"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
Somewhere between Ischia and one of it's islets, a great, golden something drifted. Sunlight streaked across its wet skin, drawing flecks of rainbow color from the leathery surface. At one point, a nosy gull surfed the air to land nearby, near enough to peck inquisitivly at the mass. This prompted a long, very long, limb to snake from the water, swatting at the pesky bird like most would swat at a buzzing fly.
With a squall of terror, the grey bird took back off into the too blue sky. A motion that might have been called a shrug in a creature possessing shoulders, the golden brown creature rolled over in the waves, revealing one massive, glowing eye to the sun. A shudder ran through it, and then with a churning of waves it began to move, very quickly, towards the shoreline.
Golden as a sand dune, and shedding the sea as easily as a snake does its skin, Acionna trotted onto the beach. Sunlight caught on the scales of her face, and was making quick work of the salt water clinging to her body. She liked the sunlight. The way it made everything so warm and real. Sometimes it seemed like nothing had been really real, until the sun shined on it.
She included herself in that. Even now, when the burning ball in the sky dropped beneath the ocean, she felt a piece of herself go with it. She turned into a ghost, a not-quite girl, and the eerie lights that glowed greenly from her skin only added to the illusion.
A shiver drew itself from her skin as she walked beneath the shadow of a stand of palms. Yes, ghosts had been on her mind a lot lately, ever since Ma told her and Moira that their home was haunted. She wouldn't say by what, which left all sorts of room for imagining. A long-dead pirate stallion, maybe. Or a herd of drowned dead foals who had wandered too far from their ma's sides, and couldn't swim half so well and she and her sister could.
On the edge of the sand, it was hard to believe anything that sad had ever happened here. Something had to account for the far-away misty look Ma's eyes got some nights, though. And, well, ghosts were as good of a reason as any. Acionna pondered as she walked, and was soon enough distracted by a jewel-bright frog leaping wildly across her path. With a shriek of giddy joy, the filly leapt after it into the tangles of fern and vine growing in ever-thickening carpets across the island.
Maurtia was sure hoping that this place was haunted. Where would the fun be if there wasn’t even just one, measly little ghost for her to talk to? She hadn’t yet tried to see if there were any bones for her to dig up - that particular magic of hers was still a little tricky anyway. She’d only done it once so far, while she was sleeping in a pile with her sisters and accidentally crafted a bone bed around them. Her mom had done what she could to temper that ability, just in case she accidentally speared herself or one of the others.
Their mom could fix anything but even Maurtia had been a little disturbed by waking up cradled among some not-quite-clean bones, so she didn’t really think too much about keeping that trick dormant for now. She’d learn how to use it properly, she was told. Not really understanding what it had been that inspired them to move to this tropical place, Maurtia is sure her dad’s going to show up any day and teach her how to play with bones. Just like any good dad would.
Tonight though, she’s not thinking about bones but those ghosts - and she’s on a mission to find one. She can hear them most times, but the voices are mostly hard to distinguish nonsense and occasional criticisms about her singing.
Her white eyes glow bright in the darkness and the fog that follows her obscures the long tail that is just beginning to drag a little behind her as she wanders. A shriek that does not sound very ghost-like pulls at her attention and she quickly follows the noise, eager to be wherever the action is - and she spots something that’s glowing moving through the ferns and vines.
At first she thinks it's a ghost, which is very exciting - and the reality is only slightly less exciting. It's a stranger. Maurtia's bright eyes try to figure out what the glowing girl is chasing but she can't see well through the foliage as she wades through the large ferns to catch up. “Hey! Are you chasing ghosts too?!”
05-27-2021, 07:15 PM (This post was last modified: 05-27-2021, 07:16 PM by Acionna.)
you’re off the edge of the map, mate.
here there be monsters.
The tiny creature, all legs and eyes, landed with a slap on a broad elephant ear. The green foliage hardly moved with the small weight of the thing. Acionna stepped slowly closer, afraid to blink lest she lose her quarry. It held perfectly still, thinking itself camouflaged green-on-green. She noted the narrow sides rising and falling rapidly, the little breaths that powered the mighty legs.
She was close enough. If she reached out, she could brush her nose and touch the shining creature, no doubt prompting another wild leap. It would be fun she thought, to give chase and run all over the island after the frog. Fun, but not kind. No doubt she could run much longer than a frog could hop.
So instead she came to a halt, and so slowly bent her legs beneath her scaled belly to watch the creature for a while. That had been her plan, anyway. The rushing crash of a follower proclaimed otherwise, startling the frog as much as the girl. She was back on her feet in an instant, the frog springing from it's perch for parts unknown. Catching a glimpse of that from the edge of her vision, Acionna sighed with disappointment as the newcomer broke from the brush.
"I was," she answered with a wry grin, taking in the sight of a stranger with as much fascination as she'd recently granted the frog. "Then I found something better." The gold and white girl bobbed her head in a cursory greeting, remembering vaguely that there was some politeness she was meant to observe. She'd never had a stranger to practice on, really.
The serious expression cracked underneath the weight of the moment, an uninhibited smile beaming out in its wake. She'd never been very good at serious.
Whatever the chase had been about ends, and the maneless girl is disappointed she does not get a chance to see the thing that had caught the other filly’s attention. But then that attention becomes directed to her as they stand there among the ferns and foliage and this is certainly an agreeable alternative. She straightens up a little bit, falling into her mother’s habit of remaining too-still but for this dark filly that does not last long without putting some concentration into it.
Maurtia’s nose wrinkles in a comical, exaggerated display of confusion when she asks “What’s better than ghosts?” Ghosts had been on her mind for as long as she could remember so they seemed like they would be the most interesting thing, but she is incredibly curious about this finned girl too - and the prospect of meeting someone new is one of the things that she had been most delighted about when they had arrived here in Ischia.
An idea comes to her, one that she’s very proud of. “Is it me? Am I better than ghosts?” She asks, meaning for it to be a joke, a smile growing that matches the one on the other girl’s face. She likes the idea of being interesting, though she’s not had the chance yet to interact with a stranger to find out if she is. Her family has to find her interesting, they don’t have a choice.
you’re off the edge of the map, mate.
here there be monsters.
A giggle broke through before she cut it off abruptly, realizing just this side of too late that this dusky girl had probably not even seen the frog. Which was a shame, really. It had been an excellent frog. But this stranger might be just as interesting.
"Yeah, you!" The gilded girl bubbled, her lost frog being quickly forgotten. "You're talking to me, that's more than any ghost has ever done." She beamed, trotting forward to bump her glittering nose to the dark girl's. "I'm Acionna, by the way. Or Cici, if you want." That sounded like something a friend would call her, and she quietly hoped that this was the start of a friend.
The heat of the day was growing thick with humidity, close as a second skin. She stretched out a hind leg, bones pulling against tendons in a very mammalian way. She'd been swimming only just this morning, but the water sounded like an ideal break from the warmth at the moment. With a quick shake, she tilted her head inquisitively at the sleek figured girl.
"You want to go for a swim?" She asked, a dubious note in her voice. There was nothing about her that suggested any skill at swimming, but that didn't always mean much. Anyway, she figured there'd have to be something genuinely wrong with a horse to not want to swim on a day like today. Still, just to sweeten the pot... "My brother Tori says we have a sister that died on the north island. We could go look for her?"
It was the mostly unspoken mystery of their family. What had happened to Kaimana? They tended to avoid the subject, especially around their mother, but Tori had shared what patchwork memories he had of the event with his youngest siblings.
She and Moira had scoured the north island with mixed adventure and thrilling dread. It had been a fun mission for a while, but months had gone by with no sign of the lost sister, and so it had been a while since they'd tried.
Maurtia is very pleased to hear she’s better than ghosts - though she does feel a little sorry for Cici that she’s never been talked to by ghosts. Or maybe the finned girl is the lucky one - sometimes Maurtia couldn’t get the ghosts to shut up! They seemed to enjoy getting particularly noisy when she is trying to sleep.
It’s exciting to get to introduce herself to someone new - usually her mom gets the honour. And then her sisters already know her name. “I’m Maurtia! You can shorten that however you want, sometimes my dad just says ‘hey you’ in a certain way I know he’s talking about me and not one of the others.” This isn’t exactly true, but the story kind of got away from the dark filly as she told it and she doesn’t see the point in correcting herself. What is she going to do, say ‘just kidding that’s not true’? To a new friend? Absolutely not.
Cici suggests a swim, which is relatively new for Maurtia but she thinks a girl with fins will probably be able to give her some good tips. It’s the second suggestion that causes her glowing white eyes to widen a little. “That’s a little morbid.” She remarks in a perfect imitation of a dry tone, but the farce only lasts for a few moments before she blinks and says. “Let’s do it! I can hear them sometimes, you know. I’m not very good at it yet but I might be able to hear her.”
And then a small pause. “Uh, which way to the north island?” Maurtia didn’t much fuss with directions. Things were either towards home or away from home and here it was even more confusing because the ocean was everywhere so she couldn’t even say ‘oh away from the ocean’.
