"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
Once, she was an orphan. A tiny thing, alone, her mother dead beside her in a pool of blood. And then she was one of many – the mouse-gray girl in the swirling galaxy that was Nera’s foal herd. But they couldn’t stay there forever, because they grew up. And Nera wanted to place them in Kingdoms and places of power, but none of the Kingdom representatives who’d spoken had captured the pony-girl’s interest. They were impassioned about their homes, that much she’d noticed, but there was something they were missing. How odd, to be defined as a person by where you lived.
But if she is not to be defined by where she lives, then what is she to define herself as? A murderer? There was no denying the blood, her mother’s still body beside her in the den (her fault, her fault, her fault)…but she has not killed since then. It does not lurk underneath her skin, the urge to kill, though she has recognized that drive in strangers she’s met since leaving Nera. A child? No, no longer. She has not grown tall but she has grown an adult’s body, and adult’s mind. A mare, then, a woman? Yes, but to what end?
Sloene stops, looking up at the sky, expecting the bright blue of coming spring. But it is not – it is gray, drab, unappealing. Like her own color, her gray against the galaxy colors of her Brothers and Sisters in Nera’s herd, the sky here is invisible against the bright green of spring grass and the colors of spring flowers. Wrong, not quite belonging, but not wrong enough for someone to say something. Just wrong enough to make everyone ignore it, as if it is invisible.
In fact, Camrynn is one of few horses who can claim the distinction of having been many somebodies – she was Camrynn the illusionist once, many years ago, before the land split itself open and ripped itself apart. She became Camrynn the magician then, and disappeared with her grandmother. She returned Cammie the filly, only to suddenly (and abruptly) turn herself into Camrynn, Queen of the Deserts.
And now, she's crafting a new identity too, one that promises to be (potentially) more interesting than the rest of them together: The Queen Illuminate, a living light-shadow wielding great power and an elite task force.
She has lofty goals, to be sure, but she's in no rush to see it all fall into place. She knows it will, sooner or later, and she's got all the time in the world to simply let it happen. Lord knows, she'd rather wait a thousand years than make a misstep.
And so she is gathering them slowly, drawing her chosen to herself with promises of power, whispers of chaos, weaving for each of them a happy tapestry of hopes and dreams with her (inevitably) at the center. She snares each of them differently, binding them each with a different tie. That's part of the fun: finding what makes them tick, unlocking their soul, laying them bare before her, piece by piece, until she discovers what they need to passionately that they're willing to give themselves away to her to get it.
Looking at the mouse-grey girl who wanders the meadow under the spring sky, the black magician is considering. She has no doubt that she could snare the girl; her desire for a place she could belong is so strong Camrynn can almost taste it, and if there is one thing her merry little band offers beyond all else, it is the opportunity to belong, to have purpose. But would she be able to handle the things that would be required of her? Is it in Sloene to break, to sew chaos, to rip and reap?
Well, only one way to find out.
She appears well away from the girl, wearing a face and body she rarely chooses from the repertoire of her imagination. Today she is a crone, a grizzled, faded bay. Her body is decrepit, swaybacked, her knees and hocks bony, her coat entirely lacking luster. Even her eyes are disguised here, their magnificent color-changing dimmed in favor of an unremarkable, mousy brown (quite worthy of her grandmother).
Hating the way she walks but knowing that this is the best way to do it, she hobbles through the meadow until she catches sight of the mouse-grey girl who watches the sky. She looks up too, then, before looking back at the girl.
"Pretty day, isn't it?" her voice is a crone's voice too, cracked and broken with age. "Like as not it'll rain, I think. Be good for the grass." She sighs heavily, settling her weight onto her left side and cocking her right hoof, keeping her brown eyes on the girl who stands before her. "Now dearie, what's a girl like you doing standing here looking up at the sky?"
CAMRYNN
co-queen of the deserts, magical, mother of badassery
Footsteps, halting and infirm, draw her attention from the sky. She watches the older mare approach from the corner of her eye, finally turning her head fully when it becomes clear that the mare intends to come all the way up to Sloene. Silver eyes flick up and down the stranger as she considers the words. Pretty? The little mare looks back up at the sky and then back towards the elderly mare, a quizzical look on her face. She doesn’t want to disagree right away – that’s not polite – so she settles for: “It’s certainly something,” in a dry voice.
She’s not full of sunshine, and she likes the world when it’s slightly shadowy. She knows, so well, that the universe is not black and white. Still, she’d prefer night or a thunderstorm to a mere cloudy day. The other question is less inconspicuous, feels weightier, and she watches the crone carefully before she answers. “Looking for something,” she says finally, glancing back at the sky before turning and settling to talk to the stranger. “I don’t know who I am. What I want. I seem to be in a stasis, of sorts.”
Sloene doesn’t look like much – she knows that. Small, that’s what she looks like, and relatively unimpressive. She’s stocky and solidly built, not feminine, and a profile that tends towards the roman nose side of things. Not a striking beauty, and not a powerful warrior. Just Sloene. “How do you define yourself?” the girl asks the woman, and waits quietly for an answer.
She likes this one, she decides. Sloene may be naieve, yes, but she's got…a certain innocence, a certain moldability, and yet a core of iron. It's not every mare who would immediately open up to some random stranger armed with nothing but age to recommend her as trustworthy. Not that Camrynn is trustworthy; she is and she isn't depending on her mood.
Stasis, Sloene says, and ancient-crone Camrynn nods along. "Mmm." she agrees wordlessly, still cracked and broken with age. She can almost feel the way the girl disregards herself, playing down her features in her own mind. A stasis indeed. "Never comfortable, dearie." she offers at length. "Nasty business, knowing who you are. Very complicated." That much, at least, is true. No matter who you are, knowing who you truly are comes only after a lot of very hard work.
Camrynn admires the way that Sloene turns the question onto her. Crone-Camrynn looks the girl up and down with her muddy brown eyes as Sloene speaks, as though carefully mulling over her question. She doesn't even begin to know what she's asking, of that Camrynn is sure. It's a dangerous thing to ask a magician to define themselves, because it's rather like trying to nail water to a fence: it's just impossible to pin her down, or to contain her. Perhaps the other magicians could; Carnage almost certainly could nail her in a moment, pin her down and make her squirm. Perhaps some of the other elder magicians could too. Or perhaps not. Certainly nothing shy of a magician ever could.
And so how does she define herself? What is she truly? "Why dearie, I'm the essence of magic." the crone says, but already the crone's mask is melting away. The wrinkled, decrepit skin crawls away, taking the muddy bay color with it. The bony legs grow thick and ripple with perfect conditioning. The swayback disappears, replaced with perfect conformation. Where once stood an old, swaybacked bay now stands a proud and undeniably beautiful white-grey mare, with a coat the color of shining metal in the sunlight. Her form is nothing like the slim black thoroughbred body that belongs (properly) to Camrynn; she's a heavier build here, a sleek and muscular warmblood. Her eyes are a strange shade of silver, oddly radiant as though lit from within, perhaps molten.
"I'm no fan of stasis." she keeps the crone's voice for the first few words, but then drops it in favor of a voice that is distinctly feminine, but sounds like many voices speaking all at once. "And, I think, neither are you." she is asking, but she already knows the answer. There's so little she doesn't know the answer to. Her silver gaze is fixed on her companion, the mousy mare.
"So, then, the question is this: what are you going to do about it?"
CAMRYNN
co-queen of the deserts, magical, mother of badassery
