Face to the Sun [Warrick]

[Tangerine]

Tangerine

In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep

Like countless others - she was a creature who reveled in sunlight, earth, and sweet meadow grasses. But in the heavy heat summer dusk became her dawn, and although the summer solstice has passed long ago, still she clings to this pattern of night-time wandering. 

He was a creature of the sky, even back in the days when his back was a wingless auburn plain. She is forever drawn back to his steadfast presence and she searches for him now, among the volcano's roots, in the coconut grove, along the beach. For tonight she has something to share with him - the child which sleeps in her womb will not be a secret for much longer.

But that was not all that was on her mind.

Tangerine finds him where his kingdom sinks into the ocean, with the waves around his ankles and his eyes turned to the stars. 

"Warrick" she calls as she crosses the black sand to tuck herself along his side, champing and lipping along his muzzle with puffs of air as she brings his sent to her in the Ancient Way of greeting. She does not carefully hide the spiral brand which sits above the painted skin of her neck, the way she often does from others, he mind is turning too quickly as the shards of anxiety Carnage had planted in her cry out for acknowledgment. 

She smothers the feeling, but to no avail. 

"You're leaving," her heart betrays her, and she speaks the words she promised herself she wouldn't. Tangerine knew she had no right to say such a thing, to place another burden on his already straining back (he held himself to such a high standard), she had intended not to. She had intended to give him her happy news and spend a peaceful evening with him under the stars.

But little ever went the way she intended - and remorse turns her liquid-amber eyes common.

She could apologize or try to smooth over what she said, but she does not - not yet at least. She needed to hear his soothing explanation, even if she knows it's wrong to ask for it.

When had she grown greedy?

@[Warrick] I know I still owe Svedka, But he needs to know about Marble before spring D:

[Warrick]

we are crooked souls trying to stay up straight

She finds him (she always will) with tender touches of her mouth against his auburn skin, curling into the strength of his side and familiarly leaning against the downy-softness of his many blue feathers. He does not remember what he had been doing previously - was he needed somewhere, perhaps? Had he been turned towards the sea in thought, losing all track of time and sense of place until the moment her lips echo his name, and breathed life back into him with their touch? All is forgotten as she comes to stand beside him, and he is thankful for it. A shuddering exhale leaves his throat as she awakens him from whatever place in his mind he had been, his cerulean gaze quickly resting on her familiar form. Merely being beside her is comforting and he relaxes beneath the soft breaths of her against him, turning his neck towards her to brush his cobalt muzzle tenderly across the gentle plane of her ivory and honey-gold cheek.

‘You’re leaving.’

He does not react - not physically. Nothing about his posture shifts (the careful way that he leans into her as much as she leans into him, the softness of his lips against her bright and warm skin) except for perhaps the way his once bright eyes now grow dim as they find the amber of hers, resting on the irises with a steady inhale of breath with fluttering nostrils. Starlight reflects there, in the shining brilliance of her eyes, and he seems to become lost in them while silence grows between them, interrupted by the steady roll of dark waves against a shadowed shoreline.

There is no anger that curls in his chest to offer her a defense, nor does he find that there is an unbearable guiltiness pressing on his heart to open himself up to sorrow - it is merely acceptance that he feels, as if he had known this all along and only had been waiting for her to bring it up.

For he would never lay such a heavily-weighted thought onto her - not when she had given up most of her lifestyle to stay with him, birthed his children, and remained a constant for him as he attempted to understand the responsibility that came with leadership. But now that the words leave her lips, he feels as if the lock finally has opened with a key, and it is relief that floods him.

Perhaps this is how the yoke of leadership goes - it never really becomes comfortable. Warrick assumed that time would create a place for him to enjoy his country and his people, but the winged-stallion cannot remember the last time his thoughts were not laced with worry or with business, plagued with burning and distant starlight that still haunts him. It weighs heavy on him, so much so that he would do anything so that none of his followers would see...but Tangerine did. Of course she did. Warrick wonders if she is not only a seer, but a mind-reader as well. She has always been so in tune with his emotions and feelings, that he is sure that some part of her can see right into his soul and interpret things that lay hidden there that even he cannot understand himself.

“Bring me back,” he tells her, nearly a plea as it crosses his lips. There is no soothing explanation that so often comes from him, but a cry for help. Even now, he craves the never-ending plains of her once-visited homeland, where he is nothing but a face in the crowd - where his only duty is to care for her and for her to care for him, and to lay in the sun and swim in the rivers. She is  the free spirit - the wanderer - and it is only she who can soothe the ache, satiate the hunger, fill the emptiness. The crown he had always thought he wanted (thought he needed) is now the very thing that is causing him to wither away, crumbling into nothingness beneath its weight. He is tired with the diplomatics and the truces and the politics and the routine of it all.

The king sighs dejectedly, his throat tight with emotion. He’s taken on so much - what a fool would he appear to be if he is just to abandon it? He is stuck, and because of him, so is she. Yet she remains - unwavering and steady as always, even in sadness. He is amazed by her everyday.

“I am not myself anymore,” he confesses feebly, even though she already knows. It is easier to admit, when her heart beats so in time with his own.

Warrick remembers the stars Saedis had shared with him only nights ago, and the moment he saw the stars he knew that something was not sitting right in his soul. And now, Tangerine’s words have spoken to him even more than the stars had done. “Remind me,” he asks, his eyelids fluttering closed over his ocean-eyes.

Warrick

@[Tangerine]
YAY A NOVEL <3

[Tangerine]

Tangerine

In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep

 
A weighted silence grows as their eyes meet, but there is no lack of information passing between them. The way he carefully considered the meaning and impact of his words was something Tang had always admired about this man, and she does not rush him. 

Finally, finally, his expression changes and it is easy to read the relief written there. A bitter-sweet smile brings the light back to her liquid-honey eyes, and Tangerine presses her head into the crook of his neck. She doesn't need his explanation anymore; she knows that she is not losing Warrick despite the absence of his form in her recent dreams. 

'Bring me back'  he pleads, and she draws a breath sharp across her tongue. She was incapable of hearing the ache in his voice feeling deeply.

He always broke her heart in the most gentle of ways.

He had never been a king to her - he was a dancer, a dreamer, a father and a lover. To her, he had become less himself once he took the crown onto his head - she had seen Ellyse's gift as a curse. From the start, it had never been quite right, and she want's to tell him that he would be no less a man if he set down his burden... but she knows that is a decision he has to come to on his own. If he set it down too soon he would never forgive himself.
 
'I'm not myself anymore,'  he acknowledges.

"you are everything to me," she replies, as his mane falls like a curtain over her own and her lashes dance along his neck. 

The child in her womb shifts, and suddenly she can no longer keep such an existence a secret. Tangerine pulls her face away from its resting place along his neck to watch his lidded eyes - already anticipating the laughter that will make them sparkle. 

"Warrick," she whispers, to draw him back to the present as she places a kiss on each closed eye.

"There is going to be another one," and with these words, the first time this child has been spoken of, the gloomy air around them seems to dissipate like morning steam. " a little girl," she nearly laughs, "with beautiful wings and the sweetest smile you have ever seen."

@[Warrick] I'm going to post the birthing thread next! So if you want to tie this reply into that thread you can, or reply to this one... up to you <3