"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
Once upon a time, there had been a ghost with red eyes.
He had come across a young girl who had been mostly forgotten by the rest of the world but one look at her and he had known exactly who she was. The jungle toned dapples always gave it away, those that belonged to her. However, there was something different about the mare before him. Something in her gaze that was flinty, something that stirred when she had looked upon his bare boned skull and the blazing red glow behind empty sockets without fear or open disdain. He senses curiosity here and there’s something else.. Something far more delicious.
Once upon a time, there had been a ghost with red eyes and he reached into the heart of the young mare and looked to see what resided there. And then the ghost had started to laugh, a wild cackling thing that made his skeletal jaws clack together, at what he discovered. Gently, he brushed away all other desires, such fragmented and weak little things that couldn’t compare to the black gem that screamed out at him to be plucked, her heart’s deepest desire.
Once upon a time, a proud Amazonian Khaleesi had given birth to four children. None of them had ever been particularly loved by their parents, a running theme that they all shared. However, that’s where their similarities ended. Bardot had been her mother’s empathy, Cersei had been her mother’s shame. The little brother, the last to be born, had been his mother’s salvation.
And the first born? What had she been?
Her mother’s spite, of course.
Once upon a time, a ghost with red eyes had looked into the oldest child’s heart and discovered that her greatest desire was vengeance and approval had flickered in the glowing crimson light, an eternal smile etched across his bones. For years, he had taken this forgotten eldest child under his own dirty white wing and hidden them both away from the rest of the world. He had shown her that magic wasn’t everything, that there were skills worthy to have that required mere wits and intelligence. The ghost found her heart’s desire was extremely moldable and that she took to manipulation and slyness with natural affinity. Everything else could be learned and learn she did. How to wear a smile that shone through the storm of her eyes while plotting death and destruction of whoever she was smiling at, how to use her looks and body to lure someone in and take advantage the moment their guard was down. From her Uncle, she learned how to kill with only the power of her hooves and the first time she had tasted blood she remembered it had tasted sweet.
Once upon a time, a ghost with red eyes had come to her with news of her mother’s death. He had told her that she had been killed by some sort of mythical beast, a magic user of some sort. The mare had smiled at the news but there was no mistaking the disappointment and anger storming in the cool gray of her eyes. That should have been her kill. The ghost had told her more, sensing what was brewing and wanting to coax it out just a little further. The Ghost told her that her mother had sacrificed herself for another… Her brother. Her fury had always been something wonderful to behold and when she had erupted, destroying everything around them in a fit of rage, he had only laughed and looked on with delight. Yes, their kill had been stolen. Yet there were plenty of ways to still hurt her memory and better yet, those that had mattered to her. The mare is finally ready.
Once upon a time, a ghost with red eyes brought a mare to the forest and released her vengeful spirit on the world that had never been ready for him. Would it be ready for her?
She moves with well practiced silence despite the foreignness of the woods she had found herself in. It is late in the night and only some small nocturnal creatures seem to be stirring in the undergrowth. She is unbothered by the oppressive darkness or the light drizzle of rain that begins to mist against her mahogany dappled fur. The jaguar mare stalks through the night as if she belongs here, has always belonged here, and peers through her long flaxen forelock through cold granite eyes. A rustling from her left draws her attention and when she turns her pretty head, those same eyes look more like storm clouds and there is a faint simper on her dark lips as she calls out in a gentle sweet voice. “Is someone there?” It was better to play the damsel in distress first then show her hand on the first draw, part of her training that is embedded in every fiber of her being, carved into her bones, thrumming in her blood.
02-09-2022, 02:43 PM (This post was last modified: 02-09-2022, 02:52 PM by Aela.)
If time could be rewritten, if there was such a magic as stories that played out differently on other planes, Aela would have been a much different creature.
Had she been born in the Beyond like some of her kin, they would have looked at her golden skin and her blue eyes and known immediately to which clan she belonged. They might have given her a wide berth, because her grandfather’s court was imperial and widely-recognized for its prestige and long-standing history. They would have recognized her as belonging to a bloodline that claimed it's beginning with the sun, that they were descended from all that was warm and good and bright in the world.
If Aela had been born and raised in Paraiso, the dimpled smile that had reminded Lilliana so much of Elena might have been genuine. She might have learned to be kind, simply for sake of being kind. She might not have been taken from her mother, or nearly drowned by her father, and so she might have spoken sooner instead of learning that she had to fight for a voice. She might not have had to learn ruthlessness or calculation to survive.
Aela might have been a much sweeter creature; but then, if there was a girl out there now that existed in such a place, it wouldn’t be Aela.
She was her mother’s rage and fury and heartbreak given flesh.
She was devastation concealed beneath a beautifully golden coat.
She was the thrill of standing too close to the edge, and to those chasing her, she was also the push to send them over.
There was nobody chasing her now, but Aela could sense someone nearby. It was a familiar sensation: emotions that came wafting towards her on a late summer breeze. It wasn’t Obscene or Cheri. The lust that permeated whenever they were around clung to them like sweat. It wasn't Wherewolf either, who still reeked of Death and saltwater. No, this was something different. This was someone new. Curious (and never one to be caught unaware), Aela stepped out into the moonlight to smile prettily at a spotted woman. ”Just me,” said the little palomino answering the other mare's simper, though the coy smile that curved on her lips indicated that she was far more than what she actually was.
In a different world, she could have had a chance for a normal life. A fulfilling one with all the bells and whistles like love, friendships, and happiness. In a different world, perhaps she would have been given a different name.
If only time could be rewritten.
And yet it cannot.
A mare steps from the shadows, golden and pretty, revealing herself in the filtered moonlight that breaks through the trees. In response, she lies with a lovely little laugh. "Oh, you startled me!” as she glances away as if embarrassed of which she isn’t in the least. In the few seconds that they speak, she is already deep in observation. The coyness lingering in the strangers smile that she catches from the corner of her gray eye, the lack of any obvious signs of magic. It doesn’t mean the other would be untraited. Like her Uncle, this one might also have tricks hidden up her sleeves. She comes away with the notion to proceed carefully until she can uncover more about where she is and who exactly she had come across in the middle of the night.
Her Uncle had taught her about all the different magics in the world he had experienced or learned about. It had always been something he had been passionate for, discovering how magic worked. He had always liked to see if he could find the source of it in a body, an unorthodox approach that very few approved of. It didn’t entice her the way it enticed him but that never seemed to bother him. That wasn’t her purpose after all.
The liver colored mare is careful to keep her mind blank and her demeanor calm as she looks back to the blue eyes of the unknown mare, her own pretty smile never faltering. "I’m new here.” She says, a partial lie and partial truth. She had not been seen in these lands since before the Reckoning and the way Beqanna had restructured itself geographically did make it new to her. "I’m Indi.” She gives the agreed upon alias easily, it rolls off her tongue as if she had said it a million times, as if that truly was her name. "Could you escort me? I think I've gotten turned around.”
02-27-2022, 12:48 PM (This post was last modified: 02-27-2022, 02:16 PM by Aela.)
Aela always counts on that initial observation. That there seems to be nothing obviously magical about her. It had infuriated her when she had been small, the way that strangers would study her petite frame or her golden locks and seem to be relieved that she didn’t reveal a predator’s smile or a dark magician’s wrath. Someday, perhaps something like that might be in her grasp.
But tonight, her emotions ebb out softly through the moonlight and shadows. The mare before her laughs and Aela can’t find a shred of fear coming from the chestnut. Good, the little palomino thinks. It will make their interaction all the more interesting, and perhaps even fun. Sweeping towards the other woman, Aela approached the other mare head on. ”You poor thing,” she murmurs, a wonderful mimic of concern and care. ”I hope the journey here wasn’t too arduous.”
Her elegant head tilts towards Indi, though her blue eyes look beyond the taller horse, glancing over the slender line of her spine towards the forest with pricked ears and alert eyes, as if scanning for danger before Aela returns her attention to the jaguar-spotted woman. ”One hears such stories about arriving in Beqanna; nearly drowning, inter-dimensional travel, fleeing from wolves.” Her coy smile suddenly seems to take a sharp edge.
She keeps walking towards Indi, coming close enough to make out the individual rosettes on her copper coat, asking curiously from beneath her dark lashes ”Are you running from anything?” before passing by her. It would be her choice if she wanted to follow Aela into the darkest part of the Forest; she was welcome to go where Aela was headed, but she would never alter her path for another.
Despite the soft words murmured to her (meant to soothe where no balm is needed) and the relieved smile that she forces to her mouth in response, she is never far from suspicious caution. It would be unwise, even though the golden stranger had so far been nothing but kind.
It doesn’t take her long to realize her instincts have been absolutely correct.
The sudden sharpness in her smile. The fact that, despite her own introduction, the palomino gives no name in return.
She feels a prickling of anticipation and forces herself to keep her features schooled in uncertain innocence even as the corners of her lips desire to twist into something wolfish and knowing. “Luckily my journey here was uneventful.” She says with that same pretty laugh as the woman comes close enough that she can truly see what a beauty she is. Thinking back on that coy smile that had changed to something serrated… She wonders if perhaps they have something in common. Vinny knew how to use sex like a weapon as well.
The mare brushes past her and she allows this, turning to follow her and noting that she was heading deeper in the forest instead of out of it. She is not stupid, her Uncle hadn’t kept her in the dark on what lurked there. The jaguar mare still recalls the silvery criss cross scars that marked his alabaster spine… When he wasn’t skeletal of course. Still, she doesn’t hesitate in falling in step behind her. Whatever trick was up this woman’s sleeve, of this she is certain now, she’s curious if it might benefit her in the long run. There was no point in wasting the opportunity.
"Not running, no.” She admits truthfully and there is a glint for just a moment in her stormy eyes. Not running. Hunting. For a moment things are quiet besides the muffled sound of hooves against the forest floor as she thinks and then decides to try a different approach. "I actually lived in Beqanna, a very long time ago.” She says quietly from behind her, the gray of her eyes carefully watching the soft sway of Aela’s hips. "Things have changed quite a bit since then, I don’t remember this forest being here.” She says, putting an infliction in her last word as if she was nervous and forcing a small shudder across her shoulders as she moves to the mare’s side. Just enough for her to see it if she was to look out of the corner of her bright blue eye.
Aela continues to walk ahead, letting her hips softly swing from one side to another, while she listens to the stranger explain that her journey had been mostly uneventful. How disappointing, she thinks. If the liver chestnut had endured something terrible, or experienced something truly terrifying, it would have been an easy enough thing for the Empath to pick up on. There is something lurking beneath the spotted woman that does intrigue Aela though, and that is better than being bored in Taiga’s smothering darkness.
The slender palomino moved deeper towards the heart of the Northern forest.
Not running, she hears as one delicate ear remains tipped back to the other horse. Her earlier intuition that there was more to this creature than just being a nomad finally paid off when Indi revealed that she had once belonged to Beqanna. So this was no true newcomer, but somebody who might have been alive when the Gates of the Afterlife had been opened, or perhaps even further back, to the Reckoning.
Or perhaps even longer.
Time worked differently outside their realm and as Aela continued to move through the shadows between the trees, her mind briefly contemplated the different calamities that had happened over the centuries. ”Did you?” she says, her voice lilting and inviting the chestnut mare to say more. Her golden companion even slows enough to feign interest, glancing over to the other with wide, curious blue eyes. ”We’ve had many changes over the last few years,” Aela continues to explain. ”An Eclipse that brought monsters with a taste for horseflesh, and the South,” she pauses, studying Indi to see if the reference would make any sense to her, gauging her reaction for a sign of what era she might have belonged to, ”An entire kingdom recently sank below the sea.”
Her voice remains even, not struggling over the reference, and Aela considers this a sign; this is a return to who she had once been.
”What do you last remember?” she asks her companion with a tilt of that pretty head, as if they were trading treasured foalhood memories instead of calamities and disasters, pressing the slightest bit of curiosity into the stranger simply because she could.
Surprisingly she shares the golden woman’s sentiments. It had been disappointing but expected. Not many were willing to approach you, prey or predator, when escorted by a living skeletal nightmare who wouldn’t think twice about delving into your hearts desire and using it to destroy you. To be honest, just being in the company of another that wasn’t him was thrilling. Her run-ins with strangers were few and far between since she had been drawn beneath her Uncle’s wing. Her interactions were chosen specifically by him for the purpose of her training. None of them still lived to speak of it.
Her change in tactic seems to work as Aela slows her pace to look over at her with curiosity. It’s even better than what she had expected, the other providing information without her needing to coax it from her. She knew some of what had happened after the Reckoning thanks to her mentor, enough to pass through this new world of Beqanna without appearing like a complete idiot. She knew the name of the lands that had risen when the ones she had known had fallen. She knew, specifically, about the South as that was where her targets had last been seen. As for current political standings, this was information she would have to collect herself.
The Eclipse sparks her interest and she is about to inquiry more about it until Aela proceeds with unwelcome news. A flash of anger sparks like lightning in the storm-gray iris’s but she is quick to look away as if overwhelmed by such things. Unaware of course that her new companion will be able to see it regardless if she’s looking at her or not. “How terrible." She breathes out, not meaning it at all and already wondering if what she seeked had yet again been stolen from her.
As the palomino asks what she recalls, the jaguar mare looks at her as if thinking. And she is... But not of what she last remembered of this place. Instead she’s wondering why she suddenly feels curious, eager even, to share something with her. It seems out of place with her current objectives. It doesn’t feel like it’s her own. It makes her grin suddenly at the other, that curiosity now directed at her. “It was a very long time ago.” She says with a shrug of her slender spotted shoulder, the memories of her life before the Reckoning hazy at best. She recalls living in the meadow (one of the few places that hadn’t been lost or rebuilt into something new) where she had been born. She recalls the jungle her mother and little sister had ruled, the few times she had visited. Tantalize had wanted her to become an Amazon too and perhaps she would have done well there beneath that structure. She had the aptitude for it. She could have been great. But Vindictive cared little for rules and discipline and shared her Uncle’s darker tastes for chaos.
"This forest wasn’t here though.” She says, glancing at the thick tree canopy with open interest. “You said a kingdom fell to the sea… How?” She easily redirects the conversation from herself back to what she truly wants to know, determined to pry as much information from her as she can just as she directs that curiosity into discovering what exactly was walking alongside her.
03-07-2022, 03:25 PM (This post was last modified: 03-07-2022, 03:26 PM by Aela.)
How terrible, the liver chestnut laments and Aela reminds herself to look sorry over the news. The sinking of the South wasn’t such a great loss, but it had taken prime real estate and with it, had left the palomino with limited choices as to what the next steps in her future would be. That path had led her back to Taiga, and she sometimes wonders why the Gods hadn’t picked that infernal place to sink (again).
But there are other, more interesting things to focus on at the moment, so as Aela asks after the memories of the Beqanna that Indi remembers, she treads lightly; her gift brushes so softly against her mind, attempting to see for herself what the other woman recalls. And while some of it seems familiar - the Meadow, at least - little else does. There was nothing else for Aela to take note of, and so she let it go as easily as she could draw a breath.
"It’s been here for as long as I can remember,” Aela replies to the other female, resuming her journey through the shadowed Forest, alluding to her own time in the Land of the Sunrise. There was a hint of knowing in her gaze and lifting the edges of her perceptive smile, something that her companion might understand herself. Perhaps it was just how time passed outside of Beqanna, or perhaps she was like the Empath, an Immortal creature that would remain in these lands until they, like the South, vanished as well.
"Who knows,” she continues to explain and adds another suggestive sway to her hips as she walks, "Some say it was Carnage. Just like how he rose Pangea, he decided to sink Loess.” Aela says, naming the kingdom that had been lost, and then turns her pretty face back to Indi. "You do know who Carnage is?” she asks with a lilting tone, playful enough to be taken as flirtatious banter, but a serious enough question that might tell Aela more about her new acquaintance and just where her beliefs lay.
It’s a shame Aela doesn’t mention Taiga. Now that is a subject she knows well despite never seeing the woods of mist for herself. It was one of her Uncle’s favorite stories, one he would tell with malicious glee. How he had snatched the forest with his band of marauder’s and shaken Beqanna to its core to the point where the fairies rebelled and Carnage himself had sent his own minions to sink the land. It had been meant to be a punishment but the White Wolf had never been upset, only amused. It had done little to stop his plans.
The further into the forest they go, the colder it becomes. She shivers slightly against the chill and doesn’t bother to hide the way it shudders across her dappled shoulders. Let her companion think her scared, it served her purpose after all. The golden beauty speaks of the Forest being here for as long as she can remember and the gray of her eyes catch that lift in her smile. It wouldn’t surprise her, if this one was an Immortal. Time had always been tricky here, even for those not blessed with the gift (or the curse) of Immortality. The fact that Tantalize had lived as long as she had was testament to that.
The golden stranger directs the conversation towards Pangea and Carnage and she catches the others eye, sensing something in the question that’s playfully thrown at her. Pangea is not a land she knows too much of beyond the fact that Carnage had a hand in its creation. Of the Dark God himself, she is familiar but not on a personal level. Her grandfather had been General to the Valley, Carnage’s old kingdom, but not when he had ruled it. She had been there a few times when she had visited him, Grandfather Cross. An interesting man who had fathered both her mother and her Uncle. Strange, how different they were and yet still cut from the same cloth.
Her Uncle held little interest in the workings of Gods despite his fascination with Beqanna’s magic. As for herself, she found the stories of Carnage interesting enough but like the White Wolf she cared little for tales and omipresent creators. If anything, according to him, they simply stood in the way but at times they could be useful. It’s why he had flung Carnage a tidbit every now and then like the mare he had told her about, Minette. Better to stay on their good side, better to keep them distracted.
“Of course.” She says and makes sure to widen the whites of her eyes, allowing the gray to become thoughtful and worried. Still playing the damsel in distress, as if expecting the Dark God himself to be around the bend. “That is a name I have not heard in awhile.” She breathes out her lie and casts an uncertain glance to her guide. “Is he still around?”
03-18-2022, 06:44 PM (This post was last modified: 03-18-2022, 06:46 PM by Aela.)
They are both putting on a show, and if Aela had been in a sour mood, it might have irritated her. But she is restless these days. She has to keep an even temper and a calm mind while residing in the North. Obscene’s rule is still in its infancy and if they are to achieve the notoriety they had aimed for in the Pampas, that would only come about with patience.
It meant not lighting Wherewolf on fire if the opportunity presented itself. It meant striving for some kind of peace with Obscene, even when her irritation would rear its ugly head when she remembered his disappearance. It meant forging some kind of nefarious truce with Cheri, if only for the sake of pursuing a deeper knowledge of magic and its more mysterious workings.
Aela is brimming with curiosity at what her companion is trying to achieve. She knows fear. It is one of her favorite emotions, the easiest to manipulate, and the most powerful to feed on. The Empath can sense it from a mile away. While Indi plays the part of the damsel to perfection, she is standing in the presence of it. There is very little that the golden mare misses, and there is nothing of actual terror radiating from her.
There is no racing heart, no frantic pulse.
Only the whites of her rounding eyes and it thrills Aela.
She is very rarely in the presence of such a talented mimic.
”I don’t think He’s ever truly left,” the palomino purrs the words, drawing them out slowly as she rounds a thick tree trunk to emerge on the other side, coming to face Indi. ”Have you had any dealings with Him?” Aela asks, widening her own brilliantly-blue gaze, still feigning the part of prey though it was becoming glaringly obvious that there was none in their current game.
Only a pair of predators, she thought, stifling a wicked grin.
