hold me down [any]

[elve]

it's strange what desire will make foolish people do.

She is born invisible. 

That may come to be an omen of her life, but it is too early, she is too new and fresh and fragile, so fragile, but those deep dark eyes dare you to tell her so. Those deep dark eyes are full of the stubbornness and bluster of the young, before they realise that threatening words mean nothing without the power to back it up. 
She is only hours old, even the power she does have is unwieldy, causing her to slip in and out of a body so brightly coloured it makes her scowl. She is too young to be so disagreeable, yet here she is, full of frowns and hate and something that doesn’t make it into words.

At hours old, she slips away from her mother (with no regard to the worry it may cause the mare, already shaken from giving birth to seemingly-nothing) and makes her way on trembling limbs to another place. Her physical presence flickers, but her mind grows stronger; she can almost believe she is beginning to control the power.
As she walks, she hears the buzz of bodies growing louder, an orchestra of voices in the air, and she finds herself drawn towards it (though of course she would say the whole thing was her idea, if asked). She hovers on the edge of the Meadow, eyes wide, scanning the numerous horses that are all here, some alone, some in pairs, some in large groups. There are more colours than she can imagine just yet, more powers than she believes are possible.
And she realises that though she has been born, her life hasn’t even begun yet. And unlike so many children, who wish to draw out the years of immaturity and folly, this little filly wants to dive straight in and become something.
But for now she is tired - the combination of a long walk to the Meadow, and attempting to control her invisibility, has sapped her strength, and she collapses into the regrowing grass, struggling to keep her eyes open, not sure if she wants to be seen or hidden.
It doesn’t matter what she wants, though, her body continues to be here and then be gone; it will take more than a few hours of practice to be in control.

She manages to stay awake a while longer, watching, wondering what will be made of her.

ELVE

i got too excited and wanted to play her ;D

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

In another incarnation of himself, he would have never gone to her.

As a boy her age, he would have stayed away purely out of self-preservation; as a young man he would have found her somewhere quiet with her mother and watched from distant transparency to feed the aching hunger of his ire. If he could not rid himself of it, he could let it grow fat and make him something. Something as opposed to nothing.
Defined by more than just the ghosts of his abuse.

In another incarnation of himself.

Now the golden stallion stands in dull green shade and watches her, unhidden. Baring the hard angles of his hips and shoulders, the enormous curved horns and the sickeningly limp and dirty wing, dragging at his side in the slush and mud. He watches her slip in and out, and he is reminded of himself. Except, he had taken to it completely whilst still in his slick bed of afterbirth and pine needles – natural, as in her. But he had been given one gift at birth nestled alongside the jeers: his anonymity, under his direction with impossible readiness. Because he had needed it, perhaps more than she. The little, broken boy had needed it.

The great gift-giver needs it, but only to feel the cheap thrill of the stalk; only when, in moments of regression, he remembers who he was before he found himself transformed and pink, and he needs to recede and to watch. He shifts his weight away from his bad right hind, and he imagines that this will be like watching nestlings picked from their homes by deer looking to bolster their antler growth – too strange to look away from, too sick and too strange. But the strangers around her are weak, and he is sure they would guard her frail body with their own. No harm will come to her here, or at least, it would not be easy. She is a lucky little bird,

Pollock watches the bright girl tuck herself into the edge of the Meadow, like a fawn waiting for her mother to come collect her. But this fawn is lost, or otherwise too stupid in youth. She grasps walking only tenuously, and that dark core in his chest whines for her. It is too easy. He moves to face her with a confidence that is only too newfound; the feather-bare totem of his disgrace flopping as if boneless entirely to his left.

“This is a bad idea,” his voice is oily and smooth in the way that a panther’s shoulder blades are. He tilts his head, and from that pulsing ornament in his breast, he feeds fear into her young mind.

A valuable lesson. A gift.

“You should not be here alone.”


Pollock,
The gift-giver.

[elve]

it's strange what desire will make foolish people do.

So young and so alone, it is no wonder that within minutes she is approached. In a place like this, a single foal will attract horses quickly, whether their intentions are good or bad. She appears to be a blank slate (when she appears at all), so ready to be moulded into something brilliant or something broken - but she would refuse to believe so, for she thinks all ideas are hers and she will never be changed by anything other than her own mind. Ah, the foolishness of youth.

The one that approaches is not what the filly expects. He doesn’t look the sort to be interested in a child - one day she may realise there is a whole group of individuals specifically interested in children. She was expecting a young mare or two, coming over to fuss her and feed her and fantasise about taking her under their metaphorical wings to raise her as their own. This one, he has a real wing, dragging through the ground, and a limp, and horns and golden fur and a glint in his eye that she cannot yet understand.
He is a broken and battered stallion, but he radiates something that she wants, though she doesn’t yet know she wants it; power.

She pushes herself up from the grass, still flickering, threatening to go out like a candle flame. But as she concentrates on this stranger, she becomes more visible, red on green on a body that trembles with naive defiance.
Then he speaks, and she trembles with something else.

She doesn’t know what it is, but she finds herself tucking her ears back, her tail between her legs, rounding her spine and sitting back on her hocks, ready to run, to sprint straight back to her mother’s side. But she forces herself to stay still, to not give in to her instincts.
She wants to reply with a bite in her words, but it takes everything she has to stop her voice from shaking. She wants to give him a withering glare that, even from a newborn filly, would make him second-guess her, but she struggles to look him in the eyes. She wants to straighten up, to make herself as tall as possible, but her body won’t obey her.

“This place-” she squeaks, and she flits out of sight again, embarrassed but trying so hard not to be. When she speaks again, the invisibility slips off, and she is back. “This place is safe for me. I was told,” which is true, in a way, but she wasn’t told, she overheard (eavesdropped) and despite the bravado she is so desperate to radiate she wanted to go somewhere safe.
Part of her wants to ask him about his wing, his limp, but she is still shaking slightly, and making him mad is probably not in her best interests.

ELVE

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

“Oooh.” It is feigned disappointment and chastisement, his lips distort into a mockery of a gentled, concerned smile. He shakes his head, clucking his tongue – tsk tsk tsk. “And who told you that?” The golden stallion bends his neck down to her level, his brutish head tilted to the side, one dark eye blinking her reflection back. “Hm?” He snorts gruffly, pulling back up high above her, his shadow stretching around her delicate little form.

“And what do you think, now that you are here?” He sniffs, imposing himself into the pliable folds of her psyche: sharp, hot dread.

He never had her boldness as a colt. Boldness like this is born from the privilege of a patient caretaker; or, from a potent sense of self – arrogance. The broken boy had neither, and so he learned to live in transparency. He learned to grow big and dangerous there. But then, she is too new to have even begun to unwrap what life has in store for her. Love and privilege are volatile elements.

He had found out for himself quickly, formed in the lair of something grisly; held there by the strength of his imprinting on her cackle, and by necessity. That he loved her once was a foolish kneejerk of his baby mind. That he had needed her, depended wholly on her, had been the hardest to reconcile.. He wonders what sweat-laden and exhausted bitch is stumbling through the carcasses of bare trees right now, wailing her name into the spring air – he wonders if she will receive a kiss of teeth for her desertion.
He would have.
Phina would have gorged on the brightness of adventure from every tip of his body.

He watches her curl in on herself with satisfaction, the defiance drains from her eyes, conceding to a more appropriate timidity. He knows this arched and tucked in form; this tongue-tied anxiety. He had been brutalized by it, until one day he fed himself full on it. What she gains from this is to be seen; whether she leaves at all is in his hands, undecided. He thinks she would not be hard to lure away.
From between her ribs, he begins to pull the fear out like a blade.

But the beauty of it, is that he controls it when he wishes – forcing in at his will, growing it and weakening it. But it does not just end mercifully when he vacates. Fear of fear itself is what makes his dark blessing so impressive. His seed grows into a mighty network of roots, it makes a home for itself. And, it may shrivel like leaves in the winter as time separates them from him, but he will forever serve as a reminder. A flash of palomino horseflesh in the corner of an eye may rattle loose those feelings of dread; the dragging sound, or two-toed prints in the mud.
A broken boy, to a lord of something never ending and consuming.

He watches her struggle with her form and his mouth twitches. In a heartbeat, he is gone, a smooth and trained transition. And in equally well-trained silence, he presses his muzzle towards her ear, “You’d better be sure, girl.”


Pollock,
The gift-giver.

[elve]

it's strange what desire will make foolish people do.

She remembers herself when he stretches himself tall above her.
An impressive thing to do, when she still isn’t sure who she is (she just knows that she will be somebody), but this cowering little thing is not going to be her. She will not shake when pressed, she will not jump because she is expected to. She will be bold and forward and she won’t let anyone ever push her around.
Except this stallion still scares her, and though she knows what she wants to say to him (anything, really, just to get him to back away half a step, to rethink her entirely), she still cannot control her voice any more than she can control her power.

When she is released from the fear (as much as anyone ever can be; it still sits there, quietly, waiting), she forces herself to look the stallion in the eyes. And then he is gone, and she gasps - he must be like her. Like her and more beyond, of course, but this golden horse with his battered wing and his aura of darkness, and this little girl with nothing except bright colours, they share something.
She wonders, briefly, if she has other powers too.
But then he whispers in her ear and she forgets everything else she ever thought.

She even forgets herself, her fear, just for a few moments while she is in awe. “How do you do that?” she breathes. Despite everything she wanted herself to be - independent, brave, wholly in charge of her own life - she needs someone to show her how to control her invisibility.
“Can you-” she pauses, unsure of how to ask, still afraid that she will be afraid of him. But she cannot spend her life like this (as if she can imagine her life, she is barely hours old), and this sort of opportunity may never appear again. So she steels herself, straightening up and gritting her teeth. It would help the overall picture, of course, if she could see the stallion, look into his eyes, but she is doing her best.
“Can you teach me how to do that?” Inside, she still wants to turn and run, and it is taking all her willpower to stay here. But here she stands, still defiant, though that little pit of fear gnaws at her heart. She cannot be afraid. She cannot be scared.
She begins to tremble slightly again.

ELVE

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

He might be impressed with her self-assurance.

Except that it is naive, at her age; naive at any age. And naivety is weakness, and weakness is to be put down on sight. When she grows up she may find she can act the mistress of her own volition; she may discover, deep within herself, tools that had been previously dormant. She may even gain powers at cost, as he had, in his northern dream-place. But she will never be without the haunt of demigods. This land quakes with them, has been split apart and redrawn by them – horses that can turn his own claws from the outside in. And they will never be sated.
He is only minor in their pantheon.

She is protected from him only by her youth, it insulates her from the full affect of his rancor. Let them meet when she is full and womanly. Let him find her then: trusting of him, her strange and imposing shepherd, and let him remind her of this day in kind. He does not soften in preparation for his role. It is not in him. Impelled by something indelibly dark in his core, he only returns back to sight and looks down on her with glinting, hostile eyes. He doesn’t need to, in any case, fear is a powerful motivator; fear is a powerful manipulator. ’How do you do that?’ He smiles a crooked smile, feeling her come to him another step – drawn to him like a bright light. He remembers when he first felt the freedom of clarity.

He had been so very young, maybe even her age exactly. Phina had wandered off in pursuit of white rabbits, and dread had gripped him. Pure, concentrated, he had squinted and called out into the darkness and then he had receded. The broken boy was on his own, and life finds a way.
He had received his gift from neither his mother, nor father.
Inborn, without roots, it had found him in his need of it.

When she asks, Pollock lowers his head again to her eye level, catching them like a dare. “Do you want to know how I found my power?” He shifts his weight, his wing sliding across the dirty ground to follow.
“My mother left me alone, not long after I came into this world, still wet and cold... Wandered off into the night,” His voice grows with a darkness, the roil of clouds heralding a storm. He spits the word mother out with venom. “Leaving me alone in the very dark kind of dark. And in that darkness I could hear the growl of a monster, creeping closer to me.” He straightens up to full height, looking down at her with one eye, “And poof. Every piece of my body was smart enough to conceal itself. Nobody else was there to protect me, and it is a foolhardy thing for a baby to make itself conspicuous.”
Foolhardy, indeed.

He imagines the bite of the words will go over her head, but the power in them will not.
“I needed to be protected, I learned to wield it because I needed it,” (and then he needed to watch wolves rip meat from the bones of rabbits; and males prey on mares in the night; and to get himself close enough to strike and to give chase without being shaken; and to laugh madly as she whips around and shrieks into the night, curing the ghost that bruises her flesh with teeth and horn – chaos) “What do you need it for?”

If her answer is power, he is intimate with that pursuit.
But invisibility is not power in itself, or at least, it had never been to him – not true power as he knows it now. Just a safe place from which he could incubate his wretchedness. Invisibility is his conduit to misdeeds. She needn’t know that just yet.

“Or would you like to try it my way? I could find you monsters easily.”


Pollock,
The gift-giver.

there's (maybe one of) Pollock's "do you want to know how i got these scars?" moment XP

[elve]

it's strange what desire will make foolish people do.

She is like the small fish that dwell deeper down in the ocean, and Pollock is the anglerfish. She is drawn to him, to the light that he is providing, and while some small part of her may be aware that it is the path to doom, she swims along it anyway.
What a foolish thing she is, and she was so determined to be otherwise.

The filly tries so hard to stand tall when the stallion looks directly into her eyes, but that fear, the fear of being fearful, it catches her and she sinks back, tail trembling (but she manages to contain it just to her tail, for she cannot let him see what he’s done). That wing slips across the mud, dragging it, and she is certain that noise will forever remind her of this moment. But she is still yet to determine what this moment will be.
(As if the decision lays in her hooves! But so young and so bold, she still wants to believe that she is in charge of this interaction; she knows, deep down, that she is at the mercy of this golden stallion).

They have very different stories - the bright filly wonders, still flickering in and out of sight, if invisibility will be the only thing they share. He was left by his mother; she left her mother (and poor Falla still doesn’t feature in her thoughts, no concern as to how her mother must be feeling). He was afraid of a monster, his invisibility came to save him; hers may be the reason the monster appeared.
He talks of conspicuousness; she will never be inconspicuous, with her green and red coat. Not unless she can control her power as he controls his.

He asks why she needs to be invisible, and she wants, more than anything she has ever wanted in her few hours, to give him an answer. But she doesn’t know why she needs it. She was born invisible, it must be a part of her, she didn’t need it any more than she needs her ridiculously bright coat but there it was. She doesn’t need it but she has it anyway; it is a privilege she perhaps doesn’t deserve.
“I don’t know,” she finally answers, defeated by the question.

He mentions monsters, and she can no longer contain the trembling to her tail. But this is excitement (though the fear is back with a vengeance; not fear of him, this time, but fear of other ‘hims’, other terrible and terrifying beasts who roam these lands). She wanted adventures, and it seems she may finally have some; all the stories she will have, the wisdoms she can share. Or she will live only a few short days before some awful thing destroys her.
She is torn, between the promise of a real life and the promise of a real death.
She stares at the stallion, unsure what to do, unsure if she really has a choice (though she will later say it was all her idea, assuming she has the chance to say anything at all).

ELVE

i was thinking (always dangerous) that since she ran away form her mum so quickly, she never got given a name. so maaaaaaaaybe Pollock could name her? since he did the christmas quest he could have elves on his mind XD but its completely up to you :3

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

If she does not find out what will foment her grasp on her invisibility now, then time will surely do it for her.
When she fills out around those girlish bones and she grows into her legs, that connection between her mind and her power will develop. Nerve ending by nerve ending; fusing together by flesh, synapses and grey cells. Her wait will be more protracted than his had been. And in that interlude, without her means of protection well trained, she may find herself needing of it. A moment of naked vulnerability – he could see to it. To punish her for her luck, and her potential for its stubbornness. He may not be the only one. She would be fortunate if he was, because she is bright and one day will be she will be pretty, and all too forward.

Fear had not compelled her like it had him. But maybe the force that gifted him at birth had known from the start the part dread would play in his life. Maybe, even though her first hours have been held before an audience of fear, it will not permeate her life like it had his.

It could be something else entirely that defines her and ignites her abilities.
Perhaps it will be her self-confidence, one day.
But for now, even he has that in ruination at his feet.
Or else, it is nothing. And she will find she simply slips into that wonderful, empowering cloak like a tiara; a princess, gilded in bright regalia, haughty and indulged by good fortune  – undeserved and squandered.

’I don’t know.’ And he nods, as if he knew the answer all along.
“If you do not know what motivates you, girl, then you must practice. Find someone or something – follow it, but make sure you are unseen – and unheard. If you are noticed, come to me, and I will make sure you are punished for it.” He chuckles darkly, and shifts back on his good hind leg. “Eventually you’ll get it.”

He watches the agitated wag of her tail, and he can appreciate the girl’s effort to keep him unaware of her fear. But the weakness in it reeks, and her strength to obscure it is lacking. She is too young, and he can feel it, thick. He can trace its origins. When he retreated, he had left it there to conflict her mind. She cannot yet rise to the occasion of his eye contact; she cannot stand tall. One day, she may find her life depends on the concealment of her emotions.
The palomino stallion does not oblige weakness, not even in her young hours. He lacks any paternal instinct, and almost all apathy, so her youthful condition protects her from his hate, but does not inspire any sensitivity in him. “Look. At. Me,” He growls, and in one unnaturally fast motion, his face is inches from hers, blowing hot and heavy breath around her nostrils. “Could you, if everything depended on it?” For now, it does not. Because he is content to play with her like a mouse, for now.

“Where is your mother, girl?” He wonders what it would take to poison that precious well.
“And what is your name?”
If there is indeed a mare searching wildly for her somewhere, more likely than not, this girl never gave her the chance to call her anything. Such cruelty, for someone so small.


Pollock,
The gift-giver.

[elve]

it's strange what desire will make foolish people do.

She feels like, with every passing moment, she is growing stronger, her defiance beginning to seep back into her bones like damp (or maybe that is a trick of her mind, this other stallion allowing her to feel this way). Her trembling is largely under control, her mind can finally concentrate on something other than fear. She cannot bring herself, still, to look him in the eyes - that still scares her, for who knows what she may see in that gaze. She does not want to find out, not just yet.

He shifts, and the bright filly shifts too - backwards, away, as if making herself smaller could change anything that has happened, anything that will happen. He laughs (the sound he makes will forever haunt the filly), and his words untangle in her brain and she frowns. But she does not - cannot - reply to him; she doesn’t want to be punished, and she fears that saying the wrong thing will cause him to punish her. Maybe even saying the right thing. She feels that he is unlikely to be concerned about doling punishment out.

Then, suddenly, his face is in hers, and she can smell his breath, and she tries to stop herself from breathing it in, just in case it can poison her as he poisoned her mind with fear. She struggles, trying to lift her gaze, to glare at him, but she can’t. She manages, barely, to flick her eyes upwards, locking onto his for a moment, before they drop and she sinks even further into her hocks. She tries again, and again; she knows she must look foolish but she feels as though if she can do this - if she can take that one tiniest of steps and look him in the eyes - then she can break whatever spell he has cast on her.
But she can’t do it, and the spell remains intact.

Two more questions - and two more answers she cannot give. She doesn’t know this land well enough to say where she left her poor mother, she doesn’t know the paths and so could never lead this golden stallion back. As for names, ha. How could this invisible girl, who gave her mother a mere glimpse of her green and red coat before she turned away, newborn mind filled with adventure, have a name? For the first time, she thinks of her mother - allowing herself just a brief moment, her pink and green coat, her look of horror.
Maybe she has not got the skills this stallion possesses, but the little filly has frightened at least one horse in such a short time.
“I don’t know,” she repeats, and her gaze drops even lower. “I just left her, and I never got a name.” She wonders how the orphan foals get names.
She realises she is no better off than the orphan foals. In fact, she is likely doing worse than most.

ELVE

[Pollock]

A FEAST OF FREINDS.

The vestiges of her confidence worm themselves back into her.
He can see them drawing her taller and steadier, pulling her muscles taunt. Barely.
Her momentary eye contact is a small victory. Too small. He makes a low, disappointed growl in his throat, withdrawing from her. “I did not think so.” One day, when he circles her bright body like a mad dog, will he still be able to depend on her to acquiesce to him so quietly? It can take a lot to truly crush the soul. (It can take a lot – an impossibility – to revitalize it.) They all grow up. Browbeaten girls become headstrong women; they become vessels of their inborn carnality, fickle lovers and cruel mothers. In any other time and place, he would seek to act on his obligation to fell her at the larval stage of that hideous evolution.

That his brutality is held in abeyance is of some interest to him. Too easy. The ungainliness in her form does not stir him, it seems. Nothing in it reeks of femininity, but of utter childhood. And he has a certain soft spot, if you could call it that, for the young. So, he feels compelled to push her to the edge of that yawning gap, and leave her there, in the end, unbroken – but not unscathed. Bearing the marks of him on her, like his own tattoos of abuse.

And to one day meet her there again, different horses, both.

He likes the poetry in that. It is an epic. His opus, to be sure, with no reason to believe it will play out like that in the end. That makes it all the more imperative that he put her down now... but he is attracted to the slow burn. He must be the force that drives them towards their third act climax. He’s never played the long game before; he is an agent of whim and volatility, erased from the world by the will of his mind, he takes his hunts and prey as he finds them. At most, he has spent an evening stalking in order to get the lay of the land – find the weaknesses, the best place between sheets of armour to sink his blade. Some are worth more trouble than others.
Yes. He likes the poetry in it very much.

And there are so many ways to skin a mare.

“That is an ill way to conduct yourself, girl.” He smiles, though, crooked and mischievous. He was fashioned in the image of some wicked gift-giver, the harbinger of punishment for the naughtiness of children.
“But then… I wonder… Well, I wonder how she has not found you yet. There is nothing so determined as a mother’s devotion to her young…” She can eat his lie. If it were a full-throated truth, he would not be the man he is today, and what a shame that would be. He sighs, full of concern. “I wouldn’t be too worried, though. If anything has... befallen her, or she has… lost interest, well, at least you have me.” He laughs again, this time harder. “But you need a name…”

He relives these things almost as he walks. Like moving through a strange duality – at once the Meadow, as he knows it, and then a wasteland of snow and polar bears. He tries to press it down low, that invading, insatiable curiosity. That night, if it truly was only one night, was something far removed from here… but it clings to him. He smiles, and looks down at her, “How about Elve then, hm? That's pretty.” She bears the cast of that place and time, her red and green, though he is certain it is not related in anyway…

The weight of that name, he will not divulge. His dear fallen comrades. But then… he had not done it on purpose.
When she returns to her mother, she can carry with her the most indelible mark of all. He must follow… it would be a shame not to witness her mother’s confusion and horror.

POLLOCK, THE GIFT-GIVER

Sorry this took so long! Considering we were rapid-firing posts like a couple of maniacs for a bit there.