"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
if there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes
Amet arrives in Ischia via the River, assisted by the low tides of the saltwater channel during midday. Despite the water's icy temperature, the dragon King's leather-plated body is warm as he moves through the belly-deep ocean towards Ischia's shore. He draws nearer the territory of Kerberos and is pleasantly surprised as the air begins to warm, as if Beqanna's winter has nothing on the island's tropical climate.
The briny water clings to his gilded scales as he draws from the channel and over the soft, sandy shore. His amber eyes rove Ischia freely. While Kali's description of it had painted a beautiful picture, there was nothing like actually seeing the tropical island. It reminds him, almost uncomfortably, of the desert oasis that had kept the Dunes herd alive so that they needn't venture outside the borders, but it's the familiar scent of Kali that pulls him back to Beqanna and keeps a smile on his friendly face.
The golden Akhal-Teke raises his head and calls loudly for the girl, or for Kerberos (who had also been pleasant during their meeting in Hyaline) before moving closer to the large trees and their sweeping boughs to search the limbs for the colorful parrots Kali had described.
Amet
@[SamShine]
sorry for how short and gross this one is -_- yay starters, right?
Wings. Kali bit her lip and stared out over the ocean, wondering once again if Khari had been right. If that was what wings felt like, his breath on her jaw, the shiver that had run through her when his lips had trailed up her neck. In fact, she’d snuck away a fair few times now to think about it, to remember how it had felt when he’d touched her like that, the way her whole body had woken up lying beneath him on the rolling sea.
Was it always like that, with wings? Always so tingling and shivery and achy and good? If that was what wings felt like, oh, she wished she had wings of her own.
Except this time, when she stared out over the water and she wished, something changed. Not just inside her, a slow burn waking up and kindling in her belly, no, this was different. This was a whole different kind of burning aching itching feeling that started in her back, stretching and pulling, twisting and grinding and oh! Oh, with just wanting and wishing and wondering, she suddenly did have wings, great big feathered things like Khari’s, but soft grey and white like the rest of her, edged in lavender like her hair. “Oh!”
She almost jumped right off the mountain, so excited to try them out, to see what flying was like, to see if Khari was right! But she wanted to show him first, to share her excitement and maybe ask him to show her how to use them, to teach her how to fly. Ohhhh he should for sure be the first one to see her wiiiings! Except by the time she got back down to the flatter parts of the island, her wings were already long gone, sucked back up into her body while she was concentrating on her footing and the climb.
Aww, coconuts.
Kali wrinkled her brow and pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes and thought of wings, but nothing happened. Grumpy, she stomped off toward the beach to go play with the water, where at least she knew she’d have some fun. Just as she was about to emerge onto the sandy shore, she heard her name. “Kali!” Her grumpiness entirely forgotten, she grinned and bounded forward, eager to see who was looking for her.
She dashed out of the trees and skidded to a halt, her dark brown eyes instantly drawn to her friend, his scales of fire and sunshine glinting so beautifully in the sunlight. “Amet!” she squealed, bounding forward to pounce on him. “You came to see me!” Grinning and launching herself at him, she hooked her front legs over his withers and draped her neck over him, twisting so she could beam up at him from his other side. “Hi! Welcome to Ischia! Isn’t it pretty? D’you want to see more? I could show you around if you like!”
if there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes
Barely half a minute passes between Amet's call and Kali's swift reveal from the tangled, close-knit forest. She runs from the trees, her lavender and white body bright against the emerald backdrop and the white sands below her. She recognizes the dragon king instantly, her face transforming under a blanket of excitement as her hooves dig into the sand and propel her closer to him. Amet laughs good-naturedly as the filly nears, her ecstatic squeal echoing over the ocean water as it laps at Ischia's shore.
"Of course I came to see you!" he exclaims with more laughter, as her forelegs are suddenly flung over his back and her lavender head is peeking at him playfully, his own golden head slung to the side so that he may peer at her from the corner of an amber eye. "It's very pretty. I knew exactly how to get here, thanks to the you," he gives Kali a playful wink and then bobs his leather-plated head, feeding off of the young girl's excitement. "Yes! Show me your favorite places to explore," he exclaims, though it suddenly hits him that he probably shouldn't be roaming through too much of Ischia without permission from Kerberos.
"Do you think your daddy will be okay with us exploring? I don't want him to think I am intruding," the young stallion muses, as he considers another potential trip to Ischia with Tang. The painted mare had proven useful during his last diplomatic meeting with Loess and, while Amet is quite sure he would have an enjoyable meeting with Kerberos, it's always a good idea to bring Tang, who seemed to have been born loved by everyone.
“Oh no, it’s fine, I can have friends over. Kylie even brought one home to live here, so it’s okay to visit. Dad won’t mind at all, and he likes you just fine.” Kali beamed and streeetched forward to bump the top of her nose against Amet’s chin, and then pushed off him and brought her feet back to the ground. “Kylie’s my big sister, Khari’s twin, you remember Khari? She looks almost just like him, except without the wings, and of course she’s a girl so she’s shaped a little differently.”
Kali lipped at Amet’s shoulder, exploring the texture of his scales again. Her brow wrinkled, and she wondered again what it felt like to have scales like that. To not have hair at all, but shining, gleaming, glistening scales like a pretty dragon, all soft greys and whites the same pattern as she already had, but just smooth and harder. Not slimy like fish scales, but almost like a snake. And as she pondered, imagining what it’d feel like to have the wind trailing curious fingers along her hairless, scaled skin, her body started to change again, to echo the image in her head. The change rippled in a wave down her neck and her shoulder, over her back and hip, around her belly, down her legs.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, dark brown eyes going wide with surprise. “Ooooh heyyy!” She whirled around, trying to get a better look at herself, and then paused to lip at her own shoulder, her chest. “Look, I’m pretty and scaly like you! Ohh, neat! Ooooh the wind tickles without the hair there, that feels nice!” Almost the same kind of shivery nice as when Khari--well, but she probably wasn’t supposed to think about that, so she shook her head and pushed it out of her mind, and grinned up at Amet instead. “C’mon, Amie, let’s go! I’ll show you the pretty parrots, they’re the rainbow birds I was telling you about when I came to visit.”
if there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes
"I'm glad your dad likes me," Amet laughs happily as he extends his head closer so that he can assist Kali in nudgin him, "I'm not very good at being disliked." She pushes her lithe purple frame against him and returns her hooves to the warm sand of Ischia, explaining all the while about her family. The scaled Akhal-Teke listens intently to her, genuinely curious about the lavender family of Beqanna.
"Do you have any other siblings?" Amet inquires as she moves to inspect his plating, just as she had done in Hyaline. He had been much less troubled then, before the assault on his home, but he does his best now to mask the distress that festers quietly within him whenever he steps away from the lake. Before, he hadn't the ability to apprehend an intruder, even if he had wanted to (which, he did very much want to), but times have changed and the bronzed stallion hides a newfound magical dampener inside of himself.
Kali's muzzle is soft against his scaled shoulder, all sleek and shiny, and Amet turns his chiseled head to the other side to watch her, just in time to see lavender and white scales race over her skin, making her regular coat disappear. Amet's jaw goes slack, his amber eyes squinting as if to remember whether or not he could have eaten poisonous berries recently. "How did you do that?" falls from the stallion's lips as Kali spins herself in a circle to get a better look, her new metallic plating glistening in the tropical sun.
The little girl grins, prompting the same expression from Amet.
Amie.
The golden stallion laughs aloud and gives Kali a quick nod, long legs moving him closer to the emerald forest and away from the shoreline. "Bring me to the birds!"
Oh, good, he liked Amie. Most excellent. Kali beamed at him and bumped her shoulder against his, walking alongside him into Ischia to give him a tour. “I don’t know how I did the scales. I was thinking about what it’d feel like, to have scales instead of hair. Wondering if it’d feel more sensitive because no hair, or if it’d feel kinda like wearing little plates of Dad’s metal around maybe, but it doesn’t feel like metal at all, does it? And then there they were! I did it with Khari’s wings earlier today too, just was thinking about wings and wondering if they felt like he said they felt, and then there they were, wings on my back like they’d always been there, but--”
As she talked, and got distracted from the feel of the scales, they faded back into her normal hair, and she paused, looking down at herself. “Aww, crab shells. It didn’t last very long then either. I was gonna go show Khari, but I was all the way at the top of the island, and by the time I got back down, well, the same thing happened, just shoop, gone-zo. Hey, you’re the first person I got to show, or tell even! That’s cool, huh? It’s like we’ve got a secret, except I mean I’m going to tell people, so it’s a very short secret.”
Kali tilted her head, jumping back to other parts of their conversation as they walked. “I don’t know if I’m good at being disliked. I don’t think I’ve ever tried it. But Dad says that anybody who doesn’t like you for who you are...hmm, how’d he put that? Is missing out on somebody pretty great, and that’s their loss. It still doesn’t sound nice though, so I think I’m in no hurry to find out.”
She smiled up at Amet as she rambled, a gift she’d very much inherited from her father. “And yeah, I’ve got two other siblings. Dad had a baby before he met mom, and she comes to visit sometimes. She’s pretty, but she’s green instead of lavender. No purple at all even, can you imagine? Dad says she’s for sure his though, and that just ‘cause she didn’t get his lavender doesn’t mean she didn’t get a whole lot of him. Makes up for it in sass. I haven’t seen her much though, she was grown before I was born.
“And then Dad found Baddie and brought him home, and he even has some purple on him, on his wings and actually all the same places I do! His hair, his ears, around his eyes, his mouth, his legs. But he’s not Dad’s, except I mean he is now, we adopted him, all of us as a family, the day I was born even. He got lost, and we still haven’t heard a peep from his birth family. So we kept him, and he’s grown up with me, just a little bit older. But what’s a couple of weeks really, after the first few months? We’re more than a year old now and you couldn’t tell by looking that he’s not my twin like Khari and Kylie are.”
Okay, so it was more of a walk and listen to her talk than a guided tour, per se. With as much time as she’d spent with her dad, it was hard not to pick up on some of his habits. “And of course there’s Reilly, who’s...well, kind of like an uncle or a second dad I guess. He loves Mom, not that I’m supposed to know that I think, but it’s pretty obvious when he’s with her. He practically doesn’t take his eyes off her, and he has this look when she’s not looking, like all he wants to do is wrap himself around her and hold her close forever, and chase all her hurt away. With his lips especially, I’m pretty sure he would kiss her all the time if she’d look at him the same way just once. I wish she would. Kissing’s nice, and her heart is so sad sometimes. It’s hard to be sad when somebody’s kissing you though.”
Kali paused, faltering in her endless stream of chatter for a moment when her mind caught up with her mouth and she realize what she’d said. “Uh. I’d imagine, anyhow,” she added, trying to cover her slip-up. Secrets were secret, not for blurting out to everybody. Probably he wouldn’t notice, though. Yeah. She was sneaky enough fixing it, and she could just keep talking anyhow like Dad did sometimes when he wanted to change the subject. “Hey look, over there, the parrots!” Distract, distract, distract. “And what about you? What’s your family like?”
if there's a light at the end, it's just the sun in your eyes
Amet falls in step with Kali, slightly behind the painted girl so that she may lead the way. Ischia is beautiful, constantly drawing his attention to new parts of the island. The foliage is bright and colorful, with a vibrancy unique to Ischia. The Akhal-Teke smiles slightly, tucking the colors gently into his memory, like the roiling orange of Tephra's plasm streams, the yellow leaves of Sylva or the crystalline lake of Hyaline.
The journey is sweeter, too, thanks to his company. Kali's voice is lilting and energetic, drawing the dragon stallion's attention to her with each sentence. And there is a lot of them. He listens patiently, nodding his plated head spiritedly whenever the young girl looks to him. Amet laughs good-naturedly at Kali's innocent version of an expletive. His amber gaze watches as her metallic scales shift and make way for her soft coat once more. She doesn't miss a beat, though, and tells him about the wings she had sprouted from her shoulders earlier that day.
Amet is blatantly enthralled, listening to her monologue with unfaltering attention. "I love keeping secrets, even if they're short ones," he says playfully, eyes turning away from Kali to rove the surrounding area once more. Sunlight trickles between the green of the canopy, playing tricks across their backs as they continue down the sandy trail. "And I think that's a very wise thing that your dad said," Amet offers lightly, though he finds a quiet sadness for the briefest of moments at the lack of good parenting in his own life. He tries to pick Him or Shalla saying what Kerberos had said to Kali - that's their loss - and even the young stallion's imagination can't force their lips to form those words.
"You've got a big family, haven't you?" the King of Hyaline asks with a smile, hoping that the expression reaches his warm eyes. She talks about love in the most innocent of ways, calming Amet's anxiety and ridding his thoughts of turmoil. When she falters, the golden stallion grins but doesn't question her, instead watching as the young Kali bolts ahead, her voice echoing through the forest. Amet humors her, his own gaze turned skyward now to look for the colorful parrots, which sit not far off.
He continues closer, sleek frame moving easily between the tropical flora. Her question catches him off guard, though perhaps he should have seen it coming.
"Ah, well," he hesitates, not meeting her eyes, "I have two siblings, they're younger than me, and they're twins like Khari and Kylie. Their names are Iset and Sakir, and they are basically inseparable. Sakir has dragon scales like I do. He didn't have them when he was little, though. And Iset is bay but her coat is metallic so she is pretty shiny, too." He takes a breath, continues watching the parrots as they preen their feathers and occasionally peck at one another. "Our mother's name is Shalla. We didn't know our dad."
"These parrots are pretty cool," he says abruptly, "have you named them yet?"
“Oh, for sure,” Kali agreed, smiling over her shoulder at Amet. “I love it, too, big families are the best. I think a small one would be so, so lonely, and I hope ours just keeps getting bigger. We’ve sort of adopted my dad’s friend Roma too, who’s really nice, and there are a few other people who live on the island or come visit sometimes, and we’re making friends all over. Uncle Roo lives in Taiga, and he’s the best. And of course you, in Hyaline! And I need to go exploring some more, make even more new friends. People are so nice, don’t you think? I always meet the best people when I go exploring.”
Really, she was overdue for a good wander. Mom had asked her not to go by herself, but sometimes she couldn’t wait for Dad or Khari or somebody to have free time to go with her, and after all, why shouldn’t she go on her own? She was practically grown up, and besides, everyone was so kind and friendly. Maybe I’ll go on an adventure tomorrow! Oh, that was an excellent idea. See somewhere new even, that would be so much fun!
“Your family sounds nice, are they nice? Ohhh, your scales are dragon scales?” Kali’s brown eyes widened and she paused, turning to look at his scales again. “That’s so cool! Daddy says there’s a sexy dragon man living on one of the littler islands, but I haven’t met him yet. I always wondered what a dragon would look like, and now I know! Well, partly anyhow.”
She lipped at his scales again, a playful smile making her eyes twinkle. “I like it. Scales are very dashing, and they’re fun to wear too. I bet way more fun than fish scales, for sure. Plus they’re so pretty and shiny. Oh, sorry, should I say handsome? I forget who said boys like the word handsome better than pretty, maybe it was Mom or Kylie or Reilly? Anyhow. So handsome and shiny, then, and they can be pretty and shiny on me. Is your sister shiny like my dad?”
And very cautiously, she peeked up at him, tucking herself up against him in a soft little cuddle. “I’m sorry you didn’t know your dad. That sounds heartachey sad. Maybe you could borrow mine, he’s pretty great. I mean, if you--well maybe you don’t want somebody to be dadlike anymore, and that’d be fine too, but if you did, or you maybe just needed a friend who was a man and who you could talk to about important stuff? I bet he’d be good at that. He’s really nice, and squishy soft even if he is iron, and he likes you. I know, ‘cause we talked about how nice you were, and how hospitable, and how well you treated me when we came to visit. That meant a lot to him.”
But she didn’t want to push too hard, so she followed his lead without protest. “Oh heavens no, that’d be pretty presumptuous, wouldn’t it? I bet they already have names of their own, squawks and chirps and whistles and funny bird sounds. Wouldn’t it be silly to give them names they couldn’t even say? Or ones they’d have to try so hard to learn? They’re friendlyish, but they’re distant enough that they haven’t exactly tried to come talk to us, so it’d be hard to ask. I do have favorites though, those little green ones with the dark red tails, and the blue wing tips, and the tops of their heads are grey? Those ones, they’re so cute and goofy and adorable. They’re not as bright and flashy as some of the other ones, the more rainbowy ones, but they’re sneaky and charming, and I love them. Which ones are your favorite?”
