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 Posted: Fri Sep 12, 2008 2:10 pm
It was true that Vartan wouldn't have been nearly and talkative, or so open, if he hadn't been cursed with a spinning head or skin flushed with heat. The stallion had never experienced anything like this. He expected he would regret his behavior later, but right there and then, he simply could not bring himself to care.
His fever was building to its breaking point. Once it peaked, he would quickly recover. All he could do was rest his head against his forelegs and let himself drift into a fitful doze, caught up in fragments of dreams and half-finished memories.
It didn't occur to him that Galaxia would be off looking for anything at all.
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Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 11:29 am
The mare wandered around until she spotted what she had been looking for. A willow tree.
In her time, Galaxia had learned a bit about the healing properties of plants and trees. And if one had a fever and ate a bit of willow it would lower that fever.
She gave a glance around her for a brief second. As if she felt like she was being watched. And with a skeptical glance to her surroundings jumped up on her back legs and broke a small branch off the tree. Its long tendrils of leaves sweeping against her front legs as her front legs came back to the ground. Her body bouncing as her hooves touched the earth once more.
And soon she was dragging the small branch back to where Vartan was. Eying him as she drew closer. He was still out.
Coming up upon his side, she lay the branch next to him before nudging the side of his head with a hoof. Not as harshly as she would have, she didn't need to have him around much longer than he already had been with a head wound. "Wake up!"
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Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 3:10 pm
Vartan was having a very odd dream.
It started with chains. Thick gold chains, looped and knotted around one another like a nest of poisonous snakes. The corners of their scales were tarnished, but their eyes shone like rubies, or droplets of blood, and they slithered over his back to bite at the shackles on his fetlocks.
The stars stared cruelly down his predicament. Snakes were cold-blooded reptiles, but the metallic bands grew hotter and hotter, burning into the-
"Wake up!"
Vartan lurched back to consciousness with a groan, and looked blearily up at the are who'd smacked him awake. It occurred to him that she was very beautiful, but that was a secret, like Grandmother's scars, or the weathered skeleton beneath the old oak tree.
At least the dream was gone. He wasn't sure if he'd liked it there. Everything was muddled.
"Heh," he smirked, making a weak attempt at insouciance. "You came just in time. My hero."
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Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 11:21 pm
Eyebrows knit heavily as he jerked awake. A huff of breath passing between her lips as she swept her tail side to side a couple times.
"Well then, I guess you owe me your life." She pushed the stick covered in long tendrils of willow leaves towards him. "I'm not going to chew these ones up and feed them to you like a mother bird. So you better eat them unless you wish to be killed off by a fever." Fevers were never good. They were a sign of the body fighting infection, but it one got too high and rose one's body temperature high enough it would most certainly kill them.
And she wasn't going to let him die that way. No, that would be the easy way out.
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Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2008 4:57 pm
It was... a stick?
Vartan didn't understand. Pale branches reminded him of something - cold streams in moonlight, the boney tines of a two-legger's comb - but the meaning of birchbark danced beyond the grasp of his conscious mind.
"My life, hmm?"
The feverish light in his eyes grew sharper with amusement. Though he wasn't thirsty, his voice came out in a raspy sort of drawl.
"It's alright if I owe you my life," he decided. "But my death is still mine. You can't have it."
For a moment, the stallion worried that the stick would bleed if he bit into it, and he nosed at it to make sure it wouldn't slither away. Then he forgot what was wrong with that, and crunched the small branch between his back molars. It went down wood-pulp and all.
"It's a damn good thing this doesn't taste like snake."
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Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 6:57 am
"Hmph." She watched him briefly as he gnawed down upon the branch. At least this should get his fever to drop faster. And with his fever gone he'd recover faster. And THEN she could dispatch his sorry butt even faster as well.
"We'll see." Galaxia replied coldly before settling herself down a few feet away from him. Whipping her tail around her back end, almost like a smaller blanket.
For now this was all that she could do. She was no unicorn. No, far from it. Healing in that way was not in her blood. All she knew were certain plants did certain things. Something she picked up along the way that seemed useful at the time.
Now all there was to do was to wait.
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Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 3:14 pm
Eventually Vartan's skin grew so hot that he had no choice but to drag himself the rest of the way to the creek, pulling with his two good legs and wriggling on his belly. He wasn't sure if Galaxia was awake for that. His head was spinning too much for him to care. Humiliation was bad, but defeat was worse, and Vartan would survive this if it was the last thing he did. Sometimes a soldier had to throw out his pride to get the job done.
Vartan's fever broke in the early hours of the morning, defeated by soothing willow and tepid water. A dizzying sense of relief accompanied the feeling of cold air on his flank and the sight of the rising sun. He noted that Galaxia' jewelry - which was more like armor, really, in spirit if not in form - shone gloriously in the pale half-light of morning. Then he rolled into the dry shore and fell into a true, dreamless sleep.
When he woke again the stars were out once more. Had he slept for one day? Two or three? It was impossible to tell. The pain in his leg hadn't vanished, but the swelling was gone, and he felt a reassuring rush of strength when he tried to move it. Vartan didn't think he'd ever felt so damned refreshed before. Taking a swim after a long run or a slow walk after a battle couldn't really compare. All the bullshit was wrong out of him. He felt like a new stallion, ache and all.
Slowly, carefully, the stallion levered himself up onto his hooves. He was damnably hungry.
"Hey," he glanced over at Galaxia.
It was a good thing he was naturally terse. Otherwise the greeting might have been really awkward.
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Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 3:22 pm
She had watched him most of the night as well as most of the day. Catching quick naps here and there. It was rare that she ever slept very long when she did sleep. Too many things would snap her to attention in the middle of the night. A horrible reflex from days long past.
The mare had woken early, not long after Vartan himself had passed out after wriggling in the damp dirt of the creek. She had watched him crawl along on his belly like a little worm. It was amusing to say the least. Watching a full grown stallion crawl along like that.
And now as the stars hung over head she had taken to a little bit of a late night grazing close by. Ripping up patches of grass and chewing them methodically as she thought to herself. But his voice soon broke through her thoughts. An ear turned before her head did, red eyes landing upon him once more. "Oh? Well it looks like sleeping beauty finally has awoken. And standing on his own four hooves no less."
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Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 3:37 pm
Sleeping beauty? Hardly. Vartan's leg was marred by the dull sheen of scar tissue and caked over with the chewed leaf that Galaxia had spat onto it. His mane was tangled and sticky with dried sweat. Mud from the creek-bed was caked on his belly, and the pink-white of his fetlocks was almost entirely obscured by dirt. Even the strange green roses tied around his throat were looking a little worse-for-wear. The only things that Vartan had to recommend him were the powerful build of his body, and the light in his pale violet eyes.
He bent his neck over the water to take a drink, caught a look at himself in the water, and snorted.
"And damn glad of it." He lifted his forelegs up and down, just because he could. They felt cramped from having been sedentary for so long. How could the two-leggers' kept pets stand it?
Galaxia, unsurprisingly, looked as put-together as ever. Not a bracer tilted or a hair out of place. Vartan guessed he could respect that kind of discipline. It would be fun to muss her up.
"I'd make good on my promise now, Princess, but I expect you won't want to get mud on your hooves."
He was drawling, and hadn't said anything standoffish for a full minute. For Vartan, that was positively cheerful behavior. He really was glad to be up and about again.
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Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 3:46 pm
Eyes lidded half way as an almost non-chalant expression washed over Galaxia's peach colored face. "I suppose anyone would be after crawling around on your belly after a while." She casually glanced down at the spot she had been chewing at for a while. Tiny shoots of grass and roots were all that were left. Nothing but a dirt spot now. Perhaps she had been thinking too long and not paying attention to what she was doing.
Oh well, it'd grow back eventually.
"If you wanna wash up before hand be my guest. I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. And I could care less about mud getting on my hooves. Mud washes off, just like anything else." She turned her attention back to the grass. Moving to another spot nearby to leave that area alone for now.
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Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 4:00 pm
He'd- what?
Oh, spirits, Vartan had crawled over to the creek. He'd thought that was a dream, or maybe a hallucination, the kind of nightmare that came to an unimaginative stallion. But no, it was real. The moon was high, so he could see the trail of bent and broken reeds clear as day.
That was just- just-
Augh.
At some point he must have decided he wanted this mare to respect him. How annoying. If he hadn't been itching for that match before, he definitely was now. Whatever this stupid, useless emotional thing he had was, he could surely stamp it out by applying his hooves to her hindquarters.
"Stayed to watch over me?" Vartan noted the bare spot on the ground. Only the lashing of his tail showed how annoyed he was with himself. "I guess I'm touched."
Maybe she was looking forward to the throw-down too. Although-
"Look, you did help. I guess. So if you want me to screw off now without our little match, speak now or hold your peace."
He'd be disappointed in Galaxia, but he'd do it. That was the extent of his gentlemanly streak.
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Posted: Sun Sep 21, 2008 10:25 pm
Galaxia scrunched up her nose as she turned her head away from him. Eyebrows furrowing heavily. "I only stayed because your in my home after all. And I quite like it here thank you. Took me a long time to find this place away from others, but you like a fool stumbled upon it. I'm not about to let it go so easily."
Her tail flicked violently back and forth a few times as her hooves shuffled a bit. The jewels upon her leg bracers clinking together as moonlight caught upon their reflective surfaces.
The mare's head turned quickly. Long hair flailing about her head as a heavy frown appear on her pale lips. She quickly shortened the distance between them, getting close to his face. Red eyes burning. "Ooohhh no! You put me through all this s**t and now you just want to bugger off without letting me get my just desserts? I think not. Lets do this right here right now. Come on! I'll give you a reason to limp home licking your wounds and I'm not going to help you out this time!"
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Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 5:36 am
"My fault? My fault!?"
Vartan wasn't a very emotive stallion. He expressed himself in stomps and snorts, deadpans and drawls. But in that moment all the frustrations of the past few days welled up within him; all the fear, and the pain, and the loss, and the utter humiliation. His eyes burned with a long-banked fury. His voice was sharp with incredulity.
"Right. It's my fault you're a crazy nag who kicks passers-by for no frikking reason. Hah! Own your own crap or crawl back to whatever hole you came from."
Yes. Oh, yes. This was exactly what he'd been craving for so long. It was strange to think that just one short week ago he'd lived in a world where the concept of kicking Galaxia's a** had been entirely foreign to him. It was the one constant he'd been able to cling to when his mind and body turned against him. She was all sharp edges and disdainful looks and stupid, frivolous, flame-red hair. How could a stallion in his right mind not want to take her on?
Without warning, Vartan reared back on his hind legs and moved to bring his hooves down on Galaxia's shoulders. His shiny new scar protested at being stretched so soon. It was so fantastic to feel real pain again, instead of that dizzy, aching bullshit.
"'Cos, Princess? You brought this on yourself."
[[Yaaaay fight scene!
Whether or not Vartan's blows land is up to you, of course. Please do PM me if you have any specific ideas for battle damage on either side. I don't mind my boy taking a few more wounds for the cause. ;3]]
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Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 7:20 am
Hehe. That's right. Galaxia wasn't going to let him just walk away so easily. And apparently what she'd said hit a nerve. Perfect, he fell right into it.
He was going to just go all mamsy pansy on her and cop out. No way in hell! And she wasn't about to just fight him in a half hearted fight now. She wanted to see what he was really made of. And the only way to do that was to rile him up.
As he moved to bring his hooves crashing down upon her shoulders, Galaxia slid her hooves backwards in one quick, fluid motion. Drawing her out of the range of his front hooves. "Come on ya twit! That the best you can do?! Show me what your made of! If your made of anything at all!"
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Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 6:59 pm
Violet hooves sliced through empty air as the full force of Vartan's weight came crashing down to earth, breaking reeds and splattering mud. If this fight stayed near the creek-bed then Galaxia was likely to come out of it covered in clay. Vartan found himself anticipating the prospect. He shouldn't be the only Soquili in this clearing who looked like they'd had a good crawl.
The stallion used his momentum to charge forward and circle around Galaxia, cornering her against the water. The mud was sticky. It could mire her legs down. So long as Galaxia had the advantage in speed, Vartan was going to have to use his bulk as a counter.
"The spirits didn't put me in this place to shine. They put me here to show you how it's done."
Vartan let out a low, harsh neigh - almost a laugh - snapped his jaws in the direction of the mark he'd given her during their first battle. His dark mane whipped wildly in the cold evening wind.
"What's a Princess made of? Trinkets and hot air? Let your fighting do the talking."
He twisted to the side, then pushed forward, aiming to force her part-way into the water.
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