This was long overdue. lying on the edge of a star |
I've only been meaning to post a thread for them for months but there's absolutely no rush to reply and if you're not up for it at all we can just nix it <333
made by the lovely tamme |
[PRIVATE] we are just breakable boys and girls
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I've only been meaning to post a thread for them for months but there's absolutely no rush to reply and if you're not up for it at all we can just nix it <333
06-14-2016, 08:25 AM
but somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams He was by the Edge.
The sun was setting, a fiery wash of red and orange streaking across the foaming backs of waves, and rushing in towards the limestone cliffs. It glinted off of the back of some marine creature arcing up to the surface, glittered in a spray of water as the animal fell back down into the sea, and cast long shadows behind the ethereal stallion. The dying light painted his face with warm, soft tones of peach, and hung like a halo around his long hair. But his eyes were as blue as they ever were, cast into darkness by his forelock, and in the shadow of himself the contrast gave his skin an icy tint. A few lonely gulls wheeled out over the water, their thin wings weaving slightly to keep them afloat in the air. Mauja watched them with a thoughtful expression. Not much moved. His sides rose and fell to the slow rhythm of his breathing. The breeze toyed with his silken mane and tail. And his eyes followed the gulls in their slow, purposeful hunt. Just ahead of him was a drop into oblivion. The tips of his front hooves nearly touched the air. A long, long time ago, a single, lonely gull had done something to his heart. It had cried in the darkness of the night, ghosted upon its thin, slender wings above the muted waves, and hunted beneath the starlight—and onto that gull he had poured his pain, his love, his care. It had been easier to pour it on a gull, than pour it on his daughter standing in the shallows. And after all these years, he could still see them both, perfect in his mind's eye, the sharp wash of moonlight glittering like halos around them. What had become of the gull he didn't know. But his daughter had met her fate on a foreign shore. Mauja closed his eyes. He had neglected her. All her life, he had neglected her, and his attempts of making up for it had always come up short. When he thought he did the right thing, it was wrong. When he thought things were fine, they weren't. The finality of the fact that he had run out of chances was a slow poison in his veins, and a weight in his heart. "Mér þykir leitt," he whispered to the the wind—the sunset—the world—to her. And a gull of fire burst from his chest and soared out far over the waves. [ I'm just sad I took forever in replying. D; @Alysanne ] Mauja
the white queen
06-18-2016, 05:41 AM
but somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams “Mauja?”
Who are you, come to haunt me? One black-rimmed ear turned back, listening, taking in the hesitant question embedded in his name. It was a familiar voice, but not one he knew by heart, and simply seeing the shadow at the edge of his vision wasn't enough. Locking up his heart again, Mauja turned his head. Ah. It was Alysanne. And it suddenly struck him that he had never paid much attention to her—of course, he knew her name, the basics of her appearance, her position as Naerys' mother and Moon Doctor of the herd... If he racked his brains he could come up with more, little tidbits, snippets of information, but in the end, it was all meaningless. Useless. Worthless, without having a sense of the soul it embodied. So it was in silence that he studied her, looking at her, from the point of her black muzzle to the white tip of her tail. She wore a glass headband, a little glass heart upon it, resting against a symmetrical star. And there—by the powerful wing joints, were those scars? Pink, hairless lines rent the white fur, but with her wings folded it was hard to tell their extent. The frown marring his face was brief, a shadow ghosting across his blue eyes—merely ripples upon the surface of a pond before the stillness claimed him again. Slowly, his gaze fell from the bright green of her eyes and to the moss-covered limestone upon which she stood. You have secrets, he thought, tail flicking once. There was definitely more to Alysanne than she gave away. “You know, if you were to fall I’d dive in after you.” He said nothing—at least, not immediately. Instead, he simply looked over the edge again, to the blue-and-iron ocean washing up against the fragile cliffs. It was a long fall. It was a long, uncertain fall, for who knew which rocks lay deceptively under the waves? How deep could a body plummet into the waters before being smashed upon them? But, he thought as he stared into the sea, if he jumped, she could glide, and where he would crash, she could just .. touch down. He let out a sigh. "Why?" he finally asked, voice soft. What was he to her? [ lmfao writing in the edgelord internet browser, "Microsoft Edge", everything is so fucked up @Alysanne SAVE ME ] Mauja
the white queen
06-24-2016, 11:35 AM
but somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams Curiosity was a powerful and damning thing. He had so easily written off Alysanne as a character simply on the sidelines in his life, a stable constant, impersonal, distant, not allowing her to become a part of his day-to-day life. And he didn't even know why anymore—aside from being a tad overbearing towards Naerys (then again, that was his default assumption of all parents who actually gave a fuck about their kids), had she ever done anything to warrant it..? She had just been there, ordinary, plain, not quite as exotic or intriguing as some others, and besides, when he had first returned to the Edge his thoughts had been full of another black-and-white mare.
And as far as overbearing mothers went, she hadn't really told him off for hanging around with Naerys, had she? Not like Ophelia, who had explicitly said that if he ever did anything untoward or harmful towards Roskuld she'd come after him. But now, here, with the wind blowing around him and the evening sun blazing in the sea, it was like someone removed a blindfold and handed him a sign saying "Alysanne is a real person too". And how many others in the herd had he sidelined in the same fashion? Was there a difference between simply not seeking them out, and just .. not finding them interesting enough to seek out? How much would he have missed Alysanne's presence, if she had just disappeared from the herd? Personally, not so much—but as a cornerstone of the herd, and the Doctors? Definitely. “Because I’m a doctor, because you are my daughter’s friend, because you’re a herd-mate...” It almost made him feel guilty, now that she had sought him out—whether it was on a whim because she had seen him, or something more deliberate—and spoke to him. (Now that he had seen her scars.) “Because that’s who I am.” He wished he could say something, anything, and finish it with that sentence: because that's who I am. But he couldn't. Because he didn't know who he was. So his gaze traveled from the gentle green of her eyes back to the sea and the sun, tail flicking once more. It always surprised him how straight the horizon was where the sky met the ocean. He wanted to say something—anything. To give her a reason not to jump after him ( Yet, he said nothing. The words were like gravel in his mouth, the truth a rock he couldn't spit out—I am immortal, Alysanne. She went on, without prompting. Her voice turned less content, but without knowing her, he hesitated to call it bitter. (If it had been him, it would've been.) And these were just like her scars, hidden, out of sight, only shown because they tumbled out of her mouth. "You have wings, yet you do not fly," was all he said for a moment, his voice carefully neutral, but it was there, in the small things—in the faint disappointment ghosting along the words, the sadness glinting in his eyes. He didn't even have wings, and here she was, wide feathered appendages and all, and she didn't use them. What the fuck. The world was a cruel place. “I’m the fool who cares enough about all she meets that she’d not see them come to any harm under her watch.” He almost began to suspect she was purging something—an old wound, hot and swollen with this touch of venom, the scab coming off when she finally began to scratch it. His ears moved, and then his head, until he was looking straight at her. Had she planned this, or had the words merely started to tumble out? "Alysanne," he said, softly, "you are not a fool." What else could he say? She was brave enough to risk herself to save another, brave enough to follow her call, but maybe—maybe not brave enough to give it her everything. He didn't know what she was questing for, or who gave it to her, but somewhere, it seemed compassion and morals locked her mind from thinking one step ahead. "What is your quest?" [ @Alysanne ] Mauja
the white queen
06-27-2016, 04:51 PM
@Mauja I got tired of the brown and now after dinner I'm gonna go change them all so they match :|
06-29-2016, 08:55 AM
but somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams “I feel more comfortable with my hooves on the ground.”
I have no choice but to have them on the ground. “I didn’t ask to have wings.” "I didn't ask to not have them," he merely replied, heart beating faster, eyes still on the distant horizon and the swelling sea. His voice was schooled to neutrality, a bit too cold, a bit too regretful, if she knew how to listen for it. And, if it wasn't because it was about flight and he was a stubborn ass, he wasn't sure he would've replied at all—the whole exchange bewildered him slightly. Why did she get so defensive? And why did he get so defensive? What did it matter, that her wings hadn't been her choice? Even if she had begged and pleaded with her creators to not have them, and still got them, he would've been jealous of the damn things! It wasn't about her, it wasn't about her choice to remain with all four hooves anchored on the ground—it was about him, and the old, old envy throbbing like an old wound. It was about what he wanted, and couldn't have. He was getting tangled up in it, again—'you have no right' screaming along the lining of his skull, a thousand apologies and explanations that he didn't care what she did with her wings, just that it was a kind of abstract sadness, an abstract longing, just.. something. He had known from the start that the world wasn't fair. Hells, he had shunned the Pegasus race when he had first come into contact with it—loathed them for the grotesque appendages sprouting from their powerful shoulders. And look at him now, standing forlorn upon the edge of a cliff, wishing for little more but to be able to fly. “Oh Mauja. How do you know I’m not a fool?” Mauja let out a soft, soft sigh. He wasn't sure if it was patronizing or just .. curious, but he felt very much like she had patted him on the head and said 'good boy, but no, that's an orange, not an eggplant', like, was he that blind? That stupid? Or was she simply mired in the same darkness which had claimed him? And better yet—how did he know? He didn't. So what had he achieved? He had somehow insulted her by voicing something he had never even dared breathe in the company of another before, and then he had apparently been all wrong about her, too. Way to go, Mauja. Way to go. That cliff, you know? If not because you'd feel guilty about her getting hurt when you're going to survive regardless, just walking off it is getting kind of tempting— "I don't," he replied, bluntly, thinking of the little sad smile that had ghosted along in her green eyes, thinking how it, and calling herself a fool, seemed so out of sorts with the Alysanne which had lived in the borderlands of his mind. "But caring for others does not make you a fool." And that, at least, was not something he was going to let her argue with. It didn't matter if they didn't want her to care, if they were strangers, enemies, friends—caring was.. never bad, not really, not in this world. He found his gaze wandering again, as he listened to her voice. She wanted to transfer the pain of others onto herself? But why? Wouldn't that just.. put her in pain? And what was she going to do, then? Be a martyr? Join herself at the hip with a healer? Or was this all some plan for some grandiose martyr's death? (He did a double take; did she have a death wish?) Was she hoping he'd hop off the edge so she could fall in after him, remembered as someone who died in the hopes of saving another? And just how guilty would he feel about that? But just as his thoughts ran away, so did time, and his thoughtful silence was broken by a question. "No," he replied absently. It hadn't stopped the Gods from fucking with him, though, but he chose not to think of that. "Why do you wish to be able to transfer pain onto yourself?" [ @Alysanne .. first time I typo'd her name as "Alyssane" and then I was like waitwatno that doesn't look right... and then I wrote Alysanen in the post... ] Mauja
the white queen
06-30-2016, 02:43 PM
@Mauja
07-06-2016, 08:08 AM
but somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams He hadn't expected to be dragged into the conversation—not in such a concrete, tangible way, at least. Her explanation seemed—
—flimsy. It was the only way he could describe it. Why take the pain away, and rely on someone else to heal them, when she could simply heal them instead? Pain was an uncomfortable truth of life, pain was a part of life, just as important as happiness, contentment, sorrow—he had had more than his fair share of pain and sorrow, and the scars to show for it. Twice he had been on the brink of death, and twice he had pulled through. And, wasn't the removal of pain as backwards as his immortality? He no longer had cause to fear death—he could throw himself into silly fights because, as far as he knew, even if they chopped him up to pieces and burned them, he'd still bloody exist in some backwards manner. It had stolen half of his need for caution, for care, removed any and all reasons to take care of himself—and without pain, what was left? If they could charge into battle, if they could stumble and get bruised, and just—be numbed? He opened his mouth, prepared to—argue? Was that rude of him, to suggest she put her soul to better uses? But he didn't get very far, not a single word passing his lips as she spoke again, green eyes solemn, on him. “I could have used it that day in the Deep Forest. Taken some of your pain onto myself to calm you, to make it easier while we were healing...” That Day. That second time he had almost died, that day when fire and shadow had merged into a single, destructive beast—a charred, molten creature, magma shining through tar-dark cracks as it charged at him. All of Tembovu's rage, all of Tembovu's sorrow, bundled up in a searing, hot body wreaking havoc on mortal flesh. His mouth closed, blue eyes troubled, as he stared out at sea again. He didn't remember much after the beast had hit him—just darkness, and silence, a paralyzing agony in which every trembling heartbeat had throbbed through his entire body. His owls remembered more, though. They remembered the silence he had been shocked into, before his lungs had started moving again. They remembered how Diego had given up and fallen onto Tembovu; how Irma had screamed with a pain not her own—and how, finally, Mauja had screamed, too. “But you seem to have healed just fine.” He felt weak. Sick. As if his knees would buckle any moment and send him pitching over the edge, falling, at last, into the embrace of the sea— "My rugged appearance was an affront to the Lady Moon," he replied, lightly, too lightly, eyes racing from one end of the horizon to the other, and back again, unseeing. How do you say to someone, that you would rather have kept your pain? How do you say to someone, that pain is as much a part of you as your legs are? How do you say to someone, that taking the pain away, takes the sincerity out of the action? Or was that just him being strange? "Pain..." he rumbled after a moment, before falling into thoughtful silence for a second or so. His gaze had stilled, fallen to the foaming waves and the drifting sheets of mist curling in the air. "We should not be afraid of pain. It teaches us things, things that can't be taught softly, gently, in ways only a sharp pebble or a bruise can—I am..." He hesitated, as the sadness in his pale eyes crystallized into the icy shield which hid his heart. "I am not sure I would have wanted you to take my pain that day," he finally said, quietly. "It became a part of me, part of my life, and—to have taken it, even just some of it, would have been a very private kind of theft. It hurt more than I have words for, but it was still my pain." The words I'm sorry danced temptingly upon his tongue. After a moment, he snorted. "But I guess not everyone is as mad as I am." [ @Alysanne ] Mauja
the white queen
07-08-2016, 02:41 PM
@Mauja
07-17-2016, 06:04 AM
but somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams "I guess I've lived here too long," he replied, crassly, absently in a way as his soul fled out to sea.
She didn't know, did she? And for once, it wasn't his fucking immortality he was thinking about, it was his past—did she know that he had lived here a long, long time ago? Ruled here, before Kahlua had re-instated him? Did she know anything of who he had been, what he had done? And with his thoughtless admission, would it set her thinking? Would she say, oh, but compared to me, you've not been here long at all, have you? And maybe he hadn't—his tenure had lasted less than a year. How long had he been here, now? How long since Kahlua had brought him home, a shaggy, mangy stray? Two years? (Two years—) Psyche had been dead for two years. Hototo had been dead for two years. His eyes stared stubbornly at the flaming horizon, a glassy darkness cradling the fragile depths; two years? It scared him. It always had. The passage of time, lives and blood slipping between your fingers even as you tried so bad to hold on—but you never could. Things would always change, and there he stood, two years later, frosted hooves digging into the limestone as he was—painfully—reminded of times gone by. Two years.. and what had he done? He had promised vengeance over Psyche's body, had found solace and forgiveness in the presence of Kahlua, had.. had been saddled with a stubborn, recalcitrant, ugly man beside him, had fought foreign gods, and lost his daughter. Given up his crown. Kahlua had disappeared. He hadn't seen Elding in forever. Tembovu had stabbed him, although he had asked for it. Where was Naerys? How was Glacia doing? What was he doing? With himself, with his life? Wasting away? His existence felt pointless. Meaningless. He did nothing; he just .. existed, and suddenly, it wasn't enough, and just like the time Erthë had found him at the Edge his weight shifted backwards, hindquarters tensing as they prepared to launch him into oblivion— (Anything but this.) If he "died" he couldn't start over, anyway. He was too well-known. So even jumping was pointless. Soft, black feathers brushed against his shoulder; he jumped, not forward, but sideways, head thrown high and eyes wide. Gods, he had forgotten about her somehow—well, not exactly forgotten, but in the face of all that darkness welling up from the bottom of his soul she had become .. not enough. Insignificant. Unable to stem the flow and pull him back to himself. And he hated himself for it. Just like he hated himself for never having been that curious about who she was. (But with all the names already carved into his sternum, and all the lives he already neglected, could he justify adding another?) "Evidence of my madness is hardly lacking," he said, weakly, but there was no way to save face. He had zoned out, he had spooked, and she had witnessed it all. He forced his eyes shut. There was no hiding anything anymore. Once, he had contained everything within his skin, within his bones, and magic had lain like a shield around his mind—but what was even the point of having a magical barrier around his head, when he couldn't even control his emotions anymore? And just like that, like a leaf thrown about in a rushing, bubbling brook, he felt the first flickering anger. Anger, at the world. Anger, at himself, and Sarazheha's gentle advice (honesty, brother) became a hard, jagged thing. "I guess what I wanted to ask was, why the ability to take pain onto yourself? Why not just be able to take pain away? Or outright heal?" And he hated himself for letting it spill out over her, she, who seemed to never want anything but to help him; what had she done to deserve his scrutiny, his digging words? Why couldn't he just shut up and let things be, instead of give voice to well-hidden judgment masked in patient curiosity? He had never been perfect. He had never been a saint. He had never been an angel. He had never been anything but a narrow-minded, closed-off, selfish moron. "What's in it for you?" he ended with, those too-sharp blue eyes sliding onto her as his hindquarters started to bunch again—because it was starting to look like the damned only way to save her from him. [ @Alysanne - d'aw, you got post #1,300 <3 ] Mauja
the white queen
07-20-2016, 08:24 AM
@Mauja <3
07-21-2016, 05:19 AM
but somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams His arteries were thrumming, fueled by the thunder of his heart as his mind danced some complex dance with elements of smoke and shadow; they wove together only to come apart as rationality clashed with chaos.
For that was what he was: chaos encased in cold, cold ice. And sometimes, the chaos started to chip away at the glacier surrounding his soul, little hairline cracks and fractures spreading as dark tendrils leaked out—like dragon-heads, snapping together with slavering jaws as the ice sought to drive it back within. Chaos whispered leap, leap, leap, high on the idea of such a rash act. Ice roared NO!, followed by the quiet, judgmental that's so stupid, are you that stupid, Mauja? Are -you-, Frozen Light and Frostheart and Ice King and all things cold, that stupid? Would you let your emotions rule -you-? But chaos was all these fledgling emotions bundled up in a fragile, newly hatched bird bundle, and when it shrieked, who knew what it wanted? Because he didn't know himself— And that was why he carried a slightly irregular, black fresh scar at the point of his chest, where love had mingled with pain and both been overridden by loyalty until he had been too afraid, in too much pain, to allow himself to keep hiding behind the guise of confusion. Chaos made his eyes wilder than they should've been; widened, a faint rim of white cradling the darker rim of his iris. Chaos made him say things that were unkind in their intent, even as it had him begging to leap from the cliff's edge; ice kept him where he was, but couldn't still his tongue, not entirely. His dark nostrils widened, dragging in lungful after lungful of warm late spring air, trying to keep it down long enough to soothe his shrieking nerves. He couldn't put his hoof on what it was, not really, though it was as uncomfortable as a snake beneath his own skin—this blindness towards the self. Because wasn't that the first thing he had thought? Martyr, helper, fool— If she was a fool, she was not a fool for loving, but for not opening her eyes, and her mind, wide enough to see herself. He couldn't even soothe her right now, couldn't explain that it wasn't her fault, that it was okay, that it was just the memories bubbling up like black tar and his skin feeling like fiery ants tapdanced on him— All he could do, he guessed, was stand there, and listen. Not jump off the edge, because wouldn't that give her about an additional fifty wrong conclusions? Not to mention she'd probably not trust him when he said he'd be fine, and jump in after him anyway, and she couldn't fly, and—ugh. So the least he could do was not risk her life in the process of flirting with his own savage bent for adrenaline. Black-rimmed ears were focused in her direction, his gaze, somehow too intense, resting on hers. Green. Usually warm green, always expressive, for throughout the course of this meeting he had realized that she showed more of her feelings in them than she did with the rest of her face (—her mouth), and now, they were sad. His gut tightened in guilt. It was his fault, wasn't it? For pressing, and as her feeble attempts at explaining to him what she couldn't even explain to herself registered in his mind he realized that while he should shut up and let her live her life as she pleased, he knew that he wouldn't be able to shake this off. It'd haunt him, it'd take up his time, his mind would twist and turn until he'd either run himself ragged on it, or he caved in and found her again and yelled 'why?!' at her again. Besides, he knew what it was like to be blind to yourself—and to remain blind. To know that there was something there, in the back of your mind, niggling at you and asking you to open your eyes but at the same time you kept telling yourself they weren't closed, that you saw clearly, that what you did was right. "But there is something for you in it," he said, more quietly than he thought he was capable of; his haunches were still tensed up and the wildness hadn't quite gone out of him, but his pulse had quieted. "And you just said it yourself. 'I can carry that burden for anyone that needs me to.'" But what if you're wrong? his mind kept screeching at him, telling him that it was none of his fucking business, he didn't even know Alysanne, did he? So who was he to stand here and pretend he was smart and insightful and had a single damn clue to what she wanted and needed, whether she knew it or not? (It was just his backwards way of showing care.) "It will let you suffer in someone else's stead," he went on, sadly, the turmoil of his dark core settling again as his eyes relaxed. He fell silent, then, before he turned his head, and his gaze returned to the darkening waves of the sea. He was afraid the sympathy he felt would come out as pity (it was dangerously close to it), and that it would show in his face. [ @Alysanne ] Mauja
the white queen
07-22-2016, 02:31 PM
08-16-2016, 02:58 PM
but somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams Truth: sledgehammer, or stiletto?
He couldn't help but feel like a small, fine knife, sliding in between ribs and going, mercilessly, straight for the heart—cold, surgical precision. If he erred on his way, it was because her heart beat, and her body shuddered with it, that foolish, mortal life. That precious, sacred thing; Mauja's pale eyes blinked, slowly. At some point, truth had become everything to him. Truth, and clarity; honesty. To dispel every smoke curtain in the world, to tear every blindfold from the heads of others, and of himself. To open eyes, and keep them open. To batter himself against the established order until hypocrisy, corruption, and evil had been vanquished. And in that, there was bitterness—when you took everything else away, life itself became meaningless, barren, so tightly controlled by a prohibition to do others harm that nothing could be done because the ripples always spread so far and something would get rocked by it. It was a worthless, sterile existence, and yet it was the path his bloodied hooves stood upon as he failed himself and her and kept poking, pressing, prodding, arrogant and self-righteous in his perception that he was right. That he knew the truth. That he saw to the core of someone he didn't know. That he heard all the flaws of her logic as she shied from the obvious, painful truth: that we aren't as great as we think. And that included him, too, perched on the white-bleeding limestone cliff and knowing that truth only existed because we believed in it. (And, that he had no right to be doing this to her.) And still, the hesitant confession spilling from dark lips was a touch away from the whole of it, falling just shy of the heart of the matter; eyes half-open, but going the right away, and as he held up his warped mirror for her to see herself his heart broke. For her. Because she had to endure this—endure him, and the poison-coated stiletto he was sinking into her flesh. “I just want to help.” Why had she even come tonight? She had been looking for him— And look at them now, listen to her now, and his eyes closed, heart stuttering out the truth but it didn't make it past his lips. Alysanne, always so bright, so exuberant, broken; he wanted to blame himself. For surely, this was his fault? There had been no need to call this to her attention.. unless she, like he, wanted to live an honest life with her eyes truly open. He didn't know. Couldn't know. “I’m sorry, I just…” I'm the one who should be saying sorry, he thought, opening his eyes to look at her again. She took a step back. She looked like she wanted to run. From him? From herself? From what he was forcing her to listen to, to think about? "Alysanne..." He said her name, gently, a mere breath; a plea, asking her to stay, if but for a moment longer. His pulse had gone up again, but this time, there was no anger in it. "You want to be loved." And his sad, blue eyes focused upon her, shimmering with soft, soft light. "Needed," he added after a breath's pause, still feeling sad—for her, for having to endure this, for thinking that he didn't want her around, for.. for.. well, it wasn't like he had done a good job of convincing her otherwise..? "And there is nothing wrong with that," he concluded, wondering if he wasn't quite done tormenting her yet; if she ran... He would not give chase. Not now. [ @Alysanne ] Mauja
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