"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
09-03-2019, 11:42 AM (This post was last modified: 09-03-2019, 12:27 PM by Melinoë.)
Hell was empty, and she was free. A child born into darkness, she'd grown familiar with the haunted shadows that lurked there. There were not many memories of light that occupied her memories. Her mother, the bringer of snowmelt, had not cared to take her youngest child with her into the realm of the mortals. Instead, Melinoë had become a child fully of her father's making - a foal who toyed with the dead and feasted on their guilt in dying. Darkness did not offer up much by means of entertainment, and her mother did not approve of her daughter's budding interests. Perhaps that was what had set her apart from her other siblings. That, or she was the child neither of her parents had wanted.
Thoughts such as though were powerful enough to destroy even the strongest of minds - but she had not let it. Finding solace in the friends she had found in her father's subjects, she created a world of her own imagination. In her own little mind, she was a being as powerful as her father. Worthy of respect and fear.
Emerging from the water depths within which she had been dumped by her father's wrath, it was all too apparent that her beloved parents had wanted to see her drowned. Her determination was not easily snuffed out. Breaking through the surface Melinoë gasped in sharp lungfuls of crisp wintery air. Her mother was with her father, thus the land had been cloaked in sorrow at its parting of her. The cold did not touch the mare, even as it stung her wet pelt and dried her eyes. Pawing her way to the shore, her limbs shook with exhaustion as she finally found the footholds to stand. Dripping she glowered towards the vast forest set before her, its depths as unwelcoming as her father's deathly river. At that moment, she would have chosen to take a dip with dead than to face the path set out before her. The fact remained a cold truth, she could not go back. She was no longer welcome. So forward she set out.
Dripping wet, little puddles gathered around her hooves creating little pools in her wake. She did not care to shake off the excess of moisture, it's tickling trails reminded her that she was still capable of feeling. Bathed in shadow, the canopy overhead did little to alleviate her discomfort and, without her magic to hide behind, she was naked to the forces that might set about her. Nearly destroyed by uncertainty her options were limited, even as she forced herself to learn what land had the misfortune of her arrival.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
A family has not made him immune to his crippling need to wander.
To move. His inability to surrender himself to stagnation.
It has not made him immune to his impulses.
And so he steals out of the shadows of Taiga just before dawn, while his daughter and her mother sleep. He kisses the little girl’s head – the only time she lets him close enough to touch her is when she is asleep and perhaps it is wrong for him to exploit her vulnerability but he refuses to think herself unloved. He refuses to condemn her to the same fate he’d faced as a child, despite how fiercely she loathes him. Despite how viciously she hisses and spits her rage and her hatred at him.
And perhaps there is some dark corner of his heart that mourns for the days he’d spent living here in these specific shadows. He knows the patterns of them and how they fall when the sun rises. He has committed them to memory, they are ingrained in the patterns of his DNA. He moves slow through them and revels in all of his remembering. This place he knows, perhaps better than he knows himself. Taiga is still strange and unfamiliar, despite all of the time he has spent there, shackled to the redwoods by some unseen force that he knows he will someday come to resent.
He can see the fog of his breath as he skirts through the forest. There is no snow here, the canopy overhead too thick to permeate, but it is cold just the same. He remembers winters spent out in the open, chest heaving, letting the cold devour him. And now he tucks himself safely away with the girl and her mother, siphons the heat from them, protects himself from the elements as if he has any sense of self-preservation.
He catches sight of her as descends into the darkness, dripping wet. He considers her a long moment, the way the water drips down the length of her face, the way she seems impervious to the cold. “You’ll catch a chill,” he says, his head tilted at a funny angle as he studies her.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
09-04-2019, 03:14 PM (This post was last modified: 09-04-2019, 03:18 PM by midnight.)
Midnight
Finally old enough to spiral out of the grips of his family and his home, Midnight wanders. As a child the stallion always thought he would settle in Sylva, amongst his makeshift parents and his ever-growing family. Those sweet scents of adulthood landed in his nostrils, though, and hinted at the many lives outside of his little universe.
So, he wanders, like the nomad his birth mother cursed him to be.
Not to Tephra like he is so wont to do, but to the Common Lands, where the shadows grow deep and the air is crisp. He likes the mystery, the endless opportunities -- a boy of true curiosity, a boy quick on his legs and kinder than one may think. He takes in the scenery as he passes by. From Sylva’s dying leaves to Sylva’s hardy cacti, he observes the way they slowly change (how they are all the same, just fucking plants, and he laughs). Loess blends into the Forest, the twining trees giving the roan stallion pause. He tilts his head at the twittering of a bird, then steps delicately into the shadows.
Midnight finds himself at a shore before he knows it, glittering emerald eyes watching a fierce woman and a rough man. He is not the kind to hover, so he slowly picks his way out of cover and in the direction of the pair.
Neither look particularly friendly, he notes; still, he wanders closer.
“Why would you go for a swim in this weather?” he questions, soft eyes drifting over the damp press of her fur. He offers Bethlehem a nod of his head before turning back to the woman.
now I wake up in the mornings and all the kindness is drained out of me i spend hours just wincing and trying to regain some sense of peace
09-04-2019, 03:42 PM (This post was last modified: 09-04-2019, 03:47 PM by Melinoë.)
The woman veiled in death did not often consider herself to be ignorant of her surroundings. In her father’s realm she had known every rock and every crevice, finding them preferrable places to lurk when he was in one of his dark moods. As Lord of the Underworld, he almost always seemed to be of vile spirits. To many, Melinoë’s reality would seem unkind and no place for a child. There had been times that, she too, had cursed her mother for never care enough to bring her children to explore the mortal world with her. Left with nothing but stories, the child’s mind had been left to run rampant. Perhaps she should have been more full of hate than she was – but she simply couldn’t bring herself to care.
Pushing herself farther from the sea, she did not see the bay stallion as soon as she ought to have. It isn’t until his gruff voice breaks the earthy silence surrounding her that she freezes, her head jerking towards him with pin-pricked pupils. Her brow fell into a frown, the look accentuating her odd beauty as he drew attention to the frost that had begun to gather upon her coat. Of course, it was cold! Her mother was below ground, serving her father. His comment is more agitated given its ignorance. Stamping her hoof, she does not shy away from his attention, nor does she continue on her way.
“No,” she denied with calm simplicity. “That is impossible.”
There was an often misconception that the underworld was fire and brimstone. In certain spots, that much was true – but, for the vast majority, it was built upon all that was cold and lifeless. In the places Melinoë preferred to haunt, the cold had been so thick her breath would almost be enough to produce a blanket of snow. She had not fallen ill then, nor any other time throughout her life. It was an entertaining notion that she might fall prey to the wintery wind now.
Tilting her head, she kept her ears trained on the stranger who intended to slow her progress. Normally she did not entertain the living, except to prey on their sadness and guilt. Magic gone, she felt naked without her wall of security. Her lips parted and vocal cords strained, ready to ask him his name, but, just as she was preparing to send forth her inquiry, all sound died as another voice joined the fray. Head snapping, she glared towards the stranger, his question oddly redundant.
“I did not choose to go swimming,” she attempted to explain, not really fully grasping how odd her words might be perceived. “I was spit out from the places beneath the sea.”
Both seemed odd in their interest of her. Dripping wet and standing perfectly still, she was like the ghosts she used to bond with. Though her body was there, her mind was elsewhere – buried by the many question she longed to ask those who had not wanted her.
I can get there on my own. you can leave me here alone.
She is right to think him ignorant.
He is a simple man of simple means.
He knows nothing of the world she’s come from.
In fact, despite traversing this land in its entirety, he still knows very little of it.
Her reaction reeks of indignation but his expression remains passive. He could ask, certainly. Ask why she thinks herself impervious to the cold but he has come to learn that if there are things that others want you to know, they will tell you. Perhaps he has learned this the hard way.
So, he nods. He accepts it as the truth because, for her, it must be. She seems on the verge of saying something when they are approached by another, much younger, stallion. He presents no threat – not because he does not cut an imposing figure but because Bethlehem has never wasted much energy on feeling threatened. He lacks in the specific kind of magic that might make him a worthy opponent but he has never had enough of a sense of self-preservation to fear for his life.
The younger stallion nods in his direction and Bethlehem returns the greeting, the mouth pressed into a thin, contemplative line before he shifts his attention back to the mare, still dripping wet and glowering. Her response is odd, certainly, but he has developed some immunity to the strange and the fantastical, being so plain in a world so full of magic.
“Are you all right?” he asks then, because it seems the only appropriate thing to ask of someone who has just emerged from the turmoil of a journey from the dark places beneath the sea. He has the distinct impression that his question will not be especially well-received and there is some part of him that wonders why he’s even bothered to ask.
BETHLEHEM
I'm just tryin' to do what's right. oh, a man ain't a man unless he's fought the fight.
