"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
08-23-2021, 08:45 AM (This post was last modified: 08-23-2021, 08:45 AM by lannister.)
you used to tell me we'd turn into something oh, you said life was much better than this
It had been weeks since Elio had last come to see his son. The dream-boy had grown and grown; and now he is a dream-man, striking and somehow taller than his father. At his forehead gleams a curved blade, half black and half gold. Stars trail him so faithfully, gold and crimson mix and mingle over strong, dream-fed muscles. He is old enough to be away from his father, now - far too old to remain nestled away like a baby bird too scared of flight.
But Lannister is jailed. In the sky he lives, his father's world the prison and others' dreams the bars holding his cell together. He can only live vicariously, can only recreate that which others offer him. No experience is truly his own. Occasionally he finds another universe, full of laughter and dancing and danger, but even those gifts are not his. Despite the good food he conjures, the warm beds he creates, Lannister rots and withers - his outward appearance no indications of the fields of wildflowers dying sweetly within him.
That festering, those pitiful, wilted petals - they weigh Lannister down. Bloom into something different, darker. The rot stirs when he grows angry, turns into some nearly twisted magic. He wants out.
The overwhelming sensation of power tingles and fireworks in Lannister's chest. He looks down, stormcloud eyes sparkling with anxiety and bewildered excitement. What was this feeling, this chaos? Where was his father to referee all the strange sensations he never learned about? A huff, short and mildly panicked, snorts from the back of his throat. "What is this?" Lan murmurs, then closes his eyes, leaning back on the clouds that held him so faithfully.
But there are no longer clouds, no - just an empty blackness. Around him stars glimmer and sparkle and when Lan blinks, that's all there is: endless darkness and minuscule stars illuminating absolutely nothing.
"H-hello?" he asks into the emptiness, voice echoing.
08-23-2021, 09:30 PM (This post was last modified: 08-23-2021, 09:31 PM by Aela.)
Perhaps it is because of her recent trip to Tephra.
Perhaps it is because that Obscene is nearby, trying to ignore this new rift between them, and it leaves an opening in Aela's dreams.
Perhaps it because, as much as Aela would like to think that she can command her emotions like she might an army, they are much like their keeper. They are strong and defiant; even if Aela can reduce her own feelings to embers, they have a power to return as an inferno. And they come blazing to life now, while she rests in a field of wildflowers. The flames raze everything, reducing the territory to ash in her mind.
But no matter how much Aela burns, she never finds him.
The only trace of Skandar she finds is in the angry-red coals on the Pampas grounds, a pale memory, but even they grow dark and dim. If he is not here, she thinks, he must be in Tephra. She offers the trees of Sylva as kindling in her search, and the burning forest of Beqanna becomes a literal one. A beacon guiding her way to the West. Aela's fires engulf the other Loessian territory, until she arrives at the Tephran border and so goes the jungle. The vibrant greens and vivid flowers are swallowed by the maelstrom, until her blue eyes fixate on the one place she hasn't searched.
The volcano.
There is an anger simmering in the air - something more than the red-orange auras of her fire - and the palomino turns her head, sensing the horse near rather than seeing it. A stirring of powerful emotions that cause her fires to die and the world to go dark, like the Eclipse. She can feel her flames, waiting to be beckoned, but if this is the Endless Night again, then there could be monsters. The obscurity brings another thought. If there are monsters, then there could be Skandar.
It isn't the star-marked stallion she finds shining in the dark, though there are stars dancing around him. Aela steps into his light and her blue eyes turn navy, as they darken with suspicion. She eyes the starshine that glints off his broad golden horn and asks, "Did you put out my fires?"
They doused your soul in water, but the flames raged higher. And they called you devil's daughter, such a pretty liar.
@lannister because a bunch of emotions in the dreamscape sounded like a terribly wonderful idea
you used to tell me we'd turn into something oh, you said life was much better than this
Lannister would hiss at Aela if he could, flex feline claws and bare feline teeth until she turned tail and ran.
Why was it he always found interruptions when his emotions were at their highest? He couldn’t fight the seething eruption in his chest, the overwhelming outpouring of anger he was never taught to master.
Elio, at his best, was an attentive and kind father; but he never particularly tried to find a way out for Lannister, thinking his son much safer in the dream realm while so much of his family hungrily prowls Beqanna. To Lannister, he saw his time here as imprisonment as he grew older, and his father's lack of explanation was filled with an excuse created by anger: Elio is selfish, Elio is weak, Elio abandoned him.
And isn’t that the truth? His father is nowhere to be found. Before Lannister had given himself entirely to his fury, he searched every night for his father’s dreams. There was only ever the cold comfort (or terror) of strangers.
That is what Aela is to him: a stranger to frighten or a stranger to find comfort in. And given his clearly unforgiving mood, Lan does not seek a hand to hold. The suspicion he finds in his aunt’s darkened eyes only fuels the fire in his chest. A sneer curls his lips, revealing teeth that slowly lengthen into fangs.
“And what if I did?” Lannister hisses, his voice a low curl he has only used a few times. He’s certain he doused whatever was in her dreams, even if it was not entirely intentional.
09-08-2021, 06:06 PM (This post was last modified: 09-08-2021, 06:07 PM by Aela.)
Aela will never run.
It is one of her biggest assets - the way that she stands on a Mountain of her own making. Even if it doesn't yet exist - as nothing does in this dark place - she will hold the ground beneath her hooves like she has every right to it. Whatever worlds she walks, they will all either learn to move with her or be trampled, if they dare move against her.
But it is her biggest flaw, because it is also the reason that the Goddess had been able to scar her. It is most often the reason she had encountered trouble before, refusing to give way, and one of the multiple reasons she goes to Tephra to soak in their healing waters, erasing any sign of hardship that Aela has known in this life.
The dark red stallion turns on her, revealing sharp teeth and a snarl that puts on the Empath on an edge. She is here to find Skandar; she wants nothing to do with this striped beast. But he is in her way, because if she can't see, then there will be no finding Skandar. Aela stalks forward because she no longer recognizes fear - not when she can banish it with a simple thought - and she certainly doesn't dream about it.
She is in no mood for him, and though her fire aura doesn't light in this dim world, she stops and stares up at the seething alicorn with a fury that burns.
"I have no interest in stopping you," she says in a low voice. "Stumble in the dark if you wish." Aela spits back at him. "But you will not stop me," and takes another step forward, ready to summon fires again. Her flames will rise and he will step out of her way or burn.
But then, in the distance, a sound like a thousand breaking bones cracks through the shadowy realm. This world glows not from Aela's inferno but an explosion in the distance. The outlines of the volcano - the familiar horizon of Tephra - becomes illuminated in furious shades of red and orange as molten lava pours down the side of the mountain, as a cataclysm starts to take place.
Something that she would have normally delighted in, if she could have taken any credit for it.
"Was that you?"
They doused your soul in water, but the flames raged higher. And they called you devil's daughter, such a pretty liar.
you used to tell me we'd turn into something oh, you said life was much better than this
Just as Aela is self-made into something hungry and bewildering, so is Lannister. Though their hands molded differently, wielded differently, and ravaged differently—they were similar in more ways than their shared blood. The contempt and anger on the dream-weaver’s face is borne from the world he learned he could change with a simple whim. He now bore his power not only with condescension, but with the care of a precious jewel.
It breathed life into his withering skin just when he thought Beqanna would tear him apart. It fed the gnawing, gnashing, starving creature that thrashes restlessly in his chest. It gave everything to him—everything.
“Foolish,” Lannister answers with a laugh, lifting his haughty head and sneering in such a way that bared all his sharpened teeth. He has never met another so bold—never encountered one that might be too confident for their own good. She certainly underestimated what he could do to her in her dreams. Lan’s hide quivers with excitement, the thought of striking her down for spitting so carelessly at him. He can barely contain the magic seeping from his skin.
But his quick planning is interrupted by the sudden appearance of Tephra. Lannister throws his head back, watching as the horizon sprouts around them. The wine-stained stallion merely sighs as he watches the lava flow down Tephra’s peak.
He looks back at Aela and answers in a tone that clearly says you’re an idiot, “No, you did.” Then, with the blink of an eye, he asks the lava to harden into rock. It complies with mild resistance, the same kind of resistance most minds give when he tries to change their creations, slowly blinking out the light that once brightened the dark sky. Lava still flowed from the volcano’s peak, but Lannister didn’t bother himself with stopping it. He then asks for the moon, croons sweet songs to the dream-realm so that it might answer him easier. The sky brightens as a full moon illuminates the Tephran soil the pair now stand upon.
“I did that, though. You're dreaming,” he says once he can see Aela's face fully.
If Aela had known about the shared blood between them (though his glimmering gold stripes certainly caught her attention), she would have scowled even in this dream world. Her relations - apart from Reave - were irritatingly everywhere; It would seem they reproduce faster than rabbits and every time she turns around, there is another one claiming their blood and skewing her ascension to greatness.
To know that she couldn't escape them even in her dreams would have infuriated her even more than the indignant stallion did now by deeming her 'foolish'.
But the Seneschal has always been a consummate actress and slips into the role easily (at least until she has a better understanding of where she is, of what she is dealing with). She schools her expression - a skill that has taken her many years and several varying situations - enough that as she lifts her blazed head, her eyes widen at the sight of the Tephran volcano exploding and then the way that he brings out the stars and the moon. Her nostrils flare and she takes a high step back away from the brute, giving her earlier bravado an appearance of necessity.
That to be bold had been her only choice, because otherwise she might have just shaken with fear.
"I was looking for a...," she pauses and turns her lovely face towards the still-erupting volcano as the lava streamed down its peak. It begins to slow and there is a familiar tug in her mind, a feeling not unlike the moments she had shared with magicians like Beyza and her brother Gale. She frowns. "A friend." Perhaps not the most appropriate name for Skandar, but it suited well enough in this moment. (A feigned story of a friend searching for a missing one, driven out of desperation and worry.) This was a dream and while Aela has had them often enough, she isn't entirely sure of this one or the red-and-gold pegasus glaring at her as they both become illuminated by the silver blue light of the full moon.
"What are you doing in my dream?" she asks tentatively, choosing this question over a myriad of others.
They doused your soul in water, but the flames raged higher. And they called you devil's daughter, such a pretty liar.
you used to tell me we'd turn into something oh, you said life was much better than this
To Lannister, the truest loveliness of the dream-realm is how it seems to lack consequences for him. Perhaps there is a soul tied to the earth below; but the dream-weaver is so blissfully ignorant to the truly physical body he will soon have to bear, and therefore does not care about what wearing a face of nightmares will mean to those with free-will. That’s always been his problem, though, right? He’s never known free-will. Only the claws of this lonely universe and the greater power burrowing deep beneath his flesh.
Perhaps Aela not knowing that the creature standing before has only ever known a father and the occasional stranger makes her assessment of him inaccurate. For when she paints her pretty face to something practiced and innocent, Lannister hardly understands it. He can barely make sense of the anger that too often controls his tongue, much less read the performance she puts on. She is not innocent or deceptive to him, only the vaguest shadow of an enemy (or a victim).
If Aela and Lannister were to have met in the months coming—when the brute has mastered some semblance of Beqanna charm—they might have put on a performance worthy of an encore.
There is nothing relaxed in the way he continues to glare at her. The mere mention of a friend causes him to bristle, those fangs from before showing themselves in a silent, instinctual snarl.
“I didn’t seek you out,” the stallion snaps in response to Aela’s question. An aggressive answer in lieu of admitting he doesn’t know how he arrived here, either.
Lannister sniffs, stormy eyes glancing over the scenery illuminated by watery silver light. Out from beneath a hanging elephant ear leaf pads a massive, agitated tiger. It settles nicely next to him, feline eyes offering Aela the very same glare Lannister does.
“I don’t feel like talking anymore.”
The tiger slashes one clawed paw at Aela, a warning.
He didn't seek her out, and so Aela's mind tries to make connections in this place that doesn't seem to make any sense to her. The palomino has certainly dreamed of the Tephran volcano erupting before; it's a fervent childhood wish that has been carried into adulthood, fueled by the same "friend" that she searches for even now.
Aela - while almost always hyperaware of the emotions of others - has always been careful with hers, and where else would she reveal so much of herself but a dream?
If everything else seems so obscure here, what else might be?
In the pale, silver light, the striped alicorn snaps back at her. It would seem her charade of feigned innocence would do nothing here, and so she no longer bothers with it. Her blue eyes sharpen on the winged stallion, glinting briefly on his sharp horn before they return to the dark red angles of his face. From beneath the viridian green of a large palm plant, a large tiger comes pacing from the shadows and places itself next to the gold-and-red brute.
The flickering beneath her skin finally breaks free from her golden stripes, and Aela becomes the consuming flame that she so often loves to be.
"Then do something," she crackles over splintering wood and burning leaves, starting to become more wildfire than mare.
