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[O] Summer skin. - Printable Version

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Summer skin. - Rikyn - 07-21-2014

Яikyn
Adventure pulled me out of the comforts of my home, the same scenery time and time again proving to be too droll for a young man to dwell in for long. My lion’s tail sweeps joyously behind me as I lope easily down the winding, narrow paths that I have walked many times with momma, confident in my knowledge of the stones and young enough to run rather than cautiously walk as some of the others did. I can feel my heart beating against my rib cage, partially the thrill of escaping my mother’s watching eyes and another the pace at which I am moving, but neither are enough to dampen to glorious way my soul rises the further away from safety I go.

The world out here is not kind and gentle, momma has warned me, but she is neither of these things and so I figure I have little to fear outside in comparison to remaining with her and her temper. Besides, anybody who is anybody knows that in order to become strong and feared, you have to strike out on your own and prove that you are more than what they would like to think you are. It was all there in momma’s tales of supremacy and grandeur – only the weak stayed in one place their whole lives. Even she had left Helovia for a time.

I wasn’t quite ready to leave Helovia – it had taken mother many years to grow bored of all that it had to offer and I figured I would be about the same. After all, we’d only gone so far south as the Thistle Meadow and never any further east, and all that land had to offer between home and everything else were mountains and valleys filled with flowers.

I might as well be at home.

It’s with this in mind that I take the path to the west that will lead me down past the glass walls of the Edge and out towards the good bit of sea. The ocean near the Basin is dark and choppy and cold, but momma says there is a beach to the west and that the water there is tolerable, even nice. I don’t know how far it is, of course, or perhaps I would aim for somewhere closer – as it is, the morning is late and the sun is rising into its peak, and even as fast as I pace myself, I only make it so far as the banks of a large, still pool in the middle of all sorts of willow trees as the sun tilts its last hours of light out across the land.

Still, I’m further away from home than I’ve ever been and my mood is high as I laugh softly under the touch of the swaying branches, smelling all the smells of strangers that have come through here and the earthy, warm scent of the land, much different from the cold smell that permeates the Basin even in the high heat of Tallsun. The flowers are much different here, too, and I admire each in turn and face every new bird call as if it is a golden treasure waiting to be claimed.
in every heart a hole
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RE: Summer skin. - Reginald - 07-22-2014



He fancies himself tall and grand; he sees himself a monster and a terror, a demon in full flower, powerful and terrible and great—yet he is only a boy.

His mind fevers with the image of that filly burnished with the hide of the sun; he wanders the shores of the edge of the world, sneering contempt in the face of the roaring sea. It is an anger that cannot leave him, yet in his coltish heat he forgets it for a time; he wanders once more, lost and aching from his mother, his stocky-chested bravado his only comfort. He comes into a secret place, one he has visited before; the memory of yet another ugly little girl floats into this mind, the spotted one with a coat of dirt and hair the texture of weeds. The image of her tears follows; he grins at the memory. It sooths some of the troubled storm in his breast—but there is no calming it.

He is only a boy. There in his limbs yearns the test of power, the grinning games of sweating, bleeding boyhood he briefly enjoyed in the depths of the earth, back when the world was black and his glory was imminent. His roving grey eye rests upon the slender form of some younger child: a colt, like him, a fellow in arms and sex. Reginald gazes at the spindle-legged form of the growing boy; disgust clouds his eyes for a time. He cannot tolerate weakness; he himself has just escaped its insufferable grasp. His disdain melts away almost instantly, the crime of the boy’s infancy forgiven; Reginald sees that he is young, a mere babe, and is momentarily shocked into satisfaction with the idea of being elder. He has always been Abraham’s elder; he had always been the world’s suckling devil child. No longer, it seems.

He approaches the boy of bronze, his eyes critical of his slender, fey-like tail, the eyes of molten gold. He smells of cold; Reginald remembers the tundra of the north; he guesses and wonders. “Can you run? he rasps, never more than a whisper—the world will never have his passion. He does not wait for the response; he does not care. He presses forward swiftly, roughly, the severe edge of his growing shoulder crashing towards the side of the smaller child; he wheels away, then, and bolts from the smaller child, snorting his power, grinning his challenge. Catch me!”

He is only a boy.

”Watch for Circe.”



There's nothing here for free
Lost who I want to be
My serpent blood can strike so cold


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RE: Summer skin. - Rikyn - 07-24-2014

Яikyn
I’m in the middle of deciding whether to test my jumping abilities by seeing how far across the pool I can get in a single leap or not when the sound of someone else coming causes my pacing along the shoreline to stop and lift my eyes to the face that breaks through the bent trees. I take him in without a flicker of a smile or friendliness at first, mostly because he exudes neither of these things but also because I am wary of those I do not know and have no reason to trust; not everything my dam has to say to me goes in one ear and out the other, to be sure, further proof found in how I search his brow and find him a validate playmate and immediately sweep my eyes down towards his spine.

Barren, making him whole and acceptable by all of mother’s rules, and less likely a threat to me than the other species who would perhaps seek to destroy me for the land of my birth and the spiraled weapon growing from my brow. But this one is like me, a unicorn, and while he is much older than me (exciting, considering the older kids back home ignore me and the other youth of this season with a sincerity of drive that could perhaps be labeled devotion to exclude) he seems safe enough. Even the air of darkness that evolves around him can’t really shake me too much – Erebos is not really a bundle of light either, and his dad most certainly is not. Neither of them have killed or maimed anyone without purpose, and so why should this guy?

”Can you run?”

I’m not old enough to think to use my nose to seek out where this kid is from like he is me, but it doesn’t really matter because in truth he is from no where; we are both children of the Storm and so I don’t question his existence too heavily, merely take in his words with raised ears and golden eyes gleaming with piqued interest as it seems he eludes to a game. "Yes…" I reply, the ends of the word trailing into nothingness to hopefully get across the point that I would not be running for my life on this afternoon. He’d simply get to kill me – but not without a good fight on my behalf and the high likelihood of an enraged mother monster coming down on him.

Little time passes and he is speaking and moving again. Shock strikes me at first as it seems he’s going to charge me, a bleating sound of disgruntled air escaping my lungs as I dodge hard to the side to avoid his much larger body colliding with my own.

But he’s still smiling as he darts away, replacing the suddenly born scowl on my face with a split and gleaming smile as my cloven hooves leap into action and dart after him. He wants me to catch him – but his legs are much longer than mine and the sheer difference in our ages sends him ahead like a loosed arrow and I am only a leaf caught in wind. Still, it’s a fun game, and one that, if I am smart, I can still win.

I’m tired from my run down here, but that thought is cast away as I press my legs to swing faster, my tail sweeping behind me in large, graceful arcs to balance my weight as I dodge between trees and feel the limbs of the willows buffet my face.

in every heart a hole
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RE: Summer skin. - Reginald - 08-05-2014



The slender body is quick to dodge; the smaller legs lag behind, unable to beat the earth as Reginald’s hooves are able to. Though maybe the Grey-Eye’d prince’s legs are just that much larger, grown into thick, sturdy boughs of budding strength that pulls him between trees, twixt the bush, over slippery loam that could crack the fragile line of a tendon? A wild abandon grips Reginald as he races ahead of the smaller child; he forgets for a moment that it is a game of chase that he has proposed. He is intoxicated with his running. The wind catches the sparse bristles of mane, the growing, tangling feathers of his hoof, the rough cut edges of his body as it sails through the salty, lovesick air. Is this flight? He falls in love with it; he understands why the dragon flies, and his brother runs beneath of slippery white shadow.

Something tugs at Reginald’s lung. The dormant fury rises in his throat like boiling bile; a token of his childhood resides within his breast, a residue of sickness. He cannot run like this forever, as much as he would love to. He bites back the anger; it slithers from his lips unsteadily—he cannot help himself. “Can you fight? he calls behind him, his voice buffeted by the speed of their journey, the pump of his chest as it propels him forward.

He stiffens his legs; dirt flies from his hooves as the body brakes oh so suddenly, his rump whipping to the side as Reginald turns unsteadily to face the tiny adversary. He is small, now that Reginald can face him, can see him; he rears, earthen hooves pawing the air, another kind of challenge, another type of game. He does not know what he wants to do with the child; where he cursed with the feminine sex, his focus would have been clear and his humiliated wrath unleashed upon the unlucky soul. This is a comrade in gender, however; there is kinship here, somewhere, in the sweat of their brows, the corded power etched in the bloodline, waiting to bloom into war. The hooves lash out playfully; the male need for competition colors the sweat that stings in Reginald’s eyes. He wants to fight, now. He wants to act before the breath in his lung is taken away—to be replaced, instead, by the shame of his weakened blood, the curse of his birth, the yoke of his frailty. No child such as this will know of Reginald’s secrets; a vault of grey stone conceals all.

[WOW sorry for the wait! D: ]

”Watch for Circe.”



There's nothing here for free
Lost who I want to be
My serpent blood can strike so cold


Image Credits



RE: Summer skin. - Rikyn - 08-09-2014

Яikyn
Almost as suddenly as the race begins, it ends.

There is some warning as he calls back behind him towards me, the wind gnawing at his words and making it hard to catch them. I’m pretty sure he asked me if I can fight, which I’m not sure how to answer – I’m sure I can. Momma has taught me some things, but even she says I can’t learn anything too useful until I’m bigger, leaving me to play with the other kids to glean what I can from play. This colt is older than me, and probably can fight to some extent, having had more time to practice than me, and I open my mouth to answer only to silently curse myself as he comes to a halt and my little ears pin to my head in annoyance at his brashness and sudden change of games.

Really, its that I’m not entirely comfortable with this proposition now that its quite apparent that is what he asked me. The way the other colt’s eyes gleam even as he playfully swats the air in front of me sends warning signs into my core, but it’s a tempting lure, one that also sends throbs down into the crux of my being, a primal impulse I don’t understand and won’t for another few years. It sends a pulse through my heart and suddenly its throbbing inside my chest, sending more insistent whispers through my brain that tug at the cords of war bound fast to my psyche, etched into the blood of my forefathers since our long ago birth to this world.

"Yes," I answer, surprisingly resolute now that my fear has been quelled by a deep desire to oblige him in the scary game, whispering that maybe I misread the flicker of something repugnant in his eyes, that maybe it had been something in his thoughts or that I had done to offend him in the game we played previously.

The smell of sweat touches my nose and I snort instinctually, enjoying the way it burns against my muzzle, all fears of the strange child who is much larger than me cast aside as I stamp a hoof down in a return of the challenge, my body springing upwards and bounding a step forward on my splayed hind legs as I bat at the air at chest level were I to be standing.

I meet his eyes with the burning gold of my own, feeling the same burning desire rising up within myself that has lured him into the game to begin with.

@[Reginald]

in every heart a hole
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RE: Summer skin. - Reginald - 08-31-2014



The Prince is pleased by the smaller colt’s answer; he is no coward, surely. Satisfaction urges the boiling of coltish blood further, transmuting it from something hateful into a vein more appropriate for a child of his age. The game has begun—and Reginald has found himself, most unexpectedly, a fervent admirer of games.

The boy rears before him; Reginald answers with the lunge of his horn, slashing through the air, a lunge with little aim and even less desire to rent the bronze child’s skin; he simply tests the strain of his chest and neck, feels how the horn weighs down his lungs, if at all. He rears, and lunges again, a mighty obsidian spear coming down toward the smaller child. The auric cloud of cold once again permeates the nostrils of the Grey-Eyed colt; again the image of the frozen north enters his mind and eyes, the memory of the contemptuous little filly of glass and flowers adding an extra spark to the faux-passion of the mock fight. He has not decided if he hated her or not; he does not know if the northern reaches are detestable places.

“Where…are you from?” he huffs underneath the furious, playful venom of his horn, gleaming dully in the light, as pleased as its master for the exercise. “What…is your name?” It is only the second time he has asked for the identity of another child—and the last one was a colt as well, a boy with furious, blood-red eyes that Reginald had curiously taken a liking to. Here, now, he takes a liking as well to this boy of brass and bravery, he of thin limbs who rises to the call regardless; the darkling colt can appreciate that.

[;__; pls forgive me ]

”Watch for Circe.”



There's nothing here for free
Lost who I want to be
My serpent blood can strike so cold


Image Credits



RE: Summer skin. - Rikyn - 08-31-2014

Яikyn
It’s a game of a swords, which is more to my liking than an actual contest of physical strength because it means I’m less likely to come home riddled in bruises and marks (and thus incite momma’s disdain and anger) – and even though my horn is shorter and less developed than my opponents, I’m eager to see how my lessons fair against someone who may actually be trying rather than letting me have at it as momma did and who was also older than my sister and Erebos, proving more of a challenge.

With each swing of the boy’s horn I return a parry, the sound of our meeting soon lifting through the clearing in which we’ve found play with one another, and soon my partner’s voice rings out over the sound of our sword song. Its curious how he huffs already though our run was brief and the fight is less winding than some mock battles I’ve had with Erebos, but I dismiss it as most children do things they don’t understand and would feel awkward asking about.

Either way, he’s asked good questions about things that I’m rather proud of – myself, and my home. A smile traces against the thoughtful structure of my face as the combat commences, and between strikes I give him his answers. "Rikyn, of the Aurora Basin," my young voice chimes, "who are you?"

Taking a deep inhalation of his smell, the scent of wilderness and no where in particular. Kahlua had smelled like forests and the sea, and when we had gone by the Falls, there had been the smell of fresh water - and lots of it. This kid smelled straight up like the no man's lands, that blend of hundreds of bodies and wilderness and earth, and even at my young age it doesn't take long for me to wonder if he is one of the vagabonds mother talks about.

She'd said if I ever found one, I should make them my friend - at least if they were horned. I think its a good circumstance that he is such a thing and seems marginally safe to accompany myself with, not a secret I have to hide from mother. She's warned me not to play with the hornless, as she calls them, but I don't really see the sense in such blind dislike. Aithniel was a great person, and she had wings, and Kahlua the painted equine mare had let me play with her scorpion.

They couldn't all be as bad as momma said, could they?

in every heart a hole
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