"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
11-17-2019, 02:26 PM (This post was last modified: 12-27-2019, 08:28 PM by alaska.)
If am lost, I am lost on purpose.
She may have landed in Taiga, and even decided to take up residence there for now, but Alaska does not fully subscribe to the idea of having a home. There is too much to see, too much to experience, for her to fully buy into the idea of tying herself in one area. Perhaps in time she would find some shred of deep loyalty to a land, but for now, she finds that she belongs to the wild, to Beqanna, to the horizon.
So it does not take her long to begin to wander outside of the boundaries.
She is coming up on her first year and has begun to fill out. Her legs have lengthened, but her entire body still screams of youthfulness. Her mane had already begun to lie flat, but naturally, it was still short and thin—something she found rather boring. Alaska rather enjoys exercising her own gifts in small, even vain ways, and she grows out her mane and tail to fall luxuriously over her shoulder. The crimson of them stands out starkly against the white of her coat and the gold of her markings, and she finds it rather pretty.
And for all of her adventurous spirit and bold manners, she does love pretty things.
So she doesn’t change much else today as makes her way to the river. Outside of her improved hair, the only change is the wings that she chooses to sprout—the feathers of them as red as her mane and tail, save for the gold trimming that sparkles in the sun. They fluff by her side and fold over her back but she doesn’t use them just yet. Instead, she continues to walk, watching the river as it pounds and roars and feeling that her heart follows the same pattern—just hoping for a chance to find an outlet like the ocean.
He is not made of wild things.
And yet. And yet, there is a stirring in his chest all the same. An urge to wander. An urge to separate himself from his twin brother (not because he does not love his brother but because he thinks that some semblance of independence might do him some good).
There is some place that he lives. With his brother and his mother and his sister, too. But he has never bothered to learn the name of it. He has not bothered to learn the names of most things. Except the plants that he loves so much. He has created names for the ones he doesn’t know, crooning softly to them as he bends them to his will.
He grins to himself now, as he tells the vines to climb up his shoulder to his mane, where they tangle themselves into his hair. He laughs out loud as they tickle down the length of his spine and curl themselves around the base of his tail. How he loves them, his plants.
The grass holds no special place in his heart, though. He keeps it separate from his plants, otherwise it would pain him so much to eat it that he would surely starve to death!
He wanders down to the river now, a quiet hum thrumming in his throat as he goes. He sees her before she sees him. There is a kind of fervor in her thoughts, it pulses in his own chest as he approaches her. He is quiet, careful not to startle her. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he asks, his head tilted, that same smile still tying up the corners of his mouth as he studies her.
12-27-2019, 08:37 PM (This post was last modified: 12-27-2019, 08:49 PM by alaska.)
If am lost, I am lost on purpose.
Somewhere, there is a family that Alaska could claim as her own.
Somewhere, there is an anchor that might keep her moored, that might help her find the gravity within the harbor and the joy of knowing a semblance of stability—but she has no desire to find it. She flew away at a young age (out of curiosity and not spite) and has not bothered to trace her steps back. The only thing that looks like family now is Wolfbane and he is as volatile as she feels, flitting in and out of her life.
It leaves her wild and untamed, set adrift in a sea whose temper matches her own.
There is not cruelty in her heart, but there is a wildness and she doesn’t seek to dim it. Instead, when the other colt comes to her, kind and quiet, she turns to meet him with the brightness of her golden eyes. She watches him with that too-sharp gaze, studying him briefly but intently before turning her attention back to the river that roars next to them. There are places of it, she knows, where it grows quiet and placid—
but these are not the places that draw her forward.
“It’s more than that,” she corrects, feeling her pulse thrum in her chest, in her throat. She takes a step forward and then another, feeling the slickness of the riverbank as she nearly slides down into it. “It’s wild and that is so much more,” she calls over her shoulder as the water begins to splash up against her chest. It darkens her to crushed gold and she finds she likes it so much that she shudders and lets the color slowly seep throughout her, bleeding over the white of her coat until there is nothing but gold and the crimson of her unnaturally long mane and tail as they stick to her neck and her legs.
She moves further into the rapids, feeling the tide pull her, and she frowns slightly with concentration as she makes herself heavier, giving herself feet that sink into the mud and cling to the bottom.
When she is certain that she is steady, when the river runs around and over her back but not through her, she glances back over her shoulder, wondering if he too feels the need to find the edge of the world.
She turns to look at him and stops him square in his tracks. The light in that golden gaze turns all of his thoughts a brilliant white. Until there is nothing left in his head but all that white, nothing left in his chest but the thrill of the passion in her thoughts. And then he blinks and it’s gone.
This is the first time he has ever felt foolish, but it will certainly not be the last.
Of course it is more than that, he thinks, of course she is right. But he sews his mouth up tight, perhaps the most self-conscious he’s ever been in his tremendously short life – and conjures up a nervous kind of grin. Maybe someday he will blame his foolishness on the way everything inside him turned bright white and his thoughts evaporated so abruptly that it had been as if they’d never been there at all.
He might have laughed if he’d felt like he could breathe. Alas, he just stands there and watches her with that stupid, uncertain grin. He is young still, so terribly young, and he does not know yet how to extract himself from the wilds of her mind. If he did, certainly he would. Because it is an invasion of privacy and reading the thoughts of a stranger is not the same as reading the thoughts of your family. But he cannot tear himself out of her mind and he is powerless to do anything but love the river in the same way she does. He has no choice but to want nothing more than for it to swallow him whole, too.
She descends into the water then and he wants to call out to her to come back. Because the current is too strong and he is certainly not strong enough to rush in after her, to rescue her from nature. But he cannot open his mouth. And what would he say if he could? It is none of his business, really, how fiercely she wants to siphon all that she can out of life.
So, instead of trying to coax her back to the shore, he follows her to the river’s edge. And then into the water. The cold hits him like an electric shock but he grits his baby teeth and wades deeper. He keeps his gaze shackled securely to her figure and it is not lost on him how she anchors herself there in the rapids. He blinks his confusion, loses his footing and feels himself surrender to the current. But the river plants act faster than the current, coil themselves around his flailing legs to tether him to the bottom. He laughs then, finally, a surprised kind of sound.
“Wow!” he yelps, forgetting his embarrassment. “This is so cool!”
She cannot imagine the kind of power one must wield to be able to read another’s mind.
She has, of course, heard whisperings of gifts like that. Whisperings of powers that go far beyond her ability to simply change her shape and form. But she has never truly paid them much mind. She has been far more interested in the purely physical of her gift—the way that she can mold herself like clay, turning her body into something new and different. Should she want wings? To sprout horns? To change her color or to simply imagine herself as small as the forest creatures who scamper by, she merely need to think it.
What use does she have of the more cerebral gifts?
The ones that, when used correctly, could have such greater impact—such sharper teeth?
She throws her head back as the water rushes around her, some of it leaping over the curve of her back, and nearly forgets about the green boy on the bank who had just seconds before been the center of her thoughts. It is so difficult to hold onto thoughts like that when the world was singing around her—when it was pulling her forward at an unbearable, unforgiving pace. So difficult to remember, to know—
But she does remember.
At least, she does when his voice cuts through the rapid-fire of her mind.
She brings her head down, the crimson of her mane drenched and splattered to her neck and cheek. Her lips spread into a wide grin, eyes glittering with her own amusement and joy that he felt it too.
“Isn’t it?” she cries over the roar of the river around them.
She studies him for a second, laughing as the water slaps up against her throat.
