[private] wide awake in a world of lullabies

[aletta]

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Her darkness comes like the night above them. It comes in rhythms and waves - reminiscent of tides and seasons and daybreak and night. Constancy and consistencies all found in nature. The darkness comes in with its black veil and then comes the dawn to lift it. Again and again, in a way that reflects the world as she has known it. "I do," she retorts back at him because it is a truth to her. Luck is the convergence of those elemental forces; it is merely being in the right place at the right time. When the tide turns. When the dawn comes. When the wind sings. So, of course, she believes in her stars. Aletta watches the way that he drops his head like his disbelief is the reason that hangs it so low. An ear flicks behind her, listening to the cicadas court the darkness with a song. Why shouldn't he hang his head, some part of her thinks? Why should he believe when he has made it clear that he has asked and they've never answered. His spirit isn't like sweet Brynn's, though. It isn't something gentle that needs bolstering, something to help stay above the floodwaters of living. Despite his incredulity at her question, Warden rises again to answer her. What he tells her though makes her stand eerily still because it is not the Night Guard she hears. Somebody has told her this before, echoes of the past shimmering before her in the shadows and starlight. Of her blue-eyed daughter from those last days on the Pass - the last time they were all together: 'You don't understand,' Lilliana had said, finally breaking under the weight of always running. 'I can't keep doing this,' she had said and that is the voice she hears when Warden says that he is buckling under the weight of knowing. (Aletta doesn't know the burdens he carries, the way that the future looms in his mind. She doesn't know how it might make him ache when the only pain she allows herself is to her mortal joints when the weather turns too quickly, when the frost comes sooner than anticipated.) "I don't," she tells him plainly. "You are still standing before me. You are still here. I am no more able to talk to a ghost than a star." The pale mare, outlined by star shine, exhales sharply. "You exist therefore you bruise. A mountain turns into a valley but it does not mean that it is always laid low. At some point, the land rises up again." In the years since that night in the Pass - when the winter winds had blown cold and her children began to pale from living - Aletta told them much the same thing she tells Warden now (though it comes out softer than the tone she had taken with her eldest son): "If you are done asking, you might as well be done with living." Her head lifts as she considers the contours of him - from the spirals of his horns to the way that he holds his wings to his sides. The brevity has started to fade from his voice but it doesn't dissipate from her proud stance. "We will all die eventually, @[Warden]. And-," Aletta falters here, struggling because she has never doubted her stars. (And a part of her thinks that his premonitions aren't from them at all.) The wanderer heatedly speaks again, finding her faith. "It's not the ending that matters. It's the heart of the story - the things we fill it with. Fill the center of it with moments that matter. Fill it so close to bursting so that when Death does come, it is not the ending that matters." It would come anyways, stars or no stars. With his premonitions or without them. Much like her answer, the one he might not want to know. aletta we turned our back on ordinary from the start show me the sky falling down photo credit to charlie---x

well this got deep

[Warden]

resurrect the saint within the wretch

He cannot even remember a time where the weight of knowledge hasn’t pressed fervently, a sort of gravity that clings to every part of him; in his weary, angry eyes and the sharp, unwavering angles of his pale face. He knows nothing but this desperation, this frustration (this fear - a sheer helplessness that reminds him of how weak he truly is) and it seeps outwardly through the cracks that he cannot hide, like the starlight as it peeks out from the fabric of pitch dark. Even so, there is a glimmer of hopefulness that lays barely thrumming beneath the surface. Maybe this won’t last forever, maybe one day he will have the ability to change fate’s design, to do some good with his power to peek into the future.

Their conversation is heavy and weighted, leaving him feeling weary and his chest tight. Aletta’s voice is precise and firm (is that compassion he hears deep within its layers?), almost scolding yet with a knowing gentleness that keeps him standing stoically beside her, enthralled by her eloquence despite the deep furrow of his brow. Experience is a brutal teacher and the way the silver woman stands and speaks, she has been a willful student.

At some point, the land rises again.

His mind travels to Tephra with its looming volcano that breathes life into the kingdom, wondering how many eons ago was it merely silent beneath the ocean’s waves. The thought and her metaphor causes a twitch on his ivory mouth, a slow-blinking of his eyes as his gaze shifts ever so slightly towards her once again, a sharp snort leaving his nostrils. Maybe I am done with living, comes the thought, robust and prominent as it remains within the confines of his mind. A familiar thought that has graced him time and time again, but one that he has not attempted to do anything with. It was something that he would never admit brought him a warmth of peace in the late night hours, but as he considers Aletta with a slight tilt of his horned head, the thought of Flower then enters with such suddence, the thought automatically begins to sour.

Warden’s lips press together firmly, moistening them before inhaling deeply - as if a sigh would release all the tension that rests like dead weight upon his shoulders.  Her words are poignant, filled with an emotion that brings his heart momentarily from such a dark place, but the load is heavy and quick to attempt to drown him once again. “I want to,” he whispers in affirmation, though his voice is soft with knowing defeat. “It’s so hard, Aletta.” To be who he wants to be, to keep away the dark and twisted edges - he is so tired of fighting, unable to fully accept his ability and continue living the life he desires and deserves. Some days, it is futile. But some days - much like tonight, beneath silent stars and a gentle breeze, he feels like it just might be possible.

“It’s like a prison.” Yes, the moments are joyful but they are fleeting - and what is joy if there is no freedom in it?

Warden

@[aletta]

[aletta]

”I know,” Aletta says with the weight of knowing, of living a life that has been full of those lessons.

The silver mare tears her upturned face away from the blanket of stars and instead focuses on Warden. She doesn’t sugarcoat the words, does nothing to uplift them to the heavens that stand watch over them. Over him. Aletta certainly knows that life is hard. It had been one of the first lessons she had learned in her youth (small, frail things such as children weren’t likely to survive on the Mountaintops). The gray mare has always liked her certainties and that life is hard is one of them.

It can be cruel.
It can be hard.
It can be uncaring.

The blades of those truths have all chiseled something away from Aletta, taken and bled something from her that makes her the defined figure that stands beneath the starlight with Warden. ”It’s very hard,” she shares with him. It’s almost hard not to smile. (It’d be an empty thing, if it did come. It doesn’t.)

It doesn’t come because Aletta thinks she hears the echoes of defeat rolling in the baritones of his voice. Though they have met under the cover of darkness, she didn’t think him old. His shoulders didn’t seem burdened with the gravity of numerous years, his mind not yet fogged by the regrets and troubles that come from years worth of making mistakes and (hopefully) learning from them. He has other troubles, she knows. Aletta understands that he knows and the weight of his knowing has extracted a price.

But defeat?
Defeat is something she has never understood. (It  always comes back to the basic instincts for her - for fight or flight and the gray mare will always choose a fight.) It’s something as foreign to her as Beqanna remains - as she forces it to remain.

”Like a prison?” she asks with her head raising to his. Aletta is about to tell him that his life is only a prison if he allows it. The bars are entirely his making. But she remembers. She remembers Valerio leaving. She remembers Lilliana being born and raising four children on her own, watching her eldest take up his father’s mantle at far too young an age. She remembers the threats that came and went and how she fought them because that was the only option.

She remembers Kalina coming back from Liridon without Brynn, with a story about their Goddess and how her dearest friend in this life sacrificed herself for her daughter.

She remembers how that imprisoned her. How that grief still haunts her.

"Bend the bars,” she tells him. "Break them, burn them, shatter them. We are born dying, @[Warden]. Take your joy where you can and illuminate your life with it. Otherwise,” Aletta stops and looks up again, turning her attention back to its rightful place. "Otherwise, there is only this. Darkness. Emptiness. Nothing.”
Aletta has found solace beneath her stars but that knowledge has only come from a life well-lived. Something, she assumes, that Warden (who seems so young!) hasn’t done yet.

"You know the endings,” she says and wonders for a moment if his Magic works against him. If he has perhaps seen his own demise. The thought practically makes her shudder. Everything in her voice becomes edged, wields a blade because she wants the sharpness of her words to rouse him back to defiance. Back to life.

"What of those who love you? Who might come to care for you?” There is an unspoken accusation there. Has he thought about what his defeat would mean to those close to him? Gentler, softer because she is a weaver of tales and she wants him to find the moral in this one, she adds: "There is your story to consider but what about others? If you bind yourself to…,”, she pauses, not knowing what to call his Magic. Marcelo always claimed himself as a Seer but it might be different for the Night Watcher. "By resigning yourself to darkness, you might be condemning someone else as well.”

[Warden]

resurrect the saint within the wretch

I know.

He’s heard the words before - a simple phrase spoken to show understanding and solidarity, but mostly met with a brief close of his ivory eyelids in disbelief because, of course, they do not know.

However, as the words pass through Aletta’s lips, there is something in them that grants him just a little bit of peace; that, despite not really knowing his plight, she did know by the way of her own experiences. It’s very hard, and a sigh that had been held tightly between his teeth like bitter iron suddenly relinquishes itself, as if saying it out loud somehow had power over him.

The knowledge of the future has aged him beyond his years. He had never been a child, not really. As a yearling he had found himself within a blizzard, screaming into the cold and the whiteness of its power, begging to be stripped of his power, to fall frozen beneath blankets and blankets of ice and snow. Even now he wishes to succumb to this weight and gravity, for it  is all he knows. It is all that he can do to carry it without faltering and it has turned him into the man he is now - one that is desperate not to feel yet each vision brings him more empathy than the next, so then drives himself to be alone at all costs, not to get too close - as if anything he did would decrease the burden that nearly breaks his back.

Yet - even with the sound of defeat in his voice and how it clunks heavily across his brow like a sullied crown - he remains fervent, present, steady. But he is only a man and he will not pretend he is anything more than that.

Aletta’s voice is strong and sturdy, resilient where he finds himself weak and malleable. She becomes what he needs, to prop him up in a time of darkness and despair that is seemingly never ending for this watcher. She forces him, pushes his hand, reminds him of what he needs to hear. It grounds him; he finds himself rolling his shoulders to pull his muscles taut beneath his auburn and patched white skin, his horned head rising with ease, though the edges of darkness do not quite fall away from his navy eyes.

There is only one who comes to his mind as she rouses him back from his reverie. A gentle, hopeful girl with rubied skin and violets in her hair; a love that is undeserving. And if he knows her future, perhaps he is the only one to keep her from it.

Perhaps he is not only a watcher; maybe he is something much more.
The stallion snorts sharply, stiffly tossing his head.

“ I pray I can keep them far from what I know of their future.”

Then, as if on cue, a tingling sensation begins to prick in the center of his ivory forehead. Terribly ironic as the sensation grows, pulsing and warning him of its unavoidable takeover. The grimace brought onto his face would be akin to something from physical pain, but that is not the reason his face contorts as it does. “No, no, no,” he mumbles to himself, a single onyx foreleg scraping at the damp earth beneath his blue opaled hoof, his jaw clenching as his ears fall deep into the tangle of his obsidian mane. Warden’s neck bends, pressing his chin to his chest, as if willing the premonition away would be enough to stop it.

Of course, it wouldn’t.

When his chin snaps up, his eyes are black and unseeing to the world around them - dark as pitch and bottomless as the sky above them. All is still as his third eye once again takes him into its nightmare.

The sound of rushing water is crashing in his ears, devastatingly loud and ear-splitting. He gasps, realizing that he’s beneath the constant push of it, feeling the pressure as it splatters forcefully into his mouth and nose, pressing against his chest until he felt like it would burst. Despite the increase in his heart rate and adrenaline, he glances around - for this will not be his demise, but Aletta’s.

Bleary-eyed from the constant rush of water, he sees her now familiar silvered form from the other side - as if the water is a curtain, shielding him from her. He tries to call to her but his voice is garbled as water pushes into his throat, causing him to spit and his eyes to burn. Her figure begins to fade beneath the water as Warden begins to get pushed deeper, so far so that his body becomes numb.

When the stallion gasps for air the second time, he is breathing in the warm night sky and the meadow grasses, his navy eyes rimmed with white as they roll to find Aletta still standing beside him. He’s not sure how long his vision has lasted and with a disgruntled, unsettled look on his face he turns to look at her slowly, as if afraid to meet her gaze. He tips his chin up, still visibly shaken from his moment in time, his jaw clenching as he swallows hard.

“I know the endings.” He repeats her very words with a sense of foreboding and misery in his voice, thin and weary. “Do you want to know?”

Warden

@[aletta]
here is a novel for you, enjoy!!!

[aletta]

She's known the hardness of living. She has felt the bitter blows of it take something from her youth. She has felt the coldness of it as it stripped her of beloved things from her middle years. She feels the absences of ghosts in her present and she fills those empty spaces with the stars that she and Warden stand beneath. They have always played a pivotal role in her life and it shouldn't come as a surprise that they became a constancy as the years went on. As the dapples of her coat faded, as the sterling of her mane and tail turned to white. She knew that someday she'd be the color of new-fallen snow; she just never knew what the experiences would be that would blanch and bleach her.

There are a few blemishes - the patch of skin on her right forelimb that is whiter than most from a skirmish with Frostbane and his ice Magic, the jagged scar on her right haunch where Sirocco's hoof had managed to catch her a reminder of when she hadn't been quick enough - that stands as a testament to the marring of time. She has grown paler as it has gone on. But Warden? Warden will never grow grey (at least not like her) but he carries all the weight of time that she has earned. His time in this world seems so brief to her, a brevity that has tired him before it's due. His circumstance makes her angry (and it touches so close to home, in ways that Warden will never know). Colts growing to stallions before they have had the time to grow into the length of their legs and the depths of their chests.

"I won't presume to know how your gift works," she says coolly despite the warm air, a sweet gust of summer that stirs beneath them and the starlight. "But if the future always lingers as a threat on your horizon, you will always see war." Her dark eyes consider him as he rolls his shoulders, like he is already bracing himself for the impact of her words. Do they crash against him? The Watcher still stands. To his credit, he doesn't break or fall apart at her implications. He stands - a tall and resolute figure in the dark. Warden raises his head like he might have a hope in his future and that turns her pensive expression lighter. He might have something to brighten his horizon. Someone to keep his shadows at bay and help carry this burden that he was given (so young, too young). He tells her that he prays that he can keep them far from the knowledge of their futures, those he cares about.

"The future always comes," Aletta reminds him again. Her slender head turns more sharply towards his, raising to look at him directly. She has always known the future as a changing thing; Marcelo had told her once that his visions were always different. All it took was another choice, a chance meeting, a moment of something unexpected and it could all change. That had been his crux to bear. He could no more prevent the differents paths as he could the future. All he saw were the possibilities - some bright, some grim - and not his spare those he loved any of them. She doesn't know if it works the same way for Warden. She doesn't know if what he sees of the endings are concrete, if they are like her - something set in stone (at least until tonight; he's given her many questions as well).

Aletta blows out softly and then turns that black, glittering gaze above his spiraling horns to the cosmos. "If you see the end, if you can't-," stop it, she doesn't say. Lives are cut short; some stories go untold. The pain in that unsaid sentence is acute and slashes through the midnight air. "Use your power differently," she manages to choke out. It is hard to find joy in death but it is an inevitable ending for all of them. Even the Immortals will return to stardust one day. "Encourage joy, @[Warden]. Find love. Laugh. It all ends, anyway. If you see the endings of those you care about it, use your power in a way to bring as much happiness to their lives as you can." The gray mare brings her regard back down, thinking of those ending when she looks back to the overo stallion.

"The ending wouldn't bother me," she tells him. "Live a life well and you will find little regret. I've made plenty of wrong choices. Some for the right reasons and some not, but there is nothing I would change." She says it with that iron-willed certainty that she always carries. The way her head tilts questions him. Would he change anything about his past? About his decisions? Could he exist as he does now and find peace with how he ends?

And then he leaves her alone. Something in Warden retreats, as though the night air has sucked all the oxygen from his lungs. Concerned, she takes a small step forward and reaches out to him, broaching the space between them for the first time. The shadows of his eyes turn white and wild, like the foaming tops of waves during a storm. He (finally) turns to look at her, like he might be afraid of what she might say. Aletta, though, has already given her answer. She has already told him that there is no fear in knowing her end; it's what she's been looking for: "Tell me."

i wrote you a novel too - i love them!

[Warden]

resurrect the saint within the wretch

Warden has felt more than he should in his short years. He feels as if he has lived through the ages; each vision bringing him into a moment in time that others haven’t lived yet. Even now, as he stands beside a woman whose experience in itself brings her the wisdom that seems to bring gratefulness to each silvered part of her body, he knows more than her: and the thought weighs him down incredibly. The watcher’s weight shifts uncomfortably, his eyes drifting to the dimly twinkling stars that watch them both silently, irreverent and unseeing as they hang terribly still in the black sky.

Even he, a watcher and a seer, does not understand how his gift works. Why is it that he only sees the ends, or the events that would bring terrible change? His mother (a true seer, he always says) will see births and marriages, reunited lost ones and love reignited. Even Rhaegor, when his third eye does strike, does not wield the terror that Warden’s does. His ability is simple in some terms, but at the same time it is completely unwoven - frayed cords that splice and break and it is Warden that is meant to piece together what is leftover; fragments that are not his own yet are his to interpret.

The future always comes.

It marches on, unbending and unyielding, whether Warden knows of what it brings or not. He knows this, of course he does, but the way Aletta’s voice grips him he knows that it is not merely a reminder; it is a mantra. He inhales with a gentle shiver down his spine despite the tepid warmth of the night wind across his face. “I must,” he tells her in reply, but he also tells to the night sky, his dark eyes searching its depths before turning his head gently towards his silvered companion.

Aletta’s gaze meets Warden with a ferocity he only wishes he could have when facing his own premonitions, and her poise and certainty allows a curt nod from him to display an understanding. The watcher inhales deeply, his eyes shifting away from her for a moment to glance upwards, as if he was looking for strength within the stars he so vocally curses.

“Water.” He begins with a tightness in his voice as he turns to face her, his crowned head lowering solemnly. The starlight glimmers dimly in the black and blue of his opaled horns with his movement, sadness within the navy of his eyes just beneath.  “Ever flowing, it’s strength never waning. Constantly pushing down, down, down until there was no breath left, no light, no escape...” Warden pauses, his face contorting, thoughtful and feeling exposed in this vulnerable state. “I could look through it, like a veil, and see you on the other side of it. I couldn’t reach you, but you were there.” Warden has never been one to try and interpret his visions besides what was given for him to see, but to him it only meant one thing: a watery grave.

Why would it mean anything different?

Warden

@[aletta] <3

[aletta]

Aletta has always been proud that she has no gifts to speak of. That she has no traits to show. Her birthright is the silver coat that she wears - something passed from mother to daughter since the reign of Coca-Cola and perhaps even before that. Every obstacle that she has ever encountered has been done without Magic and that has only strengthened her fortitude that she is better off without it.

Everything that Aletta has ever done - everything that she has ever accomplished - has been done without Magic or knowing and on some occasions, even help. It has all been done on her own merit, on her own terms.

It doesn’t mean, though, that it has come without cost. It doesn’t mean that it has come without heartbreak or loss or grief. It doesn’t mean that hasn’t come from her encountering dead ends and having nowhere to turn. In those moments, Aletta has always looked up. She looked above and she asked: What now? Where do I go from here?

And the stars, sometimes, answered with their sentinel presence.
Sometimes, they gave nothing at all but their silvered silence.

So when she looks at Warden, she meets his gaze with the same stoicism that she gives her twinkling companions. He will tell or won’t. He will show or he won’t. Warden inhales and Aletta follows his attention, her dark eyes suddenly rapt and full of starshine. She waits with baited breath. Where he inhales deeply, she doesn’t dare take a breath at all.

For the first time since.. since she heard the message that Keav gave her, she hopes.
Aletta hopes and it rises in the summer heat. It goes above them and beyond them, where it might buoy them both. What she is thinking of - of Paraiso, of Valerio, of Brynn and her children and grandchildren - keeps her spirit high. It might even shine for Warden too, if the Watcher needed to borrow something from the older mare.

Water, he begins and Aletta knows where this story ends.

Oh, the wanderer smiles. It is as broad as the journey that she has taken - from Craignair to Beqanna to the Islands and Beyond to Liridon and back to Beqanna again. She smiles and turns that radiance towards the antlered stallion. ”Home,” Aletta corrects him. Warden speaks of the end because that is all he knows but the way she looks at him - even hidden in the obscurity and depth of night - speaks of only the start.

”You’ve seen my home, @[Warden].” She tells him and the gray mare sounds like her old self. The one that had teased Valerio for his chivalry - for the damsels he’d saved and the dragons he’d vanquished. The one that had laughed with Brynn on the edges of those banks as their babies raced and reared and grew, that loved and brought forth their shared grandchildren. The one that told too many stories to them.

The way she looks at him is brighter than any star that burns above them.

”You saw my beginning.”

[Warden]

resurrect the saint within the wretch

Home.

The word floats to him as easily as an autumn leaf falls to the ground, but even in its simplicity he cannot hide the darkening look on his face; one of surprise and gentleness - she must have misunderstood. The stallion’s mouth opens to protest, to correct her, but when his navy eyes find the depths of hers his brow furrows and his lips press into a thin and thoughtful line. His visions have always been open to interpretation - the way the events come about might perhaps remain a mystery, or a decision or choice alters the exact ending.

But it always comes.

Aletta, with all her wisdom and experience, seems to choose to grasp at that hope that she fervently presses into and Warden, though having his doubts, felt it unnecessary to disagree. He remains silent, searching her face quizzically as if, perhaps, he was the one who has had the misunderstanding - and maybe, just maybe, he has misunderstood before. For the first time in a long while, the shining sliver of hope that he had been wearily holding onto becomes a foothold, propping himself up onto it and - for the tiniest moment - the weight lessens.

The future always comes.

The man sighs heavily, suddenly tired and aching and somehow calm despite his restless nature. There is an ease in his gaze as he looks to the stars once again, contemplative and resolute. “Then that is where you must go, Aletta.” A pause, silence encompassing the once strangers, and Warden wonders if he will ever see her again or if, in this home of hers, she will find her final rest. He turns his head ever so slightly towards her, the smallest semblance of a smile on the ivory of his lips. 

“You’ll know where to find me.”

Looking to the stars.

Warden

@[aletta]
<3 such a good ending!
you can obviously reply if aletta makes you though