"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
Trembling and uncertain, she had surrendered the entirety of her being to another mere months ago beneath the pale moonlight upon the very shore she had been raised upon. He had taken her with such craft and precision that for many hours, for many days after, her mind lingered woefully upon it. He was no virgin, to say in the least, but she herself had been - and though it had been nothing of what she had worried it would (he was a careful, calculated lover), it had been as empty and as hollow as her aching heart had warned her it would be.
And now, she is swollen with child - a heavy burden upon her curving spine, a plague to her neglected, glorious wings, which remain anchored to her widening sides, cradling the unborn from prying stares. She was now among the elite - the broodmares to a ruthless, manipulative King. A King she longs to love but cannot trust her heart to. The icy chill of evening washes over her as if it were a thick blanket of frothing salty seawater, but she welcomes it, as any movement now causes her silvery obsidian pelt to break into a sheen of sweat. She presses forward, uneasily stepping into delving pools of sand. Quietly, she frets over the idea of splitting a bone, of losing her balance, but with careful precision, she manages to find reprieve in the beckoning warmth of a lone cave.
With a wry cry, she collapses, the trembling pain that has surged up through her sinewy muscle pulsating once more. She knows that it is time, and terror seizes her heart. The unknown lay before her, and she lay helpless upon the dry, frigid rock, her doe eyes gaze out towards the sea longingly. She aches for the sky, for the sea and lands unknown, but for now she sweats and cries for the child bursting forth from her womb. Soon, as the caress of moonlight gives way to the warmth of dawn and a sheen of yellow and periwinkle flood the pallid sands, and with it comes the birth of new life.
"Arestor." She whispers gently, pressing the bridge of her nose to his damp skin, lips and tongue ridding him of the dreaded afterbirth. A deeply set instinct sets in, and she rises, urging her plum painted child to rise. He is radiant and beautiful; a saturated version of his father with nothing to show for the lines he carries. She worries for a moment as she gently nudges him up, urging him to stand, but she decides that he is flawless nonetheless - with or without wings.
As he cradles himself close to her, she peers out again towards the morning sky - and she calls for him, and knows in time, he will come. He has awaited this moment, and so has she - but as she peers adoringly at the still fragile, unremarkable boy nursing eagerly from her, her heart is filled with a weary dread.
forces pulling from the center of the earth again.
The bright light of dawn blinds him, and the damp, bloodied colt presses nearer to the warmth of his mother's side. He tucks his plum cheek between her moist side and the crest of her wing, and she cradles him closer to her. Still breathless, she plucks and preens him, tongue laving across his slick pelt. He nestles tightly against her with a soft bleat, shielding himself from the frigid air that wafts slowly with the rising tide. Her loving caresses and steady, rhythmic heartbeat soothe him as he stands still against her, though soon he tires of the darkness beneath. He twists and turns beneath the weight of her wing, his side pressed taut against hers as he shyly peers out.
His hazel eyes squint from the searing assault of light. The sun bathes the sea in its glory, and as it rises higher over the horizon, a sheen of various colors wash over the glimmering grains of sand. As his gaze adjusts, he presses away from her (and she is so very tired, so she merely watches him anxiously), wobbly, spindly legs stepping into the uneven sand for the very first time. He presses his damp nostrils against it, grimacing as the minuscule pebbles stick stubbornly to his skin. He shakes his head with violent abandon, though he soon finds himself losing his balance on uneven ground, awash with vertigo as he collapses onto the soft sand.
Startled, Misra steps forward to nudge and brush away some of the pebbles that now dust his deep amethyst coat, to no avail. His eyes are bright, curious and confused, and she can do little else but sigh and smile. Gently, he presses his pebbled nostrils to her cheek, and she draws him nearer to her. Altogether unremarkable, yet undeniably her own.
keep you like an oath may nothing but death do us part
The whole event interests him less and less these days, he often finds himself uncaring if he is present or not. Once you had seen one birth, well, if you asked him- you’ve seen them all. Kirin’s begun checking in less, counting his band few and far-between. Most had wandered off as well, he hadn’t made motion to keep them or round them up. They were unimportant when he stopped to think about it, merely pawns for use in the grand game.
Herd life has become rather dull to the lavender leviathan. Did we expect any less?
There are really only two women left that cause him any amount of concern or special attention and that is Capture and Misra. The others are simply that, others, and he for the most part has left them to their own devices.His children are another story. While their Dam’s interest him very little he still covets all the special little sweetlings that have sprung from his loins. Little traited things running around with purple hair or tinted pelts. They all held that one particular quality too, that purple thread that distinguished them as his.
Few have enough of what it takes to harness the beast’s attention and today one of those particular few needs checking on.
Misra was one of the special things given to him, a present if we shall call her such. Grandmama had been ever so gracious and loyal and helpful. He can clearly recall the day of their meeting as he soars over the ocean, silvery eyes alert for any speck of black against the sands. She was a young thing then, she is a young thing still but now she is made a woman. Back then she was gangling and feathered, black as oil with a sheen to her wings like they had been dipped in snow. A gentle young girl and perhaps she was gentle still but Kirin had taken to unsettling that gentle nature, if only just. He couldn’t leave her whole, he left none of them that way, the world was not made for the meek- especially not Kirin’s world.
There are no black frames among the beaches, nor curled against the hills, and when he can not see her he begins his descent. A familiar scent of blood and birth reaches him and it is only a matter of time before he peeks his head into the chosen cave. Even without light his silver eyes gleam if but for a moment, quite like a cat, as they adjust to the rising sun. Already the world is brightening around him, revealing the dark form of the woman and the plummy pelt of a boy he knows is his without asking. There are no traces of the unique against his otherwise flawless, tiny body and though he frowns he is not cruel when he acknowledges her work. “A son,” he says simply but it is evident at this time that the child is just that. Just a son. Kirin doesn’t have any reason to believe that beside the deep purple of his skin the boy is plain.l
He arrives, quiet and calculating, as he always is. Her weary doe eyes raise to meet his of bright hazel, and she can see the depth of disappointment looming within them. She has failed him, she knows. He is nothing of what the others have produced, and yet, the longing that aches with her heart is not for his approval. "It is; his name is Arestor." She murmurs quietly, unwilling to give him any more than that. She breaks away from his gaze, unable to stare into his demeaning eyes any longer, and instead she watches the curious boy who clearly has no care at all for the magnificent beast that has come across their path.
Rather, he presses past Kirin - stark plum against a soft lavender, unphased and wholly unimpressed with his father's massive wings that lay tucked against his sides, though they glimmer in the soft sunlight of morning. He presses his delicate hooves into the soft mounds of sand, idly preoccupied with all that is around him.
His glowing eyes of green and brown, which mimic that of his indifferent father's, peer around curiously, and finally, Misra presses past Kirin as well. She flinches when she nears his touch, when she feels his warmth linger too close to her - he has hurt her, she is certain, for the last and final time. She has seen little of him since their courting, and now he has come simply to see what she has created.
Nothing more, nothing less.
She will not allow him to take this moment from her.
Adoringly, she watches as he nears the coastline, following him but too far behind - the thick scent of salty seawater lures him in, as do the various sandpipers that flit and flee along the ocean coast, seeking fragile shells for their next ravenous meal. She croons to him, begging him not to move too close to the shore, but it is too late. He is captivated by the fluttering birds and their fleeting motions, and as the young boy's eyes meet his mother's, he is altogether startled by an unusual tide - and with a frightened bleat, he collapses into the grimy grasp of the icy seawater, caught into its clutches as he is pulled out to sea.
She frantically moves closer to the shore, spreading her magnificent wings of fading obsidian as she rises above, crying out for him, searching fruitlessly for him - yet the fragile, wholly too curious boy of amethyst is gone, long gone, buried beneath the sand and sea. She weeps for him, tucking her thick wings to the side as she paces along the dark stones that emerge from the ocean water, slender legs carrying her from one side to another. She feels foolish, helpless - she had seen the sea attempt to carry out another child before in her own youth; how could she have let him wander so far from her?
Yet just in the depth of her despair, far beyond any timeline a child should exist upon (minutes had passed - many agonizing, slow minutes - he should have perished, he should have drowned, this she knows), he emerges - slick with icy seawater; a string of kelp clinging to his hide. He bleats for her as he struggles against the tide, and she bounds into the icy waters herself, drawing him forward with an outstretched wing.
There, her miracle boy of amethyst is matted with water and sand, tucked safely away from the ocean and tightly against the warmth of her body and the cradling love of her wing. She breathes in his scent and weeps against his pelt, and in this moment, she realizes that her precious boy is not so unremarkable after all.
keep you like an oath may nothing but death do us part
Names. He had given in to letting them name the children in his careless, indifferent lull. One could only think of so many and even that had become a chore to him really. Sometimes he wished he had reconsidered when they lay them on him, their silly-prattle that were like nails on a chalk board. This one isn’t so bad though, his ears collecting the word as it melts smoothly in his thoughts. There were far worse names and even if she could not give him a gifted son she could give him this- and she had. Doubtful she knew that for this he was grateful, even if he was terrible at showing the fact. Kirin was not too often one to praise, least of all others.
Her response is otherwise as flat as his observation, dull even as the rays of the sun on the beige sands of the shoreline. The child on the other hand has no regard for him, pressing past him with no acknowledgement and Kirin only watches him glide past. Stringy legs finding their way much too carefully for one so young but this did not strike him as odd. This was a boy after his own genes, his strong lines had made him graceful no doubt. He remembers well the deep grape that soaked the child’s skin and he wondered if before long it would fade just as his had. Some of them did that, just as he and though he was sad to see the deep color of eggplant go, he knew something just as nice would take its place.
Again he looks to the night colored girl-turned-woman, her eyes falling and leaving his face as she too presses against and away from him. He doesn’t lash out at her indifference, instead he inhales it as deeply as he does her skin.
When they both leave him for the curiosity of the beach he merely watches, statuesque as his Sire, as the boy sates his interest. The rolling waves were entrancing to any, sometimes still even to him. A constant lapse of time, a pattern that never ended, much as the Cove seemed to have its own unyielding sequence. Kirin was much like that ocean, he had a way about him and very rarely did he stray. A coldness within that only grew colder as the layers of his flesh boxed it in, deeper down you went, the darker and harder it became.
Stumbling forward his new son falls, much quicker than either he or Misra can react to. Though if he thought about it again later he would swear it occurred in slow motion, purple end over purple end as the waters swallowed him up. He doesn’t cry for the boy, doesn’t fret nearly as hard as the black mare but he does take to the sky. An attempt to search the frothy ocean from on high, some sight, some evidence that the child was not lost after all to the greed of the salty sea. This was one of his things after all and he had not freely given it to the brine, nor did he take kindly to its feverish hunger for his bloodline. Nothing, though it was little chance he would have seen him in the murk anyways.
Then as if by some luck Arestor emerges at his own bidding, pushing forward from the might of the ocean, whole, breathing. It is enough to spark the fire to race fleetingly against the shine of his silver eyes, enough to send him back to the Earth with haste. Kirin lands against her, so near they are almost touching as he breathes heavily against the sight he has just witnessed. “Misra, you’ve done it,” and the words hold some small light of happiness if one was ever to be found in his dark...
