"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
Dominion was no follower of the dark god, neither of his blood nor even of the land that had borne him. She had no touch of the power that flowed through his veins. There was nothing extraordinary about her, no reason his summons should reach her. Except, perhaps, that she was so well acquainted with the way the world was always only ever ending. Who better than Dom, then, to find someone at the end of the world? Perhaps that was why she found herself standing in a place she had never seen, before a man she had never met.
Time had stolen the color from his coat, leaving behind an endless grey. He was smaller than she would have expected from a god, though the goddess of the raging sea had been no giant herself. There was a lean grace to his form, something in the lines of his face, the arch of his neck, the curve of his body that looked familiar to eyes gradually becoming accustomed to the look of the locals. His blood ran strong in the people of this land. How many traced their lineage back to him? And still, he needed them to do his dirty work.
How like the strong, to send those less powerful when lives could be lost. When risk was great, those who had the most to lose clung tight to the pretense of security and sent those they deemed disposable in their wake. Well. What the hell? She’d survived the end of the world a few times before. What was one more? “I might. But what do I get out of it?”
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Ramiel is a vessel yet to be filled. He’s unfinished, still-wet clay set aside by the sculptor to age with the seasons. He is young and vibrant and alive at the same time he is brooding and introspective and unyielding. He is a thinker at times, priding himself on all of the knowledge he has gained and lusting for more with his black-hole brain. At other times, he’s a doer, breaking curfew to watch the white-hot sun rise over the northernmost slopes (it comes at the cost of his burning retinas, but both the pain and freedom are satisfying enough in their impermanence). He’s black now; a black that should be a void but is a portal – a black that hides life under an outward funeral shroud. But all too soon he will grey and that will be more fitting.
Then, he’ll settle somewhere along the spectrum like everyone else. He’ll lose his vibrancy, but he’ll settle.
For now, he’s only another boy stuck between the fancies of a child and the plans of a man. He hears the summons from deep within the woods. The voice is oxymoronically commanding and sedative; he is forced into a dream-walk immediately. It feels as if no time has passed, however. In the blink of an eye (two gold-ringed eyes, actually) he finds himself transported. A figure looms over them, but upon closer inspection, the boy sees that it’s only a grey stallion - the source of the call that his very soul still vibrates with, a simple stallion like the one he will eventually be. The command quivers in his ears (though nothing has been spoken), bounces around the lobes of his brain and trembles in his trachea.
The air in his throat seems to heat considerably as it passes the command. Find her. He’s still mulling it over when the others start agreeing. Some of them pause to ask, to chide, to wonder. Ramiel is grateful for the extra time but eventually he runs out of it. When it’s his turn to speak, he shrugs (caught between wanting to help and wanting to help himself; greying every second because he will fall somewhere in between like everyone always does). “Okay.”
He isn’t a victorious warrior or an unfinished project or a noble peacemaker or a descendent of the dark god. He doesn’t have an entitlement to a throne (even if his mother were still alive, he would not be able to rule a kingdom of women), he doesn’t have any special abilities that could aide him (there is nothing fancy about a pair of endurance wings or poisonous fangs when you do not wish to kill), he doesn’t have any heroic events of winning to his name (he has not participated in a single physical challenge, only the ones against depression and darkness and suicide). Perhaps the only interesting things about him is that he is the last child of a brutal Jungle queen and that he is hopelessly in love with a spring goddess who also loves two others.
That could be the reason the dark god calls him. They both love from afar; they are both trapped in the harsh world where the heart yearns for another who cannot be reached. That could be the reason he answers the call. The sound of the dark god’s voice in the way he whispers ‘her’ proves everything to the hopeless lover – among all the thousands of mares he has lain with, she has been the one he remembers.
And so he follows the dark god’s voice until he arrives somewhere that is also flocked to by others. He pays little attention to who else is gathered (except to catch spot of his lover’s own child, independently standing tall and announcing his bravery in finding her, as they all will be, and he mentally takes note to watch over her child as if the boy were his own). “Of course.”
The words whispers softly over the breeze, echoing insistently inside her mind. She hears them clearly, that young, curious girl who cannot resist discovery. She will follow them because she must, because that is her nature. But she is so young and carefree that she does not come immediately. She dawdles, attention caught by so many things, pulling her in all different directions. But it is there, a persistent call that she knew from that first moment she would heed. So she goes, meandering as she does. And eventually, she arrives.
Her golden gaze finds him immediately, the dark stallion that had called them all here. Called them all to find her. Who, she does not know. He has not told them. But she will find her. It is what she does best: finding things. Hunting, investigating, getting into trouble. She is the epitome of the curious youth, her nose immediately going where it does not belong. But it belongs here. She recognizes this with a certainty.
He is her grandfather, though she does not realize it. Her mother had never had the opportunity to meet him, and neither had she. In any case, nearly half the horses of the land can probably claim relation to him in some way or another. She is merely one in a long string of relatives. Not that she knows this. She is only here because he had called. And she had answered.
So she smiles, a bright smile full of innocence and delight, as her agreement spills from her lips.
