"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
It's rare that Elio finds time to visit the other side of Beqanna, but on a whim he decides to seek out the tropical kingdom his brother spoke of. The golden man spends most of his time wandering the tall Taigan redwoods and the tightly interwoven trees of the Forest. Often dazed or lost, he lives in solitude, never finding the fancy to seek the company of others.
But over the last day or so, he has felt a restless fluttering in his heart, and fixates on where his brother may be, determined to prove meeting Pteron's children is the breath of fresh air he needs.
A day of lazy, unpracticed flying lands Lio in a patch of flattened, yellow grass. A cool spring breeze tousles his mane charmingly around his eyes as the hot spring sun begins to fade into dusk. Elio blinks a clear gray gaze at the sky, brilliant reds and oranges reflecting there. A hesitant smile, not nearly as bright as the waning sun, lifts his mouth, and he dips his head back to the earth.
Pteron is not within sight but Elio thinks he can just barely make his scent out on the window. He turns to face the breeze's collision, stepping purposely toward a verdant gathering of bright flowers.
i don't think i could stand to bewhere you don't see me
I should have loved a thunderbird instead at least when spring comes they roar back again
They may have made a home here, but Aegean does not so quickly give up his love of wandering. There is still too much for him to do and see—too much for him to find—and so he instead directs his attention toward wandering the sprawling expanse of Tephra. Instead of focusing on distance, he chooses to focus instead on the details. He looks for all of the hidden groves and the winding paths. He discovers the way that the beaches look at sunset and the gardens that grow up lush around the near island and the places where the ground still carries the marks of scorched earth, as if forever scarred by the war.
He is fascinated by the world that envelopes him and the people that he meets along the way. He is fascinated by each and every detail—especially when he colors it with the shades of his own gift. He brings the animals that he has seen on his previous wanderings along with him. He splashes colors against the mighty trees that grow in the groves and then he brings the very stars down around him in the afternoon just because he loves to watch the way the constellations dance along the horizon.
Today though—today he enjoys the ocean, much like he had with Pteron’s company not so long ago.
He walks alongside the blue whales and the sea that parts before him. Every so often, he feels the phantom spray of water against the broad sweep of his forehead and tastes the salt on his tongue, but it is never lingering. Such things never are. When he sees the red man, he nearly loses his hold on the illusion as the familiar wave of curiosity washes through him, but he maintains it—a testament to the many years that he has spent practicing. Never one to deny his own curiosity, he angles his path toward the other, bringing with him the oceanic illusions that he paints around himself. When he is close enough, he pauses and dips his glowing, pale head. “Hello,” his voice is melodic and soft. “What brings you here?”
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead (I think I made you up inside my head.)
These days, Elio lives in daydreams by day and nightmares by night. Plagued by the ache of his bones and imagined suspicious sounds, he exists like a ghost, often too ephemeral for strangers to think he is real.
He comes alive, though, some days - vivid in bright flashes of crimson and gold, like treasure come to life. A good actor on his worst days and a walking stream of sunlight on his best, Lio swings between hope of triumph and despair of the impossible.
Here it is easy to forget the impossible, surrounded by a very real tropical landscape and consumed with the thoughts of eager nieces and nephews. Elio's problems are so forgotten that the vivacious character he is during his highs shimmers dangerously in his eyes. A creature once ruled by black and white now subject to the ugliest of whims: the stallion's skin crawls with reckless energy.
Pteron isn't here and he is stuck with these thoughts.
When the world around Elio spins into a crashing ocean, he gasps the gentlest of ohs. Startled and stormy eyes flash down to the different world beneath his hooves, and then back up to find the curious purple gaze of an illusionist. Ethereal white and beautiful, the golden man doesn't know what to think. Every thought, as negative and as sticky as they are, disappears.
"Hello," Lio echoes, once dazed gaze sharpening to study Aegean. The elegant antlers. The jagged edges of his amethyst feet. The faint glow of his hide. "My brother is here," is yet another distance uttering, spoken as if he is incapable of telling anything other than the direct truth.
"What are you doing here?"
i don't think i could stand to bewhere you don't see me
I should have loved a thunderbird instead at least when spring comes they roar back again
The ocean of his own making continues to swirl around them, as if driven by its own pulse. His own studies have given him plenty to work with—enough for him to color the aquatic world with his own creations. He hears the faint, strange noise of a whale in the distance. Sees the shadows of something much too large to be just a fish pass overhead, leaving its shadow on the dappled floor below.
It brings a faint smile to his lips as he considers it all.
No matter how long he has spent living in this world, he never grows tired of it.
But his illusions are not the only thing to hold his attention these days. He turns his amethyst gaze away from the ocean around him and back toward the man of red and orange—carved of sunsets. He considers it and then nods, finding the answer both appealing and understandable. “I would help you find him, but I know very few residents of Tephra,” he says with an elegant shrug. “I have only recently moved here.”
Somewhere, he knows, his own children are exploring and finding their own place within the volcanic land, and he turns his gaze away for a moment—glancing to the horizon momentarily. He is not an absentee father, but he believes in the gift of space. They are both smart children. They do not need him.
“What I do everywhere, I suppose,” he says with a dreamy curl of lip as his eyes focus on Elio once more. “Carving my dreams into reality.” A fish, brilliantly colored, swims around him, swooping under his belly and then leaping and disappearing into nothing. Aegean considers it with his calm gaze.
“What do you dream of?”
The question comes from no where and Aegean does not yet look back to him.
Instead watches the fish swim around them, lets the words settle into the air between them.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead (I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stranger, as much a vision as the world he paints around them, regards Elio with an openness he is not sure he will ever understand.
The ocean whispers against Elio's skin, reminding him that for now, he is not able to be the center of the universe. Here, standing amongst the fish of the sea and undisturbed sand, he feels so small - that feeling is only amplified by the steady amethyst gaze of Aegean. They are both small, in comparison to the creatures that live mysterious lives at the bottom of the ocean, but Lio thinks if Aegean is as small as a sea snake, he must be a minnow.
"Ah, well --" the golden stallion begins, finding a joke about how everyone seems to be moving to the beaches, then; but the words slip from the rolling grasp of his tongue, the two syllables that managed to escape being low enough to wash away under the illusionist's next words.
A fish, bright like the tropical birds that once swooped around them, swims around Aegean as if he is its caretaker. Elio smiles - small, nearly unnoticable - taken by the way it swirls and glides with seemingly no effort. When it comes closer to him, he reaches his muzzle out to greet it, eyes bright with curiosity.
"Nothing as pleasant as this," Lio says absently, stormcloud eyes still focused on the fish. He forgets where he is and who he is speaking to. "But when I am daydreaming, sometimes I have just enough optimism to think of peace."
i don't think i could stand to bewhere you don't see me
I should have loved a thunderbird instead at least when spring comes they roar back again
Aegean marvels at the world but does not quite feel small in comparison. For as much as he lives in his head, he does not often think of himself at all. He is a byproduct of the world and the lens through which he views it, but the rest of it falls away in the presence of the wonder he takes in. The only exception of this rule was the period of his life in which he was without Pteron. He was consumed with his own sorrow those days—studying every angle of it, obsessed with the way that it tore him apart, piece by piece.
These days though, he is a healed man—fully whole and realized. So he does not think of himself as he stands before Elio. Instead, he finds himself fascinated by the man the same color as the sunsets. He watches him as he meets the world that Aegean paints and finds his heart thrumming with joy at the other’s sheer appreciation for his illusions. It is not often that he gets to share them with others like this.
Aegean weaves more sea life to swirl around Elio. Pulling waves of the ocean to swirl around Elio’s legs. Perhaps he can smell the salt in the air. Feel the coolness of the water against his flesh. Perhaps it merely affects his sight. His illusions touch the sense of others differently each time, and he is not sure.
“Perhaps you are not daydreaming the right way,” Aegean muses, taking a step closer to the other but not letting go of his control over the illusions. His fascination lights his purple eyes and the amethyst of his hooves sinks into the rich Tephran loam. “What would you like to see in these daydreams of yours?”
He begins to push his gift toward the other, wondering if Elio would feel that small sense of control that Aegean loans him. He is less practiced in letting another help weave his creations, but he knows that he can—has done it before. He can only wonder at what Elio would create given the chance.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead (I think I made you up inside my head.)
The smell of the salty ocean relaxes muscles Elio did not realize were tensed. His eyelids flutter low, almost tired, as they track the rainbows of fish twining around him. He is not in control here -- a fact that would normally frighten him -- and that allows him to lean into illusion as if it is and forever will be his reality.
Done with the fish, Lio lifts his gaze to Aegean's glowing frame. Elio notes how he looks more of the highest cloud than the bottom of the sea, remembering suddenly that what twists and turns around him is not actually his world. He grows dizzy, anxiously flitting to find anchor in the stranger's purpe gaze.
Elio holds steady there, in the amethyst. It feels as if Aegean will understand, even if he truly can't.
The white stallion's magic wraps tight tendrils around Lio's limbs. He shifts, sand sputtering angrily beneath him, feeling the illusionism latch onto the most imaginative parts of his brain.
For one blissful moment, the golden stallion is in control, stormy eyes growing wide as the water slowly makes way for glowing, white clouds. His mind builds a whole sky beneath the ocean, complete with a pockmarked moon and glittering stars. Lio looks to Aegean with pure, boyish delight in his eyes. His mouth falls open in a wild grin.
The moment passes swiftly. The moon's glow is dimmed by a thick cloud but Elio can still see Wolfbane's form in the distance. Next to Celina. Both tearing into him. Among the stars and the water, they look especially monstruous. As if sensing Lio's attention, Bane lifts his bloodied head to stare and laugh.
"No," Elio whispers. "No."
i don't think i could stand to bewhere you don't see me
I should have loved a thunderbird instead at least when spring comes they roar back again
Aegean delights in Elio’s joy. The sea melts away to be replaced by the sky, and he turns his antlered head to the side to watch the clouds grow. He maintains enough control to help guide the illusion. He brings in more clouds to gather at their feet. Sends a breeze through them, tangling their manes and wrapping around their bones. Brings a flock of birds that fly around and through him, disappearing at the touch.
He turns his purple eyes to the other man and just smiles.
It is a smile that fades as the illusion takes a darker turn.
His velvet lips pull into a frown at the violence that simmers to the surface, at the horror flashing across Elio’s face. It takes him a second—too long, he will think later—but he wrestles for control of the gift again. Wrests it free and then takes command once more. He fades away the clouds and then pulls in a comforting light around them. It casts away the shadows and yet obscures the land around them.
Leaving nothing but just the two of them in this makeshift shelter of light.
Nothing but the sound of their breathing.
Concerned, Aegean takes a step forward, closing the distance between them. He reaches forward and brushes Elio’s forelock away from his eyes. “Are you okay?” his voice quiet, a whisper between them.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead (I think I made you up inside my head.)
![[Image: elio-by-dozymare-ddo34i6.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/Hn9wnYb7/elio-by-dozymare-ddo34i6.png)
