"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
When she met the group in the field that desperate autumn day she had been just three quarters of the way to the end of her pregnancy. As her mother before her she doesn’t have too much more weight on her other than the child squirming inside of her swollen abdomen. She travelled west that day, knowing it would take her ages to get there in her condition…and that was before the great quakes and massive chunks of land falling into the hungry sea. Beqanna had rebelled again, she set off her alarms and shifted her pieces, and the faeries have feasted for now. One can always feel it when the faeries decide they’ll take a break. City travels slow and methodical, taking her time as she picks along the coast. She spent time in the River, waiting for the winter’s first signs before heading northward for the final push. For one whole day she struggles with intermittent pain and a restless prisoner within her. Rain drifts down ever gently. She’s on the coast; storms are brewing and thundering miles away and within her as well. Each time a flash of lightening and a crack of thunder webs across the sky the fetus inside of her, no fetus anymore, kicks furiously. She walks with her ankles buried in soft sand and lapping sea-foam from the gentle waves crashing along the open beach to the north-east of the hills. In the night the rain beats harder and come the morning she had to find a thicket among the shallow hillocks and birch forests bordering the lake. She was born there in the early rose-colored hours of a wet spring morning in a thicket of winter-berries and white trunked trees. Oleandar, said with City’s thick Valley accent, purring softly in your ear.
By that afternoon the child was dry(ish) and fit to travel. The pair makes their way out of the hidden thicket and back on the main path, the pale, wide-eyed moth child awkwardly steps in the light for the first time. The forests dappled shadows drink her happily and beside her exhausted looking mother she seems to glow in the dawn’s light. City stops for a moment to preen at the little thing a bit more, checking her over carefully. The filly is all legs and pale gold. Her nose is a mottle pink fading into white that moves up her nose and sharply stops at a point between her large baby-blue eyes. Those eyes see more colors than any regular filly could ever imagine. For now things beyond the distance of her mother’s freckled hip only melt together; the sweet smell of her mother’s milk and an occasional soft nicker pulling her along. She bears wings, bright and delicate. Each wing is constructed of two parts so that they may fold against her ribs like a pair of regular Pegasus wings. Long tails dangle from behind her, rusty and yellow colored. Each fragile appendage adorns a set of gray and black eye-patterns on each side surrounded by yellowish green and rusty patches throughout. An inky black border lines the edges and paints the very tips of each. Her mouth looks only slightly different from your typical equine muzzle, but just a bit parroted. Her top lip narrows and extends rather dramatically to help control her long nectar hunting tongue (her proboscis). As she grows older her mother’s milk nor her mother’s method of feeding will healthily sustain her. In time she’ll only want fruits, occasional fodder and nectar from special flowers. Her long legs are high-socked, the white marking serrated at their edges as they crawl up her lank, fuzz riddled limbs. These leg hairs are long and fluffed like feathery fishbones, or like dandelion seedlings floating in the breeze. They can read those very breezes as they subtly dance in its mild current. For now the baby doesn’t do much but follow her mother wide-eyed and silent.
They travel for a few more days before she can hear the crashing of sea to granite wall. The saccharine smell of heather mixed with the wind-swept aroma of salt is the first thing both of them notice, both digesting it differently. To daughter the smell is one of the first to burrow itself into her memory, among those of the soil she was born on and the scent of her mother. The mother welcomes the aromas, having never lived by the sea before, immediately soaking in the bugless flow of constant wind. This wind keeps the trees at bay, she can see as she walks quietly over the invisible border of Nerine. She’s still on the coast, travelling by sand-way and sometimes in the small forests along the ocean’s edge. The pale mother leads her tiny leggy moth-baby inland a mile or so. The earth seems to rise in front of them and the ocean sinks at their backs. They scale the greenery lining the granite steppes; it is a giant land ramp in some parts and a dead drop in others. Trees only managing to group where the wind does not rip. Heather of all colors masses across the lush landscape. She stops out in the open somewhere, the afternoon sun finding her grazing and her child nursing happily. Every so often the freckled mare will lift her head and scan the horizon with her yellow eyes to look for someone moving in on them, but otherwise she chews hungrily at the spring grasses at her feet.
rushed and filled with all I found more, give me more, give me more
OPEN TO EVERYONE
@[Orion's Belt] recruited her awhile back and so here she is
sorry for rambling! i tried to explain what freakbaby looks like accurately XD TRIED
in this post and in my head really lol i designed Nerine after Porthcurno, Cornwall, England.
it's a stunning place and sounds about right XD
Naturally he would be the first to approach her. Just as he did in the field that day. Her soft hued coat shined brightly on this beautiful Beqanna day. It didn't contrast as much here though. The whitewashed beaches and greyed cliffs but her scent he had captured upon the breeze. He had been simply strolling along lazily when the breeze sent him such a tempting treat...
His heavy frame neared quickly with long strides and just as the breeze brought him her it brought another... His movements slowed as caution consumed him. Sea blue eyes searched for the mare and upon seeing her, he saw another trailing behind her. They had barely stopped to graze when he called out a greeting. A soft hum to not alarm her but to notify her he was there. He was large and rarely looked over but he bore the same coat color which blended into the scenery at his back. "Hello City, welcome. Glad ye found it. I'm sure it 'twas a long travel." His eyes shifting from her sculpted face and to that of her company. Obviously it was a very long trek given she now had a child. He smiled kindly as he again shifted focus to her. "My congrats. What be her name? If I may ask." He waited patiently for her response and as his distance was also kept...
”Mother,” Castile is older, his voice at the cusp of deepening – barely – and he handles himself more carefully now. When he glances over his shoulder he sees Nayl looking at him with a lift of a brow, silence keeping her lips pursed shut. ”Outsiders,” he doesn’t say much, almost mirroring his father, but it is enough to pique the Queen’s interest. Her head lifts from the tall beach grass; it tickles her legs and underbelly as a swift coastal breeze sweeps through. From afar she can see the mother and child ambling across the sandy shores with an interest hovering on the expanse of ocean to their left.
A groan nearly escapes her, exasperated with trespassers, but she soon catches glimpse of Orion’s Belt. He is quick to find the couple, his voice piercing the seagull cries to welcome the mother and congratulate her. ”She’s recruited,” again, stating something obvious with minimal words. Nayl merely bobs her head and reaches for his shoulder where she touches him with the tenderness of a loving mother. When she glances back over her shoulder, Nayl half expects to see her daughter, but isn’t surprised to see that she is still practicing her independence. She comes when hungry and explores when not. Oftentimes, Castile prowls nearby to keep a heavy eye on his sister. Today, however, he decides to accompany his mother.
”I see the two of you have already met,” it’s the first time Nayl has spoken in hours, her voice a near drawl punctuated with a languid smile. ”Had you not been greeted by Orion so quickly I would have taken you to be trespassing,” she pauses as she draws to a stop among them, ”and I don’t care much for trespassers.” The fire in her eyes crackle and scorches the words slipping from her velvet lips. She is easily softened, however, by the gentleness that Castile reaches down to the young child with. His eyes – one gold, one silver – peer at her curiously, but he searches her eyes more than her tiny body. ”Hello, I’m Castile,” his attention is engrossed by the filly, and he almost forgets where he is, who he is with. He regards mother with a nod when she brushes his hip, but he doesn’t peel away from his fascination with a child younger than him (he is so used to being the smallest, the youngest).
Moving along with a resigned sigh, she looks to the mother. ”I’m Nayl,” then to the stallion, ”It’s nice to see you again, Orion.”
06-10-2017, 12:18 PM (This post was last modified: 06-10-2017, 12:18 PM by City.)
City
The moth-baby is still unsteady on her long pale legs; those knobbed knees shaky as the terrain morphs from stones to grass and back again. City tenderly picks at and grooms over the baby, bending her milky freckled neck to snake protectively around the fragile little thing as she nurses. Orion comes lumbering forward, his footsteps making the ground tremor beneath their toes, Oleandar breaks away from her mother with a start. City’s tail sweeps calmly from side to side with a subtle message of calmness for her daughter, the baby abides and returns to nursing while the blurred stone-gray figure of Orion approaches.
Molten gold. The day’s light hits her eyes just right while they peel over the dappled man coming forward so bravely, as if they’re good friends. She resists the serious temptation to snap at him and demand he give her space but she lets it go and keeps her teeth herself. She does nothing to hide the hard stare or the flare of her gray nostrils. He prattles on, a greeting, small talk and inquiry of her child’s name. No, but thanks. She’s about to find something to say, trying to feign interest in this recruiter who gave her a free pass to these cliffs, for which she is genuinely thankful for (so far). She’s saved however, another silhouette is slithering through the grass toward the trio. Two, actually.
The daughter is now staring with her giant globular eyes, pale jade in tint, pupiless and metallic in their lids and under those long white lashes. Her pink nose twitches and blinks curiously, her butt tucked against her mother’s underbelly. She can see the stranger sharply now, the day’s sunlight blinding to her sensitive night-keen eyes. The second stranger is only but a dark cloudy blur at first, but her voice precedes her approach. Another shadow creeps forward and she's not sure if she's seen another... Olea’s long, skinny almost antennae like ears flip toward the women and her intriguing voice. Her figure is broken in color, smoke and clouds, or stone and snow. The baby has only seen landscape in her short life and so these coats of all kinds are akin to such, apparently. Another child comes forward but they’re voiceless at first, blurry and then detailed as he gets closer. This one smells funny to her, that is the colt smell, different than the sweetness of her mother’s milk, the fern sort of smell of another mare or the musk of a stallion – no, colts smell much different, she’ll discover. City does not bother to snap at the Queen’s son but she eyes him suspiciously all the same as he seems enamored with the little winged thing pressed against her. the freckled gray mare disregards the coy game of wit the Queen employs; something about trespassers? The blood-eyed mother has zero interest in humor, or playful games of intimidation, or whatever the painted woman is trying to do. City ignores everything but her name and nods.
“I’m Castile” City’s attention, her eyes, flick back to the colt almost involuntarily but she says nothing, only looking to her pale wide-eyed baby for a reaction. She has a mother moment, realizing this is the first child, the first living thing beside City, to say anything to her. The mother wonders briefly if the baby might be frightened, but she’s not. She’s still and blinking, and silent. She’s still so very little. She is, however, very inquisitive and reaches out to bump her pink nose against his own. Something like a smile creeps at the edges of the mother’s lips but she soon remembers where she is and who she is around. She turns back to Nayl. “City.” She leans toward the boy, “Her name is Oleandar.” Her valley accent laces each word. She smiles awkwardly, noticing she is sort of pleased with how the boy is interested in the moth-baby. She finds the piebald mare again, “When she’s grown a little more, I can be of better use than just a body – intelligence, military, whatever. I can earn my and her spot here.” She casts her yellow eyes out to the populace scattered about, from horizon to horizon and back to Nayl. She expects the woman to tell her more; what shape is the kingdom in perhaps? What should the citizens do? Goals? Such a fetal little Kingdom must have goals and laws, yes? She searches the mare’s face, the Queen’s face for something deeper than a common greeting.
rushed and filled with all I found more, give me more, give me more
