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+---- Thread: [open] I fell by the wayside. (/showthread.php?tid=28798)
I fell by the wayside. - Meyer - 01-27-2021
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I am so tired of being alone.
The melancholy fills my chest just as persistently as the darkness that fills Beqanna’s nooks and crannies. I no longer have any sense of whether it is night or day, nor can I find it in myself to care anymore. In the beginning, I yearned for the quiet, creeping pink of sunset, the trill of birdsong greeting the day. It was not long, though, before I came to the conclusion that those soft wishes are just as worthless as my hope that the grasping fingers of my past will fully relinquish their hold on me.
It is easy enough to forget the silver scars that pock my skin, my moth-eaten hide stretched over an angular frame. Reflections, at the odd times that I do find myself at some lake’s edge, are nil these days. It’s easy enough to tell myself that the demon has forgotten me, this dirty plaything cast aside. But telling is not believing and I know that he is out there yet, somewhere nearby. The shadows are his minions and now that they rule supreme, - or, perhaps second only to the hellish creatures released into our world - escape in its truest form seems entirely out of reach.
Water drips from my chin, my thirst sated for the time being, my belly full of water and little else. With spring comes tender, young shoots to graze on, but I find myself browsing listlessly through the tangle of old and new without actually picking anything. I keep to the Field in the hopes that he will not look for me here, but it is its outskirts that I know best, avoiding the quiet murmurs of strangers and the unfamiliar powers that my magic cannot help but imitate on the occasion that one gets too close.
The melancholy fills my chest just as persistently as the darkness that fills Beqanna’s nooks and crannies. I no longer have any sense of whether it is night or day, nor can I find it in myself to care anymore. In the beginning, I yearned for the quiet, creeping pink of sunset, the trill of birdsong greeting the day. It was not long, though, before I came to the conclusion that those soft wishes are just as worthless as my hope that the grasping fingers of my past will fully relinquish their hold on me.
It is easy enough to forget the silver scars that pock my skin, my moth-eaten hide stretched over an angular frame. Reflections, at the odd times that I do find myself at some lake’s edge, are nil these days. It’s easy enough to tell myself that the demon has forgotten me, this dirty plaything cast aside. But telling is not believing and I know that he is out there yet, somewhere nearby. The shadows are his minions and now that they rule supreme, - or, perhaps second only to the hellish creatures released into our world - escape in its truest form seems entirely out of reach.
Water drips from my chin, my thirst sated for the time being, my belly full of water and little else. With spring comes tender, young shoots to graze on, but I find myself browsing listlessly through the tangle of old and new without actually picking anything. I keep to the Field in the hopes that he will not look for me here, but it is its outskirts that I know best, avoiding the quiet murmurs of strangers and the unfamiliar powers that my magic cannot help but imitate on the occasion that one gets too close.
RE: I fell by the wayside. - Aela - 01-27-2021
If Aela abided by much of anything, she would know better than to wander the Common Lands. They were notorious for scandal and unfortunate happenings during the best of times; and these times - the Eternal Dark - was certainly not one of those better times in Beqanna. Everything was cast in shadow and as she stole another glance over her slender shoulder, Aela knew that it wasn't changing anytime soon.
The young palomino sighed and stopped, turning to look at the silhouettes of bramble before her. Something had rustled the spring branches and the tender sound they made alerted the golden girl that something was near. (Or someone but Aela still assumes the thought she shared with Gale: that those wandering now were either doing so for a thrill or because they had nowhere else to go.)
As she lifts her head and her flaxen forelock moves to one side, Aela knows why she is here. The creatures that roam - the monsters - aren't like anything else that she has encountered so far in her young life. Her abilities have allowed Aela to have a voice (and discover it), have led her from Taiga to the wider world and she now intends to use them to keep growing. Why stop at the escape of a foggy swamp? Why abate at only a few words?
There was so much more still to come.
She could feel it - in her bones, in her confident stride, in the proud of angle of her lovely head - that there was still more.
But today is about trying to find one of those creatures. Today is about understanding them (if they even could be understood). Today is about finding one.
Instead, she finds him.
She's disappointed because there is hardly anything fearful about him. The smaller mare stops a few paces away but she knows that he will hear her coming. It's then that the idea comes to illuminate her presence and the golden filly manages to glow for a few moments before the dark swallows that as well, leaving them to both readjust their vision.
Aela knows she isn't the type to be forgotten; she thinks that he will be able to gleam the stripes around her legs, remember the imperial blue gaze that levels on him. It's only when her mind reaches out to flash a few memories (her way of speaking that he didn't like) of their previous meeting that she encounters his melancholy. Her small ears flick back into the curls of her pale mane before they come forward again.
"Brooding?" she asks the grazing stallion. The edges of her pale lips are tempted towards a smile. "Bad patch of grass?"
@[Meyer]
RE: I fell by the wayside. - Meyer - 01-29-2021
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The darkness compounds the sounds of those creatures and beings moving underneath the eclipse. I can hear them coming and my pangs of loneliness are abruptly beaten back by anxiety and uncertainty. I know it is not him, my tormentor – the shadows lie too still, dormant without his touch. Nor is it my inattentive savior and his protégé – I smell only horse, not the reek of a thousand different beasts. It is someone I’ve smelt before, though, and as the steps draw closer, I search the blurred halls of a memory where hurt and loneliness reign. My legs shift restlessly without actually taking me anywhere, a physical outlet for the apprehension that stirs in my gut.
They stop a few paces away from me and I can only make out a vague outline. My feet go still even as my heart pounds. I squint and twist my head, as if the motions will help me to see the silent unknown. The harder I stare, the brighter they – she – becomes … white hide clings to her well-wrought limbs, so white they’re nearly blue … my gaze travels upward, briefly touching the gold barring, before finding and meeting a haughty blue gaze that strikes a chord I’ve known before. Just as our eyes meet, the light grows,, the white of my blaze mimicking the glow of hers. And then it blinks out, gone and darkness presides yet again.
I forget my anxiousness when the foreign memories come, sliding the final piece of the puzzle into place. She had found me in the Forest once, invading my mind – a gentle touch on the sadness that pervades, where theirs was forceful and aching – but unwelcome just the same. Much as they had so many days ago, my ears find themselves buried in the knots and mats of my mane. “I don’t like –”, I start to say, but then she … speaks. She had not done that before. Her voice is not what I might have expected; teasing without hurt, her words tinged with the hint of a smile. “No,” I start. “It’s just …” I stop again, guarded as a shadow of distress cracks across my memory.
After several beats of thought, I lick my lips and find my voice again. “I don’t want to be trapped anymore.” She escaped once – I can remember the sequoias and the magic that kept us – her, because I know that I wasn’t there, but I still feel as though I was. I’ve escaped, too, but I still have nowhere to go. Gold eyes, black eyes, both flash in my mind, eyes that wish me harm, to wield me as if I am not a living creature. I am trapped for as long as I’m living, I’m sure of it.
@[Aela]
RE: I fell by the wayside. - Aela - 02-05-2021
He twists his head - (not that there is much of it she can actually see) - and Aela lifts hers while her blue eyes narrow on his silhouette. It's then that she notices how the white of his eyes glow; of how before all the light dims around them and they swim in darkness again, that something about the way he stares at her strikes like flint striking a stone.
There is a spark.
It makes her curious - more than she had been moments before - and she attempts to scrutinize it. Though Aela has found her voice, what comes next is instinct. Her curiosity peaks through the cracks of her mind and attempts to peer into his. It's another flash of images of what she had just seen: the glow of his eyes, the light a mimic of her silver-blue aura. He protests it and Aela blows sharply through her pale nostrils, wishing for once that might overlook her intrusion and see the possibilities instead.
"When I do that," she says readily enough, recalling their first meeting. When she hadn't yet found her voice. Aela is watching him, wondering if he might have anything further to say.
But he surprises her.
There is distress coloring the air and Aela rails against it. She pushes her own emotions out - confidence, certainty, perhaps even trust - but refrains from touch his mind again (for now). These are the emotions that Aela so often takes with her, because how else does one venture so boldly into the dark? (It's either stupid or a deathwish but Aela has her reasons to be here searching.)
The boy speaks and Aela studies him, wondering what his reasons were. Why he was roaming the Common Lands when it was far safer to be elsewhere. Did he still have nowhere to go? There is a flicker across his memories of the land where she had been born: Taiga and its misty forest. Aela bristles in anger; the sight of her birthland is still something that unsettles her. Her pale nostrils flare and her slender head lifts but it is just a memory, she reminds herself. There is another flash across her eyes - gold eyes, black eyes - and there is a sense of foreboding about them, something gleaming from their depths that she can't understand from such a brief image.
"So you break the cage." She tells him (not unkindly but her previous humor has fled). Because she had escaped the North. Because she had found her voice. Because she has seen one leader swallowed whole and she has watched the Night and its terrors descend and she is still here. She glances at the young stallion, appraising him. He is still here.
Aela knows nothing of what he is escaping (just as she knows nothing of her history, of why it had been so important that she stay within the confines of the Taiga). She could skim across his memories but Aela does something rare. She refrains and instead asks the colt, "What would keep you trapped?"
@[Meyer]