"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
She no longer cared for the dark. It brought unpleasant things to the surface of her mind. Things she would rather forget. Things she would rather have taken from her memory. It hadn’t started off horrible, had it? No, not she had loved him at first, mistaken the gleam in his eyes for feelings of affection. She had fallen into the darkness of his eyes because they had looked only at her, thinking that they were beautiful. If only she had known...if only she had stayed away from the way his smile had melted her insides.
If only she had some internal warning to make her steer clear of beautiful stallions that turned into terrible monsters.
It had changed the moment she went home with him. The gleam in his eyes turned harder, darker and the smile on his lips had turned sharp. Her blood flowed from thousands of wounds, never enough to kill her. Just enough to break her spirit and snap her spine. No back talking, no defiance. He would do what he wanted, when he wanted, and how he wanted. If he wanted to of it kill her, he would, but he never had. Impregnated her with claws and fangs ripping into her body, her blood warm against her body that always felt cold and empty.
Her eyes lost the look of wonder and happiness, dulling into nothing more than the basic will to live even when she wanted to die.
And then little Lyssie had come, saved her from the thoughts of dying and saving them both from his wrath. It was even better when she came with powers that he thought were useful. She didn’t like the way he used her, the way he trained her to be better once she was just a couple weeks old. She had hoped she would have more time to infuse her with love, to let her know without a doubt her mother would do everything to keep her safe. And she had hadn’t she? She had keep his teeth and hooves and claws from her Lyssie as much as she could. She had done whatever she had been told to do with a kind of desperateness that he seemed to like.
Lyssie had been safer, never completely safe, but others had had it worse. He had made them both do terrible, terrible things, but it always seemed more horrible in the dark. It was harder to see, and more just sounds and the smells.
She shook her head, the gathering dark lingering along the edges of everything. She had skirted the Meadow when the day had been still early. It was too open with no places to hide. The Forest had been the opposite, too many places for things to hide where she couldn’t see. The River was the last place she had left, and so she found her way near the banks of the river, felt the moisture in the air and the small droplets of water splattering against her legs and face. She closes her eyes just briefly, inhaling the scent of water and green pines before she turned around. The sounds of the river would do well for her, hiding any noises she made, however she knew that it would hide the approach of anyone else. It was not exactly ideal but for now, for tonight as the sky darkened and the shadows lengthened, it would have to do.
She eyes the large tree in the center, the giant oak and wonders if there is a place amongst the roots for her for tonight.
It’s strange to think that something that can happen in only a matter of moments can change your life forever. That’s all it took - moments, moments to watch the light in Moselle’s eyes fall away, moments to use everything left alive inside of herself to move the earth enough to sink what was left of her mother’s body into a shallow grave. Just moments for her to have been alive, and then erased.
Now the memories are all that Eilidh has, and so she pulls them through her mind, again and again and again, wringing them dry for the fear of losing them, too. Because she remembers, days afterwards, when the mound of earth that marked her grave was still dark and freshly uprooted, feeling so alone when she tried to draw on the feeling of touching Moselle’s skin and couldn’t. And now, how it sometimes could feel like she was never real to begin with. Like she was never here at all.
She knows what it feels like to have your light extinguished.
It had happened to her, after all.
The shadows are closing in as Eilidh wades through the meadow grass like an ocean, with thistles and lambs quarter that break across her legs and back like waves. She is making her way toward the river again, partly because she haunts it cyclically, and partly because there are quiet parts of her that hope for a second encounter with someone she’d met there recently. He’d left something in Eilidh that she had thought she’d forgotten; a light, small and fragile, but there.
“A light in the darkness,” she says, softly, as she walks.
When she rounds the wide trunk of an oak tree she sees her there, with the gathering dark on the horizon lingering in the fractures of her irises; a kindred spirit in the water. The river might have hidden her well enough from most, but not from Eilidh; she has existed in every inch of space that it offers.
“Do you like the night?” Eilidh asks, because she always has.
a dragon who couldn't be hurt on the outside could have so many ragged holes inside
Quiet, he needs a bit of quiet.
Breckin doesn’t like all of his idiocy any more lately - he thinks she’s stressed about the kingdom’s relations, with Loess most likely, or Tephra. She might be secretly pissed at the whole Klaudius ordeal. Or with the fact that he bit her in the heat of the moment. Either way, every time he wants to ask what’s wrong, there is a look about her that tells him better not.
And then there’s the kids. Roseen has been nothing but trouble for him, trying to avoid her at all costs. Thorgal sneaking up to him nevertheless. Ophanim who wants all of his attention for himself and gets annoying when he doesn’t get it (oops, where would that have come from). Chryseis claiming Breckin as a parent more than himself.
And not to even think of his mother, or Sarkis’ return recently on the shores.
So this night, he slips out of Nerine. The river is the closest common land nearby, since he doesn’t want to go far. But fairies forbid he sets foot in Hyaline now. He doesn’t want to deal with Kagerus or Briseis, and also doesn’t want to know if Thalassa also had developed feelings for him like Roseen, because then she would also be pissed, and he cannot handle three super-angry women at the same time.
If he’d only known about the mare’s past, he might have made a very wide berth around the pair.
But he doesn’t, so his shiny scales and golden locks go noticed easily in the moonlight. He approaches slowly, he’s on a walk and this night doesn’t feel like there should be whinnying or shouting at strangers from a distance to say hello, in it. He arrives after the second mare does, from the northwestern direction he came from, and doesn’t catch her question or the answer that follows. He stops though - as if he has just been walking about and accidentally hit a dead end, oh, no further walking, and simply nods to the both of them. ”Hi. I see I’m not the only night-walker around.” He gives them a bit of a crooked smile, but doesn’t make much of a move either. Those days are over, after all.
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@[Willa] @[Eilidh]
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
The sound of another approaching had been lost amongst the gurgles of the river. While normally rather observant, Willa had been lost looking up amongst the oak branches, appreciating their beauty. She tried to steal moments like this, forced herself to stop when she felt the fear becoming too much, when she found herself starting over small noises in the brush. He was dead, he couldn’t hurt her anymore, but she was never quite sure what kind of magic ran rampant and whether or not he would come back.
She had seen it before after all.
And she never wanted to go through what she had went through again.
So the mare’s voice was sudden, startling her from her thoughts and sending her splashing away a few steps in the river. Her eyes rolled, the whites flashing even as her head jerked up and to the side farther away from the voice. Her heart thundered in her chest, the scars along her body invisible in the dying light of the sun. ”Do you like the night?”
Her words registered, striking a chord deep within her and rattling her. She wasn’t sure why exactly but they shook her, those words. When she settled, when she realized that the voice was a female and therefore not Him, and when she looked she saw it was not Him, she managed a shaky laugh. It almost choked her as it escaped her lips.
“No.” A breathy word, barely audible. “No.” She says louder, forcing herself to be heard over the river. “It has been some time since I have last enjoyed the night.” Too many places for him to hide, to watch, and not enough places for her to hide from him. He had revelled in the night, enjoyed the way the shadows caressed him.
”Hi. I see I’m not the only night-walker around.”
That voice was not female. It had the rumbling baritone of a male and her body immediately froze. She had heard them from afar, but to be spoken too when she had carefully steered clear brought back every memory, every fear, every ounce of terror she had ever felt. The muscles along her body tensed and she turned her head ever so slightly to see him. The scales along his back glittered and she almost sobbed from the resemblance, from the imagination that turned everything similar into Him.
All the time she had survived, she had done her absolute best to not show fear. Even now when her body shook from terror and her muscles were so tight she looked like a coiled spring she raised her head just slightly, a rare bit of defiance glimmering just slightly there in the dark depths of her brown eyes.
Her heart pounded in her ears but she forced herself to take a long look at him, forced herself to take in the details, to notice the differences and only then did she spin herself around so she faced him. “Too many things go bump in the night now.” She says, a softly continue conversation carried on with the mare, even as her eyes stayed upon the stallion. She saw it wasn’t him, knew it to not be so, He had never had golden streaks in his mane and tail before. Too much glittering, gave one away in the darkness by the glint of the moon and the stars. “So it seems.” She says, her words now directed at the male. She blinks, looking between the two of them. “I apologize. It has...It has been some time since I have been around others.” But her eyes always fell back on him with a wary watchfulness.
A veil of moonlight cradles her face against its palm, and it feels like home.
It feels like a touch that she used to know better than she knew how to breathe. Eilidh smiles for the memory that doesn’t make her ribs feel as though they’re going to collapse in on themselves; they are so rare. And now everything is quiet, with only the faint trickle of water and the gentle echoes of her words falling between them. Eilidh loves the night so much that sometimes she forgets that not everyone was the same, that some harboured fear in their hearts rather than gratitude when they saw the daylight dimming. Moselle came from the stars, and because of that Eilidh romanticized them in a way that most didn’t.
A light in the darkness.
Her light in the darkness.
So, she doesn’t mean to frighten the stranger. She doesn’t mean for her to move like she’s been set on fire; for her eyes to roll wide and white with fear. For a moment everything is wild with the jolt of her body and the splash of river water. For a moment Eilidh’s heart is racing, too - she can’t help herself, because the movements the stranger is making now mimicked those that Moselle made the last time.
At first Eilidh says nothing, she doesn’t want to make it worse, but then the other mare breathes: “No.” No, she doesn’t like the night. No, she doesn’t think that the stars are a light in the darkness. No. And Eilidh doesn’t argue, just waits for her to settle, and once she does Eilidh takes a gentle step forward so that the moonlight illuminates her entirely.
It isn’t over, though.
There are only a few quiet moments that exist between them before calamity strikes again.
A second stranger breaks into the clearing. He, like Eilidh, likely doesn’t mean to startle her - but he does. Because he comes from the darkest parts of the shadows, like a wraith. Though he flashes them both a crooked smile, his build is large and the gruff nod he extends then towards the pair of them is not particularly approachable. She can see the mare as she quakes in her bones, but Eilidh knows that the worst types of monsters could find you whether you were looking for them or not. When at last she settles again and the mare apologizes, Eilidh can only shake her head, softly.
“No, don’t be sorry,” Eilidh offers softly, with her head low and her eyes clouded with regret. “We shouldn’t have startled you.”
“I’m Eilidh.” She says, craning her head to look at both of them as she speaks.
“Would you like some company tonight?”
a dragon who couldn't be hurt on the outside could have so many ragged holes inside
She’s terrorized, the first one, the one who just stood there. He sees her eyes roll, sees her tensed muscles, so he blinks at her but doesn’t dare move a muscle until she calms down some more. Then, he tilts his head slightly at her as she speaks, she is looking at him so tensely, but she must mean the words for the other mare, because it’s not an answer to his question.
His eyes have the worried glance of someone having stumbled upon perhaps, a wounded horse. She must be wounded on the inside, figuratively then, otherwise she would not have jerked her head so. He hardly registers her polite-enough answer, but nods as the second mare speaks. She doesn’t need to be sorry.
His eyes glance to Eilidh when she introduces herself, and he registers her silver bay colouring with a bit of a smile - it’s a familiar colour, though he has the added roaning to it, and the golden streaks (but those hadn’t been there from birth); almost as if looking through a mirror to his own past. A past where he had a sister with the silver-on-roan-bay colouring. A more recent past when his son was born, silver sooty bay. All in all, there is a subconscious familiarity to her even though he can tell they’re probably not related.
The question she asks is a bit of an odd one, though it is meant for the dark-coloured mare. She reminds him of Briseis, though he doesn’t think that she would like to hear about all his stories right about now. She had a past with, obviously, a stallion who had wronged her in more than just the heart-breaking way, or she would not have reacted to his voice like that. For that alone, he could be sorry, but also slightly annoyed, evident by a more distant look as he almost absentmindedly, flicks his tail in a slightly irritated way. He’d always been one to protect, and to know that someone had damaged another this badly, was enough to make him tense.
But he wasn’t here and the damage had already been done, so he tries not to show too much.
Looking from Eilidh back to the black mare, he carefully chooses a few words to say. ”I’m Leilan. From Nerine.” he says. Admittedly, he adds Nerine purposefully, because he knows it is well-known as more of a female kingdom, and perhaps the idea that he lives with the former Amazons, now Leviathans, could ease her. Them. Knowing she’s wary, he doesn’t move an inch from his spot, either.
Crazy as it sounds maybe in light of the past two years, living with so many sisters, even if he had avoided them as much as he could in his youth, and had spent a few years of his life mainly irritating girls and winning them over; now that he’s more settled down, he knows exactly how to handle a highly emotional girl - with care. But this one is not family, so he doesn’t expect her trust. She has no reason to, so other than that he won’t invite her anywhere, and makes not a single move towards her, he just has to wait.
He can’t very well go offer her to hunt down her wrongdoer, or even just find a place to hide in Nerine, if she doesn’t trust him, he thinks.
Looking to Eilidh briefly, he has nothing to add. Perhaps the black mare is better of with her alone; but they know he is here, now, and even if he left them, they might be afraid he was some scary monster hiding out his chance, so that wasn’t going to work now either, he supposes.
It’s an impasse, for him.
HTML by Vanilla Custard, picture by x-celebri-x on deviantart
@[Willa] @[Eilidh]
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
It dragged her down, this feeling of being absolutely stupid. She felt it now as she looked at both of them, as the mare, Eilidh, stepped closer offering both comfort and company. She wanted to say yes, wanted to let her join her but the large male still hovered in her line of sight and she wasn’t quite sure yet what to do with him. Her body wanted to shake, but she forced it to be still. Her hooves wanted to dance, but she forced them to be steady. She says nothing again for a long moment, her eyes clearly on the stallion, clearly waiting for him to do something.
It has been so long since Him, that she has forgotten that there were good ones out there. Good ones like her Da.
“Do you lie Leilan?” His name sounding odd to her ears as it rolls off her tongue. She has made a decision in those few moments of quiet and though the words want to choke her as they come out she questions him anyways. One simply did not question the words of Him. “Do you offer honey flavored words only to become the monster of nightmares once you bring home the ones you find?” She knew nothing of kingdom. She has been hiding since he was declared dead and she hasn’t been able to force herself from being scared.
For years she has hidden herself away, talking to no one but the birds when they would listen and slowly feeling the passing of yet another day...or week, or month. She tries to be steady as she moves, settling closer to the mare, because she reminds her of the one who she had tried to befriend before Tarnished had swallowed her with his darkness.
“My name is Willa.” She says after another small breath, her voice still quiet, barely heard over the rushing water but she blinks her eyes from the stallion to take a look at Eilidh, a very small, barely there smile curling her lips. The feeling felt odd on her face, her eyes starting to slide away from her, but Willa makes a very determined effort to stop herself from immediately looking back to him.
“I remember long ago, stories my Da told me, that he had heard from others, that sometimes the dead come back to life here. Do you think that is true?” It was an odd question, but she asks her anyways, hoping behind hope that her answer is no.
If Eilidh could only take a look inside her to see what was there, under the wild eyes and flesh and fat, because she’s known what it feels like when your body betrays you -- to ask of it one thing and then receive another. Even today, past her flesh that quivers with the chill in the air, her muscles are begging her to remember how to take hold of what lies dormant inside of her, the power that lays at the ready, trapped under her skin since the day that Moselle died and a constant reminder of that betrayal. Because her body had sold her out in the worst way then.
Because she had wanted to help. She had wanted to do something, anything - and all that her body had wanted was to throw her pulse into her throat, and freeze her legs like iceburgs to the earth. She could only watch as the only thing she loved was stolen.
She could only cry out.
The memory brings hot tears to the backs of her eyes, but she blinks them away and catches Leilan’s eyes instead. He’s trying hard to settle their newly found acquaintance, and she admires him for the effort. “Leilan,” she says after his introduction, softly enough that neither will hear her but she wants to commit it to her memory. She likes learning names; it reminds her that there are things bigger than herself.
He says he’s from Nerine, and Eilidh smiles politely. She imagines the granites cliffs and the endless ocean. She had always wanted to go, begged Moselle to take her to see the ‘end of the earth’. The imagery is bittersweet.
“I’ve heard Nerine is beautiful,” she says, absently, pieces of her hoping that the imagery of Nerine might bring peace to the other mare’s heart.
But she’s unravelling.
But she’s bleeding out her truths and Eilidh can’t save her.
Like that day with Moselle, she can only watch.
“Willa,” Eilidh repeats softly, when the mare is calm again. She’s wearing a smile, but it’s so smile that Eilidh can barely bring herself to look for fear of shattering it.
“I remember long ago, stories my Da told me, that he had heard from others that sometimes the dead come back to life here. Do you think that is true?”
“No,” Eilidh answers, perhaps a little too quickly, perhaps with her wounds just a little too exposed. But she would like to think that maybe, someday, it would be true. She would like to think that maybe, someday, Moselle’s resurrection would see fruition. The stars have had her for far too long now.
a dragon who couldn't be hurt on the outside could have so many ragged holes inside
This is a new one, he sees now.
A new situation. Another kind of broken, than that he was aware of previously. She asks him the odd question - does he lie? - the one he knows he can't answer. He could say yes, he could say no. She'd never believe either answer, because her trust has been broken before. Silently a while, he stares at her. Begins with a shake of his head, then tilts it had her, tiny shake, tilt again. He doesn't know what answer would satisfy her. But she speaks more, and she speaks of monsters, and nightmares and bringing 'the ones you find' home, and then she gets a more definite shake of his head, and a frown.
It takes a while for his half-answer to form like this, and then the second mare gets his attention when she says Nerine is beautiful. He nods to her, still wondering what he can say in the moment.
But Willa isn't done.
Her story is leaking out to them in bits and pieces, but the dam has been broken already, and the flood will come. Eilidh says no, there are no dead horses resurrected, but the truth is that there are. Now Eilidh gets a little frown, for her too-quick-denial. "Sometimes they do," he says then, knowing it's not what Willa wants to hear. But he knows what else to say now. Do, actually. "Tell me about the monster, Willa. What's his name?"
He needs to know, now. Needs to know what to look out for, if he wants to keep them safe.
Somewhere over the course of the last two minutes, them went from his family and friends in Nerine to these two, as well.
HTML by Vanilla Custard, picture by x-celebri-x on deviantart
@[Willa] @[Eilidh]
Aww look, he likes you <3
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
Too quick. She notices and shifts herself subconsciously a bit farther away. That wary look falling back into her eyes. “No, no, I don’t want that.” She says, her eyes straying from them both to look into the darkness that had now surrounded them. A small sigh of fear escapes her, the breath rushing past her teeth to escape into the cold night. Her heart thumps a little louder, beats harder against her rib cage.
He speaks again and it’s not that she forgot that he was there but she turns sharply to look at him. ”Sometimes they do.” Her breath whooshing from her lungs and her knees almost buckling before she snaps them back beneath her. “His name?” She almost laughs, but she cannot, it’s stuck in her throat almost suffocating her.
Her breath wheezes through her lips, her eyes almost rolling again but she manages to steady herself. She doesn’t know how, but she does. She moves away from them moves closer to the steady trunk of the large tree, finding a place to lean. “His name is Tarnished and there’s not protecting yourself from him.” She says, her voice fading and her eyes seeing other things than what stood before her. “Just saying his name….” she shudders, hoping that it doesn’t have the effect of bring the death back to life.
She wants to trust them both, but long ago realized that you can never trust what you see. There was too much that could be hidden inside deep where it mattered. She never would have thought that Nish would have hurt her the way that he had, never would have imagined that he would have tormented her and broken her the way that she had been. It hurt and broke her confidence to think that she could be so wrong, so utterly, and completely wrong about someone. It broke her happy too, her carefree laughter. All of it was long gone, broken by the shadows and the evil.
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