"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
Between the branches of a towering oak tree, a little sparrow is all but invisible nestled between its yellow, and red, and orange leaves. Agapi ruffles her feathered wings, and puffs out her chest at the chill of a calm autumn breeze. She’d come to the meadow alone today, desperate for time and space from the hectic calamity of the homecoming taking place in Nerine. It made her feel small, and Agapi was far too young to handle such big emotions with much grace.
So, rather than an inevitably public meltdown, Agapi had slunk away at the earliest opportunity and high-tailed it from Nerine back into the mainlands.
Agapi had never been anywhere without Agave before, and there are parts of her that ache at the distance between them. They were two halves of one whole, after all. Other parts, however, welcome the peaceful quiet. If she were honest with herself she would admit that today, in the meadow, was perhaps a chance to finally explore who she was without her sister.
She only had to find the courage to take it.
Seize The Moment
@[Vic]
*in case it wasn't clear from my lazy writing, she's in her sparrow form right now.
Knaught walks through the meadow and through the forest before stopping at the lake. He sighs softly, feeling lonely and sad but content all the while. He hears the birds chirping, talking to each other as he lays down by the side of the lake. He lays his head down softly in between his young, long legs. He closes his eyes, dreaming of what he wants in his life.
His tail twitches side to side sporadically with each image in his head. He jumps and wakes himself up from a nightmare. He immediately jumps onto his feet and breathes heavily as he tries to catch his breath. “Shh... it was a dream again. You’ve had those before,” he mumbles softly under his breath as he walks off to find some grass to munch on before the winters snow takes all of it away again like it does every year.
Quietly from her perch in the tree she watches as a stranger approaches, lingering in front of the water. They look similarly (at least, when they are both horses), both with white bases and spots, only his are a vivid purple that she finds herself envying discreetly. She watches as he settles in for a nap along the shoreline, ruffling her feathers occasionally as he slumbers and she counts the spots along his hip. Lately, she’d found herself envying a lot in others and the shame of those feelings, slowly but certainly, was picking away at her. She needs this time, she assures herself having suddenly felt a pang of guilt at leaving Agave and the others behind, to set things right again.
Like the stranger sleeping peacefully before her, Agapi, oddly enough, could heavily relate to the feeling of loneliness. Even with all of the voices of Nerine around her, even with a twin sister who could essentially finish her sentences before she ever spoke them out loud. The truth about loneliness is that it can take you regardless of the noise you’re surrounded by; it is possible to be alone in a sea of faces.
Agapi is still contemplating loneliness, and who she will become when the stranger startles upwards.
Her tiny head cocks first to the right, then the left. And then, with a final shake of her wings she descends from the tree branches, floating on the gentle wisps of a breeze as though she were surfing a wave.
“Are you okay?”
She asks him while settling neatly on his shoulder for only the moment that it takes for her to realize it’s likely rude to sit on the shoulder of someone you’ve only just met. Briefly embarrassed, she flutters a short distance away and lands in among the wildflowers before shifting out of her sparrow form.
Knaught jumps up, his chest rising and falling quickly with the feeling of anxiety quickly rising. He looks around while being extremely on edge. All he wants to do is run but he can’t. It’s like he’s stuck in one place. It’s like his brain isn’t connecting with his muscles and legs to move. All he hears is his little heart pounding in his chest. He doesn’t realize that the sparrow landed on his shoulder until he finally comes back into reality and by that time, the bird has become a horse.
Knaught shakes his head, almost confused as if he is losing his mind. “Where’d you come from?!” He asks, still extremely on edge. “I’m okay, I’ve just been getting really bad thoughts and dreams,” He says, not wanting to burden the filly.
“W-who are you?” He asks, his tail still stiff from anxiety. He doesn’t want to let his guard down anymore than he already had. He’s embarrassed he panicked in front of someone, especially a filly. “I’m Knaught,”
Agapi has never felt her heart slam up against her ribs, or known the hot prickle of sweat breaking free to slide down the curve of her neck. The truth is that Agapi has lived a pretty blessed life to this point, even now, as she stands in the meadow reeling from events that shook her like an earthquake — she is lucky. These were not things that would break her. They were not things that would leave her quaking in fields in front of child strangers, either.
But she recognizes fear in him.
He still wears his falter in the slick sheen of sweat that coats him, even as he asks her where she comes from. Agapi opens her mouth to ask him if he means originally, or just in this moment. Internally, she hopes that he means to ask her where she calls home. She isn’t willing to admit it, but talking about Nerine now would soothe her own nerves. Nerine is a beautiful place. She loves it, and as an added bonus she is fairly confident that he will too once he hears about the way the granite cliffs just fall out into the roaring ocean.
However, her hopes are dashed as he goes on to tell her about his nightmares. Agapi lets her shoulders fall a little in her own disgruntlement, but she had asked him if he was alright. Besides, she could relate, at least somewhat, though her own dreams these days tended to manifest themselves with themes of abandonment and not belonging — again, hardly things to break her.
“Who are you? I’m Knaught.”
“Knaught,” she repeats, sounding the name out across her tongue. She likes the way it sounds out loud, less exotic than her and Agave’s in a way that is uniquely refreshing.
“My name is Agapi,” she chirps, suddenly enthusiastic. She would tell him about Nerine anyways, she just needed to maneuver around the subject briefly.
11-03-2018, 04:54 PM (This post was last modified: 11-03-2018, 04:54 PM by Knaught.)
Knaught finds some calmness in the filly’s voice. Oddly enough, it soothes his nerves, to just have the calm presence of another horse by him. He manages to take a shaky deep breath which lets his nerves and body just relax.
“Agapi,” He says, testing out the name. “I like that! It’s prerty!” He says as his body begins to quiver from the cold air hitting against his slick, sweaty coat. He listens to the filly and he hears her voice perk up from excitement. “Nerine... I have not heard of it. Is it nice in Nerine?” He asks, trying to do anything to get his mind off his own anxieties that plague him day in and day out.
It takes only a moment for her cunning plan to see fruition.
First she notices his body beginning to quiet. He takes a deep inhale, then exhale, and Agapi finds herself mimicking the breath even if she isn’t certain why. “Agapi,” he says then, and she can hear him drawing out the syllables like he is tasting it. It was a good trick for learning names, she knew, but could barely remember to do it herself this time excluded. And then it happens:
“Nerine… I have not heard of it. Is it nice in Nerine?”
Likely he won’t see it, but her chest puffs out ever-so-slightly with the pride of her success. She smiles politely while nodding her little head, doing her best to contain her own delight with her newly learned trick. “Nerine is beautiful,” she says, and the wonder of it as she imagines it again is there, evident between the words. Nevermind that Agapi has never been outside of Nerine to the other kingdoms to learn whether or not her home was in fact deserving of the word, comparatively speaking.
“It’s huge, and lush, and bright, and it goes for miles and miles and miles until suddenly it just drops off over these great granite cliffs into the sea.”
She knows that some of the Nerine citizens had been left weak in the knees to stand so close to the edge of the world like that, but Agapi had not been one of them. She had always stood as close to the edge as she could manage, with the ocean breeze tangling and untangling the length of her hair and stinging her eyes. Sometimes it felt as though she were flying.
And sometimes she did fly, though it was a trick that had always left her family with their mouths gaping and hearts slamming up against their ribs every time she plunged from the cliff face and became a sparrow there over the sea, twisting and winding with the wind.
“Do you have a home?” She asks him then, her hunger for Nerine satiated with the brief exploration.
