"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
Her ears move back and forth uneasily as he chuckles and seems to make a decision that is half-hearted but also somehow momentous for him. His face betrays him and she sees so much in his eyes, thoughts that move low and quick like clouds across the green prairies. Or maybe she imagines the things that she sees in his eyes and she can feel the fire start to spark and pop in her bones, building as the silence builds between them until at least he concedes to her offer of a home in a rather agreeable manner.
“What do you wish?” she blurts out, unable to stop herself from asking him that. She could almost taste a note of reluctance on the air as he says he’ll go but adds as fast as he can that he makes no promise of staying put. She smiles at him, “I never asked you to.” and it was true, she hadn’t. Spark had asked him if he’d like to come home with her, and she left it open-ended so as not to frighten him off, allowing him to think it was more like a visit than a promise to stay that she refuses to ask him to make. That was perhaps the worst thing she could - make him make her a promise he couldn’t quite keep.
“Consider it a visit if you like, until you have a better idea of what you’d like to do.”
Still, her pinkish lips pull up in a smile as she bumps his nose with her own then moves passed him to the trail that leads to her home. “Follow me then,” and just like that, she starts off down the trail that wends its merry way from field to flatter land and along the way, the temperature increases and the smell of sulphur and ash hangs in the air. She can see the shadow of the volcano in the distant, stretching far across the land and it makes her throw a smile over her shoulder at him. “That’s the volcano that my father and a few of his closest companions built a kingdom around.” She explains this much to him, the trek is not all that long of a one and before she knows it, she can scent her father and her brother and the rest of the Tephrans up ahead.
The further inland she takes him, the hotter the fire burns beneath her skin and she cannot help the way that her mane and tail suddenly burst into flames. Her flesh begs to do the same but she keeps it at bay momentarily to not unnerve him at the strange elemental properties that she has come to possess or that has possessed her, that seems more apt. It is a possession that she longs to give in to as she picks her way amongst infant rivers of magma that cool and harden the further they get from the volcano’s bubbling and burbling slope as she brings him closer to the main river of Tephra. Here, the water is cool and deep and runs to the sea that sighs in the distance, not so very far from them at all.
“Well,” she says before pausing to look at him as she submerges her burning hooves in the river. “What do you think?” The water hisses and steams as the fire dies down, and she glances down, not having noticed how easily her hooves had become flame too. Like the magma, they harden back into the familiar shape they always used to be and she looks up at him, somewhat sheepish. “Sorry, I can’t fully control it.” That’s as much as she says on the subject.
There was that question again. What do you wish? He merely smiled at this and shook his head.
"I am sure you will be the first I tell when I figure it out, and I appreciate you for that."
Krigare offered halfheartedly. He didnt have to linger on the subject long though, for the pale mare set off. Leading him down a path to her home. As they walked, he watched her. Not only did he want to stay on track , but he could tell something was changing about her.
He was about to ask if she was alright when her locks burst into flame. He made a small sound of shock and stopped. His hooves dug into the ground, though as she made no move to put out the flames he relaxed.
She must have been ( he realized quite quickly) criatura de fuego. The horses from stories his mother used to tell him as he struggled to sleep. They were beings unlike himself, magical and rare. They held the ability to summon fire, or (as it seemed in spark's case) become the fire.
The stallion muttered something of amazement under his breath before continuing onward, the volcano slowly coming into view. His heart could have stopped then, he couldnt tell.
The heat that burned his skin so well, and the fire that burned deep within the volcano beckoned him forward. He was so transfixed on the land that he barely noticed she had stopped. He skidded to a halt hurriedly, as not to run into her.
"Hmm? Oh. No dont apologize! please."
He felt somewhat ashamed of himself, she had felt the need to apologize for what? The fact that she was different? To him especially. Hmph.
"And as for this place...Your home? It is beautiful Spark. Truly beautiful."
To him, the burning of the air, and the cool water that he moved to stand in was pleasing. Serene in contrast to his wandering thoughts.
He quietly made a deal to himself. Three days. Three days he would stay, and if he found himself still pulled to wander, he would leave.
She cannot help but smile up at him; no doubt of his appreciation exists in her, he has been as candid with her as she has been with him. Still, she cannot help but feel a small thrill go through her like a shiver at his words. It was not the same to be appreciated by her twin brother, or their mother and father, or even Giver, who has long been absent more so than present though she can never forget his face or the way his eyes burn like stars when he looked at her. But she had never truly been appreciated, either. It was new and unexpected, and she liked the way it made her feel.
A black ear flicked back at his small noise of shock; she had felt his gaze on her, as heavy as the heat that built beneath her fur and knew that he had witnessed the change coming on her as she pushed further into Tephra’s humid depths. Crossing the threshold had induced a visible change in her - the outward conflagration of her hair as it burst into living flame that writhed about her neck and flanks and seemed not to burn her skin at all. Spark understood his surprise, had made a similar noise herself the first time it had happened though it had not just been her hair that caught on fire but all of her, and that had been most frightening of all. It had been so easy to surrender to it, to let herself burn up and become elemental for those first few moments… it had been so hard to reclaim back her flesh and bones.
He tells her not to apologize to him and she smiles again; he was, at times, altogether too kind and she found this a rather endearing quality about him that made her smiles come quick and easy to her face. The flames quieted down and her hair became her own again as she ducked her head towards her black shielded breast in shy happiness as he talks of how beautiful her home was. She heard the hush of awe in his tone and knew that too, to be genuine as her black hair fell across her mismatched eyes and she stared at her smoking feet, the flames having died out there too but left the little bit of river she stood in still bubbling.
“Yes,” she murmurs, “Yes, it is.”
She lifts her head back up to pierce the humid gloom that surrounds them; “So, do you think you’ll stay or do you need to explore more?” It is a casual question, despite how curious she is to know the answer. “But I know the road ever beckons,” she remarks offhandedly, for it once beckoned to her before something in her broke and made her stay.
His heart was thrumming, and he knew nothing of a reason. Simply that her question scared him. How was he to tell her that he might leave? She had said he didnt need to stay..but he felt a certain anxiety at the whole leaving thing. As though the lands pulled him into them. Threatening to cry out if he left.
"I'd love to explore ... Who knows? Maybe a tour will help me fall in love with this place."
His scarred lips pulled into a small smile at his own words. The thought of a tour actually making the stallion giddy.
A feeling he had missed.
Along with the heat, and the water, he could smell others. Horses he would try to make friends of.
But there was that nagging feeling once again, because where the was a kingdom there was a king.
Krigare had not been under ones rule in his entire life, and that did not settle well with him. He feared that he would become angry at rules. Or the possibility that he would be dragged into something he did not like.
He shook his head, dispelling the thoughts that burdened him. For, he would try to make the equines like him, and he was sure he could follow rules.
His gaze traveled from her to the volcano, its towering peak beckoning him forward, the heat that burned in its core inviting him into its homeland. Without thought, he snorted before looking back to her. The anxiety that once had a hand around his neck slowly releasing him.
He found solace in Spark's company. A horse whom he could talk to here. One he trusted not to hate him. She had been nothing but kind to him, and he thanked her silently for that.
He knew at times he could be arduous, and cross. Though she had looked past this, and offered to bring him here, and he was compelled to tell her he was going to stay. He felt as though he needed to.
Though as he looked to the volcano once more he knew he would keep the promise he had made himself.
“Very well then,” she tells him and inclines her head in a follow-me gesture as she leaves the river that they’ve just cooled their heels in.
Her first inclination was to circle the base of the volcano and let him get a good look at it close-up since his eyes strayed there as much as her own had. The crown of it sat wreathed in smoke, and sometimes it spat embers and ash that burned much of the land around it until the ground sat smoking and black beneath their feet. Spark realized that she liked this part of Tephra best, perhaps because there was a bit of danger at playing around the volcano’s base.
She did not think she needed to tell him to be careful; trusting that he could see with his own beautiful green eyes the dangers that lay in standing here for too long, how every ember and ash spewed above them could burn and blind. Except that she did not seem to mind. The ash dirted the pale hairs of her fur and her skin drank greedily of the embers that ought to have singed her, instead they seemed to melt and merge into her as if the fire in her core just absorbed these smaller flickerings as offerings and orphans from a greater source of the same stuff that lurked in her.
It occurred to her though, that he will not be as fortunate and she touched her nose to his brawny flank to urge him back a distance out of the spiteful cone’s circumference. She knew the wind could still blow things their way but few winds rose within Tephra, leaving her static and hot. “Beautiful isn’t it?” she asks him, thinking of how next she’d show him the sea. Spark knew that she had never asked him to stay, never exacted a promise from him other than to look, explore and enjoy all that her home could offer him but part of her could see in the carriage of his head and the look in his eye that he warred with his own nature.
Spark could tell that he was a creature of habit and to know anything but was challenging and frightening. She saw how he thought of it all, to stay or go and she smiled at him, once again touching her lips to his neck in a friendly gesture. “It’s okay, you know... To want something other than what you’ve always known but so too, is it okay to go.” The pale mare could not imagine causing him to harbor ill will towards her or this place because he was meant to go wherever the wind blew him, she’d known what that life was like and it had vast appeal but she had taken root here, touched her feet to this soil and known, much as the immovable volcano had, that it would take earth-altering forces to make her leave again.
“I’ll always be here,” she promises him as she grasps a strand of his mane in her teeth and gives it a gentle tug before turning back to the volcano.
Krigare dragged himself out of his thoughts , strolling after her. As she began to tell him things, the weight upon him slowly began to lift, his smile growing. The land soon fed into the ash that surrounded the volcano.
Tilting his head upward, Krigare realized how truly massive the volcano was. The hot ash it produced fell unto his pelt, darkening it more so. He was aware of the burning, though he barely felt it as he stared at the creature that dominated these lands.
She touched him then, and his head snapped to the side, his muscles quickly moving to pull him away from the heat. He grimaced as he turned to look at his back, small patches of is dark mane smoking.
"It really is."
He smiled, turning back to Spark. His heart stuttered, the ash that burned him so merely sank into her skin. Its red glow fading into a dull black.
His green eyes hardened into a look of worry before he realized that it wouldnt harm her. For it didnt seem to, as she looked at him. Her voice breaking the ash the clouded them.
She had noticed, hadnt she? That he was uncertain. His broad shoulders slumped, and his head fell.
"So it is."
He chuckled mournfully sighing as he thought of what to say next.
"I just.... I have never been so confused in my life."
Krigare smiled, a soft smile that he prayed answered any question she might have after that. Though he was prepared to answer any that she threw his way. With another glance at the volcano, and a final whiff of the dark air he nodded. His smile slowly fading.
She leads him for a while then falls back, lingering to watch him stare in awe at the monolith that dominates the landscape. Listens, as he tells it is really is beautiful and she smiles, pleased that he is so agreeable. She sees him grimace at the embers that touch him, burn his flesh and make his hair smoke and for a moment, she pities him and wonders why she cannot feel those things any more until the fire inside says because you are me and I am you.
He is a book of dark brown pages lined in black that she enjoys reading. Every glimpse of his green eyes reveals his emotions plainer than the expressions on his face do. He is worried about her, she can see that and opens her mouth to tell him not to but he comes to that conclusion all on his own. What makes her take a step towards him, even brush her nose tenderly against the thick of his neck, is the way he outwardly seems to deflate and fall in on himself. Had she seen too much?
Spark knew she was far too observant at times, too keen on the emotions that moved like clouds across others’ faces. It was a favored pastime she shared with her brother, horse-watching and guessing at the stories that showed plain as day on some and sulked like dark hurt shadows on others. This one, he seemed somewhere in between, defiant but courteous, in love with exploration but yearning to anchor himself to some place in the world - maybe, in hers’ - in Tephra’s.
For every smile that he gave her, she gave him one back.
She laughs; “Most of us have been confused at least once in our lives. If not more than that!” Her pale tail flicks against her hindquarters as she beckons to him with her chin as if to say follow me without saying anything at all. She plans on showing him the sea next, thinking he’ll like that too. “You’ve got time to think, I hope, to sort out the confusion.”
Spark interested Krigare to say the least. She had an inviting way of existing. She spoke with kind words, and seemed to know what others needed to hear. She was like the fire that possessed her. Lively, and bright, though dangerous in its own way.
He returned her gesture as she touched him, his way of letting her know he was calm now. Mellow against his previous anxious air. Her laughter was contagious, the stallion letting out a belt of his own.
"I suppose you are right."
She nodded at him, a call to follow her, and he did. His tail flicked at his sides, swinging ash off of his back at it did so. His mane no longer smoked with he remnants of the coals, and his skin no longer burned with its heat.
He wished that he too could be like Spark. Flame retardant. He smiled at the thought of him living here. Deep down he knew that he would become accustomed to the heat, though not now. Now his thick coat burst with heat, and his mane stuck crudely to his neck. Though he didnt mind it much.
Krigare was simply happy to be here, laughing with a friend.
"I too hope I can sort it out."
With a small snort and a toss of his head he smiled brightly
Spark would laugh at discovering someone thought her dangerous. Her brother told her this, time and time again, since she acquired her fire that she was different, dangerous even and she laughed in his face before nipping his shoulder in a sisterly way to show that she was still the same old Spark that he’d always known. Spark dangerous? She’d scoff at such knowledge!
(The fire in her knows otherwise, bides its time until it can show just how dangerous it is. Fire burns, it cleanses and it kills - Spark doesn’t realize this, it burns small parts of her away, cauterizes the holes where those parts once were and she seems whole still, and unaware but all magic, even in the minutest form, has a price it exacts from the one who wields it. Spark forgets this.)
She feels him touch her in return; can feel an affection for him growing beside the interest in him, in his story. Spark wants to know why he is so taken by Tephra but reluctant to commit himself to her tribe of individuals but is wise enough not to ask - he still wore too much of his travels on his skin, could not forget how the road calls to him and she knows what that is like, having once wandered herself but there had been something - no, someone, here to come back to. Her laughter prompted his own and shook her loose from her reverie, even her mind still wandered, more so than her feet did nowadays.
“Maybe,” she concedes, smiling up at him as the wind starts to cool their backs as best as it can. Here, the wind blew a tad bit cooler than over there in the volcano’s hot glimmering shadow. Out here the sulphur still clung to the air but the sea battled it, bringing a briny note to their nostrils as her ears came forward in anticipation of the chorus of tides that they would soon hear. She had never been one for large bodies of water besides rivers that snaked through the flat open plains, but something about this sea matched the spirit inside, churning and tempestuous and both storms and tides are not so different from fire.
“You will,” Spark tells him, mustering up a measure of certainty to her assurance. She had no doubt in her mind that he’d figure it all out. It just took time, and he had to allow himself that if he could. Observant, she had caught the way his eyes looked for the edges of the land. Looking for ways out if he chose it, she imagined and still could not blame him for it. Wandering was a hard mistress, kind at times and cruel at others, but she loved her four-legged grazing children best because they moved where they willed unless something stopped them, be it fences of the wooden kind or those penning the heart in.
Spark laughs;
“Only to the sea, then you can decide what you like best about this place - the volcano, or the shoreline.” She can hear it now, singing soft and siren-like to her but the fire in her balks at it, recognizing a mortal danger to its existence and she shows it only in the slightest of hesitations before planting her feet firm on the black ash-and-sand shore. Crabs skittered away from them, disturbed no doubt by their large looming presence and she pays them no mind, nor does she caution him against their pincers (having heard tell of another mare who battled the pinching claws of one not too long ago).
The salty air hit him before the sounds of the sea did. The wind tasted of home, and danger. The ocean had always been a place Krigare had respect for. It was mighty and strong, though it chose to merely lap at the feet of its equine friends.
Though as they approached he guessed it was unforgiving as well. It could take you as quickly as it chose to leave you be, hundreds of miles of uncharted land waiting for you below. The water was cool as he plunged his hooves into it. Foam raising to greet him.
Crabs skittered about, and he tried his best to keep his distance. The one thing Krigare chose not to fight.
crabs.
"Nasty little creatures , arent they?"
He muttered , almost before he could stop himself. Green eyes traveled from the white capped ocean to the mare next to him. A hoof dug into the sand they stood upon, forelock falling restlessly into his eyes.
"Since there is no mane eating ash here... I shall have to deem the ocean as my favorite."
Krigare chuckled at this, finding it easier to laugh now. He felt comfortable in Spark's presence. Not so locked up as he had been. His shoulders slumped in relaxation as he sighed. A sigh that let his muscles calm, and his heart to slow.
"Though I do like the mystery of your Volcano."
The ocean gave many things the volcano couldnt. An easier access to its treasures, a closer look at what lay beneath, and shelter for mundane creatures such as he and the pesky little crabs that pinched at his legs.
The volcano however offered none of these things to him. He was not Criatura de fuego. Therefore he could not seek home in the mountains firey depths. Or get to close to its ashen wall. Spark however could, and that set these two apart. A limit to their exploration.
![[Image: krigare_by_voltum-dbctewi.png]](http://orig01.deviantart.net/7a05/f/2017/166/6/b/krigare_by_voltum-dbctewi.png)