"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
05-23-2016, 01:46 PM (This post was last modified: 05-23-2016, 01:47 PM by Vidar.)
It is terribly easy to reach the Deserts.
It is nearly impossible to leave the Jungle.
More specifically, the young man balks at the idea of leaving Lagertha behind. He knows she is strong - she is the khaleesi of the land, the fearless leader of soldier-women – but surely the departure of one of her offspring will diminish her in some small way. He doesn’t want that, even if he should have left long ago. He doesn’t want to think of her in quiet moments away from the Sisters. Time has been unkind to the iron lady’s rule (how the war had pulled her: past, present, and future), but still she holds on. It is only a testament to her strength that she has kept the Sisterhood largely untouched by the cold hands of the Reaper. Being the only child present to witness the war and his mother’s involvement, Vidar knows all too well its toll on her. He wishes the others had been there. The realization that he had been the last to leave the nest had been quick and stabbing. Neither Dalten nor Anguisette had left on good terms, besides, and the weight of these truths presses further into him.
But there is so much out there.
Vidar isn’t meant to remain sheltered behind the banana fronds forever. He is meant for the push and pull of his muscle against soil of foreign lands. He is made to represent his mother’s kingdom, to be a drain on thoughts of war and violence with the Jungle, to keep the peace. In many ways, he is glad to come out from the last fern covering the border. It trails against his blue-grey skin and elicits the smallest of smiles to flicker on his lips. The final, voluntary shackle falls away and he emerges into a brand new freedom beyond.
The azure sky is open and overwhelming to the child of shadows and leaves. He is at first mesmerized by the play of light on the land. The sunlight dips into every north-facing crevice, pooling in space between the hills that grow with every step he takes away from his homeland. It is beautiful in an honest kind of way; there are no sneaking vines hidden in the dark, waiting to trip one up. Here, everything is wide and his vision is reaching. So different, he marvels, appreciating it all the same. So much more like me. Because he is not made of deceit and trickery. He is as candid and unassuming as the land he finds himself in.
The heat, however, remains a constant. It hits him anew when he toes the edge of the Deserts. New, because this warmth has no breath to it. The heat of the sand kingdom is dry and without a hint of the Amazon’s infamous humidity. But the sun is still there, beating against the gentle slope of his back. Vidar welcomes it, relishes this one hint of home. His eyes, the color of a storm gathering above rainforest canopies, search for signs of life. There aren’t many to be found. A quiet kingdom, his mother had said, and he sees now that she had been well-informed. Quiet, perhaps, but surely not dead. The stallion considers moving further into his potential new home but wavers on the border. He remembers, suddenly and forcefully, everything he is representing. It would not do to cast a pall on his arrival, even as anxious as he is to search the Deserts to find his place in their world.
05-28-2016, 09:58 PM (This post was last modified: 05-29-2016, 01:51 AM by Volaire.)
TARNISHED X EVRAE
I.
The sunshine dragon stirred from her high nest of salt-blanched stones, claws crunching across small skeletons that littered her sandstone ledge. A soft hiss rumbling from her scaled throat as she leered down at the marbled stallion who idled at her grandfather’s borders, pieces of rock crumbling beneath her to the dunes below.
She was growing large – almost too large to keep holding to this form as often as she did. But the war-wrought girl’s heart was filled with fire and she had always felt more dragon than horse.
Was she not born of a golden, jeweled egg, anyway?
II.
Volaire loved the way her prey’s breath tasted as they flailed wildly, terrified in her claws – fear tasted beautiful. She loved the exquisite way flesh gave way to her predator’s teeth and the way blood dripped thick and warm down the back of her throat.
The girl climbed down the side of the rock-face, back claws and talon-tipped wings allowing her to crawl down the crag like a Desert cat down a palm tree. But when she reached the dune she forced herself to shift, already hating the way her hooves felt too awkward – too useless in the soft sand.
III.
Long legs carry her to the border where the smoke colored stallion waited, pearlescent eyes pouring across him curiously as she stopped before him. “Who are you?” She asks, tongue slipping across her golden lips instinctively despite her current form. Her tone is without malice, just an inquiring mind’s prying. Her eyes travel greedily across his face, shamelessly.
And they linger too long on his throat. Innocently, of course..
Every lie was an inch of rope… I only stuck around to tie the knot & I enjoyed watching you struggle as you hung yourself
The sand lifts and rises with each small gust of wind, swirling intricate patterns on the surface that keep his attentions for a time. Vidar can’t get over how different this place is than his home. Mother had told him everything she knew about the deserts, but firsthand knowledge does not trickle down so readily; nothing could have prepared him for the vast emptiness of this new land. No words could have done justice to the way the light is swallowed up by the undulating lay of the dunes, shining them golden. No explanation could have satisfied his curiosity for the absence of trees when he had grown up nearly choked by them. Only standing here, now, does he realize the enormity of his decision.
Even with her muffled-by-the-sand footsteps and as mesmerized by the shifting grounds as he is, the blue stallion’s head immediately lifts when the stranger approaches. The same lack of trees makes it all too easy to spot advances (instantly, he worries for the defense of the kingdom – how do they combat their major vulnerability?). And her stark white coat only compromises her stealth further. Vidar doubts she is really worried about her safety in her own home. His mind simply cannot help but meet with strategy before all else.
As it turns out, her mind seems similarly occupied by safety. She is blunt and quick in her greeting, neither saying more than she needs to nor giving her name. Understandable. He imagines if the roles were reversed and a thick, muscled man stood at the doorway of the Jungle he would be on the offensive as well. Of course, he would have the backing (more like the fronting) of the entire Sisterhood on his next breath. Not exactly a force any foreigner would stand a chance against. This mare, however, seems to be quite alone.
Still, he’s never been foolish enough to underestimate a woman – or her changing moods.
“Ma’am,” he says, dipping his head slowly in greeting. When he looks up again, he notices how her eyes seem to linger below his own, not meeting them but instead focusing on his throat. He wonders if her bluntness comes from a place of introversion; perhaps she’s too shy to keep his gaze. “I’m Vidar, from the Jungle.” And surely the scent of jasmine and frangipani still clings to his mane, wafting in the dry air between them, a testament and proof of his origins. Soon, they too will leave him. All he will have is the heat baking the land to remind him of a childhood spent elsewhere.
The roan offers the pale woman a slow smile as he regards her. This might be home now and she his comrade. Best start making connections when the opportunity arises. And as far as company goes, there is something about this one in particular that strikes him; a quiet ferocity lingers behind eyes that flash too quickly away from his own. “I’ve come as a boon from your ally but also as a man in search of his place in the world. Perhaps you can tell me more, show me around?” He leaves a space after his question, hoping she will fill it with her name.
Volaire eats up his dubious glance as it moves across the breadth of her grandfather’s kingdom and she savors the taste of his uncertainty. She drank in the muted flavor of his doubt and swishes it around on her devious palate – they were not vulnerable, they were mighty.
II.
She catches the same doubt flicker in his eyes as they move across her and a predator’s smile slips across her golden silk lips. Volaire, like the Deserts, was anything but weak, anything but fragile. He addresses her formally and at this time, she holds his gaze with her own slitted eyes of gold, “Vidar?” She says, a question lingering with his name on her black forked tongue as she tilts her head curiously, “I like that name,” she says, her voice a too-sugary sweet.
III.
“My name is Volaire,” the slender golden mare offers her name with a voice that lilts with a lusty heaviness, too much like a growling purr. He speaks of the Jungle and her delicate featured face tilts with curiosity as she wonders why he would leave the lushness of the Jungles for the sparse harshness of her bloodline’s Deserts. Questions scramble for a breath before they settle, her cunning mind filing her questions away for a time riper for the asking. For now, she would show the smoke roaned stallion the wonders of the kingdom to who’s door he had come knocking. “As you wish,” she laughs, her lithe forelegs shifting into wide crimson wings as her elegant face is replaced by that of a phoenix’s. Her lips sharpen into a sunflower-yellow beak and her golden eyes sit unblinking and violet in her feathered skull, “where would you like to see first?” The phoenix asks, a trail of fire dripping from her tail to burn into the sand below as she hovered nearby him, “an oasis, perhaps?” She asks, a mischievous giggle too hard to hold as fire leaked from her plumage and sizzled beneath her.
Every lie was an inch of rope… I only stuck around to tie the knot & I enjoyed watching you struggle as you hung yourself
