"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
Ahead of me, the broad sweep of the land lies green and lush. As far as the eye can see, the gently rolling hills are covered with the pampas grass that has given this place its name. The pale white tops bob in the same gusty wind that ruffles the feathers of my wings. Those I hold loosely around my body, still adjusting to the strangeness of my empty belly, and at the reminder I glance down.
There, just drifting off to sleep after a morning of soar-and-canter, is the fair-haired prince. He holds one cloudy wing against his side but the other is splayed out where he'd collapsed and I reach down to tuck it in more neatly. The soft warmth of maternal love is overwhelming but in a way that only causes me to smile happily down at my little boy. He is perfect in every way, I think, from his fluttering eyelids all the way down to his striped hooves.
It is easy to pretend that this quiet life we live is our real one, and not some odd getaway. The land beneath my hooves belongs neither to me nor my husband, and the land that does belong to him is unreachable. This is not a predicament I have found myself in before, and it feels odd.
I have Wolfbane's favor as well as his love - he had called me his Queen in front of the assembled Southern lands - but I have no authority. To be reminded of this (as I have so recently been) brings an uncomfortable feeling to my chest. The Loessians I know are not here with us, and those that have come are unfamiliar.
Where is Kaurma? And who is the splashed mare who eyes my husband with bald lust when she thinks I cannot see? I was prepared for the shadow-dwelling wraith but I am uncertain how to deal with the stranger whose purple hair I had once pulled from between my husband's feathers.
These thoughts bring a scowl to my face and I force my attention elsewhere. Instead I scan the horizon with storm grey eyes. Good timing indeed; I lock eyes with someone who has just crested a nearby rise.
@[Anyone]
@[Kaurma or Electra maybe? since she thought about them but no pressure!]
And with the winds, my greyed sister is gone... Again.
Sent on some duty to the new Sylva leader I assume, but I do not try to find her this time. She is as feral as the wild things that call Sylva home now. And I feel that I no longer belong. My father dead. My mother... Well who really knew any more. Her ambitions had always rose above me and quite often I had found myself at my father's side. Wondering if she would return for me. Or even if she cared for me at all...
My golden body travels from the dark of Sylva and instead of going East to a place I once called home, I go South. Perhaps there I would find a new life. A new destiny, one that involved taking care of others who appreciated the effort.
As I cross the borders, my green eyes look across a vast expanse of lush greenery. And in its center a small speck of yellow stands out against the colors, much like I do. My chocolate ears twist forwards when I recognize the navy wings that I have only ever seen on one other. Mother...
My peridot eyes look and I scuff under my breath. Of course she is here, why the fuck not. Apparently I can not escape my past and those that stain it.
I bend my neck to turn myself back to where I had came from. To venture to the farthest ends of Beqanna where none would know me, and they would be strangers as well. But as I turn I see her look up and my eyes can't help but hold her gaze. It stills me and I wonder what her thoughts are of me. Was I a nightmare she too could not escape? A reminder to the most broken pieces of her past? Am I regret...?
Delta
SURPRISE! haha
@[Lepis] maybe they can have a heart to heart and she tells him she is not his mother... I dont believe we have been down that road yet
I would know those green eyes anywhere. Even from this distance, even with the way he has grown in the last six months, I recognize Delta. When Arthas had thrown me from Sylva, he had made it quite clear that Delta would not be coming with me. That hadn't surprised me. The boy had always been closer to his father, and I have assumed he chose to stay in the forest rather than return to his birthland - our homeland - Loess.
Leaving Pteron where he dozes, I cross the hundred yards between us without thought, my blue-grey eyes fixed on the buckskin colt. It is clear that the boy is the son of Arthas, and it is easily believable that I am his mother. We share the same pale bodies and dark hair, even the splashes of white paint markings across our coats.
Had I known he thought me ambitious, I might have laughed.
Ambitious isn't quite the right descriptor. I do truly not want more than what I have. I only want to ensure that I recover what has always been mine, the power and influence that I should rightfully have. I want the same for Delta, the same for Pteron. My children.
The emotion I feel for the acidic buckskin is not the same as for my winged newborn, but that does not make it any less. I loved him as I'd have loved my firstborn; my fault lies in my lack of parenting abilities.
"Hello Delta." Because I am unsure what Delta might think of me I do not crowd him, but rather stop a comfortable enough speaking distance away. We had not been a hugging family (my fault, like most things) but the smile I wear is warm and easy. With his father gone I had hoped to see him sooner, but the world that has been disrupted by the Plague is a strange and frightening one, and we all react differently to fear.
I simply watch as she now nears me. A hard lump within my throat attempts to rise, but I push it down with great effort. It could have very well been the acid bile that is my insides, wishing to make itself known. Again.
I am unawares to my history and the very reason I have always felt out of sorts. I call her Mother but I feel something missing. Like I am the butt of some cruel joke. Mary was so sure of herself always, it seemed. But I am unsure of everything and so I attempt to hide it with a faux sense of propriety. The protector that is nothing but a weak child beneath it all.
My gaze does not falter, and again I stand steady as if I have something to shield from her. Little do I know she can see right through me.
Hello Delta. Thats it. Thats all you have to fucking say!
I scuff at her greeting, her affection -or lack there of. "Mother..." I match her impalpable greeting. My eyes linger emotionless upon her, trailing the many scars across her buttermilk body. A slight tinge of concern weakens the wall I have built around me, and a sudden rustling in the grass causes me to turn towards where she had been. At first I think it to be a small creature, perhaps a fox searching for a meal. But there is a scent upon the breeze that hints to it being something more.
My gaze returns to the slate grey of hers, "Seems you get around." It was an implication and my shoulder rolls with indifference. Another suitor, another title, another bastard child. It mattered little to me anymore.
With no more than an ignorant dip of my blanketed face, I excuse myself, "I'll let you get back to your duties..." My body shifts away from her and to head towards the cragged hills of Loess. A snort vibrates from my nares when I have turned my back to her, as she has turned her back on me...
Delta
@[Lepis] well isn't he all butterflies and rainbows :|
I do not recognize the emotions that mar the familiar face of my oldest son. This is not the happy-eyed colt I remember, nor the somber teen I had been forced to leave in Sylva. This is someone else entirely, a man who looks like my Delta. I had greeted him with a warm and easy smile, but the look he gives me is absent of emotion entirely, and there is no visible pleasure on his dark face at seeing me.
What had happened?
What had his father possibly told him that might have turned him against me so readily?
My smiles fades slowly, the confusion on my face shoved aside for obvious hurt at his implication. I flinch as though the barb of his words had almost been tangible, but my child will never be the target of my infamous temper. I swallow my defense, because to never speak poorly of his father in front of him is another vow I’d sworn to myself. He doesn’t need to know that his father gave me away when I was barely older than Delta, that he’d knowingly fed me to the wolves to advance his own political agenda. He doesn’t need to know that the colt that I’d birthed might have been his half-brother, or it might have been the bastard of any of the nameless Sylvans who’d taken advantage of my captivity.
He doesn’t need to know any of that, but I cannot help but remember it all at once.
I swallow a rising bitterness as he turns to go. Already?
“Why did you come to the Brilliant Pampas?” I ask his departing figure. I am not sure if I will get a response but the idea of not trying is one I cannot accept.
I watch as my words strike her with intent. Good, let her feel what I feel. Unloved. Disposable. Without purpose or belonging. I may have stayed in Sylva, but it was for the love I held for my family. She had left. That was her burden to carry, not mine. And still, I am hardened by it.
With my back to her and my eyes to the horizon, I walk proudly. I did not wish for the poisonous lives my family seemingly craved. Her words called out to me, rise the bile that I had held tightly in the pit of my stomach. My movements stop, my face hardly turning to see her where I had left her.
"To find a family deserving of my love. One that does not faulter with the changes of the wind nor tide of ambition. Clearly I have miscalculated my path..."
Venom laced words flow easily from my lips and then movement returns to my body. Carrying me off in a new direction entirely. There perhaps I would find my true family.
There is no mistaking the bile in his voice, the dismissal and dislike in his face as he barely turns back to face me. Though I know in some ways he is right, I am equally sure that he blames me for all the hurt he feels regardless of whether or not I am the true cause of it.
Something else hurts him, something I cannot fathom. I am sure of this. Nothing else could have turned him so solidly against me so very easily. It's not been a half year since I left Sylva and my son. I had assumed Arthas told Delta where I had gone and that he had made it clear that I had been banished and was unable to retrieve him.
I'd assumed - apparently mistakenly - that he had not wanted to come with me.
I'd assumed - apparently mistakenly - that Arthas might have told him the truth: that our relationship was loveless, that we had been nothing more than friends for years, that even though I had chosen to put myself first for once in my life that doing so did not mean I didn't care for my family.
"I have always loved you," I tell his departing figure "And I always will. I don't know what your Father told you, but that has never been untrue." I don't expect him to come back - at least not yet, not if he has even a sliver of his father's pride - but I can only hope that he will remember this when he most needs to.
The quiet that has suddenly filled Loess brings music to her ears. The cowards had ran the first hint of danger. She on the other hand laughs in its face and awaits its wrath. It doesn't come and she is quick to wonder what has become of her own spawn. Tucked away in the hills of Hyaline, under the watch of her sister, she is nearly certain nothing ill would befall the child. She is mistaken and does not know Kreed has fled the mountainous region and found herself on a journey of self discovery. The bay mare also does not know that at this very moment, her child grows ill in health and temperment. Thanks to the girls sinister father she is sure.
No she is here, on the borders of Loess and the safe haven. Always lurking, always listening. It is from a great distance she hears a scuffle. Shouted words and implications. It causes a malicious grin to spread wide across her blackened lips. Gold eyes stretching across the plains to find two figures in a stand off of sorts. Eavesdropping ears hang on each hiss of words and then it is over. One turns their back, the child. While the mother is left pronouncing her love into the empty air.
The vampress could sympathize. She had left her own child in the care of another, with good intent. Solace could provide the child so much more. But again I am naive to the fact that that very child was in the company of wickedness. Bruise could easily twist the child's mind. Influence her to thinking her mother abandoned her. That she did not love her. That only he could give her all she ever dreamed.
A chuckle chokes from her lungs loud enough that the buttermilk mare may know of her position. Let the winged creature come closer to see for herself the darkness that is ever present.
Kaurma
What goes around, comes around
@[Lepis] Thought maybe this would be a fun continuation...
Though I had not been shouting after Delta, it might seem so to a creature with supernatural hearing. It harder for me to hear her laughter from the shadows – so hard in fact, that I do not. Instead it is the cool spring wind that brings awareness of her presence, and my storm-grey eyes pick out her shape amid the trees. There are few of them in this wide green pampas, but I am unsurprised that Kaurma had found them.
The bay woman has always been more than capable of surviving, and though I had a brief moment of concern for her well-being, I had been doubtful something as mundane as a plague might keep her away. No, I’d assumed she might have heard of Wolfbane’s declaration, the easy way he’d called me his queen when we had faced the gathered mass of Sylva and Loess. Since then there has been no official proclamation, but there has also been no sight of Kaurma.
I wonder – perhaps irrationally – if she knows what Wolfbane has asked of me in private.
Rather than worry from a distance I move closer; there are some difficulties, at least, that I had been taught to deal with. Dealing with the jealous lovers of my king had been a lesson my mother had taught me well. I suspect that my mother never had to deal with something quite like this though. The woman she’d lost my father to had been as mysterious as Kaurma, as gifted in unseen ways.
I, too, am gifted. This I remind myself of as I approach, knowing that my advantage is less in the ability to warp her emotions and more in my determination.
“It took you long enough to make it,” I tell her, with enough lightness in my tone to suggest I am teasing rather than passing judgement. Wolfbane had commanded us all to come to shelter in the Pampas, but there had been some that had lingered, and some that still cross the border. “I hope you haven’t been ill?”
She had heard the warning reverberating through the cavern she called home when Bane gave it. But she wasn't as easily swayed to follow his commands. Her position here was out of necessity and nothing more. Plus it may have been day when he made the announcement and she wasn't about to burn for nothing. Plague or no plague, she wasn't going to choose sure death in an inferno of flames.
When night did come, she had other tasks to attend to. Bane had knew of her pregnancy and with whatever maternal instincts she could have possibly possessed, she wanted to know what had become of her spawn. She was quite possessive of her things and knowing of its safety was of utmost importance. So she had slipped away and stayed clear of the Pampas.
Having not found her child in Hyaline had disturbed her somewhat and so the search continued. Bringing her now to the border of a safe land and in the presence of someone she knew from kingdom gatherings. Never really bothering to engage with the winged creature, or anyone else for that matter. Just Bane. Though there relationship was of mutual benefit only, one that did not involve commitment or coitus for that matter. She had no interest in the stallions heart, just the blood that ran warm through his golden body.
Her attention remains with the navy winged equine as she now turns and nearly mistakes her as nothing more than part of the landscape. She grins at the mortal strife of normalcy. Even now she can hear the faint strum of the others heart beating.
Winds shift and sweep the bays scent out into the open prairie. Hinting now to her presence and this time the other stops to find her nearly black figure against the shadowed treeline. I simply wait, allowing her to come to me as I have no interest in feeling the burn of sunlight on my pelt.
Ebony ears flick forwards when the mare speaks in sarcastic tones. A scuff comes from her lips in response, "I've been busy... Seems something I had left with Solace has gone missing." Her body leans lazily against a nearby popple tree, "Kids," she huffs as if exhausted by the subject and gives a roll of her golden eyes.
Lepis asks of her health and she allows a chuckle to escape fanged jaws, "Healthy as a... well, horse." Her body shifts away from the tree and she takes a single step forwards, "How's things here?" Her tone is chipper but underneath lies a hint of uncaring. She much rather enjoyed Loess as it is now. Quiet. Peaceful. She could rest during the day without every Tom, Dick and Harry chattering in her ear.
