"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
He stands amongst the brush that thrives near the crystalline lake, eyes on the farthest shoreline as his tail snaps from one side to the other, lashing at the smooth hide of his flanks. There is a distinct bite to the breeze that stirs the greenery, heralding the colder months that await them in the near future. Normally, he might pause to lament the passing of summer (easily his favorite season, at least temperature-wise), but on this evening, he is too distracted by different trains of thought.
At least twice now, someone has asked if the Dale is his new home and each time, he has given no firm answer because he can’t seem to make up his mind. The Dale has been pleasant enough and its people kind and welcoming. He has heard that all of the lands have recently begun organizing beneath new leaderships, but he has not sought out she that wears the Dale’s crown. Maybe he should.
And yet.
Something keeps him from choosing this place. Perhaps it is the curiosity that picks at his soul and pushes him toward the Chamber, despite a lack of allegiance to her in the past. But he debates whether or not to select the Chamber as home, even though he has yet to set foot within her boundaries. It is an inevitable link, however tenuous, to his past, and he is hesitant to travel down that path again.
Then there are still the Gates and Pangea to consider. There is sure to be a long history behind the Gates, for some version existed when he last walked the surface; he wonders if the landscape is as heaven-like as it’s old name might suggest. On the other hand, he knows nothing of Pangea’s history, nor really what the climate and surroundings are like. There is a certain allure to the unknown aspects, yet he still holds back.
All this time quietly yearning for a home or for a purpose, or maybe for both, and now faced with a handful of options, he may as well be clinging to a fist full of smoke.
Perhaps because home is not always about a place to hang your hat, sometimes it’s about what you’re coming home to.
Unbidden, her image manifests in his mind’s eye. The uncertainty does not slip entirely from his being, but it fades from the foreground. Her presence, even the very thought of her, affords him a sense of comfort he is yet to find elsewhere. A part of him assumes that it is because she is the first creature he’d laid eyes on in a century or so, but the deeper crevices of his soul recognize that there is another reason, that something else is rooting and taking on its own new life.
They have been exploring this newest version of Beqanna, so it has been some time now since he has seen her. A faint, wry hint of smile curves his lips as he realizes this is why he has come to the water tonight. He watches the moonlight creep lazily across the gently rippling surface, quietly appreciating the white-gold softness it bathes the scene in.
Something tells him that she will be here tonight, so he waits and thinks of what to say.
assailant
"The comfort zone is always the most desirable place to be. But in settling for comfort, there is a price to pay and it comes in the death of ambition, of hope, of youth, and the death of self." -Simon Barnes
07-03-2023, 12:41 AM (This post was last modified: 07-03-2023, 12:42 AM by Adriana.)
i showed him all my teeth & then i laughed out loud, because i never wanted saving, i just wanted to be found
Though they had come to the Dale together, Adriana had been careful to not cling too tightly to him.
She is still not ready to acknowledge the part of her that longed for his company, and the only way she knew to elude facing that is to continue as she had always done—to be indifferent, though not to the point that she appeared callous or entirely disinterested. And it is easy enough to find ways to entertain herself without him, whether that be in the Dale, or elsewhere, with whoever happened to capture her attention at the time.
She is fairly certain he does not struggle to occupy himself without her company, either, although that is a begrudging acceptance on her part.
This is a new land to her, and while it isn’t likely a place she would ever consider calling home it is still interesting enough. It is beautiful in a way that she is unaccustomed to. It is not lush and bright in the tropical way that Tephra had been, but the rugged hills and mirror-like lake are pristine in their own way. She did not care for the way the mountains seem to make a barrier just before the sea, though; even though the lake is beautiful, it did not call to her the way the ocean did.
It felt too enclosed, and she missed the feeling of infinity that the ocean provided—the idea that she could go forever and end up somewhere entirely new.
It is why she still found herself leaving the Dale to seek the solace of the sea, only this time whenever she found herself miles beneath the surface of the waves, it was far more difficult to ignore that invisible anchor that pulled her back to land every time.
That something—or someone—drew her back.
Tonight she followed that pull, walking the now familiar path that led her through the rocky hills, the scent of the sea still clinging to her hair and skin. The frost on her scales glistened faintly in the silvery moonlight, and the golden strands of her mane remained damp and knotted. She looked especially out of place on land this evening, with the water of her wings cascading along her sides and the seashells embedded into the coils of her hair, her ocean-blue eyes scanning around her intently.
She knows that she is looking for him, and this time she lets herself accept that that is what she is doing.
She finds him along the bank of the lake, illuminated by a streak of moonlight, and she pauses. There is no denying the way her chest tightens at the sight of him—a mystifying ache, and she cannot decipher if it is pain or happiness, or why it somehow makes sense that she would feel both.
Although she is sure he heard her approaching she still manages to fix that siren-smile to her face by the time he looks up, her expression impassive as she slips forward to place herself alongside him and ask sweetly, “You waiting for someone?”
A snippet of his first conversation with Famkee worms its way into his thoughts and he finds himself thinking about days long since put to bed. He runs down the pieces of his old life, the routine of leading a herd, the women that he kept under his thumb, the children he barely glanced at despite his quest to keep producing more of them, and the relative ease of keeping all of them safe.
But he lingers at the single name that has stayed with him for all of years that have passed in the meantime. He is sorry to realize that details have slipped permanently from his memory, as though they are surrounded by a dark hazy shield that rebuffs his attempts to summon them back. He remembers the feel of her pressed to him in one of her calmer moments, but cannot recall the color of her eyes, not even the once familiar curves of her body. It is frustrating, to say the least, but he is grateful that some of the intangible things remain, for he knows he needs them in this current phase of life.
“How did it feel to be in love?”
An innocent question, one that he hadn’t cared to give much thought to when he had answered Famkee. However, it returns with a vengeance, demanding his attention as he waits by the water.
Not quite willing to abandon the bravado that had once served him well, he denied that he had loved Demise back then. She’d just been one of his girls, albeit his most loyal (even if the most unhinged) one. But beneath the wicked delights that occupied their time, love had surely woven a web that supported their chaotic relationship. Now, he sees that and can admit to himself that just as she would have done anything for him, so he would have done for her because he did love her.
And so, where the clouded vision of his old love’s face sits in his mind’s eye, a new image develops with precise clarity. The crimson and gold tendrils that frame the eyes, blue as the icy sea she so carefully tries to keep her heart locked within. He smirks at this. As well as he knows himself and his stoicism, he also knows that he has somehow burned through her barriers, by however small a measure it may be.
As he draws in a deep breath, he swears he can smell and taste the salt of the ocean that reminds him of her, despite knowing that the lake at his feet is the freshest of waters he’s encountered thus far. Just as he brushes it aside as a mysterious manifestation of his longing, he hears the steps that had become so familiar to him on their journey here.
He is tempted to bound up to her with the enthusiasm of a young colt, but restrains himself and stands placidly fixed in her gaze as she slinks up to his side. A glint of pleasure, easily mistaken for a flash of moonlight, passes briefly through his eyes as he reaches for her. The new additions to her mane do not go unnoticed, but he does not bother to comment on them even as they scrape at the soft skin of his nose when he pushes against them to inhale, to memorize more of the briny scent that clings to her. The coolness of the scales beneath the hair rouses a quiet rumble of satisfaction deep in his chest as he lets his breath trace a warm path to her cheek.
“And how would you feel if I said it’s you?”
His voice is soft and quiet, yet laden with the loud roughness of his delight (and relief) in seeing her again. He says nothing else, content with just her nearness in the moment. Eventually, his curiosity wins out and he tugs gently at an errant strand of her mane that just happens to be near his lips.
“I haven’t seen you in the Dale for a while.. find anything worth your time?”
assailant
"The comfort zone is always the most desirable place to be. But in settling for comfort, there is a price to pay and it comes in the death of ambition, of hope, of youth, and the death of self." -Simon Barnes
i showed him all my teeth & then i laughed out loud, because i never wanted saving, i just wanted to be found
Even though she doesn’t flinch away from his touch, it is a habit that she cannot seem to break, that she still tries her best to hide the fact that she is happy—relieved, almost—to see the way that he reaches for her. She fights the urge to lean into him, afraid that he might feel and read her every thought if she allowed herself such closeness. But there is something in the back of her mind, a voice, that tells her she runs the risk of actually pushing him away if she keeps going on like this; if she continues to play it cool to the point she may as well be ice.
It would be so easy, to simply let herself press back into him, to just see where this path might lead if she weren’t afraid to follow it.
But all the things that could go wrong flood her mind, overriding anything that she might feel or want, and she might have managed to once again barricade herself inside her self-imposed fortress if it had not been for the warmth of his breath against her cheek.
It was only a breath, only the ghost of his actual touch, but it still sends a shiver up the length of her spine and draws her in like gravity, her body leaning towards his whether she wants it to or not.
“I’d feel like I should tell you that you don’t have to wait for me,” she begins, and at first she speaks with her usual lilting cadence, that teasing coyness that comes to her far too naturally. Her lips brush against his mane, and she can feel the weight of his wings against her side, and something in her shifts, changes, as she averts her eyes to the ground and admits quietly, “but I’m glad that you do.”
It felt like a confession, but instead of the coiled knot in her chest loosening it seems to twist itself tighter. The urge to move away from his closeness—to restore a bit of the shield she had lowered—comes again but she resists, and she is certain that he must feel the erratic way her heart pounds behind her ribcage. She almost doesn’t hear his question, but the feel of his lips tugging at her mane demands her attention, though she does not look at him yet. The internal war she has been fighting starts up again, her mind racing almost as quickly as her foolish heart.
She could lie; she could make her encounter with Lie sound like it had been more than it actually was. She could use it to keep space between them, to lead him to believe that he, too, is just another conquest, another thing to distract and entertain her.
But that voice is there again in the back of her mind, the one that tells her to stop before she makes a life-changing mistake. The one that tells her she will never know where this path goes if she doesn’t follow it.
Finally, she looks at him, ocean-blue eyes finding his face, and her pretty golden lips twist into a small, knowing smile as she shakes her head. “No, I didn’t,” is all she says at first, holding his gaze. She could say more; she should say more, but she can’t bring herself to do it just yet. She can only hope that maybe he can read between the lines of all the things she doesn’t know how to say, and know that the fact she came back at all meant more than any words could express anyway.
Leaning closer, she brushes her muzzle against his neck, trailing the slope of it down to his shoulder as she asks, “and what did you do while I was gone?”
Her hesitation does not escape his keen senses, but he does his best to mask any outward reaction to it. How can he possibly blame her for any reticence when he himself has been clutching his cards so closely to his chest? Still, it is somewhat frustrating that she is far more unyielding than any other woman he has staked an interest in. The wheels of his mind turn as frantically as hers, though his are less driven by fear of the unknown, but rather in search of the most effective way to progress this relationship.
While her years of life are so few compared to the centuries of his, he is no more wizened in navigating these waters than she, so he is quietly thrilled that she does eventually fold at his touch. His ego sufficiently stroked by the feel of her lips at his mane, he huffs slightly at her words and offers what he feels might return the favor. “I’d wait another couple of centuries for the loveliest lady in Beqanna if that’s what she wanted.”
He allows the wing nearest to her to lift and drape over her back, wordlessly inviting her to fall further into his embrace with its warmth and feathery caresses as the tips drag along her skin. Though she may wish to hide hers behind those thick walls of her fortress, he does not mind if she feels the way his pulse quickens at the thought of bringing her nearer to him.
A smile spreads across his face, surely the broadest he’s given since their initial meeting, at her next words. Oh, how that statement further inflates his pride, his delight that she found nothing (and no one) that could fully draw her attention from him. He tilts his face closer to hers, not bothering to disguise the traces of elation in his dark eyes as he lets his breath wash over her again. When he speaks, his voice takes that rough tone again. “Well, I must say I’m somewhat happy to hear that.” And then, he gently presses his lips to the corner of her mouth.
The shiver that raced along her spine belatedly finds a way to creep along his skin as her touch dances across his neck, seizing the synapses in his brain so much so that he barely registers her question. He spends a delightful moment lost in this fog before his mind stumbles to catch up, to phrase an answer for her. Unlike her, he does not wrestle with the idea of falsehoods. In fact, he does not really give much thought to what he says, instead just offers the naked truth without considering the consequences of its bareness.
“Not much, just wandered and met a few friendly local ladies. One of them proved to be a great help, actually..” His voice trails off as his thoughts drift to Ryatah and the starry visions that had helped fill the gaps in his memory, not realizing that he might be sparking a destructive fire between himself and Adriana, especially given his colored past and the fact that the innocence of his meeting Ryatah could not be gathered from the natural brevity of his speech patterns..
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware
i showed him all my teeth & then i laughed out loud, because i never wanted saving, i just wanted to be found
No one else makes her feel like such a complicated mess.
She doesn’t know how he does it; how in one heartbeat she can feel like of course he has no choice but to fall for her, and then in the next find herself wondering why he ever would. But she knows that it isn’t his fault, that it isn’t something he is intentionally doing — she is almost certain that she is the only one caught on this ever-swinging pendulum, vacillating between her usual fearless self and then shifting into a hesitant, uncertain girl that she doesn’t even recognize.
It’s easier to keep it all locked behind pretty smiles and coy flirting, but at this point she has let too much of her true self slip through and she is sure he can see right through her.
She isn’t sure how much longer she can keep up the charade anyway.
When his wing drapes across her back, her chest tightens and her skin shivers.
For a few stuttering heartbeats she resists that magnetic pull that intensifies in the space between their two bodies, until, finally, she folds. With a subtle shift her curves meet his, and the warmth of his skin seems to melt beyond her frosted scales and straight into her bones. She catches that look of delight in his eyes when she confesses to finding nothing—and no one—worth her time, and this would have been the moment she made a teasing retort had his lips not found the corner of her mouth.
She cannot tell if her mind goes quiet or if it is suddenly filled with such a humming electricity that she cannot hear anything else. For all her coquettish ways she has never been this close to anyone, and for a moment she is distracted by the feel of his own heart beating behind his ribs, of his breath across her skin. Her blue eyes find his, and even though she can feel heat flooding her face she does not pull away.
There is something thrilling in this hazy kind of confusion, and she would have been content to linger there a few moments longer but his last words are like a rock shattering the glass-like trance.
“Oh.” A single word, but it falls heavy like a stone from her mouth, and she stiffens against his side.
She can feel the coldness returning, and it takes her a moment to realize it is because she has stepped away from him and the frost is already hard at work remaking itself, the scales lacing across her golden body. She doesn’t look at him yet, her jaw clenching to keep the vitriol that sat on her tongue from spilling. Her ocean-blue eyes flash with anger and jealousy, but by the time she looks back to him the storm-clouds are gone, replaced with only a flint-like hardness and a cool indifference. “Well, I’m glad you had your choice of women to entertain you. Or…help you.”
The remnants of the antiquated machismo that once dictated his way of life linger just behind his new enlightenment and given physical embodiment, it would currently be a large cat purring triumphantly over its freshly captured prey. And yet, while he rides the high of seeing and feeling her yield to his touch, it is not quite the same creature it once was. He is not sure when exactly he’d accepted that his old way of life was defunct, or when he’d come to realize that perhaps, despite the small successes he’d found as a herd stallion, he was intended to fulfill a weightier, more meritorious role. He is still not quite sure what that purpose might be, but her vulnerability in the moment opens doors he had never considered before.
So, he revels in possibilities hidden in the way she thaws as his wing curls tightly around her, in the way her body fits perfectly against his, in the way time stands still as he swears that he can feel their hearts throbbing in sync with each other. There is still much he is unsure of, but he knows that this intimacy, so unlike any he’s known before, that she herself is the home he has been looking for all of these long, lonely years. While he had once lamented those decades of imprisonment, now he is grateful for them, for who knows if their paths would have crossed if he’d been left to wander during those years instead.
For a moment, he lingers on this train of thought, wondering what he might be experiencing if they had met with him having spent all of his time as a free man, or if he’d never ventured to the Mountain and been thrown into his ‘little’ spiral of self-questioning. Perhaps he would still be playing games with her mind, having never taken the time to acknowledge the true scope of his feelings for his old flame. Maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he would have chosen his words with more care. Not likely, but he probably would have at least recognized the danger in his phrasing.
But he is not that man anymore and the change in her body language comes unexpectedly. As it does for her, the fact that she no longer presses herself to his side does not register immediately but eventually he realizes that he is left holding his wing over an empty space. Confusion knits his brow into a furrow as he watches the tide of emotion wash over and change the landscape of her face. The sharpness of her tongue flicks at his exposed emotional underbelly, but instead of cutting deeply, it tickles lightly, and he laughs aloud as he understands the reason for its presence.
Jealousy. That is what buries the tenderness she had managed to let slip past her defenses and he laughs, not out of malice because he had intended to rile her; no, he laughs because the thought of another turning his head has become utterly absurd. Sure, he has spoken to more women than men since returning to the surface, but none have come close to holding power over him as she does. Again, not understanding how his reactions influence hers, he reaches for her again, thinking that he will be able to easily soothe her temper with his touch.
“Now now, there’s nothing to worry your pretty little self about. Come back here and let’s calm down a bit..”
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware
i showed him all my teeth & then i laughed out loud, because i never wanted saving, i just wanted to be found
She does not have the right to be mad at him.
This idea is what echoes through her mind above all else, becoming the mantra she uses to try to smother the jealousy that now squeezes at her chest. He’s not yours, the voice whispers, and somehow that does nothing to placate her. She knows that she does not have any kind of right over him; he is free to do as he pleases, just as she is. And she knows too that if she had wanted him she could have — should have — just said it. She does not have the right to feel betrayed when she never said anything; it only further spoke to her naivete that she had foolishly, stupidly thought they were following the same unwritten rules.
And maybe that is what she is most angry at, is knowing that this could have been avoided if she had not let her fear of the unknown rule her every action. If she had not assumed that if she was not entertaining anyone else, then neither was he.
Perhaps her apprehension to reveal any part of herself to him had been a warning sign. Perhaps this is an opportunity to cut her losses and count herself lucky that all that happened is a blow to her ego, one that she can surely recover from in due time. She likes to think she is the type to learn from her mistakes, and somewhere beneath the stinging envy is a hardening promise to not let this happen again.
His laugh, though short and quiet, is a grating sound. Not for the first time, she wishes she had inherited the bite of just one of her parents — either Sabbath’s fangs or Varick’s unforgivable jaws would have suited her just fine in this moment. Instead all she had was her sharp tongue, but even that she can’t bring herself to unleash on him. There is a part of her that is aware that she cannot take back anything that she says, but she is afraid if she doesn’t get away from here soon she will lose the tenuous control she has over it.
“I promise you, I am calm,” she says tightly, her jaw clenching as she bites down on what else she wants to say. She sees him reaching for her and she recoils, widening the distance between them, before leveling her ice-blue eyes with his. “If you want to touch someone I’m sure you know who else you can ask — sounds like you have plenty to choose from — but it certainly is not going to be me.”
Before he can answer she abruptly turns away, and without a second thought she disappears into the lake, where she knows he cannot follow.
He had never been a dreamer before, but the more time he spends on his soul-searching in this new incarnation of Beqanna, and the more time he spends with her, the closer he gets to becoming one. Visions of the future still dance in his mind’s eye, even as reality implodes around him, something he is yet to realize. For a brief moment, he sees the faceless shape of a darkly colored child with red and gold tendrils falling over its eyes, eyes that he knows are ice-blue. Though it is but an image, a mere thought, it warms his heart unlike any of his true children had in their lifetimes.
But the fantasy is quickly disrupted as she flinches away from his touch and the picture is set ablaze by her heated words. Confusion spreads like wildfire through his brain, for he does not understand why or how easily she shifts into this cool, controlled anger. The jealousy he understands, for he would have felt similarly had she mentioned meeting another man, but this is something else. Then it hits him.
She thinks that there has been more to his interactions, and her assumption, her utter lack of faith in him lights another kind of fire inside of his chest. His own brand of anger sparks and rapidly boils over, fueled by disbelief that she thinks so lowly of him. But there is no time for him to issue a scathing retort, for she vanishes into the water in the blink of an eye.
The anger does not reduce to a simmer, but bubbles of regret cool the frothing heat just a touch. Perhaps he should have thought more carefully about what he said, should have made it much more apparent that he had only spoken to (and gleaned much insight) from those other women. But the time for that is long passed now.
He had come with the intention of giving his heart to her, but instead he is left standing, heart in hand, alone in indignation, staring at the waves beneath which she has sank.
“For fuck’s sake…”
Now what?
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware
