"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
everything we are, it just went away with a slide of the tongue and a sour taste
She should have known better than to go to Tephra.
But diplomacy and all that, right? She had wanted to learn how to better serve her kingdom, and going on kingdom trips has to be one of the ways. She knows she isn’t always going to like kingdom life, and she can tell that this is one of those times. If she had used her brain, she would have traveled anywhere but Tephra, but quite clearly her brain isn’t working at full capacity right now.
One thing that she knows for sure, though, is that she has to apologize to Solace for her behavior in the neighboring kingdom. She had been a broody, awful mess and it would have been clear to her and Yidhra and Magnus that something had happened between the two former best friends and the way they had acted towards each other had certainly reflected that. She owes the woman an apology, or at least an explanation for why Dawn had behaved the way she had. She is sad—miserable, even—but it was no excuse for the entire lack of diplomacy or openness for the entire first half of their visit.
She is sad, but she is not her sadness. It is a piece of her—an unchanging, steadily thundering piece—but that is all that it is. She cannot and will not let it control her life, and that’s exactly what she had done in Tephra. She had let her sadness take the wheel while she had flopped in the backseat, cold and unfeeling.
I have to force myself to do better.
The bear urges her to find her own way back to the Cove after the meeting, and with a curt nod and promise to see Solace later, she had broken away from the group. She is learning the terrain quickly as she travels, and each tree she passes is starting to become familiar to her. As the light starts to fade, she finds herself on the beach—always on the beach—of her home. The sands have not yet begun to glow as they do, but her heart is torn as she takes a step back, flashing back to the night a few weeks ago. Stop it. Tears fill her eyes as she turns away from the ocean, but she cannot bring herself to leave.
It is there where Solace finds her, after the sun has properly set. Dawn watches the woman as she approaches, glad that the tears have finally stopped. She is sure her face is still wet, but what’s the use in hiding it? Solace knows that something is up, and she doesn’t want to hide anything from either of Sunny’s mothers. “I’m sorry,” she tells the queen, the words barely a whisper. “I... wasn’t at my best today.”
For the first five years of her life, her emotions had ruled her. Every almost-lover had overtaken her mind for weeks. But they had a habit of disappearing, this chain of men in her life before Kagerus, and it did little for they young Solace's self-esteem. It had taken her until the ripe-old-age of six to realize that their lack of interest in sticking around had nothing to do with her value as an individual.
But that doesn't mean her heart hadn't hurt, that she hadn't wondered if one could die of loneliness in those years, or that her soul still doesn't ache from time-to-time for other reasons. And the sight of Dawn suffering from a similar sort of sadness is something Solace can't ignore.
Luckily, Dawn is easy to find after their journey, and the gold-splashed pegasus comes alongside the girl with a low nicker as the moon begins to rise in the north. The mother of six is tempted to drape a wing over the young diplomat, but she resists, for now, settling for a closeness that is just near enough to allow their sides to exchange warmth on this winter night. Solace wears none of her business-like formality now, the lines of her are softer if not a little older.
"There is no need to apologize," She says sincerely after Dawn speaks,"you were perfect. I'm sure the knowledge of Cress will be very valuable to Magnus." a pause, a breath, "I did little more than listen on my first diplomatic trip with Hyaline's first king," she adds with a light laugh. "I trailed behind and played with the daughter of the ruler we were visiting. So you are already a few steps ahead of three-year-old me."
The moment stretches as Solace observes the damp trails on her young face, the lingering signs a hurt that she wants so badly to sooth. Tenderly, motherly, Solace reaches out to brush Dawn's forelock away from where it rests over her near eye. "Do you want to tell me about it," she asks quietly with no expectations in her voice, simply a wish to be a friend, "or maybe just some company tonight?"
S
olace
we're reeling through an endless fall we are the ever-living ghost of what once was
everything we are, it just went away with a slide of the tongue and a sour taste
She can’t help but be reminded of her own mother as Solace approaches, a look of concern all over the buckskin’s face. She looks so much like Rhae that she almost can’t look the woman in the eye; it hurts too much. She sees her hesitate to drape a wing over the unicorn’s back and Dawn almost breathes a sigh of relief—if Solace were to touch her now, she would surely crumble into irreparable pieces. She mentions Cress and Dawn looks away, studying the sand beneath her hooves. Her small speech at the meeting is not what she was talking about, and they both know it.
“My mother is a good woman,” she murmurs, thinking fondly of the woman who raised her. Her mother had doted upon her. She would follow her to the Playground’s borders and watch from afar as Dawn met up with Rhaegor and Clayton and played for hours, coming home to regale her mother with stories of the epic adventures she had gone on with her best friend. Oh, the adventures they had gone on, from one end of the Playground to the other! When they outgrew the Playground, they had explored every inch of the common lands and then some, even daring to tiptoe the borders of the kingdoms surrounding them. They had been unstoppable once.
Solace reaches out to brush a piece of her blond forelock away from her eyes, and Dawn sighs as she leans into the brief touch. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ the pegasus prompts her. Dawn swallows hard and glances over to the queen quickly, praying that more tears don’t fall. “I... I screwed everything up,” she whispers desperately, voice cracking. “I don’t know how to fix it.”
Too late—the tears well up in her eyes and overflow, swiftly following the tracks down her face. “I pushed him away. Rhaegor. I told him things... things I never should have said.” Things that are true, though. Things that are so true they ripped through your soul when you uttered them aloud. She trembles but doesn’t move away from Solace’s warmth, afraid to lift a hoof. “I love him,” she admits finally, head drooping. “I love him more than the ocean loves the shore; more than I ever thought possible. But I’m just... me. Plain, boring Dawn with nothing special compared to his actual girlfriend. And I lost him because of that. He won’t even look me in the eye. I ruined our friendship. I lost him.”
Realizing that she had just vomited so many words all over the sand between them, she snaps her jaw shut and looks up at Solace, eyes wide. “I-I-I'm sorry,” she stutters, apologizing for what feels like the millionth time. “He’s your son and I would never, ever speak ill of him. I just miss him, more than words can say. He was my very best friend.”
This look of concern had become her default expression in these days of sickness. Although Solace had somehow avoided contacting the plague (despite her constant exposure to the virus over the last year) it seemed that she was an anomaly among those she knew.
But what is troubling Dawn is, as she suspected, an ancient sort of heartache - one that far too many could relate too. Not that its prevalence made it any less painful.
Solace moves forward to close the small gap of space between them as Dawn responds. She listens to the words between the tears as she holds the girl, her heart stirring with a familiar hurt as she hears the crack in Dawn's voice.
"I... I screwed everything up," the little mare cries, and Solace pulls her closer.
"I pushed him away. Rhaegor. I told him things... things I never should have said." Dawn continues and She does nothing to ebb the flow of words, not yet. Solace trails her muzzle in lazy circles across her companion's golden shoulder. Her parental instincts were strong and at this moment Dawn could have been one of her own children, heart-broken and in desperate need of a shoulder to cry on. Solace knows she could speak for ages on the perils of young love, how rare it was for the first love to be the longest, but she remains silent for a moment longer.
"I'm so sorry you are hurting like this," the queen's quiet reply finally comes, heartfelt and low as the motion of her motherly caress halts. "You have a lot of love to give, Dawn," she continues, her tone barely above a whisper, "and someone is going to see that for the beautiful prize it is." Dawn continues on to apologize, but Solace only shakes her head.
her embrace she takes a step back so her cerulean eyes can meet her diplomats. "And you don't need to change anything about yourself to make that happen."
S
olace
we're reeling through an endless fall we are the ever-living ghost of what once was
