"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
Winter nears its end and like the tide Starros is pulled back to where he has been before. His endless wandering has a rhythm to it now over the years and he finds comfort in seeing the same places in Beqanna at the same time of year. The silver-moon cove where he enjoys the summer, the autumnal painting that the forest becomes, the sweet winters of the south and quiet cold of the ruins. Spring tugs him towards the meadow, with the long grasses and slow-budding trees that erupt first in a faint whisper of green then grow louder and louder with it as the season ages.
Today, though, it is still cold and frosty here beneath the early morning sky where the inky blue hues are only just beginning to lighten. He has hopes for this spring, feels as though there is a chance to thaw himself from the seclusion he has walled himself within over the years. But even if it doesn’t, the winds will change and he will follow the migration path he has adopted for himself and move on.
It’s a comfort to know those habits will always be there to catch him should the secret hopes inside of his heart prove to be just as impractical this year as they have been since he was young.
Without the light of the sun, the self-made sunlight is dim around his feathered wings – appearing just as a gentle glow that catches on the soft metallic feathers.
He daydreams beneath a barren oak, resting after his travels and content to spend this first morning in the meadow quietly. But daydreaming has always been an active thing for Starros and though his light tricks are weaker, just ghosts of what they can be in the daylight, his mind still conjures those ghosts. Two pale, phantom-light deer bound through the frosted grass nearby and he watches them without seeing – allowing his mind to wander wherever it wishes.
who could ever leave me, darling, but who could stay?
She has started to feel braver, and she finds herself venturing further each day.
After following the river along the edge of the forest, she found herself in the meadow. This place was familiar, even if she had not chosen to spend much time here. From the moment she had learned that she could suspend herself in the clouds, that is where she had chosen to spend most of her time. She liked it up there, in the quiet beneath the stars, where she could watch the world go by below. She liked watching the way the rolling hills of clouds changed with the rising and setting of the sun, or the way they grew cool and damp when filled with rain.
And she liked watching them—the way they lived their lives, all of them interwoven in ways they perhaps did not realize. She liked to imagine how she might weave herself into those lives, painting dreamscapes in her mind from the safety of above, daydreaming and fabricating a hundred different scenarios.
But even she had begun to outgrow her dreams, and so here she finds herself, earthbound and a little lost.
Through the half-light of dawn she sees the two nearly spectral deer that seem to hardly touch the grass, and she stops to stare at them in wonder and confusion. Looking beyond where the deer had seemed to appear, she finds the stallion resting beneath the skeletal limbs of the large oak tree. She can just make out the dim outline of light around his wings, and it reminds her almost of sunlight behind a cloud.
She is drawn to him immediately, pulled forward by some unnamable force.
“Hello,” she greets him softly in the hush of the cold morning, her doe-eyes wide and searching. The pale blue of his coat reminded her of the sky on a clear winter's day, and the gentle glow—softer even than her own, which to her always felt too bright in the dark, especially when accompanied by the glittering stardust—felt like starlight, and while she cannot explain it, something about him felt safe and familiar. “You remind me of the sky,” she tells him with a hesitant smile, having learned that not everyone was so welcoming to strangers.
For a brief moment, Starros genuinely thinks she is part of a dream. That he has fallen asleep. He knows she cannot be one of his light creations — he could never craft such a brilliant gold even in bright sunlight — but that she could be from beyond the real world absolutely seems plausible. His daydreaming stops abruptly, the ghostly deer disappearing into wisps of light as his concentration breaks.
A dream feels so much more plausible than someone approaching him while he had been berating himself over not being social enough. And more plausible than someone just existing with golden stardust falling from their wings and a perfect kalediscope of colours on their body.
She compares him to the sky, and instead of doing something normal like saying thank you Starros quietly says "I've never seen anything like you." He hears how reverant and earnestly he says this and his sky blue eyes widen a little in embarassment and he fights the desire to laugh at himself. It sounds like a line, something that could be easily said from someone a lot smoother than him, but he genuinely means it. There's something celestial about her appearance but no single sky he has never seen could match what her coat looks like or the way the gold shines in contrast. It's more like all the lovely pieces of day, twilight, and night were mixed together.
These stay inside thoughts. Attempting to poetically describe someone else may come across as sounding like he wants to wear her skin and Starros definitely, definitely, isn't like that.
So though he doesn't laugh, there's a glimmer of a self-deprecating smile that lingers — wondering if he just completely ruined his first impression. "I'm Starros." And now his smile eases into something warmer. Because of course his name matches the sky as well.
who could ever leave me, darling, but who could stay?
Heat flushes through her at the way he speaks to her and looks at her, and for a moment that hollow ache in her chest seems to ease, as if soothed by his reverence. Something else sparks alongside of it—an unyielding need to chase more of this feeling that she can only describe as being wanted. She does not recognize this yet for what it is—her fatal flaw, the thing that would likely someday be her undoing should the history of her mother’s blood decide to repeat itself. All she knows is that her heart had given an unexpected skip at the sound of his voice, and this feels like the very scenarios she had built in her mind while dreaming up in the clouds.
“That can’t be true,” she says, her demure smile nearly hidden by the way she casts her eyes to the ground instead of his face as she tries to gather herself. He is such a stark contrast to the last man that she had met that she finds she is even more unsure of herself than ever before. To swing so quickly from the dark to the light had her feeling unsteady, and almost timid, afraid that he might see whatever it is the ice demon had found so off-putting about her.
“Starros,” she tests his name, liking the way it felt on her tongue and how it seemed so fitting of him. “My name is Empyreal.” It did not escape her that both their names inspired thoughts of the sky and the heavens, a celestial string that she has decided will tie them together. “I hope I wasn’t intruding. I saw the deer,” she pauses, her gaze drifting to where the light had dissipated into the morning light, “and I couldn’t help but to get closer. They were lovely.”
