[private] i've never fallen from quite this high; Aegean - Printable Version +- Beqanna (https://beqanna.com/forum) +-- Forum: OOC (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=24) +--- Forum: Archive (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=81) +---- Forum: Lands (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=98) +----- Forum: Hyaline (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=92) +----- Thread: [private] i've never fallen from quite this high; Aegean (/showthread.php?tid=24421) Pages:
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i've never fallen from quite this high; Aegean - Pteron - 07-29-2019 He wakes with a start just a few hours past midnight. It had been the dream again, the one where his bones grow thicker and his wings begin to shrivel into his shoulders. Too much time spent on the ground, Pteron tells himself as he works to steady his breathing and the rapid pounding of his heart. After a moment he stretches out one wing to look at more closely. Still there, he finds, and surely no shorter than when he’d fallen asleep. The moonlight casts odd shadows across the ground around him, and the creak of moving wood sounds overloud. There will be no returning to sleep tonight, Pteron is quite sure. Instead of pursuing rest the pegasus stallion rises from where he’d been leaning against a jutting boulder. He has found no suitable place to nest despite his months in the woods, but this place is as good as any. Still, he is not reluctant to leave it the way he recalls being loathe to rise from his beds in the rushes of the Pampas. Was that childhood, he wonders, or had the Pampas truly felt more like home than the Taiga does? This is a question that plagues him almost as often as the dream. To put it from his mind, he breaks into a canter nearly from a standstill. His bones (they can’t really be heavier, can they? Surely that is a figment of his dream?) and muscle complain loudly, but soon adjust to the relentless pace that the tobiano holds. He travels through the unpopulated redwood forest, places rarely touched by hooves other than those of the fallow deer. His pace is dangerous, and though he tumbles once with a loud crack and his leg hangs briefly at an impossible angle, he does not slow. Not until he breaks into the open meadow that separates Taiga from one of the Hyaline rivers does he stop. Ahead, the peaks of the mountain kingdom rise into a sky that is just starting to glow with the early light of dawn. Sweat streaks down his pale sides, and plasters some of his blue mane against his tobiano neck. His breath is heavy but he is a young stallion in the peak of health with an unnatural speed of recovery, and soon enough he is eyeing the high-altitude trails leading into Hyaline with a considerate eye. He’d been planning on turning and running back through Taiga, but he has never been to Hyaline. Now seems as a good a day as any, and surely it will be a respectable hour of the morning before he finds the lake and valley that he knows are the main part of the kingdom. Knowing that relations between his home and this place are unsubstantiated, Pteron makes no effort to hide his presence. He keeps to the trails with the heaviest use, moves with no special attempt at silence, and remains perfectly visible. @[aegean] RE: i've never fallen from quite this high; Aegean - aegean - 08-03-2019 Aegean I should have loved a thunderbird instead I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead RE: i've never fallen from quite this high; Aegean - Pteron - 08-05-2019 Ahead of him, the dawn light has just crested over a ridge. The shadowed trail ahead of him is suddenly bathed in the day’s first and softest sunlight, and Pteron smiles to himself at this chance to watch the sun rise with the mountains to frame it so well. Yet his attention is quickly pulled from the vista and toward the pale figure that the sun has just revealed. At first Pteron has just noticed the long streaks of remaining shadow on the trail ahead, and had followed them with his olive gaze as the shadows grew wider and eventually culminated in a set of amethyst hooves. He knows it is Aegean, even as his gaze still flicks upward, toward the eyes whose color reminds him of the crocus hearts back in Loess. The white horse was born the same spring as Pteron, and though Pteron knows that he has grown much in the time since their last meeting, he finds himself hoping that he has grown as well as Aegean has. There is a brief moment, just as his eyes take in the impressive spread of antlers that crown the stallion, that Pteron is uncertain whether he wants Aegean, or simply wants to be Aegean. Neither emotion is especially concerning, and the young stallion processes them both with an easy smile. “Yours is not a face I’d thought to find here,” Pteron replies, briefly eyeing the soaring peaks of Hyaline that are far from the low coast where they had met. “But I’m not disappointed.” There is a lively glimmer in his eye that suggests he is much more than not disappointed, and he recognizes much the same emotion in Aegean. The tobiano pegasus has remained rather still since first catching sight of the antlered stallion, but he turns his head at the gust of saltwind. A familiar scene plays out in a familiar way, and Pteron’s olive eyes watch it curiously. He knows enough to have put together that Aegean is the sibling of the only other illusion-weaver he knows; the faint scent of the white stallion’s visit to Loess had stirred an unexpectedly sharp pang of regret in the dun stallion – Aegean had been so close and he had missed him. Their craft is similar, but the image of the Silver Cove is not exactly like anything Oriash has produced, and he briefly wonders if the two of them had played vision games like his own younger siblings. “What are you doing here in Hyaline?” He asks. “Do you live here now? Or just visiting? I’ve heard the queen here is very...accommodating.” Pteron grins at that, amused by his own wit. The high peaks have been a haven for youth and beauty since their discovery; the recent shift toward more liberal behavior is not entirely shocking. It is intriguing though, and Pteron had been hopeful he might at least get a glimpse of the fabled golden queen. @[Aegean] RE: i've never fallen from quite this high; Aegean - aegean - 08-09-2019 Aegean I should have loved a thunderbird instead I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead @[Pteron] RE: i've never fallen from quite this high; Aegean - Pteron - 08-11-2019 Pteron smile is slow, but twists up into amusement as his companion speaks of heartbreak at his disappointment. “It never would,” he promises, and even though he chuckles around his words Pteron is quite sincere. “The very opposite, really.” The dun stallion shares his happiness with the antlered Aegean, his brows raised in a mirror of Aegean presenting his illusion a few moments earlier. There’s a question in his green eyes, curiousity in how his pale friend might respond to this display of Pteron’s own gift. He does not often share his emotion, feeling that it is a weak imitation of the gifts that his mother and sister possess. As a warrior, he thinks that something offensive might have been better: fear or hopelessness or cowardice. Today though, he is happy to have happiness, to be able to project toward Aegean an insight into how very not disappointed he was to have found him here. With Pteron able to project only one emotion, Aegean is spared the many others that flutter through the blue-haired pegasus before him. He lives here, says the moonglow stallion, and Pteron flicks forward curious ears to take in the brief story that follows. So Hyaline is to Aegean what Loess is to Pteron – the home that should have been. Instead, both of them had sheltered in a new place, shielded from the illness that ravaged the world around them. The pegasus considers asking how he likes it, if it really feels like home, but his tongue stills before the words fall. And if it does, how. How does Pteron make a place feel like home, because he has tried and tried and failed. He cannot push himself to admit this yet, not to Aegean who makes his pulse thrum and who has shifted Pteron’s tastes to tall, pale, and impossibly beautiful ever since their first meeting in the Cove. “It’s beautiful here,” Pteron says, having stepped forward to where the trail falls away. The valley below is still bathed in darkness – only the rim of the mountainous bowl glow red with the dawn. Somewhere is the lake, he knows, but rather than look for it he turns back to Aegean, preferring to trace the peaks and valleys in his face. “I can see why you’d choose it.” The mention of Kensa is somehow startling, as though Pteron had not been the one to name her only a few moments before. He swallows, knowing he’d been staring and unable for the first time to find the charisma he so often falls back on. “I wasn’t.” He admits, “I didn’t mean to come here at all, really. But then I was there at the river and the wind was right and it was just bright enough and so I just decided to come.” Such impulsiveness is frequent behavior for the piebald stallion; it is the reason he’d first gone to the Silver Cove. “I wanted to see what it was like here. I’ve never been to Hyaline before.” @[aegean] RE: i've never fallen from quite this high; Aegean - aegean - 08-11-2019 Aegean I should have loved a thunderbird instead I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead @[Pteron] RE: i've never fallen from quite this high; Aegean - Pteron - 08-16-2019 For a long moment, Pteron can feel the breath catch in his throat, trapped by the anticipation that follows his projection. He briefly hopes he has failed, but as the soft edges of Aegean’s face turn upward into a smile, he knows that he has not. That sweet relief last only a heartbeat, and he has barely time to release that held breath before Aegean comes a step closer. “It’s me,” he replies, marveling how clear his voice sounds despite his internal chatter.“I don’t do it very often,” Pteron adds. A flicker at the corner of his vision pulls his gaze from Aegean – are they to be interrupted so soon? But it is only a falling star, one of many, and Pteron watches with wide eyes as they fall around and between the pair of young stallions. He makes no effort to hide his wonder, and the expression on Pteron’s face is nearly childlike in its marvel. That Aegean has made the stars come down to earth seems impossible, and yet the violet-eyed stallion glows in the light of them. In the summoned darkness, Aegean blazes like a moon among the stars, and Pteron cannot tear his eyes away. He wonders if he might be asleep, and this entire trip nothing more than a dream. E has dreamt of Aegean before, after all, but they had all been adolescent things, full of imagined passion and fabricated heat. They had been carnal things, and yet this inexplicable need to reach toward his companion feels most like touching an eggshell – soft and tender and delicate. Yet that is not right either, for Pteron has never been captivated by a nest the way he is by the boy in front of him. It is Aegean’s laughter that breaks the spell of silence, the offer to show him Hyaline. Pteron almost refuses – even opens his mouth to say so – because to see Hyaline would be to look away from its most splendid attribute. But as he blinks away the brightness of the starlight around them, the part of him that has dreamt wickedly of Aegean whispers, and Pteron nods instead. “I would like it,” he tells the antlered stallion. “Could I request a special tour, though? I’d like to see your favorite places – Aegean’s Hyaline.” Pteron takes another step forward, and though he knows that Aegean will soon turn to lead the way to...wherever, he allows himself to enjoy this brief moment where they are near enough that they might touch – if either reached out. @[aegean] RE: i've never fallen from quite this high; Aegean - aegean - 08-16-2019 Aegean I should have loved a thunderbird instead I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead @[Pteron] RE: i've never fallen from quite this high; Aegean - Pteron - 08-21-2019 Despite the chill in the autumn air, Pteron thinks he might be catching fire. Aegean’s words settle into him like the smallest of sparks, and Pteron thinks his entire body might be tinder, and the other’s violet gaze a fan to the flame. His breath is caught in his throat, and the internal blaze he feels makes him as weightless as Aegean’s imagined sea. Special, Pteron thinks to himself, special. He had wanted to take back his request, but the answer that the moonlight stallion gives makes it worth it, and Pteron wonders how likely it is that his body might simply catch fire and float away, like a bit of grass caught in the gust of a wildfire. Very likely, he thinks, if he spent much time in this company. Not even the sea that rises over their heads does much to quench it. It does grow quieter though, as his wonder builds again. There is little that might have torn his gaze from Aegean, but the view from the sea floor is certainly one of them. The starlight shifts to sunlight, dappled and muted by the water overhead, and silhouettes of creatures Pteron has no name for flicker overhead. He does not recognize the whale song for what it is, but it does resonate within him, a low and wordless song that brings a smile of wonder to his blue mouth. They walk down the mountain and into the sea, and Pteron looks back at Aegean to find that his white companion is a soft blue-green in the sealight, his antlers branching up not unlike the coral. Your head is magnificent,” Pteron tells him, knowing that the phrase is silly but too enthralled to think of something wittier, something better. “I think I would live there too, if I could.” The muted sunlight falls away as they come to a stop, trickling away into a gently pink dawn that tints them both a shade of rose. He is not looking at the view, but rather has once more let himself admire his companion and the way his violet eyes and amethyst hooves look against the dawn-colored paleness of his skin. Even his white mane is shades of blush and mauve, tinted by light and shadow in such a way that Pteron longs to reach forward and see what patterns he might make by rearranging the strands. Instead he blinks away the immediate need and soft embers that warm him from within, and looks out at the lake. Pteron had known that it was Hyaline’s defining feature, and yet he’d not expected this. Far larger than any water he’s ever seen, save the sea, it stretches ahead of them like a mirror. The dawn sky is reflected with barely a ripple, and the mountains that they’ve descended while underwater soar overhead. Pteron sighs happily, and looks back at Aegean when he says, “It is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen,” he tells him, and even Pteron isn’t quite sure if he means the lake or the boy or both of them together. @[aegean] i didn't spell check this but i will later <3 RE: i've never fallen from quite this high; Aegean - aegean - 08-22-2019 Aegean I should have loved a thunderbird instead I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead |