She lost everything when she jumped out that window.
She didn’t think twice, at the time, of leaping with no promise of safe landing; she just lunged in the direction of her sister’s hair and the shadow whisking her away. She hadn’t wings at the time.
Here the grass is green and soft and not dank, dark city streets with curbsides and fizzing lights. She is trapped there, though, and the sweet air is lost under the acid-hot stench of corroding flesh. Above, the sky is a blanket of baby blue, dotted with cumulus clouds. It is a gentle comfort and she is undeserving.
Sabrina does not fear, not in the way of a normal creature; but there is agitation, an unease, a burning bed of coals at the bottom of her mind that question her resolve. If she should pause and give herself to luxury-- to even the briefest of respite-- would she continue on? Or would she give up?
She could not question, nor risk. Her will was the only thing she retained. It would move her forward. There was no rest.
The first statue to speak to her caused her to pause and study it with an unimpressed eye. Such magic was commonplace in her homeland-- from living gargoyles to magic stone effigies. It was a gentle rumbling at first, but the more she listened, the clearer it became. Let me tell you the story of my birth.
“I don’t care about that.” Sabrina said, on the off chance this creature was sentient. “Tell me about my sister.”
Still it prattled on. She ducked her head and walked away.
The next one promised a tale beyond belief.
“Tell me about my sister,” she prompted. Again, it ignored her. As did the next, and the one after that. The babbling was getting annoying-- just the barest of whispers at the edge of her hearing, drawing her in; grating disappointment again and again.
Finally she came to one wedged upside-down in a hillside; originally perpendicular, gravity had pulled it down a bit. It swore to reveal the secret to life itself with a sickly, child-like smile on its face.
Sabrina lost it.
“Tell-- me-- about-- my-- sister!” Each word is punctuated by her pulling up her front hooves and crashing down on the statue’s face, splintering the speaking stone into a thousand intelligible fragments. Its babbling slows down and warps, like the forced slowness of a record being spun backward. With an angry shout, Sabrina rears, and hammers the statues head and shoulders straight off its body.
“Stupid-- useless-- piece of-- ass statue.” The expletives are muffled under her heavy breathing. hooves sore, back sore. Just sore.
She sniffs, petulant, chest forward, a challenge. Keep talking, losers. The statue has no more to say. Neither do the rest. Silence and the wind.
A shard of rock has sliced the meat of her hoof. She refuses to limp.
She lost everything when she jumped out that window.
Given the choice-- if she could go back and do it over-- she would do it again.
@ ANYONE | "Speech."
angery
that are falling off your wings.
12-10-2020, 09:48 PM
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Zombie [PM] Posts: 103 — Threads: 8 Signos: 325
The fucking squirrels were at it again. All night they kept her awake, squealing like cats in heat. If the sounds coming out of the holes in their faces wasn’t irritating enough, the bonfires they started were just icing on the fucking cake. Those little pyros loved to burn their little island to the ground. Generally speaking, Sloane didn’t care if they ruined their island, but since her island was right next door, she sure as hell did mind if the blazing fireballs they started didn’t allow her sleep. She wasn’t a night shift person. A girl like her needed her beauty sleep (but not in the sense that she needed to look like a doll-faced beauty in the morning, but more so that it made her attitude a little more tolerable for most folks). But alas, she had stayed up damn near all night and now she was awake and irritated. An irritated Sloane was never a Sloane you wanted to mess with.
In a fitful rage, Sloane traveled from the privacy of her own island in Delumine to a new place that had seemingly popped up in Novus. Hills. Whoever thought hills were a wonderful thing was on crack. The uphill climbs made her muscles burn. Not only did her legs feel as though they were on fire, but it made her sweat which made her mane stick to the side of her neck. It was hot and gross and Sloane hated every second of these hills. And yet, here she was.
As she trudged downhill, thankfully (because Sloane would not go up any more blasted hills today), she came upon an individual that was so clearly angry. It made a snarky smile curl at the corner of her lips. Clearly this mare was worked up quite a bit about some sister of hers. Jesus. Family. Something she hadn’t thought about in a long time. She doesn’t remember her mother or her father or the other two sad excuses of souls that made up the other two corners of her triplet triangle. You couldn’t pay Sloane to think about her family. So naturally, it was quite amusing to see just how worked up over family this mare was.
Sloane dipped into her magic, making her appear translucent. Unless one was looing closely, Sloane was virtually invisible. There was a shimmer to her, as if she was a weakness against a forcefield. But her body colors blended into the background as she came forward towards the stranger. She watched her act out against a harmless statue, holding back the need to snicker. That would only give away her position and she simply could not have that just yet.
Only once the mare had damn near pummeled the statue into dust did she slowly reveal herself to the stranger. Her disguise faded in an instant, her true form standing just in front of the other. She cocked her head just slightly as she finally allowed a chuckle to escape between pursed lips. "…and I thought I had anger issues."…and family issues, but she supposed those could be hashed out another day.
Was she always this angry? Had she always been this vortex of ire frothed up into a storm of anger and hate? When was the last time she had been happy? When was the last time she had been free of pain? Sabrina scrubbed a mental hand down her face and sighed, trying to remember. Somewhere along the way, the sharp pain in her frog had dulled to something bearable, just like everything else; just like the knotting in the muscles of her back and the ache in her chest and the anger burning ulcerative holes in her gut and soul.
Between the rolling hills and picturesque skyline there was a path of trodden down grass that serpentined down the slopes and slithered into a valley. In the distance the hills turned into mountains, great chunks of green veined with ridges and dotted with clumps of thick juniper-colored copses. And everywhere were these stupid, talking statues. Some were no bigger than dolls. Others were massive, the type of stone titan that welcomed visitors to ancient cities; Sabrina paused to peer into the mouth of one, wondering if it was hollow.
Pools of sweat were gathering on her back from where her great hawk’s wings shadowed the dips in her muscular shoulders. She spread the things out to try and shift their weight to a more comfortable position and immediately her veins filled with the familiar, dizzying buzz of her stolen magic, like caffeine injected straight into her heart. It made the organ skip a beat until she gave up and let the extra appendages rest, useless and painful, in their normal position.
Sabrina didn’t see the individual who intruded upon her temper tantrum-- obviously, because the woman was fucking invisible, but also because she was so caught up in her own misery to truly give a damn. Unless someone had information on Delphine or was capable and willing to help, Sabrina didn’t give two shits for acquaintances and companionship. So when the dark-hued mare materialized in front of her like some sort of predator turning off an invisibility cloak, Sabrina just looked up with an unimpressed gaze and flattened her lips out in the ultimate expression of being underwhelmed.
The stranger had a laugh and made some sort of comment about Sabrina being angry. She must’ve seen that explosive display on the stupid statue. If she were a better person, Sabrina would have just walked around the red-tinted mare and move on; but she was not a good person, let alone a better one. “Your powers of observation are stellar. Non-paralleled, really. You deserve an award. Now fuck off.”
Then she just walked around the red-tinted mare and moved to continue down the valley.
The mare in front of her seems not at all impressed by her magic. Either she had similar magic or she had no magic at all. Her powers of invisibility were great, at least she thought so. She was able to be that well-talked about fly on the wall. She had used her powers to gain secrets and then she sold those secrets. Sloane, you see, was a buyer and seller of secrets. She started wars if the price for her information was high enough. She had no allegiance to anyone really, so it was so very easy to make a living.
But this mare didn’t seem to care about her. A normal person might be bothered by that fact, but Sloane simply shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t really care if the other liked or did not like her company. She was still standing here, staring her down, coyly making fun of her little temper tantrum that made her appear no older than a child.
The other congratulated her on her powers of observation and she only gave a dissatisfied sigh. While she had to agree that yes, her powers of observation were beyond stellar, that was not really why she had come to talk to her.
You see, the child-like outburst was hilarious and Sloane loved nothing more than making fun of anyone and everyone. In a sick sense, Sloane loved putting other people down to make herself feel better. If everyone else was miserable, she would be as close to happy as she could possibly get.
But alas, the other mare was not nearly as excited about this meeting as she was. She was asked, rather told to fuck off, a phrase that Sloane used nearly daily. She simply smirks. She contemplates for a moment actually leaving, but that would be giving in and Sloane did not give in. So instead, she would do one better and make the other mare think she had some sort of useful information about her sister. "Fine…" As she turns away from the mare and began to wander downhill, she pauses just a few paces away from the mare as she speaks, her voice loud enough for the other to hear. "…good luck finding someone who knows more about your sister than I do." And with a shrug of her shoulders, she continued forward without looking back. This was going to be a fun little game.
Where she was from magic was about as rare as blood. Everyone had it. There were entire universities dedicated to the craft, the development, the honing; every child with a drop of magic in their blood was scooped up by colleges and benefactors in the hopes of training soldiers and servants. They were indoctrinated with school spirit chants and made-up rivalries with people who bore animals of a different logo. Sabrina had been blessedly spared from all the chaos-- unwanted, undesired. Free to follow her sister wherever Delphine’s bottomless spirit dragged them.
The strange dark mare with her stranger red highlights seemed indifferent to Sabrina’s indifference and Sabrina could appreciate that, if just for a moment. Everyone she’d run into in this godforsaken country had wanted to talk, like they had something to prove, or something they thought she should care about. They had so many fucking gods in Novus she was amazed all the factions hadn’t all killed each other. The presence of magic, illness-inducing though it was, was no surprise; in fact, it was rather comforting, like wearing a pair of dirty pants, to watch various enchanted creatures flexing their magical muscles and trying to impress each other.
Magic was a disease of the body and brain. Sabrina lifted her wings and winced as her heart skipped a beat.
Her temper may make her seem young but the fire within her was well-cultivated and fed. It was ageless, eternal, a constant burning which licked at her lungs and turned her words to flame. Anger was a weapon; Puck had always warned her it would get her in trouble in it’s innate self-destructiveness; Sabrina argued it was others-destructive, as she might need to display here, soon, if this bitch didn’t up and leave her alone.
The truth was Sloane didn’t need to do anything to make Sabrina miserable-- she already was. She was burning, burning, burning down to coal and embers, blackened and useless and devoid of feeling and any knowledge except that of moving forward. She was knives and needles and the type of acid that opened chests.
Somewhere behind her, Sabrina could feel Sloane’s smirk, so greasy and oily on the pure, fresh air; she pinned her ears to her skull because she could just tell this mare was not the kind to up and leave. She liked being a miserable pain in the ass; Sabrina was intimately familiar with the type (I like annoying people and you look easily irritable. Am I right?)
So when she mentioned her sister Sabrina almost didn’t stop. At first, she hadn’t realized she’d ceased forward progress; but that word, sister, was like a neural trigger, something ingrained in her brain to make her respond a certain way. And it was bitter, bitter combat within her, the kind that made her stomach flip-flop and ripped her stomach in two; there’s no way this dumbass knows anything versus you promised you’d try everything. You promised.
So she exhales deeply from her nostrils and imagines clouds of smoke expanding and scalding the ground. She raised her head, but her shoulders were slumped, and she did not turn around. “Look. I imagine you have better things to do than sit here and bother me. So look at it this way: You can either continue on your way and find someone else to pester, or you can tell me what you know, if you know anything, and I’ll owe you one for the rest of my life.” She winced, hating herself for indulging the flighty broad, but unable to not. “Though I doubt you can even tell me her name,” she added as a muttered afterthought, as certain as sundown.
