"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
She is alone, and she is used to it, but it is a strange thing after not being alone for so long.
She had not expected to grow used to it, again, and not so quickly. Rhysa was grown and gone, and Badden...she pushes thoughts of him aside, because that is what she has always been best at. Burying things that she does not want, or does not know how, to deal with. Her dragon, usually, or in this case, her heart. She takes the confusion and the hurt and the loneliness and she tucks it away with every other heavy, shadowed feeling she has had, and she remembers what it is to be alone.
She thinks that maybe this is how she was meant to be.
Alone.
Always.
It is easy to pretend that she is not, though, when she comes to the meadow. It is late in the morning, and though the air is cold and the clouds above promise a snowfall, the meadow is busy as always. They huddle together in groups, their conversations mingling into a hushed kind of chaos. She does not pay particularly close attention to any of them, though in the back of her mind she does think of how when they were younger she and Cassian would race their way in and out of the crowds, completely oblivious to anyone and everyone.
She forgets that she had been so carefree once, almost as quickly as she forgets what it had been like to have love.
Behind a veil of bright white forelock she lifts her ice blue eyes, and when they accidentally lock with that of someone else she finds herself suddenly coming to a stop.
Her body is still raw. The smooth trot that carries her north across the Riverlands is agony, but it comforts her misplaced-pride. Mixed with the pain there is some satisfaction. She believes she hides it well, even if there are none other than the woodland creatures to see her. But she covers the miles in this unnecessary exercise of will-power until the fingers of cold wind nearly remove every whisp of Tephra's scent that tries to cling to her.
She needed the bite of cold air in her face.
She needed to get away from her child. His child.
There was no true winter in her new home, and the heart of the mountain-girl she had once been aced for the bitter cold sometimes. Sometimes, when she was inclined to be discontent, when she felt like fighting the world, when everything anyone said just made her angry.
When that bitter restlessness worked it's way into her bones and she just wanted to scream. But, she doesn't scream, she runs. She runs even though her labor-wounds had not healed, and her heart skips a beat every time her gait hitches and her side splits.
Maybe she would break something in there, maybe she would never be able to take part in the beautiful process of procreation again.
She blinks. Returning to the present and realizing she is on the edge of the meadow. The leopard-skin mare works to smooth her mouth out of the grimace it had taken on. The Face, as someone called it. But she came here to get away from all of that, and her nearly black eyes scan the snow-heavy clouds it is a little easier to remember she is not there, and no one needs her here.
But she is not alone - not that she wanted to be. Movement catches her attention and her eyes meet those of a stranger. Maybe though, the stranger wished she was alone, as the impact of their meeting gazes halts her progress. Warlight smiles slightly, the tall crown on her antlers tipping back. It is a crooked smile that's neither innately friendly or sinister, just something that happened when circumstances suddenly changed. She had always thrived in the spaces between order.
"Don't let me stop you," she calls into the cold wind that swirls between them, "I'm just here to..." her answer halt for a moment as she suddenly realizes she doesn't have a simple word for why she's here, and if she did she isn't sure she would use it. When her brain fills the space for her, she hides another grimace sd she hears the words that find their way out "... see the snow"
She straightens herself when the other mare speaks to her, and she offers her a thin smile. The warmth that does not reach her eyes is not because she is displeased at the idea of conversation; in fact, she welcomes it. There is just a small, insecure part of her that always feels as though she is going to be disliked. She is sure most of that stems from knowing she hides something from every stranger she meets. The dragon part of her is too feral, too difficult to control, and so she keeps it caged – no matter how fiercely it fights against its bars.
And she hates that she feels guilty because of it.
She is ashamed that she has always been so afraid of it that she never learned to control it.
She is ashamed that everyone she meets, she keeps this part of herself hidden, and wonders if it is obvious that she is hiding something.
Her light blue eyes again look into the darker blue of the mare’s, and then to the proud antlers that reach towards a snowy sky. There is something sure about her, something that indicates that she likely has never hidden a part of herself ever in her life. It is an envious thought, but what born more of admiration than true jealousy. Her smile earns a bit more depth, and she turns her eyes skyward to the clouds where a few flakes have begun to lazily descend from. “Do you not get much snow where you live?” She asks her, remembering how her birthplace rarely ever got snow – much too warm and tropical, but she and Cassian had never failed to venture far enough to find whatever Tephra could not offer them.
And then, remembering her manners through her uneasy nerves, “My name is Casimira.”
Something of the other's insecurities makes thair way across the bitter wind between them, although Will does not recognize it for what it is. She only knows there is some hesitation, something being held back.
Like there always is.
She doesn't feel the need to put a name on it. She is content to watch the other mare from below her dark forelock as the damp tangle of it whips across her face. It scratches some itch, the dance of meeting a stranger. It makes her forget about the world outside of their interaction. Casimira doesn't seem inclined to hurry away, despite the thin veil of tension that surrounds her. No, she offers a name and a question, enough to convince Will she isn't pushing in where she isn't wanted.
"None to speak of," she shrugs, "at least not in my time." The world had been rearranged once during the years she had lived on it, and she had never really been one for history. If she learned that Tephra had once been a tundra in an age past she wouldn't have been surprised. The leopard-skin mare was young in the scheme of things, even if she had lived twice and died once.
"I'm Warlight, or Will, from Tephra." she watches for any subtle responses the name of her home may cause. Tephra had been quiet during her few years there, but she had learned that had not always been the case.
The wind changes suddenly, needling below her coat and causing a shiver to ripple the skin across her shoulders. But she doesn't show any hint of discomfort. Instead she carries on, as if they chatted by the western ocean under the shade of the swaying palms. "And this," she gives a glance across the grey expanse of the meadow, "this is your home?"
Her smile steadies when the mare offers her own name, and a light visibly brightens in her eyes at the mention of Tephra. “Tephra,” she echoes, and the name is so easy on her tongue it must be obvious that she is familiar with it. “I was born there, along with my twin brother.” She had loved Tephra as a child, and she tried so hard to make it be her home. And yet, it never was. Their mother – wayward and wandering, impossible to keep anchored – was rarely there, and though they had half-siblings from Ryatah’s other romantic trysts, they weren’t particularly close to any of them.
How strange, that she had died for a place that she felt so detached from.
That she had let herself be shattered into nothing, let her scales be scattered with the ash and cinder as Tephra burnt at the hands of Loess.
There is a sadness that reflects in her eyes, faint and fleeting, but it lingers in her voice when she says, “I wanted so badly for Tephra to feel like home, but it never did.” She shakes her white head, her long forelock cascading across her eyes and along the edge of her face, and she looks again at her companion. “I stayed in Nerine very briefly after I left Tephra, but I live in Hyaline now.” She pauses a moment, the jagged outline of the mountaintops and the mirror-like surface of the lake flooding her mind, and with it a strange rush of warmth. But also, guilt. Guilt because Hyaline almost felt like home, but Badden is not there with her.
“I like it,” she says, maybe as a way to reassure herself that she did not make a mistake. To remind herself that it was not wrong to finally have begun to feel secure – maybe even almost happy – even if it had meant no longer waiting for a piece of her heart to return to her. She looks out at the pale meadow, and she adds softly, “It’s just….an adjustment, I guess, and it’s nice to get away sometimes.”
She shifts the attention from herself, unable to resist the curiosity about her birthland and she asks her, “How are things in Tephra? It seemed like it had recovered well enough from the war with Loess, last I was there.”
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