we're knocking knees in a traveling breeze; brigade - Printable Version +- Beqanna (https://beqanna.com/forum) +-- Forum: Explore (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: The Common Lands (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=72) +---- Forum: Forest (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=73) +---- Thread: we're knocking knees in a traveling breeze; brigade (/showthread.php?tid=25874) |
we're knocking knees in a traveling breeze; brigade - irisa - 12-29-2019 and the walls kept tumbling down in this city that we love He's died and come back, and she’s done nothing so astonishing, but she has grown stronger. She’s had little to do but practice her strange ability. She’s learned to make her own dreamscapes, to change things in these worlds. It’s still harder – the default is still the dream-place she grew up in, her touchstone – but she can change it almost easily now, make it unrecognizable and entirely her own. She can make creatures, too, though she is wary of this – her mother is a cautionary tale of the allure of dream-things, and Irisa fears that path. Still, there have been times – indulgences – when she has dreamed things into being, because she is so often lonely. Mostly animals, other species, as if this is some sort of acceptable line. It’s a lovely world, but she forces herself not to dwell in it overmuch. She stays in reality often, wanders Beqanna, even if there is little here for her – she still has not found her mother, or her sister, and there was little else in way of family. She thinks of him, of course, her friend (she wanted more, maybe, but she gives it no name, but she is comfortable with the word friend). But she had not found him, either. Until today. Until this night, when she sees a dark figure, the color inscrutable under the cover of night. But she does not need to see the color, because she knows the shape of him, she’s gazed upon it enough. A wolf howls, as if in confirmation, and she remembers him as one of those creatures, running through a dream land with her. It’s a fond memory, and one she often revisits. “Brigade,” she says, her voice perhaps too loud in the quiet darkness, but she doesn’t care, moving toward him, suddenly so grateful for something that’s both familiar and real, so grateful that it’s him. Irisa tarnished x heartworm @[brigade] consider this my reply to your any post...couldn't resist <3 RE: we're knocking knees in a traveling breeze; brigade - brigade - 12-29-2019 I was a poor boy; you were a bright light shook like some old souls when our bones broke BRIGADE I AM SO HAPPY RE: we're knocking knees in a traveling breeze; brigade - irisa - 12-29-2019 and the walls kept tumbling down in this city that we love He is before her, finally, and she feels something calm within her, like the release of an unknowingly held breath. She does not let herself plumb too deeply into her own emotions, and so she had not felt his absence acutely, it is only now that she realizes the depth of her gratitude for his presence, the way something in her quiets as she looks at his still-dim form, the shape of antlers and wings, the curve of his crest. He says her name and she smiles, because she is bright and alive this autumn night. She has not yet scented the strangeness about him, the tightness, the scent that she will be unable to place. In this, she is perhaps selfish, so absorbed in how his presence affects her that she does not think deep enough about his presence in itself. He said her name, but says nothing else, and she is close enough now to touch him but she doesn’t, because she is less flippant now, though she remembers how it felt to touch him and take him into sleep, how he’d collapsed under her touch, and she’d felt the taste of power melting on her tongue like honey. “How have you been?” she asks, and the question feels shallow, insufficient in relying her feelings, but it’s simple enough, straightforward enough, so she leans upon it. She is eager to tell him of her own knowledge, that she is stronger now, in her dream land, that she can do anything he’d ask of, there, but first, she wants to know about him, about what’s happened since they last ran across her dreams as wolves, wild and free. It's only here, close and questioning, that she notices the change in him. She cannot ascribe it to any one particular thing, but rather an overall sense. “Are you all right?” she asks then, another question, and one she thinks she fears the answer to. Irisa tarnished x heartworm RE: we're knocking knees in a traveling breeze; brigade - brigade - 01-08-2020 I was a poor boy; you were a bright light shook like some old souls when our bones broke BRIGADE RE: we're knocking knees in a traveling breeze; brigade - irisa - 01-10-2020 and the walls kept tumbling down in this city that we love She hadn’t known what to do when her world had first split in two. When the veil was lifted and she learned that the place she’d grown was a dream, a kingdom built as Heartworm kept her asleep, some insane existence that she had not known was insane, because it was all she knew. She hadn’t known about her twin, either, the child who was left behind – perhaps because she looked too much like her father, perhaps because Heartworm only had the strength to take one. Irisa had never asked – why hadn’t she asked? Too caught up in her own collapsing world, perhaps. It's still strange, sometimes, because her tongue stutters across the word home, but it’s not a word she speaks much, so maybe it’s okay. And now the tables have turned – now she is the one with the power to dream places into being. She is careful with this power, or she thinks she is. She vows, that if she is to ever have a child, she will not take it into the dreamland until it is older. She isn’t sure what answer she expects from him, but it isn’t this one: I have been dead. Her eyes widen, and she moves without thinking. She does touch him now, just briefly, to assure herself that this form is real, that he is not some strange ghost come back to haunt her. He is warm, and smells of the earth, though she now thinks of gravedirt and inhales, sharply. But no. It’s him. Alive. “Dead?” she repeats, unsure what else to say. The word is strange in her mouth. “What happened?” She isn’t sure she wants to know. She isn’t sure how he’s standing before her now, but she’s so, so glad he is. Irisa tarnished x heartworm RE: we're knocking knees in a traveling breeze; brigade - brigade - 01-25-2020 I was a poor boy; you were a bright light shook like some old souls when our bones broke BRIGADE RE: we're knocking knees in a traveling breeze; brigade - irisa - 02-02-2020 and the walls kept tumbling down in this city that we love He touches her back, keeps touching her, and her heart pounds hard enough in her chest that she has a moment to wonder if he can hear it. She can feel too well the softness of his lips against her neck, her throat, and then his forehead to hers, warm and alive, and she realizes how much she wants - needs - him to stay that way. She is shocked when he says wolves. She has always thought fondly of wolves, having only known them when they were together in the dream-world. She has heard them in this world, but only as distant howls. Truth is, Irisa does not know much of danger, having never really been in it herself. She has certainly never died. She doesn’t know that there was a version of her – the first version – who starved to death in a broken dreamland, in another quest longer ago. She doesn’t know that she is a recreation of that girl, that she was always living up to some unknown standard. (Though perhaps she sensed this, somewhere, a vague discomfort with her mother, why mother showed things and always expected Irisa to act in a certain way, a way she tried to guess at. She was successful, mostly, and even when she wasn’t, Heartworm never seemed angry, only faintly sad.) She is silent for a moment, after, breathless at the idea – of death, and more, of him dying. “I’m sorry,” she says, and the words do not adequately express her emotions, the depth of them, horror and relief and so much more, swirling inside her but unable to be articulated. “I’m glad you came back,” she says, and that’s almost adequate, it’s more than I’m sorry,, at least. Still not enough. Nothing she says can be enough. Irisa tarnished x heartworm RE: we're knocking knees in a traveling breeze; brigade - brigade - 02-08-2020 I was a poor boy; you were a bright light shook like some old souls when our bones broke BRIGADE RE: we're knocking knees in a traveling breeze; brigade - irisa - 02-26-2020 and the walls kept tumbling down in this city that we love She listens to his confession, quiet, unsure what to say. She wonders if she should be shocked, perhaps, or even angry; wondering why he might have chosen to leave his life behind. She does not, of course, know the depths of his life, his experiences. She is only a piece of it, a woman who came into his life when he was barely out of foalhood, who dreamed him into a wolf. “Me too,” is all she says. And she is glad, even if it is perhaps selfish that she is glad, if living was not his original wish. She is glad because he is warm and smells familiar, and she has never met someone like him, has never had her heart beat in this particular way, fearful and flourishing all at once. She wants, of course, to fix it, to find some way to ameliorate things. She granted a wish of his, once, dreamed them both into wolves, but given the circumstances, that is not such a dream that they should revisit. “We could escape,” she offers. A strange choice of words, perhaps, but the more she experiments with the dreams, the more she understands the undercurrent of escapism that feeds her dreamscapes. She thinks, perhaps, that he could use the escape. Or maybe she is wrong, and dreaming is too close to death for him to want to partake. She waits, breath matching his, for his answer. Irisa tarnished x heartworm @[brigade] feel free to powerplay them going a'dreaming or he can be like "girl i just died no THANK you" imma have fun either way <3 |