"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
I can remember a time when I was so afraid when even my shadow wouldn't follow me
There was nothing that made Elaina great, or wonderful, or even unique aside from her wild past. She was a mass of tortured beauty- broken and beaten she had lived a life of solitude and loneliness, the constant heart ache, the battered dreams, the beautiful friends and family. But she was trying. But the betrayal, the hurt and the loss all factored into the creature that was here in Beqanna.
Elaina briefly wonders what happened to Altair, and if Lilli was safe. She wondered if Aerwir was still in Woodlands or if he had moved on, she wondered what happened to Soren and if he missed Beylani still as much as she did. Elaina yearned for the comfort of her family and her friends, yet she knew she must push that yearning, that love- behind her. She had no time for it anymore, it only seemed to cause more pain and eventually she would not be able to take it any more.
So maybe this was it, with Kensa. Starting fresh, wiping her memory of all that pained her. She would pick herself up and rebuild her world, no matter the limits.
The blonde has decided to travel to other lands. She needed something to keep her busy, to keep her mind from wandering to the little blue eyed red head and how they were living in different lands, unable to so easily change. Elaina knows that, if she approached Kensa, that the mare, Elaina’s leader would grant the blonde palomino passage into Wolfbane’s land without a second thought. But, the thought of doing this, sends ELaina’s stomach into a pit as she realizes, while she loves Lilli and always wants her cousin close, she didn't think she could part away from Kensa and her new home in Hyaline. Not when she had just gotten settled and not when she was trying her hand at becoming a diplomat.
She shakes that snowy mane, the feel of the spring sunshine is a welcomed relief against the winter backdrop for the summer child. Every winter Elaina suffered through the biting wind, and the freezing temperatures, but every spring she found herself with something like renewed hope. And now, with the backing of a home behind her, Elaina feels like something entirely new as she moves through Beqanna with countered steps. There is something familiar to her now as she walks, something overall comforting almost.
Her direction is the field. Although a new resident to Hyaline herself, it may seem silly to be traveling with the intention of recruiting new members, but, she thinks, maybe she could make it more relatable. Elaina could offer them the validity of their emotions, and let them know that it would get better and perhaps, offer Hyaline as a place to gain their barring and a family of some sort.
She is content in the loneliness the forest provides, in the silence the trees off her. She is a quiet thing as she moves, as tough as stone, but not entirely resistant to anyone deliberately trying to chip away at her. She is scarred, she has endured her parents death, being hunted down like property, and being ripped from her home, multiple homes. Yet, there is a piece of her that remains steadfast in her faith that there is good in this world, and that good is all around her, inside her, inside everyone. She is not heartless; she misses her friends, feels sad when she remembers those she has left behind (Alvaro, Soren, Altair, Starett, Hoshi). She only wishes them to be happy. She has been hurt, and she has found it in her heart to forgive them. She is remarkable in her solidarity, strange in the way she seems so unoriginal.
The late morning sun bakes the meadow a healthy green-gold and she smiles at the grasshoppers clicking as they sail through the air. Aside from the drone of everyday life, the birds and the grasshoppers, the forest is quiet. She is the lone stranger in a sea of old friends, fine with being near them but also fine without. She is here to converse; everyone is here to converse. Perhaps contradictory to her lone wolf attitude, Elaina finds pushing past that antisocial nature effortless and turns to a stranger, not the first she sees but the first she wants to talk to and smiles such a beautiful smile at him it breaks her heart to know her parents are not here to see it. Those amber eyes, like a wild firestorm, are like dull jewels set in the golden sunshine of her face. She is happy, and she doesn't know why, but she has already decided that he is her friend.
Childlike in her happiness and lull of adventure, Elaina simply says “Oh, hello,” as if it answers all the questions in the world.
08-03-2019, 12:31 AM (This post was last modified: 08-03-2019, 12:33 AM by Tunnel.)
She is not his usual type… then again he has been branching out of late. There will never be anything so lovely as Shroud with her wings full of thorns and her mouth full of his name and delicious taunts begging him to punish her but…He is a collector of lovely broken things. Whether they come to him broken or he breaks them himself is no matter.
The demon, the darkness that brings Tunnel his pets is does not deliver this beauty to him. She comes in the light of day of her own accord, smiling like the sun that tries and fails to reach him through the trees. (Is there really a demon at all? Likely he’ll never know but it doesn’t matter.) It is strange that he desires this golden creature the moment he sees her, yet another mystery among a dozen as her greeting rings out prettily and makes his black barred ears turn back and then roll slowly forward.
He is not used to being discovered, approached. Monsters crawling in the undergrowth don’t often find themselves greeted by happy foolish girls. His pets, most of them dark, seething beauties are elsewhere, sleeping or making themselves busy with little rebellions that will draw their master’s attention from one to another. Tunnel sees this as a boon at the moment, this bright thing might be put off by his petulant collection should she meet with them before he has laid claim to her. Some of them are jealous things who would happily anger him and fend off a competitor for his ‘’affections” and it is already too late, he wants this one before he even knows if she will be worth keeping.
In the diffuse light beneath the trees, tangled with choking ivy and honeysuckle he is only slightly less forbidding than in the deep forest night he prefers. The blue of his skin is smudged and barred in black, his face stained sooty with eyes the light flat gray of a glaring overcast sky staring out of it. He stands alone, well apart from any others who meet in the forest today. The creature Tunnel, when approached by Eliana wears an expression of indifference that she may mistake for distraction, though he does not try to puzzle out why she approaches him. “Hello, Sunflower.” He rumbles in return to her sweet chirping greeting, one side of his lip drawing back slightly. Massive hooves back him away from her, away from the edge of the forest and those creatures from outside it who think to wander into this place meant for darker, crueler things. “Are you looking for someone?” Another might have cast their gaze around to feign confusion at being approached by a stranger, but in his masculine growl there is none of this duplicity and his eyes do not leave the woman’s beautiful heart-marked face.
I can remember a time when I was so afraid when even my shadow wouldn't follow me
When Elaina had been born, there had been nothing but sunshine and smiles.
Born underneath a hot afternoon sun, her mother and father had said that she completed them, that this was trinity they needed, the final piece of the puzzle. Her mother was like the early morning light, that barely skims through the trees, docile and pretty. While her father was the ever imposing night, black and encompassing. Elaina was the sun, bright, bold, beautiful, so much like the afternoon star she was born under. Never perhaps was there a more welcomed child into this world than Elaina.
But, the peace hardly lasted. Frostbane, the Snow Prince, had insured this. So Elaina had no choice but to grow strong in a land she soon learned was filled with monsters, a monster that killed her father. She had to grow hard, stubborn, brave. A little orphan girl in this big world, who had to make such a long journey, all on her own. There was still a certain innocence to Elaina, there was denying it, softened by love, by the protection of her family, that sparkle in her eyes that says she thinks everything will turn out alright. That, maybe, this world is not all bad, as much as it tries to be.
Elaina would have done well to learn by little red riding hood’s mistakes.
He is ragged: dirty skin, angry edges, violent shine to his eyes that she had seen in only one other being in her life, but never this close, her family and friends had always kept him from getting that close, but they aren't here anymore to shield her away, the sunflower girl had left them all behind. Elaina has seen worse. She has seen so much worse. And, yet, she cannot shake a feeling of general discomfort when he turns to look at her, says the nickname her own parents had given to her when she had been so small on stumbling, uncoordinated legs. Those ash dusted nostrils of hers flare and quiver as if she might cry as he asks her a question. “No, um no, I am not looking for anyone,” she stammers, breathes, defeated. Everything about him is unwelcoming. Everything about him tells her she ought to go back now, to Kensa, where she can tell her leader about the strange man she met in the forest. “I’ll just go.” Elaina really does turn to go; she pivots that golden body, slowly, but decidedly, each movement measured to be as efficient as possible, each stride calculated exactly the way she wants it to appear. She is beautiful in her desolation, beautiful in the way her wavy blonde mane drapes sadly across her forehead, hiding that heart shaped birthmark (a symbol she was told, of her parents love and devotion to one another) from prying eyes. From his prying eyes.
But she is so, so much like her father, still, and once she has moved the few steps it takes the uncomfortable tightness in her throat to fade away, she decides she will not just be forced to leave because someone was so unwelcoming. No, she would not just be told what to do like that. The temper of a father she barely knows, if only because they hadn't had long enough on this earth together before he perished, flares behind her amber eyes (her father’s eyes), every bit of her burns with embarrassment for just a moment, and then Elaina, so in love with loneliness, so content in her solitude, pivots back around and stares the stallion down. Somehow, the anger is all but imperceptible. Her expression has not changed except for a certain metallic sheen to her eyes, a strange tightness to that pleasant smile, and the way she tilts her delicate sunshine hued head, as if preparing to make some sort of scathing comment. Being Elaina, of course, no such scathing comment comes, her mother had taught her better than that. Rather, she shakes that anger off and grins as brightly as ever at him.
“You know, you seem like you aren't very happy,” she says, making an observation based on first impressions. “Maybe if you were kinder, and learned to let people in, maybe you could be happier,” she says, innocently. This is so uncharacteristic of her, clawing at his chest until she lets him into his heart, at least as someone that does not look at her with such distant eyes and a sneer upon his lips. Her laughter is youthful, pure, not quite the cliche of tinkling chimes but more like the trilling of a silver flute. It is airy, quiet, perhaps even sad. “My name is Elaina. I am from Hyaline, do you live here? What’s your name?” Boldly, the golden palomino little mare rolls her shoulders and looks off to her right, watching as the bird float lazily between the trees. She breathes a quiet sigh, wondering, perhaps, would Frostbane be mad that he had never made good on his deal? That she lives here, breathing and blinking amber eyes.
Or would he be enthralled that Elaina still hasn't quite learned how to shut the door to the monsters that come creeping?
Blue and handsome Tunnel is not quite as frightening in the light of day. His black points, and the primitive markings that bleed darkness across his impeccable, masculine frame recall the shadows of which he is so fond. Still he does not invite company and it should not surprise him that he frightens the flax-haired girl away. This changes his mind, for as inviting as her spanish curves are he is quickly bored by lambs. Though he does like the way she tries to hold onto her pride, taking her pretty measured steps and coiling her golden neck with a tuck of her child and blonde bangs sweeping across her forehead.
Her shining-eyed determination when she spins back to him his eye narrow a fraction, pleased.
“That is rather rude of you to say. You don’t know me at all, Sunflower. Elaina.” Her name (he does love to have names) is repeated with slow savor, though he will hold on to that nickname too. She mistakes him for something unhappy or rude, assigning far too much to his cool demeanor. His lip twitches in the only indication he is at all amused by her huffy demonstration. “Very well.” The blue stallion rumbles, taking a single step forward. “We will begin again. I am called Tunnel. I live here.” After a pause in which he looks at her critically, speculatively for a moment Tunnel puts himself within a ‘friendlier’ speaking distance though he would much rather guide her deeper into the cool shade. “Not everyone can be expected to smile so prettily all the time. Some of us are content to be more sedate.” This is spoken matter-of-factly, she will become accustomed to his brusqueness or she will run away like she ought to have a few minutes ago. Tunnel will not alter his demeanor to coax her, what he wants he takes, but even a monster can appreciate a little delayed gratification.
“So hello. Tell me something you want me to know about you.” This time his words begin with something like politeness before curling into something lower, appealing, flirtation flavored with delicious darkness. Reaching out to bring his muzzle close enough to brush hers, restrained power in his every movement.
I can remember a time when I was so afraid when even my shadow wouldn't follow me
“And then, from the shadows the King of Bloodvale leaper, mouth open and aimed at Valerio’s throat!” The filly shouts excitedly as Mina and Maren sit there with wide eyes and open mouths, enthralled with the tale of their grandfather that they knew so little about. Mina even manages gasp as Elaina’s voice grows low with suspense. “It looked like this was the end of Valerio the Valiant.” Voice is somber. Elaina had a gift for storytelling, she always had. Creating dragons out of boulders, mountains out of pebbles, oceans out of streams. “But then, just in the knick of time, Valerio produced a gust of wind so powerful that he was able to blow Cazador back to Bloodvale,” she says and the fillies’ eyes light up in triumph as Elaina raises her head a little higher. “The wind was so powerful that some say it is still blowing today, and will keep blowing for all of eternity, trapping Cazador there so he may never return to Windskeep again,” she says with an affirmative nod of her head, thus concluding her story. Of course, this tale was far from the truth, but the girls had asked for a Windskeep story and Elaina certainly couldn't tell them tales about the war and how sometimes, despite her parents shielding her, she saw the soldiers come back bloodied and broken. How every time her father left she thought maybe he wont come back. She couldn't tell them about how Val returned every day looking more tired and more ragged than the day before. So Elaina tells them a story full of conquest and glory because she cant bare the truth any more and if she tells the fantasy enough, believes it hard enough, maybe it can become her new reality.
The war had scarred Elaina. He had scarred Elaina. Ugly lines that have found her shoulder from where that liquid ice burned her skin, scars from the running, her knees bare the markings. A reminder that world does not love her, as much as she loves it. She is unlucky, an orphan at the age of one, and to remain one all her life.
Her heart skips a fearful beat when he speaks; she had almost convinced herself she was elsewhere, could feel that he was not this dark stranger, a thing to be feared, but a clean, pleasant creature. Safe and comfortable, but infinitely less intriguing. Her heart settles into a steady rhythm again. She should have left.
It was true. She didn't know him at all, but the shiver he sends up her spine is familiar, for a heart beat she thinks of Aerwir, but his face is so quickly replaced with alabaster and ice, before melding into a black and white with red, demon eyes. Elaina knows monsters, she is not so naive to not know when one looks her in the face. Even as the sunlight apples across him through the trees, she knows, daylight cannot keep out the boogeyman. Not all monsters hide under the bed.
“Im…sorry,” she apologizes before she even knows what she is saying, but quickly she silences, careful amber eyes watching him like the rabbit watches the fox, wondering who is going to try to run first.
His voice, it rattles her bones once more. “Tunnel,” she says, and her mouth closes around her own breath like she is afraid he may steal it. She has never been afraid before, even when Frostbane had found her, even when a demon himself approached her, she had faced them with deadly determination, asking for just a chance, just an excuse, just a reason. But those times were different, because she had Lilli. She is here, in this land, but she is momentarily forgotten in his presence. She feels so weak. He is making her weak.
Ears flitter forward to catch his words before falling back once more amongst those blonde locks. “Can I ask you a question?” Her voice, so quiet already, is barely more than a breath. “Who exactly are you? Why are you here?” He was Tunnel, but Elaina had a feeling that was not the only thing he was.
Tell me something you want me to know about you. There is so many things, she could tell him something vague, something that would not give him anymore information about herself than he already had. Her name. Where she lived. “I’m an orphan.”
She can feel his breath against her skin.
She would do well to run. She knows this. But morbid fascination fastens her to her place before him, even as his dark lips are so close to hers, his breath inching its way across the golden flesh of her face and her knees suddenly feel weaker, bend inward in an attempt to keep her standing though her entire world is fading into a dull gray-brown blur. This is terror. She doesn't like it. She wants to leave.
She wants Valerio, her dad, Alvaro, Marcelo. The men in her lives, strong enough to make her go away. Strong enough to tell her that, this time, she’s wrong.
None of them come.
So she doesn't leave either.
Amber eyes close, those long feminine lashes falling over gemstones as she steadies the shaking in her legs, finding that body almost drifting towards him, as if the slightly distance between her and him were to much. She wants to close it, like two sides of a book slamming shut, but all of her restraint fights against it. She tears at the pages, ripping each out one by one, knowing eventually she will run out, and her fate will be inevitable.
Fear does not long appeal to Tunnel, though it has its place. She has clearly learned to be afraid of the things she ought to, a woman grown and shaped by a life he has no idea of. He almost wants to know what made her this way, able to see that something dangerous stands before her but is still unable to let herself escape. Did someone just do a very good job of teaching her what she should fear or did they instead fail her, and leave her to learn on her own why she should be afraid of a man like him?
How disappointing either way… but Tunnel, he would never see his pets afraid of anything but him. She comes to him too late for that, but the creature is too pleased by the shape of the woman to dwell long on how he might have raised her better.
“You may ask.” He says, knowing she is going to continue speaking either way and he doesn’t mind questions. They do not have to be answered. Still her questions are odd ones. Why shouldn’t he be here? A snort is at first his only reply. “I told you, I live here. Why are you here?” This is his home, his forest that he shares with monsters who would not give her the time to ask them ridiculous questions.
An orphan. Not the first he has met out here, and his appraising look turns unreadable. “That’s too bad, Sunflower. You had someone to take care of you?” Tunnel takes a single step closer, the rustle of brown leaves and pine needles as whispery as her anxious breathing against his face. Roughly he drops his muzzle to chuck her beneath the chin once. “It seems you must have.” Another step and he is drawing her bright scent (tinged by her fear) off of her shoulder, his gray eyes taking in the pattern of scars carved into her flesh. A pity that, he prefers no marks or at least only those he leaves himself. “Though they might have done a better job.” This he says more to himself as he shifts again and settles so that his chest is inches from her scarred shoulder and his mouth hovers over the arch of blonde along her neck.
“I think I might be here for you Elaina.” If he can speak with tenderness it is not intentional, but his words are a soft growl breath along the golden girl’s spine. Tunnel follows the slope of her neck back to her withers and then traces the slope of her scarred shoulder, touching her this time, slowly. “You don’t want to be alone.”
TUNNEL
@[Elaina] He is being unwieldy but we're getting there
I can remember a time when I was so afraid when even my shadow wouldn't follow me
She is unsafe. She has deliberately crawled into the lion's den and kicked away her ladder and here, trapped with this monster (She could leave, if she wanted. She could have left earlier and, still, she can leave now but she won't.) in this open cage she feels her stomach turn and something about it, she likes it.
Elaina aches to leave him behind, to go back home and pretend she had never left in the first place, to bathe in the comfort of Lilli beside her as she tells her about a new flower she has discovered. Or for Kensa to find her a new job to perform. Where Tunnel will not be there to send shivers down her spine and confusing thoughts through her head. She thinks, does he know? How she wants to run and never look back? But she cannot leave, she has found no reason to dislike him, not that she ever could, not truly. There is not enough room in the heart of her golden breast for hatred. She had hated Frostbane for so long and it brought her no closer to resolution, it only hurt her family. She has learned her heart is a tiny thing, that only holds love and loneliness and grief, often all at the same time. And, often, to such a degree that, while outwardly she may seem blissful, she feels quite desperate for something new, something to take it all away. This is what brought her here in the forest, making her way to new land. She knows, and this is why she will be a hermit if she can ever make it out and away from him.
“You could have walked away,” she says then. “Ignored me,” she says, but she thinks, this is a lie. If there was one thing Elaina has learned, is that she is rarely ignored, and for all the wrong reasons. So it begs the question, why was he here? “You’ve stayed this long,” she says pointedly. The same could be said for you, sunshine child. Why is she here? “I am traveling,” she says, an honest answer, well, it was at the time. Elaina’s trip, it would seem, was cut short for the day.
She doesn't like how close she is.
No, she is supposed to like it.
That is what she tells herself.
“I’m finding,” she says in that voice that aches to brave like her father, like her godfather, she tries to hold the tremble steady. “That I am so uncertain of you.” She says it because she can, because she has to say something and she cannot say anything but. Elaina is a terrible lair, and she doesn't want to say she is so unafraid. She is filled with the scent of mountain air and pine. But there is something that stenches of uncertainty and even fear, and it turns the mountain air to factory smoke and the pine to sawdust. She wants to be brave, really she does, but she is such a young girl, such a fragile girl, and the most she can do is make it clear that she will sprint away the second she is actually threatened.
(So she tells herself.)
You liar.
She tries to do this by looking him in the eyes (those hauntingly beautiful eyes, she sees, and finds herself interested in despite everything) when he speaks next and pushing her little body a little bit closer to him, a light step forward, head turned upwards. “My family loves me,” she says, defiantly. She was a legacy, descended from a great line all from Legado the Great. It burns hot in her blood. “They did everything they could to protect me,” she says and she feels those ears fall back in that blonde mane. She wants to cry, but she can’t, not with him.
“I dont need you,” she says, it is reflex. It aches to put those words on her tongue. “You don't know anything about me,” she says defensively. But all of it melts away the moment she feels his lips against her shoulder. She realizes what he is doing and those ears fold back once more. She decides, that she doesn't like being touched, not by him, even if she is lying to herself. She shifts that golden, scarred should away from his mouth. Elaina straightens her back, some, and takes a step away from him, skin crawling where it had touched his. She is appalled at the sick way it feels too cold without him there. But she does this with everyone, craves their attention even if they mean to harm her. She trusts too easily, loves too easily, and she is so stubborn. The palomino wants him to follow her, to close that distance once more. But Elaina has not realized that she is the mouse and he the lion.
“Why are you doing this?”
Elaina wonders, if this the type of thing a victim says? Is she just playing a part, here, while he watches her dance? She is usually so good at reading people, at knowing what they want at a first glance. But, Tunnel, is different. And she harbors a subtle longing to understand him, to push past that growling face, the uncomfortable looking, and find something inside that tells her she was right to stay, and she believes that she can, but she is a naive girl and would search for kindness in the devil if she ever met him. She should go home, right now, but her muscles are not coiled, just tense, and her heart, while beating harder than ever, is not beating quite so fast anymore.
“You will.” The creature Tunnel murmurs, low and dark. The needles and leaves beneath the woman’s hooves snap and rustle and then fall quiet because he does not follow. Often meetings like these are governed by what is to be gained and it’s worth in comparison to the energy it costs. Elaina costs too much for an emotionless monster who collects unwanted children and broken women, requires too much effort.
Irritation darkens that man’s previously indifferent countenance. Most are allowed to escape him when they become too inconvenient or boring to continue to bother with but he is already bored. Bored with what he has, with endless days and nights spent without plan or purpose. He has been too long separated from his favorite plaything, the one creature who might have summoned some feeling out of him. Try as he may there is no finding a replacement for her and though the golden creature should not put him in mind of his thorn winged pet there is a twisted connection made all the same. Tunnel wants only to possess, but with his latest quarry drifting away he makes the decision to force something of himself, some additional effort he once would have given only to Shroud.
“Doing what, Sunflower?” Says he, standing where she has left him. Grey eyes appraise her anxiousness and he knows she wants him to come after her, but if he does she will not like what befalls her...and she is not a pet that he wants to break right away. “What is it you think I’m doing?” What does she want him to be doing? Being some sweeter daydream version of a blue evil with a black smudged face, perhaps? Elaina will go on in her disappointment if that is the case.
“Come here Elaina. Come here and tell me about your scars…” It may be a bit of coaxing but it has a steel backbone of command. “Or leave.” Tunnel snaps his black tail against his barred hocks, the impatience of a predator who will wait for hours all the same. A heavy footfall brings him part of the way to her, but leaves the rest for Elaina to make up. When she comes he’ll not let her go again until he is ready.
