The Lost Islands
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Peak

The Prime Minister

Khar'pern

The Codebreaker

Ashteroth

The General

Marceline

The Companions
None None None

The Thinkers

Naydra
Titan

The Politicians

Ararat
Axelle
Hollis
Mae
Nashira
Serenity

The Warriors

Clarity
Kaeja
Lysimache
Starling

The Trinkets

Beloved
Cato
Cullen
Güneşlenmek
Isengrim
Jigsaw
Kazimir
Octavius
Starscream
Yıldırım

PRIME MINISTER'S DECREE

"None." - Leader

The Offspring

Diccon (Cicada x Khar'pern)

Rules

• The Vulcan Peak is where homeless mares come to live as a sisterhood. Stallions may not live here except as captives or companions for the Leaders.

• Warriors keep mainly to fighting, Thinkers keep mainly to raiding, and Politicians may do both, neither, or act as diplomats. Members may issue their own battles and raids, but should generally consult the General, Codebreaker or Prime Minister for permission.

• All major decisions are determined by vote, but the Prime Minister maintains order within the Peak and has the final say.

• Elections for leadership positions will be held every TLI summer, provided the qualifying criteria are met.

• You can find detailed information about how the Peak works on the Rules page.
bittersweet between my teeth
Posted on May 27, 2014 at 03:14:54 AM by jezibelle

j e z i b e l l e
bay blanketed mare of nowhere

Jezibelle knew of monsters. She knew that some lurked in the shadows where the moonlight did not touch, and that others hovered at the corners of your eyes, always just out of sight. The scariest monsters were the ones who hid beneath the faces of other horses, and she had lived with one for five years as a silent witness to the horrors he subjected to the mares and foals in his herd. Neglect and rejection were bad, but the violence had been so much worse. She still woke sweating, some nights, her teeth clenched around a scream but she must be silent, she must, or he would turn on her and set his teeth to her so hush! Don’t make a sound, be silent! as the vivid dream-memory of her brother’s small body shaking like a thing without bones at the end of her father’s mouth faded back into the darkest recesses of her mind.

Yes, she knew monsters. They were ugly, misshapen things disguised by a long, handsome face and well-muscled body, skulking behind the liquid-dark eyes of a stallion who should never have been a father. She was grateful her father had been so handsome, because it made it easier to hate him, and to identify others who would hurt her the way he had hurt her brother and sister— and, in his indifference to her very existence, the way he had hurt her. Horses who had never known pain, who had taken everything without resistance and been given so much simply because they looked nice or spoke smoothly could not possibly be benevolent. Jezibelle trusted Impa because her sister had suffered, and her half-blind eye and dominant attitude made her unattractive to others. She trusted Rurisk because he deserved it: he had suffered the worst out of all of them, and he had never had a voice with which to defend himself— the very reason he was who he was today.

These were the things that occupied her thoughts, the things she clutched and held close to her heart as she swatted Impa away. Impa wanted her secrets, all of them, and Jezibelle had no interest in revealing all she knew to a mare who had been Kisei’s favorite child —if being given away without warning or explanation could be called “favored.” She knew her sister was still torn about her feelings about Kisei. The black stallion had been good to Impa, had done right by her up until she matured and Jezibelle knew that her half-blind sister struggled to come to terms with the fact that he was a monster, a fiend, a horrible horse who deserved what he got. Impa had never seen their sire pick up an hour-old colt and try to kill him, hadn’t been witness to the next two years of hell within that forest herd, or the aftereffects on Kisei’s temperament even after he’d driven Rurisk out.

Monsters. She tossed her head and shook out the rest of her thick winter coat. Impa had gone away, for a bit, and so there was no one nagging her with questions about the past, and no reason she had to keep thinking about it. There was also the opportunity for her to slip away from the herd and return to the base of the mountain —never by the same route, or at the same time of day or night— to revisit a more recent memory, and a secret she held even more tightly to herself than the ones her sister tried to pry from her one word at a time. This secret made her heart jerk in her chest, and its unexpected lurches always made her gasp. It unsettled her stomach but not in a way that was entirely unpleasant, and part of why she returned to the trees that prompted that memory was because it evoked such delightfully foreign physical sensations within her. The other part was that she hoped to see that secret again in the flesh. She liked to think that if she saw him again, it would be because he was waiting for her, but as often as that thought crossed her mind the bay mare laughed it off as beyond ridiculous. She was a moonchild, insubstantial in the eyes of her family and other horses, certainly of no consequence to him. Still, she hoped.

Hope was a dangerous thing. Jezibelle had never dared to indulge in it before now, but it was hardly a voluntary feeling. The mare had come back to this place almost weekly since her encounter with the silent silver-black stallion, hoping to see him. For a while she imagined his scent still lingered, like a phantom in the dark, long after the elements had erased it from her memory. She saw his unkempt coat in the milling mares of the Peak, recognized his blindness in the left eye of her sister, and sometimes antagonized Impa to the point that her older sister took Jezibelle’s ear between her teeth, just to imagine what the loss of such a limb would feel like. Kisei had been monstrous, but that decrepit stallion was angelic to behold. She trusted him because he must know pain, and when she had first encountered him it was the similarities between them that had drawn her out of hiding to stand before him, her tongue loosening with every breath and her voice freed from the cage she had locked it in.

Her heart leapt again and she drew in a shaky breath as a smile touched her face, but the sound of hooves on the ground smote the rare expression. She turned to confront the rapidly approaching horse, terrified the blood-red filly had followed her and would discover her secret, and was shocked to see the one-eared, half-blind, scraggly-haired stallion bearing down on her, as if her thoughts had finally summoned him. Jezibelle backed up, afraid he was going to touch her, and kept the length of another horse between them when he stopped. She stared at him, terrified and struck with wonder at how beautiful he was.

And he spoke to her— to her, not at her, or to someone else. It took her a moment to unscramble her thoughts and recall the day she had first seen the half-blind stallion, but she remembered it as clearly as if it had happened a moment ago. Her ears pushed to the side with embarrassment to be reminded of how badly she had stumbled over her words. The stallion only faltered once or twice, but once as he continued on his words took up a rhythm, one punctuated with emotion that drew Jezibelle in. The bay mare stepped forward as he spoke, aware that what he was telling her was important but too distracted by his presence and attention to retain the vague pieces of information he shared with her. Jezibelle did not have any idea of who the stallion was speaking of. All she knew is that she wanted him to keep talking forever— and to keep speaking to her.

He turned away, and the mare stepped closer so that when her breath plumed away from her nose it broke against his shaggy hip as she listened intently to what he said. The pain in his voice evoked her own turbulent life, and she mourned the trauma he must have experienced. His voice was rich with memories, soaked in history and dripping such intimate knowledge of his past that she closed her eyes and wished she could taste it on her tongue. Jezibelle imagined his voice would taste like the moon: so cold it would feel hot against her throat and infused with a gentle light that would leave her throat tingling after each swallow. She closed her eyes and sighed softly, and her ears twitched at how loud the sound was. The stallion had fallen silent, although he still faced away from her, and Jezibelle blinked her eyes open to focus on his damaged face.

His question surprised her, namely because it was rare for another horse to inquire about her personally but also because it was the one question she did not know how to answer. Jezibelle was a ghost, a figment of her family’s imagination, recalled only when someone needed a useful piece of information and forgotten the rest of the time. Her first five years of life had been spent in timid silence, and after she left the Forest it had not changed for many years. No one had approached her and she did not know how to approach others. Jezibelle was a hollow horse who collected the secrets of others— she was a vessel, and nothing more. The bay mare opened her mouth, unable to tear her eyes away from the stallion’s steady gaze, but could not tell him the truth. For the first time in her life she was ashamed, ashamed to be a quiet, moonstruck girl with no desire for a future and no interest in her own life (which was so pale, so bland in comparison to the others, all of whom were far more important than she). But this secret— this short, shaggy stallion with no name was the first secret Jezibelle had ever kept for herself. She would not risk revealing him to anyone, and when she answered his question her voice was no more than a whisper.

"My name is Jezibelle." She did not matter. Her interest was in him, and when she spoke again her voice gained volume until it reached a normal conversational tone. "Who are you? And where have you come from, why have I not seen or heard of you before? " Surely someone whose life was as complicated and emotionally devastating as hers would have stuck out on the Islands— this stallion did not strike her as someone who could be forgotten easily or soon. Had Impa known of him, and hidden that knowledge from her bay blanketed sister to keep the one-eared male to herself? The thought almost made her pin her ears, but Jezibelle was too conscious of the delicate emotional state of the stallion she stood behind, her chest brushing up against his haunches with every breath. When had she moved so close? Jezibelle moved back a step and dropped her eyes to the snow. "The worst enemies are the horses we must call family," she said, trying to find something to say that would make him face her again. She did not know how to cheer someone up, and had never wanted to until this moment. "In my experience," she amended, then fell into a self-conscious silence.

stock by desperatedeceit-d30dgz2; html by shiva


[that was a beautiful post, Jessy— I’m glad it was a long one because it was an absolute pleasure to read. Thank you for letting me thread my sad little pixie with this phenomenal character. <3 I’ve gotten a huge chunk of character building done for her in this thread, instead of tiny increments like usual. So thank you for that, as well <3]

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