"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
Rhonen has begun to wonder if he will ever find a home, or if he is destined to be alone since he lost his family. Perhaps he is only half of a person without his twin, and nobody wants half a person as a friend or anything else. There is only Atrani, and while he loves her quite dearly and always returns to her side, it is not the same as having a home. A whole family.
His family.
Everything would change for him if he knew he had a nephew wandering around Beqanna; if he knew that Nairne had left a son behind here, if he even knew Nairne had been here. But their paths had not crossed – Beqanna was too big a place, and even though they like to pretend they’ll just KNOW when family is about, it’s not true. It had always just been – return to the Falls, and the family will find you. But since the Falls are no more, they have no homing beacon. Their line is finally lost, to wander like so many others.
If you’re into dark tragedies, he’s sure it would make a great one.
Today he is in the Forest, tucked away in the dark. Dark like his encroaching loneliness, if you think like that. (Rhonen does). Unfortunately not dark like his coat, because even in the gloom the chestnut with the slightest akhal-teke shimmer and high white points shines like a beacon.
His exterior certainly doesn’t match his interior thoughts, or even the scowl currently plastered on his face while he stalks under the trees, going nowhere in particular, muttering to himself about how much life sucks.
I want you to know that I'm all yours; you and me, we're the same force.
If there is one creature in this wood that knows about loneliness, it would be Reagan.
She walks, cloaked in black, her body changed to meet the needs of a disguise--she is as dark as night, an oil slick sheen to her. She is like tar--sticky and sweet and dangerous. Even her eyes are changed this day. She moves like a viper, sliding between the trees on legs that were made for sinning, silent as the grave. She never comes to these woods anymore. But something in her heart drove her here this day, and she came with a lump in her throat, the images of her memory assailing her like the many sharp blades of those icicles of her ex-husband. That magical pain that seered her heart and made her as one of the mortals.
This, here, is where she almost died.
But these trees gave her their whispers and beckoned her here. So she dons protection to hide her face, and changes the shape of her body as so to go unrecognized by any who should approach her path. While she does not take for granted that she is so infamous that she would be known immediately by sight, there is one undeniable fact--
There are a limited amount of magicians in this world, and far fewer females at that.
These trees bent and bowed for their mistress as she quietly makes her entrance known—they would have known her anywhere. She has birthed her children in these woods. Hunted these woods. Protected and defended them.
Until it was her job no longer.
Her family, was broken, her children scattered.
And so she finds, it is time to begin again.
It does not escape her notice, that despite how far flung her location in this forest was, that there was always something—or in this case someone— to find. It was as if, even in the reverie of one's quiet, there is always an anvil. In this case, a copper colored anvil with bright points that shone likes stars in the darkness.
Reagan says nothing, but begins to turn away, tilting a shoulder to him, dampening her steps so as not to turn over leaf or root. Perhaps she would slip by unnoticed—much like a shadow or a poltergeist.
She was not sure she was ready to address a conversation in this location.
He is lost in his own thoughts one moment, the mumbling and grumbling as he stomps his way across the forest, but a sense of motion, something sighted out of the corner of his eye, pulls Rhonen quickly and firmly out of his thoughts and into the present. He freezes, going entirely motionless except for his head, which comes up quickly; ears flicking back and forth, eyes wide to take in the gloom and shadows, nostrils flared to catch any spare scent. The actions of a man who has experienced a living nightmare, and still has the repeat nightmares to remind him.
A man who has been attacked before.
It doesn't take an extraordinarily long time for him to spot the mare, though it takes him longer than he thinks it should. That makes him uncomfortable, uncertain, and he response instinctively to those unfortunate feelings bu lashing out, at least verbally. "Hey!" the word is drawn from him in a growly tone, tension vibrating through his entire coppery body. But - that's not right. He knows it's not right; encountering a stranger in the gloom doesn't mean that stranger is planning to try and destroy the world. She hasn't done anything to him, there is no heartbeat of the world under his hooves, no scent of death and decay under his nose.
Rhonen takes a deep breath, forces himself to lower his head to a neutral position. Some of the tension bleeds away accordingly and he calls out again, voice still gravely but calmer. "Sorry I mean - sorry. You just startled me. I maybe overreacted." he waits a moment, hoping she will turn back towards him, give him a second change. Immediately wonders why he cares - it's not like she's Atrani. Not Aubri. Not Nairne. Still something prompts him to add - "I'm Rhonen."
I want you to know that I'm all yours; you and me, we're the same force.
The black mare looked at her copper colored beacon, and did not starte when he approached her—nor when he rebuked her. She had known he would do so. Her only care was that she was not discovered in herself, and so, she wills that she will not be. Reagan's eyes roil with all the tumultuousness of a galactic storm, and she smiles at him kindly, in a removed, ethereal way. Rhonen. She had known his name, too.
She could have discovered his past, if she wished. But he was not interesting enough for her to crawl though his mind, pressing her fingers into images of his memory. Here in the world of shadow and black, she wonders what has brought such a penny here. For her, it was bad memories, and to check on the world that she had once held dear.
What could his reason possibly be? No one ever came to this part of the forest unless they had something nefarious on their mind. Or unless they were running from something.
Rhonen looked like the boy next door. Which meant he was running from something.
Her voice carries an unnatural echo to it when she looks at him, her smile disingenuine, her eyes shallow. What would she give to go home where she was safe. "I am Reagan" She whispers, as an enchantment that he would forget when they left here and parted ways. "It is easy to be startled in this part of the world."
Her eyes are hooded, and she is cloaked. "Why do you look like you're running from something?" There. Said it. She's too old for aritifice any longer.
Rhonen was a normal boy – the next in a long line of legacy for the Falls. Perhaps he might have been the first King of his line, rather than their many Queens. Maybe it had been his mother’s dream to leave Rhonen to the Falls and Aubri to their father’s Kingdom, two coppery-bright royal children to usher in the next age of royalty in the Falls and the Deserts. But the world had begun to change around them, and Mikhael and Natilyn took their family out of Beqanna – Rhonen should have gone, but he had answered magic’s call and it had changed him forever.
She is magic by nature, and in this dark place he can sense it. Perhaps it is true he will remember only what she wants him to remember, but for now everything is fever-bright in the gloom. Well, everything except the mare’s eyes, which seem unfitting for the rest of her. “Reagan,” he repeats, tasting the word on his tongue and in the back of his throat. It reminds him of grandmother’s – and so he wonders. Some would believe that names have no power, but Reagan’s name has the same old-time power flavor of Yael’s. Something he would never tell anyone else, but he believes it in his gut.
Even if she is magic, he cannot bring himself to be afraid.
“Maybe because this part of the world is good for people who are running.” That’s not right, though, not any more than yelling at Reagan had been right. “I’m not running. But I’m certainly tired of looking and not finding.” Looking for his family. Looking for a home that is like the Falls. Looking for a friend. Looking for an escape from the nightmares. Oh. “I could be running from the nightmares,” he says thoughtfully, tilting his head. “I can’t dream if I don’t sleep.”
I want you to know that I'm all yours; you and me, we're the same force.
I don't dream if I don't sleep.
He sounded so sure of himself--and yet so sad at the reality he was living. Reagan know about that. The guilt she carried whenever she thought of what had happened to this forest. She was dancing the borders of the Taiga, and even with he muted, dulled senses, she could feel the roots begging for moisture--for love and for comfort. They had recieved it in the form of another, but would it be enough? Would it ever be enough? The images were frightening, and When Reagan focuses in on the copper beacon in front of her --Rhonen, it is with a sad smile that she speaks. "I know what you mean."
She falls silent then, her mind peaking into his past, seeing the images that haunted him, and the greatness he might have led if the Fairies had seen feet to leave the Old Beqanna as it had been. Her heart aches at the thought of the loss of the Dale--a place she has not thought about in ages.
"Have you ever thought that maybe you would stop wandering? Or is the thought of facing your nightmares so deep that you would just prefer to keep running?" she uses that word again, a knowing look in her eyes. Her black body is slowly melting away into her natural self, and the call to the trees is greatened... her heart is pining for them. She knows what it means to run.
It is what she did that night that she was caught. It is what she did after she had her last frost baby. She ran from the ice... and into the fire.
And she was not sure she had ever truly recovered from it.
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