"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
He wakes to the crisp, clean scent of the pines and smiles.
The trees that had sheltered him through the night are like long lost friends he’s happy to have reunited with again. The branches cut through the summer-warm air, reaching down to rest their shaggy arms upon his back. He shakes off the fallen needles that had coated his back overnight, displaced from their sources by the creatures of the moon-time. Because the Chamber is not the soulless, lifeless stretch of rock and brush that everyone seems to think it is. Life fills even the darkest of forests and highest reaches of stone. It survives in the smoky mist that curls around the boulders and thrives even before the ground has thawed from frost.
He can’t believe how much he’s missed this place.
A raven hops from one of the higher branches down to the one Walter is currently under, shaking more piney residue onto his back. He glares at the twin beads of black staring at him, seemingly mocking him. Yeah, birdy? Without warning, the palomino snaps his white wings out with a flourish, upsetting both branch and bird at the same time. The raven takes off, protesting with its incessant CAW-CAW track far into the distance. He smirks with his little victory, but at the same time, his eyes search for any sign of movement around him. Straia - was that her name? - had seemed rather attached to her ridiculously large flock. Don’t want her to get the wrong impression of him…
With a last quick peek into the shadows of the tightly-pressed trees, he follows the trajectory of the raven’s escape. He is on hoof, however he covers the ground almost as easily as he would the sky. This kingdom had been his home for many years. In his extended absence, thoughts of the Chamber had passed through his brain like tumbleweeds across the prairies of the Outside-lands: quick, infrequent, and gone between one blink of his eyes and the next. But he realizes now that it had never left him, really. As much as he had tried to bury his past firmly in the soil he once had tread upon, he knows that he had been wildly unsuccessful. Every easy, unfaltering step across the pocked ground proves it more and more.
He only stops when he finds what he is looking for (what he has spent decades looking for, unconsciously).
“Djinni,” his voice is the smooth tenor it’s always been. She’s just as beautiful to him as she’s always been, too (no matter what form she takes), but he doesn’t tell her that. There’s a blockade that forms somewhere between his heart and his head. And even though he can read her emotions – her’s and everyone else’s – he can’t translate them, can’t reconcile them with his own. When it comes to Djinni, his head always wins out in the battle for supremacy.
Walter looks around them, taking in the pines that stretch away to the hills that rise up and up. He remembers all the times he’d climbed those same hills as a boy. He remembers the freedom and fearlessness of his daytime adventures. He remembers the loneliness that crept from the mist and swallowed him in the nights. His honey gaze levels on the mare who’d eased so much of it later on; she had pulled him back from the brink without ever realizing it.
He doesn’t tell her he loves her (does he?). Instead he says, “I like seeing you here.” Walter gestures around them with his nose. He’s never been afraid to say what he feels, what he thinks – he’s just not often sure what, exactly, he does. “Want me to show you around some more?” He ruffles his wings at his sides, already anxious for her to see it all. Already anxious to spend more time in her presence, to play the game of cat and mouse (where the roles are always changing) that they constantly fall into. “Us locals know all the best spots, after all.”
Walter
come down from the mountain
you have been gone too long
Though she had heard the clamor of battle, Djinni had stayed away. She had no desire to see the war, let alone participate. She felt the magic shake the kingdom to its very core, and tucked her head against a tussock of moss and went right back to sleep. The politics of the kingdom have changed; she has not seen the paint mare or her ravens in weeks.
She does not miss them.
So the cawing that rouses her at dawn is met with a scowl, and a wish for the raven to find itself unable to make noise. It continues to caw, mouth stretched wide, but no sound emerges from its beak. Pleased, Djinni rises to her feet. She stretches her pale yellow legs, and nibbles at an itch on her gradient caramel barrel. She’d dreamt of a sunrise on a world with no water, and the colors are reflected in the pale flaxen chestnut pangare of her coat, and in the hot whiteness of her eyes.
Djinn is still blinking the sleep from her eyes when she hears the familiar voice, and she is smiling when she turns to see Walter.
“Good morning,” she replies, the final syllable muffled by a yawn that bubbles up unexpectedly. It drowns out his first statement, and she hears only his offer to show her around more.
“ S’too early to look around,” she says, leaning across the space between them to nestle her jaw into the warm breadth of Walter’s back. Drowsiness has made her throw away caution; she forgets their awkward physical dance as she waffles into the soft pale hairs of his mane.
His smell is strong this close, and the novelty of that is what finally rouses Djinni from her sleep-addled. They’ve never been this close this long, and she draws back so quickly that she accidentally teleports herself a few yards away.
“Sorry.” She says as the golden shimmer of her magic fades away around her. She refuses to meet his eyes, and slowly fades to dun and white as she hides her grey eyes behind the natural black curtain of her mane. “Sorry.”
It isn’t a memory he likes to dwell on, though. He tries not to think about the grim-set lines on the faces of those he fought with. He pushes away the pictures: the righteous glow in the eyes of their enemies, the splatter and splash of blood and magic, the stark white bones of the raised skeleton army. Walter can’t remember his state of mind at the time. What had compelled him to fight with the Deserts against the Valley? Why, after decades of avoiding organization of any kind (much less a well-oiled army of seasoned fighters) had he decided to join in the melee? He is sure it wasn’t his own righteous indignation on behalf of the murdered victims (although it had been terrible what they’d done, he wasn’t willing to risk his life for the dead). Perhaps a desire to assimilate into something larger than himself – a purpose – had finally called to him, despite his naivety on the battlefield.
Or maybe he had simply been bored.
Whatever the case, his innate self-preservation had persevered this time around. Walter remained pointedly oblivious to the machinations of war happening in the Chamber. And when all the plotting and scheming had turned into fighting and maiming, the palomino had kept away. Not from Djinni, though. If anything, the screams of both pain and triumph had propelled him further away from the battlefield but closer to the genie’s side. Not that she knew every time he became more of a guardian than a companion; he often circled closer as she was sleeping and left before she awoke. Sometimes, he had ventured close enough to touch her. His muzzle would hover over her shoulder or her neck, debating, always eventually deciding to withdraw rather than to wake her. He longed to be that man for her (longed to feel her pressed against his side, tucked into the protection of his strong embrace). He was not that man, though. He was more like the mist in the night, there but gone by morning.
This morning, at least, he comes back.
She always looks different on the surface, painting herself to her fancy and whims. Today, she is like medusa. Her eyes are a blinding white that he can’t look away from. It is like staring into the sun (but then, it always is to him no matter what face she wears) and he feels trapped in her gaze. Only her sudden yawn frees him from his visual ensnarement. His eyes study the sunrise of her body when she’s momentarily distracted. By the time she’s leveled her white-hot eyes on his, he looks back quickly, almost sheepishly.
It’s not just his wandering eyes that cause the heat to rise in his face. She seems to not hear his first declaration and he is hesitant to repeat it. He wonders, too, if she knows about his nighttime rendezvous’. The more he sinks into the swamp of his embarrassment, the more he believes he should have woken her. He should have touched her…
And then she closes the distance between them.
Walter can feel the soft puff of her breath on his neck. His skin prickles but he does not stiffen at her touch. The stallion has to close his eyes for a moment, because the desire to is there like a straw pushed to bend by the slightest bit of wind. It takes all of his willpower not to flinch or shy away. The desire to be more man than mist wells up within him, and for the first time, it is easier to believe he can be. All the nights he’d watched her, all the times he’d imagined her hair draping him like a flag he’d earned. All the times he’d thought he could do it, could break down the barriers he’d spent decades building. For her. For Djinni.
She flies away from him when she realizes what she’s done.
And when she materializes again, the mare appears as she always does in his mind. She is the smoke and white of his dreams, his memories; the telltale chiming of her bangles draws him in. Walter is sure of his steps, and they bring him close enough that he pulls the same air she exhales into his lungs. “Jin.” The moniker is short and steady in the stillness between them. He swallows his last reserves of resistance and pushes the curtain of hair from over her eyes. The black strands fall over his muzzle, and though it’s not quite the flag he’s imagined, it is enough. “I’m the one who should be sorry.”
The gold stallion takes a small step backwards, releasing some of the pressure that had built up in such close proximity to her. It hadn’t crushed me though, he thinks to himself. I am getting there. But will she wait for him? Doubt creeps like a fog into his brain and curls around each lobe. Why should a girl that is as vibrantly decorated on the inside as she is on the outside wait for a guy who is grey in every way but his color? “I want to be better.” He says, conviction colliding with the softness of his voice. He moves in again and the pressure squeezes his heart but he doesn’t care. “I want to want this.” Walter presses his dusky lips to her poll and withdraws again. It doesn’t feel like an empty gesture, but it doesn’t feel like everything, either.
Walter
come down from the mountain
you have been gone too long
