Starglow Basin [m] vengeance is hereby mine

Mature Content Warning

This thread has been marked as mature. By reading and/or participating in this thread, you acknowledge that you are of age or have permission from your parents to do so.

The participants have indicated the following reason(s) for this warning: language

colt briggs would say "i aint been dead long enough to bring back, why in the blue hell are yew disrespectin' me?"
the thing about dying the way he'd done was that yer soul tended to stay bound, and for colt briggs, that meant he was tethered in the deadly center of the basin. three days in. three days from the far ridge which might lead a traveller back into the teekon. who could know? no one had ever gotten that far.
the manner in which one died was particular as well. in briggs' case, he'd been bits of bone still losing patches of ragged fur, but largely bleached by the unrelenting sun.
starglow my left nut!
colt groaned. he lifted a paw and could see his ivories right through whatever ghost skin he'd been given. this should terrify him, by all rights, but he ain't died scared.
he'd died in a mission.
ironic, briggs reckoned. had he opposable thumbs and proper hands and a cigarette, he would have lit it then, a skeleton man who shimmered between flesh and stark bone depending on who might be staring in his direction.
ironic that she couldn't come to him here without dying. not what he wanted for her. 
but colt couldn't move on without the connection. "jes plumb fuckery," the ghost swore to itself, pacing a tight, annoyed swagger around his real self, femurs and tibias and teeth all piled there. "ain't that some shit, red."

from the pass to the butte to the many-rounded lakes and back again indra roamed, had been roaming, felt like she would be roaming for the rest of her life; having turned away from the known wilds and any pieces of the gang, seeing as they weren't worth their spit these days, she had gone solo once more. it was a harder life but one she could adapt to quickly. her paranoia as at an all-time high, as was a natural side-effect of relying only on yourself and needing to be safe from outsiders, which served her well enough. she was still here; the rest could've been dead or something worse — settled — but indra didn't give two shits.

she sulked now westward from the butte and the last half-assed camp she had built, finding the tendrils of the serpent lake as it dribbled through the badlands, and followed it. in the grudging light that passed for days indra crept along, a wraith by all accounts, alive but looking more like a shambling corpse for all the successes she'd had (almost none). the silt of the river gave the water a murk and she knew she would only struggle to find any fish there, or frogs, and after a moment of consideration she chewed the side of her cheek and spat, watching the gob hit the water and vanish.

south, then. south and south and constantly, mindlessly, south; to where the water seemed to take over more of the land but it still remained heavy and the dust followed her every step and soon there were trees, tired the way she was tired and clinging to life with their roots. she gave them a glare, and thought she saw a shape moving among them. indra stopped and stared a while, squinting against the cloud-blindness from above, and could not be certain if the body moved or if it was there at all. she could not stand idly by for much longer and she knew that. a decision had to be made.

ducking and snaking, then. she made for a hedgerow of spines with a spidering gait, then hunkered low and watched a little longer. there was a voice now, and no body. it held a familiar snark to it but that would not lull indra out of her watching place; she knew better than to be baited this late in the game. the moment the voice said red, her white ear flicked towards it.

i'll be, she said to herself, inhaling through a grimace.

standing now, wild-coat prickled and red-rimmed eyes ablaze, she saw him. not the rest of it: the pile of bones which held nothing but more dust, not even a bite to eat left on them. she stalked closer but not too close, in case this was a ploy of his. yer the only shit i see, i thought i scraped yew off my heels way back when. toothy grin, watching eyes. yet here you are. nothin' keeps yew down fer long.

it was horrible to have her here.
it was wonderful to see her again.
red, red, red. redbird. redblood.
colt remembered, and the ghostly bones sank behind whatever passed for flesh in hell. purgatory, more like. the thing about being dead was that over the heads of the ones you missed, you could see their own date.
their own date.
colt drew a breath. something like it. he flung out his arm. couldn't she see, the wraithlike skeleton inside his wrist? but she spoke like he'd never died. briggs spat. wait. he couldn't, confound it all.
she was rail-thin and red-eyed. colt snorted upward at the sun and then set his still-vibrant crimson eyes on her. "i told myself when i was out here i'd be back fer yew."
a rakish grin. "nothin' keeps me down, redbird," colt said in a low voice still full of death-smoke. "not even passin' on over t'glory."
colt hadn't even remembered the couple of days prior. the last thing remaining of the life before was entering this basin and seeing scorpions scuttle out of it. the end was the sun, engulfing him, mind, body and spirit.
passing on over to glory, indeed, but no pine box for this unfortunate. them scorpions and beetles and rattlers, they'd gnawed him clean and left him to a fitting end.
now, a wolven jacob marley, he pointed at the place where what was left of him lay. "yer gonna die out here so far, red."

He sputtered something about glory which almost made her laugh had her tongue not felt dry as ash. What glory could this foul man have found? There was nothing here.

She began to creep closer. The slightest move of her wrist made the meat of her rail legs flex. The tuck of her belly was more of a deep scooped void. Sockets dark, looking more dead than the dead man who now threatened her

Promise? She cajoled, mirthless.

I don't see it happenin' less you have the urge for it yerself. Her eyes followed his, and when met in mirrored defiance it was all she saw. Indra got closer and while she did not seek to touch him there was an invitation there; a dare, more like. You wanna taste?

Maybe she'd passed that level of desperate that made her a true man-eater, given the way she now looked at him.

hungry eyes, hungrier than she had ever been for meat or blood or the hard possessive nature of her mentor and man who thought her his.
colt turned his head sharply, a hawk who has heard the rustling of something serpentine in the underbrush; his nostrils flared and he eased his preternatural shoulders with a long whistling exhale.
red was all angles and sunken valleys; he'd left her this way; he could — "yew know i cant touch nothin, red," colt growled in a voice strained with the want of a man and the want of the dead for what is alive with vital warmth and the solid thump of a heart.
he could hear hers, a starving watch. briggs listened as long as he was able before he reached the bone-flickered arm toward her, toward; and where there should be contact, his limb only dissolved into a sickly mist which rose up around her thin face.
"there." his voice was riddled with a dusty grief. "now we know, red. aint no more wonderin."

She knew he was dead, somewhere in her mind. She also knew she hadn't eaten proper in god knows how long, and felt the pounding of her brain while it begged for water. There were things she had to live with and accept, and there were things she was too desperate to face in the moment.
Colt being dead was one of them.
He was standing here and talking to her, even if he was pieced together with bones and shadow, even if — as he tried to touch her — he became empty and formless on contact. It was more like he'd been defanged; he was all talk now, and she was desperate enough for company that she'd put aside the rest.

A long breath pulsed through her nose, almost snickering at his predicament. The moment going stale; what did he expect from her? Sadness? She felt nothing. She refused to face any feeling that didn't feed her belly these days. If there was grief within her for this new knowledge she stowed it deep, deep down.

Fuck you, Colt. she sneered as she said it, although there wasn't much power behind the words. She moved to push past him — maybe clipping his spirit body, maybe passing through it entirely, she wasn't delicate or any more respectful of his space now that he was a dead man — and loomed over the bones.

She stared down at them. Whatever passed as thought in her head now was locked away behind feverish eyes.

Indra reached in to the pile and drew a piece out, as if to test the weight of it, and tossed it aside. Then another. Then another, and kept on doing this until his bones were scattered and all that was left was the skull, and pulling this free of the dirt, she positioned it between her paws and began to pry free the jaw bone.

The young woman hoisted this prize up, having cracked the side of Colt's skull to remove it which she indelicately kicked aside, in to the dust. Her eyes flashed upon his form, her teeth a grimace around his own. C'mon, yer comin' widd me. At this point Indra was mad enough to think it might work after all.

colt almost snarked something back in his usual way, but there was something so horribly off with red that he found himself going silent. 
the feeling of her scarlet body passing through, as it were, was that for a tiny moment of this pseudo-contact, briggs felt her whirlwind of emotions, her hurting head, the pressure behind red-rimmed, maddened eyes.
and then she was herself and he felt no more. grimly the cowboy watched as red picked through the bleached pieces of him, finding it distasteful and full of discomfort despite the fact he was no longer tied to them.
scapula, clattering; spine-bones clacking. his ghost flesh felt the strange insistent pressure of her warm jaws ... on his face.
briggs regarded the remains of his skull and frowned at her. "don't think i can leave, girl," he growled, now irritable. hadn't she seen they couldn't touch? why was she doing this? to torment him? punish him?

this went beyond indra. this went beyond colt. she clutched the jaw bone to spite his words and loosed a growl, refusing to let his words linger too long in her ears. she shook her head and felt the weight of the bone, then spat it in the dirt; one of the teeth caught in her cheek and she tasted blood.

yer comin' with me. it was not a request. it wasn't really a demand either, but a certainty. as if indra had control in this moment; she knew how to build altars and began to fashion the scattered bones in to such. the blood dripping from her mouth anointed each bone as she assembled things — shoving femurs in to sand, decorating them with segments of spine, the arc of rib.

the jaw bone, separate. this was to be one offering. it would not be enough! she knew it would not be enough; but his soul was not a pure one, and could not be seen as a prize among the dead.

the second offering came with the sound of flesh tearing: her head bowed, her arms awkwardly reaching up, cutting at her white ear with her nails. pressing herself against the dirt before the altar so that the ear was flat against the dry stone; if this did not work, she'd find another way.

when up she came, indra's head was bleeding. her teeth were bloodied, her cheeks and chin scraped from the effort. blood netted in the fur between her toes. she took the discarded ear and placed it with care upon the altar.

now quit yer gabbin' you piece of shit. she leveled a manic look at him which juxtaposed the empty tone of her voice, and then bowed her head to pray to the only god she knew.

"now go on an' knock it off, red," colt snapped, his dander truly up now. "yew ain't know shit about what's goin' on, so quit it!" he ordered, stepping back with ragged hackles as raised as they had been in life; he turned sharply and stalked away from red.

ding
colt was falling through hell, screaming; he was being split into seven hundred eternities; he was being shoved through mirror dreamscapes simultaneously;
the ghost materialized nearer to indra. colt swore and swung and whirled, eyes wild.
blood in the air.
a bear
"the hell yew done, red!?" briggs roared, rounding on her. "yew don't got the sense god gave a blind goose in a hailstorm, foolin' around like this!"
had he a heartbeat, it would have been going a mile a minute.

Her prayer became a murmuring. A chanting, low beneath her breath. She did not plead with the bear but levied with it, angled with praises and curses alike.

What good was this man to you? Let me tell you. Let me tell you of his ploys, his scheming, his surviving. Tell me how this was not in service of you, god. He kept me alive and now I may serve you. He has been sacrificed; we will sacrifice more, if you bequeath him to me.

And then, commanding over the altar of bones and blood and dust and shadow: Give him to me. No, she did not ask. Indra never asked for anything; she took what was her's, and Colt was her's.

give him to me.
his eyes narrowed. if there was one thing colt briggs had never been, it was property of any woman. you could call him every name under the sun till you were blue in the face, hell, you could do it till the cows come home, just don't call him no husband.
the spirit's eyes were hard. he spat in imitation of life, mouth watering at the very thought of birch juice once more. "yew wouldn't be mine no time afore, red," colt drawled, ragged hackles wavering in an unseen breeze. "what yew want with a dead man now?"
some part of colt was thrilled, thrilled to know he was not bound here. tied here. 
in the back of his ghostly skull, a bear-growl vibrated so loudly he grunted in pain, sideways glaring at redbird, sideways watching to see what sort of power she would manifest yet. had she gotten into witchin while he was dead?

the frenzied look in her eye turned upon him as if to assert her will, wordlessly, and while she did not hear the bear she felt the roar of a distant wind, one which pulsed through Colt and up Indra's spine.
yew don't know everything 'bout everything, Colt. there was plenty she had not told him; of ursus, of Arielle, of Rivenwood, the bear, the blood, coyote bodies contorted upon altars - and the pit.
the wind died down and Colt remained there with her. that was answer enough of her demand.
scooping up the jaw from the altar now, dripping; her head aching, her ear a mangled mess of blood on sparse white.
Her teeth scored the bone. Mine now, mine always. not a husband - she wasn't sure what Colt was to her now - but she wouldn't be alone ever again.
wordless now, she would never let that jawbone out of her sight.

and where that jawbone went, it looked like colt was hellbent to follow.
"ain't that some shit," he growled to himself, dissolving into tendrils of red-brown which dragged on the ground as her path was taken.
and yet the cowboy was relieved to leave the pile of his picked-through bones, and pleased enough it was redbird who had found him.
as a gift, colt briggs gave her silence for the next several hours.