"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
05-12-2019, 01:05 PM (This post was last modified: 05-12-2019, 01:07 PM by Solace.)
The frost has flourished in the absence of life. In the back of a cave below the mountain, seasons passed the once-queen by and the snap of frost and magic in the air keep the goats and bears at bay.
Her sleeping body is entombed in this frost now, shimmering and statuesque. It had once been a gentle accent in her mane and tail (a gift from the fairies) but now overflows; fostered by the winters storms and protected in the belly of Hyaline's mountains with no movement or life-blood to keep it in check.
But now it cracks and crinkles musically for the first time in months as the sleeping creature draws breath.
Solace would not have guessed that Kagerus' gift of immortality would be a card that was played so soon, that what should have been the simplest of her pregnancies would kill her.
But it had, and death had forced her hand. But like many others in her magic-gorged world, it was not her end.
She stands, dream-fed and weak, shuffling sideways as fragments of black fill her vision and ice falls from her shoulders. 'It's too soon' a voice shouts in her head over the ringing in her ears, but she shakes it away before the words have time to sink in.
Solace steps towards the glow of morning, taking too many jig-steps to keep from tipping forward as she finds her feet for the first time in.... a year?
But now that she has risen her motion is unstoppable. The mare is driven from the safety of her shelter by a primal urge and objects which stand in her way are passed through with ease. Her thoughts have one focus, piecing together the fractured memories of her last child's birth.
Her magic is glitching as her body adjust to too many changes in not enough time. Immaterial and translucent the pegasus resembles a ghost more than a mare. She had never truly perfected the trait she received later in life. The times she needed it were few and far between.
"@[Oriash]?" Spectral-Solace calls as she makes her way south, and it is a terrible, wild sound. The trickle of a mountain stream draws her attention, and phasing through tree and boulder she walks in a straight line to the water, plunging her nose into the frigid waters. "@[aegean]?" She tries again after her drink but stumbles on before she even listens for an answer.
She doesn't know how long she wanders in this way, at one moment solid and the next intangible, but it feels like only moments. A thick fog clouds her mind, urging her onward without consideration for her body, but when she glances back at the distant mountains and up to the noon-day sun, she knows that her mind is a broken as her body seems to be.
With the realization, the fog seems to thin by the slightest of increments and she pauses to take in the damp air of The Forest. A deep breath helps to settle her nerves, and she walks on looking a little more like the composed ruler she had been for the majority of her life.
But her reckless resolve has not softened, she is prepared to search the continent over and over again until she finds her baby.
S
olace
we're reeling through an endless fall we are the ever-living ghost of what once was
Kyra feel free to play this as finding her right away or making her search for days! I can fill in any gaps in my next post
05-13-2019, 11:17 AM (This post was last modified: 05-13-2019, 11:18 AM by Oriash.)
they promised that dreams can come true
Castile isn’t much of a jailer, and though Ori stays put most of the time, on occasion she finds her feet wandering out of Loess. No one stops her, perhaps because she was such a willing captive. In truth, she didn’t feel like a captive at all, but rather like a guest who just wasn’t supposed to be leaving quite yet. Not that she’d been greeting with warm hospitality and dancing dishes, but simply because no one treated her as anything less. Mostly they left her alone, but she was fascinated with Castile, with the hustle and bustle and straightforward nature of those that called Loess home. At least, that’s what it looked like to her from the outside.
Today though, she wanders to the forest. Her mothers, for once, do not join her. Instead she focuses on painting summer into winter. Grass grows beneath her feet and all around her as she moves. Something akin to warmth seems to come from the brighter light that surrounds her, though it’s a fickle warmth. Ori has not begun to master illusions of senses other than sight, but she has at least discovered that they are possible and has been fascinated with the possibilities ever sense. It is easy enough to trick the eyes, but it never takes anyone long to figure out that trick. But to trick all the sense…she grins at the thought, and keeps practicing.
Oriash?
Ori stops dead at the sound, distant and indistinct, and summer disappears from around her. The call is wild in its way, but she can find no source, and who would be looking for her? Someone from Loess? They’d never stopped her before. When no obvious source appears, she dismisses it, assuming it’s her own imagination gone rogue as it so often does. She continues on, turning the surrounding landscape to fall now, reserving the dead trees of winter to the fiery, dying trees of fall. She tries to capture the scent of fall, that crisp coolness that has its own particular smell, though she finds herself falling far short, creating something more akin to the smell of smoke like a bonfire in the distance. Not quite what she’d been going for.
Aegean?”
She stops again, the illusion disappearing with her concentration elsewhere. That’s a name she would not have conjured from her own mind, but the voice is the same and it nags at her in its familiarity. It’s a voice she should know but cannot place because she cannot fathom the possibility that it might be who it sounds like.
Ori doesn’t move, doesn’t seek out the source, but just stands there dumbfounded until the specter of her mother comes into view. She looks like a ghost and Ori assumes her brain is playing tricks on her, finding a new level of torture to suggest to her that her mother is but a ghost now. Not that her mother was much more, but at least they were alive, even if only by the barest scraps of what one could consider alive.
The mare keeps coming, and Ori tries to will her away, not in the mood for her particular distorted brand of personal illusion and torture. The specter doesn’t go away though, and Ori takes a step back. It can’t be. She can’t figure it out, can’t believe it. Is her mother dead? Ghosts don’t want these lands though, even Ori knows that. Then what…?
“Is it really you?” she asks, voice small and uncertain and unwilling to hope. Though she’s not sure she wants this, not sure she has ever truly hoped for them again. It’s a complication she doesn’t know what to do with, having grown so used to her solitude. But the more she looks at the mare, looking exhausting and disheveled and a little crazed, Ori knows that if nothing else, this is not her own power. In her own illusions, her mothers are perfect, almost too much so – they are the embodiment of the way a child sees her parents. This is not the Solace Ori has come to know, fake though that Solace may be. She’s just not sure what this Solace is; reality or illusion?
The figure of a fawn-child, winged and beautiful, catches her eye and Solace's heart shudders as she halts. Despite the urgency of her hunt, the groggy, rational part of her mind had not truly allowed her to believe one of her children would be so easy to find. A chill passes through the ghostly mare as her intangibility fluxes again, but she truly feels hope for the first time since waking.
Solace turns to follow the girl just as she is detected, and the pair face each other under the dappled winter light. The girl steps back, seemingly shocked, and the action quiets the storm of emotions Solace feels. She steps forward carefully, suddenly aware of how disheveled she must appear compared to her former self, and almost as unsure as her daughter is about the reality of the situation. But if this was a dream like all the rest, she didn't want to know. Not yet.
"Is it really you?" The soft voice asks, and still, it is so much older than Solace had imagined.
"Oriash," the name escapes her spectral lips before she can form an answer. 'Yes, it's me, It's your mother' They are words she can't bring herself to say - they are too strange and so different from any she has ever said to one of her children- they hold all the weight of their separation.
Her uncontrolled phasing loosens its grip as she steps forward again, as the involuntary magic wrestles with her need to hold her lost child. It pains her to maintain the polite distance kept by strangers. Still, she remains conscious of her daughter's reaction, prepared to halt should she flinch or move away again. It wouldn't surprise her if she had lost the privilege to hold her daughter; if Ori had grown too used to having no mother at all. But still hopeful, even as these thoughts cross her mind, Solace reaches out to tuck her under her chin the way a mother should, to feel what can never be truly captured in dreams.
"I'm sorry," She says, breathless and exhausted, regardless of whether her gesture is accepted. The time for explanations could come later; for now she just need Ori to know that she was truly sorry.
"I'm here for you now, If you will have me."
S
olace
we're reeling through an endless fall we are the ever-living ghost of what once was
Ori doesn’t correct her, as she corrects so many others, having taken to simply telling everyone to call her Ori. It was shorter, simpler, and less painful in a way. Her mothers had given her the name Oriash, and though she did not desire to change it, she desired to make it her own, to disentangle herself from the painful memory of their abandonment. It is too harsh a word, she knows, because she knows the reasons but to a tiny little girl the reasons don’t matter. In the end, she was left alone without a soul or a clue and she sat on that damn beach until Dawn found her or otherwise the ocean might have swallowed her.
They stand like strangers, but Ori doesn’t move because she doesn’t know what she wants. Some part of her simply wants to run to her mother and crash into her, to sob like a little girl should when she finally gets the family that she dreamed of. Her feet don’t move though, her whole body rooted to the spot because she was something else now – she was Solace’s daughter but she was more than that too, shaped by the childhood she was forced to live. It felt suddenly like two pieces of her warred within, and so she paralyzed by indecision.
Her mother closes the distance, and Ori lets her, basking in the warmth of her disheveled but real – so real – mother. Ori’s illusions had some substance to them, when she tried, but she was too aware of them when she made them substantive to really take any pleasure in it. She couldn’t replicate a hug from her own mother, and in truth, she had never wanted to. It is only through the contact, through the sound of her mother’s beating heart, that she knows this is not a cruel illusion. Her mother is here.
After a moment, she steps back though, unable to stay in that embrace. She looks up to her mother, almost sorrowful. “I’m not going back to the Cove,” she says, neither accepting or denying her mother in that statement. She wanted both. She wanted the life she was on and she wanted her mother, but she couldn’t become the little girl she might have been in different circumstances. She couldn’t go backward.
The truth hangs there for a moment. It’s a truth Ori has known for a while, though she hasn’t voiced it. Technically she’s still a prisoner in Loess, but she doesn’t feel like one, isn’t treated like one, and right now, she has no interest in leaving the place that had stolen her away and given her hope when she’d had none. The silence drags too long before she finally speaks again. “I want to see you, though.” It is not quite forgiveness, but perhaps understanding or something close to it.
They could not go back, but perhaps they could go forward.
They fold into each other, and for a moment all is right in the world. Solace's anxiety-knotted shoulders relax as her wings reach forward to briefly embrace the girl, her girl, and the taut cords of her neck lose. The moment is not long but it is healing, and Solace savors the so-real warmth and scent of her daughter's skin.
Ori is the first to withdraw and Solace lets her go.
A soft smile plays on her lips, despite her daughter gentle defiance, and the mother of seven nods her acceptance without hesitation. All of her children were strong. She had never been one to contradict them once they stepped out into the world on their own. Ori never had the option to not be the one making the big decisions for herself, and Solace wasn't about to make her think she had shown up just to start telling her how to live her life.
"I don't think I will either..." she says, her hazy mind considering the choice for the first time as her gaze drifts eastward. The once-queen had no plan when she stumbled from her cave in Hyaline, she had not thought beyond the next foot-fall. But she knows she doesn't want others to see her like this, not when she could hardly remember their names and titles... or even how long it had been since she had fallen ill.
"I want to see you, though.”
Ori speaks again and Solace is spared any decision making as her attention returns to the little pegasus. She nods again, her blue eyes tracing the lines of her child's face and the unique way fate had blended her and Kagerus' features. But her body begins to fade The winter brush which had been pinned below her hooves is suddenly freed, rising to pass through her translucent legs. Stretching out a pale, downy wing she turns her head to examine herself with detached wonder.
"I think I'll stay here, at least for a little while."
S
olace
we're reeling through an endless fall we are the ever-living ghost of what once was
06-12-2019, 09:19 AM (This post was last modified: 06-12-2019, 09:19 AM by Oriash.)
they promised that dreams can come true
Ori is surprised at how she feels the distance between them. Where they connected and touched is warm and tingling and alive, and without her mother wrapped around her she is keenly aware of her own skin now. Strange, it’s a sensation she has never known before, and she doesn’t know what to make of it now. Some part of her just wants to rush back into that hug, to stay there until the sun went down and the stars were the only light to see by. The rest of her doesn’t know how to bridge a distance that she has grown so used to, and she is paralyzed by indecision rather than anger.
What had she expected to feel? She always knew there would be a day when her mothers resurfaced from their dream coma, and perhaps yes, she had expected to feel anger. Anger at being left behind. No, the truth was that anger was not the right word. Anger was the cover for the simple truth that it hurt, that it hurt more than she could put to words that Kagerus chose Solace over Ori when Ori needed her parents. When neither could even be bothered to make sure their child was taken care of.
It was hard to blame Solace, who had been too sick to do much of anything. Ori didn’t expect anything of her mother but to survive in this, and perhaps that’s why she finds no anger now and only a little hurt. Would she be so easily forgiving when faced with Kagerus? That, she didn’t know, and she doesn’t dwell on it. Instead, she takes in her mother’s face, on her voice, on the realness of this moment that she does not doubt.
Her mother’s words startle her, and Ori’s eyes widen slightly. “Oh,” she says, softly startled. She’s expected her mothers to stay in the Cove. It was where they belonged, or so she thought in her limited knowledge of them. Ori doesn’t offer to bring her to Loess. That feels wrong and selfishly, she wants to keep the life she has built for herself to herself. If her mother found herself there, then so be it, but Ori doubted Loess was the sort of place Solace wanted to be anyway.
Instead, her mother says that she might just stay here for a while, and that seems right. Ori closes the distance again, reaching up to pull a few leaves from her mother’s mane, though whatever parts of her mother that have faded out simply let the leaves flutter to the ground. “You are kind of a mess,” she says, and not in the way a child might point out the obvious but in the way a girl growing up might realize that she is, in fact, growing up. “What can I do?”
Oriash
but they forgot that nightmares are dreams too
@[Solace]
Use of mild power playing is allowed; no injuries without permission
Solace's answers seem to catch her daughter off guard and she is suddenly sure of her decision. If Ori wanted to find her again, she would have to know where to look.
"I'll be here," she confirms, returning her wandering gaze to the girl's eyes.
(eyes so familiar even if this was the first time she had truly looked into them)
But the fleeting intensity dissipates as a gentle laugh escapes Solace - brought on by her daughter's observation. It is a sound which reminds her of her former life, of a grotto full of children and wisteria trees. Of harsh winter nights in Hyaline which only made the comfort of their home shine even brighter. A life Oriash never had the opportunity to be apart of.
You are kind of a mess...
Ori pulls the debris from Solace's frost-kissed mane and the tender attention softens what could have been harsh words. But Solace doesn't falter; she had never been one to shy from the truth.
She was a mess, a fact which is reinforced as she uncontrollably begins to phase again. She hadn't stopped to think, much less compose herself, when she flew from the mountains, the result being that Ori is seen her as very few have. But Oriash doesn't leave the comment to linger, continuing to ask what she could do.
Solace pauses. Her lips draw together as her she considers. What she wanted was to hear the sound of Ori's voice, to be close to her, to begin to learn who her youngest child was. But the fear of asking too much weighs on her mind.
"Will you stay with me, just for a little while," she offers. A faint gleam of light ripples across her skin, but her face betrays no concern. There was still strength in her, although it was not easy to see "... tell me about the places you have been and the creatures you've met."
"Then you will run along, get back to whoever is missing you." A half-smile breaks as she brushes a stray wisp of her companion's dark forelock back to its place. "To know that you are alive and well is more than enough for now."
S
olace
we're reeling through an endless fall we are the ever-living ghost of what once was
@[Oriash] hope it's ok that i put up this super late closer! If it contradicts something you have come up with IC in the meantime please let me know and i can change anything
