[open] there is never a day that goes by; any

[Hurricane]

He trembles, awakens. Awareness comes slowly, like a thick fog is clearing from his brain. Eyes blink open, steely and dark as ink. One would expect them to be sleep fogged, but they are sharp, focused.

Slumber lifts slowly from a pale frame as he shifts, stretching limbs that have been still for far too long. He rises stiffly, shaking years of dust from his pelt, from large, thickly feathered wings.

The years fall away easily, sloughing off like so much dead skin. The advantage of being immortal, of partaking in the immortal sleep.

But this world is different, strange and new in a way he has never before encountered. Not in all his very long years.

---

He had awoken on the mountain, a strange place he has no memory of. The descent had stripped him of his wings, ripping them from his body and replacing them only with a smooth expanse of white pelt. His invisibility is gone too, and only time would tell if the immortality that has kept him on this earth for so long is still his to claim.

He finds the meadow, the forest, the field. These have not changed. But the Tundra, it is gone. Wiped from the earth as though it had never existed. Since the moment of this discovery, a hollow pit has churned inside his gut, loss and confusion and anger roiling inside of him in a tangle of emotion he does not wish to acknowledge.

He had fallen asleep in the snowy north and woken atop a desolate mountain. And now, he is empty, stripped of all that he had been.

So he lingers in the forest, a pale shadow slipping through the trunks. His life (not for the first time) has lost all meaning, all purpose. Even so, he cannot bring himself to go to the field. He cannot bring himself to start over.

There is never a day that goes by

that is a good day to die.

Hurricane

[Offspring]

something has been taken from deep inside of me;
the secret I've kept locked away no one can ever see.

  The sun is bleak yet blinding, weaving its light between the brittle, dried branches and stirring the crystalline ice crystals that cling precariously above the moist soil below. It is a dreary morning, one that is slow moving and seemingly endless – his own breath is shallow, but a cloud of carbon dioxide lingers still with each exhalation. Winter; it is the only reprieve he has from the tepid humidity of the volcanic land he had long since claimed as his own - one that he savors, for it is always too short.

  He longed to once against tuck himself within the arctic tundra, to savor the icy wind against his thick, muscled skin, to thrive within even the harshest blizzard – he yearned for the many days he had once wasted, loitering in the frigid wasteland that had become every bit a part of him as his own heart, as his own soul.

  The fiery ember of pyrokinesis that burned deep within him held no comparison to the way wielding ice once made him feel – the fire is scathing, burning and he loathes every part of it. It is as if some higher power had sensed what small bit of comfort he had taken in the ice and bestowed him with fire as a way to mock, to taunt him.

  There is nothing (nothing) left for him now – it is all a distant memory, and yet –

  And yet.

  A grunt rumbles from the tense restraint of his throat as the ridge of his brow line furrows, the darkened rims of his red eyes narrowing in disbelief. A pale, flightless figure – lingering in a small clearing, flesh and bone - a small reminder of what had once been, of what was.

  ”Hurricane,” his voice is rough from disuse, reverberating off of the dense foliage surrounding them as he presses through the thicket, emerging from the west. ”a pleasant surprise, brother.” A pause, as his gaze studies the carved lines of his broad cheek, of his weary and frustrated eyes. A man, lost as he had been. As he always would be.

  ”I miss it, too,” he says, knowingly.

wounds so deep they never show; they never go away.
like moving pictures in my head, for years and years they've played.

Offspring

[Hurricane]

He had grown so accustomed to the frigid winters of the north that this late winter chill seems as spring in comparison. The air cools in his lungs, but it does not bite or sting. The wind is never more than the barest breeze, nothing one must hunker down against lest one be blown from their feet. It is all so very tame in comparison, and it reminds him far too much that his home, inhospitable though it might have seemed, is gone forever. Ripped from the earth as though it had never been.

He is not a man given to melancholy, but the thought stirs a sadness inside of him. It is as though the past does not matter, all too easy to forget. To a stallion who had once forgotten his past, it hits far too close to home.

Her anger must have been grave indeed, to punish them so. Perhaps it is irony that it was the terrible misuse of power that had sent him to slumber. He is a simple man, from much simpler times, and the posturing had disturbed him. Enough to send him to his sleep, but it must have angered Beqanna far more.

The crunch of hooves breaks his reverie, bringing his pale head around to better see who nears. The dark form is familiar, large and solid, with red eyes peering from a black forelock. Offspring.

His instinct is to ruffle his feathers and settle his wings against his sides, but he is instead starkly reminded of the lack. His invisibility he had not used often enough to miss terribly, but his wings had a been a part of him. Flight had been ingrained, at the very core of his essence. The ache of its loss is real, tangible, leaving him thoroughly disgruntled.

He dips his head slightly to acknowledge the larger stallion before greeting simply, ”Offspring.”

His once brother understands, perhaps more than any other could have. A low sigh escapes his lips as he turns his dark gaze to consider the trees. After a moment’s silence, he continues ”How did you ever become accustomed to it?”

there is never a day that goes by

that is a good day to die

Hurricane