"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
A breath of warmth cast across her nearly frozen corpse in the forests of Taiga. She was numb, but she could feel it. The magic of the mountain. Breathing into her a small fraction of life so she may live to tomorrow. What happens next is the only sign of her soul trying to fight for more than tomorrow. She hardly knows it happened, 'cept for the sudden shift of land beneath her. Turning from the hard coldness of the pine kingdom, to a soft bed of grasses in a lighted meadow. She feels as though it is a dream, one where you wake up and don't know where you are, or how you got there.
She awakes with a flutter of dark lashes. The burning along her skin is gone. Feeling in her limbs have returned, enough so that she tries movement. Her ivory dipped legs thrash about but still she is too weak to rise. A body -once youthful in appearance- is nothing more than skin and bone. Her bright pelt is still dull and patches of hairless skin are scattered about. Remnants of her sickness hold tightly to her, even if the fairy have weakened it slightly.
Laying flat to the grassy plain, her eye shifts to make out her location. It is a place she has never been, this she is sure. Which frightens her slightly. If she is not dead, than it is only a matter of time in which she may return to ash. A hostile region may not hesitate to kill a stranger plagued with disease, nor would an opportunistic creature not seek to fill its belly with what meat remained on her bones. It is enough to will her to rise her head in hopes of seeing if anything -or anyone- stalks nearby...
Kolera
Earth to Earth, Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust.
@[Noah] since she is still alive she might as well meet her sister
The little red mare is grazing quietly in the smaller field, the one shaped almost like a peninsula, bordered on most edges by the wandering freshwater stream and on the last side by hills which give it some shelter from wind and elements. She’s alone, under the bright summer sun, until suddenly she isn’t. She startles backwards several steps (she’s easily startled, nowadays. Still frightened by sounds and scents and very nearly her own shadow. Noah has never been alone, never been away from Rhonen, and the stress of being the only one looking out for herself is catching up to her) at the sight of a horse lying amongst the flowers and grasses, a mere horse-length away.
She forces herself not to run by sheer force of will, and instead takes a deep inhale and samples the air. The stranger smells of snow and ice, of places far distant and cold. There’s a short thrashing motion and then stillness, but the creature does not rise. A moment later, as Noah is bracing herself to step forward and investigate, a finely-shaped head appears over the tops of the meadow grass, and Noah is momentarily pinned by the gaze of the bay horse. Mare. There’s something…familiar about the gaze, and the little pegasus is drawn forward, steps cautious and shy.
“Hello,” she murmurs it, offering a little smile. “I’m Noah,” as she draws closer she can feel the illness in the stranger, and she frowns a little. Not a threatening expression, not on the little roan mare who doesn’t even break out of the ‘pony’ category, but more one of concentration as she reaches out to the sickness, evaluating it, nearly tasting the weight of it in her throat. “You’re not well,” she says softly. “Let me help you.”
noah
@[Kolera] td;lr Noah wants to heal her, but also has no idea who she is :|
The world around her is bright and colorful in the midst of late spring. Flowers of all colors bloom in an array of brilliant colors around her. This settles her fears some, and so her eyes reach farther to see a form of a winged horse. Her gaze steadies as her eyes blink rapidly to focus. It takes a moment longer than usual for her vision to clear and find the reddish horse has neared slightly. A gentle hello finds her ears as they tilt forwards. A soft breath of air rattles in her nares as she scents the gentle breeze.
The small horse smiles but quickly it fades at the realization of the disease that holds strong in her veins. With what more strength she could muster, she tucks her white limbs under her to press against the ground and seat herself upon her belly versus side. With a large collapse of her lungs, she exhales with a vibrating cough. The roan quickly comments on her condition and she is even quicker to reply, "I guess this is what you get for helping... Or trying to." Her words are spiteful as her gaze lowers in thought. Memories of that day fill her immediate train of thought. The fear in her father's eyes as others struck out at him in anger not provoked by the chestnut. The wickedness in her own son's eyes as he stole life from her, again. The failure she felt as she collapsed upon a bed of pine needle litter. And now the hopelessness of a life worth of trying to do right but something wrong always came of her attempts.
Sienna eyes slowly rise to find the small pegasus examining her, "I'm Kolera... It's kind of you to want to help me... But I may be beyond help." A faint smile does not even find her lips at the offer. She has little optimism at this lowest point in her life. Her voice begins to mumble her resentments, "I wish I had got to know him better... Maybe my life would have turned out differently, you know?" She questions the roany mare, having not given a hint of her reference...
The stranger rolls onto her stomach and coughs violently, and Noah eases forward again, worried about the sound of the mare’s cough as well as the shadows that chase across her expression. She doesn’t know what Kolera is remembering; has no way of knowing that the other girl is remembering the exact scene that haunts Noah’s dreams. She is not sleepless, because even she must collapse occasionally from exhaustion, but she rarely finds peaceful sleep without reliving the darkest minutes of her life. Only on the rare occasion when she sleeps after a healing – that is when she sleeps undisturbed.
The mare gives her name, Kolera, but expresses the opinion that she is beyond help. It’s not unusual, she has seen, for the victims closest to death to be this hopeless. She is immune now, but she remembers the helplessness of being ill after helping to raise Pangea, and so she can empathize with her patients. She remembers lying, delirious and fevered, while Rhonen worried and fretted – but he did not help her. She’d been confused, then, certain that his fear of unleashing some great evil was unfounded. After all, she had practiced her own power in secret many times a child, and not had anything bad happen. Now Noah knows better – after all, when the mob took her father’s life, there was a great evil. This plague would not have been possible without Rhonen’s death.
“You underestimate me, I think,” she chides gently, and finishes closing the distance between herself and Kolera. She reaches down, runs her soft muzzle down the bay mare’s neck, reaching out with her power even as she offers a hmmm, and speaks again, wanting to engage the other mare in conversation to keep her conscious. “Gotten to know who, better?” It’s an idle question, really, because while she vaguely knows she has a sister, she has no suspicions of who it might be. She’s only half listening anyway, pouring out her energy and concentration towards driving the disease back. She can taste it, see it, feel it; her vision blurs as she expends the energy – Kolera’s case is far advanced, and it’s taking everything she has to fight it.
noah
@[Kolera] Noah should technically be able to heal Kolera completely but of course that's up to you; also I know we're rolling for healing success so I'l tagging another officer in too. :3
@[Officials] Not sure how we're doing these exactly but Noah is using her Disease Manipulation to try and heal Kolera.
