Post by ferabird on Feb 8, 2011 11:04:53 GMT -7
(No idea what my word count is! D: Need moar word programs!)
Draped about the shoulders of the grand stone-carved statue that she considered her sanctuary... her security blanket... the little chiroptae wondered. It was so easy here to fall lax, letting fears and worries for the future fall aside so that she could leave her mind's eye to wander and retrace those footsteps that had brought her to this inhospitable land. Iridescent sails of lavendar and sky splayed whilst the growing girl indulged in a stretch, her wingtips reaching so much further this time to either side of her fierce perch's shoulders than they had in the past. So much of her past was chaos and fear, but moreso than her master or even her mother.... the diminutive marionette remembered that always this particular carving had been there to offer his mute company.
War had broken loose before they'd had to move... to 'come home'. Only it wasn't home, not to her. It was just one more thing she'd had to endure since her birth, and as she considered just how much that was, the delicate hybrid she wrinkled her brow beneath her frost-gilded mask. Always it was trial after trial.... Her birth had been a thing of fortune, at least according to her mother. Two beings so powerful had allowed a nobody to carry their seed and bear the fruit of it, even to keep a pair to rear to adulthood! Lucky me... she sulked inwardly, tail giving a tempermental flick that whisked the pallid tuft against the curve of her beloved statue's cheek. She was immediately remorseful for the imagined 'affront' to her equally imaginary friend, but it was so trying! Her master and keeper had collected so many of their kind about him, but she was the only one with stunted ears, and that foolish tail.
Yes- she thought herself freakish. How long had it taken her to learn to grasp with those.... those paws? Not proper long-fingered feet, no- but soft lovely little paws that were closer suited to a cat. Her ears were nowhere near so large as they should have been, either! It was no wonder she was told to stay in at night while others hunted on the tundra wrapped in furs. She wasn't as fast, nor as deft as they without use of her blank silver eyes. Perhaps this was why she'd begun to catch Kaedaj looking upon her. Always he made the same strange expression, and always the muscular heir turned away when she caught him at it as though he thought she'd not notice.
No matter how kind her master was, she knew one day he'd see her for the awkward mistake she was. Perhaps he'd cast her out into the cold, that day, or turn her into one of his grotesque 'masterpieces'. The ice was as cruel as it was beautiful, after all- killing heartlessly those who were left stranded in it's numbing embrace. Still the blooming youth was puzzled by their 'homecoming'...
It was bitter cold, biting past her mother's embrace every time the wind gusted and causing the babe to loft shrieking wails. Akaildamib could do little to scold or comfort the child as they forged their way through ice and snow, having long since been chilled to the bone herself. She'd been struck with terror when the Prince drew back from his place at the lead of their dwindling Cast, the fur-clad monarch holding out those arms to demand the babe be given into his care. Those arms- flexed time and again to wield long iron spikes he'd plunged through his enemies to make examples of their threats and defiance.
The rest of the way he'd carried her himself, tucking the child into the curve of his arm and beneath the heavy and warm wrap of his own beloved greatcoat. When finally they reached the great sheet of stone cliffside that the arrogant puppet master had demanded as his due and the entrance to his new home, he peered down upon the dozing child.
"Joo vill name zis one Danika. Ze names of ze old word hev no veight hea, und it vill do her no gut." the puppet master had declared as snow pelted his Cast, and one by one they'd filed into their new home while he paused to regard his thus-named 'morning star'. Purified in his mind by the trial of passing through this world of ice, little Danika would grow into the first of his people to be born into this world of beautiful and shimmering death.
She didn't recall the declaration herself, though her mother claimed that seeing him claim the girl as one of his own had freed her from her clutching fear. She'd been legitimized, then... made a part of the cast and a part of this world. One day soon she would be sent out, coached to boast the name of her prince and his kin and to draw others into his hungry shadow. She could only hope that all he wished of her was an emissary- no father looked upon their own child so hungrily as the aged vampire looked upon his foundling.
Shivering come recollection of those empty-eyed stares, she'd set herself in the crook of shoulder and wing upon her beloved statue... her gargoyle. Perhaps when she was of an age to travel outside their home, she would beg her keeper for the rights to this monster, a comforting fuse of feline and chiroptae. Why- he was like her! Was it any wonder then that the mute gargoyle was her only source of solace?
