I ran over a gummy bear [Islas] - Printable Version +- Beqanna (https://beqanna.com/forum) +-- Forum: Explore (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: The Common Lands (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=72) +---- Forum: Meadow (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=3) +---- Thread: I ran over a gummy bear [Islas] (/showthread.php?tid=26832) |
I ran over a gummy bear [Islas] - Shipka - 05-09-2020 Shipka She hadn't gotten in as much trouble as she thought she would. When she returned to her mother's side, the speckled mare had barely had breath to speak, let alone to scold or shout, and only hugged her child close. Perhaps because, by the time Shipka had finally clambered down off the solitary Mountain's broad side, more than a day of frantic searching had elapsed for Yggdrasil. For her daughter, it had been tedium and hunger and gravity that pulled her down. Photo by guille pozzi on UnsplashHow did you get lost on the Mountain? Mama had asked, but it was daylight and Shipka could not show her. Instead she yawned and buried her head into the space behind the mare's elbow, pale eyes fluttering shut against the queries. By the following evening, all is forgiven, and she is adventuring again, searching the skies for the first thin stars of night. Even now, she casts an eye up at the jagged peak and remembers how close the stars were, how they were clear and bright, and she thinks she might have stayed up there in the cold and silence if her belly had not driven her back among the mortals below. She might have stayed among the stars and the fairies and the cold that struck through her as if she were nothing but a silk spiderweb clinging to a branch. The wind in the meadow doesn't ring with the same clarity, rustling softly in the hardy grasses, and the stars feel distant and remote, for all that she can pull them down around her. Small ears flutter against the ticklish breeze and Shipka presses close the the border of the meadow where the soil grows sandy and red, humming softly to herself as she kicks at the dry ground. The air here is warm and hints at the arid nature of Pangea, breathes its heat into the common land and wards off the worst of the winter snow that plagues the North, but it comes with a dulling red dust that coats the rocks and grasses an the few low trees that persist here. It makes her sneeze. And sneeze. And sneeze. And when she finally looks up again, her eyes bleary with tears and squinting and her small nose twisted to one side as if only just holding back the outburst, she finds she is not as alone as she thought, the glowing white shape of a mare burning softly in her eyes. In the darkening meadow she is as bright as starlight and pulls Shipka to her side without trying, the dark filly drawing close enough to press her muzzle against that pale shoulder. It leaves a smear of red dust. "Oh." she says, chargrined, looking up at the purple-eyed mare, "I'm sorry." @[Islas] RE: I ran over a gummy bear [Islas] - Islas - 05-10-2020 isn't it lovely all alone, heart made of glass, my mind of stone She has no sense of home, but rarely does she leave Pangea anymore. There had been a time when she wandered far more frequently, though perhaps wander is not the right word. Wander implies to move without reason or direction. Islas rarely did anything without reason. When she had traveled she had been in search of something – of someone, or somewhere. She hadn’t been sure what, back then, she had just known that there were so many puzzle pieces missing that she couldn’t even begin to imagine the full picture. Islas RE: I ran over a gummy bear [Islas] - Shipka - 05-18-2020 Shipka Can you talk to stars too? It would be a strange question to ask anyone, and her thin experience has been that most would say no - and perhaps not only 'no,' because the idea of talking to stars sounds mad if you've never done it. Shipka, red-nosed and teary-eyed, only looks at the pale mare in wonder. How did she know? In one swift motion, the girl wipes the dust from her nose and circles her attention back up to those purple eyes. "How do you know about that?" The day is truly done, and as the sky darkens, the filly becomes less visible, not by any magic, but because her midnight coat with its flecks of white seems to fade into the background of clear sky. Not so for her companion, who glows and pulsates softly, who draws her in like a moth by looking so like the stars that she does speak to in the dark of night. The little appaloosa is enthralled and her grey eyes widen. Is that how she knows? How else could she, Shipka had not told anybody, she had hugged her secret tightly to her chest, but the star-woman saw right through her. "Are you a star?" Her voice is an awed whisper and she closes the space between them again, although she remembers not to touch, this time, "Is that how you knew?" She had tried to reach them in the sky without ever checking to see if there were any walking the Earth, first. A small frown turns the corners of her lips down thoughtfully. "Are there others down here? Could... could you take me up there? What's it like? I tried to get there myself but it's such a high climb, the sun always comes up too soon! Or my mama wakes up and wants to know what I'm doing and... and I haven't told her yet, cuz, well, it's just so much more fun to have a secret." She gushes information like a fountain, splashing into the still well of the mare without noticing that her enthusiasm is not returned in kind, and without realizing how easily she gives up that tightly held secret. Secrets are fun, but only if there's someone you can share them with and if anyone will keep them, surely it's a star? They've kept all her other secrets, so far. "My name is Shipka! What kind of names do stars get?" @[Islas] RE: I ran over a gummy bear [Islas] - Islas - 06-06-2020 isn't it lovely all alone, heart made of glass, my mind of stone She thinks she is getting better at blending in. It’s becoming easier to smile when she is supposed to, because she has learned they usually smile at the beginning of a conversation. It makes them appear friendlier, she supposes, though she still frequently forgets. Her smiles were different anyway, all mechanical and thin — more like a concept of what a smile should be, without actually being one. The action did nothing to soften or brighten the starless-dark of her eyes, but she offers the girl a thin smile anyway. Islas @[Shipka] RE: I ran over a gummy bear [Islas] - Shipka - 06-23-2020 Shipka "Islas." The pale mare is solemn and quiet as she gives it, and Shipka mirrors that as she presses dark lips together and nods, repeating the strange name softly into the air between them, committing it to memory and feeling it's airy weight on her tongue. It's a thin, pulsing, word, like the starlight that they pull down to earth, and beside it, Shipka feels her own name too heavy and hard. They are opposites, sharing the night, Shipka, with her too-hard name and her dark coat and her pale eyes, blending into the night like a shadow besides the gently glowing Islas with her dark gaze. "It's like Eyeless, though," the girl blurts out, tipping her head to one side, curiously. Islas clearly has eyes. Perhaps it is her mother that was blind and she didn't know it. Maybe if you weren't really looking, those midnight eyes looked empty against the gleam of her skin. The night sky could be like that, too, dark and empty and quiet if you were looking for the sun. Shipka nods again, offering a comforting smile to a mare in no need of it, "She probably didn't mean anything by it." The moon-eyed filly considers the thought that the stars don't have names, don't need them, and the way Islas answers her question so openly. Most of the time her dreamy questions are brushed aside as silly or childish and the mare's earnestness soothes that place in her that yearns to be taken seriously. It roots in her heart a deep appreciation for the star-mare. Her small ears flicker as she decides what question to ask next, there are so many. "I bet you just knew each other from the way you shone. They all flicker a little differently, that's kind of a name, too." Shipka turns to the sky again as Islas's birds fade into a rain of glittering light, "I'm sorry you've forgotten, but if you were a star, then it's gotta still be inside you. You'll remember some day." She offers a bright grin to the night, and her words are filled with all the confidence of childhood as she asserts her belief that Islas will find her way back, will find those memories again. "What was it like, when you went back?" @[Islas] RE: I ran over a gummy bear [Islas] - Islas - 07-01-2020 isn't it lovely all alone, heart made of glass, my mind of stone She can recognize the awe and wonder on the younger girl’s face, and she tries to understand what that must be like. When she had been newly born into this world she had been mostly confused. Trying to understand this strange body, this peculiar heartbeat, and the sister she had been born alongside and the mother that raised them. She had not even fully comprehended what she was at that age, and the confusion had left no room for childlike wonder. The relentless feeling of being lost, of not belonging, of being trapped had been consuming. Her childhood had been spent wondering why she was not like the rest of them, wondering why she felt virtually nothing when her mother held her, and why she didn’t care when she eventually stopped. Islas @[Shipka] RE: I ran over a gummy bear [Islas] - Shipka - 07-30-2020 snag the sky, make it bleed starlight
She wants to touch her, when the mare gestures to the place in her breast where that bit of starfire still burns, Shipka wants to reach out and press her small nose there as well. It is, in part, a gesture of sympathy for all the things lost to @[Islas], but it is also her own longing for the impossible heights between the pair and the stars above them. She wants to, but she doesn't. Instead, she mirrors the softly glowing mare, brushes the small point of her dark chest, and imagines what it must feel like to have that flickering flame burning cold beside her heart. Unfair, is what she thinks to herself as her own breath softly stirs the midnight-colored hair that curls there. Unfair that Islas is a creature apart, neither star nor horse, and that her life is spent caught between worlds. Shipka, though she longs for the stars, is truly part of this place below. She is fully a creature of emotion and feeling and though she is coming to understand that Islas does not experience those things - at least, not in the same way or with the same fervor - she feels a flood of grief and anger, as though the white mare's lack doubles the bite of her feelings. "But that's not fair!" Her small ears flick back and she stamps a foreleg, denting the soft red-sand dirt with the edge of her black hoof, firm lips curling into a petulant frown. "Things should be fair," she insists again, childishly unaware that the world isn't fair, "everyone should belong somewhere." |