"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
10-02-2017, 02:47 PM (This post was last modified: 10-02-2017, 02:50 PM by Celest.)
Wait for it... Celest watches her mother from her place below the ferns. They were both tucked away in their hiding places, safe little nests, where Tang had planned on them sleeping away the morning - if not longer. But the little teal filly had other plans.
When her mother finally drifts off to sleep Celest rises with care. She travels in a straight line, slow and creeping like a forest creature at first, then boldly and sure-footed and she put distance between them. She had spent nearly her entire life in the shadows and mists of the river, the shadow of her mother, and today she wanted to cast her own shadow. If she ran straight for long enough surely she would find something new.
And she does. Soon, Celest reaches the cusp of the forest and from the shelter of the trees she looks out across the delightfully barren rolling hills. The openness of the land before her was exhilarating compared to the confines of ancient oaks and a scattering of goosebumps rise across her seafoam colored skin.
Her first small victory. She has made her first truly independent act and she is ready to burst with excitement. So, with a buck and a toss of her little dished face, she is tearing down the nearest hill under the open blue sky.
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
The sweat streaks his piebald hide, and Ivar’s dark forelock is all but plastered across the left side of his white face.
He has been running ,checking the perimeter, and has just drawn up short, his head raised as he pinpoints the source of the unfamiliar scent. The summer air is heavy with scents, but only one does not belong. It’s from farther south, closer to the border that Loess shares with Sylva. Ivar moves quickly, traversing the valleys between the numerous hills with ease and familiarity. He is breathing heavily by the time he finds the intruder, and when he draws up in front of her he looks almost…disappointed?
She is not at all what Ivar had been expecting, and it shows in the curious way he lowers his head to her eye level, clearly completely unconcerned for his own wellbeing.
“What’re you doing here?” He asks, concern in his brown eyes. “Are you lost?”
She storms down the nearest hill feeling like thunder. Her little hooves leave deep crescent marks in the soil as she reaches the valley. But the seafoam girl does not slow, and her momentum carries her up the next hill and farther into the unfamiliar kingdom. As she reaches the top on this next hill her heart is beating faster but she has yet to break a sweat. But here she halts - she has to.
He pulls up in front of her and she slides to a halt, sending little rocks and a cloud of dust flying towards his perfect white legs. Like a knight, he stands before her, beautiful and proud like the champion of one of her mother's stories. He lowers his face close to hers and curiosity flashes in her deep amethyst eyes. This one, he is no hero, he is an antihero - she knows him. She has seen his face before, though he had looked older then. So far in her life she had only seen a handful of faces between dreams and waking, she wasn't about to forget one of them.
The shock probably shows on her dished face, the strangeness of seeing someone so perfectly represent in a dream and then seeing them in the flesh later. But she decides to keep this for her self, for now, she was so focused on this stranger (the second stranger she has ever meet!) that the details of what had seemed like just another dream are a little fuzzy anyway. And he had asked her a question.
"I'm not lost!" She responds louder than necessary, slightly insulted. "I'm just exploring. I'm tired of the river. What are you doing here?" She questions him with genuine curiosity and not a hint of sarcasm. The whole concept of horses with real homes and kingdoms has yet to be properly introduced to her.
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
On an even level, Ivar’s brown eyes easily catch the surprise in her amethyst gaze. Surprise and something else, something he cannot quite put a name to. It doesn’t ever occur to him that it might be recognition – she is just a child, after all, and he has certainly never seen her before.
“Night time is not a good time to go exploring,” he admonishes, and is surprised to hear an echo is his father’s voice in his words. Isn’t that the same thing that he had told a curious young Ivar? He’d caught him sneaking off in the dead of a crisp fall night, when Ivar had been doing his best to keep quiet. “Does your mother know you’re out here?” He pauses, frowning for a moment in concern. “You do have a mother, don’t you?” She must ,he reasons ,she’s said that she’s come from the River and not the Den,. So surely someone is watching out for her.
Not watching very well, he decides, not if she’s cavorting about in strange lands in the dark of the night.
“I live here, little star girl” he tells her. “This is Loess.”
Then, because he’s not cold hearted or at all tired, and because it has not been terribly long since he was adventuring himself, he adds: “The bats are going to come out of that cave over there any minute. If we run, you might be able to wake them up a little early.” Ivar has always enjoyed spooking the bats and watching them soar out in a great living wave, and he supposes that a child who thinks night time exploring is a good idea might also be the kind of child who likes bats.
In the dark, her amethyst eyes seem nearly black. The look on her young face grows stern as the stranger scolds her - even her own mother didn't scold her. Luckily, before she can truly show her displeasure and ruin her chances of a tour, the scaled stallion says something else which makes her smile.
He asks about her mother and the concerns she hears sounds selfish. "Why? are you afraid I will have to make do with you as my mother?" A peal of laughter causes her chest to shake as she pictures the young man in front of her trying to be motherly.
In the back of her mind a little bell is ringing, warning her that he is dangerous, but she finds she is more intrigued than frightened. Her mother would turn and run, she thinks, but Celest held very little respect for her mother and that knowledge does nothing to spur her back to the safety of the shadows.
With a flick of her fluffy violet tail, she trots towards the cave he had alluded to, calling back over her two-tone shoulder to him.
"C'mon mamma! Or you will miss the bats." Another laugh, and a buck for good measure.
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
The idea of being motherly is startling. He would probably break her, Ivar thinks – she looks very fragile with her thin legs and spindly figure. It’s a marvel she’s made it this far, really; she would make an ideal meal for one of Beqanna’s rare predators.
Well, perhaps not so rare.
Still, she gives him little time to be concerned, having brushed off his worry in favor of the proposed trip to the cave. At least he can watch her while they’re in Loess, he decides; if she gets eaten on her way back to the River…well, that blame would lay on her actual mother.
“I’m not your mamma,” Says the piebald stallion, rolling his eyes in exasperation. The teal filly is jesting, he knows, but the term still feels uncomfortable, like a dangling noose he has only just managed to avoid. (If only he knew, that in a few short days he’d willingly offer to hang himself.)
“You’ve got to be quiet,” He adds, quickening his pace to trot abreast of the girl. “Otherwise you’ll scare them too early.” He clamps his scaled muzzle shut at that last word, emphasizing his silence as he begins to slow his pace. The cave mouth stretches ahead of them, and there are soft peeps of slowly waking bats. They’ll grow louder until they spread out into the sky, and Ivar knows that they’ve arrived at the perfect time.
Lowering his head, he whispers into Celest’s ear, his muzzle barely brushing the brightly colored stands of her hair. “Now you’ve gotta yell. Loud as you can.”
I'm not your mamma.
The way he rolls his eyes makes her giggle, he is the youngest horse she has ever meet and his mannerisms are very different for the two sad mares she has knows- more like her own.
But she is young and easily distracted when the entire world is a new sight to see. His body aligns with hers and they trot together towards the cave she finds herself glancing up to his striking face. She had of heard of handsome before, and some instinct inside of her informs her that he is exactly what handsome is.
She lets him take the lead and halts when he does, staying silent. But as his muzzle brushes against her skin, she feels a sharp shock and turns her small face back to his with a scowl furrowing the star on her brow. It is the same feeling she has when she plays with light magic. Her ears flatten, the bats completely forgotten.
She is more curious than scared.
She reaches out and touches his scaled shoulder with her muzzle, trailing it along the bone below the muscles of his neck. The shock is there again, and this time the dream about him comes flooding back with it.
There is water, she is older and they are tangled together in the water, but the water is red and something is not right. She pulls away quickly, unsure of what to do with the information, afraid to keep looking.
"You," she whispers, not accusingly, but suddenly unsure of herself. She swallows her next words, surely if he meant to harm her now she would have seen that. She had been a woman in that dream.
With her thoughts in turmoil, she turns her head back to the cave and takes off towards yawning black mouth at a full gallop. "WAKE UP YOU DUMB BATS!"
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
The scowl she gives him feels unwarranted, and without thinking he scowls back.
Had he done something wrong? He’d just wanted to show her the bats after she’d wandered in uninvited into his home, and yet he’s the one that get scowls at? He is almost bothered, but before he has time to ask she’s leaning back toward him. Ivar stands still, not entirely sure how to react. It would be very easy to
(take her down.)
but she is also
(small, unsatisfying.)
as well as
(a child.)
He settles on the last, unwilling to trust instinct when it seems to battle with itself. Ivar stands still, feeling the occasional soft puff of her breath as she traces the scales of his pale shoulder to where they fade to black along his neck. The tall stallion has to twist his head around at an odd angle to meet her gaze, and the word she has to say do not seem to meld with their situation. Him? What had he done?
There’s no time to ask, because she’s already racing off toward the cave, shouting loud enough to wake them (and probably loud enough to wake all the bats in Beqanna).
For a split second there is only silence – the peeping having stopped entirely – and then there is a cacophony of sound. The flap of leathery wings and the chittering voices of a dozen species of bats, all streaming out of the save mouth at once. There are tiny fruit bats and gigantic flying foxes, leaf-nosed bats and vesper bats. In the night, they vary only in size, but Ivar knows from closer inspection that the unique landscape of Loess has drawn the little mammals from every end of the world. Some will fly to feed on the fruit of the prickly pear that grows beside the plum and palm trees, while the more blood-thirsty creatures might swoop down on the unsuspecting herds of gazelle or sleeping mobs of kangaroos.
“Careful,” he calls to her from the safety of distance, doing his best to keep the laughter from his voice, “Or you might come away with a little more white on your coat than you started with!”
But as she gallops her toe clips a stone she hadn't seen in the darkness. She gives a muffled "Ouch" hopping on and hoping he didn't realize her blunder, transitioning down to a trot and then a walk. A black (smelly) wave of bats flies from the cames over her head and she quickly backs up to stand to the side of the dark torrent. A sour wind lifts the amethyst strands of her mane but as the outpouring thins, she finds her gaze drawn back to the mouth of the cave.
She tucks away the warning bells, reasoning away the treat. He seems to be nice enough, for now, and there could be something much worse than him in that cavern anyway.So maybe it would be best to keep him around, because into the cave is where she wants to go.
Exploring is turning out to be even more fun with someone other than her mother tagging along.
"Have you ever been in this cave?" She calls over the distance between them, it looked like the perfect place to practice playing with her magic light. The thought of him seeing what she can do gives her a little thrill - she had never been able to show off before. And maybe they would find a fantastic monster.
She had always wanted to slay a dragon.
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
Watching from the safety of distance, Ivar’s eyes trace the swarm of bats up into the navy sky. The spiral there for a moment, like a flock of birds, and then, with no visible signal, they separate. Each heads in its own direction, and the chatter of their echolocating voices eventually fades away. A few stay nearby, emitting little peeps as they hunt the powder-winged moths, but it is difficult to track them against the darkness.
When his attention leaves the sky, he realizes he has lost the teal filly. She is no longer standing where he’d last seen her, and for a brief moment he entertains the possibility that she might have pulled a Karaugh and flown off with the bats.
But then he hears her, asking a question across the distance, and he steps forward to see that she stands in the mouth of the cave. Ivar moves closer, following her gaze into the yawning mouth of the cavern, and then glances down to her. There was something in the way she’d asked if he’s been inside, something in the eagerness of her expression. She’s going to ask to go inside, he just knows it.
“No,” he tells her honestly, “You can’t see it now, but it gets narrow in the back. Even sunlight doesn’t reach all the way back during the day.” That should be enough to dissuade her, Ivar thinks, surely a child won’t want to go stumbling around in the darkness of a cave with no visible end.
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