"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
a dragon who couldn't be hurt on the outside could have so many ragged holes inside
Moving, or staying as he'd like to call it, might have one big threatening storm-cloud hanging above his head; and if that was the case then he would have to do something about it.... but that something wasn't going to be easy, with all that he'd done in the meantime, with all that he had made happen and the things that in return had happened to him.
After all, he hadn't spoken to his mother since he last left her in the meadow, at the end of summer - a conversation neither of them should be proud of, and that was one (or several) of the many droplets in the bucket that had soon after spilled. No, his actions were near-inexcusable since then, and they had changed him physically also. He still can't grasp the fact that Breckin could so readily forgive him. But then love comes in strange forms.
Not to mention she had already known half of it, it turns out.
But his mother - his mother, he'd left nearly clueless. Unless she'd gone peeking into Hyaline since then, but honestly she had not come searching for him in the meantime and so he kind of doubted that she'd even considered his last words. He'd probably have to bring Chryseis over here to visit some time soon; but not right now. First he needed to know if his mother was still angry with him. At the very least he'd given her half a year to cool down... but she was a flame and who knew if she still had embers ready to fire up at his sight.
But honestly - honestly he couldn't really bother. If she was still angry, then so be it. It would be on her. Because his mind is as stubborn as hers, his head equally hard - and he's decided to stay.
That still left him with the somehow incredulously hard task of finding her, here in Nerine, at all though. He was starting to think she was avoiding him.
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@[Scorch] Um. Liquid time, definitely. Like before birthing season anyway.
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
She avoided everyone this winter. And as spring threatened to bring forth the life that now widened her barrel beyond any question as to why, she found herself burrowing deeper into Nerine. It's not that she forgot her duty to Nerine by any means - she'd brought Woolf here from the field after all - but it was more that she needed to disappear for some time. Perhaps if Hestoni hadn't disappeared in the summer last, things with this pregnancy would have gone differently, in fact it might not have happened at all; but for now, she must endure the weight of her infidelity and the weight of her unborn child on her own, unsure, uncertain, and scared.
She got her wish, in the end - just one more child to raise and love.
As spring crept closer and closer, a familiar male scent began to frequent Nerine's cliffsides; for a few days, Scorch wondered and hoped that it might be her husband's, that he would seek her out and listen as she cried and then pull her close in forgiveness and understanding. It was silly to think that her confession would play out so smoothly, and she cried whenever she got to the end of the daydream and had to remember that there would be consequences for her actions; but life went on, and eventually, she stopped crying. Oh, and she realized that the scent was Leilan's, too.
He'd be looking for her soon, if he wasn't already. After taking the time she needed to prepare herself for her son's rage at her infidelity - though his own could easily be called into question if she knew about it - the ancient mare unfurled herself from a twilight disguise, walking forth in all her pregnant roundness, expecting to be found shortly by one particular stallion.
"I don't care about our fight," she delivered flatly when he did find her. He looked somewhat different than she remembered, but she doesn't fixate on that now, instead giving into the weightedness she felt so often these days, an exhaustion that ran bone deep reflecting in the dull grey of her dragon's eyes. "If you're here to finish it, you're better off not wasting your breath."
a dragon who couldn't be hurt on the outside could have so many ragged holes inside
When today he is looking, coming by a spot he nust have passed three times already in the last week, suddenly there she is, emerging from the shadow. Clearly has been avoiding him, but - well maybe it has something to do with the baby? Did she really think he’s harm them? He remembers Breckin’s words, in retrospect they match her tone now. Don’t talk about your mother like that. She is... preoccupied. Though why on earth they both had kept him in the dark he is not so sure.
He frowns a little, his face matching hers as he shakes his head at her words, ”I wasn’t” he starts, but he can’t be bothered by that demeanour. Not right now when she’s obviously the size of the moon. He grins mischievously, his colour eye matching in emerald green. ”Let me guess, it’s a girl?”
However, he doesn’t spot his father anywhere, and he doesn’t come out of any shadows like his mother did. Probably where the tired face comes from, if he’s missing... he has to ask anyway. ”Where’s dad?”
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@[Scorch] short but to the point today I guess
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
His face showed consternation when he first spotted her, but as he admitted to not coming to finish their fight, Leilan's expression slipped into an all too familiar foxy grin. It almost pained the mare to see it right up and close - and when she noticed the irregular emerald of his eyes (also uncannily similar to her natural born ones) she tossed her head, snorting softly in confusion. What remained of her forelock flipped lamely to her other ear, looking bedraggled and for all the world like a rat; similarly, the stub of her tail flicked at snow which caused her skin to itch, a habit from fifty years before that had yet to die despite her hairlessness.
Let me guess, it's a girl?
She would have smiled, if the baby weren't a bastard.
"Despite what some of you children seem to think, I have a pretty good ratio of girls to boys." The joke came out rather tightly, but she did allow herself to chuckle at the end of it, trying to shake the nerves that threatened to close her airway and leave her passed out on the wintery ground. What Leilan said next made all of her efforts worthless though, as his eyes went beyond her into the forest, as if Hestoni would be following in her wake.
And he would have been, in a different world.
She wouldn't be alone, in a different world.
She wouldn't have cheated, in a different world.
But they were here, and she had no answer for him besides the truth.
"I haven't seen your father in months Leilan." As she spoke, a gust of cold air came and buffeted them hard; Scorch reflexively put up a tangible twilight barrier, a huge arcing wall which shifted softly as it deflected the nasty wind. In the moment when the magic formed, she bit her lip nervously, and by the time its distraction ended, her face was again impassively neutral.
a dragon who couldn't be hurt on the outside could have so many ragged holes inside
There’s something definitely amiss, and his grin falters as soon as he catches up with her. His mother had never really encouraged his type of homour perhaps, but certainly there was always something about her body language betraying to him that she did not actually mind it either. Today, however, all he gets is a rather meek smile, and he narrows her eyes at her when she says her boy-girl-ratio was pretty okay. Well for an Amazon she surely lived up to her own standards, he would think. He shrugs. If that’s what she likes to think, he supposes he can live with it.
However, his father is not following, and she confirms it by saying that she hasn’t seem him in months. Leilan frowns a little, thinking she means the months since conception, but when she continues, he can only stare in disbelief. ”What?” That can’t be right. Brennen wouldn’t betray Scorch’s trust by...
Oh. Other way around, perhaps. Awesome. Just when he himself was being pulled back on the normal and straight path, she’d decided to be a bad example. With one difference... he’s never actually cheated. But then if dad was gone, she might not hsve considered it that... ugh. What a mess. Wait, Brennen never said anything. Nothing even remotely along the lines of oh hey man, I met with your mother lately and knocked her up - in fact Brennen had never told him his mother had been in Ischia, even for a day. How strange, all this.
And in confusion, he finally moves - backwards. Hasn’t noticed how his eyes changed colour throughout all of this, now settling back on the base ice blue, though perhaps a little whiter than what is normal. Does he really want to know exactly how much he turns out to look like his mother? Or his mother like him?
A frown. A stare. A weird tone to his voice, as he remembers what she’d said about his twin sister all those years ago. ”So... she’s not one of us.”
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@[Scorch] ah, whoops, sorry for the feels
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
In the wake of her confession, only a word escaped her son; and then, as if his skin could no longer do its duty, he seemed to deflate. Proud Leilan, who always took his mother's side even when it came to alienating his own twin sister; joyful Leilan, begging for attention as the youngest son because if he didn't, he wouldn't get it. It pained Scorch to watch such vulnerable expression flitting across her own son's face, a face that she'd known since birth and had raised and loved every single day since then. It reminded her of how insanely hard it would be to explain this all to her husband, when or if he ever returned... But he always did, and for the first time, Scorch couldn't tell if that was entirely a good thing.
He took a step back, eyes gradually lightening and shifting tones until the icy blue of a blizzard laid claim to their shattered depths. Scorch went to take a step forward, but stumbled, catching herself halfway as she realized that she no longer had the right to demand his closeness and his love. She wanted to of course, but she couldn't; not with Leilan. They'd always been too alike for their own good, much like how she'd been with her first set of twins; no amount of brute-force love would overcome the issues that they had both created for one another in their unthinking impulsiveness.
So... she's not one of us.
Scorch's heart stopped at the utterance, memories of Wrynn's birth flooding her mind.
And although it sickened her to think of, she couldn't deny that a part of her felt the same way about this child, too.
Tampered with by magicians - tainted - not of the pure bloodline she and her husband had created and built and struggled to maintain for decades. Except this time, she'd been an active player in the conception of the child. The magician Camrynn had only taken a twin and shaped her aesthetically.
It's a moment's hesitation before she answered, but it was enough to indicate her uncertainty on the subject. "Of course she's one of us, Leilan." Her tone is harsh, though the anger is aimed inward as opposed to towards the roan stallion. She chokes on the next syllable, squeezing her eyes shut as a headache with the force of a typhoon rocked through her skull. "Of course she is." This time, soft.
With a shuddering breath and the sensation of being pulled back into the network of twilight she had made for herself within the depths of the Nerinian pine forests, the mare slid a hoof back and spoke in a voice that was empty of any emotion. "Come meet her in the summer, Leilan. She'll need a big brother to look after her."
And, turning, she left him there to his heartbreak, as she had been left alone to hers.
Scorch
Once Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle
@[Leilan] got some feels coming right back atcha pal
a dragon who couldn't be hurt on the outside could have so many ragged holes inside
Well, at least it stunned her.
Looking her over sternly, but just a little, he snorts. There's things to be upset about, but he's not sure if he's the one to blame her (he's not). But the thing is, this wasn't going to help them. This bickering over what she did - not when it was his own doings that had them snapping at each other's throats in the first place.
So when his mother turns her back on him, for him that's entirely too soon. His mind quickly weighs two options - asking her if this was why she never made it to see her grandchild in Hyaline like he'd told her to, or do as he did with Breckin.
Truth is, the latter felt more like it had a possibly good outcome than the first. "I was going to say I'm sorry." The words are there, but, the tone is rough. Slightly upset, too, because honestly, she just happened to rub him the wrong way and he's not quite sure if there could be any more sincere apology for yelling at her and not actually telling her what was going on back then in the meadow, not while both still had their daggers unsheathed.
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@[Scorch] Since you said there was muse; he decided he had more to say.
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
Just as her shoulder turned towards the pine forests, voice rang out behind her once more. Momentarily, she considered just ignoring it; had it been anything except an apology, she probably would have. But something about this demanded her attention, and so - feeling as though the world rested atop her shoulders and that to turn back would only add to the weight of it - she looked to him once more, a tiredness in her eyes that spoke to how grievously this pregnancy was affecting her.
"I am sorry too, son. If you would like to move past this, then so would I." Her voice seemed even choppier than normal, as if the fire's laceration upon her vocal chords had intensified somehow despite the event having occurred nigh on forty years prior. "But please - I must go and rest. I hope you are staying around Nerine for good this time - " she paused, looking at her son for either a nod or a shake of his head, " - because we could always use your dedication."
"I'm sorry again, Leilan... I will see you in the summer."
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