"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
Riva is glorious in her triumph; her first successful recruit! Oh, and a new friend, which Riva has never had friends… never had a need for them honestly. That was a type of baggage she never really wanted to saddle herself down with, or so she told herself. Damn Lagertha! She’d curse the Queen for making her more susceptible to things like this, like making friends… still, it was nice but… agonizing too, like what if Fayella decided she didn’t like the Jungle and never wanted to see Riva again? Oh the horror! She feels an odd protective instinct towards the mountainous little mare already which so un-Riva-like that she is aghast at herself for the way she is feeling and how rather carefree she is being, all things that are so not like the fiercely bitter Riva few have come to know.
“Good,” she says with a nod, fairly impressed with how truthful and quick Fayella is to admit that she can hold her own if necessary but would prefer the path of peace. Riva has a quick tongue and a quicker temper, and ought to be more suited for war but her strong points lie in the fact that she is blunt and apparently not too shabby at being diplomatic, so it remains to be seen what she will do for the Jungle besides recruit more sisters to swell their ranks. She likes the excitement she sees in the mare’s eyes; it brightens them and Riva knows she has made an excellent choice this day in approaching Fayella. “Come then, let me show your new home.” and the bay tovero sets off on the path in a comfortable pace that allows them to ramble on.
“I should warn you, it’s only been a couple of years since there was a big war here and they tried to burn the Jungle down. It takes time for the land to grow back strong and green; it has done that already in such short time but there are still parts of the Jungle that are hard to look at - you can see the waste they laid to her but so too, can you see the new shoots poking up through the raw dirt and ash.” They pass by some of the destruction then head on towards the greener untouched parts of the Jungle. “There is a river nearby but it is not entirely safe to drink from alone, too many crocodiles. There are plenty of pools here and there to drink from and cool off in though,” she throws a smile back over her shoulder as the Jungle opens herself to them, revealing the brightly colored birds that flit through the trees. Riva likes the macaws best, their plumage brilliant and their mimicry even more so.
“This clearing,” she says with an indication of her nose in the direction that they are heading to, “Is the main ground where you can find most of us.” There is a large tree in the middle and it is there that the paint mare halts, hoping that Fayella has not found the trek too tiresome. “What do you think? Oh, and I hope you don’t mind the heat…” it was rather humid in the Jungle, but Riva’s own pelt was so thin that the heat did not make her sweat continuously like it might others. The heat could kill you as easily as anything here could, she muses. “The Queen might ask tell you the same thing that she told me - that most mares only make it this far, after that, you choose whether to stay permanently or visit. If the former, then the Jungle will begin to give up her secrets to you the longer you are with her. If not, she remains mysterious and tricksy like anything else can be, but I think you will be with us for quite some time…” Her smile is amused, and more a smile than her usual wry grins which means Riva is definitely becoming a softy where Fayella is concerned, and that should be concerning in its own right but she basks in the simplicity of this easy companionship.
Fayella eagerly soaked up the information Riva was giving her about the jungle like black asphalt soaks up sun. Her eyes darted around to keep up with all the sights, and her ears frantically swiveled to analyze every sound around them as the landscape morphed into a new, breathtaking but deadly environment. Fayella could feel the air getting hotter, the trees becoming denser, and she saw new animals she'd never seen before, only heard about. It was hot, but nothing she couldn't handle. Vibrant macaws clung to tree limbs, their brilliantly colored feathers in various shades of blue and red and gold. "Beautiful," she says, her blue eyes lighting up so they look almost as vibrant as the macaw's feathers. They passed a barren space full of dust and ashes, where tiny sprigs of green dotted the earth here and there. If these plants were as strong as Riva and the other Jungle inhabitants seemed to be, she knew the forest would be teeming with plant life in no time at all. And then they approached a heavily forested area once again, with green everywhere, growing healthy in the rich, dark soil. Fayella loved the way the moist black earth felt, not so hard, it sort of molded to her hooves as she traipsed along, following Riva. When they reached the clearing, Fayella turned to the painted mare. "It's perfect," she whispers, her voice filled with wonder and adoration. "And it's so alive. I feel like the whole forest is living and breathing. It's...enchanting." Then she comes back down to earth, blushing a little. "Sorry. I probably sound like a nut job." She looks down, and then looks at Riva again. "Thank you for.. well, taking me under your wing." Riva might not know, but Fayella had been overwhelmed with the daunting task of leaving her family and everyone she knew to go pursue an uncertain future, and it helped so much to have a kind person to help her start a new life, and she was grateful.
Fayella
We're the song inside the tune full of beautiful mistakes
Riva nods; she is pleased that the black tobiano finds the Jungle beautiful as much as she does. That to her, is a promising start for the both of them. Fayella says it is perfect and Riva could not agree more; it really is perfect in so many ways from the moist loam underfoot to the rays of the sun that dance along their painted backs. She had to admit, she really did love it here. The Jungle had grown on her the way moss grows on the backside of a rock and she figured she would never lose that sense of home that had started to worm its way deep into her blood and bones. It did however, raise caution because of how precious the idea of home was to Riva - she never had one, could not bear to lose this one now that she’s found it, and she cannot help the fierce snort that comes from her nor does she explain it, some things were just better left unsaid and she hadn’t even told Lagertha the whole sordid tale of her origins and how it had shaped her into the bitter thing she usually was, except when around Fayella who seemed to soften all of Riva’s sharp edges including her tongue.
“She is alive,” she says, as it was her belief that the Jungle was an entity unto itself, definitely living and breathing in the same ways that they were living and breathing. Riva laughs and nudges her newfound companion lightly, “Nah, you don’t sound crazy. I think we all sound a little like you the first time we encounter Her.” The paint respects the Jungle, accords her a personage that might not otherwise be accorded to a kingdom but the Jungle has certainly always looked after her own from what all the stories say, so it is hard not to think of it in terms of a deity deserving of their utmost respect and care. Deity of course, is not the proper term for it if Riva thinks long and hard. The Jungle was more like a mother, a sister, or whatever female entity she was needed to be for each of them. That sounded better in Riva’s head, honestly.
“No need to thank me,” she says but adds in a more thoughtful murmured tone, “You’re welcome.” She doesn’t think she has ever had someone express gratitude to her in her entire life. Fayella just keeps surprising her and making her discover parts of Riva that she had thought long dead and burnt up in the midst of all her hot brash hate. She also doesn’t want to admit that it is kind of nice not to be so consumed by her passions all the time, to let go and just be… herself, whoever that is. The paint cocks a hip and leans more peaceably towards her comrade. “To be honest, I haven’t met any of the other sisters yet. That’s what we refer to ourselves as - sisters, no matter if we share blood or not, we share the Jungle.” She will reveal more and more about expectations and life here but for now, it is nice not to explain everything all at once and overwhelm her friend. Besides, Fayella is smart and asks questions about what she wants to know.
The humidity oozed into Fayella's black tobiano pelt, and sweat oozed out of her sleek black and white fur. She shook her mane, which acted as a little fan to slowly cool down her glistening neck a little. The heat wasn't bad enough to be even minority unbearable, and if there was one thing Fayella knew, it was that all pretty things have flaws, including the jungle. Whether or not they bothered you usually depended upon whether or not you chose to see them as flaws, or merely part of the makeup of the jungle. Fayella, forever the optimist, chose to see them as the latter. She pricked her ears and listened to Riva as she reassured Fayella that she was normal. Fayella smiled at her bashfully. "Glad to see I'm not the only one." When Riva leaned closer to Fayella for a moment, she was surprised. Riva seemed as though that were not something she did very often, being so nonchalant about physical contact. Not the Fayella minded one bit; she was beginning to adore the little mare, and was pleased that she was warming up to her. Fayella turned to Riva. "So, what do I need to know before joining?,"Fayella inquired, hoping she didn't sound to overzealous.
ooc: Sorry, this is definitely not one of my best posts, I was interrupted a lot and couldn't concentrate very well.
Fayella
We're the song inside the tune full of beautiful mistakes
The only two place Lagertha has ever lived is the Meadow and the Jungle. In the chaos that is war, the beating of the Chamber’s heart never pulsed against her hooves. The Desert is dead, depressing even (despite her affinity for Vanquish and Yael) compared to the vibrant lushness that is home. The pine trees and rocky peaks of the Valley appear almost sterile to her, and while the Dale and Gates are pleasant, there seems to be little depth to their rolling hills and green grasses. The Tundra can’t support anything that isn’t migrating or has a thick fur coat. So that leaves the Falls, which she’s sure plays host to a world of fish… can the roar of their waterfalls compare to the beautiful cacophony that is the Jungle?
She - the Jungle, their mother - breathes new life into the charred portions with every rain. Lexa had helped, of course, using some super secret aspect of her power to push the saplings to grow more quickly. And when Lagertha couldn’t be found by the main clearing, she was usually patrolling the edges of the kingdom, though her hunch was that the energy of the rest of the kingdoms were focused elsewhere. A storm is brewing, and she may be called to action (because that’s what she does, and that’s what she’ll always do; not to mention she’ll never turn down a fight), but the Jungle will not be directly involved. They aren’t ready for anything… yet. Her mind drifts to the new recruits: Eila, Odezsa, Riva, and she lets the possibilities run through her mind as she picks her way down a familiar path. Her steps are easy, and for the first time in a long time, everything seems to be in sync: her heart, her feet, and the thrum of the wet and wild world around her. A pair of smells (one familiar, one foreign) infiltrate past the mustiness of the ground, and cause the Iron Lady to take a turn at a fork in the path, choosing one that doubles back, towards the clearing.
There, she finds Riva, just as he had recently found Lexa and her recruit. She spits out a sassy remark, eyeing the little paint mare with some incredulity. “Tell me I’m not hallucinating, Riva. Are you playing nice with someone? You are?” Lagertha chuckles in the back of her throat, tilting her head slightly to look at the massive mare the woman has in tow. It’s too bad this giant is gentle - they could always use more impressive women in the battlefield. She’s caught the tail end of their conversation, and after a brief once-over with a gaze as blunt as her tongue, the Warrior Queen continues. “I’m Lagertha, the Khaleesi, but don’t bother with formalities. I’m sure Riva’s filled you in, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. So know this: we take care of our own, here, and I have high expectations of myself and my Sisters. But I won’t ask you to do anything that I wouldn’t do.” Lagertha grins, then, unexpectedly. “I also enjoy a badass reputation, but really, I’m not a total killjoy.”
The heat slicked Riva’s fur down and made it a little more shiny than it normally was, but it was nothing like the patches of sweat beginning to darken Fayella’s skin. She seemed to bear the oppressive nature of the Jungle very well though and Riva was proud of her recruit and how she conducted herself thus far - smart, respectful, and already trying to become task-oriented to earn herself a place amongst the sisters, just like Riva was trying to do. Granted, she was going to suggest they spend the afternoon in one of the lesser known pools hidden like gems inside the Jungle, sparkling, blue, and cold…
(She purposefully ignoring the fact that she had leaned in close to the mountainous mare, that she was being rather amenable to someone for once instead of her usual caustic self that kept all but the Queen and one particular stallion at bay. Riva did not want to dwell on the subtle changes occurring in her character so she played ignorant, like she didn’t know what she was doing.)
“Good question, basically you must commit yourself to the Jungle first. Then recruit others to join us, and the like - ask to join diplomatic forays to other kingdoms, seek out those that will be your fellow sisters in order to get to know them. Lagertha, I believe, can better answer your questions than I can.” Riva bends an ear to the oncoming footsteps and smiles, “No doubt that is her now,” and sure enough, a glance confirms it - the gray is fast approaching and calling out a sassy remark that the paint grins at. “Perhaps, there’s a first for everything right?”
She does not pale beneath the incredulous look that Lagertha gives her, merely squares herself and eyes the Queen right back. “Sometimes, playing nice just might get you somewhere in life.” There’s a bit of sass in her own remark, the usual fire that Riva spits at every chance she gets but there’s a glimmer of mirth in her eyes. The paint has always liked that about the Warrior Queen - she does not expect them to do something unless she has done it herself, and for that, she has Riva’s undying respect (besides the fact that she saw something in Riva that she still doesn’t see in herself beyond her quest for retribution against the family that spurned her). “She really is pretty badass,” she echoes, laughter rolling along the edges of her statement - Lagertha really was a force unto herself and Riva had nothing but admiration for her.
That, and Lagertha gave Riva more purpose beyond the hate she has carefully cultivated over the years for her family and any of them that remain. It burns there, that hate, in the back of her eyes.
Fayella smiles at Lagertha's sarcastic remark about Riva playing nice with her. She turns to Riva, a playful twinkle in her eye. "I guess, I'm special then," she says.
Then Fayella turns to look at Lagertha. Her dark, silvery coat shimmers in the sun's brutal rays. She carries herself proudly, and rightly so, as the queen. Yes, this obviously badass queen wouldn't take a distasteful remark from anyone, it seemed, and she wouldn't have to worry about anything like that with Fayella; she was just a naturally respectful, kind mare.
"Hello, Lagertha," Fayella nods to the dark gray queen. "It's nice to meet you. And it seems like I'm in good hands."
Acknowledging Riva's answer to her question, Fayella says, "Well, I'm ready to commit myself to the jungle. What must I do?"
She looks towards Riva, and back to Lagertha, and then her icy blue eyes sweep along the jungle, with its green hues and tendrils of vines growing everywhere. Even where she's been damaged, she's obviously fiercely growing new green shoots of plants, refusing to give up. "It feels like home, already."
Fayella
We're the song inside the tune full of beautiful mistakes
Her natural inclination would have been to come back with a witty retort but she rather liked this mare. There was a spark in her that drew Riva like a moth to the flame to be perfectly cliche.
It feels like home already.
That one statement hits Riva hard, or the truth in it does. It took her a year or more to figure that out and she doesn’t begrudge her friend that instantaneous feeling of home at all. She knows now that that is what the Jungle is to both of them - home, and then it happens - magic rends the entirety of Beqanna apart, like a great sucking void of absence, and Riva cannot say that she is sad to see it go. Magic ran rampant through all the lands and perhaps, in its absence, they’ll gain more semblance of how things should be - ordinary and extraordinary alike, none greater than the other, but with it comes the loss of Lagertha and Riva feels this perhaps no more keenly than any other sister, but it still stings to know the gray mare is lost to them. Not dead, just lost, and Riva feels that same thread of abandonment tug on her torrid little heart and she snorts fiercely at the feeling.
In the aftermath of everything, she looks for Fayella - calls out to her, “Fay!” having nicknamed her friend. She hopes she hasn’t lost her too, she really couldn’t cope with that devastation…
Fayella smiles at Riva's remark, warmed by her new friend, her new herd, and her respectable, badass queen.
And Riva's "Quite" is the last thing the black and white Gypsy Vanner heres before Beqanna is turned upside down in a cacophony of disaster - magic. Bewildered, Fayella squeezes her pale blue eyes shut. When she opens them again, Lagertha and Riva have disappeared.
"What the-," but her sentence is stopped short by Riva's call. Fay! A wave of relief washes over Fayella. Utterly grateful that her one and only friend in this strange new world is not lost. "Riva!," she calls back. She follows the sound of her voice until she finds Riva.
And then - she can't help herself - she barrels towards Riva, muscles rippling, her huge hooves pounding the moist, dark soil. "I thought you were gone too," she says, instinctively nuzzling Riva's neck with her nose. But then, slightly embarrassed, she pulls back.
Trying to change the subject (and seeking answers) she asks, "What in the world just happened? Where's Lagertha?"
T
Fayella
We're the song inside the tune full of beautiful mistakes
Her heart calms at the sound of her name thrown back to her from an eager throat; her friend is alive and well, and she could not say why entirely the vanner had become so vastly important to her, but she had. Fay was her anchor to feeling something other than the general apathy and scorn that sizzled in her. Something about the mountainous little mare quelled the fire in her, and Riva knew that she needed that at times, to stop the seething mass of hate from eating her up.
It is a cancer that she knows she will never be free of.
She laughs as her friend storms across the earth, mighty and massive. Fay slides to a stop before Riva, showering her in a spray of soil that pebbles her skin. She is about to laugh but is too surprised when Fay’s nose darts out impulsively to nuzzle her neck. For a moment, she is too shocked to do anything but stand there with her mouth agape and then slowly, she returns the gesture a tad bit shyly in the wake of her friend’s embarrassment. Eventually, Riva’s head comes to rest upon her friend’s back as she sighs and explains;
“What happened as I understand it, is that some kingdom launched a raid against another kingdom and the entirely of Beqanna raised up in revolt. Well, okay not the entirety but the magic in her did I guess. A manifestation of the magic came to each kingdom and told them that the land had had enough and the magic tied to each kingdom was going to be taken back, leaving each kingdom stripped of their special rites and privileges. Things like the initiations and scars and small gifts to designate us as members of our respective kingdoms are gone now, we are as we might have always been meant to be - just horses.”
She pauses to suck in a breath before talking of Lagertha because it still stings to know the gray mare is gone, not dead - but gone. How can she talk of it? It sits in her throat like an angry sore lump that refuses to go away but Fay eases that pain, or the smell of her does and the feel of her broad back beneath Riva’s small head does. “Lagertha fought in the raid on the Deserts’ side, but they lost and then the Deserts flooded and all the royal family and Lagertha have been spirited away to god knows where and she just left us.” Riva doesn’t mean to sound spiteful towards their once-Queen but she cannot help the note of hurt that lingers in the end of the sentence, and maybe it wasn’t just Lagertha’s leaving that hurt, but it stirred up old memories from Riva’s childhood and that hurt more.
