"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
Emelia had come and gone just as the leafy greens do in the Tundra. The snow had taken her away, far away into the very heights of the mountains that surrounded the kingdom. Peace is what she found within the mountains. The very beast, tall and grand in all their glory, comforted her troubling and chaotic soul. It reminded her of her father and their many days upon the very peak of her once home – the Dale.
She could stay up there forever if she could. However, Emelia knew she had to return to a civilized world eventually. It has been years since she came down from the mountains, not since her sweet Ianto had disappeared from this world. She knows nothing of his whereabouts. And it made her heartache when she left. He was the one that made her life a little bit easier, a little bit of hope to grasp onto when her world came crashing down on her. Their son had been her light. He stayed with her in the mountains a couple years ago, but Emelia could have never kept him at her side forever. He was meant for great things – things she hopes have turned alright for him.
But this time she couldn’t stay up in the mountains.
The snow is heavy today, a storm brewing strong within the kingdom. It covers the land in a blanket of white, blinding your vision, and creating your destruction. This land was troubling and lethal but she endured the obstacles that came with it. It is her home, this bachelor kingdom. While it was not an ideal place for most, it was her peace, her sanctuary. It made her strong again.
There was something comforting she finds in the cold; a warm hand wrapped around her like a tight blanket and bright blazing fire keeping her world. She feels safe here in the frozen wasteland – far away from the world and the wickedness it holds. It was what she had always wanted in the end from her tragic memory. This land gave her peace and finally put back the empty hole in her heart.
She pushes forward through the snowdrifts, the snowflakes blinding her vision to see what lay ahead of her. The winged mare does not shiver in the cold; her coat by this time has adapted to never thin to a summer coat. She wears a thick coat almost year around despite when spring and summer decides to grace their presence in the Tundra. Emelia does not know where she does, but only that she cannot stay within the mountains anymore.
“Hello?” she calls out (her voice is raspy and hard from disuse for so many months) when she sees a figure of another in the distances. The snow blinds her, but she knows that there is someone out there. But who is it. Emelia moves forward, closer to where she believes she saw the other horse.
He had disappointed the few that he had loved. He had betrayed them and broken pieces of himself in the process. He had lived alone, retreating to the reaches of the Tundra that could only be reached by wings, and then perhaps going even farther north. He had disappeared. He had left his kingdom. He had left Ridgon, his confidant. He had left Emelia, his love. And he had left his Roan, his beautiful daughter. And his Niklaus, the son he had never met.
He had come to love the bite of disappointment as it gnawed in his breast. He had become bed mates with the cut of betrayal and the familiar way the pain sliced through him. He had been everything more than he was now, a ragged stallion, his body covered in hair so thick he could have passed for a polar bear. The scars from his reign covered, hidden beneath it, the multicolored fur that covered his body.
But something, or rather some ones had returned to the Tundra and while he was no longer king, his blood ran through it, his blood was part of the Tundra. The ground told him, whispering their names to him in his sleep. Roan. Em.
And so his wings were opened, his muscles clenching and working, pushing him into the air, each stroke of his feathers through the wind that much less than before. Until he remembered and his body remembered and for the first time in a very long time, the old stallion laughed. The sound was hoarse from disuse and the wind stole it from his mouth, but he was off.
Days. It took days to remember the way back to the Tundra, to finally see her below him and know that it was here. That his beloved Emelia was here, returned to their home. His wings tucked themselves to his sides, and he fell like a bullet from the sky, oblivious to the rest of them, to the other Brothers would no doubt come to find this intruder.
All he could see was her.
He lands in front of her, his wings barely tucked to his side before his nose is mere centimeters from her own, and while he aches to tuck himself against her, to press her into her place along his body, he does not know if she will welcome him. The conflict apparent in the eye he turns towards her. "Em." He says, softly, nothing more than a whisper of breath against her nose.
Her eyes search carefully through the mass of snowflakes that blow into her vision. She cannot see the figure very well, but she hears the familiar sound. The familiar sound of wings flapping and the swoosh of the wind at high speed. Emelia knows there is a rush in the way the figure moves through the sky, excitement perhaps flowing through the bloodstream of the other horse. She doesn’t know who it is. The storm keeps her from finding out exactly who it is. However, as the mysterious winged figure comes closer through the sky, a distinct yet familiar scent clings to him.
She knows this scent.
It feels old, but it is a scent she could never forget.
It was Ianto’s scent.
Ianto is already there before her, his nose so close to her own, before she could say a word to him through the snow falling. Her heart is racing fast now as hazel eyes trying to focus on the winged figure merely inches from her. Emelia can’t believe what she sees in front of her. She thought he was gone forever, but here is he now. He is right here! It felt like the world fated for such a perfect moment as this and that fairytales actually did exist. Emelia hardly believed in such stories of romance and happy endings, but this time she believed they were true. Her knight, her prince had returned.
“Ianto,” she whispers back to him seconds after his warm breath is felt against her nose. Emelia lunges herself into him, begging to feel the warmth of his skin against her and his embrace. She doesn’t care that he might be a raggedy mess or how long he has been gone from Beqanna. All she had ever wanted, wished for, was for Ianto to come back. And he has come back. He is here now and she wouldn’t dismiss him. She welcomes him back, forgives him for ever leaving (she understands whatever the reason may be because she loves him). “I missed you so much!” Her voice comes suddenly, tears begin streaming down from her eyes and roll down her cheeks. Emelia presses her head closer into his chest.
The snow storm is just a mild inconvenience. So he had to lean more on what the land was telling him before he could find her, but he still had found her. She was still standing there before him in all her beauty. Her scent wrapped around him and her voice was a balm to his soul. He closed his eyes as she said it, his heart hammering in his chest in anxiety (she wouldn't want him anymore), in happiness (it had been so long since he had seen her!). And then she is there, her body pressing against his and all he can think of is how good she feels against him.
His heart still hammering, thumping so loud he feels it might break free from his skin. Her warmth is soothing to him, his wings stretching out around their faces, covering their heads and necks and enveloping them in their own cocoon. His eyes open to see her against him. His lips trail along her neck, across whatever part of her body he can reach. She is almost just as scruffy as he is and it makes him smile. "Are you just returning too?"
And she says she misses him, and his heart contracts, stuttering momentarily in his chest when she says that. Pain lancing through it and taking his breath away. He swallows, pushing as much of the pain away that he could before he presses his face back against her. "I am sorry Em for leaving. The crown was too heavy and I had to escape." He murmurs against her neck, his wings still sheltering them, creating their very own little bubble. Finally he reopens his eyes. "I should have taken you with me. It was miserable." Here a small smile curls his lips as he pulls back slightly to take a look at her. "I thought of you every day." His voice was clearing the more he spoke but it was still rough and scratchy not the more elegant stallion that she used to know.
The snow storm whirling around both of them now has simply been forgotten. She only has eyes for her dear Ianto now. It was a sight she thought she would never see in a million years. All of years with his presence missing from the Tundra had made her come to the conclusion she would never see him again. But she had been truly wrong in that matter. It was her fate, somehow, to always find the winged appaloosa stallion. He was the sun to her cloudy day; he was the rain to her dry, desert soul; he was her missing puzzle piece. Ianto was her everything.
Her heart is still racing too. She can’t help how excited and happy she is to see him right now. Ianto puts his wings over their heads, sheltering them from the snow, and she smiles when she can clearly see his face now. “There you are,” she says with a smile and laughs. The laugh naturally comes out. It’s been years since she had not forced a laugh out. She peers up at him while he covers her in kisses. Emelia laughs again. “Yes, I was up in the mountains again.” The mountains in the Tundra that made her strong and feel safe.
Emelia feels his head suddenly pressed into her neck. She knows within his sudden movements and breath felt against her skin that he dreads the words he is about to say. Emelia frowns at him (not because she is mad but because she is sad for the way he felt pressure from the crown). She remembers watching her father when he ruled the Dale. The last couple years of his reign had been hard on him, but there had been something more than the weight of the crown on his shoulders. Emelia knows he struggled personally with her mother, Alona, and his treachery with other mares. Either way it did not matter, she knew that her father loved her mother deeply.
“It’s okay, Ianto. I understand why you needed to leave.” She pulls away from him, but only to get a better look at him. Her eyes met his now. Emelia smiles when he says he thought of her every day since he was gone from Beqanna. “Maybe next time you can take me with you, Ianto,” she says with a humor in her words. “But truly I cannot live without you again. I need you by my side. It doesn’t matter where we are, I just need you.” She says with a smile and touches her muzzle to his again.
He could have been blind and still found her. So long ago he had felt like he was being forced to her, forced to love this girl. One day, perhaps even the day that he had found her half frozen in the Tundra snow, he realized that his life without her was drab indeed. She made the days bearable and the crown not as heavy. She made him realize it was okay to make mistakes, to be real. She steadied him. She was his foundation and when she was gone he was standing on stilts that made life so much harder. So to have found her today, found her when he had felt low, lower than he had ever felt before was a godsend.
"There you are." She says, a laugh tumbling from her lips. It pulls his own smile out, curling the corners of his lips as he finds contentment in just seeing her. His body settles against her like it has so many times before, pulling her as close as he can get. His wings shuffling over their faces, a couple of big snowflakes sneaking through the gap before he closes it back up. He smiles again as they float between their faces and can only imagine that their bodies look like snow horses with as heavy as the snow was falling down. He could feel the cool damp feeling of the snow all across his back and no doubt it was all over his wings.
He worried briefly about the Brothers of the Tundra, unable to hear or see them respond to the two if they chose too but then he realized he didn't care. Emelia was what was important. Remembering her scent and the curve of her neck, the line of her cheek and jaw....all this was more important to the stallion. Her words were a balm to his soul and all the tense muscles in his body relax.
She understood. She still loved him.
His world would be okay. Great perhaps. "Em." He says, because it's all he can say in the face of her forgiveness. He tucks his face back into her neck, his lips trailing this time along the curve of her shoulder. He holds it for a moment before shifting back to meet her eyes. "Well my love, what would you like to do?" He tilts the outside of his wings up so they can look out into the Tundra. "Should we see what we can do to help the Tundra? Or shall we escape to our own beautiful part of it and hide? Or...Both?" He says with a laugh, and doesn't care what she picks so long as she is happy.
Ianto pulls her closer into his warm body. She doesn’t protest against his movement. In fact, she wanted it more than ever now to feel so close to him. Emelia smiles when a couple of snowflakes fall through the opening of Ianto’s shuffling wings. She liked the idea of them being snow horses. It put a funny image in her head at the idea of them remaining like this, but if that came to happen she would be glad to be frozen at the side of Ianto. Emelia loved any idea of that happening, so long as she had him at her side.
“Em,” he says, calling her out of the silence and daydream she was having as she enjoyed the warmth of her lover’s body. Emelia smiles though because she loves when Ianto says her name. It is one of the best thing she enjoys hearing. “Yes?” She asks and laughs softly as he lips her body gently. Her hazel eyes then meet Ianto’s own gaze. As he begins to ask her question and pulls his wing to look out towards the Tundra, her eyes peer out to take in the snow covered kingdom. She falls silent for a moment.
There were many things she would like to do, especially involving just Ianto. She smiled silently at herself with those thoughts though. There would be a time for everything though. It is her gut feeling that tells her something else. “I have to stay here for Viserion,” she says with certainty because she remembers her brother, Rigdon, asking her to take care of his son before he passed away. “You remember my brother, Rigdon, right?” She asks but she knows he will since he had been the Hand to Ianto when he was a king. “I promised I’d take care of his son, Viserion, when he passed away. I know he would like for Viserion to be raised here in the Tundra.” She smiles at that thought. She enjoyed the Tundra. It was her home. “We can do both, Ianto. I owe this kingdom a lot. It gave me a second chance.” She lips at his mane lightly and smiles again. “And it brought me to you.”
