"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
His pulse pumped loud against his eardrums, filling his head with a kind of unbearable pressure. The hum of a machine. The release of trapped steam.
A sustained drone, drowning out the pound of his hooves on flattened earth, and the heave of his breath as he nearly choked on his want for air. But bliss warmed him around the edges. A heady kind of euphoria, like nothing he had ever experienced before. It cradled him in close comfort as he felt triumph bulge against the surface of his powers for the first time–blood dried on the keratin of his curved headgear, but the tokens of brain matter and fleshy bits had long been jarred off.
Such a shame.
He stopped, gasping for air and letting the foam of sweat dry on his neck and chest.
But he could not sleep. Not kept awake by the uncertainty in his dreams, but this time by the manic throb in his muscles. Exhaustion found him early, but unable to surrender to sleep he was sent limping through the trees as silvery moonlight relinquished to red sun, searching. Coiling and uncoiling his mind around the memory of her dull eyes and the wicked crack as he ran through her skull. Like an eggshell.
Then came the hard and unfamiliar respite of her black and white hips–he hated her least of all, but found a place for anger between their flesh all the same. It was sweeter for it; it was roiling and primal, and when he disengaged from her, he hadn’t felt the desire to invade her mind. Her body had been enough, his own in that moment just as the black mare wasting away into the roots had been.
It was what he needed. Stranger flesh to take control of and purge his lust, and then leave behind.
Pollock is weary when he wades through the underbrush and loose leaves, finally pressing into the open of the Meadow. He limps heavily, the dull ache in his left front leg and right thigh slowing him to a creep. “Fff-,” the stallion stops, shifting his weight back to his right, moaning low from his throat. The afterglow is dulled, from the sex and violence both, though they continue to rattle in his head as he leans away from his cursed muscles and lets his eyelids droop finally, shielding against the unkind, afternoon sun.
And she'll always get the best of me, the worst is yet to come All the misery was necessary when we're deep in love
Rest.
There will be none for the wicked, none as long as Kirin is around. For the kettle knows when the pot is black, and he knows when they belong together.
The Meadow is a place of conquest for the lavender hued stallion. It’s a place he frequents in search of new treasures, the shining gems he can tuck away in the Cove. There have been many lately, yet Kirin is an insatiable beast in his own right. Yet in appearance the Cove lead is far from bestial, he is graced with a pastel hide that reaps those he has not sown.
He’s used his fine looks since he can remember, young as he’s always been. He’s used them for a myriad of things, whether they brought destruction or creation it matters not. Today he uses it for the later, in a sense. For his own whims, to enjoy the finer things in life, lest he deprive himself of its delicacies. Swooping from the autumn skies, he lands not far from the dozing male, pulling up a magnificence that has been practiced time and time again.
At first he studies the creature before him, coated in a layer of sweat, spattered around his face in what can only be droplets of blood. Horns protrude from the other’s head, with a twist that is akin to the mountain goats that linger in small flocks on the Cove crags. Again his hooves favor the rock climbing animal, cloven and absurd to the lavender boy. It’s back is disfigured, one wing broken in a manner that has likely rendered it useless. Kirin only smiles against this disfigurement, broken things could be made further broken, or unbroken depending how you tended to them.
He raises his thistle colored feathers, shielding the sun from beaming its rays on the males closed lids. “You’ve been enjoying yourself today.” Kirin says matter of factly, his voice husked at the scent of sex and blood that lingers on the goat man's hide.
She gasps sucking in air as if it would bring her life back. Yet her lungs did not burn, the air flowing through her body did not so much as caress skin. What had happened? Where was she? Hooves touch the sands yet they leave no marks. Its as if the land has forgotten her. Panic rises, heart thudding violently, wait what? She glances at her chest, there was no heart beat there. Just a pain, a remembrance of what was, what would have happened should she have been alive. This made no sense, maybe it was one of her nightmares. She sees no shadow meandering on the sands. Thoughts swim, they tumble over one another.
Looking around the mare notices something near her feet, a horse? What was it doing laying down? At a closer look she sees the familiar scar that Zayn had given her in their last battle. Brows would furrow if they could. But she was here? She was standing, she was breathing.... no, no she wasn't breathing. That Hestia had a shadow, that Hestia had a scar, that Hestia wasn't breathing. That Hestia had no heart beat. Appearently neither did she. She roves over the body until she sees the head. Her body trembles, thoughts blurring her mind. All that blood, there was no way anyone could make that face out, there was nothing left to look at. She was laying in the meadow with her face trampleto extinction. She spins around remembering what had happened.
"Kryten!" She cries out for her son, she can see Demian there "Demian?" She tries desperately to get his attention, "Demian look at me! I'm right here." Her nostrils reach out to touch to touch him. When she doesn't get a response she rears up hooves lashing out to gouge his hide. Maybe then he would notice. Coming down from her lofty position, she finds that her hooves pass through him, as if they did not exist. She was begining to wonder if she did exist.
What had happened? Why was she here? Why could she not get herself to get up, nudging at the body she tries to lay back inside it, "wake up you idiot, you have a family to care for!" Nothing happens, she waits and waits, finally getting up she slams her hooves to the stomach of the other Hestia, once again passing through. Sure letting the energy surge through her felt amazing, to let it out and release it... even better. But the fact that there is no response, that the purpose to her antics follows with no results sends her into a blind rage. She was helpless, the one thing she hated, the one thing that she always dreaded. She was helpless, and now... what was she to do? There is no purpose for her existance, she tried to will herself to leave, to let her mind free itself of thought, void of emotion. But it didn't seem to matter. She blinks, this time, she isn't in the meadow, this time she can see the beach, corpses rotting around her. The putrid scent of flesh, and salt. Carrions ravaging the land, bones glisten white from the sun.
She squints her eyes, the incesent light blinding her, she cries out for Fennick. Maybe just maybe someone would hear her, hopefully she didn't have to end her life as unhappy as she had lived it. She steps back, the water lapping around her legs, though she can not feel it. There is no cold wetness, they do not part and roll by her, no they just pass through as if she didn't exist. One more glance told her that the rose of the amazons was withering away. It would dissapear before her body did. She marches her way back to the place of her death. There is a stallion in the distance that smells of the one on her carcass.
Something whispered to her telling her that this was the one that had killed her. She flashes before him. Standing next to the other purple one. Even as he probably couldn't see her she smiles to Pollock. You know its rude to not introduce yourself. She snidely remarks. There seemed to be a pull towards him. Something WANTED her to be near him. She felt stronger. Her face not quite as disturbingly mangled. Still even as half of it was missing her one eye glimmered with the curiousity of his reaction to her pressence.
Shade falls across his face and he exhales, growling between his clenched teeth and tight jaw. His eyelids twitch from the movement below the thin skin.
He sees blood spattering the ground like an expressionist canvas.
Bone, impossibly white…
He feels the phantom pressure in his own skull, remembering his curved horns meeting her cheek and muzzle, forcing the bones and muscles out of their places. In waves, like soft fingers on damp sand, he sees and feels her patched body under him. His chin resting on the rough ridge of her mane. He snorts, exasperation and weariness, and when he opens his dark eyes he is a beast incensed. Roiling under the surface, but subdued by the heavy chains of his own exertion and unnatural wounds. He curses under his breath, blinking once or twice to clear his eyes of her viscera, and the other’s warm haunches.
His lips wrinkles, and with a heave and heavy exhale he evens his weight on all hooves, equally. His left thigh sings, and he wonders (curiously) why sometimes he can see the indentation of teeth there in the corner of his eyes. It is always smooth and supple when he examines that weak muscle more closely. “Do you think so?” his voice is more gritty than usual, lost in his night of overindulgence. The palomino catches his eyes. A pretty boy. He does not look at the wings, but he suddenly feels some measure of shame flood him.
It is dangerous. He doesn’t have the patience to wrestle with his demons right now.
He shifts, the draping, grimey feathers on his left side slink beside him, in the dirt. “Why the fuck have you chosen to ruin it now, then?” He flinches, picking up his right leg and place it down again. His ire and senses are dulled to a low thrum; waiting for for the tranquilizer to wear off and uncloud, the horned stallion does not think to invade this pretty boy’s mind, or become unseeable to slither away.
It is all too much effort.
And there is something in the charming glint in his eye.
Something like him, but more polished and shiny.
“Can I help you?”
He doesn’t need help.
Or he needs his help more than he knows. Either way, the palomino would never admit or concede to it. He’s spent too much time rounding out the corners of his self-sufficiency; refining his own ability to make himself unknown and his violence untraceable –
…. but then why had he revealed his face to the boy?
A demigod gets cocky.
He opens his lips, to tell him to go, or to indulge him further maybe, find in his pretty, pale purple some way to sober himself up. But he is not done. This night and day, wickedly sewn together with stitches of blurriness and blackouts, winds on. Unrelenting. The throb in his head increases – fills up, pressing firm against every inch of his braincase. The pressure, like a profuse hemorrhage.
And there she is. Not quite as he left her, and in his queer, addled state of mind, that is the first thing he notices. Like a painter finding his work marked over, it annoys him. Enrages him. He stares at her, dark eyes narrowing. “Pollock,” he spits, and maybe it is because he is overtired, but he does not at first recognize her as real – or maybe something existing in between. A projection. A thing he must sleep off, loosen with the aches in his head and legs.
So he is mad, and fearful, and those two things come together like the great cracking impact of two rams slamming headgear.
Mad at her incessant need to crowd him.
Fearful, because he is made of that and it drives him. He is master and slave to it.
And she'll always get the best of me, the worst is yet to come All the misery was necessary when we're deep in love
“Oh I know so.” He says, a saucy smile sweeping up his lips. A single wing still tilted aloft, casting shadow in some galant display. Though against his actions his words bite, snip back at the grump that greets his ears. Like this is some sort of tug of war game, and Kirin only brightens at the prospect of a tousle with the horned beast before him. The stench of sweat clings like a heavy coat on a summer day and usually Kirin is not one to appreciate an ounce of soil. Today isn’t a usual day though and neither is he.
“Ruin it? Oh no.” He pauses with a seriousness. “I do not ruin things.” An air of certainty clings to the very fiber of his words, and it is thick and impossible his confidence. “I make them better” He says, reaching forward only just. Far enough for the sweet, saltiness, of his breath to whisper in puffs at the brute he faced. A silvered eye winks as he practically sashays to the side, ravaging the male with a heavy glare.
“Help.” He drawls, smiling as he speaks. “You’re looking tense. Maybe we can help each other.” The words fall slick with sugar and salt at once. Odd it might be the way he dances about the horned and otherwise foreboding creature, but that is what caught his attention in the first place. He had taken plenty of squeamish and trembling mares, but he had not tasted this, not yet. The weary monster sparked a new interest in Kirin, for he too held a monster- his not so obvious to the eye. Kirin’s monster bubbled inside, raking at proverbial cage- bars that trapped it within.
He never allowed it to feel too trapped though, why should he? No, best to let it out to play.
Pollock. The goat-horned man spits at him, and the lavender hued stallion doesn’t avoid the flight of spittle. Instead he takes the golden’s parted lips as an invitation, bracing himself, pulling forward. His own mouth extends to meet his treat's. Lips tracing over the other’s velvet muzzle, as he speaks his name.
The two males drone on especially the purple one. What a little twit he was. So insignificant. Yet so grandios. She nips his flesh though she passes through it. Still it must chill him or something as often ghosts are prone to do. Smirking at Pollock, Well nice to meet you Pollock. She dryly chirps back at him. Now as for the rest you have quite a bit of explaining to do. She steps up to him. Rearing at his face her hooves plunging to plant on his forehead. And as she knows it will simply pass through, there is still the instinctual reaction to jerk away. She hopes that it gives him a taste of the fear that he seemed to enjoy giving to others.
With a sigh she passes through him turning to be along side him. Looking into his eyes with large leafy ones. She smiles again. You know I really should be thanking you.... but... I haven't decided yet. No, no she wouldn't make up her mind just yet. After all she had an eternity of fun ahead of her. Why stop it all now.
Not like she wouldn't eventually weazle all her answers out of him eventually. Glancing to the other horse she feels more curious than anything for a moment. Whats this? Your boyfriend? She chortles a whispy sort of laugh. Well this would definatly explain a lot of things. It would be so amusing to watch. Maybe I'll join her eyes glimmer with mischief. How ackward could that get. Well maybe they would find out. Or the next time that he tried anything intimate that is.
He watches her, his lip quivering slightly.
Black and half-faced, she presses in between worlds and planes of reality and for a second he believes she could be real. His gut knots and he places a two-toed hoof in front of him, making to step forwards and examine the sureness of her intangibly.
He glances at the purplish stallion, but his glinting eyes register no recognition nor sign of her anomaly. He stands, pompous and primp, her flesh (and the meaty scent he thinks he can smell coming from the open side of her fractured skull) imperceptible to him.
And when she touches him, her teeth sinking through, unharmed, he wonders if he feels her pass through.
And then he realizes.
She has been stripped of everything that made her animal.
Stripped of flesh and of form. Of bone and sinew and white fat.
Chewed at hastily by maggots and restuffed by the curious gods that animate them,
A husk.
He smiles, flinching back as she slips through his head and horns, sending a thrill down his spine. I did that. I am the god. His lip curls and he continues to look at Kirin as she moves into his chest and past that dark ornament, through his stomach and out his ribs to stand beside him, shoulder to shoulder. When she stops, a waft of coolness and the slightly tang of something otherworldly hangs around them.
‘Now as for the rest you have quite a bit of explaining to do.’ He turns his head ever so slightly towards her, tucking in his chin to say something but thinks better of it… she can wallow in his silence as she should have festered in her grave of peat and leaves.
‘I do not ruin things,’ he shakes his head to rattle the strangeness from between his ears. ‘I make them better.’ Pollock examines the cool and confident ridges of his handsome face and when he presses towards him the gift-giver yields (though his jaw locks and flexes, his muscles instinctively clenching to prepare for something sharp and cruel), snorting softly over his muzzle, and smiles slyly. “Cocky,” he notes, he cannot say he does not admire it. He spends much too much time wading through the mire of weakness of broken toys to begrudge him of that.
(He is shiny and arrogant –)
When Kirin touches his lips to Pollock’s face, the horned stallion stiffens, groaning from his throat; the warning growl before the teeth.
“I’ve never thought myself particularly helpful.” He exhales as Kirins pulls away and gives him his name, “but I suppose I’m feeling a little more… giving today, than usual.” He turns his cheek a bit towards Hestia, his lips tightening and he wonders what she thinks of his generous mood.
“I am not sure I can be helped, Kirin. I am a man of simple pleasures, really. It doesn’t take so terribly much. What do you need? Maybe you are more… complex. Or needy.”
POLLOCK, THE GIFT-GIVER
the low-key flirting is sooo not in Pollock's nature. blame it on the sex and violence. unless it totally is and I'm just finding out haha.
And she'll always get the best of me, the worst is yet to come All the misery was necessary when we're deep in love
Tick tock, tick tock His mind winding like a the gears of a time piece. The momentary brush with the male leaving a salty, metallic, sweet taste on his lips. Kirin bends the velvets inward, tasting the remains and quivering gently. 'Mmm' He breathes, a whisper of a word, barely audible rising from his throat.
His reverie interrupted but for a moment with a chill. A fleeting thing, coming quickly and ending just as soon as the temperature drop has registered in his mind. Brief, almost non existent, he can't be bothered to linger on a hypothetical worry. An inconvenience, so he gruffs, turning his attentions to the goat-horned male once more. A growl bubbling forth from the man, only furthering his madness. "Oh?" A question, a statement in retort and he bothers not with the pleasantries of personal space. Pressing in again eyes finding Pollocks, as if to say- 'Oh do go on then'.
Perhaps Kirin was crazy, or lustful, or both. Perhaps the feral nature of the male sent a stiffness to his loins that he could not ignore, that he only wished to give his own sort of gift in return to words to pass next. The evidence of his arousal displayed without shame or concern, the lavender had never been modest.
"Giving? Well what a pleasant revelation, I am of the business of taking myself." He dips his head, tucking his chin slightly as the mischief flares against his lips, flashes from his silver eyes. Almost a purr are his words now, thickening with a proverbial perfumed smoke, a heady mix to the senses.
"Hmm," he muses, theatrically deep in thought. "Everything," he presses, "for starters you. I'll take you, you look like someone to fill my needs, play my games quite nicely. In return, well, it appears you are a taker of things as well. Life perhaps?" Again a question, though the hints that he knows the answer already is not lost. "I'm sure we can find some of those for you, and me even. You can take me too but death is so..final. No, I have tastes for other games of take." A hiss completes the last word, his head and chest rising, puffing.
He flinches just as she passes through him. Even as he is smiling she still finds herself smirking with pleasure. Satisfied that she could bring even the slightest discomfort to the male. She watches as he opens his mouth.
Though past ages had already warned her of the twinkle she saw in his eye. So she does not get her hopes up for something that she is well aware would not happen right away. She smirks a glint of mischief in her own single eye. Her head cocks to the side a little. Cocky? How so? She says it over the purple stallion, making a effort to over ride his words with her shrill voice. Though he proceeds to step into 'their' space. Her frame flickering with the gust of a breeze from his movement.
She can't help it. Its to much to intertaining. So as the stallion blinks and flirts at the larger more sinister creature. She does the same mimicking his every move. What long drawn out speachs these are. All so common place, its all really quite boring to be honest. Have you no better company Pollock? Is that why I landed your victim? Where you jealious of my life? My family? My enjoyment of something that you will never posess? She cackles loudly at this point, her vocals ringing on the wind, just as transparent as herslef.
In a moment of seething anger she steps up to her ear. What should have been warm breath puffs clouds of cold otherness agaisnt his hairs. I hope you realize that you have just killed the Valley Kings lover. She lets the last word hang in the air. Stepping away slightly looking over his body, looking for any sign of what is running through his mind. While she herself may be dead. He was still alive. He would still have to face the stallion that he had so quickly and easily stole from.
He could try to explain to Fennick how it is that his lover and mother to his children was dead and a ghost. He could try to explain how it is that it came to pass that her face was laying mangled and rotting on the beach. She offers him nothing not a hint as to how much pleasure she was recieving from this torture. He had to know just what exactly he had done. And now concorting with one of the kings herd stallions? Oh how much trouble was this guy asking for?
Tell me what do you think that Fennick, and Gallows will do when they find that you have been cohorting with their newest allience? her eye narrows at the Lavender whore. With all his shine and glamour he couldn't live up to anything that comepared with her family.
02-16-2016, 04:01 PM (This post was last modified: 02-16-2016, 07:26 PM by Pollock.)
A FEAST OF FREINDS.
It is a curious thing, that the lavender stallion’s excitation does not rankle him.
In many other situations, it would have. When he found sex abhorrent—a dull abdication of sense for pleasure (that was before he had found out the value in that plunge for himself)—and Kirin’s advances would have exhumed the whorish bones of his mother. It would remind him too much of her painted up lips and hip sway; of the way emptiness and malice wear lechery like a skin-tight dress. If it weren’t for the fatigue and the thin voice in his head making it hard for him to concentrate.
He cannot think.
He holds the other man’s eyes but she mutters in his ear, and he cannot help but flick them to the side. His lip wrinkles, ‘Have you no better company Pollock? Is that why I landed your victim? Where you jealous of my life? My family? My enjoyment of something that you will never possess?’ She cannot know how wrong she is; or he cannot accept how right. He had been jealous of pretty little Elve whose mother and sobbed and skinned her knee when she found her wayward little girl. He had been jealous of Lirren, the well-loved, starlit thing of promise and potential and privilege. Of Chessur and his upbringing…
What is left in him that may have wanted those things is under immense pressure, being pressed into a fossil of what might have been and what was denied for too long.
She does not make him jealous. She makes him angry and he suddenly needs room.
He takes a step back, away from the heat of Kirin’s breath and his arousal, ‘Giving? Well what a pleasant revelation, I am of the business of taking myself.’ He presses his eyes tight, his head pounding harder and harder as she raises her papery voice to meet and battle Kirin’s. “I am not surprised,” he mutters, his jaw clenching tight and stiff. They are similar in that way, they both know that well enough.
‘I hope you realize that you have just killed the Valley Kings lover.’
The corners of his lips curl upwards slightly, and he huffs air out his nostrils, heh.
He had not. Imagine that.
‘...for starters you. I'll take you, you look like someone to fill my needs, play my games quite nicely.’
He is walking a thin line. He must be used to taking easy little things. He must be used to playing games with pliable opponents. Pollock would run him through if he thought he had it in him, or if he thought it would be worth it, right now.
But his proposal is just interesting enough, “I do not think you know the value of treading carefully, Kirin. That might be a lesson worth learning, one day,” he must be the kind of man that self-destructs, “but I’ll play. I cannot say I am having much trouble managing to entertain myself on my own, but I am nothing if not willing to take on some extra playing time. I know I don’t need to warn you, but while we are on the subject, I’d be cautious. I am not saying I’ll play your games, necessarily. But that I’ll play with you. We’ll make our fun.”
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