"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
Things had actually been going pretty well in this strange little place until the sun went out. Anuya was new to anxiety, didn’t understand why her heart raced as the eclipse occurred and how the tempo had only increased when the darkness did not fade.
Somehow, this is worse than the Rift - without the glowing, poisonous plants to illuminate the world around her everything is darkness. When the shadows move, they are either the short-eared inhabitants of this world or strange creatures that seem to be on the hunt for their next meal. Anuya might joke about how she isn’t sure which is worse - but she knows well enough.
She thinks of Aureus and Astrum and how comforting the light of the star would be but though she has (very casually) kept an eye out for the bright pair their paths have not crossed again. It is an effort not to gravitate towards anyone that glows, anyone that might offer a little sanctuary. For all the stars that decorate her own skin, none of them offer her any light.
Instead of cozying up to strangers and taking advantage of them for their light, the fae mare lingers in places like the meadow, as she is doing now. Away from the oppressive shadows of the forest and trees - where the landscape and figures around her are more of a dark grey than a thick blackness.
She doesn’t like the fear that still affects her, even now after the darkness has dragged on for so long. Her long ears twitch as she looks up to the sky - scowling at the thin halo of light as though her own ill thoughts towards whatever is blocking it will be enough to work. Has anyone tried giving the sun a really dirty look yet to shame it into working again? It cannot possibly hurt.
He had loved the sky once. In his youth, when he had been capable of such softness. When he had turned his face to the stars and watched them rain from the sky. (He had never learned how to master this and had never quite worked out whether or not it truly was his doing, though the stars only seemed to fall when he was watching them. Will he miss their falling when they return and he finds that whatever connection he had to them is gone? Or is this kind of softness really, truly beyond him now?)
He wanders now in this strange darkness, as he is wont to do, still trying to put as much distance as he can between himself and The Mother and The Father. He had made his way through the forest and found diamonds there. Diamonds that had rippled across his skin, diamonds that he wears splashed across his brow now, as he makes his way to the meadow.
He, too, lacks a glow. He throws no light. Despite the galaxies on his face, there is no living color to them. He has seen creatures with galaxies that glow and spiral across their skin and felt real, vicious pangs of jealousy and he has understood that there is real, desperate ugliness in him.
But he finds her in the darkness by chance and there are stars on her skin and they do not glow either. Were he something more vulnerable perhaps he would feel some immediate sense of kinship. However, he does not, perhaps too distracted by the uniqueness of her ears.
“Did you come with the darkness?” he asks her.
@[Anuya] how many threads is this now lmao if i am annoying you please just punch me in the face
@[The Monsters] i am once again asking you to mess with his flight without wings
Movement on the ground brings Anuya down from the fathomless heavens (scowling at the sun had not in fact worked). Her pale turquoise eyes focus on the short ears that approach her but she’s too thankful to not be alone that she doesn’t feel the same annoyance. It has been fading, ever so slightly - helped, perhaps, by the fact that she has only twice run into anyone with ears that could even remotely compare to her own… and one of those someone’s was her sister, who hardly counted.
There’s no glow around this stranger, which would have been handy, and but she is admiring the stars that mark him and what looks like diamonds on his brow when he speaks.
Honesty comes far too easily to this star-painted fae - she isn’t really capable of anything else. Sometimes, when she tries, she can soften the bluntness of the truth or even just keep her thoughts to herself.
This is not one of those times where she tries. “That’s a weird thing to ask.” Although her annoyance is only surface deep and she's a little amused, Anuya’s voice is just a little louder than what would be polite. Despite having eventually forgotten to throw her voice and managing to converse with Aureus just fine, she still harboured the worry that these horses with their itty bitty little ears wouldn’t hear her properly. Her long ears twitch a little in annoyance as she tilts her head to regard this diamond-decorated stranger. “Did you?”
The volume of her voice catches him off-guard and a fresh wave of diamonds ripples across his skin from hip to shoulder. (Such a strange reaction, he thinks, and he immediately resents it. Resents how weak it makes him look, resents how visible it makes the sharp spike of surprise that had spiraled through him. But things had been so quiet for so long that her voice had hit him like a sonic boom in a way that he had not been prepared for.)
He exhales a sharp breath and he shakes his head, gritting his teeth as the diamonds sink back beneath the surface of his skin. Though they remain splashed across his brow even still. They linger, too, on his chest but he is just as aware of these.
He takes a half-step backwards away from her, though he does not immediately speak. He does not meet her annoyance with annoyance. Is this surrender? Or something else entirely? He is not a coward, Gravitas. But he will not needlessly fight either, he has learned that the hard way. He will not waste his energy where he does not have to. It is the faintest hint of amusement he hears in her voice that keeps him from turning and heading back the way he had come.
She turns the question back on him, just as loud. And, though he is still troubled by the volume of her voice, he feels something in his chest loosen. He swallows and turns his gaze away from her to the darkness that closes in around them. Pressing in with a new insistence, a kind of perpetual urgency. “Yes,” he says, pulling his attention back to her face, “just not this particular darkness.” There, the faintest ghost of a smile in the furthest corner of his mouth before it is gone again.
“Might consider lowering your voice or you’ll attract some unwanted company,” he warns after a beat of silence.
@[Anuya]
@[The Monsters] i am ONCE AGAIN asking you to mess with his flight without wings!
She is surprised by the fresh wave of diamonds that cascades across this stallion’s skin, but it brings about a smile. What a weird defense (and she’s also a little proud to have startled someone enough to elicit such a response. Maybe she hasn’t lost all of her talents).
They disappear, which is a little disappointing, and the stranger takes a partial step back. He was the one asking rude questions, why was he going around acting all offended?
Her long ears twitch at his response and she is powerfully curious about what he means by not this particular darkness but she’s distracted from asking when he adds a warning about her volume.
This is the perfect opportunity for Anuya to tell him she’s already attracted some unwanted company - except she doesn’t really feel like that at all. So she can only think it at him and internally laugh at her own little joke. Such a shame, he wouldn’t be able to appreciate her comedic genius.
She’s stuck with the truth, which inspires a puzzled expression from her while she replies. “Oh. I… Well your ears are just so tiny, I didn’t think you’d hear me otherwise.” Sure Aureus had, but he might have been a fluke!
He glances up at her ears in the wake of her appraisal of his, rolling his shoulders in a kind of noncommittal shrug.
“Nothing wrong with my hearing, far as I know,” he muses. If he had a sense of humor to speak of (which he doesn’t), perhaps he’d make some internal joke about how there’d been no issue with his hearing up until she’d blown out his eardrums with all of her shouting. But there is no joke to be made, not for him and if she’d actually voiced her own joke out loud it likely would have sailed right over his head.
He drags his focus back to her face then, finding her eye through the darkness. “Must be some kind of affliction, huh?” he asks, gesturing vaguely to her ears, though there is no cruelty in his tone. It is not his intention to be vicious, he is simply curious to know what kind of magic brought about those ears.
“Where’d you come from?” he asks this a little gentler, the tone a little more personable. No one will ever accuse him of being particularly charismatic, Gravitas, certainly. He is moody and disagreeable, broody and aloof for the most part. But there is something amusing in her penchant for shouting, her blunt appraisal. He likes her, he finds, which is a strange thing in itself.
Well, there goes all her belief about the tiny-eared horses and their ability to hear. Anuya makes a mental note to conduct a test with a mare, maybe the stallions here just have supernatural hearing.
To make up for their obvious lack in braincells, she thinks, when this one asks if her ears are some kind of affliction. Although there’s no cruelty in his tone, it is still offensive and those long ears of her twitch backwards in annoyance. “They aren’t an affliction.” Anuya attempts to bite out the words with a little venom, but she’s about as good at being angry as she is lying.
There’s plenty of other things she’s good at but, naturally, this starry stranger seems to be trying to bring out the ones where she’s got no talent for at all.
Her voice is, however, back to a normal volume. Though Anuya also tucks in the knowledge that it's probably annoying for her to talk-shout in the back of her mind for future use.
His second question is easier to answer - no lies or venom required, even though her distaste for her old home leaks out into her tone. “A land called The Rift. It was dark like this place, and filled with strange things. I prefer this darkness over the one I came from, though.” And then, because she’s just a little curious, she asks - “Do you?”
She insists that they aren’t an affliction and he glances briefly up at them, thinking that they must be but he doesn’t open his mouth to argue. He can’t imagine how exhausting it must be to be able to hear every sound within a ten-mile radius but he keeps this opinion to himself, locked safely behind a slanted smirk.
She can say whatever she wants to, just so long as she does it at a reasonable volume. He doesn’t have the energy to fight off a shadow thing. He thinks the diamonds would certainly be useful in warding them off, but he’s spent enough time in her company that if they found themselves blindsided by a monster he’d feel obligated to make sure she came through unscathed, too.
The Rift, she says, and he thinks that’s a strange thing to call a home. His brow darkens with a frown and he tilts his head a fraction as he mulls it over. It doesn’t sound like any place he’s ever heard of and he wonders if she’s from some other world entirely. Before he can ask, she asks him a question of her own. A question that gives him pause and any expression he’d worn fades from his face as he considers it.
For the space of a breath, he studies her face with a plain expression before, finally, he draws in a long breath and nods. “Yes,” he tells her plainly before he pulls on the same passive expressive he’d been wearing moments earlier.
“The Rift, huh?” he asks, frowning again, “sounds like a wild place. Everybody in The Rift have ears like those?” There he flashes her a teasing, lopsided smirk.
