the Rift


[PRIVATE] we were always meant to be shadow and sin

Nymeria Posts: 182
Outcast atk: 5.5 | def: 8.5 | dam: 6.0
Mare :: Equine :: 16.2hh :: 3 years HP: 69.5 | Buff: NOVICE
Lilómiel :: Plain Black Dragon :: Fire Breath Wanderer
#1
And I've grown familiar
With villains that live in my head

The moon was bloated and yellow, a degenerating king surrounded by rich black velvet and white-faced squires.

No. The moon was a queen, not a king. She was full and gold, the crowning glory of the nightly court; she watched as guardian and sentinel, her ebullient light washing the world in silver and gray. In her arms she cradled the thieves and the wicked, the devout and the faithful. All were safe beneath her gaze. These were blasphemous thoughts—thoughts that did not belong here in the Falls, where flowers wilted and trees shed their leaves come autumn. Here was very far away from the sky's dark embrace, and the wind was converted into a mere whisper by the blunt force of the trees. Nymeria wanted to apologize to that far-off goddess, to ask to be forgiven—but that goddess did not watch her. That goddess probably did not know she existed.

Lilómiel twisted his claws tighter into the artfully tangled curls of her mane, chiding her and her blasphemous thoughts. Moon watch, he promised to Nym. The worst part was that he honestly believed that a goddess would waste a moment to look upon the obsolete and the lost.  

She may watch, but she doesn't speak, the grullo said in turn, with a twitch of her ear and an annoyed whisk of her tail across sooty flanks.

Their thoughts momentarily entwine, a broad and loose exchange of emotion. It settles both their unrest; Nymeria bends at the knee, lowering her weight to the ground. Her back pressed up against a tree trunk, Lilómiel cradled along the dip of her spine, she lays and watches the stars. As always, she is entranced by their celestial swirl across the sky, unpredictable and hypnotic; but she does not feel the same kinship to those cold and distant bodies as she does with the falls booming in the distance, or the ebb and flow of the sea. In some way, she wishes that her magic would not be so earth like in nature... but she would not trade away her given gifts for anything in the world.

Nymeria wondered why she wasn't able to innately see the moon as a symbol of the Moon Goddess. When she looked at it, fat and gold—it looked to be a parasite, swollen with ill-given blood. And then, she closed her eyes, concentrated, opened them again: and it was a crown again, a smile, a promise.

It's an illusion.

It was all an illusion—all she had to do was give it the right context...

image credits


Yes I lied, don't think about you all the time
All my switchblade words ain't aim to cut your sweet delusions


Knox Posts: 262
Outcast atk: 4 | def: 7.5 | dam: 6.5
Stallion :: Equine :: 17hh :: 7 Years [Tallsun] HP: 67.5 | Buff: NOVICE
Jen
#2



 Knox
          We didn't know we knew you 'til we lost you
</style>



Nothing is the same anymore, now that Manhattan is gone. Knox wanders alone, thinking of how he must return to his family but knowing that just looking at them will turn his heart inside out. To see them there, son and lover, mate, Aylin without his companion sitting between them is too much pain.

He knows that he will need to overcome this. He understands that it is his duty as a father, as someone who has tried for so long to guide Aylin to safety and make up for the hurt he has caused her. But the option does not lie there before him, and so he simply walks alone.

Knox does not care about the moon. He does not think about she who hangs it like an ornament of the heavens, he does not think of her once strong loyalty to her. Those were the killing days, the days of the hunt. Now he has lost all power and will--now he has lost his most trusted, kindest weapon. This time, her mortality has betrayed him and turned the handle of the knife away from its bearer.

Slowly, he feels the pain of its sucking wound in his chest.

Bridleless, unbonded, and without tethers he moves through the night. He has been shirking his duties. He doesn't care about any of them. And he doesn't pay attention, isn't used to filling in the gaps of his senses that Manhattan once filled. He is susceptible, no longer the master of stealth that he once was. He doesn't see the mare, doesn't see anything as he wanders and toys with the magic of blindness. He doesn't care to find her.

How can he care when half of his heart has died?

Credit


@Nymeria sorry for the wait

Nymeria Posts: 182
Outcast atk: 5.5 | def: 8.5 | dam: 6.0
Mare :: Equine :: 16.2hh :: 3 years HP: 69.5 | Buff: NOVICE
Lilómiel :: Plain Black Dragon :: Fire Breath Wanderer
#3
And I've grown familiar
With villains that live in my head

It is always interesting, when someone doesn't see you. The stallion, at least, didn't appear to see her, although admittedly looks could be deceiving—no, he seemed genuinely far-off, drifting like a lost ship on the sea. A pale and pearlescent white shed soft light upon his dark and shapely head, carving out a hard jaw and a lonely eye. She, in turn, remained overtly interested, her ears pricked forward in idle interest, but her eyes not so casual. There was a sharp, predatory gleam to her red, reminiscent of ravens or salesmen or sharks—hunters and scavengers all, on a warpath for power.

Lilómiel chirruped something to her in a loosely-formed question, but she did not dignify his childish queries with an answer. Instead, she remained attentive to the stallion's passing, listening, watching, and waiting. She supposed the stallion was her herdmate, and yet that hadn't seemed to amount for much (at least, not yet.) Herdmate was hardly an adequate descriptor for a potential consort, or rival; it didn't have enough... information backing it, particularly with those tight straps and gleaming buckles strapped to his face. There were too many questions, as always, questions that rarely had easy answers, and rarer still were even answered in the first place.

Despite the stranger's difference, he looked very much like her, or her brother.
A warning bell went off in the back of her head, chiming and chiming and chiming, but at this point, she wasn't sure if it was instinct or just Lilómiel getting off on her stewing emotions.

Whatever the case, she wouldn't have this minor curiosity turn into another unsolved riddle. The lost stallion, for all the world alone in the darkness and the faded moonlight, was solvable and usable like anything else: and she would discover his weakness, and his strengths, and pit it against him, because that was what she did and would always do. Once she found out of his rank—if she did—she would only be more greedy to learn his secrets, to learn what was in his pockets.

When she moved from the trees to more trees, she did not soften her footsteps, but let them snap out sharp and clear, a warning shot as much as anything else.

"Who are you?" She said, her voice beseeching and wheedling, friendly and on the very edge of rambunctious.

image credits


OOC: All of Knox's magics can be used on Nymeria without asking first! Apologies for the short post, I'm sure it'll get longer as the thread progresses.


Yes I lied, don't think about you all the time
All my switchblade words ain't aim to cut your sweet delusions


Knox Posts: 262
Outcast atk: 4 | def: 7.5 | dam: 6.5
Stallion :: Equine :: 17hh :: 7 Years [Tallsun] HP: 67.5 | Buff: NOVICE
Jen
#4



 Knox
          We didn't know we knew you 'til we lost you
</style>



The voice that comes from behind him is irritating in every way. Knox is too tired to entertain it, just as he was unable to maintain patience for the half-crow that begged him before. Let her be of this rank. Let any at the meeting that show interest in his shadow, be of this rank. Let them all be goddamned spies and thieves!

Knox no longer cares. It is his heart that hurts, it is his body that shudders every time he thinks of all he has lost. With Manhattan gone he is nothing, and yet so many seek him, so many knock upon his door and ask: who are you?

The dark stallion snorts, his body turning deftly to face just one of many more fools who has found him. "So many ask, and so few have been given an answer. When will they learn?" he speaks in part to himself, his voice tired and mournful. Manhattan...

"It doesn't matter who I am. Are you seeking someone, something? State your name and your purpose, I'll direct you to someone who can help." A grunt comes with the words, his tangled tail swishes, and he hears his ancestors murmur quietly in the back of his mind.

They all look for something, a quiet voice speaks in his head. His ears perk and flatten, his breath catches. He wants to believe it is her. He wants to think that somehow she has returned, that she crosses even the borders of the living and dead to find him.

But she can't. No one can reach Knox, not anymore. His father, locked in that addled brain, has tried and tried. His grandfather, his granduncle, so many others who have worn the bridle that Knox has so carelessly tossed aside, has so foolishly given to his son who will do nothing with it. That quiet son, that dumb son. Does Milo know anything, Knox wonders. Does Milo live or breathe or eat or simply follow him, haunt him like a shadow, a reminder of failure?

The hunter can't bear to think of it, can't bear to think of anything. His cold blue eyes stare, he waits for the mare's reply. "Should you be unwilling to provide even that information," Knox adds then, "then we're done here. I'll request you leave me be."


Credit


@Nymeria

Time the Dice Queen Posts: 144
OOC Account atk: 50 | def: 50 | dam: 50
Mare :: Other :: 5'7 :: 22 HP: 5050 | Buff: DROPKICK
Time
#5
unarchived per request

Nymeria Posts: 182
Outcast atk: 5.5 | def: 8.5 | dam: 6.0
Mare :: Equine :: 16.2hh :: 3 years HP: 69.5 | Buff: NOVICE
Lilómiel :: Plain Black Dragon :: Fire Breath Wanderer
#6
And I've grown familiar
With villains that live in my head

The stallion snorts.

(How rude.)

When he speaks, his voice is dulled by mourning, blunted by some old tragedy—she wonders what it is, if he’d be in a mood to divulge (wouldn’t that be divine?)—but it’s not merely his tone that sets her itching but his words, words not really meant for her. At least, she didn’t think those murmurs were for her; and normally her thoughts were right. Why would she question herself now? No—she’d trust her gut. And so instead of letting her eyebrows arch upwards or her face to startle into an expression of disgust, she lets a coy smile roll over her lips, just for him.

I wonder if he’s a madman. His words didn’t sound entirely sane.

Then he slips on, the words falling fast and flat and dismal and more coherent. Nymeria blinks, lashes posing together, and her smile stretches ever so gently wider. She marvels at him—admires him—with his monotone, his tangled mane, his knotted tail, the rasp to his voice; although perhaps his dishevelment was simply for show. It would be a fair conclusion to say he seemed irritated by her company (although why he’d be she didn’t understand.)

“I—” she begins, but then the stallion cuts her off with another bitter sentence, his eyes reaching for hers. His were cold and hard eyes (should she say they were like ‘chips of ice’, or was that too cliché?), blue like a winter sea. Nymeria meets his gaze gladly—confrontationally—in scarlet, wondering if he’d missed the bones marked on her cheeks in his non-reality. (Wondering if he just didn’t care about her appearance which so often spooked others.)

“I was going to say,” she said with a hint of acerbity, “that I’m looking for a stallion named Knox. He’s supposed to give assignments to spies. And I’m Nymeria, if you’d given me the chance to introduce myself.” The grullo lifted her head—and flashed him a warm smile, sanding off the edges of her voice. For all his bluster, she couldn’t help but be intrigued.

That’s a dangerous way of thinking, Lilómiel told her.

I know.

image credits


Yes I lied, don't think about you all the time
All my switchblade words ain't aim to cut your sweet delusions


Knox Posts: 262
Outcast atk: 4 | def: 7.5 | dam: 6.5
Stallion :: Equine :: 17hh :: 7 Years [Tallsun] HP: 67.5 | Buff: NOVICE
Jen
#7



 Knox
          We didn't know we knew you 'til we lost you
</style>



His eyes are indeed quite cold. Maybe not even chips of ice, maybe not even the sea, but they are undeniably cold. They burn with a ferocity of uncaring, the sort of passion that only the truly apathetic, the truly brokenhearted, can imagine.

Knox can't help notice the shifts of her tone, her body, her manners. Is she nervous, upset by the fact that he's no time for her to speak? He'll cut her off as much as he likes; he doesn't care who she is, and looking like she does he's inclined to think she's more likely just gotten by on her looks her whole life.

Not surprising, then, that she sees so preoccupied with his. It isn't as if Knox hasn't seen that look before, that sort of vapid curiosity a mare gets overtaken with when she tries to imagine him ravishing them and breaking their heart in some way or another.

And maybe he's projecting, maybe it's a hint of vanity creeping in, but he's still right in the end in thinking that none of them really understand who he is. So let them think him mad or a rough gentleman, a bad-boy or a papa, he'll keep living as he has for so long and tell them nothing more.

When she admits that it is him that she is looking for, the hunter doesn't even wait for her to finish before throwing up his head with a raucous serious of coughing neighs--something like haunted laughter.

"You're looking for that coot? Ha! I'll tell you this, if you're so readily giving me your name, Nymeria, then chances are he won't give you the time of day," Knox says with a wicked grin.

{Huric:} Are you having fun, Knox?

The hunter's tail lashes behind him. He does not hear his ancestors now. It hasn't occurred to him that this is perhaps the first time he has really laughed or smiled since Manhattan died. "Even I haven't met this herd's sleuth; he seems to only keep the company of the few he considers above him," the hunter adds with a shrug and a lowering of his head. He looks into Nymeria's eyes--deeply.

{Janos:} What an idiot.

"But he does have his network," the dark one goes on as he crafts his lies, "I've met the stag Zekiah before, he frequently keeps company with the sleuth. I can pass along the message that you'll be waiting for him here in, oh, say two season's time?"

{Anaan:} He's all alone.

"I'd come back with some more useful information than your name," Knox says as he turns to leave, for this mare truly is not worth his time, or even that of the identity he's taken on. "I hear he's not easily impressed," he calls back with a snort, just before disappearing into the shadows.

{Anaan:} Don't you two, my boys, pity him at all?


Credit


@Nymeria sorry for the wait, again. I said two seasons because this thread was in Orangemoon, if I'm correct, which makes two seasons in Birdsong. If you make a thread I will have a reply up (much quicker this time, I swear) and Knox will officially grant her the rank, assuming all goes well.


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