"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
09-25-2015, 03:23 PM (This post was last modified: 09-25-2015, 03:49 PM by Astarte.)
astarte
She is restless, aching limb shifting to aching limb. She has been as restless as time… as continuous as a second hand, ticking away her life with every jerky click across the clock face. Those chocolate eyes have watched the time drift by with an impenetrable stare. She has felt each second like the bite of a whip upon her soul. It has left the bone white girl ragged and lonely. She longs to feel her cells grow tired and weary, but they do not, they thrum with eternal energy, like the kind that comes from a lover’s first kiss; renewed and enlivened.
Cocoa lashes, as rich as midnight, flutter down to close against her cheek like a fan. Her eyes are closed, but for a moment, before they fly open to spy the horses that drift upon her horizon. She watches them, a distant ghost unable to let go and move on, chained to this corporeal life. Shuffle her bones breathe,. Shuffle her lungs sigh. Shuffle from this mortal coil her heart moans. She smiles, and it is a beautiful thing upon such a delicate, intricately sculpted face. Those eyes flutter shut once more and when they open, that warm, wholesome chocolate gaze is gone. Shadow lurks there, the cold, dank darkness that speaks only to the wide, gaping black maw of eternity. It turns her smile to ash and acid. She has seen too much. Too much, too much… her soul echoes as it clings to the cages of her body.
She shifts and moves and it is a wonder no one can her limbs creak like an unoiled, rusted machine. She drifts, as if she is on shadow, as fluid and endless as the water of the earth. She has had many lovers. Kings and demigods and yes, she loved, so many moons ago but now her soul is empty and her heart is little more than scar tissue. It beats, but only because it can, not because she needs it to… Eternity keeps it young. Eternity wraps its arm around her too young body and her ancient soul. It knows her and it whispers of their long - too long - future.
A tear escapes her as she is just a little more broken and a little more insane. She wonders when she reached the Field, when she started to weave through the bodies. She wonders when she stopped and began to stand like a phantom amongst them. Oh this beautiful girl of bone and endless time, what new stories will she scribe upon her tablet now.
From above, the wicked shall receive their just reward
Rarely, very rarely did Kronk get angry. When his home was attacked, that made him angry, when there was no one to defend it, that made him furious. He had tried to stop the horses that had come, but they couldn’t be stopped, not by the sad handful of defenders that were left to protect the Gates.
Kronk had watched his home burn and it left a deep, wrenching hole in his heart. For he knew that he had failed, that they all had failed. Failure did not sit well with him.
As soon as he could, as soon as he had coughed the smoke and ash clear from his lungs, Kronk had taken to the field. He needed to make his home strong, with good, worthy people who would see the beauty it had to offer. They didn’t need to be warriors, the Gates needed all kinds, but they needed to be loyal, trustworthy individuals.
He had seen what happened when a few snakes were allowed to enter the garden.
Kronk was unused to this seething, boiling of his soul. He was born of happy times, of good friends and laughs. He was not used to rage, or the anger that prodded him to charge to the Chamber and tear it down tree by tree, root by root. So, when he saw gray girl, he was glad to feel the anger disappear. She looked so sad. Kronk’s heart lurched, and he felt like a fool for being angry. Rage solved nothing. Hard work and compassion, that’s what the world needed. He had no compassion to spare for the Chamber’s horses, but for this girl he had it in spades. A little hesitantly, Kronk approached. He coughed when he was a respectable distance away.
“Pardon me? Miss?” Kronk cleared his throat again and hoped he wasn’t intruding.
“I couldn't help but notice — are you crying? Is there anything I can do?” Perhaps he was just being a pest, but his conscious wouldn’t allow him to walk by her and not stop.
The cough rouses her like a dragon from the depths of its sleep. Her eyelids part, dark smoky chocolate eyes appearing. They watch this newcomer steadily, like black orbs of swirling shadow in the winter haze. She breathes and it is a silent thing but for the cloud that rises like smoke from the dragon’s maw. She is too pretty to be a dragon though her blood runs as hot as lava. Her pink tongue wets her charcoal lips to better impart the words to come.
“Death,” she murmurs. The word is ominous and it hangs alone, proud, and as harsh as blade in the icy air.
“Death is what you can do for me.” She clarifies. Her eyes close again as a stray tear carves its way through the dirt upon her cheek. She is dirty, like bones within a shallow, uncovered grave and dusted with earth.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
She wonders where her god of death is now. He had promised her, so sweetly, so definitely[ an end to her eternity. She thanked him with a hot kiss upon his cheek, but it never came and her god left. She has been obsessed… fanatical about death, desperate to feel its cold nothingness. But even death ran from the pretty girl of eternity.
She gazes at this stranger with her unblinking eyes. She knows what he wants, what the point of this field is and it all just feels… monotonous. She has been here before as a love struck youth luring weary travellers back to her kingdom. She gazes around at the horses maintaining their stilted conversations. It’s all so bland. She longs to scream and feel the burn in her throat, the sound clawing from her throat.
She doesn’t. Her silken lips remained closed. Instead, all that leaves her is:
From above, the wicked shall receive their just reward
Kronk watched the girl with his own brand of quiet stoicism. He was not used to being a sympathetic shoulder to cry on, but it did not seem like this girl wanted that. She seemed heartbroken, yes, and a little battered around the edges, but her pain was quiet, rather than outward and loud. Kronk had to suppress a start of surprise at her request, and then bite back an emphatic refusal. Instead, he paused for a long moment, and when he spoke it was very carefully.
“I’m afraid that’s not something I can do for you, my dear.” He offered her a slight smile. Kronk, as an army boy, was in the business of death. But only in a way. In every way that mattered he was a shield against the dark and a protector of those that needed protection. Violence did not come easily or naturally to him.
Again she spoke, and again it gave Kronk pause. She asked difficult questions, this girl. A week ago Kronk would have said something silly, like duty or honor. After the mother tree burned, Kronk might has said revenge. Today, when the wound was still raw, but the hurt less acute, he found his answer was a little different.
“Right now? I suppose I live for my home. It burned recently, and I find that living for myself seems selfish in the wake of a tragedy so much bigger than myself. There are things Kronk could have added to that. He could have said that his home was attacked, and that it had been purposely set ablaze. Yet, he found he didn’t want to talk about it, and didn’t want to burden this girl with his problems when she had problems of her own. He wondered, briefly, if that made him dishonest. Kronk hesitated another moment before continuing. He wished he could offer the girl something more useful, something that would ease her mind.
“If you want, I’ll show you my home. It’s very beautiful —“ Kronk abruptly cut off, for the Gates had been very beautiful. Now it was a wreckage of ash and char.
“Or, at least you can get out of the cold.” It was far too cold to be standing around in the snow. He could do that much at least, offer her a place to stay, at least until she decided she wanted something else.
”I can give you death.” It meets their ears before he slips free from the trees and shadows behind them. His wings folded gently against his side, his coat still smeared with soot and the scent of smoke clings to his mane. Those crimson eyes focused on her, ignoring Kronk completely. Oh he remembers the Gates stallion, how could he not. And he’s completely positive the sad excuse for an army man remembers him. But he doesn’t care. He’s come for her and the other stallion is a small obstacle in getting what he wants.
”It will be slow, it will be painful, it will come only when I’m satisfied you deserve it.” He ruffles his feathery angel wings, a smirk curling his pale lips at the end. Angel of Death. ”I can give you death…” He takes in her sallow appearance, the dirty coat that’s stretched too thin over brittle bones. ”But what would you do to earn it?”
The white girl stands apart from her acquaintance of the Gates. Chocolate eyes, cooling in the icy air, peruse him languidly as he considers her words. She allows her reply to drift endlessly through her own mind also. It reverberates through her thin skin and brittle bones, awakening memories and cells long dormant. Her matted mane snags in her long lashes as she shifts her gaze in the direction of the Gates. He reeks of it. Astarte had lived there once, likely long before Kronk was even a spark in the future. The stranger smells of smoke and char and her eyes trail, as soft as a lovers caress, down to his limbs and, yes, his ankles are stained with ash.
Burned.
Her eyes flicker up, her gaze darkening, her lashes lowering and her lips quirking as he stumbles and deviates with his offer. Seems the Gates are as barren and wasted as her soul. She laughs and it is a cold melody that she lets die too soon upon the winds. “How the mighty fall to ash and dust.”
She had possessed the power of the earth once, but not even then could her cool heart be warmed to encourage plants to grow beyond her own masochistic blood roses. She would enjoy the wasteland.
Words creep, like a predator from the scrub. They slink into her ears and her delicate skull twists to appraise this newcomer. Chocolate brown eyes meet the heated red gaze; enough to melt. Her lips, as sooty as the ash in the Gates, curl.
Reveler.
Her eyelids move slowly, like a contented cat, no less content than if she lay by a warm, soothing hearth. For a moment, her eyes gleam watching him as if he is a God and she is the broken priestess begging for salvation upon dirtied knees. But, like the flutter of wings, it is gone and instead a laugh peels from her lips. It is sour, beautiful and as venomous as a snake bite. “I have been promised death by a god. I made him promise to strangle me so I could feel every second of my life slip from me.” She steps towards him, her lips twisted in a feral snarl. “I do not fear the pain you claim to lay upon me with your empty threats. But they are just that. Empty.
“Immortality is a blot upon my life; a protective vice. Overcome it, truly give me death, and I will sooner call you a god.” She finishes harshly, her words little more than a hiss.
Blasphemous girl.
The bone girl chuckles softly and dangerously and her eyes drift back to Kronk but her murmured words are for the red eyed stranger. “I gave my god a kiss for his vow, but I don’t think you would be content with so little.”
He is laughing but it is hollow and empty. As empty as his threats apparently. ”Even the immortal can die dear girl. You just don’t want it as badly as you claim to.” His crimson gaze glints with a sudden hardness. A hoof scratching the frost covered ground, almost in a mirrored way of someone filing their nails. ”I never said I would be the one to kill you.” A snap of his snowy tail against his ash covered hindquarters, the curl on his lips more present than before. ”I said I could give you death. I can give you to your reaper.” There were plenty of ways to die and plenty of others who could deliver. Even those that could overcome immortality. And he knew plenty of them.
He laughs again, this time with a bit more amusement. ”I would rather not be a god. Too much responsibility.” His angel wings stretch out behind him as he moves closer to her, the girl with a death wish. ”And you’re right, a kiss is just the beginning.” He is bold and brash, his lips trailing gently against her shoulder for a mere second before he pulls away. ”Why do you want death so badly? I’m curious about your motive… What have you done to deserve death?”
From above, the wicked shall receive their just reward
Kronk ground his teeth very hard. There were times when he felt like he would shatter into a million pieces if he didn’t rip and tear into someone. Now was one of those times. He worked hard, to keep his darker side in check. He channeled his frustration into focus and his anger into determination. He wasn’t a herd stallion, he was a kingdom man. He couldn’t just do whatever he wanted.
Kronk had to repeat that to himself several times as Gryffen approached. Why Kronk’s king had not demanded this man’s head was something he still didn’t understand. The fact that Kronk had let Gryffen walk away with his head still attached (regardless of a lack of orders to take it) was something that haunted the big stallion every day.
He took a deep, shaking breath. He needed to stay calm. He could seek revenge later, but not while another atrocity was about to be committed. In the brief time Kronk had been trying to steady himself, Gryffen was already weaseling his way into the mare’s company. He needed to put a stop to this.
“Look. This guy isn’t an angel, or a god, he’s not even a man. He’s just a sick puppy. And, no matter what he says, he wont give you what you want, because that wouldn’t be fun for him.” Kronk huffed in anger, quickly loosing the battle to stay cool. It was difficult, and he had to remind himself that this wasn’t about him, and it wasn’t even about him and Gryffen. Hell, at this point it wasn’t even about the Gates. It was about the principle of the thing.
He positioned himself in front the the mare, snapping and stomping at Gryffen, trying to get him to back the hell up. When he was sure the girl was looking at him he fixed her with the full intensity of his gaze.
“Death isn’t going to disappear. If you want it, it will always be yours to claim. I’m offering you something else though. You can always change your mind on what I’m offering. You’re not going to get that deal with him.”
As he said him he shot Gryffen an venomous look, practically daring him to try something.
What would happen if she were to trade her deathless god for a deathless goddess? One that is perhaps less cruel, and more dazzling to look at? One who does not bother with testosterone ridden fights and boasts of being such a harbinger of death. In the end, it’s all one great big circle anyway, though no one ever remembers.
The real question was - could they ever bring her back to life? So many take and take and take and some give and give and give, but who can resurrect? It isn’t resurrection that the old woman wants, but still, the offer always hangs in the air. Unspoken. Yet some find speaking to be the hardest part of life. And some find it to be the easiest. Rarely do they ever toe the line.
Yael remembers Gryffen, and her disembodied lip curls. If she weren’t here to find some more Desert members, she’d nudge Astarte towards Kronk, and let him start to rebuild the Gates. But with the state of the Kingdom being what it is, she cannot afford that luxury of simply not trying. Not yet, anyway. The golden woman is loyal to a fault, hopeful, and perhaps too kind. She is well aware that Camrynn is irate with her, but she cannot bring herself to care. Yael lives by her conscience. Cam can always say she acted of her own free will, not as a part of the Desert, and that she’s a cold hearted bitch for not caring what happened to the Gates. Does she think that Set and Anaxarete are gong to come crawling out of the woodwork again if they want to attack the Desert? They were… super flaky at best. Yael and Cam and Gumby were not (though even that statement is debatable right now).
She appears a few feet away from the trio, calmly stepping forward and sliding right in after Kronk’s impassioned bit. “Or you could eegnore ze men vile t’ey compare dick sizes and take a valk vit me. I’m Yael. Ahnd I can xelp you vit t’at eemortality problem...” She smiles slightly, glancing to the two stallions after speaking to Astarte. Hello, boys. Too bad neither of them could possibly know how close she was to both of them only just recently.
