and bury itself in the dirt at her feet.

    It is a kind of brokenness she would not have thought possible. Something worse than when night had bullied the sun out of the sky and left it vast and starless and filled below with creatures who thrilled for the hunt. That had felt like death, but this feels like dying in perpetuity. Like an unraveling that nevers stops, like all her bones have broken and there is nothing but pain to hold all her ragged edges together.

    She is cracked. She knows this because thoughts slip from her almost constantly now - not always entire sentences, but words with certain emphasis, certain weight. She knows because strangers watch her with bland friendly eyes while she smiles at them like her world is perfect and she is the light that she is made of; they smile until they frown because her mask has slipped and they see what actually lives behind such beautiful molten eyes. Not the sun, not the day, but a living, burning brimstone darkness.

    She thinks it must be Hell that burns inside her, because how else could these demons in her chest thrive so well.

    It is dark still, and though it should have been easy for her to keep track of the passing time, of the shape of the stars and the position of the moon where it hangs full and heavy in the sky, she is too trapped inside her own head to notice. Perhaps that is why she nearly stumbles over the sprawling legs of someone sleeping quietly in the grass near her feet, why she only just barely throws her wings out like sails to halt her motion. The suddenness of it makes her heart race, and the racing of her heart makes the light beneath her skin glow a little brighter over this sleeping stranger.

    She takes a few quiet steps backwards, casting him in faint shadow and she steals away from him with her light, but she cannot help but to imagine him like an angel fallen from somewhere higher than she can fathom. He is a shade of pale grey like ash, too dark to be white, too pale to be like storm clouds, and his wings seem somehow more powerful than hers. Broad and heavily feathered, built with more muscle than the smaller gold and dark appendages that sit on her own shoulders. Angel? This is the thought that falls through her widening cracks. Peaceful.

    They tip from her like points of conversation, words unspoken and yet shared all the same, and the more she tries to quiet them, the faster they spill. Pain, sleep, exhausted. Peaceful. Dead? He is so still, so still that she cannot help but to move closer again, to reach out and touch the feathers along the outer edge of one of those ash-pale wings. Her light spills over him like a shy, watery dawn. “Are you real?” It is a whisper, it is the sound wings make when they brush against delicate skin, it is the sound a raindrop makes when it strikes the sun-warmed stone. Or have I finally lost my mind.

    aureline

    dear wilderness, be at your best 
    her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress




    @Ashhal
    Reply
    #2

    I tried to sell my soul last night
    Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite

    He has grown so used to the gnawing emptiness in his own chest that it has merely become another wretched part of him. The only things that fill it are rage and lust, but even he cannot sustain such violent appetites day and night. Maybe that’s why he finds such temptation in slumber. Why he spends hours basking in the warmth of the sun or in the peaceful shade of the forest. It is something that requires nothing from him. Not even thought.

    Anyone who knows him would be entirely unsurprised to find him sprawled on a damp bed of moss beneath an ancient oak in the forest. Of course, few know him well enough to know that, least of all the mare that finds him now.

    He is deep in sleep when she nearly trips across his legs. Deep enough he doesn’t notice her at first. It’s rare for him to slip into true slumber. Most of his time is spent in that half-waking stage where the mind is numb but the body is aware. Old habits die hard. Apparently even very very old habits. But in the dead of night, when only the haunted are restless, Ashhal sleeps.

    It’s strange that he could find respite in this hour when his own demons have haunted him for eternity. Of course, after an eternity, even demons grow bored of the same old bullshit. There would be plenty of time to hate himself when he finally wakes up again.

    The light finds him first. It creeps past his closed lids and tickles confusion across his consciousness. He had fallen asleep in the forest. How is the dawn light finding him here?

    Then her softly spoken words reach his ears. Are you real? With a grunt, his eyes pop open only to squint against the brightness far too close to him. Brightness that halos an equine face hovering uncomfortably near his prone body.

    “What the fuck?” he snarls, wings lashing at her before he scrambles upright. He doesn’t fight his instinct to close in on her. In fight or flight, the needle almost always swings to fight, and tonight is no different. Wings flaring aggressively, he crowds her, pressing uncomfortably close as he teeth hover threateningly over her neck, dark eyes ferocious.

    “What the hell makes you think I’m an angel?” he grinds out, breath fanning her skin, expression black. He doesn’t question where the thought had come from. How it had found its way into his sleeping subconscious. His ribs heave with the anger that had come roaring to life the moment he’d awakened to find her peering so intently at him. “Because let me fucking assure you, I am not.”



    @aureline
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