Sleep came easy to her as it always had. All it took was a cozy nook, a yawn and a whim, and the overo girl would quickly be swept up by the intimate pull of slumber.
It came so naturally, just as a bird to flight or a fish to swim.
In dream’s embrace the world turned over and everything felt right - like all the good things possible - like peace. She could be everything and nothing. She had control, she had power, she had endless possibilities.
It was a limitless world. It was her world. It was home.
Tonight she wove a tapestry of black, cloudless skies and the teals and purples of the northern lights dancing with iridescence through the stalks underfoot. The wind is warm with the impossible scent of lavender and fresh fallen snow and her ears fill with the sound of an unseen ocean.
Atop the crest of a shallow hill is where the girl often stood on nights like these, her chin tilted upward in studious concentration. When she moves it’s deliberate, bending and craning of her neck, using her horn to orchestrate and paint the stars and galaxies as a conductor might lead his symphony. And when she hums her mother’s lullaby, the stars come alive, glowing and flickering with the warmth and sense of familiarity that only home could bring.
She is happy again, and the approaching sound of an unexpected wanderer would not be able to chase that good feeling away. Not tonight, not ever.
TLDR catchie falls asleep, goes to dream world, paints a pretty picture and waits to welcome your pony to dream world.
He hurts. His whole body aches. But worst of all, he has a bone-deep chill he just can’t seem to shake.
It’s been the only thing on his mind since the attack - since the bizarre predator on Icicle Isle has ripped him open. His wounds were mending, slowly, but the cold was always on his mind. It’s was the kind of cold that made it hard to think of other things.
So he had left, despite the care of those who helped him there. He needed something they couldn’t give him. He said he would be back in the spring, or at least that’s what he told himself. The far north held a sort of appeal for the young would, he just had to shake this damn chill.
But the common lands aren’t that much better.
Dusk falls, and the little patch of winter sunshine where he had been resting goes with it. Reluctantly, he stands, putting the river at his back in search of a better place to pass the night.
With a snarl, the wolf-boy chases a mother and her two yearling fawns away from where they hand been sleeping. He could never catch them, in his current state, but they didn't seem to want to take the risk. Wading into the nest of dried grasses and leaves, he moves quickly to take whatever heat they may have left behind. He spins and falls into the comfort of their beds, and sleep finds him nearly as soon as his eyes are closed.
He dreams of warmth, he dreams of a girl, and he forgets the ache in his chest and the chill in his bones.
How curious, she marvels, for a star to have fallen all the way from the sky. How had he escaped? Why would he want to leave?
“You’re beautiful.” It’s a whispered sigh, a sound that would be otherwise impossible to hear in the tethers of reality. But not, here. He would hear her voice as though she stood at his shoulder.
Bright and blazing against the pitch of her canvas, he was there, warmer than any of the other stars she had strung that night. A fallen star glowing, and yet, something was off. Her brow furrowed with concern, having difficulty in placing a name to such a strange thing. A blemish - cold, void, hard - that left a vacancy where something important had been.
But the specifics are lost to her, only guessing with the perceptive intuition of a sensitive soul.
She assumes it to be loneliness.
Still beautiful though, she concludes with a sage nod of her head, as if her thoughts were absolute.
When she descends from the top of her ridge, she severs cords and the stars begin a slow descent to the shimmering ground that they share. Perhaps if she brought the stars to him, he wouldn’t feel so alone? And when they dance lazily between the dreamweaver girl and the skyfallen boy, glowing as fireflies would, she presses into the midnight air that separates them.
She can see now, as she settles the span of a step in front of him that he is a sentient wanderer, a trespasser within her dream, a unique melding of equine and canine. And it fascinates her.
“My name is Catcher. Who are you?”
@[Firen]
The warmth of a whispered sigh washes over his shoulder, and it leaves a trail of light in its wake. There is no pain or cold here, but he tries not to think of it, afraid that will be enough to bring them roaring back.
You're beautiful, the dream girl says, and he knows this is no ordinary dream.
That she is no ordinary girl.
His broad, wolfish head turns towards her slowly as she descends to him, and he takes in the dreamscape which surrounds them. The air is thick with starlight, firelight and fireflies - light, light, light - but he doesn't fight it. Having woke to find himself in the exact opposite of the cold, damp woodland he left behind, he would be an idiot to resit. Even if he knows it isn't real.
Firen breathes deep the perfumed air, too lovely to be apart of the world he knows, lifting his eyes, the color of the burning wings which stretch high above him, to lock onto hers.
"You are beautiful too," his voice is youthful yet firm; in his dreams, he was never the omega. The wolf's eyes leave hers only to sweep across her fire-and-snow pelt, but he knows that is more than her shape which makes her beautiful. That he should want her, be spellbound by her.
So why doesn't he feel anything?
"I'm Firen," he answers her, hoping his name is enough for now. He doesn't want to leave this dream. On padded paws he steps forward, even if in life he would never be so bold, reaching out to touch her shoulder in the place where her whisper had touched his.
"Are you real?"
He is an interesting thing, with his coat of night and wings of fire.
Firen. She knows his name now, and she repeats it over and over again like the chant of prayer until it is safely tucked away, committed to her memory. She didn’t want to forget this strange and beautiful star boy.
“Thank you,” she replies breathily, sincerely. Presumably, that was the correct thing to say - she truly had no idea - no one had ever told her she was beautiful before. Nor was that a word that would have used to describe herself if inquired. And a part of her begged to doubt him. Looking back through a rose-colored lens then maybe, but the girl she had come to identify with was often dull with the film of grime and burs that tangled her mane. Maybe not beautiful, but at least genuine in the kindness she tried to share.
Firen reaches, and she lets him, watching with bright iron toned eyes. Are you real? he asks, and for a moment she is swept in deja-vu, lost in a memory where another boy had asked her something similar. But this time, she understands. He is close enough now, that when she leans she catches his touch at the point of her shoulder. Warm and solid beneath their mutual gesture, she is as real as he.
But she worries that it’s not enough, that he may still feel alone, or isolated or lost. With a tangible whim, the fire of her coat melts to the grey it would soon become, an image of the future self she had yet to discover. A span of a heartbeat she lingers like that, until her contrasting pelt collides and the grey overtakes the white. Her coat grows heavier and hooves are exchanged for paws until the horse he had just known is no longer there. Instead a gray wolf with scattered silver highlights is found in her place now, though the chime of her light voice goes unchanged.
“Can you feel me?”
@[Firen]
For a moment it seems as if she may argue with him, and although he has held back until this moment, he moves with his mind to touch hers. Unsure how his gift will translate in this strange world she has created, he is cautious, and only brushes his consciousness against the surface of hers. What he finds surprises him, although it should not.
He hears his name, once, twice, then three times, and he smiles.
His physical touch is quick to follow and the dream-girl does not shy. But she is changing below it, and his eyes grow wide and curious. It was a trick he played often enough, but rarely had he seen it done. The color drains from her coat and he watches intently as her form begins to shift also. But what her pelt lacks in color it more than makes up for in texture. She is soft, she is kind, and she has looked at him longer than any before her.
Can you feel me?
If he were with the pack now he would not have been allowed to let his touch linger. But he isn't with the wild dogs of the forest, he's with... @[Catcher].
"...Catcher."
He says her name, the way she said his, trying out the taste of it. She is beautiful in the ways that shoould move him, that should make him feel love and other things. But there is no movement in his soul as there had been with his glimpse of the moon-mare in the meadow not so long ago.
Before the creature ripped him open.
And a dragon sealed him with ice.
"No," he finally says into her pelt, as his muzzle lifts from the line of her shoulder and her drags the scent of her wolf-pelt across his tongue. He knows it is not exactly what she meant, but he can't ignore the realization that is dawning on him. That he hasn't been quite right since the attack.
"But you should make feel something," he says, his voice low and muffled by fur "and I think there's something wrong with me."
01-27-2020, 10:19 AM
(This post was last modified: 01-27-2020, 10:21 AM by Catcher.)
She can feel him so plainly against her shoulder - as firm as the pressure of the ground beneath her body she lays atop in reality.
The answer she expects does not align with the one he offers. And she worries, as she turns her shaggy head towards him with a questioning tilt, that that lack of connection was her doing - or not doing. It was possible her dream magic did not transcend the realities as she had thought it did, and perhaps her contact was one-sided versus the multi-faceted she had previously believed it to be.
When her fallen gaze reaches back to him, there is a fraction of disappointment tinting her cool, gray eyes. Disappointment, not for the benefit of herself, but for the lack of effect in what she deemed proper of comforting someone. What was the point of a hug or a reassuring touch if you could not feel it?
Catcher moves to sit, wrapping her tail across her paws hidden beneath the emerald grass without straying from his side. But you should make feel something, he says, and she smiles at that. It wasn’t as she had thought again, another error acknowledged on her part, but now she understands.
”I’ve got nothing but time. Do you want to talk about it, Firen?” she asks softly, into the breeze sweeping across the still warmly glowing field. “I'd like to help you."
@[Firen]
Her broad, shaggy head turns towards him, and he can't help but admire the dainty turn of her wolfish ears. Not so long ago those questioning, almost wounded, eyes would have stirred in him an obligation. He would have moved heaven and earth to erase the doubt from those eyes, to make her smile.
But he remains unfeeling and he wonders, briefly, how it would feel to pretend.
Black lids slide closed over his ember eyes as the breeze flows between them, as soft as her voice. He wonders what he would have said, before, before. Maybe he would have thanked her, maybe he would have opened up.
He wonders if he should try, if he began would it be enough to crack the ice in his chest. He wants to speak, but his mind is painfully empty of all the things he could have said.
She is expectant; he is empty-handed.
His black-specked tongue slides over his teeth as he tries to find the words to say, but his mouth is dry and empty and each moment only amplifies his awkward silence.
Agitated, his feathered tail lashes behind him. The change in the air is as quick as it is liberating. Firen's head lowers as his wing of flame double, and double again. Around them, the fireflies ignite, each a twisting dancer writing in the flames. The glow of their world is no longer tender and soft, it is terribly brilliant and growing hotter.
He is frustrated, what should be a feeling congealing into a hard matt of heat under his ribs. "There's not much in this world that words can fix," he growls in the wolfish tongue. "So I hope that wasn't your only plan."
It would have been easy to close it down and toss him out of her dream.
The surprise of his reaction makes her rise from sitting and she shies back, watching in tragic mesmerization as the beauty of the night shifts suddenly around her, threatening her craft and the serenity she had vowed to keep for the night. That rancid thought of shutting him out looked brilliant in that moment, and the surprise she wore is quickly replaced with a steely resignation as the heat swirling around them intensified.
The eyes of the inferno are easy enough to find and hold onto, and she challenges the fire in his stare with the icey calm of her own, “This is not the typical world that you refer to, is it?”
It takes a cycle of controlled breathing to notice, but she notices all the same. Behind those eyes looking back at her, she recognized something - something wounded and confused - something that on some level, albeit a much less degree, she could relate to. At the back of her throat she makes an almost inaudible grumble, squelching the predatory desire to do what was necessary to rise above him and take back control over what was hers.
“Talking is a starting point.”
Catcher sits, unwilling to break their visionary bond yet, aware that the flames burned brighter and hotter as that began licking at the curve of her claws and the feathery fur that lined her large paws. “Will it make you feel better, Firen, to watch me burn?”
She’d give him a chance.
@[Firen]
04-30-2020, 02:09 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-30-2020, 02:23 PM by Firen.)
Will it make you feel better, Firen, to watch me burn?
He knows now he is a selfish creature, but he can not feel it. He knows his face would have flushed hot with shame for these actions and words only weeks ago. But such facts don't change his course. He wants to feel again, and her offer is all too interesting.
"I don't think it would."
He had hated seeing the little mare on icicle isle hurt by the monster which had so easily disposed of them both. He had never toyed with his prey; his hunts had been brutal, but they had been quick. The fear and the chase, these last moments before life was extinguished that so many carnivores lived for, they never brought him joy. But the wolf had demanded to be fed, and he had returned to the hunt for the reward alone.
He wonders, now, if there will be a reward at the end of her pain.
His actions may seem to contradict his words as the flames move towards her. They re not hurried, and he knows that this is not his world. Maybe that is why he is reckless; she could end this all with a thought.
She could probably end him with a thought, here, in her world.
Maybe that wouldn't be so bad.
He smiles, as thoughts pass like air between them. He can read hers, and his are probably available to her - this entire interaction is taking part in their minds after all. The embers that were once fireflies move towards her pretty head, spiraling together into a crown of flames. The crown slowly turns above her, lowering, lowering, between her ears. She wields a power he could never fully understand, and he only now toys with the residual magic, snatching whisp of it for himself when it all belonged to her.
"You could make me stop," he says, his breath like ice in the rising temperatures of the false-air around them. His heart beats faster, but still no feeling as her rough top-coat begins to singe.
"You could make me do whatever you wanted," and he wonders if she can.
@[Catcher] some boys only learn about consequences the hard way... so literally any kind of harm/attack power playing that you feel is appropriate is fine!
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![[Image: Firen-insane.gif]](https://i.postimg.cc/fL1FKyZk/Firen-insane.gif)