"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
A cloudless sky stared down at the lone filly seemingly stranded upon the sands of Ischia’s beach. Her nearly black figure stood in stark contrast to the pale blue of her surroundings. A warm breeze drifted off the white capped waves, catching wisps of her baby mane within their tendrils. She’d lost track of time. Granules of sand stuck to her legs and crabs pecked nosily at her hooves, still she stood unmoving, barely blinking. Green eyes searched the horizon though, for what, she hardly knew. She’d been born upon the very ground on which she stood. Barely moments old she’d been discovered nestled within the dunes, her eyes shut against spring’s warming sun. Brennen – her father – had wasted no time in taking her in.
He never spoke of her mother, Brennen. Though, she wasn’t deaf to the whispers shared among her half-siblings. It was easy to pretend that she didn’t care, simple to feign ignorance. Truthfully, she supposed that it hardly mattered. The creature who had planted a foal amongst the seagrass clearly hadn’t the slightest interest in mothering the child she bore. Thus far, Astarael hadn’t wasted a single moment pinning after such a careless creature.
But this day was different. It was one year ago that she’d been lost and found simultaneously. Her expression grew solemn as she closed her eyes and called upon the memories of that long-ago day. Deep within the depths of her earliest remembering’s she saw Brennen’s face as she had the day he’d found her. Concern wrought upon his face, he’d wasted no time in wrapping her within the comfort of his safety. Galilee, too, had been kind enough to take her in, whilst her new siblings welcomed her joyously. She’d found a sliver of happiness amongst the tugging of her loneliness.
And, at times, it was lonely. While her brothers and sisters trained tirelessly with their multitude of abilities, she sat sidelined. Ordinary was not a word she was pleased to align with herself. She liked to think that things would have been better for her if only the fairies, in their abundant wisdom, had sought to bestow upon her a gift.
Abruptly, she opened her eyes and, for a moment, imagined a far-off land just beyond the realms of sight. She realized how foolish she’d been to hold onto a hope that she thought she’d long since buried. Still, she’d prayed that she would stand upon that beach, in the spot where she’d been born, and be met by the figure she’d only ever encountered within her dreams.
Hot tears pricked at the corners of her eyes and Astarael blinked them furiously away. She would not waste precious tears on a woman who hadn’t even bothered to bestow upon her a name.
03-26-2018, 12:28 AM (This post was last modified: 03-26-2018, 12:37 AM by Cagney.)
Cagney
who can say when the day sleeps, if the night keeps all your heart?
only time
The stallion is meandering along the beach when she catches his eye, and he changes directions to slowly approach her. He has not met this sister, having only returned to his father’s chain of islands quite recently, but Brennen had given him enough information that he has no trouble placing her name with her face, when he comes upon her on the beach, and his dark brown eyes wander over her face as he comes to stand beside her, offering a quiet smile with an equally quiet greeting. “Hello,” The boy thinks he sees the hint of what might be tears in her eyes, just the beginnings, but he politely ignores them. “I’m Cagney, and I’ve been told you’re my littlest sister. Well, until the even littler ones arrive in a couple of weeks,” There, he offers her a tiny little chuckle, inviting her to share in his half-amusement half-exasperation at their sire’s very nature.
He is at once more like her than many of their half-siblings, and yet just as remote as they. Cagney, too, was left with Brennen by a mother who had no interest in him; he understands the strange duality of being unconditionally loved by prominent sire but yet also occasionally wondering how life might have been different if he had two parents. He wonders how much worse it feels for this little sister of his, who grows up in the shadow of Galilee having settled on Ischia alongside the rest of them – his mother he never met, but at least Brennen had not had any other children and their mothers living together with him. But his father had also shared concerns with Cagney about Astarael having a hard time fitting in with some of her siblings, for the lack-of-mother-issue but also the lack-of-fancy-traits-issue; and that is where Cagney is uncertain how he can help, except for that he spends most of his time letting everyone in his life assume he, too, is plain. But he is a good listener, and so Brennen had shared perhaps more of his younger siblings’ secrets than he had any intention to, and the roan boy now feels the need to check up on the girl.
After all, gods know how lost Cagney would have been without the family Brennen had provided him. Now that he is not lost in the fog of loss and the webs of time, perhaps it’s time for him to start contributing to that family again.
Who can say where the road goes? Where the day flows? Only time.
Astarael wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing there alone upon the beach. It was only as the sand around her hooves began to dry did she realize that the tide had pulled itself back out. Exhaling she watched as the phytoplankton slowly began to fill shoreline with the glowing blue of their bodies. With one final glance at the horizon, she turned back towards the inland. It was then, as she prepared to leave the beach, that she spotted the approach of her older half-brother. Cagney.
It came as no real surprise that the stallion was just now introducing himself, even after a year of her living amongst them. Brennen’s brood was large, and he kept his sons too busy to mingle with the likes of her. But she knew them all. She knew their faces, their names and their abilities. Like her, Cagney had been dumped upon their father by a careless mother. Like her, he was seemingly average – yet she sensed a power within him. Whether he knew it or not, he was not as plain as he appeared.
”I know you,” she said with a slight edge to her voice. ”Cagney, you’re in the brotherhood? Vader and Thayne are your children, my niece and nephew?”
Left, mostly, to her own devices, it had quickly become a favorite pastime of hers to learn as much as possible about her many siblings. She studied them from afar, asked questions and remembered. There was much more than she’d learned about Cagney through her older siblings. Especially the mares. They liked to talk. One name presented itself to Astarael, but she chose to tuck it away for another time. It was more fun to move slowly, to dance around and make them believe her to be the young impressionable filly that most of them pretended her to be.
who can say when the day sleeps, if the night keeps all your heart?
only time
The girl is all sharp edges, right off the bat. Perhaps it might repulse someone else, but Cagney is used to sharp edges, sharp voices, sharp minds.
(She had been almost exclusively sharp edges, from meeting to the end. And their daughter was the same, a creature of ice and pinpricks and suppressed fire.)
So he takes it in stride, his body staying relaxed and his voice unerringly warm; somehow he has separated his children from Elite, or he would never be able to stand on four feet and try and move on with his life. His grief was deep enough to drown a better man, so he thinks of them without her. “Vader is my firstborn. My other child’s name is Kellyn. Thayne is Vader’s son.” He has no idea that Thayne is Elite’s son as well as he grandson, and the unfortunate creature who is Vader - broken somehow, and simple-minded - will never tell anybody. He doesn’t have the words, or even the understanding of why it would be an issue.
He is not totally sure why his sire wishes to reform the Brotherhood rather than just take over Ischia; it seems to Cagney that it would be better for Brennen to have the might of all of his children behind him, rather than just his sons; but the Brotherhood protected Cagney, supported Cagney for most of his life, and he will not stand in the way of them if they wish to resettle here. He can only imagine how it must be for Brennen, who had loved the Tundra and it’s men for five decades or nearly that before Cagney was even an imagining of a fickle god. “I was a Brother, yes. When there was a Brotherhood,” He says nothing about the future, about plans, because Brennen has not even told all of his children. Not for want of love of them, for he could hardly love them more, but because he has seen too many plans ruined by the wrong slip of the tongue, and this plan is too new, too uncertain, for that risk. “Since my return, I’ve served Ischia. It’s nice enough here, I suppose, and my family is here. I wouldn’t care to be anywhere else.”
(Without her, his family is all he has.)
“What about you, little sister? You are nearly old enough to leave the nest. Will you stay here, or pursue dreams elsewhere?”
Who can say where the road goes? Where the day flows? Only time.
It didn’t surprise her to have some of her brother’s past mixed up. Most of what she’d heard had been the idle gossip of bored mares. A pastime that held no appeal to the nearly grown filly. Still, at times, there was information to be stolen from the mouths of the matronly. There’d always been a hint of disapproval whenever Thayne’s name surfaced in polite conversation. Behind thinly veiled speculation, Astarael often wondered if there was any truth to the rumors. Even more so, she questioned if Cagney was as ignorant as he seemed to be.
Those were all questions for another time, however. She listened intently as he spoke, noting his attempt at shielding her from their father’s plans. Like many of the others, they assumed her to be too young to understand the oncoming storm. And there would be a storm if Brennen’s plans did not go as anticipated. She doubted that Krone would relinquish the throne as easily as he was hoping. She believed herself to be chosen by the sea to rule the island kingdom. Yes, Astarael was certain that she would not shy away from Brennen’s challenge for her seat.
That wasn’t to say, however, that Astarael thought her father would make a poor king. No, quite the contrary. She knew he would rise to the occasion and rule the land justly. Forever. His immortality would secure his place so long as no one sought to challenge him in the manner similar to his own claim.
Her green eyes softened as she noted the searching of his eyes upon her. She wondered if he could see her. The darkness within and brewing storm of curiosity. He loved Ischia, that much was evident in the tone in which he spoke of the salty land.
”I’m not yet sure where my feet will take me,” she lied. As the words slipped past the velvet of her lips she felt a familiar pull upon her heart. A longing that called her to cross the bridge to the mainland. To search for her mother.
who can say when the day sleeps, if the night keeps all your heart?
only time
Cagney is willfully ignorant of the things Elite had done. He must be, to continue existing on any level of sanity; for he loves her, despite her faults, and his heart can only hold up to loving so many of her doings. The ones he acknowledges he has excuses for – she had not murdered all of those people, after all; it had been the mob that her Kingdom had become. She hadn’t loved Vader, but she had cared for him enough to deliver him to Cagney rather than let him be in danger in her Kingdom who loved only the gifted. She had loved Cagney, in whatever way she could, and that was enough for him.
Probably his love would crumble under any more knowledge of his pink lover’s crimes, but luckily she is no more now than a blip in history, forgotten or unknown by many…and those that do know would hesitate to use the information to break Cagney, for if they know of him and Elite, they know also that Brennen’s vengeance against one who hurt his child would be swift and fierce.
(On good days, he knows this. Trusts in his father’s absolute love. On bad days, he wonders whether she would have defended his ‘white knight’ so completely as his family would.)
He does see something in Astarael, and it reminds him of Elite a little, but more so of his daughter Kellyn. It is, all at once, reassuring and terrifying. Reassuring because he loved both of his fire-women, despite their flaws. Reassuring because nothing could ever keep them down for long, and it’s nice to see some of that same fire in his younger sister because it will serve her well in the wide, harsh world. Terrifying, because Elite had done terrible things, believing to her death that they were the right thing. Terrifying, because Kellyn had that same potential and having her out on her own was like secretly waiting for a bomb to go off and shower them all in blood and destruction.
(Cagney knows his father sees Elite in Kellyn as well; it is part of why he let her go. You don’t clutch on to hot coals; you let them fall and hope they burn themselves out without setting anyone else on fire.)
“There is a big world out there, waiting to be explored,” he agrees, glancing out away from Astarael and across the ocean. “But it is nice to know that there will always be a safe harbor to come home to.” Cagney doesn’t want Astarael to feel alone. It’s a terrible feeling, loneliness, and he would not wish it upon his worst enemy, much less a little sister.
Who can say where the road goes? Where the day flows? Only time.
The denial was thick within his eyes. She saw it as it shifted and changed into a million different forms before it faded from his face. Perhaps he was not as ignorant as she'd originally assumed him to be. Reality often was a cruel mistress - and love was even crueler. She could never truly understand the depths in which one loved another. The selfless giving of time and devotion - it reached beyond her levels of comprehension. She, herself, had never once felt the burning desire that others often exhibited. Even the simple affection her siblings held for their shared father could not be mirrored within the emerald of her gaze. And, after seeing the aftershocks of a love as blinding as the one Cagney had experienced, she wasn't sure she ever wished to know it.
For all his strength, he was weakened by the mare who'd spat on his devotion. Disgustingly she could see the remainder of his affection just beyond the confusion that boiled within his soft gaze.
His words rake against her skin like burning prongs. Unwanted sympathy reached itself towards her and she flinched away from it. She did not need to be comforted like some sniveling child. Unlike the soft stallion before her, she hadn't willingly accepted her identity as a castaway. She let her disdain for the events of her past grow within her until it'd shaped her into the being she'd become.
"This is not my home," she corrected him. Her eyes grew cold as she edged herself around him. "My home lies somewhere else beyond this godforsaken island and I intend to find it."
She didn't care how her words might have sounded. Cagney was nothing but a meddling stranger to her. His misguided attempts to comfort her slid off her hide like the whisking of moisture after a rain. Young though she may have seemed, she'd been forced to grow beyond her age. Without a mother licking away her tears, she'd grown stronger and smarter. Perhaps that was the one thing Astarael could credit her mother.
It was because of her carelessness that she'd grown into the mare she'd became. That was not a gift she was likely to toss aside.
