"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
Summer nights were Mesec’s favourite - a wide expanse of stars and no biting chill to the air making it less uncomfortable to get out and explore. If he were self-aware at all, he would consider whether or not he ventured out at night purely for the aesthetics of it all - but he doesn’t. There has never been much vanity in him.
All he knows is that, even in a strange land, there’s a piece of him that feels at home at night. It’s a feeling he used to battle, but now he accepts the comfort of it - the familiarity. Nights in the Rift were full of horrors, but here in Beqanna he had found nothing to discourage him from enjoying them wherever he wished.
Fireflies blink in and out of existence among the long grasses of the meadow while Mesec lands from his flight - his great wings outstretched and revealing the glowing silver feathers on the inside as he gracefully lands. Then they fold, concealing most of the glow much like the clouds that cut dark shapes against the bright stars and near-new moon that is just a sliver in the sky. Once on the ground, he inhales deeply - as though he could breathe in the peace of the moment.
Silver eyes close and he stands quietly, listening to the nothing-and-everything sounds of the night.
She loves the night. It is so quiet that she can almost hear the sound of her own heartbeat, can almost hear the way that it thrums against her veins as she takes to the sky. The world speeds by beneath her, and she flaps her wings, long and feathered. They are golden tonight, dripping metallic, and she loves the way they look with the silvery light of the moon washing down, turning them nearly milky at the base.
Alaska tips her head back slightly, golden eyes looking at the starlight before she begins to spiral down, turning into a sparrow for a brief moment just to feel the thrill of the wind rushing by her, before she turns back into herself. She lands that way, keeping the wings as they are, overlarge and dragging on the ground beside her. It’s then that she notices him, as cool as she is warm, and the curiosity in her flares.
Taking a step forward, her tail catching on the grass and wildflowers, she moves toward him. She has no concept of being shy, no concept of being ashamed, and she makes no attempt to silence the sound of her steps. When she is close enough to nearly catch the scent of him, she stops, letting her breath fill the air.
“Hello,” she finally offers, her voice silvery and sweet, belying the adventurous spirit beneath it.
She turns her face gentle, a soft smile, ignoring the chimes of her heart.
Mesec keeps his eyes closed at first, though his ears twitch with the sound of someone landing nearby. He is not a presumptuous stallion, does not assume that anyone might find him interesting enough as he stands quietly in the night.
Only when the hooffalls come closer do those silver eyes open and he turns his head - a smile already forming on his silver-lined face at the prospect of company. From the shine of her golden eyes to the beautiful metallic-dripped wings, she’s daylight and summer and for a heartbeat too long Mesec is dazzled into silence.
It’s an honest reaction that he is slow to shake off.
“I’m…” He hears the ridiculousness of his own voice as though he is speaking in slow-motion and it snaps him out of his daze - a slightly brighter but more embarrassed smile taking over from the soft moonlight one of moments ago. “I’m Mesec. Sorry I was…” And here he tilts his head a little and laughs in a soft chuckle at himself. “Can you still call it daydreaming if it’s night outside?”
He sheds his embarrassment quickly enough, shoving it aside as he gestures with his head up to the heavens. “It’s so easy to get lost in the stars.”
She watches with a genuine, unabashed amusement, preening slightly beneath the attention as he looks toward her. Alaska has never been one to shy away from praise and she glows beneath his attention, finding herself hunting out his silvery gaze so that she can see herself mirrored back, knowing that he is snared. “Mesec,” she echoes back at him, letting herself enjoy the syllables and the alienness of it.
How different he is.
How very much the same.
And she lets herself get carried away by the conversation easily, laughing in tune with his own. “I don’t know, nightdreaming does not have quite the same ring, does it?” She shuffles her overly large wings again, finding that an ache has begun to speed across her shoulders, sinking slowly into her muscles.
Without thinking, she contracts the wings, at first just letting them shrink in size to a more normal weight and then thinking better of it and having them disappear into the folds of her shoulders entirely.
“I love to swim amongst them,” she confesses, tilting her head back to stare at them beside him.
Mesec appreciates that though she laughs along with him, it does not feel as though she was laughing at him, which he assumes would be rather easy to do.
And then he watches, absolutely fascinated, as her wings shrink before his eyes and then disappear entirely. He’s staring again, he knows this, but it’s difficult not to feel a gravitational pull towards her. Mesec has seen a lot in his life but he has never seen someone who could choose to have wings or not.
Unbidden, memories of his father and his half-siblings come to him - of the sister that once wanted to tear his wings from his shoulders so he would look like the rest of them. So his heritage wasn't a blight on the rest of the family.
Now, Mesec would not erase his wings but as a colt? To please those that he desperately wanted accepted from? How much would that have changed?
He returns to the present - a much nicer place to be - and smiles instead as he imagines Alaska swimming amongst the stars.
Mesec’s silver-touched head tilts up with hers to look at the stars as he answers her question. “I feel more comfortable at night. Beqanna is still new to me, I’m still trying to figure out… well, I guess figure out if I can fit in.” He wonders if this sounds strange. If others can just show up in a different land and start a new life. Do they carry the weight of everything they have seen or done as he does?
“And underneath the night sky, it feels like I might. Even if these stars are different than the ones I’m used to.” He does not say this with any bitterness, though - he doesn’t mind these new stars by any means and he’s not opposed to new experiences by any means.
As though to make up for his previous staring, he keeps his eyes focused upwards as he asks “Were you born here, Alaska?"
Alaska cannot remember the last time that she allowed herself the company of those like her.
She had always stuck to herself. Not because she was shy (the concept was foreign to her) but because she was so deeply uninterested in the lives of those around her. They all engaged in politics and scandal and the kind of drama that she found so trivial—so deeply boring. Alaska could not imagine turning her head from the wilderness and the skies to the desert of their lives; couldn’t imagine trading freedom for that.
But he is different enough to ensnare her attention.
Different enough that she finds herself pausing, sinking into the moment with him.
“There is so much to discover,” she says with an earnest smile, her lips turning up into a nearly dreamy curve. “Especially if you are new.” Her gaze goes slightly hazy as she looks past him to the horizon. “The islands of the north are nearly entirely covered with ice, save for the parts where fire has touched them, and the jungles of the west are so dense that you could lose yourself for days in the volcano’s shadow.”
Perhaps she should not be exploring such places, but it does not occur to her.
Borders and kingdoms are meaningless in the end.
Her gaze snaps back to him. “Fitting in is overrated. Why bother trying?” She angles her head, trying to imagine what it would be like to try and force herself to fit into the places where she clearly did not.
There would perhaps be bitterness in her answer, if she was capable of it, when she thinks of her childhood, but she feels nothing at all. “I was. I wandered away and lost my mother at a young age.” She still remembers what it had been like when first learning to shift—how she had taken to the skies and never found her way back. “I was taken in by a man named Wolfbane but I wandered from him too.”
When her gaze snaps to him and she remarks on how fitting is overrated, a very soft chuckle escapes Mesec and he looks back at her with fondness - appreciating that blunt remark to his core. “You know, I’ve struggled with not being able to fit in for my whole life. No one I’ve ever met has told me it’s okay if I don’t. They just give me optiosn for what to try next.” And now, that is how his mind works - it’s what kept him here in beqanna, at first. It did not occur to him before now that this coupld be a place where he discovered who he was - and damn what that meant to anyone else. “It is... beyond refreshing to hear something to the contrary. Thank you.”
Mesec wonders what it might have changed, to hear that as a young colt, or even in his adolescence as he drifted from one family, one home to another. Not once feeling like he actually belonged. There had always been that sense that he was an imposter, an outsider just temporary staying.
What would it have been like to just tell that family that hated his wings that he did not care what they thought?
It felt ridiculous now, with grey hairs flecking his face beside silver, not to have another option - embracing how unique he was - open to him.
His expression softens to hear her story, though she does not appear to feel any bitterness about being alone (something else Mesec has never quite gotten a handle on). “You’re not on your own right now, though.” He says, and it’s a small thing to offer, but he smiles while he looks up at the night sky above them.
“And if I don't turn you off of having company, I would consider myself lucky to swim in the stars with you as we explore a new land. I’d like to see what else Beqanna has. I’ve only seen such a small part of it so far.” He doesn't say this, recognizes how selfish it might sound - but he wonders if it'd be good for him to spend more time with someone like Alaska - who just so casually showed him most of his negative thoughts throughout his life had no right to so much of his time.
