"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
08-08-2019, 12:38 PM (This post was last modified: 08-21-2019, 12:17 AM by Leilan.)
We got older and I should have known that I’d feel colder when I walk alone
The roan stallion has bigger things to worry about than just moaning on top of the mountains. Even so, he still does that a lot - sometimes he hates his draconic look, other days he digs it. As if he can’t quite choose, the universe gave him his current in-between.
Some days, he wonders what it’s like to fly. It would be easier to get around as a full dragon than his current half-frostdrake state. Other days, he loathes the very idea, knowing he is too heavy to dream of it anyway. A walking contradiction is what he is.
For example. Today, mid-summer, he mostly curses himself for even going to the open space; he should have known better than to expose himself to the sun and leave the mountain’s snowy caps. On the other hand the scaled stallion knows how much he enjoys the company of others; especially if he can trick them one way or another. Of all things Leilan ever was and has been, he is a trickster, enjoying seeking the border between joke and true irritation. It gives him a sense of what other people are like, what they can handle, if they’re prone to aggression or not. But that’s just his rational side explaining his irrational one.
Today he walks into the meadow likes he owns it; as he would do with so many places he visits. It’s easy not to care about things when your wife is far away and your kids are all grown up, your former kingdom has gotten used to your absence and the new one is easier-going than yourself. All in all, life is perfect - if he could choose his form, that’d honestly be the greatest bonus. Either a dragon or not. Simplicity; no compromise. That’s all he ever asked for and never got, in his life.
He discards the idea that it might have something to do with his sticking his nose in other people’s business when he feels like it.
Leilan
no. 7 | ice forged in fire
Wow this is true garbage @[Jackel]
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
Eh.
Could be better.
It also could be much better, could be even better than much better, even. But it’s not. Just not.
Nope.
Maybe I should give it a chance to be fine. It could be fine. This place could be super fine. And I’ll be finer then frog hair. The giants here certainly were fine. In fact too fine. As in, there were like…..9, 8, 7….all the way down to one!
I don’t like it.
I’m leaving.
“BYE!” I shout at the lopsided offender of a rock I pass, rather obnoxiously and decisive. Don’t judge me. I dont want what he ‘s selling. Who really needs a time share? Not me, not on a fixed income. And I really have no desire to vacation in Ischia. So. There.
How did he see me? I’ve been invisible this whole time. I wish Haide were here to sort this out. But she’s not. Maybe she’s vacationing in Ischia…? Well now, no time to dawdle. By the time my noggin is done trying to sort this pretty little conundrum out, I’m shocked to find my body as already about faced and started heading back towards Sylva. Bitch has a mind of her own, I swear.
That hussy.
But she stops, we stop, they stop. He doesn’t stop.
And so I wait patiently for him to notice me, if at all. Let’s see if my transparency blew a fuse, or if that rock is just lucky.
@[Leilan] I hope you enjoy this nonsense I made for you.
We got older and I should have known that I’d feel colder when I walk alone
She’s weird.
Who isn’t? Perhaps she’s the most normal mare he’s seen in a while.
Or, seen - that depends on how you look at it. Her invisibility to the naked eye is definitely something - there’s no way to tell if she’s sleek, fat, muscled, or hairless (just to mention a few things). And others might think him weird for talking to her - to nothing - but he just does. ”What’d the rock do?”
Rewind, explain. She shouts to the rock. Something is surely off with her - he might not have noticed her if she had stayed invisible and silent, and thought he’d be alone. But he instantly switched vision, a habit mostly adopted due to a time in a frozen land, where the mist and snow drifts made everything hard to see otherwise. Sound equals switch - and there she appeared, a heat source hidden in plain sight. Unless you counted the shouting. That’s not exactly hiding.
He stared at her for a moment, unsure of what he saw, but then, well, exactly - the previous thoughts kicked in. Who wasn’t weird these days? One thing is certain - nobody would call him entirely normal either.
Leilan
no. 7 | ice forged in fire
@[Jackel] lmao
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
08-20-2019, 06:40 AM (This post was last modified: 08-20-2019, 06:41 AM by Jackel.)
He could hear me.
Yeah, well. That thought never crossed my mind. It probably should have, but of course it didn’t. This is EXACTLY why I need Haide. I can’t handle this. This kind of forethought. Too much pressure.
Can he see me watching him with dark scrutiny and my weird, trademark smile? I stick my tongue out at him, long and elastic like until it touches the ground. There’s no reaction yet, so maybe he can’t tell here directly in front of him. I wonder what he tastes like for a hot second before I think the better of it. Not now, but maybe later? When my tongue returns to its throne between my luscious, pink lips, I can taste the earthiness of the autumn soil. It’s bitter and grainy, but oh so real and delicious. Maybe even a little salty.
Somewhere something rumbles low. My head turns in either direction as if something stalks us. Then turns towards my stomach because I can’t remember the last time I ate. But nothing, nada, zilch.
The noise persists and I feel a strangely foreign but familiar press of consciousness against me. Could it be? Had she finally come back from her time off? I bet she got a tan. Normally, I’d fight her, but today I welcome the rebellion.
Still cloaked, my head tilts sideways curiously, drinking in the strangely dusted gent nearby. He is alone, and perhaps as equally curious of me as I am of him He questions the rock’s motives and my large void eyes roll back to look at the trespasser that he speaks of. I blink a few times before my wonderful attention drifts back to the shiny man. But I have just the answer. Or rather, she< does.
“He was trying to get me stuck between a rock and a hard place,” I say smoothly. Which wasn’t untrue, luckily for me, I caught onto it pretty quickly.
Silent now, I pass loosely to his side and behind him, watching in divine curiosity to see if his eyes follow my movements. On the opposite side of where I had stood before, I settle in nicely next to a friendly bush. “So what’re you doin’ out here, Frosty?”
We got older and I should have known that I’d feel colder when I walk alone
Oh. Well. Weird is perhaps not the right word.
She’s insane.
Her heat form is of course, much less detailed than what he would have perceived if she were not invisible to the colour spectrum of the sunlight. It is thus that he has a hard time deciphering what exactly she spits out, but that it’s not normal for a horse is clear immediately. Upon her retraction of her far-too-elastic body part, he decides that it is indeed her tongue, and she has now literally eaten dirt. Why, or why she doesn’t spit out the gravel or seem bothered by this at all, is a total mystery.
There’s no use trying to make sense of it - neither is it to try and make any more sense of her answer than of her as a whole. He’s not quite certain why he expects her answer to make no sense and yet some - nor why he accepts it as something completely logical. But he does, and, tail swishing softly through immovability, he nods to her when she tells him about the rock and the hard place. ”How incredibly rude of him.” he concludes.
Something about her seriousness and the way that all of this is ridiculous, strikes incredibly true with him. He’s ridiculous, but he plays the game - it’s not even a conscious decision to accept what she says and does, more like something that comes natural. Following her every movement, his draconic, peripheral vision tracks the heat of her as best he can. All in all, when she asks what he’s doing here and deliberately notes his frostiness, he shrugs a little. ”Defrosting.”
Leilan
no. 7 | ice forged in fire
@[Jackel]
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
I’ve become quite used to that word. That amongst others: crazy, nutso, wackadoodle, demented, dingy, mad as a hatter, and the what have you. REally though, I could go on and on, and on and on and so on and so forth. My favorite one was, “Wow, that dingbat went round the bend and out to lunch!” It didn’t matter whether he was thinking it or not, I didn’t need to be able to read his mind, I could tell by the strange twist of his face and the way his eyes seemed to realize something wasn’t quite right here. It won’t be the last time either.
Good thing that I don’t give a flying frick!
Instead of letting my fricks fly, I just smile that lovely little warped smile of mine.
If only you knew, sweetling.
And I drop the sweet, sweet veil that finally keeps me from everyone else’s prying eyes. I am still not certain if my ability has fizzled out, because he seems to know exactly where I travel, but regardless, there is no sense it maintaining it anymore right now. So I just let it all go. I drop it like it’s rather hot too, not slow and steady like I’ve done before to Dorothy and some others. Just BOOM. Suddenly I go from nothing to something to the naked eye.
Yellow, pink and adorned with flowers, I take a step closer to him, smiling, though much softer than what I had just been only moments before when I was still hidden. My eyes - normally dull, cold, and null - they are a tick warmer too. “And whyever would you want to do that?” I ask, casually tilting my head in honest intrigue. I want to touch, to see if he is blustery as he looks and I extend my muzzle, though refrain from doing just what I want. Breathing an extended breath at his neck I ask because I just can’t help but wonder, “Is it because you are as frigid on the inside as you look on the out?”
We got older and I should have known that I’d feel colder when I walk alone
It is in the range of expectation now, for her to do something unexpected each time. But for as far as he can see, or think, she does nothing - he doesn’t know she’s telepathic, but he does know she’s invisible. His orange-flecked eyes follow her heat form, curious, intrigued and somewhat disgusted due to the tongue-thing from just before.
It’s ironic how he doesn’t notice her dropping her shield. Courtesy of the vision switch, it’s either one or the other. She comes closer, asking questions he doesn’t know the answer to. Perhaps she is right, more than they both know. Perhaps he is frozen on the inside, frozen in time or even just in demeanor or perhaps it’s worse than that. There’s been so many changes lately that he can’t quite say if he’s the same as he was, or if he ever was the same or just played a part here, took on a new role there. Love was a dangerous game to play - be it family, friends, or romantic love.
Or perhaps his reactive personality makes every thought about being who he is, who he wants to be, a pointless question. But she still demands an answer - why?
He’s a master in deflecting personal questions or emotions - that’s not a good thing, but it helps him now. He shakes his head at her question, denying the feeling of her hot breath on his iced, thick skin, not wanting to remember how that felt coming from another mare. ”It’s the inevitable consequence of exchanging a frigid place for a warmer one.” he tells her - defrosting, is perhaps not so much a choice as it is a must. Figuratively as well as literally, he supposes.
Orange-coloured eyes briefly flicker to blue, and as such he finally notices she’s no longer invisible. Her soft buttercup-and-strawberry colouring is a sweet contrast to everything she did and showed before.
He smiles, because the irony of her contrasted being is never lost on a joker.
Leilan
no. 7 | ice forged in fire
@[Jackel]
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
“My, what a very logical answer,” I say just away from his scaley, woven neck. Retracting my pale pink nose ever so slowly, I take a step backwards, settling back to tilt my chin upward and stare critically into those color stained eyes of his. “And so predictably boring.”
While I stare up at him, I take those fantastical seconds to skim the fringes of his thoughts. Really, there’s so much clutter up there I have no time to get into the good stuff. Nor do I really care about that for the present time at hand. For now I settle on that pesky little tidbit of information that keeps on keeping on and popping up like a hazardous barricade to his thought process. Apparently it’s that whole tongue thing that he’s still stuck on. Really now, have we not moved on from this, sir? His assumptions were correct, for all that I am and am not, I can at least give credit where credit is do.
I ponder and consider how to keep this whole escapade entertaining because clearly, he is not keeping up on his end of the deal in that department. And well, really all I need to do is keep it interesting enough for me . Which thankfully, shouldn’t be too difficult. I ain’t hard to please, am I right?
So right, the tongue.
For the splittest of seconds, I think of blaming the tongue issue on a curse that was given to me by so and so for doing or not doing such and such, and yadda this and yadda that. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Okay, that’s enough yadda-ing and too much thinking and shit for our current state of mind.
Let’s just keep it simple, stupid.
Taking a few more steps backward without breaking eye contact, my demure smile grows a little more wicked with each backward hoof set.
When the distance I’ve reached is at peak contentment - only the length of a horse or so - I stretch my tongue out again, aiming for that little clod of grass just a bit away from his fore hoof. Meeting my target, the end of my tongue coils and tightens until I yank it back with a dull snap. When it meets with my mouth, I chew painfully slowly with a look completely engulfed with contented smugness. I am unashamed of what I am and who I am and what I’ve become. Here I am, baby, in all my weird fucking glory.
Now for that interesting part that I was telling you about.
Will he duck tail and run in the name of disgust? Or we will match me for my instigating play?
Tag, handsome.
You’re it.
@[Leilan] I'm so sorry, she's so weird. If you're not a fan of the telepathy, let me know and I'll edit it.
We got older and I should have known that I’d feel colder when I walk alone
Wow. He hadn't thought to disappoint any more people in his life, but apparently he just did. Boring, she names his answer and perhaps that is indeed what he has become over time and love and lack of purpose other than to please a wife.
He never wanted to be boring. Boring it he worst thing.
A thought surfaces and dies as quickly as it came: does that mean he is the worst possible version of himself right now?
The mare has no patience for his thoughts; high after high, action after action. He says something, she comes closer. He says something else, she moves away. But the problem of her boredom, if it could even be called that, is quickly solved. She extends her tongue once more, now grabbing a poll of grass near his feet, and eats it - root, dirt and all.
He silently cocks his head and watches her eat all that with a form of fascination he can't quite place. But it's not-thinking that she inspires, and so he roughly shoves all the logical, surfacing thoughts aside. Sometimes illogical thoughts too. Doesn't matter.
So it is that he moves forward a few steps to scrutinize, and finally comment. A logical comment about the effectiveness of her eating method is replaced with another. "I'm sure there's less boring ways to use that tongue." He clicks his own against pointy teeth, stepping forward some more, at touching distance (for him - he knows now that her range is far greater). "Don't get it stuck." he warns her.
Leilan
no. 7 | ice forged in fire
@[Jackel]
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
Wow.
This is so much better.
Much, much, much better.
Bravo.
I knew he had it in him, really, I did.
Okay, not really. Woe of me to admit, but I actually thought he would do the primary and abort mission. Truthfully I didn’t have much faith, but I am very so glad I was wrong. And here he is, sticking it out right after I just stuck mine out. Tongue, that is. And not only once, but for the second time no less. Dare I try for a third time? Possibly. Let’s wait and see.
“Aye,” I reply, dipping lightly into the folkish lingo I thought I had long ago forgotten. And a bit devilishly with the gentle rise of a slender brow, I add, “I can think of a few.”
What I actually meant by that was: I have actually done several things with it to several different things for several reasons but I am not going to go into that right now. And his last comment rings more truth than what he is aware because that bird has soared. And if I wasn’t stretchy and moldable, then I’d have the scarring left from the splinters to prove the tale. Or tales, rather. There are many, many more where that one comes from.
But his tone leaves me to wonder.
And wonder I do.
I had been also wondering if I might dare again earlier, and dare I do. Taking a small step closer, I tilt my head in the opposite direction of where he had just tilted his not a few moments past. The voided black of my eyes search his inquisitively and my smile widens almost to the point of becoming unnatural. Oh and dare I do yet again, “And what can your mouth do?”
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