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    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


    hold fast to the break of day || any
    #1
    like the sun swallowed up by the earth
    It is nearly nightfall, the in-between time where the day is almost done but night has not revealed itself. The sun has not yet touched the horizon, but Warrick comes here long before that. The bay stallion stands near the base of the towering volcano, his brilliant blue eyes staring thoughtlessly into a rivulet of molten lava as it slowly boils, beginning its long journey though Tephra. He found comfort here, watching magma bubble idly instead of staring into a running river of water. The lava was in no hurry – it was calm yet purposeful. The idea soothes him.

    The lava at night was magical. It brightens and revitalizes the darkened world, pulsing with life. As the sun moved across the sky, the lava begins to make a glow onto Warrick’s auburn coat, making him illuminate in the coming darkness. The warmth on his skin is comforting, though to many it might be too intense. He could feel the coolness of night at his back and he instinctively steps closer to the lava. He wanted to be away from the darkness, to bathe in the fiery glow of the magma beneath him and never emerge to a dark world again.

    Warrick stands quietly, stoically – as he always has. The rampant war raging in his mind and body was not evident on his outward appearance. He keeps it bottled, under lock and key – he ignores it. But it is there, ever present and lurking, like a beast at the door, scratching its way through. Remaining still only makes the scratching louder in his mind, so the Overseer begins to move forward with a rumbling sigh, following the stream of lava until he finds himself beneath the moonlight of night, the shoreline opening out before him with welcome arms.

    He is a dark shadow along the horizon, moving slow and methodically beside the shoreline. White and frothing waves pool at his hooves, his indigo legs darkening from the spray. The ocean was rough tonight – a sign of an incoming storm, perhaps? It churns and foams, the sound of each rolling and crashing wave almost overlapping each other in quick succession. The sea wind ripples the long and tangled black of his mane and tail, crisp with salt as it scratches roughly against his russet skin.  

    Warrick feels himself slipping away, melting into the background of the tropical and lush land of Tephra. His grasp is loosening, strength fading. The winged stallion halts, closing his eyes so that his auburn lids shroud the brilliant blue, and inhales deeply. The crown of leadership weighs heavy on his shoulders and he can feel himself beginning to crack beneath the weight - he is changing, forming into a new man beneath its weight, and he is not sure if he likes how that feels. He thinks of Amorette, and how he has let her down - how many others are there, besides her? Amorette is bold enough to speak out against him, but the others might not be. He grimaces at the thought.

    He opens his eyes, focusing on the tumultuous waves before him  He watches them as if there is something just beneath the surface, though he knows they hold no answers.
    Warrick
    #2


    Saedís is little more than a stranger to these shores. If oyu asked her if she lived in Tephra, she would reply with a small nod, or a breathed “yes”. But Tephra could not claim to be her home. The beautiful emerald that kissed Saedís´soft, moonshine skin had taken her as its own. But Saedís was not its child. You may try to hide the past, bury it beneath the folds of newness, tuck it away inside yourself where you can trust no one can find it. But it always, always rises to the surface, makes its way to the top. Nothing can truly conceal it. And such is the way with Saedís. She could have been Tephra´s child – daughter of grass and tree and shade and brimstone. Anyone, at first glance, could mistake her for such. But look into her eyes and the truth is instantly obvious. Saedís is the child of the sea and no one less. Her heart would always coincide with the ebb and flow of the waves, her gait synchronized with the fluid rush of the tide. It was whispered into her ear, braided into the strands of her mane.

    She did not know every face in Tephra. Still, she knew them enough to recognize the solemn figure of their king. Perhaps Saedís is no child of Tephra, but neither is she the stranger to it she once had been. Perhaps she has yet to find her path, but she is not lost. Not completely.

    Saedís lifts her head, shivering at the rush of chilly spring wind as it embraces her, dancing across her skin. The darkness is a soft blanket draping over Tephra, but the moon shines bright, orange, and the stars peer from behind a veil of cirrus. The evening softens lines, and in the half light, everything appears surreal. Perhaps Saedís is captivating herself, a small, pretty mare of shining silver with starlight on her face. But this, to her, is irrelevant. Warrick is what catches her eye, solemn and in thought – a brilliant beacon through the darkness. Saedís pricks her ears and offers a soft huff into the night, watching her breath appear before her, then fade away.

    ”What troubles you so, king Warrick, that you should seek answers from the sea?” she sings, and her voice is thick with seafoam and fairytales. She smiles, as she always does. A star-brimmed ear twitches at the roar of the sea and the cries of a gull.
    #3
    we are crooked souls trying to stay up straight
    What troubles you so, king Warrick, that you should seek answers from the sea?

    Her voice is delicate on his ears, hushed against the churning of the waves yet still clear and strong enough to be heard on the wind. His mind is as frantic as the sea, and in his solitary thoughts he had become lost to the frothing waters and spitting wind, not giving himself the chance to have heard her approach. Her voice is unfamiliar - the tinkling of sea glass across the sand - and when his wide, solemn eyes turn to meet her, he recognizes her at once. “Saedis,” he murmurs quietly, mostly to himself than to the white mare. Beneath the starlight she is ethereal, her flawless coat soaking in the colors of the night that sparkle around them, where the softness of the winking stars blink overhead. He purses his lips thoughtfully at her question, thinking of all the things he could truly say to one of the newest residents of Tephra. Ellyse and Dahmer have gone, Offspring as well (dead?), and now another has crossed over into new life (Diable Rouge...how is it even possible?). One of his closest friends still holds anger in her heart for him, and all the while he can only think of the safety and protection of everyone else...the children, the newly pregnant mares, his own dear and sweet Tangerine, his precious new daughter…

    Instead, he inhales a sharp breath, the taste of salt and smoke pungent on his tongue, and exhales in a rumbling sigh. She must know - the way her eyes softly trace the hard features of his face and rest knowingly on his solemn eyes - that turmoil churns beneath the surface of his skin, rampant and raging beneath a stoic facade. And so he does not respond quickly, and instead allows the salted wind to tug at his dark mane and tail, to brush at the finely preened navy of his feathers in attempts to scatter them haphazardly at his sides.

    “To what will I look for help if I will not look to that which is stronger than myself?”

    I am but a small nothing in this great, wide world.

    His gaze has turned back out to the sea, though a slight sparkle seems to have caught in his blue eyes. He sighs, shifting his gaze upwards to look at the many constellations and galaxies that spin lazily above them, not remembering the last time he had gazed upon them with a clear mind. He desperately wishes to change the subject, to shift the focus off of him, so while he revels in the starlight that had comforted him as a child, he asks her:

    “What is it you look to?”
    Warrick


    @[Saedìs]
    #4


    Where many would shy, so Saedís places her faith; where many would take heed to the subtle warnings of flesh and words, so Saedís will remain unjudging, sinking beneath the surface without realizing how close she was to drowning. How much pain will you stand, star-ember, before you stand against them? She is a young tree constantly victim to a wind that is eager to break her, and she will ignore the closeness of the rocks beneath her until she is strewn upon them. Take great care with her, Warrick, for she is as fragile as glass.

    Her eyes are reflections of the ocean as they settle on Warrick, searching for something that lay beneath the surface; the instinct is involuntary. As soon as she realizes how long her gaze has lingered on the stallion, she quickly turns away, the traces of a smile her apology. Her eyes entertain the gathering shapes of waves against the moonlit shoreline, and her recovery is soft.

    ”Stronger perhaps. But the ocean is a fickle lover – and she might just as soon lead you astray.”

    But for the honesty behind her words, so matches step for step the nostalgia she cannot place. She understands his need for answers, did she not stand with a kingdom once, and love it, and watch it birth and die? But she could not have, not within the short five summers she has called her life! Fitting then, it seems, that the shining starlight of her coat so resembles the gray of fog, that she should be a passenger in her own life thus far. Perhaps that is the reason she falls so quickly into the shadow of others, into the supporting arms of those who may or may not mean her well, seeking some stronghold for which she may one day stand on her own. Her attention reverts to Warrick with its ever questioning patience, and already she is beginning to trust, for it is her fate that she must.

    Rather it is her curse.

    ”I look to those I admire, those who love me and who have given me their trust”

    Her words are starsong on the night-breeze, and she smiles softly. Saedís remembers Wound, soft-spoken and astute and how the mare had spoken so highly of their king. She had placed her trust in the bay – and surely, his other subjects must have to.
    #5
    we are crooked souls trying to stay up straight
    She is easy to talk to, he decides. Her presence has distracted from his thoughts (as tumultuous as the sea itself), and somehow feels a bit lighter despite the bitterness of grief that resides in his chest. It is a dull and frantic ache, one that he had not felt since the day he had lost both his mother and his twin sister to the mountain and their stars, and though it is a familiar feeling, he knows that feeling it means he is vulnerable and distracted - something an Overseer should not be. It is why he had sought out the darkness of night (though he would not be able to find sleep anyway) to use the starlight as a thin veil, to perhaps hide is troubles at the depths of the sea and never speak of them again.

    Her words cause his bright eyes to glance her way, a curious look sparkling in their blue depths. He presses his lips together in thought, turning her statement over in his head, before looking back out the the black and frothing waters, illuminated by the moon and starlight, as well as hazy and grey from the volcano’s smoking brim. His breath catches in his throat as he begins to respond, and instead inhales deeply to get rid of the feeling. He tries again, and this time is successful: “What is to keep me anchored?” His voice is rumbling and deep, a low tone that is nearly lost on the sea wind - the question he asks mirrors a special moment to him, and it is hard to reflect on it; especially here, at the sea’s mouth, with the stars winking sleepily down at him and his companion.

    How is it, that though he has not ventured beyond Tephra in many seasons, that the ones he finds solace with are still finding their way to him? She is akin to him, somehow, just like so many others. He had come to Tephra in the need to find his family, but has instead found one without blood relation that has offered him so much more. This woman, pale beneath the moonlight, he could see staying here with him, looking endlessly into the seas and stars and questioning life and existence together as if they had known each other since birth. Her words are a comfort (and so had Ellyse’s been, and Tangerine’s, and Wound, and Amorette…), and despite the turmoil in his gaze he knows that they are the truth, and that her truth had already been known to him, deep within his being. He only needed to remember them.

    “Those who love you,” he begins, turning his gaze from the sea to survey her gently. “are they here?”

    Or are they amongst the sea? Amongst the stars?
    Warrick
    #6


    She dreams – one dream, a recurring thing that plays itself like a favorite movie on the backs of her eyelids. She dreams of osprey wings, white and black and shining, and of sea-salt. She dreams of love, and of loves; she dreams of home, a home that is hers no longer. Her dreams show her nothing she does not already know.

    ”Even an anchor cannot hold against the storms” she says, whisper-soft and sweet. She remembers the ocean drying and receding; remembers its foam-soft grass browning and falling. Without them, it was nothing. And as her beloved home had faded so had she, and what then? Darkness. Darkness and cold and lightless days, splintered with memories and with regrets. The world had pressed in against her and forced her away, and her once precious sea despised the very figure of her. Then I slept she thinks, but that could not be right. No one sleeps away days, months, years… but she had slept, in some form, and awoken only days older in a time span that was much longer. She had never been, after all, normal. So she had convinced herself that she had spent the time wandering and keeping herself alive, drowned in arms she was now sworn to forget and searching for faces that faded the nearer she got to them. She abandons her memories in favor of night and company and presses the pale of her nose against one of Warrick’s ocean-wings. ”But you need no anchors, sea-hawk” she smiles, and her voice is orca’s song and wave-break.

    They are not so different, Warrick and Saedís, in that they desire (and almost, expect) the same ‘love’ from all they encounter. She is the bright-eyed child so quickly to lay her trust, for she has not yet learned what betrayal this could bring to her, or what continual pain this simple act promises. And he? He is the osprey-king who has been hurt and has been broken, but still he insists on giving, and it would be this trait that Saedís would most come to appreciate. She can already understand it in his ocean-dark eyes, but she has not yet known it.

    It is his next question that brings a fleeting shadow to the ocean-depths of her gaze. Not enough to dim the bright shine of star-glimmer, but enough to dull it for a moment – new and unbecoming to her. She thinks of her dark-skinned lover, haunted and untamed. And she thinks of how her heart is bound to break. She thinks of how she is cursed to love too easily, and yet never stay tethered to any one place. She envies him that.

    ”No” she answers truthfully, and there is longing in the soft sea-spray of her voice. ”They are not”

    The world never did favor the dreamers.
    #7
    we are crooked souls trying to stay up straight
    He doesn’t know when it happens (perhaps it is when her mouth presses to the salt-dried feathers of his great, navy wings, or when her voice calls him sea-hawk), but he has shifted his weight and leans into Saedis with a sort of tired sigh. It is not as if they have somehow found a solution for the weight of sadness on his heart, but the auburn stallion somehow feels lighter - if only just a bit. It is enough, though, and for a moment he feels as if he can breathe fully. He inhales deeply, the familiar scent of salt and seaweed and ash filling him in a way that he finds comforting (it is all he knows, his peninsula that opens up to his family of stars that wink sleepily above him each night). A smile finds him - one that is dreamlike and wistful - and the curve of his cobalt lips reaches the blue of his eyes, sparkling dimly in the darkness.

    Warrick is stronger than he feels, and he wishes desperately he could see himself the way Saedis sees him - a protector, a guide, a fierce raptor on warm thermals with wings that keep him from plummeting into the sea. He wants so much to do well, to do his duty, to create a happiness around himself that radiates into each being he encounters, but he hesitates, he falters. There are some moments - fleeting and quick - that he feels completely content, without a worry or doubt in his mind. He wishes it would last, that he would feel good enough constantly, that his mind wouldn’t stray from where he knows it should remain.

    He is quick to see the good in her, to be drawn to her likeness by his own gentle spirit, and he hopes she sees the same. That he is trying, that he is not just a leader who revels in his title and sits back, but is consistently growing with his country, his family (for they are all his family, a creation made not from bloodlines, but from same-spiritedness and the light he sees in each one of them). He hopes she will stay here, weaving amongst the sand and sea, a quiet soul amongst darkness and chaos.

    She dims and he notices. He dims with her (ever empathetic, ever understanding), and he turns to her, his lips pressing into a thin line of a small frown. The ache in her voice, though quiet and barely noticeable, resonates in his heart. He has had the same ache, the same longing, and he feels it now. A forgotten mother and sister, their souls radiating amongst the stars that watch both him and Saedis this night, stolen from him. Warrick presses his navy mouth against her pale cheek, drawing her back from the nightmare that now plays in her mind, feeling guilty that he has reminded her of what had been, instead of what could be.

    “I’m sorry,” he says into her skin, before pulling away, his great blue eyes wide with sorrow. He wants to find them for her, to bring them here so that the sadness in her voice and in her eyes would disappear. He would, in a heartbeat, if that is what she requested of him. Sorrow does not belong on Tephra’s shores, and the great-winged stallion would do anything if only a sweep of his wings would brush it all away. “I did not mean to bring up sad memories.” He inhales sharply, turning his head upwards to look into the stars, smiling sadly.

    “I am glad you have found your way to Tephra, Saedis. Truly.”
    Warrick
    #8


    The night is still, like her heart, caught in a beat between longing and restlessness; still, as if holding its breath, waiting in the path of looming clouds. She does not shy from his touch; she shares a kinship with this osprey-stallion she has no right to feel, for they are but strangers under the watchful eye of stars. But she can feel the change in him, how the edges of his flesh tremble, and how her own sadness turns to smoke between his lips. Perhaps that is his curse – loving too fiercely, giving too much of himself to those that calls these shores their home. He is shale and bedrock… Saedís is starfire.

    ”Don´t apologize” she says; soft, breathy and unworldly. ”We all carry them.” and her summer’s smile matches that of his own, sea-spray light and silver-bright.

    Will you be, Warrick, the one who leads her home? The one who she will follow footfall to footfall?  

    Like tree and leaf they are then, these two souls. Where Warrick lay rooted to the earth of his homeland and its reality so Saedís will grow, change, and fall from the branches she has put her trust in. But perhaps they will need each other; swapping dreams for sanity and pain for comfort? The question stands true, for it is the leaf who needs the tree, and not the other way around. So does Saedís put her trust in you, Warrick, for you remind her of the stone that stands against the river; and these dangerous memories may one day be her unwinding. She puts her trust in you, because you were meant to lead. And she, to follow? In some ways, yes.

    For some strange, unholy reason, this draws a bubbling, startling laugh from between her lips – birdsong and bell-chimes. Again, she is the child of the stars, of bright-shine and silver-glitter. For Saedís cannot stay somber for long. She is made for sunshine dreams and smiles and laughter.

    Perhaps the curse of trusting has turned profitable this time. She wants to curl up under the watchful eye of Warrick and stay there until the world is less complicated; until she has lost her memories and her past. She wants to indulge in the story that dances just below the warmth of those ocean-eyes - just out of her reach.

    ”So am I” she admits; simply, softly.

    ”Tell me about Tephra Warrick, how did you know you were meant to stay here? What did she promise to instill your loyalty?”

    She wonders quietly if loyalty is a concept she can learn to grasp.
    #9
    we are crooked souls trying to stay up straight
    ‘We all have them.’

    Warrick’s mind wanders momentarily, his heart racing through the stars and galaxies that hang low in the inky blackness that yawns before them, the bitterness of loss and pain throbbing in his chest.

    He is quick to find a bond between himself and others - it is a need he cannot satisfy, no matter how many times he has seen it be his downfall. He is constantly searching for it and open to it, welcoming their stories and their heart into his own, holding them like little treasures and protecting them with the grandeur of his navy wings. Perhaps it had begun when he had been left alone, and he sought the need to fill the emptiness, and now he cannot control it. ‘Bring me the outcasted, the unwanted, the lonely - here, we will show them they are so much more than that’ - he had told Amorette, and she has done so. Tephra now swims with the many people that have been invited, and his chest beams with pride and warmth - despite the dark cloud that hangs over him. He cannot even remember now why he had come to the ocean in the first place, for he is lost in a place in between.

    Though quick to trust, quick to see goodness and light in their eyes, Warrick is fierce. He is fierce in everything that he does - in his loyalty, in his love, in his devotion, even in his anger. There is nothing that can quell that ferocity, and it is something that has been with him since birth. Perhaps it is all too much, perhaps it is why he finds himself staring into the night sky and into the ocean’s trembling waves for answers - because his ferocity in all things brings him here.

    If that is the case, he would not change it. He is fierce because time is fleeting and waning - there is no other option. His heart is on his sleeve, for in a moment, it could all vanish - just like it had on the mountain.

    That is why he leans into her, that is why their first conversation is so contemplating and deep and true - what if he is never to see her again? The thought saddens him a bit, and he sighs deeply into the salt-strewn air, his breath a cloud of roiling vapor from his cobalt lips. She speaks of Tephra as if it is alive - a thought he had himself the moment he arrived on its shores. The volcano itself has its own heartbeat, pulsing and wild throughout the grasslands of the island, a silent protector looming in the distance. “I don’t think she promised me anything,” he muses aloud, his brow furrowing in thought,“but that I made a promise to her.”

    “I was young and powers beyond our world took my mother and sister from me.” He doesn’t tell her they are in the stars, for part of him thinks she might already have guessed, the way his eyes continue to search the heavens. “I did not know what I was searching for here - perhaps the end of the world. I traced the lava streams until I knew them by heart, I swam in the ocean until my muscles learned to handle the current, I brought others here to learn the land as I had...and in return, she gave me a home and a family. That had been what I was looking for. I had looked to the skies, to the stars, but Tephra made me realize my family is here. A new one, not of blood, but of one heart all the same.”

    His voice trails off, the sound of the ocean filling in the silence as he snorts softly, turning his brilliant blue gaze down to look at Saedis. “I still look to the skies, though. I can’t help it.”

    He often flies into the higher atmosphere, searching for perhaps a sign of his mother or sister, despite his knowing that they would never be revealed to him - not in the way he wanted. They are only starlight, twinkling and winking millions of miles away - too far for even a pair of wings.
    Warrick
    #10


    Saedís, her starlit face flashing his loss as her own. Saedís, bright-eyed, became gentle as he leaned into her – lending him the tender warmth of her heart. How his words soften her young face, how their companionship lulls the storm-grey of her eyes into stillness. She cannot know of that which he speaks; of loyalty and kinship, for they are things she has seldom known. Saedís – belonging only to the stars and the sea and the otherworldly recognizes only the same sea-longing in his eyes; another child of Water left parched upon the ground.

    O! To be so torn, and she is muddied by her indecision, earth and water together until she is no more than she is; a small mare – with the indecision of dreamers in her eye. In that, she is so unlike Warrick who has become one with the sea, wind, sky and earth of his home, who knows every face from another, who glides through life with the essence of ocean on his skin, inexplicable sorrow in his eyes, who designs every action himself.

    Saedís does everything by chance: each breath is erratic; each movement unplanned; she leaves them to fate just as she leaves the earth and the wind, the rain and sunlight, certain of her own inability to control them – but even then she is certain that the earth deliberately leads her forward, the wind to whisper tales of the world in her ear, the rain to wash doubt from her skin, the sunlight to illuminate her path: some may call her insane; claiming that all of existence is as she wishes it to be, but she is simple and true in her thoughts… these things are hers, as surely as she is theirs’. Just as she is sure Warrick knows the names of every horse who has crashed haphazardly through the boundaries which he has set so eloquently around the lands themselves, marking border from border, Kingdom apart from Kingdom; he knows the names, the words and the eyes of those who would call themselves Tephrans – for it is in his mind, his body and his blood to know. She wonders if he had known from the first moment that his first hoof had crossed the borders of these lands which will always be his own. He belongs to these lands just as she belongs to him – to his lion-heart and star-soul. To him and all the other souls that she keeps in her heart; to the gentle ambition of Wound, to the sun-bright kindness of Amorette, to her lover Garbage – as fleeting as time itself. Yes, she thinks, she belongs here too – dream-song and stardust.

    It is startling, but it is there, always there, as the stream beneath the meadow-soil, as the bubbling of water in the midst of rock; it is there, and even she, even Saedís, cannot run from that which is invariably of her own flesh; it is there, and there are no excuses; it is there, and it will always be there, for it is of the eternity of the sea.

    ”I think.” she begins, ”That you and Tephra have been the salvation for many lost souls” and here; she presses her pale-white forehead into the tangles of his neck. She lends him the white-hot brilliance of the stars that was given to her – they erupt from her like lava from his volcano, swallowing the darkness around them, coating them in galaxies and brilliant star-beams. He has brought her a moment (however fleeting) of peace, and now she brings him the stars he so desperately seeks answers from. They twirl and dance around him; a plethora of embers – distant and ethereal. She closes her eyes against their brightness – wondering if he will find what he looks for in the faces of her stars. She wonders if he will see the faces of those he loves. 

    ”Tephra didn´t give you a family, sea-hawk, you did. She would be lost without her protector, lost to the whims of sea and time.” her voice is as gentle as the whisper of moonbeams and stardust that press against their skin; a gentle reminder of who he is.




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