the Rift


[PRIVATE] the stars will be your eyes [birth]

Mordecai Posts: 77
Aurora Basin Mare atk: 5.5 | def: 9 | dam: 5
Mare :: Hybrid :: 16.1 :: 3 years HP: 62.5 | Buff: NOVICE
ali
#1



Upon the realization that she was pregnant, carrying the child of Rikyn, Mordecai had made herself scarce. Her first reaction was anger at him for getting her pregnant. At herself for allowing it. At everyone for simply being alive and breathing the same air she breathed while she grew heavier and fatter. 

Then it was fear, rooted so deeply in her mind that she couldn't shake it. Her own birth had not been a time of joy and celebration. It had been miserable, agonizing, terrifying, and had it not been for her father's interference the day of her birth would have also been the day of her death. 

The winged mare was far from being like her birth-mother, but while she hadn't nurtured the idea of murdering her child when it was born, neither had she thought that she actually wanted it. What would she do with it? How would she care for it? What if she didn't like it? What if it didn't like her? What if it looked and acted like Rikyn?

Weeks dragged slowly by and she fretted in solitude over the what ifs that came with children. She worried over protecting it, and teaching it, and if she had the capacity to love it as fiercely as her adoptive mother had loved both her and the children she birthed...

But now as she stood, slick with sweat and exhausted from the strain of childbirth, looking down at the small dark foal on the snowy ground she felt ... something. Some motherly love, the strong, undeniable desire to protect this small babe from the world and everyone who would seek to harm her. Mine. The word whispered fiercely in her mind, as she gazed down at the child. This is mine. If anyone tries to hurt her I'll end them.

Her muzzle brushed along her daughter's body, feather-light but encouraging her to stand and greet the world.

"." 


MORDECAI

when the last light warms the rocks and the rattlesnakes unfold
mountain cats will come along to drag away your bones


@Arleigh @Rikyn
the emptiness that we confess in the dimmest hour of day
in Automatown they make a sound like the low sad moan of prey

Arleigh Posts: 4
Outcast
Filly :: Tribrid :: 16.3, wfg :: newborn
Reli
#2
arleigh
She tumbles into the world in a graceless heap of long legs and damp fur, nostrils sputtering and spitting fluids as her little lungs struggle to pull oxygen in through wet airways. She gasps, coughing and grunting against the fragility of her new body. Long dark lashes brush against her cheeks, squinting against the hazy light of this dying world. It is a place she will only hear stories about—stories of the glory days, when the land was fertile and full of life, and its gods were as beautiful as they were ravenous.

Now, however, she is left to only see the final days of darkness and dissolution.

Mercifully swathed in a cocoon of ignorance, the black babe can understand nothing of the world’s death as she surges into her first few moments of life. Paper-thin nostrils quiver as she breathes, the downy fur of her body trembling as the sting of cold air and early snow awakens her fledgling senses, pupils retracting against the light (however dim) to reveal the stark paleness of a murderer’s grandmother’s eyes.

Warmth.
Suddenly she feels the warmth of someone else against the bony curves of her newborn figure—mother, her instincts tell her, the woman’s breath and smell somehow familiar. The filly turns her head, huffing a breathy, warbling squeal as her eyes find her mother’s face, trying to make sense of the lines and planes of her features. There is an innate sense of love that is roused within the girl’s young breast—a stirring of something she cannot understand in this moment, but something that she knows is natural and good.

Shifting her weight and awkwardly flapping her small, downy wings, she tries to move closer, emboldened by her mother’s encouragement to stand. She does not know that when she stretches her legs out in front of her, that her pointed toes are not normal, or that the uncomfortable throbbing in her tendons shouldn’t be there. Only when she attempts to roll her weight upward—when the weight of her little body tries to flatten her hooves and pull and tear at the tendons—does the babe realize that something is terribly, terribly wrong.

Pain—!
She doesn’t know what it is, but something awful and burning suddenly fires through her front legs. Buckling over and tumbling back into the snow, the filly screams. It hurts! The invisible flames reach from her tendons and seethe along her spine, licking against every nerve in her young body with a burning and harrowing discomfort. It is then that something else, in her agony, extends from her conscious—something thrown inadvertently and haphazardly from her aching soul.

Magic.

Instinctively she reaches for her mother, with both her mind and body, pale eyes wide with fear and confusion, lips trembling, as the pain burns and her magic flares.

“Speech.”
but I will hold on hope, and I won’t let you choke
on the noose around your neck

image credits
please tag Arleigh in all replies!
magic & force are permitted.

Rikyn the Puppeteer Posts: 549
Aurora Basin Lord atk: 7.5 | def: 11.5 | dam: 4.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 16.3 :: 4 HP: 70 | Buff: SWIFT
Duir :: Royal Cerndyr :: Earth Spirit Bunnie
#3


ЯIKYN


Duir had noticed all the things that I had not.

Mordecai had not been absent at the festival because she disliked fun and celebrations; she had been disguising herself with scarcity. If I’d seen her, I’d have known. If Duir had any ounce of respect for the man I would like to be, rather than just disdain for who I actively am, he may also have told me of the roundness he’d noted in her sides, and how it seemed to grow broader the less and less often she was to be seen in the shade of the Basin’s pine forests.

The season, perhaps, had led me to believe that our union could not possibly have led to this outcome, and, so, when I follow my companion down the dead thistle lined game trails, his mind eagerly gesturing and nagging at mine to keep up and come along, I’m not sure what to expect. Per usual, I have my feelings mostly sealed up here, because I have memories in meadow that hurt, more than they appeal to me, anymore. It’s a good thing, too.

At first, I think it’s a doe and her late fawn, which you sometimes come across out here. The barely perceivable, trampled down ring is the same, and the smell is definitely that of birth, but, as we approach, they do not dart away once the breeze carries my smell over, and they are quite dark… and familiar.

Mordecai rises from the grass, and I stop. Every fiber in my being wants what I’m seeing to not be real, but it is, and, with a slow, steady loss of every molecule of air in my lungs, I stare, for seconds that feel like hours.

Another set of wings rises from the grass, small, damp, terrifying, perfect…

My heart slams riotously against my ribs. A breath is taken, one that hurts, one that is slow, and steady, because I’m not ready… Not yet…

Our dark angel screams and falls to the earth. The spell upon me is broken at that piteous sound, and I move, quickly, appearing from where I’d cowardly stalled, and quietly prayed the foal would not be gilded, would not be marked across her eye with gold, would not be mine…

"Why? Why didn’t you tell me, Mordecai?" I quietly demand, no sooner than I appear, because it’s all so fucked up, and she’s broken, this child. She needs a healer, and we’re way out here, in the middle of no where, miles from the places I know to find one readily. She’s broken. She’s…

I’m really mad, and overall feeling a bit sick inside. I keep running my eyes across her, how she’s dark and golden, and winged. More than I had wanted to run when Gwyn had come into the world, I want to hurl my rage into Mordecai’s face and flee, going wherever I can to find someone else to tend to this disaster.

I should have known. I should never have kept going with her, like I did. I should have let her keep walking, that day in the desert…

"She needs a healer," I tactfully decide on, the emotional overtone that had riddled my first statement now chilled, layered in ice, my golden eyes moving away from the mare here who hurts me, for the one who has done nothing of her own free will, but hurts me no less. Her legs, I notice, are shaped strangely, and I reach down with my muzzle to touch the soft, small feathers sprouting from the slope of her shoulders, letting more and more frost slake itself over the small death occurring inside myself. When I look back to Mordecai, I want my façade to stick. I want the mask to be cold, and indifferent. She’ll have no more power over me. Not anymore than she already has. Unfortunately, as I tell the Laurelin when he gets on my nerves, I’m not truly my mother’s son; my masks are flimsy, and slowly chip away, the more I ask of them. "Some of the best in Helovia live in the Basin. Guess I’ll go ask that tree over there for some help, though, seeing as we’re in fucking no where, but, what do I know?"

Nothing. I'm not even allowed to know when I've impregnated people.



call me a safe bet
I'm betting I'm not



Art by VeerDesigns@DA | Table by Me

@Mordecai

Wishlist - Plots

Force/violence is allowed to be used on Rikyn permitted it does not permanently maim or kill him (PM me!).

Mordecai Posts: 77
Aurora Basin Mare atk: 5.5 | def: 9 | dam: 5
Mare :: Hybrid :: 16.1 :: 3 years HP: 62.5 | Buff: NOVICE
ali
#4



Her ears fell back, flat against her head as she heard a breath taken that did not belong to herself or her child. The dark woman turned, her face set with an expression that suggested she would brutally murder anyone who came with ill intentions. When she saw Rikyn standing there looking much like a fish gasping for air her expression softened a fraction. Her attention returned to her daughter and she watched expectantly as the girl tried to rise for the first time, screamed in pain, and fell back to the earth. She had scarcely a moment to think before electricity rippled across her body, clinging to her as the sweat on her hide did. Mordecai cried out in a mixture of surprise and pain as the electricity shocked and burned across her body. The unexpectedness of it caused her to tap into her own magic, though she had the presence of mind not to hurl it at her daughter, but instead, at her sire.

As soon as the shocking and burning that ran across her body stopped her own hold on her magic was released. Her breathing had become rapid and the air in front of her face fogged as she breathed. There was something wrong with her child, something that didn't allow her to stand, and this concerned the raven, because she could not allow the child to simply lay there forever.

"Why? Why didn't you tell me, Mordecai?"

The sudden movement of Rikyn coming to her side right after her daughter failed to stand spurred some protective instinct in Mordecai. She spun around, positioning herself in a protective stance standing over her child, shielding her from her sire. Her ears were flat against her head once more, and her eyes flashed dangerously as she regareded the stallion. "Yer tikh vo ogat mae." She spat. "Anha tikh vo allow yer." She would fight him and would kill him if necessary to spare the life of her first and only child. Of course, to Mordecai, the idea of a parent killing their child wasn't as strange as it might have been to Rikyn. It was what her mother had tried to do, so why wouldn't a father do the same?

Her anger abated a bit at the suggestion that the child needed a healer, which obviously Mordecai knew. But she couldn't leave the babe there and go search for one by herself. And there was no way that she was going to leave her with Rikyn when she didn't trust him. For all she knew he could be pretending, trying to isolate the child so he could end the child's life. He was a sarcatic asshole, as he always was and it only made Mordecai want to spit in his face. But what could she say to him when he was right about her having their child in the middle of nowhere? And what did it matter where she gave birth when there weren't any Gods left in any of the herd lands?

"Back up..."





"."

Translation:
yer tikh vo ogat mae - you will not kill her


MORDECAI

when the last light warms the rocks and the rattlesnakes unfold
mountain cats will come along to drag away your bones

the emptiness that we confess in the dimmest hour of day
in Automatown they make a sound like the low sad moan of prey

Arleigh Posts: 4
Outcast
Filly :: Tribrid :: 16.3, wfg :: newborn
Reli
#5
arleigh
She doesn’t even notice him at first—the other figure, tall and dark, approaching them from the field of snowy ruin. Her eyes are narrow and squinting, ashen pupils like white fire, and her whiskery lips continue to tremble with bleats and whimpers from the pain that proceeds to sear through her buckled tendons. Is this life? Her small mind tries to make sense of what is happening to her, this feverish distress (to no avail), and all she knows to do is reach out for safety—for mother.

Of course, the black babe has no realization of what misery she is inadvertently inflicting upon the very woman she clings to for her own comfort—of the magic that surges from her aching soul in a haphazard swell of electricity. She does not know how wrong it is as the black mare quakes with pain, too wrapped up in her own woes, with her fledgling mind far too overwhelmed and her senses past their edge of understanding. Small, downy wings flap clumsily against her sides, instinctively trying to bear the weight that her throbbing legs cannot.

It is his touch that distracts the filly. Confusion, because she is looking at her mother (clinging to her with wide, ashen eyes), and it isn’t her who the babe feels breathing against the feathery limbs of her wings. Puckering her lips with a mewling whimper, the young girl glances up, her head leaning backwards as her eyes (still frozen wide and staring) focus on this new stranger. His scent, foreign and musky, is entirely strange for the newborn. With stubborn cries still warbling in the back of her throat, the girl extends her head towards him with an innocent sort of curiosity, her nostrils flaring.

And then suddenly her mother is there—
Standing over her, like a familiar cocoon of comfort, enveloping her as she always has. Mercifully, the newborn babe cannot comprehend the tension that is harbored between the adults (her parents), and is instead soothed by the proximity of the woman she has always known. Still reaching, the filly noses her mother’s leg, bracing herself against her sturdiness because instinct tells her that she must stand (she doesn’t know that this is not what they all must endure, what they all must suffer through in life).

“Speech.”
but I will hold on hope, and I won’t let you choke
on the noose around your neck

@Rikyn @Mordecai | image credits
please tag Arleigh in all replies!
magic & force are permitted.

Rikyn the Puppeteer Posts: 549
Aurora Basin Lord atk: 7.5 | def: 11.5 | dam: 4.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 16.3 :: 4 HP: 70 | Buff: SWIFT
Duir :: Royal Cerndyr :: Earth Spirit Bunnie
#6


ЯIKYN


I can’t see the magic shared between them; I don’t know why it is that I’m suddenly besieged with acid or hostility when I move forward to greet my new daughter, and to scold her mother for being such a stubborn idiot. What I do know is that I hate this magic, and the fire it leaves burning in the thousands of small pockets in my face and joints, in particular, even after it leaves, and as Mordecai’s acid begins to eat through my body, my ears nearly become one with my head, and an enraged sound rips from my lips as I pull away in a powerful pivot and sideways step. Swinging my head side to side rapidly, as if it might shake her magic out, her words strike me like snakes, though I’m too dumb in the moment to understand them as more than how they sound.

The sensation of the child’s lips as she’d reached to return my casual touch, the slick, dancing feeling of her feathers, they both linger on me, strange amidst the pain that otherwise riddles me. Duir’s scream of shared pain fills my ears along with Mordecai’s sharp decrees. Drawing on my own puppet magic in response, I’m preparing to use it, to force her to stop, and to be still, but the pain ebbs away, and I’m left with the throbbing aftermath, and crippled with rage.

I turn my eyes to her coldly again. I replay her words slowly in my head, the frigid anger writ upon my face perhaps only deepening with my confusion.

Kill her?

What sort of monster does she take me for?

She doesn’t know, does she? She doesn’t know the promises you made to those souls adrift in the star sea, or the ones pledged solemnly to your mother, as you learned of the world through her tactful teachings?

Is that why? Even if though not one of them is unbroken…

No…

What the fuck is wrong with her, that she thinks fathers kill their children?


“Back up,” she tells me, and I snap. Stepping a pace closer, instead, I meet her eyes with mine, almost challenging her to try and make me leave, if that was what she really wanted.

"No, I won’t back away, Mordecai. I’m her father! It’s my job to be here for both of you, and I swear, if you try to keep me from being near to her, you’ll regret it," I half shout at her, a thousand resentments against a dozen others hurled with everything I have at her face, because it’s not fair! I haven’t done anything to her kind but love and revere my own! And how could she, the accusation like the violent stab of poisoned dagger in my already rupturing heart, because of everyone... she should know me better than that. "For the last fucking time, I’m not my dickhead parents! I don’t harbor psychopaths, I’m not plotting the downfall of any mother fucking thing, and damn it, Mordecai, I don’t kill kids, especially my own! I shouldn’t even have to defend myself against you! Anyone but you!"

Blowing out a wealth of air in frustration, I try and not shout so much, suddenly remembering there is a kid about, and embarrassed at having thrown so much of myself out there all of the sudden. Quieter, with a softer expression (though still pissed, and hurt, and overwhelmed), I piece together the rest in Dothraki. It’s less… personal somehow, this way.

" Shafka shilat anni," I mutter, remembering how she’d laughed at me for being too soft in the caverns of the Heart, "do you really think I could do something like that?"


[ Translation: Shafka shilat anni, - You know me, ]



call me a safe bet
I'm betting I'm not



Art by VeerDesigns@DA | Table by Me


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