"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
The sun filtered winsomely through leafy canopies above. Dappled brown earth stretched out between trunks of massive trees, blinding little saplings. There existed here and there in the canopy enough of a gap to let a whole flooding pool of golden sun fall onto the forest floor, creating oases in which fresh green life was brimming. A tree had fallen in one such pool, probably the cause of many, weighed down some years ago by ice or slain by wind or storm. The ancient gray trunk was now softened by time and thaw. Around it early buds of primrose (pale green pods full of unborn sunlight), and young creeping ferns had pushed up above the ground, along with a few thin-stalked young trees, with no leaves yet to identify them.
Within this patch of gold sun and green spring lay the little filly this morning, alone. Lounging with her head on an Artist’s Conk and her legs spread out on the carpet of young green plants. Her pale, metallic coat glittered in the light that fell upon her. The thin strands of her mane like liquid gold against the faded gray of tree and fungus were spread in haphazard disarray. She had been hard to notice before the sun came up, for she was very still. Her shimmering, pale flaxen hide was almost the same colour as morning sunlight and – lounged as she was on the east-side of this log in the direct light it was just possible to imagine that she had fallen through the canopy with the dawn. The picture stayed this way, static and waiting, for one long, slow minute until the stillness was broken by a rustling, hopping rodent that stole across the ground in search of snacks.
As the sun dragged itself higher into the sky, as the light grew warmer and less ephemeral and the slant of the rays changed through the canopy above, Alayaya stirred. Her eyelids fluttered open (a little too dramatically to be believable) and she stretched her legs, rustling the leafy floor. She didn’t quite disturb the nearby chipmunk turning over leaves to look for snacks. He kept her in his eye line, but his busy hands kept digging. Lifting her head sleepily she looked around her, stretching her neck so she could peek over the back of the log, though not apparently expecting to see anything. She seemed supremely unconcerned about being alone. Silly creature – have you been alone since you fell asleep? There certainly wasn’t any sign of others nearby. Suddenly, ear swivelling first, the chipmunk caught her attention; she whipped her head around to find the little scurrying creature on the ground. With a grin she climbed to her feet – and the movement looked a little too fluid, too graceful for her age and the enthusiasm she suddenly emanated. The chipmunk did pause now, tail twitching, considering her. She made a tiny step forward, head down, ears forward, and he ran – and so did she; exuberance and bright young energy in a bounding playful agility. The chipmunk scurried across the cleared earth floor of the forest a few dozen yards, the filly in hot pursuit, before it leapt up the trunk of a wide old tree and spiralled upward. Coming to an abrupt and unceremonious halt at the base of the tree she reared up, planting her forefeet against the trunk and peering upward at the boughs above. She followed the progress of the little brown rodent, head weaving as he wove through the branches. Above her head about forty feet he made a leap to the next tree and she, craning her neck backward to keep him in view, overbalanced, flailed with a squeal, and fell backward.
With a snort she rolled over and climbed to her feet again. Without a second glance for the chipmunk she was decisively off – racing under the branches overhead, leaping from patch of sunlight to patch of sunlight, never lingering long in the shadows. Did she know where she was going? It was hard to say… she weaved in several directions as she ran, but overall she moved through thinner and thinner wood. Suddenly, she turned at 90 degrees and pelted at full speed along an alley of elms just awakening from their long winter slumber, emerging in a few moments under the bright, cloudless blue sky of the Plain. Grass grew up to her ankles here, with forget-me-nots adding splashes of early blue to the green waves. She ran with a lilting, carefree grace about a dozen more steps, a shriek of delight trailing after her like gossamer and promise. Quite abruptly she flung herself down onto the ground and rolled in a patch of forget-me-nots, giggling.
And there she waited, flopped on her side in the sun, expectant.
The sun was the first thing the spotted mare looked forward to seeing every morning. Radiant and luminous, it's rays danced across the hills rolling landscape. The morning light brought life to her home. If you were to pay attention you would come to notice the small rituals that twisted through the land. The morning doves with their singsong melody would perk up from their nests. With widespread wings they would take to the sky and dance through the clouds with a sort of elegance. The small fluffy rabbits would shake themselves free of sleep, and then they would hop from the bush. With glistening eyes full of the need to explore, their tiny noses would twitch before they started off in a quick run towards the tall grasses that spread across the landscape. The butterflies would begin to flit above the wildflowers that painted the land with color. The deer with their tiny fawns would make their way from the trees to the lake for a morning drink. Their fawns would chase one another in the form of a game while their mothers drank.
It was beautiful this, a morning so peaceful and harmonious. Most wouldn't care to stop and observe such natural ways of life. Yet Crota wasn't the type to ignore the small gifts of the world. Every day the small sized mare made her way to the tallest point in her home and looked down over it all. With bright eyes she would watch her home come to life in response to the sun's light. After some time, she'd turn to where the Hill's resident's slept. Then as they came into view, she would count them until she had seen them all and was able to note that they were all accounted for and safe. It was one of the many duties of running her home; keeping a close eye on her homeland's residents. Though they weren't only her homeland's residents. No. They were also her family. So once they were all awake and wandering about, she would finally head down the hillside to join them.
The rest of her mornings were usually spent conversing and exploring with the herd. Though this morning was different. It was one of the many days that called for the Hill's leader to make her way back to the lands of those in search of a home. Their own home was in need of more life, more personality and the only way to change that was to continue to recruit. With this weighing on her mind, the short legged mare makes her way out of her kingdom and towards the fields. With confident steps, her small hooves dig into the dirt as travels along the well beaten paths. Along with the sounds of the wind twisting through the tree leaves, she can hear the calls of the many creatures as she walks. With every few steps, her ears turn at a new sound as she tries her best to take in every part of the world surrounding her.
The pony doesn't want to miss a beat so to say. She wants to witness, to explore and to discover each little bit about the land that she can. That is, she wants to do her best to do so before she reaches her expected demise. This factor is one of the reasons she has been known among her resident's for consistently being the type to wander in and out of their home. So when she finally see's the field in the distance with it's various blooms of wildflower and golden grasses, Crota finally picks up speed. Her heart pounds with excitement and her skin trembles with a small rush of goosebumps. She wants nothing more than to finally be successful at helping build her home for those who wish to call it such. She knew that such things took time and effort. That in the beginning it was not always fruitful. But she had hope that her hard work would one day pay off and she would come home to a land thriving and full of equine life.
With an air of excitement and confidence the small mare bounces her way into the field at a trot. The soft grasses lick and tickle along the bottom of her belly and wrap around her muscled yet short legs. It's a welcoming feeling. A feeling that tells her that the day ahead is about to be a full and interesting one. With a look to the sky, her bright blue eyes close and she smiles to herself, enjoying the sun's warmth as it presses against her skin. With a silent prayer (for confidence of course) to the gods up above, she lowers her face with a slow grace and her eyes flutter open. It takes a moment for her eyes to adjust, soft sun spots dancing through her vision as she blinks. Yet within seconds her vision has cleared. In response the view of the field spreads out before her in a beautiful display of color and activity. The tall grasses lower as the fan towards the center, reaching to about ankle height and the soft blue of the forget-me-not's dotting across the emerald color of the field's inner grasses is enough to draw anyone's eye.
Though on this particular day, it isn't the wildflowers dancing across the landscape that draw Crota's eye. Instead it is the metallic colored filly that makes her way across the land at a playful run. She watches as the stranger makes her way quickly across the grasses, her lean legs carrying her body with ease. A smile tugs at her lips in response, pulling memories from deep within of how she too used to run like that; with such freedom and grace. Though when the other fell to ground and twisted onto her back, and a smile could be seen tracing across her features, Crota couldn't help but chuckle when the other giggled. The unknown mare's silly nature brought a simple yet lovely sort of happiness to those around her. At least, that is what it did for Crota. So when the stranger flips upright once again and looks out across the lands, Crota is drawn to her like a moth would be drawn to a flame.
Before she is even aware of what she is doing, her short legs are carrying her towards the other at an eager trot. With a soft nicker of greeting, Crota announces herself so as not to startle the other and soon comes to a stop close by. "Hello!," she says brightly. Her voice is light and airy and she soon continues speaking, "I'm Crota! You look like you are having fun out here." It's true. It's something she couldn't help but notice and deep down she wished she too could do the same. Though before she knows it, her wishes are coming to light and forming into words. "I was wondering if I may join you?" Screw it. She deserved a day of fun too, right? It didn't always have to be business, did it? Though if it did, she could have fun while completing said business, can't she?
ooc: no html at the moment, i'm sorry! Also, I don't know what this is :| I decided to actually *try* writing properly today and I'm really rusty at extensive posts and "proper" writing. So please forgive this, lol.
It’s hard to imagine a time when she was so innocent. So wide-eyed and young and full of wondrous joy. Sometimes she feels as though she has always been so worldly and cynical. A quiet thief in the night, stealing memories and secrets others had thought long buried. Of course, it is not always just memories and secrets she spies. Sometimes it is innocent scenes of playful young fillies awakening in the dawn to chase after a rodent whose eyesight she had temporarily borrowed. Normally she might have simply withdrawn, might have gone on to more lucrative pursuits. But there is something in the purity of this child that reminds her of her young daughter. A brightness that is as hard to match as it is to find.
Instead she finds her feet carrying her to the field. With her unique abilities, it is not difficult to follow the young girl’s path, to find where she had halted so abruptly in the midst of the new spring grasses sprouting eagerly in the bright sunlight.
Such a jaded soul rarely has reason to pause and wonder at the beauty of nature. For her, the passing of seasons have become routine, just a backdrop to the much more interesting and intriguing affairs that run rampant through Beqanna. It is odd, in an almost refreshing way, to see the world from the eyes of the carefree youth rather than her generally indifferent ones. But today is unusually fair, the sky vibrant, ancient and new all at once, the grass fresh and green, tickling fetlocks and filling nostrils with the scent of growing things. For a moment, she can almost pretend that she is not herself. That she is not Heartfire, a world weary woman who has seen too much of the worst walks of life.
And perhaps for those reasons, she finds herself protective of such innocence. So, as she nears, she reminds herself that even she has not seen all the world has to offer. That there is so much more out there.
She pauses a moment as the other mare nears, a small thing, black and white and as boisterous as the filly. She is nothing like these two. Her body is young enough, the black coat dotted with white is sleek and shiny with health, her curves full and feminine, her features refined and elegant. A lovely enough picture, though no true beauty. But those bright blue eyes of her’s are ancient, filled with memories and lifetimes that few could ever hope to comprehend.
It is not often she feels out of place, but in this moment, she does.
Still, she is not a shy horse, and she continues her path. Her lips curve in the faintest of smiles, hardly discernable but pleasant nonetheless. “Hello there,” she says, a soft echo of the spotted mare’s more energetic greeting. “Looks as though you are having quite a time here.” Her smile hitches up a bit more, her eyes softening as her gaze lands upon the filly. “I suppose I should have brought my daughter. She would have been much more fun than I, I’m sure. I am Heartfire, by the way.”
heartfire
i filled up my senses with thoughts from the ghosts
Bored by stillness she was, without particular grace, rolling a little in the soft grass when Crota’s shadow fell across her from a short distance. She appeared oblivious to the nickered greeting because, well… flowers, I assume. Hello! She froze in position. Then she turned her head without lifting it off the ground and looked up at the pony, her blue eyes wide in over-dramatized surprise. Thin legs akimbo she was a comical tableau for a moment. She righted herself again in a tumble of shimmering limbs, shaking crushed blue flowers and loose stalks of grass from her undergrown mane in a halo of belated spring fever. With Alayaya there was never a suggestion of hesitation. Even her surprise was underscored by her boundless, impossibly founded confidence, and had a happy eagerness to it that was almost palpable around her as, finding herself observed, she made to tuck her feet prettily under her. Her eyes, blue and boundless as the overhead morning sky, were full and attentive to the spotted face Crota had dropped toward her. There was something appraising there, something less light than the attitude she held, or maybe it was just the shadow of her pale forelock, briefly obstructing.
I was wondering if I may joint you? Alayaya’s grin was a living, contagious thing. Crota clearly could not have said anything more right in that moment. Possibly Alayaya sensed that the mare held no ill will toward her, but it was impossible to say if she would have reacted differently had Crota been more reserved. Children do seem often to sense when the adults in the room are not quite behaving like they ought to behave, or want to behave. Perhaps this double standard doesn’t even occur to Alayaya, for whom it seems there is no filter between instinct, action, and energy, and she understood the sincerity behind the words as instinctively as she knew to walk, run and eat the grass. The sun clung to her where she lay. There was no magic to it, just the pale palomino at the right shade and the metallic shimmer of her (ironically stealthy) desert ancestors. She was incandescent in the rich green of the grass which defied the season.
Pose accomplished she wiggled back into action again, scrambling energetically, but once again with a little too much ease and a little too much grace, to her feet. Picking her way carefully, perhaps theatrically, out of the flowers, she came closer to the taller mare. A knot of longer grass hid a divet in the earth to which, unavoidably, Alayaya fell victim. Catching the edge of this hole with a forefoot she tripped forward, and crashed unceremoniously into the leopard-coloured mare. Her lithe, fit little form a mass of reflected sun and summer, hot and radiant and dragging the smell of remembering with her into the chest of the ruler of the Hills. There was a girlish squeal, and a cascade of sunlit, youthful laughter that doesn’t know shame or hurt, but relishes the unexpected. She made a show of righting herself, holding on innocently to Crota for a handful of seconds too long, her trilling laughter vibrant in the air, before she arranged herself beside the older mare, facing her mess of forget-me-nots. “These are my flowers.” Said the golden filly, indicating the patch of forget-me-nots she had nearly destroyed. There was nothing possessive in her tone, more exhibitionist, inviting Crota to admire them and agree that they were exceptional. She waited barely a beat before she issued a clarification, her voice urgent and slow to underscore the importance of her words “They’re not mine” she said “They’re just mine right now.” She seemed satisfied with the logic of that explanation, and she stepped forward again into the blue-green carpet. In any case she added, to make it completely clear; “And yours too.” Of course, Crota laid claim to much more than a patch of temporary flowers, but Alayaya was ignorant, and untroubled by concerns of rank or decorum.
She cocked her head a little and started to say; “Want to…”
The question would have to wait for another opportunity, however, because they were interrupted at that moment by a new voice. Alayaya’s ears turned toward the approaching voice, followed by her pretty pale-coloured face. Her eyes locked on the new approaching figure of blue roan. She stared at Heratfire with assured interest. It appeared that she was not listening, exactly, to Heartfire, but she seemed attuned to something about her that was instantly fascinating. Almost before Heartfire had finished speaking Alayaya had flung herself quickly forward and touched her cheek to the larger mare’s. Alayaya smelled like grass and forget-me-nots and sunshine, like hope and unbroken promises. She pressed herself further forward, against the mare’s chest and neck, the vibrant beat of her heart echoing through her whole body – surprisingly even and measured. Inhaling the smell of Heartfire as she brushed herself against the unfamiliar chest, wrapping herself in the warmth of this one too, before she broke away again and waltzed backward into the center of the flower patch.
She flopped easily down again, with the careless physical grace of someone who doesn’t know you can break bones, or bruise flesh, who’s never had a hurt that couldn’t be soothed with soft words and distraction. A waft of nectar sweetness rose from the crushed petals as she dropped her weight upon them again, like youth itself, fading into the richer scent of the grass. She fell a little off of center this time, leaving room for the Crota in her patch of flowers. No one understood the need for a moment of childish freedom more than Alayaya did. In that moment she did not need mindfulness to know to revel in the softness of the grass, the blue blush of flowers, the smell of new life. As though she knew that Heartfire had no designs on the patch of flowers herself she turned her gaze serenely back to the roan and said, simply, but with unabashed, sibilant command “Come on!”
She had offered no name. Perhaps she assumed the older mares already knew her name. Perhaps she felt that sharing the bed of flowers was more important right now. Perhaps she just wasn’t at an age where she had learned to give it without the preceding question yet. Perhaps it wasn’t her name to give.
She had always been the one that defies expectation, the one that no one knows what to make of. The one whose secrets have secrets of their own. Even her closest friends could never claim to know all that she is and all that she can do. Her brother perhaps has some inkling, but it is only because they had shared a womb for nearly a year. So it is perhaps fitting that she is drawn to those who cannot be categorized so neatly. Those who appear one thing on the surface, but are so much more beneath.
It does not take her long to discern that the pale yellow filly that had drawn her here is one such creature. Sight is her domain. In that respect, there is very little that escapes her notice when it comes to others actions and behaviors. She has learned through decades of practice how to delve much more deeply than the average equine might normally. There is so much to be seen, if only one knows where to look. And this young girl, as carefree and jubilant as she is, has more beneath the surface than one might expect.
Still, she is young. A child. And children are similar across the world. Across time and space even, and in that she is not so very different from the rest.
Though she knows to expect more, she is still mildly surprised by the exuberant way the golden child flings herself into her embrace. Before her children had been born, she had never been particularly maternal. Children had never found her enchanting or entertaining or even especially approachable. The considered chill of her blue gaze, the stillness of her demeanor, the sparsity of her words - these had all served to keep others at bay. Not just children, of course, but everyone. Her emotions might run hot just beneath the surface of that cool facade, but she had learned long ago how to keep them contained. Lifetimes had taught her that.
But the foreign and yet somehow familiar warmth of the child pressed against her chest, the scent of crushed grass and flowers, of sunny youth filling her nostrils as she presses her velvety muzzle instinctively against the smaller form of the child, serves only to bring some of the softer emotions to the fore. Emotions she had always before hidden so well. At least, until she had become her a mother.
So her eyes, when she glances at the now retreating child, are the petal-soft color of bluebells rather than the cold, distant blue of a cloudless winter sky. Her smile, though faint, is a true one and not the variety contrived for purposes of diplomacy. With only a few easy steps forward, she has come close enough to the patch of flowers and the lounging child to drop her nose in order to better inhale the scent of bruised grass and flowers and life.
Her head rising only a few inches, her gaze turns to find the shimmering, joyful girl, her protective urges rising swiftly to the fore as her mind considers the reasoning behind a lone child in the midst of the field. ”Have you family nearby? The field is not the safest of places for children alone.” A faint hint of concern touches her blue eyes, the smile slipping from her mouth. Perhaps she had not simply come because this filly reminds her so strongly of her own daughter. The thought alone is enough to have her seeking out any family the as yet nameless girl might have, that she might return her safely to their side and thus protect her from the vagaries of the often cruel place she had so guilelessly entered.
heartfire
i filled up my senses with thoughts from the ghosts
