"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
03-08-2016, 10:22 AM (This post was last modified: 03-10-2016, 09:35 AM by Issa.)
rise and rise again, until lambs become lions
It's warm when she falls to the earth, though Issa has known nothing but warmth since her beginning. They very moment her consciousness had been created she felt it and it had yet to leave, perhaps it never would. In truth she would never know the absence of the fire that warmed her very soul, it would live on within her. Later she would know that the sun would not leach her heat, nor burn her, it would only give. Some things take time to learn though, time to understand, such was life.
A slick thump accompanies her emergence, in a curled, wet, ball she lays, blinking blearily at her surroundings. Two amber colored eyes try their best to discern her environment. It was dark now, a sing-song chirping filling her ears from the shadows. Later, she would learn these were crickets but for now she just enjoyed the funny chorus. She was nothing spectacular so far, just a coal colored girl, with not a mark to break up the black. She was well built if some might ask, a fine head that some might call beautiful if they were into that sort of plain beauty. Mostly she was just a girl, she was just Issa.
Not far off something stirs in the brush, shaking the grasses and darting from one end of the clearing to the other. Issa starts, jerking her tiny head before she no longer lay in the form of a horse. Instead she pips and squawks, a grey fuzzy chick, with wide eyes and a sharp beak. Around her is a bed of ash, smoldering as if there had been fire where there was certainly nothing before. Yet the girl was hot still, unbearably so to some, so it could be said the smolder came from her- but she wouldn't know it.
In another breath she is again the black filly, looking confused as she lays splay-legged in the pile of ashes. Her breath releases in quick bursts as her chest heaves from the fright, she didn't know it was just a critter or that it wouldn't likely harm her. Issa just knows it was sudden and it was unfamiliar, just as her new life was, she was thinking now it would have been better to stay inside.
I have seen the night torn into thin darkling strips
and woven into shapes too bleak for dreams.
He is quite possibly the worst horse to find her. For one, he hates fire. It takes away the shadows. Warmth and light and fire are not his things. He’s a boy of the shadows and darkness and cold. He’d known destruction and death (so much of it at his own hands) at too young an age to be anything but what he was. And besides that problem, he knows nothing about children. It’s not like he could actually be counted on to raise a child into something functional. He hardly talks, prefers fighting to diplomacy, and doesn’t know what manners are.
He can just take to the girl to Demian or something.
To be fair, it takes him a minute to figure out that the foal is in fact a mare. And then it takes him another minute to be convinced she’s actually a horse, after she turns to a chick and then back to horse again. He’s been watching from the shadows, standing within a small copse of trees, his own shadow blanket pulled tight around him. It was no longer solid armor for war, though it looks like a normal horse coat and hid the cuts and bruises that littered his skin from the battle. Damn elastic horse – his neck still hurt.
Finally though, he wanders out to the girl when no one else approaches. She’s in the Valley, trespassing if you ask Rhonan without a recognizable mother around. But then again, the thing probably didn’t even know where she was. Not that Rhonan really cared, but he was trying, which is more than he can usually manage. “Are you….alright?” he asks awkwardly, coming to a stop near the filly, who’s still sprawled on the grass. He really doesn’t know what he’s actually supposed to do here.
03-15-2016, 10:43 AM (This post was last modified: 03-15-2016, 10:50 AM by Issa.)
rise and rise again until lambs become lions
Blink, blink, blink
She strains her eyes to peer into the surrounding darkness, wondering where she is, why she is there. A shiver racks her small frame and it is uncertain whether she shakes because she is cold, or because she is afraid. Only now does she realize she is alone, that's she's been laying in the ash covered grass by herself.
Another quick movement catches her peripheral, sending her to her feet in a quick sweeping motion. Her thin limbs tremble as she adjusts to the awkward position of standing, something she's never done before. So far she isn't sure if it hurts or if the new stance is just uncomfortable to her weak appendages.
Soot covers her, racing up her legs, spreading across her stomach and up her hips to her rear. The embers slowly burn out but she doesn't notice any heat emanating from the tender coals. What Issa does notice is the man standing before her, appearing from the shadows almost too abruptly. Her back left leg juts out as she fumbles backing, the maneuver almost sending her tumbling. Instead of falling, she stands with her legs awkwardly slanting out much to wide to be enjoyable.
"I- I think so. Who are you?" Her answer is accompanied by wide nostrils and eyes, unsure of who this stranger is or why he is there. For a moment a trail of flame flickers along her spine before it quietly melts back inward from whence it came.
"Where's momma? Where am I?" She asks wondering just how she had gotten here, and where exactly the familiar scent of her Mother had disappeared to.
I have seen the night torn into thin darkling strips
and woven into shapes too bleak for dreams.
He definitely should not be the one standing here with this girl. He actually has no idea what to do. Well, that’s not entirely true. As she backs away, he is smart enough to take his own step backward, trying to make it clear he’s not here to hurt her. Yes, he liked fighting, but no, he didn’t really plan to kill children that just so happened to be plopped in the Valley. Even if it’s technically trespassing.
Thankfully, his shadow wolf is not lurking by his side. He’d crafted a few of them, and though most had gone back to being shadows on the ground, this one had decided to stick around. He doesn’t know why, but it does come find him now and again, lingering at his side for some reason Rhonan can’t fathom. But it is not here now, or the girl would probably be running in the opposite direction. Not that he could blame her. Rhonan wasn’t the most comforting presence around.
“Rhonan,” he offers, his voice rough though not necessarily unkind. Not exactly soft and soothing either, but still. He’s trying. It’s about the best he can manage. “This is the Valley, but hell if I know who your mom is. You know her name?” He’d help her look, if she had something to go off of. But it’s not like he currently had a clue where to start. He’s wondering himself who her mother is and why the mare thought it prudent to leave her child in the middle of the Valley.
It’s a curious thing to be thrown at the world in such a careless way. Left to sift through a pile of ash, lost and confused in a world cloaked with shadows. If she knew any different she would thank the stars that this man had not brought with him creatures of the dark. Already life was dark and confusing and warm, strangely warm.
As he himself backs at her retreat her tiny ears flick forward, wondering just who this was. It is not a long wait before he is telling names and asking questions. Rhonan. The word sinks into her young mind, one of the first names she has been spoken, one of but not the only one she was gifted with.
Momma said I’m Issa.” She blinks her ambery eyes, reserved curiosity filling them as she watches the stranger. Her tiny head lifts just an inch, her nose jutting forward as she spreads her nostrils wide to smell. The scent new and real and different, much more different to her own, or the fading smell of her Mother. Soon she would likely forget the scent all together, instead she would remember the name she was given, just one other.
“I don’t know her name.” Ears fall flat against her ebony tufts of hair, making no difference in the way it projected upwards so comically. “She said I was to stay here with Dad, he’s called umm..Flame..Flame..” Something, he was called something like that, a name with fire and a hint of fear. It didn’t sound like a nice name or a kind one and little Issa worried about who she had been left to live with.
“It’s got Flame at the front but it’s a bigger name, I-ohhhhhh.” Worries fill her small voice, already she’s lost half a word, half a name- the most important of words mind you. Was she lost now?
I have seen the night torn into thin darkling strips
and woven into shapes too bleak for dreams.
The dark is such a misunderstood thing. Sad, really, how little the world knows of the powers that flow through his veins. Not because he cares to be known as powerful, but rather because he simply wishes the world would understand. The darkness is kind, it is loving. It caresses you when you are alone, blankets you until you fall asleep. Yes, it can be deadly, but so can the light. The light, which illuminates all your flaws, which shows the world the things only darkness will keep hidden. The dark keeps your secrets, the light gives them away.
Ah, but of course, without light, there would be no shadows.
“Issa,” he repeats lazily, without any real purpose other than to store the name away in the endless collect of them. It’s a wonder he remember them all, because he doesn’t entirely care if he does or doesn’t. Sometimes he suspects it’s only Noah with that disappointed look in his eye that ever manages to keep Rhonan on track. What would Rhonan ever do without the ghost of his friend, always lingering in the corner of his vision (when they are alone, anyway)? Fall to pieces, probably. Slip into the darkness and simply stay there. There are worse fates. The darkness would welcome him with open arms.
The girl is still talking, and he catches most of the words, but she stutters and stumbles about with it and he can’t entirely be bothered to keep up with all of that. Flame keeps coming up though, she repeats it. “Flamevein?” he asks, not knowing that there are other Flame names running about as well. But he’s Flamevein once in a blue moon. “He’s almost never around, but he might show his face.”
He rolls a shoulder in a shrug, like this is no big deal. But of course, the realization is setting in on him slowly. He’s rather unknowingly just adopted a child. A girl, nonetheless, who leaves burning patches in the ground. What the hell is going to do with a girl? Shit. “You’re safe here,” he adds, like his nonchalant, gravely words can actually add any comfort.
The much bigger man comes off as much more helpful to her as he is honestly trying to be. Children’s eyes have a way of skewing the world and the people in it, thus the magic of a child’s innocence. Isn’t that something? Issa is no different, fresh to the world as she is, all she knows is that Mother is gone. This man is here, this dark friend who speaks his name as Rhonan, who helps her and finds her thus subtracting loneliness from the equation. Father is somewhere apparently and he is called Flamevein but where the man hides it is uncertain.
Her tiny ears fall flat, splaying outwardly as she sulks at the news. ‘He’s almost never around.’ Had momma left her here to be with Papa or to be alone? The little anglo was beginning to think the later might be a possibility but Mother had not succeeded. She was not alone at all, she was with this man, this Rhonan.
Certainty fills her when he speaks, calmness finds her in his words and her sulky disposition ignites with hope. It ignites physically as well, licking flames up her legs as her mood and spirits lift. Safe here. He said she was safe here and she believed him. “Safe with you right Rhonan?” The question is hopeful and demanding all at once and within the space of a breath she is moving towards him, tiny tail wiggling. The fire dims and subsides and part of her is reluctant to let it go, but he is night and shadow and in a way so is she. At least superficially. Dark skin paints her delicate new body, traceless and unassuming, deep like shadow. Inside she is day, she is life and burning fire but the time to know this was yet to come.
For now not being left to the shadows was enough. For now companionship, even the most begrudging kind, was preferable to enduring the endless darkness alone.
