"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
I can remember a time when I was so afraid when even my shadow wouldn't follow me
Elaina finds comfort in the sunset. She wasn't sure why.
But somehow the warm ray’s of light make her wildly beating heart stop and falter, its pace dims and for a moment, brief and wonderful, she can breathe. She can almost feel her besides her, the comforting presence of her mother as she listens to the pounding of the waterfall flying over the cliffside on the opposite end of the large lake. But, as the sun makes its final descent behind the mountains, Elaina loses whatever presence she thought she could feel of her mother and is left in the cold of the night.
When she finds her father, he is on his own, maybe it is the only time that he feels at peace (if he feels any peace at all). It makes her want to snuggle into his chest like she had done when she had been a newborn. To be held by him, until he hurt no more. Until she hurt no more, they could chase away their sorrows together. She wants to save her father from what is making him so sad. It is a shame, really, that Elaina could not even save herself. She needed her father to do it for her. But he looks so weak here, alone, without her mother’s pale form beside him, complimenting his obsidian, night coat. She wanders to his side, presses her nose against his shoulder, until she is completely touching his side, comforted by her father’s presence. He looks down at her, with matching eyes of amber and smiles at his daughter made of sunshine, who already looks so much like her mother. “I think tonight we should try to forget,” he murmurs, “If only for a little while.” He says to his daughter, looking down at her, with so much love, so much adoration. She was truly the perfection representation of Benjamin and Beylani. “Just one night,” Elaina had said, her eyes lingering still out to the water. “An adventure perhaps.” Just for tonight.
She has become so much more than that little girl standing by her now dead father’s side, lost in the grief of losing her mother. Elaina was now the same age as her parents were when they had her. Elaina is now almost the same age as when her parents died, a thought that plagues her mind more and more often these days. What happens when she ages to become older than her parents. What then? Does it mean anything? Will she feel any different? The palomino tries to shake the thoughts from her mind as she moves through the trees that have all gone bare as winter cross the land. My summer child had never enjoyed winter, the cold, the monotone dreariness of the landscape that would encapsulate the world. What she hated most was the silence, as everyone would tuck away, the stars tinkling quietly in the night sky, and Elaina left only with her thoughts as she would sit just inside Lovelace’s cavern, watching the world drift onwards.
She finds a clearing, where sunlight manages to split through the trees and send the snow below into a glistening landscape beneath her very hooves. Head turns downwards as she reaches a leg forwards and pulls snow back towards her, revealing the foliage underneath: browned grass and a single dead tulip, unable to live through the frost. Lilli. Was she ever going to see her best friend, her cousin, ever again? Was staying here and continuing searching a mistake? Should she move on into the next land she would find? Once more question plague her mind and Elaina cannot stomp them out, not while that blackened tulip is staring back at her, haunting her with unanswered questions of where her best friend was and if Elaina was ever going to see that blue eyed chestnut ever again.
Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one
Not long ago the silence of winter had stretched throughout more than one season. Spring came and travel cranked to a stand-still. Summer bloomed hot and there was still no sound of hooves, or even animals to pass on your way. What Fear didn’t keep the majority to the safelands killed the rest as a slow-consuming illness. Vadar walks along sturdily through the barren, snow capped forest and remembers it all. He’d contracted the sickness himself and even though he’d been healed twice-over to survive it, the horse couldn’t easily forget.
Maybe that’s why the silence around him doesn’t unnerve him, like it could others. If it did his expression seemed to say otherwise, anyways. His round jaw and furry head bobbed along to the time of his hoofbeats, painted with strange markings that always seemed to give the black stallion a smile.
White grin and silver hair, Vadar was pleasantly making his way through a healthy dusting of snowfall. Aside from the outward shape of his body, the rest of him seemed to blend in well against the backdrop of dark trunks and white powder. All except his eyes, which trailed a faint line of red glow as he crunched along.
A thin flock of blackbirds shook free from a branch and flew off into the sky as he stepped into the clearing where Elaina was. Her sudden appearance, rather that he had come upon her when he hadn’t expected to, stopped Vadar and left him standing there. He breathed in the crisp smell of the air around them, blew out a curling breath, and wondered what she was looking at down there in the dirt.
“What are you looking at in the dirt?” He asked out loud, his dark voice echoing a bit.
07-18-2019, 11:06 PM (This post was last modified: 07-18-2019, 11:09 PM by Elaina.)
I can remember a time when I was so afraid when even my shadow wouldn't follow me
Winter.
There was something vastly lonely about the winter months in a land. There were no colors outside of the simple white of the snow, the blue of the sky, and the green of the coniferous forests. The dull browns, the blackness of night, it could make an entire land look depressingly bleak. Especially when that winter had come, the first winter without either of her parents, the first winter in Beyond. it had been even more depressing still when she would catch them watching her. Marcelo, Aletta, Malachi, even Ori occasionally. They had handled her with kid gloves, desperate for answers but scared to ask the questions. It would have been enough to drive a single person mad, desperate for someone, anyone to be rude to her, to get angry, to show her anything but that sympathetic smile and quiet look of pity.
When spring had come though, Elaina had found friendship in her cousin, Lilli, the crimson girl that Elaina has been so desperately looking for. And with the coming of spring had meant her godfather had returned to her, and the healer that had been present at Elaina’s birth. It had almost been like the family was once again reunited. With the exception of her parents that had weighed on her shoulders and ached her young heart.
Now, Elaina has been alive longer without her parents beside her than she has known them. The feelings was—strange, to say the least. Elaina wonders if she had even been given a chance to really get to know her parents. Their faults, their strengths, their trails, instead of having perpetually looked at them through rose tinted glasses. Valerio had told her stories of when her father had first come to Paraiso as a testosterone filled two year old stallion, and how he had rebelled against Valerio’s kind nature. Elaina had known none of this, her father never having gotten around to telling her the story, it would seem. When she returned to Windskeep years later, she learned things about her mother that she had never known. These stories, while they warmed her soul, caused her to bite her lip in sorrow. Elaina realized how little she knew about the parents that had created her. The more she learned, the more she felt as though she had been living with complete strangers.
She startles, that golden head quickly lifting upwards in surprise. “Wow,” she says after her heart settles. “Quite a trick sneaking up on someone,” she says with a laugh, those amber eyes drifting downwards for a moment before finding his own glowing eyes. “You have nice eyes,” she says, strange eyes, different eyes, but nice all the same she thinks. “I was just,” she hesitates, she doesn't want to sound stupid, but she knows she is about to. “I was looking at the dead flowers I found,” she offers, point blank. “Winter sucks,” she says and can hearing the scolding in the back of her mind from Cherish. ‘Ladies do not say sucks.’ Yeah, ladies don't do a lot of things. Ladies don't fight, they don't travel off on their own, and they certainly don't talk to strange men in the woods. “I’m Elaina.”
Seven characteristics are in an uncultivated person, and seven in a learned one
There’s nothing left of his parents. Well that’s not exactly true: what was left of Vadar’s parents now stained his blood and skin. He was short and stocky like his father, extremely hairy legs and a thick, burdensome mane and tail. The mark of the clown king was clear on his face. He looked clownish, though he didn’t feel it. His mother lived on in the remaining fragments of his self-restraint, which were quickly wearing off as time went on.
His eyes gleamed a ruby flash when Eliana’s head rose, and Vadar quietly wondered how much longer those fragments of good could hold out against the evil inside of him. Especially when something so pretty and soft teased his quietness with a laugh. Vadar’s white-colored mouth grew into a wider sort of grin. She complimented him and answered his question politely enough that the stocky little stallion eased nearer to her golden shoulder for a look. “It’s the fucking worst.” He agreed deeply, smirking. Peeping down into the shoveled snow he could see the flowers she was talking about.
“Not worse than being a dead flower though.” Vadar shrugged and slammed his forehoof down onto the grimy, brown stem. He twisted, grinding the thing into the muddy soil. “You said your name was Elaina, right?”
Glancing through a part in his forelock, Vadar’s bright eyes flashed as he turned to look at the palomino mare again. “That’s a nice name. Nice name for a nice-looking girl.” He hummed at the back of his throat, completely unaware or entirely disregarding how odd that might sound out loud. “You’re very pretty, did you know that?”
Of course she must. The way he asked and the way he looked at her now, like a starving animal, made it seem as if he expected a certain kind of answer from the nomad mare. She smelled of nothing and no one, which made Vadar bold and left him feeling relaxed despite their surroundings. She was a lovely, sad sort of creature and she was here alone. For him. Like a golden present in the bare white snow.
