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Home » Search » Roster » Whitepages » Records » FAQ » Guidebook
Daddy, I'm alone, 'cause this house don't feel like home
Private Halcyon Flats  Odd
Iskra
Currently championing: Caevoc
#1
When there's madness, when there's poison in your head
When the sadness leaves you broken in your bed
A feather idly traced the line of a scar against auburn hide. It felt slightly raised, but just slightly - it hadn't been deep, but the skin had parted red. It felt nice to actually touch it though, this testament to pain, and healing. His heart and soul that had been wounded plenty of times, and though those certainly ached just as fiercely, he could never truly see them, never touch them like he is now. It made them feel...less real.

Iskra sighed steadily and pulled his wings in tighter to his sides. The motion jostled the necklace of bone against his chest. Absently he curled his chin in, whiskers just passing over the jagged tips, reminding him that Gaucho was still there.
"I wish I'd met you," he whispered softly to it, lifting his head back up and stretching his neck out long and low. He was settling down for the night, adopting the Halcyon Flats as his home, because out of everything here, everything that was left anyway, they were the most like it. The collapsed shield on Iskra's back glinted in the fading light as the sunset's myriad of colors shifted among the sparse clouds. Dragon's Sun he had taken to calling it, another relic of his family, of his past, as most of the things he carried with him were. His trinkets were one of the ways he could still feel connected to it all, as if part of their past, of who carrier them or where they were made, lived on in them; bones instead of metal, memories instead of leather.

"You'd know what to do," Iskra went on, his voice wavering faintly, though not with grief. His tear tracks had long since dried, his salt given back to the earth. Instead, it was worry that underlined Iskra's tone, and fear. It was the sound of the slow but constant retreat of Iskra's hope, and with it, his will.

Movement at his side caused Iskra's head to turn slightly, teal gaze drifting across the golem that was awkwardly attempting to sit not far from him. The creature clasped a little piece of shining bone in its rudimentary hand, a large iron and copper hammer in its other. Squishy had been a gift from his brother, a memento of happier days, but as the Rift was apt to do, it had consumed him too, anything else joyous.

Iskra sighed softly, turning back to look out across the flat expanse of desert. "She always said you did... they all did really - they loved you for it. You were strong and brave, and you probably could have beaten this place." A whale swooped in the horizon's line, its long call reaching Iskra with a distant whine of contentment. "She might have too if she were still here, but she'd left the same day you did, it just didn't look like it. You made her someone better - you had the power to do that. I can't imagine what losing that must have felt like..." Iskra blinked, thinking back on his mother's steady descent into grief, and then the fire water she turned to when tears weren't enough. He sighed loudly.

"But that's why I wish I'd met you, because you were stronger, better, and I think I'd be too if I'd known you."
Maybe then I wouldn't feel like this...
Iskra
I will hold you in the depths of your despair
And it's all in the name of love


@Odd

Magic or force permitted any time, aside from death.
Rift Havoc
Currently championing:
#2


Death ... well. It wasn't what you think it would be. Gaucho had always believed that his death would result in the ascension of his soul to the great plains in the sky, where food would always be plentiful and his muscles would never tire. But even such a nirvana as basic as that wasn't what was waiting for the Wildfire when his flame finally died out.

But that is a story for another time.

On this night Gaucho found his soul not in its usual place, but tethered to something that for once felt firm and tangible. Eyes the colour of storm clouds just before a downpour over the ocean surveyed a desert-scape that sparked no recognition in his primal, but intelligent mind. Around his neck a serpent coiled herself, unworried about this change in scenery given that this new land was warm and kept her body at an appropriate temperature. Cheery as ever, the small pheonix who flittered near his antlers offered a small trill of trepidation but, given that she had died once already, was not all that bothered.

Moving with an odd grace for a creature so large and bulky, Gaucho followed a pathway that seemed to lead directly into the setting sun. He thought perhaps he might glide away into the fiery blaze and see what might become of this bizarre reality, when his mind suddenly stuttered. "Gaucho know this place.." He said to the companions whose minds, though no longer tethered, still remained closely attached to his own. "Crocodile?" The Wildfire murmured almost rhetorically, for neither Vorsa or Mara could reply in his mind anymore. But yes, they seemed to agree, Crocodile seemed right.

Had this been a place ...

..in Helovia?

Had .. had he killed someone here?

A scene of fire and illusory magic burst into his mind, but was veiled by the remnants of his death. Memories were slippery things, once you had died.

A glint caught his attention - what he thought might have been a spark - and in the hush of the setting sun pulled his gaze towards it.

This memory needed no prompting, but instead immediately entered into his mind. Iskra. The word bloomed like the cactus' of the Throat so long ago, and immediately the dun began to move towards the boy (for all of Gaucho's children would remain children in his mind, despite how large they grew). Just as distant as he had always been, Gaucho had perhaps been a better Father once he no longer lingered on the earth than he ever had in life. In death Gaucho had the opportunity to watch over his kin, even if he could not be with them.

With flaming wings at his sides, the Wildfire advanced, waiting until he was only a handful of feet away before calling out.  "Iskra." It was not a question, but a command of sorts. The Wildfire's voice was a low and reedy barritone that rumbled with the same volume and bass of an earthquake.

Gaucho the Wildfire
If this is to end in fire
Then we should all burn together

Iskra
Currently championing: Caevoc
#3
When there's madness, when there's poison in your head
When the sadness leaves you broken in your bed
He does not immediately notice the shift of the atmosphere, or the bend of light around the clouds and the sand and salt. He is still lost in the horizon of his mind, replaying memories from a place that shouldn't have seemed as distant as it was, given his youth, and yet it felt like he'd already lived a lifetime there and had been reborn here - some damned phoenix raising in a cursed land.

It was only with the utterance of his name, so bold and assured, that Iskra finally slipped away from his thoughts, blinking reality back into view with a bit of regret. His head turned slowly, unhurried, and settled against the slope of his shoulder. Amid the framing of feathers and wind-knotted mane, teal gaze beheld the wildfire that bloomed in the desert realm, and it was astonishing.

The figure was familiar, in the way that something can be when you've never actually seen it. It resembled the animated golem from his home, and it matched the stories he'd fallen asleep to. This figure was different though, it lacked the jagged points of crystals, the cold gleam of metal, and the crude rounding of shorn stone that Iskra had grown up with. It also did not stand so high that its antlers caught the sun between their tines, nor did its wings blot out the sky with their might, as it often did in his dreams. The difference was, this figure was real...?

Hesitation poured through Iskra and set his feathers on end. The last time he'd seen someone who was supposed to be dead, it had earned him the scar he'd been tracing moments before. Still, Iskra couldn't help but be hopeful, couldn't help but be curious. He tilted his head, as if a different perspective might aid his decision. Abruptly he exhaled, unaware he'd been holding his breath until his chest burned with exhaustion and hunger. As he inhaled his nostrils quivered and it seemed the breath revitalize him, surprising even himself as he strode forward with determination.

His steps were sure, his pace one with purpose. He stopped upon reaching the figure that called to him, head lifting to bring their noses near each other, where Iskra exhaled warmly in greeting and wished to feel the same warmth in return. Only then, when he had some determination of reality established, did Iskra finally loosen the tightness against his heart.

"D-ad?" he finally asked with a quiet hope.
Iskra
I will hold you in the depths of your despair
And it's all in the name of love

Magic or force permitted any time, aside from death.
Rift Havoc
Currently championing:
#4


There weren't many times in his life where Gaucho had felt hesitant or uncertain. That did not mean that there were none, for especially during his time as Sultan the dun had encountered many a situation which required deligent contemplation, but for the most part Gaucho followed his primal and primitive instincts, and rarely had they ever led him astray. Into danger and chaos yes, but never astray. And so as his youngest living child turned towards him, without thought for how potentially traumatizing this might be for Iskra, Gaucho stepped forward to embrace him. The dun's flaming wings seemed to roll open as if to block out the sky and its greedy star-point gaze from seeing the embrace which had never been allowed to occur while Gaucho was alive.

As the dun took the final step which would bridge the gap between sire and son, the oddest thing happened. Should Iskra have remained where he was, he would have felt only the slightest stirring of air. Was it slightly warmer than it had been, or was that only his skin creating a phantom embrace where there was none? Had the boy moved back, he would have felt the non-existent rush of air that should have accompanied the closing of Gaucho's wings around nothing, or perhaps in that moment he might have noticed how the dun cast no shadow in the dying even light, nor did his hooves leave an imprint of the massive body they carried.

Gaucho was a ghost.

Gaucho, new to whatever astral projection or semi-reincarnation that this was, cast his stormy gaze downwards not with confusion, but something like resigned frustration, as if he had been expecting something like this to happen. Vorsa let out a small trill of disappointment , while Mara slithered down Gaucho's neck and spine, moving his mane to ensure that she could at least have an affect upon him, if not the surrounding environment.

Gaucho sighed, and a deep penetrating sort of sadness creased the deep lines of his face. It was the sort of sadness of a Father who showed up too late to a birthday, one who despite his best efforts had brought the wrong gift. He was a man so far removed from his son before him, and now on top of a mountain of missed opportunities, he wasn't even able to hug him. The dun's wings folded deliberately against his side like two smoldering points of darkness.

Gaucho wanted to apologize for dying, for not protecting the Throat better against Kisamoa, and for not being around when Ampere had needed him the most. But even after death, it wasn't as though Gaucho had been gifted with a wider vocabulary and more complex set of emotional tools. And so for a moment all he could do was look into a pair of eyes much more vibrant than his own, and long for something that he could not have.

"Gaucho see you, even when not here." He rumbled finally, trying to string together some meager offering that represented the eclipse of pain and longing inside of himself.
"Death ... it not like the stories," Gaucho continued, his speech, while a marked improvement from when he had first arrived in Helovia, still broken and lacking any sort of refinement. Still, his words were coloured with genuine affection and sorrow, a bitter sweet melody that even his barbaric sentence structure couldn't ruin. "- but Gaucho see enough. Gaucho watch Iskra grow. Gaucho proud."

Gaucho the Wildfire
If this is to end in fire
Then we should all burn together