"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
04-12-2020, 04:26 AM (This post was last modified: 05-05-2020, 02:11 AM by Ryatah.)
“I know when you go down all your darkest roads I would have followed all the way to the graveyard.”
She feels restless, and what a dangerous state that is for her.
Because when she is restless she becomes reckless; when she is restless she wants the most dangerous outlet she can find, and of course, the most dangerous outlet will always be Him.
She feels ready to crawl out of her own skin, like electricity is jumping in her veins and is frantically searching for a way out. It made Hyaline feel suddenly so incredibly small, even if it was anything but. The vast land, with its jagged mountains and endless sky, was given the illusion of being all the more larger given the fact it was, usually, just her and Atrox. She didn’t mind that; Atrox preferred to not be found unless he wanted to be (a recurring theme for all the men in her life, truthfully), and raising Firion through his first spring had been enough to distract her, at first.
But as she was so prone to do, her attentive nature only lasted for so long. She loved her children fiercely, but once they became old enough to begin testing their boundaries, she did nothing to rein them back in.
When she leaves Hyaline one summer morning, she is alone.
She follows the river north, as though she might be able to walk the weighted feeling out of her chest – as if she was so simple that walking could actually clear the impossible mess that was her head.
She almost doesn’t notice when the trees begin to press closer and grow taller. It’s only when the sun all but disappears from behind the canopy of the treetops that she stops, and realizes that she is in Taiga. She remembers it from being here briefly with Illum after Aislyn was born in the midst of the war in Tephra. She cannot help but to wonder if he might still be here; she doesn’t think he would be, but, that thin tendril of curiosity is what makes her walk forward again, washing the shadows with her amber glow as she does.
04-16-2020, 07:10 PM (This post was last modified: 04-16-2020, 07:16 PM by lilliana.)
Maybe it’s coincidence that the clean, pristine scent of Hyaline lingers sweet in the summer air; maybe it isn’t.
Still, it’s a scent that she knows. It’s one buried and burrowed into the very core of her. Hyaline had been for moonless nights and saving graces. Hyaline had been girlish laughter and the very last vestiges of her youth, of her old life. Hyaline had been the last stronghold on a heart that had very much wanted to deny that it had broken some time ago.
Maybe that’s where Lilliana learned to hide the last of her childhood hurts and smile instead. ('Can we pretend, Lilli? Please? Just for a little while?’)
Taiga smells very much of deep, damp Earth in summer. Fog wraps its fingers around the Redwood forest in the mornings and Lilliana (who has spent what? Four? Five years in this place now?) knows the sunshine will chase it away just like the tide will eventually go out, just like the moon will eventually pull it back again.
It’s only the unnerving silence that causes her to look down. Against the verdant leaves is one boy and not far is other - gold stripes and green eyes, a star and blue eyes. Her boys show the slightest movement - a lazy witch of an ear, the flickering of a copper eyelid as they start to wake. She can’t help but smile because though she has tried to teach them to contain it, they still glow when they dream. And who is she to gainsay a dreamer anything?
This cloistering part of the Redwoods is a new spot for the trio. It’s a futile effort against masked smiles but Lilliana has always been a mare of quiet defiances. She might not stamp her hoof or bare her teeth but the chestnut woman likes to linger too close to the edges Nerinian cliffs, likes to languish near the Taigan undertow simply for the thrill of the pull.
(There had been a night that she shouted out to the empty waters of Hyaline, a night that she slipped free from watchful Brazen and protective Ruth. Lilliana had tried to shout her seething anger across that black expanse of still water; she had lost her voice. The anger stayed.)
When the boys are awake, when they are rearing and clamoring to leave her behind, the Taigan mare shakes her head with that ever-patient smile she reserves just for them. "Don’t go too far,” she says, her slender head pointing towards the Nerinian border. "No further than the Three Guards,” she mentions the triumvirate of gray, granite boulders that keep watch just on the outskirts of the seat of the Northern kingdom.
When they are gone and it is only her wrapped in the wisps of trailing fog does she move away from their newest resting place. She’ll scout another one out today.
(It’s a stupid, trivial game but there is always some small part of her that enjoys never being where he left them. That when he comes to Taiga, he at least has to look for them.)
It’s a flash that catches her abrupt attention. It’s the scent of Hyaline and hope blossoms inside a dormant place in her chest. For a moment, she thinks -
No.
The glow is more ghost than gold and she knows.
Still, the aura is unfamiliar. This isn’t a phantom (that she knows) that has haunted these Redwoods before. Lilliana stops her searching and waits, forcing herself to be still while her mind races North. Where are the boys? An ear flicks to the side and a swish of her tail gives her away (as if an ochre shadow could hide even in the densest part of the Taigan fog). Unsure of herself, both ears flick back and burrow themselves into the copper of her fire-bright mane.
"Hello?” she asks in a voice that sounds much braver than she feels - her confidence apparently gone to the Nerinian border with her sons.
LILLIANA
all that i'm after is a life full of laughter (as long as i'm laughing with you)
04-26-2020, 04:25 PM (This post was last modified: 05-05-2020, 02:16 AM by Ryatah.)
“I know when you go down all your darkest roads I would have followed all the way to the graveyard.”
She hears a lilting voice, the way it lingers in the cool Taigan fog, and she stops. The voice is too sweet to belong to anyone that could strike fear into her, and so she does not hesitate to walk towards it. She has been alive for too long – and been dead too many times – to be afraid of much anymore. Not the way most were afraid, at least. She knows there are faces that she looks at, knows there are bright and glowing eyes that she stares into, that makes up someone else’s nightmares.
She is afraid of them, too, just not for the same reasons.
When she looks at Carnage, she is afraid of the moment he gets tired of her, or decides not to bring her back.
When she feels Atrox’s piercing stare she is afraid of the day the heat behind it has died, and she is again entirely alone.
She is terrified of them, just not the way someone else might be.
Through the dense shadows and trees she moves, her angelic wings curled at her sides, ignoring the way low-hanging limbs and thick bramble tug at her feathers and snag strands of her mane. When she rounds a final corner she is greeted with the familiar face of Lilliana, and a smile breaks like the dawn across her face. “Lilli?” She does not notice the faintly defensive stature that the chestnut mare has adopted, and it does not occur to her that she looks entirely different from the last time they spoke, either. She continues forward, her impossibly dark eyes almost bright when aided by the glow of her halo, and she shakes her delicate head with a kind laugh before she says, “I forgot you lived in Taiga. I hope I’m not intruding. I was just….restless.”
05-02-2020, 10:49 AM (This post was last modified: 05-02-2020, 10:50 AM by lilliana.)
you got a cold hard truth i got a bottle of whiskey but i got no proof
This is the part of the plan that she has never actually.. planned out.
Lilliana could search for Aten all she liked but if the champagne stallion never emerged from the fog, what then? If the border patrols had really fallen to the slender chestnut mare, what would actually happen when she greeted an intruder instead of a friend?
Thankfully, this isn’t a question that needs to be answered today. A literal Angel emerges from behind one of Taiga’s towering sentinels and the relief that Lilliana feels at seeing her is almost reverential. @[Ryatah] would always be welcomed here. Lilli? the white woman asks and Lilli can feel her gaze being drawn to so many (wonderful) places surrounding Ryatah. Her glowing, the halo, her lovely white-and-gold wings.
The mare had been beautiful before, ethereal in a way that only time could carve away at somebody.
But now? Now she steals the literal breath from Lilliana’s lungs. Her blue eyes connect with the piercing dark of Ryatah’s - lighting somewhere between wonder and disbelief - before the copper mare smiles. "Look at you,” she almost whispers into the fog. "You look like something that fell from the stars,” comes her gentle teasing.
The words are playful but there is a touch of truth in them - a look of longing when she spies the wings at the pale mare’s sides.
"Is that how you got those?” she asks while her dark muzzle tentatively reaches towards the gold feathers that outlines them, "or did you go to the stars to find them?”
“I know when you go down all your darkest roads I would have followed all the way to the graveyard.”
She can feel all the places the other mare’s eyes wander. She sees the way her glow reflects in the blue of her eyes, feels those same eyes when they touch her halo and then linger across her wings. She recognizes the look on her face; the kind that looks like wonder, but she never interprets it quite like that. She thinks only that they must see what she feels. That they must wonder, much like she does, how someone like her could possibly be akin to anything heavenly. A heart like hers that loves until it is empty, that sucks itself dry and then moves on to someone else – that was hardly angelic.
Her wants were dark and twisted; she could shimmer like gold and glow like stars on the outside, but it would never change the insatiable, selfish thing that she was on the inside.
But she smiles, gracious as always, laughing and shaking her head until wisps of pristine locks tumble before her endlessly dark eyes. “There are no angels amongst the stars,” and she almost cannot hide the longing ache that threatens to intrude, when memories of a far-away galaxy and a dark god made of stars flashes forcefully to the forefront of her mind. Her skin almost feels like it could burn with the ghost of the stars that had lit her up, but she shifts her focus back to the radiant mare in front of her, finishing her sentence with another light laugh, “Trust me.”
She reaches, then, touching her white nose to the golden flame on Lilliana’s shoulder, and asking her gently, “How have you been, Lilli?” It is a genuine question, but truthfully, she was simply eager to redirect the attention away from herself, for now.
05-05-2020, 08:57 PM (This post was last modified: 05-05-2020, 09:03 PM by lilliana.)
Lilli’s blue eyes remain fixated on the edges of Ryatah’s wings, the gold that filigrees them. A childhood habit she can’t seem to outgrow.
When Lilliana raises them, her slight head tilts towards the winged mare. The smile that comes is hesitant, like the chestnut is mulling over words like galaxies might contemplate a single star. "And how would you know what's up there?” comes her soft rebuttal, followed with an impishness that brings a spark of life on her refined features.
The Taigan mare looks up, only to be greeted with the dense foliage of the changing leaves above them.
When she looks back at @[Ryatah], Lilliana feels herself relaxing into the delicate glow that she radiates. "I’ve heard that it’s where secrets go, where dreams linger so they aren’t truly forgotten.” Those had been the explanations given to her, anyway. And Lilliana had always loved that: imagining that for every star in the sky, each had their own orbits of dreamers and secret-keepers alike.
Her smile threatens to turn lopsided, mischievous with a dimple that rarely emerges these days already lines against her dark mouth. "I’ll take your word for it, though.” She’s accepted that she will always be earthbound. Her view of the heavens will always be from down here. A question lingers in her blue-eyed gaze, wondering for a moment if Ryatah might share her views.
"I’ve been better,” she admits under a hushed breath. "I think.” Lilliana shifts her weight and lifts her head, her ears flickering back and forth before they settle again. "The forest feels empty,” she says, thinking of Aten and the ghosts that linger on their borders. (If only it stayed empty.) A shadow crosses across her face before she flashes a tentative smile, "But my boys are growing.”
They had spoken about that last time - how children could be a claim to immortality. (It’s still a span of time she can’t fathom. One lifetime is enough.)
Something happens when the white mare touches the gold marking on her shoulder; the world shifts. A slip in her emotions. Shades of sunset paint the sky, the proud rise of sand dunes, an echo of a gold mare as she battles with an orange-eyed stallion. The palomino mare sinks into the sand with the setting sun behind her; lower, lower, lower until they are both gone.
A bird trills in the branches above them, calling them back. Lilliana steps back, whispering, "I’m sorry.”
“I know when you go down all your darkest roads I would have followed all the way to the graveyard.”
Her story of the stars is right there on the tip of her tongue, but she can’t bring herself to tell it. She tastes it there, a memory that refuses to fade, but to try and spin it into words she fears wouldn’t do it justice. She has never been much of a storyteller, but even then, it’s really her own selfishness that keeps her from saying anything. There was a part of her that liked having something that existed just between her and him – an entire galaxy – and so even though she could tell Lilliana exactly how the stars feel when they come alive in your veins and how they are so much more than wishes and dreams, she doesn’t say anything.
“Simply an educated guess,” she says with that same nearly hidden smile. “I don’t doubt that the stars are full of secrets, though.” Including her own.
She lets the topic shift, following it seamlessly when Lilliana mentions the quiet of the forest. She says that it feels empty, but Ryatah is not sure if she agrees. To her it feels almost crowded in comparison to Hyaline, with the towering trees that smother the sky with their branches, and the shadows that creep and seem to carry voices with it. “I used to hate when the lands were quiet. For so long I was always doing something that the quiet and the nothing was unnerving. Now I’m so used to it that everywhere else feels crowded and loud.” If she notices the darkness that seems to dim the light on Lilliana’s face she does not comment on it, not yet at least, and instead she lets her own smile brighten at the mention of her children. “Your boys? I think that’s a newer development from the last time I saw you.”
She is about to ask more questions, because if there was any topic she was well-versed in, it was motherhood – not that she was really any good at it – when there is a noticeable change. The way Lilliana seems to disappear from here entirely, her mind so clearly taken to a different place, and then the sharp call of the birds up above and the red mare’s eyes again focus back onto her. Though her expression is one of concern, it is mostly curiosity that itches beneath her skin. “You don’t have to apologize,” and she means it, and her tone remains soft, almost hesitant when she asks, “Is everything alright?”
05-27-2020, 10:25 PM (This post was last modified: 05-27-2020, 10:30 PM by lilliana.)
She knows that the stars are more than what they appear. (But, oh, what she can't imagine - she can't even dream of the kind of relationship that the Angel has with the heavens.)
Her earliest memories are of being told that they have names and dreams and secrets just as the earthbound souls do. And she has often wondered if the two worlds mirror each other; do the stars race across the sky as the horses race on the ground? Is there anywhere where the dreams intermingle and breathe life into something else entirely? Does a star ever fall from the sky and take the shape of a mortal instead?
The Angel shares a secret smile and Lilliana almost arches a brow. A spark brightens behind her blue eyes and Lilliana agrees with @[Ryatah]. The pale mare might not be as timeless as the stars but as an immortal, if there is anyone who could make an educated guess about the heavens and the knowledge of galaxies, it would be someone who has spent (at least) centuries beneath them.
"I think that’s the part that unnerves me the most,” the Taigan mare admits. "If it’s quiet here then doesn’t that mean something is going on somewhere else?” In the fog. In the shadows. The rest of Beqanna.
"Twins,” Lilliana explains. "Colts who will have me as grey as you before they are grown,” the chestnut mare teases. Whatever apprehension had been on her face melts away because speaking of Nashua and Yanhua is something that brings her joy; it is easy to glow at the mention of her two boys. Tilting her head towards the winged mare, picking up on a scent that drifts towards her prompts the copper mare to ask, "What about you? Any new pieces of immortality since we last spoke?”
The conversation shouldn’t go this way but it does.
A press against her golden flame and the world falls away - golden sun, golden eyes, golden sands. When it comes back, Taiga almost blinds her and she firmly shakes her head. "I’m sorry,” she apologizes again because she isn’t sure what else to say. Her emotions slip through her cracks so easily these days, blows right past her like the element she hails from: wind. "I-,” Lilli says, reminding herself to focus on how solid Taiga feels beneath her hooves. The ground is loamy, cushioned by generations of pine needles and dark soil from fires and floods past.
"It’s alright,” she exhales, "I just need to get my bearings again.”
Lilliana swallows and admits, "I’m not used to … whatever the Mountain did to me.” It was worth it, she reminds herself. Craft and Anatomy were saved. They were given the chance to rewrite their own ending and here they stay in Taiga, where they offer their magic and protection. It was worth it. (She ignores the cry of a dying man to his murdered mother, 'is this enough?’) "It’s overwhelming. Like someone stole my sight.” And her senses and sometimes, the worst part of all, her emotions.
Her blues drop again to the wings that grace Ryatah’s ethereal form. "Is that how you got those? The Mountain?”
LILLIANA
if i ever get to heaven i've got a long list of questions
“I know when you go down all your darkest roads I would have followed all the way to the graveyard.”
She is used to the strangeness that is Beqanna. Is used to the lulls and the sudden sparks, the valleys and peaks. She doesn’t take much notice to any of it anymore, though that is partially because she remains wrapped up in her own world. Her own private universe, with different galaxies and different stars – a different kind of sun that she orbits around. The longer she is alive the more selfish she becomes, until her mind hardly ever ventures beyond herself, and so it is almost startling – a sharp pull that yanks her back to reality, a reminder that there actually is a ‘rest of Beqanna’ – when Lilli wonders if the quiet here means the unrest is elsewhere. “Sometimes,” she reasons agreeably, thinking back to the days when she was more involved in the comings and goings of the kingdoms, “though sometimes it just means there’s an actual interlude of peace.”
She cannot recall the last time she felt true peace. Peace for her meant boredom, and boredom resulted in her taking drastic measures to cure it. Which leads to her answer to Lilliana’s question on children: “There have been a handful of new additions,” she says with a smile, thinking of Noel and Firion, and Beyza, even if she could not openly claim her. Children were not exactly a rare thing for her, even though each and every one of them was special; each of them having their own story of creation, each of them a physical product of the strange twists and turns her life took.
The conversation shifts to the mountain – the source for most of Beqanna’s strange magic, and a place that Ryatah has only been to once. Her visit there was, of course, far different than what most experience. Something ripples inside of her at Lilliana’s choice of words - like someone stole my sight. Something like the beginnings of an incredulous laugh, because what an ironic statement to be made to her – the woman whose eyes were ripped from her skull, and gifted back to her by the same man, and he could still steal her vision whenever he saw fit. “The mountain can be a powerful place. Whatever it did to you, it did with some kind of purpose. But no, that is not how...this...happened to me. It happened after I returned from the afterlife, in the same incident that opened the gates.” Her wings shift, the watery sunlight catching the gilded edges, when she angles her face slightly away from her with a short, humorless laugh. “I don’t actually feel like an angel most of the time, though.”
06-13-2020, 09:04 PM (This post was last modified: 06-13-2020, 09:15 PM by lilliana.)
The copper mare looks worried and smiles tensely but adds nothing to Ryatah’s comment. Perhaps there is peace and she has been so scared of her own shadow that by looking behind her, she’d realize there is nothing to worry about in front of her. That tight smile loosens and she feels comforted by that. Lilliana feels comforted by @[Ryatah] and draws a little closer to the pale mare, finding peace from the light she radiates and the peace that shimmers off her white skin.
Handful of new additions? Her blue eyes, suddenly sparking from the winged woman’s company, brighten and holds a tint of laughter. "How long has it been since I last saw you?” she muses rhetorically, trying to remember that day in the Meadow. Lilliana shakes her head, silently berating herself for letting so much time pass.
Speaking of the Mountain, though, is a harder topic.
Ryatah is speaking of purposes and the auburn mare grimaces. Craft and Anatomy lived. She reminded herself, trying not to focus on the sound of Craft’s breaking ribs or the receding form of Anatomy as she went racing after Aida on that ledge. They lived, she thought again, forcing it to overtake the others. They had been given a new beginning - regardless if it was in Taiga or Pangea - and that was all that mattered.
Surprised, she turns her head quickly to her haloed companion. "You came from the Afterlife, too?” Lilli asks, stunned. How many horses had come back from the Dead? She is thinking of the other one she had met, the large gray stallion from the Field. A dull ache languished in her chest at the thought of him; he had returned to the land of the Living, only to be greeted by chaos and Wolfbane. Ryatah is looking away from her and Lilliana is taking a thoughtless step ahead, distracted by her own memories.
Even in the dim light of Taiga, Ryatah manages to catch it and Lilli glances side long at her from beneath dark lashes. I don’t feel like an angel most of the time, though.
There is nothing warm in the laugh. It’s distant, a hazy echo in Taiga’s fog. "I imagine it’s hard to live up to the image,” the chestnut mare murmurs. There is no further to fall than from the heavens, she's learned.
And Lilliana never earned wings.
Ryatah had earned hers, though. If she didn’t feel like an angel, "who do you feel like?” She queries. The Taigan mare doesn't laugh when she honestly shares: "I don't know that anymore."
She knows she isn't the only lost one. Lilliana knows she won't be the first or the last. It's a comfort to keep company with someone else though, she thinks, who might know what it feels like to be another number in the tally of lost things.
LILLIANA
if i ever get to heaven i've got a long list of questions
