"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
I can still hear you saying -
you would never break the chain
For the first time in her relatively young life, Dacia feels the sharp pang of fear in her gut and the awakening of an anger like she’s never known. She flies across the earth, uninhibited by any creature or obstacle. Her skin, the same skin she’d used to hide herself from her mother’s assailant, is now pale white. Void of any color or feeling. She cannot help herself but cry. The blur of her surroundings becomes even less identifiable but the tears, they will not cease. What she had witnessed is more than she can bear. Her mother is dead.
Dead. Not from age, not from heartbreak, not by her own will. Her mother had died by the hands of a murderer. She screams in her frustration and pushes herself faster as she slips past the borders of her childhood home. Lupei is nowhere to be found, she cannot track him, and the matter is urgent. Her mind can only focus on one other individual - Killdare. A stallion who’d been something of a friend to her mother since her own birth. He was Lord of the Chamber, certainly he could help her.
“Killdare!” She cries out, hoping that in this particular circumstance he will not be far from hearing her. She slows, coming to a stop for the first time since the moment she’d left the forest, white foam lathering her chest and gliding down her forelegs while she paces, her movements muffled by the thick layer of dead needles. Anxiety grips her, and her coat flashes in pops of bright reds and yellows. “Killdare!” She yells again, turning in circles with the hopes that he, or anyone, will come.
no matter what we breed we still are made of greed
Normally he would be stalking the borders, or else gliding over them with harsh pushes and pulls of his gigantic wings. Taking care to cover every inch before circling back for another round. Today though he was grazing, a mouthful of greens pushing past his lips as he chewed carelessly.
Fuel was needed to keep the body going, as well as water and rest. These mindless tasks he took care of with just as much enthusiasm as he could muster for them.
Bite, chew, swallow, repeat.
He worked the short shoots from one end of the clearing to the next, moving along when the pickings became slim. Killdare didn't know the last time he had really just sat down and ate, a real meal, a few days? He snorted to himself, ripping a particularly tough patch of crab grass from the earth. He's concentrating as much as he can about the drying meal before him when a shout litters the quite and brings with it a chorus of birds.
Ugh." He groans, chewing feverishly his last bite before crowing at the chaos of caws. "Quiet, the lot of you, shut up!", his barks do little to settle Straia's pets. Again the yell brakes the silence like a ball to a single pane of glass, this time he can literally smell the fear dripping form her mouth.
The child he had met some time ago, Dacia, the curious color changing daughter of his friend Astri. The girl who was growing and flowering into a rather promiscuous sort of woman. His first thought is of Lupei, that the boy had sparked some sort of trouble that he would now have to clean up. Never in his wildest dreams would he guess otherwise but the girls screams are unsettling, tossing a stone in the pit of his stomach that he can't shake.
He emerges from the cover of pine and bough to stand before her, eyes narrowing as her coat flashes in yellows and reds. "Calm down, what is it?!" He isn't the best for calming but he uses his wings like arms, trying to wrangle and slow her from the circles in which she turns.
I can still hear you saying -
you would never break the chain
He finds her, of course he finds her. When his wings brush against her skin she feels fresh tears threatening to spill across her cheeks, but she only grinds her teeth and closes her eyes, settling herself the best way she knew how. She melts into him, finds his chest with her nose and then collapses against his sturdy build with an exhausted sob. Her coat ceases its wild flashing, drains slowly again to white. Dacia’s mind is still racing, however, and her body is trembling from the effort of recalling the scene. “Astri she’s … gone.” She begins, speaking of her mother’s death without fully clarifying the situation. She gathers herself, inhales, and then begins to speak - feeling comfort for the first time since she’d left the forest.
“She was murdered.” She spits, head turning away from her Lord. The trembling she feels is no longer from fear, but anger. “Preyed upon by some stallion who had a gift I could not outwardly see.” Dacia seethes. Her teeth, clenched tightly together, now snap in frustration. “He toyed with her mind, and then he crushed her skull while she was weakened from his attack.” She’s quiets then, moves away from Killdare to look out into the seemingly empty kingdom, and feels bitterness pool in her stomach. “Cowardly.” She hisses, ears falling flat.
She circles once more, only to face Killdare again and to gauge his reaction to this news. Shame sweeps over her mind, and her eyes fall to the earth. “She was out looking for me, that’s how I know. I had camouflaged myself to stay hidden, so I suppose her assailant didn’t see me either.” She speaks softly, eyes darting once more to his. “I watched the whole thing.” She tells him. Dacia feels physically weak again. Her vision would not stop spinning, her head feels heavy, she cannot breath. Her mother’s death was her fault, and she hadn’t even tried to help. “Killdare...” She whispers, and it brings silent tears again to her face. “My mother is dead.”
02-20-2016, 04:42 PM (This post was last modified: 02-21-2016, 02:52 PM by Killdare.)
no matter what we breed we still are made of greed
Guilt, anger, pain.
Killdare hardly ever felt so many emotions at once, and even less so ones such as these. He stood so still, caught by surprise. His mountainous body rigid cradling the girl against his chest as the wetness from her eyes came freely. If he too could drain the color from his hide they would both be standing stark and white against the dreary backdrop of the wood.
Her words strike him numb, unable to move a he processes their pattern, their meaning. All at once he feels empty and full, overwhelmed with the event that drives daggers to his ears and chest. Never in a million years would he think Astri had found herself in some form of trouble she could not handle. She was strong, tough, a woman that could hold her own, or he always thought she had been.
This news, these words speak different, they tell a different tale. One of death and murder and cowardice beyond his forgiveness or comprehension. It takes the most to set his jaw, to settle the quiver that threatened to take his ashen lips. “Of with you lot then!” He shouts to the assembled ravens, no doubt the sudden burst sent them flying, hopefully a few would be finding her majesty and regaling the story.
“His face, did you see it? Would you know it?” He pulls back staring into her weeping eyes and searching for answers. “Nevermind,” He says tugging her close again, tucking her to his chest, “I’ll find her, I’ll find him.” Perhaps the brute would not cover his tracks, would not know to, perhaps he was still there and Killdare could rip him limb from cruddy limb. Somehow drop him from the nearest cliff.
“Your brother hmm? Where is he? Best find him..” He shushes her, swiping a single tear from his own cheek with a slate colored talon. He had not meant for her to see, nor anyone witness such vulnerability from him, but he was mortal and suffered the ailments of the heart as they all did. “But do not wander far Dacia.” He cautions, unknowing if the reaper had caught sight of the hiding girl or not. For a moment his hardened face softens, the lump in his throat catching before he can swallow it back down. For a moment she looked so much like her mother, for a moment she mirrored his friend.
I can still hear you saying -
you would never break the chain
There’s a solidarity to Killdare when he pulls her close, something that surprisingly comforts her and seems to displace the fresh pain in her mind. He speaks, and his voice echoes against her own chest. "Yes …" She thinks, "His face." Dacia sees the horns, curved and wicked. She sees, sharply, every line of his golden face, remembers the way his hooves were split in two. Oh, she knows him and she knows him well. His face consumes her then, she knows it will occupy her thoughts and dreams forever until she sees him again. Dacia makes a promise to herself: the next time she did see that monstrosity, she would steal the last breath from his body.
Killdare’s mention of her brother Lupei snaps her from her thoughts, and her eyes dart around her, bringing her back to the present. “Lupei, of course.” she mutters, knowing full and well how her brother would react. Lupei is more her her twin rather than half-sibling. He would channel their mother's death into a rage that could not be contained. Dacia wouldn’t stop him either. Let the young wolf seek out his own means of revenge. Killdare speaks again, warning her not to stray far and Dacia smiles weakly in return. It’s all she can manage.
---------
When he returns Dacia is waiting for him, dressed in black and shrouded in stoic misery. ”He knows the truth then,” she thinks, “He knows what must be done.” Her gilded eyes trace the sharp edges to his face, a face she had never truly seen before this moment. Sorrow doesn’t suit the Chamber Lord, but anger certainly does. It burns between them now, this bloodlust, and like her mother before her Dacia shares something with the bay stallion. She moves forward to close the distance between them and her voice breaks the silence that had cloaked her since his departure. “I will see him suffer at my own hands, or I will die trying.” She promises.
Her nose, velvet black and comely, reaches out to stroke Killdare’s briefly. “Thank you.” She murmurs, because that’s all she can say. She saves her deep appreciation for the Stallion until the day she can bring her mother’s killers head to him with eyes still rolling. Until then, she’ll settle for this sort of interaction - and a new sense of admiration for the winged chamberling.
