[open] Strangers in the night - anyone

[Saedìs]

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”Awaken, little dreamer.”  Darkness; the moonlight is netted across the land in pieces, broken and timid. She closes her eyes again.  ”Rise, child!”  An unpleasant, involuntary instinct forces her to snap awake. The world comes slowly into focus and every bit of it is foreign, even the smell of late summer grass and the feel of the warm air over her haunches. Saedís shivers.  Have I really been asleep so long? She cannot remember. Her mind, once so keen to every whisper and secret of the Earth has lost its sensitivity; she feels blind even as each shape in the shadows is perfectly outlined, feels numb even as the dirt below her shifts with her rising weight. She is waking from a dream that used to be her life, and with each passing moment logic slips through her reasoning like rain through the leaves, and she becomes passive to the ensuing emptiness.  She moves and her body screams in protest, every nerve regaining life under the agony of thousands of needles, but Saedís does not react. Her gait is jerky and her coat is dull; the splendor of the ocean a memory so dry that only the salt remained. She did not try to remember them. She did not care. The only thing that mattered now was the dangerous coaxing of the earth in front of her, the rewarding relief that came with each step forward, and the ache on her tongue for water. But she passes over a stream without seeing it, oblivious to the icy water that slides around her legs, as indifferent to her as she is to it. She has not needed to eat or drink over this past year, why should it now be necessary? Delirium is a harsh master, and he drives her before him unrelenting.  But she is not all lost: still the light of youth and innocence glows, hopeful, within her emerald gaze, and increasingly her stride evens and flows, remembering a time when golden sand shimmered beneath her and the setting sun painted fire along her silver body. The others there, the places she traveled and the love she lost; these things will come in time. For your sake, little dreamer, may you pray these memories are never recovered.  At one time she would have taken delight in the quiet solace of the night; but now she is terrified of it, abandoned by all she has ever known including her capability for recalling what may have protected her. It is this that forces clarity through her mind and turns the mystified shapes of her surroundings whole; it is this that draws her attention, finally, to the world she is moving through. The silk-soft feel of the moon, the choir song of evening’s creatures… they are curses upon her loneliness, echoes of what motivated the blood in her veins. She has been long without contact and even longer without proper rest, so when the ghost scent of other horses reaches her, she actually begins laughing. "Saedís!" And she sighs, as though having a fond conversation with a dear friend, "How blind you have become."  SAEDÌS

[Camlin]

camlin

It's always the same, I'm running towards nothing again

He is a moon child in a flood of sunlight. The dark haired boy walks through the forest with open green eyes. It had seemed as though he had not been surrounded by the tall trees in so long. The floor of the land lay blanketed in gold and reds, he breathes in the must of the sleeping decay. The stallion walks slows and deliberately as he makes himself remember. Beqanna had gone through changes with painful growth spurts with each flood of insightful influx but the forest had always remained.

Camlin looks upward at the nearly exposed sky. In the times of summer, it would be a green canvas dotted with peeking sun rays but now as the world lays her head down for sleep, Camlin watches with a small smile flickering across his features.
He does seem to notice, waking him from his daydream, a woman's musk mingling with the cedar and sandalwood. The emerald eyed man finds a woman not far from him...a pale wisps moving between the ash brown of dormant trees. "Hello there." His voice is low, a baritone rumble across the cradle of silence that is the forest floor. Camlin attempts to offer a smile but it only manages to tug crookedly over his lips so he allows it to slip from his expression.

Camlin is grateful now for the moonlight creeps through the naked trees to illuminate the mare and the porcelain parts of himself. He attempts to not frighten her but simply expose himself to a potential conversation if she should chose too. It was a chilly night but the length of his growing coat does well to keep him warm. "I'm Camlin." His name is encased a small frozen cloud as it leaves his lips, listening for the mare's own reply, if she gave one.

[Saedìs]

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Saedís was a child of the stars, and despite her seeming wake from endless dreams, stood against the world now in the full splendor of her youth. Each passing moment pushed her past beneath water she was not yet willing to surface, and she was recovering gracefully; a fawn who must gain her footing before she is left for the wolves. She found beauty in this place — in the subtle, shy dips of the trees and the quiet, silver-soft rustling of the grass. Had she just waken? She knew, somehow, that it had been only one night’s uneasy rest just like all the others; that she awoke and ate and drank as she must, but did not see what was before her, as though watching her life from someone else’s unfaithful gaze.  The wind betrays the presence of another; Saedís is aware of Camlin even before he is within sight, but sleep has put my child-mare at ease and she waits patiently. Her eyes are unjudging; they dismiss the intimidating appearance of the stallion as though reuniting with a dear friend. How lovely the lights of stars dance in her silk-spun eyes! For Saedís is everything she should not be: loyal, welcoming, and ultimately trusting; believing that the best of everyone is the side of which they show at all times. Even those who have broken her have not yet extinguished her child’s heart. Her offering to Camlin is all these things, and her voice is sweet as spring.  "Hello wanderer" She breathed, and the sound was melodic. "I..I think I've been sleeping, can you tell me where I am?" But she has barely dipped the slender alabaster of her face to the stranger when the memory flutters out of reach like a mischievous butterfly and she stares almost dumbly at Camlin as if delving answers from the emerald in his eyes. ”Sorry, I must look utterly silly” she chirps, and the realization of this procures the shiest of smiles upon her lips.  ”I am Saedís” SAEDÌS

[Camlin]

camlin

It's always the same, I'm running towards nothing again

Camlin is not a creature of ill will. The painted stallion simply moves between the rays of moonlight as the autumn's spice clears his head of nonsense and allows him to simply be of his simple nature. Here, among tall trees, lay a quiet solitude that could be sought if one should decide to seek it.

The pale woman draped in the moon silk was watching him with dark eyes that gleam with curiosity. She does not smell of Beqanna and it's spilled blood. She is a representation of something perhaps a bit greater outside the confines that Camlin had not bore any witness too. A great beyond that filled his head with coltish possibilities that he must slowly strip away with each passing year.

The woman's movements are deliberate and her voice is a sing-song of cords as she speaks to the pied man. Ears move forward when he finds a place not far off from where she stood, his head inclined thoughtfully as he listened to the way she spoke. Her words are proper and clipped, a tone of casual song weaving between the vowels and it coaxed a curl to the tall man's lips as he listened.

"I'm Camlin." His reply is low and thick as the bed of dead foliage beneath their feet. "This is Beqanna...the forest to be more exact." He rests a smooth smile on his dark lips with no malicious intentions creeping just beyond the edges of his rested demeanor. "Are you from here?" He inquires as she seems foreign given her scent and the way she speaks so he rests into his hip, a leg lifted slightly, listening to the pale mare.