"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
01-21-2018, 11:17 PM (This post was last modified: 01-21-2018, 11:17 PM by Sid.)
He is small, overlooked, the kind of creature that escapes your notice when the sun dips too low. Amethyst eyes gleaning what information they can from the moonlit landscape - it is pretty here, at night. The faint glowing of his curled, gnarled horn gives him away, however - but even then, stranger things go bump in the night.
He shouldn't be so far from home, so far from mother. Without her, he will die - his spindly legs trip often over the unfamiliar ground. Go home, the earth tells him. What are you doing here?
There are sounds of life and he sees them with his bedragoned eyes, watches as animals who ought to be kept secret go about the business he was never invited to take part in. He smells other horses, but cannot see those creatures - his wings shuffle, so like his father.
Even in her immaturity, Wishbone is a wild firecracker. Her dark, growing mane is in a constant state of disorder, with an assortment of feathers or grasses or flowers tangled among the knots. Her knees are always scratched and bruised from her own doing, whether by trying to climb the volcano, trying to dance across a fallen tree, or trying to run as fast as she can and tripping. She is brazen and courageous and untamed.
She is still a child.
Yet she ventures away from Wound on some days, a wildly independent little thing with no fear among the lava streams and ashen forests of Tephra. That’s where she finds him; in the darkness of a restless night when her legs won’t stay still so she sneaks away while Wound is dozing. She’d been following him for a while, actually. A brimming giggle attempts to roll from her lips but she holds it back, if only because she didn’t want him to run away from the noise.
Instead she slips from around the trunk of a tree, looking for all the world like she were birthed from the very depths of Tephra itself (amber eyes blazing with that intense wilderness, auburn-tinted hair tangled with a feather she found on the beach earlier, sable mouth twisted up with a witty smile). She notes the fact that he doesn’t smell like anyone from her island as she circles him, shooting-star eyes scanning over his growing horn and shuffling wings.
“Who are you?” She isn’t very suspicious of him in terms of danger, but her curiosity urges her to ask the question. “Why are you here? Did you come from the mainland? Have you been to the Mountain before?” She is blossoming, vibrating, bursting with questions and spirit.
She is chaotic, bursting with a liveliness that he may never hope to find. Twigs, feathers, dirt - they are one with this creature, melding into something both unseemly and perfectly fitting. Just as she is still a child, he is still an old soul, reincarnated and trepidatious, not scared, but wary. A watcher. Quieter, far quieter, than she will ever maintain.
The tree she wraps herself around seems to grow towards her, embracing the tiny child, reinforcing the image that she belongs here. The auburn hair, the sunset eyes - Trekori senses her belonging immediately. He has yet to belong to any place, to any name - mother and father, Trekk and Noori, they were familiars, his caretakers. But he wandered, and not the way she did - not with the intent to return, nor with the intent to find anything at all. Rather, to observe - to find what might present itself.
Today, she does.
His tiny, spindly body is stalk still as she encircles him, his eyes blank and head held high. He isn't ready when she bursts into speech - the sound of it, the volume, he cringes. His wings clutch his ribs more firmly, lending himself that small comfort in this new, loud environment. It's not that he's scared. As is her nature to belong here, it is clearly his to not.
"I am Trekori," he breathes, purple eyes blinking softly in the girl's directions. "I am wandering..." Her other questions, he deigns not to answer. He does not know what the mainland is, nor the mountains. Her spirit is doing backflips, sprints, sparking like fire. His is calm, quiet - the ocean at low tide, threatening to return. "This place is ashen. It looks good on you."
i fell like a dreamer for sweet tea and lemonade; it clings to my t-shirt it’s loud and it lingers, designed to suffocate. i light up to find what i’ve known all this time, there’s some beauty here yet
Wishbone has never felt the pressing force of silence and loneliness on her shoulders. Even when there are no other horses around, she is not alone. There is the presence of the volcano, the endless song of the island birds, the background rush of the waves on the shore, the tropical wildlife skittering underfoot, and the loud presence of her own, unhindered thoughts.
She enjoys being in the presence of those she can have a conversation with, but she is not unhinged by the wilderness of her own privacy.
He is quiet in comparison to her. He is the stony face of the volcano (silent, serene, protective) while she is the lava that burrows underneath (ready to force itself up and out and into the sky, fierce and untamed). She finds his presence oddly soothing and yet entirely irritating. He introduces himself as Trekori but doesn’t answer any of her other questions.
For a moment, Wishbone is upset enough that she contemplates turning around and leaving him there. But he says Tephra is ashen and that she looks good alongside the island’s nature. So she doesn’t leave, but instead looks him over again with a bit more contemplation. Her mother’s taught her manners, unfortunately, so her first response is a “Thank you.”
Then, she’s twisting and turning toward the scents of wind and salt, looking over her skinny shoulder with a grin that’s both unnerving and encouraging, both wild and tame, both selfish and selfless — a grin that’s rare on any other face but entirely too common on her own. “C’mon, Trekori. I want to show you something I found yesterday.”
Without waiting to see if he follows, she’s racing through the forest on light feet. Her legs know the trails as easily as she knows the sound of her mother’s voice, allowing her to wind between undergrowth and across warm, misty streams efficiently. Finally, Wishbone bursts out into the sunlight and along the shoreline where a humid breeze pulls at the delicately-tangled knots in her growing mane.
Along the beachfront at this point there is a small cove where large rocks push past into the deeper parts of the shallows, forming a section of the beach where the waves do not break so heavily. Nestled among the deeper waters, furry arms linked to keep one another close, are several families of sea otters. They are sleeping for now, the glow of the moon catching on the tips of their fur.
It’s peaceful here and for a brief, daring moment Wishbone’s body stills long enough for her to stare at the sleeping otters. She waits for Trekori to comment aloud first, auburn eyes latched onto the mammals with all the rapture and peace of a lost child returning home.
i'm freezing, it's not winter yet
but my fingers and toes
are shivering beneath these sheets
and i feel so alone
i don't want to die, i want to sleep
The colt is standing there uselessly, being an absolute party pooper, when the filly's brain lightbulb suddenly lights up. He can practically see it, just like she can see his own light shining above his head. Even despite his usual disposition regarding such exciting thoughts as hers, Trekori can't help but be a little excited. He's just a kid! Give him a break.
"Okay, I'm coming!"
She runs quickly, and there's no time for hesitation if he wishes to trail her. Snorting, Trekori squeezes his wings to his sides and hurries along behind, knocking his hooves on rocks occasionally, but keeping up for the most part. Eventually, the underbrush disappears behind them, and before them, the ocean.
The shore alone is enough to momentarily take his breath away; the sparkling water, the roll of the waves, the way the gulls cry over head. The little golden boy has never seen the ocean, never mind a lake. And in the gleam of the moonlight, with the stars twinkling merrily, well; perhaps in this moment alone, he is truly rendered an awe-filled, naive little child.
It as she walks away from him (hooves scrunching in the cool night sand) that Trekori notices something else, the real reason their here. Skittering anxiously to be at his companion's side, the little pegacorn bumps into the filly when she stops at the cluster of rocks. The touch is not unpleasant, and as he looks on, he finds himself leaning further into her, his guard down, drawn to the energy that she radiates.
"Oh my goodness," he breathes. "They're sleeping like that!" He flashes his purple eyes to her, mouth hanging slightly agape, his feathered wing tickling her side. "What are they?"
This started out shitty but ended pretty cute so enjoy.
i fell like a dreamer for sweet tea and lemonade; it clings to my t-shirt it’s loud and it lingers, designed to suffocate. i light up to find what i’ve known all this time, there’s some beauty here yet
She loves the ocean. It is as wild and untamed as her. Some days she finds that it will match her mood perfectly (when she’s angry the waves crash upon the shore with unrelenting force, when she’s sad the tide is low and there’s a gloom to the beach’s weather, when she’s happy the sun is high and the waves are soft hushes) and those are days she particularly enjoys. Although Wishbone is not tied to the rhythm of the tides like the ocean is, she finds they are kindred spirits.
It doesn’t occur to her that someone might’ve never seen an ocean before. She has spent all her life on Tephra’s island, surrounded on all sides by the shoreline. There is not one direction she might travel where she does not end up on one beach or another. Trekori’s awe causes a delirious giggle to dance past her lips.
When he leans against her (first because he wasn’t paying attention, secondly because she is pulling him in) she doesn’t object. While the otters hold her attention momentarily, the feeling of her new friend’s wings brushing along her side distracts her (for a flashing moment she thinks of her father with his mighty, dark wings).
Wishbone is delighted at Trekori’s excitement with her discovery. It had been an adventure finding them earlier (she had splashed in after them initially, but her long legs are not used to swimming just yet and so she nearly drowned trying to reach them) and, although she had run around the island sopping wet, no one had been able to explain what the creatures were.
“Aren’t they so cute?” Amber eyes glance toward purple ones, a wild smile dancing on the corners of her mouth. “I don’t know what they’re called, but they look like sea squirrels.” Wishbone has seen her fair share of land squirrels before — climbing the trees on her way to the common areas of Beqanna with her mother — and she chalks up the furry water creatures to some sort of version of them. “I think they sleep like that so they don’t drift away from one another.”
i'm freezing, it's not winter yet but my fingers and toes are shivering beneath these sheets and i feel so alone i don't want to die, i want to sleep
I'm too distracted by the adorable creatures to notice the way she stiffens and looks as my wing brushes her side, but then again she relaxes back into the touch too quickly for me to notice anyway. Our touch is comfortable, or at least, it is for me, and that's saying something: besides my mother, and sometimes my father when mother is away, I haven't touched anyone.
Well, her now.. But I like it.
"They are so cute," I agree emphatically, grinning (an awkward expression on my usually somber face) as our eyes meet, the energy in hers only encouraging the same in mine. I listen raptly at her explanation of the creatures, studying her pretty, youthful face as she does. Perhaps I had been too quick to judge her, before, when we had been surrounded by ash.
It does still look good on her, though.
"Well that makes sense, sea squirrels is a good name, they look silly like squirrels so it suits them." I feel silly rambling as much as I am, too used to being the quiet onlooker instead of the boy standing next to the girl with too much life, too much vitality. But I can't help myself, drawn into her, buzzing on cloud nine now that my barriers are lowered.
"Wow. I'm glad we don't have to worry about floating away at night like they do. But I do like the idea of getting to sleep next to someone who cares about you so much that they never want to lose you." I am blushing suddenly, the whites of my cheeks rosy and hot. I glance away, sheepish, completely fumbling with nothing to grab on to. "I -- yeah..."
i fell like a dreamer for sweet tea and lemonade; it clings to my t-shirt it’s loud and it lingers, designed to suffocate. i light up to find what i’ve known all this time, there’s some beauty here yet
He’s handsome. She comes to that conclusion as he stares at her while she talks. It could just be a childish love for meeting the first boy her age (one that will run with her through the night and watch the sea squirrels doze under the moon) or it could be the faint rhythm of a song to be sung when they age more (a song that could be silenced easily, but for now hums beneath the quiet hush of the waves). As Wishbone decides her new friend is cute, she settles herself closer to her.
He is warm against the smooth current of the beach’s breeze. It plays with the black-and-auburn of her growing mane, twisting strands of her forelock. She closes her dark eyelids as he continues talking, enjoying the atmosphere of their night. Her heart has finally calmed from their running through the undergrowth and Wishbone feels the itching of drowsiness behind her eyes.
Amber eyes reveal themselves quickly when Trekori talks as though he has never spent a night nestled against the embrace of his parents. The times when Wishbone does sleep — though they are few and far between — are mostly spent curled against her mother’s side or even between her legs. Sometimes, if Warrick isn’t busy, she will even lay beside her father under the warm blanket of a large wing.
