"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
The salt of the sea covers him, the wind plastering it against the auburn of his flesh. The ocean’s churning and frothing waves have given way to the dark sand as the tide recedes, a large expanse of thick black revealing itself on Tephra’s shoreline. His muscular navy legs brings him through the sand and small puddles of excess seawater, the tide pools looking like puddles of oil from the sand, black from volcanic ash and rock. The soft grains, still damp from the ocean’s water, give way beneath his dark hooves, squelching beneath his weight.
The sun is high in the brilliant blue of the sky, warming his skin and the great navy wings that are folded gently against his sides. While the rest of Beqanna faces the bitterness of winter, Warrick only had to worry about the intense heat that constantly shines down upon him.
The stallion stops, his front hooves standing in a shallow pool of now-warm seawater. The wind is harsh on this side of Tephra’s peninsula, carelessly ripping through his long forelock and mane, as well as causing fervent ripples in the tide pool below him. The feathers, so unfamiliar and so cumbersome to him, are forced this way and that from the strong pull of the wind, out of place and uncomfortable. His new attribute keeps him hidden away, uncertainty flooding his features and eyes. He isn’t sure how to use them, how to take care of them, or why he had woken up with them at all.
He stares down at the rippling pool, his eyes catching the light of the smooth and glittering shells that had been left behind, curiously watching as one of them begins to move through the dark sand, a small hermit crab shuffling. His mind is everywhere but in the present: Hyaline, Tang, the fact Offspring’s fire-obsessed son now lives among them, how long he’d been keeping himself away from Ellyse…oh, and that soon he would be a father.
His tail swishes idly at his hocks as he stares into the clear water, choosing to instead to appear thoughtless.
I know some things that you don't; I've done things that you won't there's nothing like a trail of blood to find your way back home
“I should have known I would find you beside the ocean.”
She cannot look at him – her gaze is elsewhere, lost somewhere in the insatiable sea, as its dark, unforgiving waves ease up along the shoreline, pulling away at the thick, impacted sand that lay just beyond the thick and swaying vegetation. She had seen his silhouette, gleaming a vibrant auburn beneath the bright and vivid sunlight, with the faint shadow of indigo touching the very edge of his jaw and darkened mouth, and she had gone to him, but she could not look at him.
Not yet.
She had kept herself from him for long enough. Her heart is broken and tempestuous; unruly and seeking so much more than she could ever deserve of him – she loved him, so deeply, for he was her closest friend, her confidant – but she had felt a glimmer of something more, and each and every time it dared bloom, she quieted it and silenced it with distance and time.
Finally, she has parted the long and lustrous vegetation that lay between her and Warrick himself, with the churning and rustling ocean that lay before them. He is focused on some miniscule, living creature scuttling across the dense coastline, his mind elsewhere, with thick, roiling tension etched into the hardened muscle of his neck and jaw – but a gasp emerges from her lungs as the entirety of his physique is revealed to her, with thick, radiant wings of the deepest indigo clutching to his barrel, harnessed into the hard bone of his shoulders.
”Warrick!” she exclaims, with awe, disbelief and enthrallment suddenly taking place of any hesitance or aching uncertainty that might still linger. Their time apart was of their own doing, but so much had happened – so much he had not told her, and so much she had not shared. Not yet. Gently, her wings tuck tighter against her widening barrel (she is not yet heavily pregnant, but she is visibly expecting, with life stirring and stretching within her).
”You have wings!” she murmurs, the corner of her mouth rising with the uptick of a smile, curious, with a glimmer of amusement in the golden flecks of her watchful eyes as her lips press against his wing, tasting the salty brine of the sea where the ocean mist had carried itself onto his feathers. ”When did this happen? How? Tell me everything.”
Everything.
Yet still, the feathers of her own ivory wings, stark against the gold of her skin, spread to hide her own secret – to no avail.
Her voice finds him before he has time to realize she is there, his blue gaze glancing up quickly to find the hazel of her eyes that he knew would find. Seeing her relaxes him immediately, the muscles that had drawn taut beneath his auburn skin now releasing, and falling slack as he allows an easy smile to find the intense cobalt of his lips. “And I knew that you would find me here, like always,” he murmurs, his voice a deep rumble like the ocean’s waves, and just as fluid.
Many things have kept him from the company of others; he is a creature of habit and when he cannot un-cloud his mind, he often drifts away to the outskirts of his home, hiding beneath the shadowed volcanic rock that splices into the ocean. He knows that she can easily see the anxiety and tension that had built up within him, she always had a knack for noticing even the smallest changes in the inflection of his voice or facial expressions. And he could do the same with her, and notices the hesitancy (why were they both always so hesitant around each other?) in her approach, in the quiet way she addresses him, unable to bring her eyes to him. He notices the gentle swell of her stomach, (something that was familiar, since Tang herself presented the same quiet blossoming in her belly) even though she attempts to cover it with a tight squeeze of her pale, large wings.
He almost reaches out to her, an instinctual gesture that he just cannot help, to brush the corner of her golden lips with the stark indigo of his own, to quell her thoughts and to bring her focus to him, but the gesture is interrupted by her noticing the large and unkempt wings that he still forces tightly into his sides. She becomes elated, pressing her pale lips against the navy feathers without faltering, studying and exploring the new feature he had only recently acquired. The touch felt strange on his wings, for no one had touched them yet (not even himself, which can be seen by the haphazard way the feathers press into each other). The wings were a strange thing, cumbersome actually, and though he felt like they were an extension of himself, he is nervous about them. Her breathlessness and excitement is infectious though, and he cannot help but to stretch the wings a bit beneath her touch, ruffling them gently as a chuckle rumbles within his chest.
“I, I don’t know,” he says to her honestly, his eyes falling downcast as his realization becomes reality. “I woke up one morning, and they were there like they had always been a part of me.” His voice becomes distant, his gaze shrouded by a crinkled brow as confusion sets in.
Absentmindedly, as if Ellyse was no longer next to him and he was alone, he glances upwards and whispers: “The stars, maybe?”
I know some things that you don't; I've done things that you won't there's nothing like a trail of blood to find your way back home
She cannot ignore the warmth simmering within, where her heart is wildly pounding and her heavy, adrenaline-laden blood is churning - there are so few that she had permitted to know her as well as he does, and yet, there is so much left unspoken between them. There are fleeting moments in which doubt descends, settling upon her with the weight of a thousand suns, but when the lightness of his piercing eyes meet with the darkness of her own, she is reassured that she is as much to him as he is to her.
His companionship meant so much to her - he had been a pillar of strength when she had faltered, and she had kept him afloat and tethered to the shoreline, preventing him from drifting into the sea of his own self-loathing and misery. She had spent too much time away from him, and she can see the void that such distance has left between them, and it causes a deep, resolute ache to expand within the tightness of her rib cage - and for a moment, she has forgotten all the many experiences she has had since returning to the volcanic island. For a moment, she has forgotten the small, shifting life growing steadily inside of her.
Gently, her teeth preen and pluck at the darkness of his bristling feathers, tucking them into place - she cannot suppress the faint smile tugging at the corner of her mouth - such a profoundly rare sight, brought bubbling to the surface by witnessing own awe and wonderment. He had been bestowed a gift, yet he did not know from whence it came - not an altogether unusual experience; it so often seemed that the gentle caress of magic appeared only when one least expected it to. Nonetheless, he is given the opportunity to take to the sky, to be among the stars as he had longed for, for so long -
And yet, he is still grounded, still wistful.
Softly, her pale lips brush across his jaw, a tendril of amusement lacing itself within her words. ”You will see, they are a blessing. They are so fitting for one that yearns to be closer to the starlight - and yet, here you are, still grounded,” she muses softly, her golden-flecked gaze tracing the uncertainty lingering on the edge of his features, while he contemplates the glittering canvas overhead. ”why?”
It felt strange, her gentle touch against the newness of his feathers, casually preening them so that they lay comfortably. He relaxes beneath her work, allowing the auburn of his eyelids to flutter half-closed over his blue irises. Her voice is soft, her being so close allows her to speak gently, her thrumming voice easily heard even over the sound of pounding waves in the distance. He smiles to himself, her words matching the desire in his heart, though he is too reserved to speak of it aloud. She stops her grooming, her voice now pointedly asking him why he has not taken to the skies, to soar beyond where the ground has kept him, to venture into the abyss above them. His eyes flutter open, a look of surprise on his face, as if he had not even thought to try that.
In truth, he hadn’t allowed himself to think it.
His gaze falls downcast almost embarrassedly, pressing his blue lips together into a thin, thoughtful line. He shuffles a single hoof, carving out a hollow rivulet in the wet sand beneath him, watching it absentmindedly as it fills with seawater. “Maybe if I had been born with these, I would know how to use them correctly.” He pauses, allowing a small smirk to find his lips before stretching his wings out gently, marveling at their length and strength now that the feathers lay beautifully and in their correct place. “They didn’t come with any directions,” he says with a gentle laugh, his eyes finding hers.
Of course, this was partly the truth – he had no idea how to use them, and was slightly afraid to try to take to the skies on his own. However, if he were to dig a bit deeper, he would realize that not only was he afraid to try, but he was afraid that despite his ability to be closer to his family, that it would only leave him with more questions than he had before.
Thoughtfully, he says to Ellyse: “I have come so far, I’ve moved on from them, continued my life – I’m now a solid pillar in my home, a friend, a father…” He pauses, wondering if the last admittance would strike a chord in her (and secretly hoping it would). “What if flying only brings me back down again?” His voice softens, a low sigh leaving his lungs.
