the wave that you could never conquer IP: 172.243.247.39 Posted on August 23, 2017 at 10:05:06 AM by Echidna
Note: This character can be explicit at times, I’d like to add an [M] label and a [TW] for violence/sexual innuendo.
If you’re uncomfortable with guts, blood, weird sexual preferences, and the like please don’t read anything beyond this message!
She was old now, at least older than when they first met. Only a sprout back then, she’s something with deeper roots now. Not quite an old oak but a young juniper. Her branches reach out in crooked gnarls toward the endless stretch of the sky. There’s nothing out there for her to grasp, except for the iron colored clouds or the feathers of crows – she might always be aimless, without a true purpose. It would suite her fine, she thinks, but there were moments when she desperately wanted something to latch onto. Years had gone by without a true anchor. Echidna could float away in an instance, caught up on the breeze. Less a tree, more a leaf. But time turns everyone against themselves eventually, turns them inside out until they are no longer recognizable, then flips back outside again for laughs.
Echidna is on the return journey. She can see herself in small, brush stroke wisps. Faint colors threaded along a black canvass until a shadow of something larger becomes evident – she can make out the snarl of her mouth or the glint of her dark eyes. It’s hard to distinguish true detail but the shape is fierce. A remind of the animal she used to be and wants to be again. Seeing him sit there in the grass with the sunlight razor sharp between the trees, his face unchanged from all their time apart, it does something funny to her insides. Makes them jump, twist up. Echidna grits her teeth for a moment, her jaw sets, and then she relaxes into her nonchalant self –
Which is not nonchalant at all but an intricate system where she fools herself into believing she doesn’t care. It’s no doubt a form of greed. Echidna has been known to take all the toys and not share with anyone else, which includes her own emotions. Besides, there isn’t much she can control anymore and she’ll take what she can get since this crazy adventure began.
His demeanor makes her want to smile but she keeps it stony. The way he leans into himself, looks at her with that quizzical expression – she tilts her head at him for a moment. Yes, it felt like all they ever did was walk the same path and end up together in their misery. Echidna slips down onto the plush grass a few inches in front of him and folds her legs. It feels like she’s praying to an idol but she’d never do something like that. With one dirty hand she wipes her nose, her dark eyes flick onto his face and then away. There’s always a handful of emotions she feels when they close and each time it’s like they never get shake out of her bones. Instead, they sit and eat away at her.
“Kind of makes you dizzy,” she says finally.
Echidna plucks at the grass absent mindedly, threading emerald green shoots between her fingers and scratching the dirt with her nails. She mildly notices the other horse coming up to the older mare, not until Caia gives a quiet shriek with her white ears pinned back. Echidna smiles a little at her companion and feels a bit sorry for the bewildered male who tried to make a quick friend. It was strange being on the outside looking in on something she used to be.
After a moment, Echidna stretches her short legs out in front of her and rubs her thighs. Everything was trying to go to sleep on her. “I think the whole ‘being thrown back in’ part is whenever we meet each other,” Echidna flicks her tongue over her teeth and shrugs. “At least when I don’t look at you I can pretend I don’t feel anything.” She sniffs loudly then and folds her legs back in a more tasteful way. There is dirt on her knees and bits of grass stuck to her tunic. Splotches of mud along the arch of her neck, beneath the sharp point of her jaw – something rust colored at the edge of her mouth, down her pale chin.
“But it always happens, so I guess this sucky universe wants something to happen.” Echidna shrugs again and bites the inside of her jaw. She doesn’t believe in the universe or fate or any of that nonsense. Even so, it felt like something needed to change, to happen, or they were going to keep repeating this torturous cycle until one of them went totally insane.