Two things were happening with you that was breaking my heart.

First, you were frustrated and you wouldn’t tell me why. You didn’t even know it as frustration, either; you just knew you had an urge you couldn’t fulfill, an itch you had trouble scratching, and even though I showered you with question after question you refused to give me a full answer. Do you want to go back down south? Silence. Is there something you wanna eat? Silence. I knew in my breast that you hated me for returning to a place that only served to get colder and cause you to huddle in my mane that much closer—but you never said, and you always wanted me to come here because you knew what it did to me, to go up north. I wondered if you started blaming me for it; the thought was more painful than I’ll ever admit.

And another thing. You were worried too, which was a hell of a lot more alarming.

Worried about me.

“It’s cool, I’m cool, I’m fine,” I said breathlessly, rolling to my feet once more, despite the protest of an aching, exhausted body. “No, I’ll be fine, I got this.” My voice was vague, unfocused—throaty, too, probably with all the things that had come out of my mouth during the—

--the—

….well, anyway. It was fine. I was fine. I was gonna be cool.

“I’m fine, it’s cool, I’ll be cool--“ I kept stammering, and I could almost see your worry rise behind my eyes, crescendoing into something tragic and frightened, “Chico, chill,” I said, still with that awful vagueness, “It’s fine, I just won’t sleep. S’probably something I ate or whatever.”

I heard your silent agreement—a mental head-nod. Yes, it could be something I had eaten; you knew full well I hadn’t eaten in a few days.

And now I wasn’t sleeping. Now I was haunting the north--literally haunting, because I was too numb to feel myself, to feel like something blood-filled and breathing. Now I was stalking the curved, glazed, icy walls of a cavern, pacing back and forth to walk off the throbbing heart—trying to erase the memory of red eyes cackling at me, screeching gleefully, shouting, shouting, you need to learn your fucking place in this world—

“….’m fine,” my voice slipped, suddenly fragile—even as the echo of hooves rattled further down the arch.

I froze; I held my breath. Someone was here.From the Basin? Was I ready?

….ready for what?


@[Zünden]
"talk"

I saw who it was—someone completely unfamiliar, too small and young to be any sort of danger to me. A filly. But even that knowledge didn’t really assure me; in fact, I couldn’t do anything to release the tension in my body even if I wanted to. It felt like I was knotted up and stuck, my limbs splayed slightly underneath me, my breath short and fast like the beating of my heart. For all intents and purposes, it might as well have been a cougar staring me down with the corner of a cave flat across my backside. Trapped. There was a filly here and I woulda bet all my pocket change in that moment that it was me.

*"Yo, I like your hair."*

It was so far removed from what I was expecting (what was I expecting?) that it didn’t even register as a compliment. Well, actually, the words themselves didn’t register at all; if voices could be blurry then this girl’s voice was certainly doing it, smudging on my mind in distorted tones and mixes that stretched and compressed and twisted her words into things incomprehensible. It didn’t help that your fear for me spiked dramatically when you felt I couldn’t understand her words—guess it was the heat of rushing blood, or something. A fever (but why was I feverish? How was I sick? I never get sick--)

There was only one sentence she spoke that really glued my attention to her, snapping my eyes onto her face with greedy suspicion: You look like the Time God. My already furious heart quickened even further and there was a sprk! from the tip of my horn—the tiniest squirt of lightning from me. A knee-jerk reaction, I guess, as my own panic started to rise (why was I panicking?). The last vestiges of the nightmare’s darkness still hadn’t really left me and (Are you happy to hear now--) it was starting to do strange shit (--that even though your mother was raped--) to my eyes and now my ears, too, ringing with (--by a god--) an echo that couldn’t bounce off the ice of the cavern even if it wanted to. Because it didn’t exist.

I backed away from the girl, even though she was still speaking and giving her name and doing polite things that I was incapable of doing (--you're awful--). She asked me if I was alright and it was an automatic thing that got my tongue moving mechanically, without even thinking. “’M fine,” I said, with the same vagueness that I had spoke to you earlier, “I’m cool, I’ll be cool, I’m—“ But then I caught myself; I stopped backing away, my hooves digging into the snow beneath me, and it was like my mind was trying to catch up with the impulse of my body. What was I doing? Why was my heart beating so fast?

“J-just stay away from me,” I stammered, and even that somehow turned into a growl from my throat; I turned from the girl and tried walking away, shoving myself from her presence, because of course she was a Basiner and even though I’d never ever seen her before in my life, she was a thing I wasn’t ready to face just yet.



@[Zünden]--Posted because time and muse! If you'd rather me wait for Adelric to post, I can always delete!
"talk"

It was cold—it was the north--but I was sweating anyway. Little trickles of it started beading behind my ears, and you felt my head getting so uncomfortably warm and I would’ve felt your little feet patter against my neck if I still had my senses in check. But I didn’t. Everything was warping out of my reach. The world was unraveling and my sense of balance and everything else was crumbling—softly, slowly, but it was crumbling still and I didn’t have the glue on me to paste it all back in place.

I tried anyway. I tried shoving it all together again, a sagging sandcastle I was trying to save—and you know how that goes. The castle stays standing, but the form is gone and there are still so many little cracks running along the foundation and the edges ‘n shit and honestly it doesn’t even look like a castle at all anymore. It just this pile of sand you shoved together hoping it’d fool some kid into thinking it was still super awesome before the collapse.

I didn’t know what happened; the entire situation was wrenched out of my grasp and my understanding of it was completely shot. I remember I was trying to get the hell away from her—a Basiner, a filly, a chick who liked my hair—but she wasn’t having any of that, I dunno, she needed me for something or thought I was too cool to lose, but either way she wouldn’t stop riding my ass.

That’s when things got weird. I turned to her, whipping my ass around in the snow to face her and tell her ass to back the fuck up--but when I found her behind me she was already on the ground.

I gaped, my jaw working like a fish out of water. I didn’t know how she ended up there—if something attacked her, if I attacked her faster than I realized. I tried to remember--did I do that? I racked my brains trying to figure out how I could’ve gotten her face-first and ass-flat on the ice like that, and it scared me that I couldn’t even bring up the image of a hoof flailing or my horn swinging so fast like that.

Was I really that dangerous?

And—oh, look, now she was yelling at me. Which cemented the idea that it was my fault that she was on the ground like that.

She was shouting at me, daring me to do--something, but all I could do was stare down at her, dumb and confused, terrified to move because of what might happen. I mean—shit, I had already tried to leave, hadn’t I? And before I could register it she was on the ground already, my whole body deadly and uncontrollable, apparently.

I didn’t let myself move; I stood stock-still in the snow, just staring down at this filly, knowing deep in my breast that every move I made was dangerous and wild.




@[Zünden]--Couldn't quite get her to attack in this post :/ maybe if Zunden made the first move?
"talk"

It’s a hard place to back to. Like…when you don’t even know what’s happening yourself, it all kinda sits funny in your head, and it’s too jilted and angled and crooked to really look at straight. And I’m talking about all the pieces of it; the emotions I felt, the ideas I had, the perception I had of that chick on the ground, getting madder and madder at me for standing there and looking down on her—all of it’s jumbled and every time I look back on it, the meaning behind my memories slips through my clutches and I’m stuck grabbing in thin air.

I guess…I don’t even know. There was this plot cooking in my head in that moment, that Ma had warned the citizens against me—or maybe the citizens themselves had decided to pin themselves against me for making their leader cry (still fucked me up, thinking about Ma as any kind of leader that didn’t stand for the Foothills). Or maybe it was just the fact that I was so destructive and I was just flinging this poor girl everywhere it seemed and I had no control over it—so obviously she was gonna fight back and she was launching herself at me to finally put the monster down.

Somewhere along those lines my mind screamed “fuck it” and I guess that was the sound of it snapping in two. Instinct would have to take over reservation eventually and I ain’t really all that reserved in the first place—I guess what I’m trying to say is that, when you boil away all the trimmings and the politics behind it, there was someone attacking me and I didn’t know who swung the first punch but my nerves weren’t about to let me take that shit lying down.

The lightning was out of me before I could change my mind; it was a white-hot burst out of me, right for the chick charging with her horn pointed at me, and maybe I screamed something (“Stay away from me!!”), I dunno, like I said it’s all a blur at this point. Nothing but the mechanics of survival kicking in, where my head and my heart was failing me.

After that I…well. I don’t really know what happened. You were clinging to my skull and I guess my actions were freaking you out super hard or whatever, but I don’t remember actually leaving the scene. You told me later I zapped the poor kid and then high-tailed it out of here—subconsciously getting the fuck out of the dodge before the mob descended, I guess. The next thing I remember was waking up somewhere damp much, much more south than where I had been, and it was basically you who remembered that entire episode.

Like...whatever. Maybe I’ll apologize to that girl one day. (For what, I’m still not sure).





@Zünden -- I hope this works! Sorry for the wait!
"talk"