"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 love the way you rake my skin, I feel the hate you place inside.
The stars draw her out.
So does the swirl of apprehension that spins around her heart. What will her beloved mate think or say when he discovers not one but two (soon to be three!) foals wedged together in sleep inside his wolf’s den. Part of her thinks that he should never have shown her the meranti tree. It was too perfect a place for her to harbor her foundlings, but he had and she loved him all the more for it because it was his place, and in some fashion, hers.
But the stars beckon.
Spinning above her head though she feels as rooted to the earth as the meranti tree does. Too much emotion takes her and Femur is not an emotional sort but the first time she had laid eyes upon the blue roan colt, something else inside her had snapped, like a clean break in a bone. It shook loose something in that breaking - something that softened Femur’s hard edge, and some of that had been the unbridled passion she found in her mate. The rest of it had been in the imploring look the colt had given her the moment she looked back at him, curious and caught.
Not just the stars beckon, but the sea does too.
She can hear the churn of it just beyond the shore and it pulls her forward, unroots her from her initial spot until she is crossing the small channel to the main Tephran grassland. Femur discovers that she is not the only one about this night; so too, is the new Overseer whom she has met but once and that meeting was enough to make her go to him in the night. “Can’t sleep?” she asks in a reserved tone, much more reserved than bold Femur ever is unless in the midst of loving on her little pair of foals or in the hot and heady throes of her blue mate’s affection.
Femur
@[Warrick] short and kinda sweet but more words as promised! <3
He is at peace beneath the starlight, the faint silver of their very being pooling into the shadows of his neck and shoulders, touching the bay-blue stallion with familiarity and tenderness. The placement of the constellations above him let him know that autumn has arrived within all Beqanna, though the intense and sweltering heat of Tephra remains unchanging. However, the night brings a certain coolness that is unfamiliar but welcoming, a gentle salty breeze flitting across his body and tugging softly at the cobalt of his feathers.
The Overseer normally positions himself to stand at the ocean’s mouth, his indigo legs melting into the blackness of the volcanic beach as the frothing waters push and pull at his hooves, splashing salt and brine onto his auburn skin. But tonight he finds himself in the mainland, with crisp grasses brushing at his underbelly and scratching at his legs, the glow of the streams of magma illuminating him with colors of orange and red. He smells strongly of the sea and the ash that filters through the volcano’s plumage, though tonight the glowing mountain is still and quiet, much like Warrick himself.
“It has never been something that finds me easily,” he admits to the voice that comes from the shadows of the grasses, their golden shoots parting for her as she moves to him. Pale gold with splashes of alabaster, the stallion turns his blue gaze to take in the sight of Femur, his eyes softening for just a moment as she reminds him not only of their first meeting (the bloodied and broken dove upon the shore), but also of his children, who are somewhere else entirely - together, he hopes.
Meeting beneath the moonlight, with the gentleness of mid-autumn’s moon on their backs and the streams of lava warming their legs, Warrick takes a moment to consider the pale woman a bit more closely than he did during their attempts at a rescue. She smells of the deeper parts of Tephra, of hidden caverns and (though not entirely surprising) children. The familiar scent of Longclaw, the iridescent blue stallion that he has seen quite often patrolling the borders, with his blue fire, is the strongest on her skin and though he barely knows her, the idea pleases him.
“What is it that brings you out tonight, Femur? Are you as restless as I am?”
The starlight suits him and she can understand the swirl of rumor that follows him about how many stare after the Overseer with something like lust in their eyes. It is more than simple and pure adoration, she thinks, that they harbor for him. Girlish intent, perhaps? Femur lacks that and sees him for what he is - Warrick, navy and bay, dusted by the light of the stars and perhaps the gentlest of the Overseers that they’ve had but she does not doubt that he’d do what he must to prevent war or the like from darkening the volcano’s doorstep. Behind that gentle exterior hides a hardness in his heart that she is certain he reserves for those moments when he must.
But he is so different from her fierce blue mate!
Different enough for her to appreciate that in him but look on him with nothing more than a fondness of a friend.
His scent precedes him - sea and ash, and it is a combination that she finds soothing in the midst of the grassland that she has caught him in this night. Warrick’s admittance does not surprise her. Sleep did not come easy to her either. At least not tonight and she could not say why. Her three foals slept in her mate’s den all curled together in a tangle of legs and tails and noses. Even Claw seemed to snatch a few winks for himself therein or just outside. His patrols were made in tireless effort with unwavering resolve and endurance but still he managed to grasp sleep’s hand more readily than Femur did some nights and she envied her mate that.
“I am,” she admits to him with a smile curling about her fanged mouth. “Though I cannot say why my dear Overseer. Something about the stars or the night air keeps me up…” and those, she knows, are just poor excuses because she has sought him though for no real reason that is evident to her. Just that she too, remembers the hurt mare that both of them had helped and ever since, the navy and bay stallion had sometimes crossed her mind as someone to find and speak with. Which says much about Femur’s character because she usually seeks no one out besides her children, her mate, or the mare Wound that she’d recruited here.
That is the extent of her relationships though she does think of the broken mare they’d both stumbled upon from time to time, meaning to seek her out too but Femur has been distracted by her three children and her mate’s insatiable need for her. Back to his question though… he wants to know what brings her out on this night and her head tips back to regard the stars above them with eyes that rival the night sky in their blackness.
“To be honest, i don’t know but I keep thinking back to that day we met and tried to help that poor soul shattered on our shore.”
It doesn’t occur to Femur that somehow, she has come to regard Tephra as home even if she does little for it.
@[Warrick] omg I cannot believe I hadn't responded to this thread utnil now, sorry for the long wait my dear! <333
