"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
12-10-2015, 08:00 PM (This post was last modified: 12-30-2015, 08:43 PM by Vineine.)
***There is silence here. A confined and stark silence. Where some may find it eerie or oppressive in its sheer weight, she finds it peaceful. It contains a throng of soft, woody voices — grown in queer quiet, these things become dull and sleepy. But they are there: The rustle of leaves above, the groan of a younger tree shifting in the breeze. and the crack of a twig (mercifully clear, a warning sign; rabbits retreat to their dens below, safe). But, though it seems so comfortable in this green hall, silence is not inherent here. As the sun inclines its face, voices and passerine trills will fill the empty spaces between tree trunks. Copses of breath and laughter, disturbing the tranquility with the splendor of animation.
***She glances up, head on a tilt. Soft, sun-exposed green filters in rays of strong, red-golden light. The sun is somewhere distant, just above the horizon. Its perspective throws peculiar shade and bright stipples on the ground. Here and there, animals stretch and flowers yawn their petals open to pollinators. It is a slow awakening, a dawn chorus playing an imperceptible shift; the nocturnal tuck into themselves and others, and the matutinal take the throne.
***She lifts her fine head, ears swerving back. Across the soft dirt and grass, a padded ghost creeps. She snorts a soft warning, wide, brown eyes blinking into the mossy air. But it is gone all without being seen, perhaps already sated or otherwise unsure of its chances with something so much bigger that itself. Her tail flicks across her dappled hind, and she resumes picking at the dewy grass. Vineine is nothing if not harmonious — small, pink-grey, neither fine-boned nor cobby, but something gracefully substantial and light; she breaths with the oaks and birches, each half-step she takes sinks her further into the musky dirt, and around her saplings and asters find company in her wake. ***She is not made for it, but of it. The same stuff but breathing and blood-filled. ***Here is a delicious solitude, and there an expectant flutter in her breast. A waiting sigh in between chews. She inhales, and the air is sweet and floral, it reminds her of a place she used to call home. Long ago, now kept in the loving and curious embrace of memory. Once she had wondered if it was forever, but she knew it never would be. Or never could be. She had curled into its embrace twice, and each time she had found warmth and welcome there. A pause in her life, and a constant joy in her mind.
*magic-borne daughter of Prague and Elladora ****‘...Herself in the Heavens, her beam on the waves.’
PS: If you want to 'power-play' (so to speak) anything about their past in your post feel free. They certainly would have seen each other around the Gates, but as for whether or not their breeding was like a one night thing, or if they ever spoke before (technically, they never did thread, sooo), I guess that's just up to us to make up lol. We can say that she was maybe around for a bit after they did the sex, but disappeared before she would have started looking preggo.
And I don't know how this fits into Fiero in the process of meeting Trystane. Because yeah, that kind of matters, doesn't it? Either way has its complications Maybe the easiest thing is: we can make it before and he doesn't ask and she doesn't tell because reasons I'm sure I can come up with. It could be an elephant in the room between them, but because they are just re-meeting neither can find the way to bring it up? Fiero wondering if she ended up pregnant at all, and Vineine knowing that Fiero has a son. Then when they meet again after the reunion thread he can be like "you did not tell why exactly, woman?" .... although them meeting before the reunion thread doesn't really work with what you posted... I'm maybe overthinking this, but this whole family storyline is life for me right now haha.
He does not return to the Gates, not yet. The weight of his encounter with Trystane, and Magnus is still too much for him to bear. He flickers between a firm resolve, and complete disintegration. He refuses to be weak, to be anything but stalwart, and strong. He has pretended for too long to be anything less. He finds his solace in the Forest. In the heavy silence before the waking of dawn he finally sleeps, and dreams collapse into nothingness.
His dreams take him far away, into oblivion, into eternal, endless galaxies. Yet, the earthy smell of Autumn still lingers in the starways. Ever since her name had been muttered from their son’s lips, Fiero has been unable to shake the scent of early autumn honeysuckle blooms. In his dream, she is there, alien, and out of place amidst the glowing planets. She lures him back to earth, to her realm. He forgets the stars, and the nebulas for autumns heavy breath. He follows her through painted trees, all dressed in red, yellow, and orange. When he wakes, she is there.
He blinks, unbelieving, just as he had been unbelieving of Magnus’ return from death. He blinks, expecting her to disappear with the haze of sleep. Yet, there she stands, grazing in the morning sunlight, a sister to the land around her. He watches her for a time. Sunlight dapples her rosy gray hide, and he remembers how beautiful she had been to him those years ago. He remembers the grove of trees she had led him to, and the sweet scent of early autumn blooms (perhaps, she had mentioned them, for he probably wouldn’t have remembered them otherwise).
He would have been content to watch her for the rest of time, for she, unbeknownst to her, steals away his strife. But, he is greedy, eating up every particle of light that bounces from her body. He ventures forward.
He is nothing special, a mixture of bad blood and righteousness. He is conflicted to his very core - born into the fray of his own ancestry. He wouldn’t know the true depth at which the fissures of conflict reach. He washes them away with early memories, of he and his sister resting in the sunlight of the Gates. He drowns them out with the sunlight that bathes Vineine this early morning.
“Hello, Vineine.” He says, smiling, because he has missed her. Their time together had been short, but it had been sweet to him. He clings, hopelessly, helplessly, to those small, bright moments in his life - those things that have lit up the gray lonesomeness. Vineine has been one of those quickly burning flares along the synapses and corridors of his mind. Here he comes to stand within her light.
“I met our son.” he says, and the weight that had burdened him since their reunion is lessened. “You have raised him well.” He only wishes he could have been there.
12-30-2015, 11:05 PM (This post was last modified: 12-30-2015, 11:19 PM by Vineine.)
***She has been fortunate. She has only ever known softness around the edges. Even the loss of her mother had been gentled by the discovery of Espie — standing unsteady on two-day legs, watching their mother return to the roots with confusion, nosing her stiff thigh in search of milk. She had been sheltered by the innocence afforded to her by her youth. Her mother had borne the grief of a lost child, the first; a lost love, the only. Vineine has lost only in ways that are still negotiable, like the friendship of a man, unencumbered by age; the departure from that floral land, always where she left it last… ***It is an odd thing that Vineine had not thought about her second parting from the Gates. Not at the time, when in the squalls of early snow she had left to abate that powerful wanderlust. But, she had not known for certain then.
***I had been made unavoidable in an enclave of maple trees. She picked at young grass and the buckskin colt lay nearby in green shade. The rosy mare had caught sight of it, only just, and turned to the lazing boy, ‘Trystane, come look.’ She whispered, as if they were sharing a great secret, and that alone caught his attention. He wobbled to her shoulder. ‘Look. A walking stick. See it?’ She motioned to the spindly bug. ‘A walking stick, mum?’ He squinted close at it. He had touched it, maybe… silly boy. He knew better. She had chastised him and returned to eating. ‘...Mum? Who is my papa?’
***It had caught her off guard. More off guard than she thought it would. Maybe, because Viera had never asked (had she?), or because she thought when the time came it would be uncomplicated and clean. She had blinked over the colt’s shoulder as he watched the stick-bug move down the stalk of a blackberry plant. ‘Fiero, Trys.’ The boy had no more to say on the matter. Whether the man still remembers, she couldn’t say.
***A stick snaps somewhere, and the mare looks up through the gold light and moss shade. It echoes in the dawn quiet but she cannot tell from where it came. This place has a way of sucking in sound and reverberating it through bark and rock, until everything seems to share sound equally. She cranes her neck, ears flicking around for more — the muffled step of hooves, and Vineine turns back to meet his eyes. ***Autumnal flowers and a more homely copse of trees, but this is close and it kicks her in the gut. When he says her name she opens her mouth and then settles on a smile, taking a dainty step closer to him. She had not thought to find him when Trystane had been born… she had only known one of her mothers, and she had only ever been a lone provider. But she had wondered about him often.
***What she has never been able to tell him, of course, is that for whatever is left of her mortal wake, he occupies an indelible space in her mind. He gave her something most precious.
***And then he says it, and she looks down at the ground, squeezing her eyes shut. “I…” It is made worse by the absence of accusation or anger in his voice. He has every right. “How?” She finally forces out, soft and surpised. “I never meant to hold him from you, Fiero. I didn’t know… yet, when I left.” And she hadn’t thought… but she can’t say that. It has a bite, and she has been unfair enough. “He asked about you once…” She sighs, and looks back at him. He is the same handsome man she had known intimately years ago, and very similar to the one she had watched grow bigger than her, faster than she could bear. “There are still things left to teach him.”
*magic-borne daughter of Prague and Elladora ****‘...Herself in the Heavens, her beam on the waves.’
Fiero had fallen, rather unknowingly, into fatherhood. He had planted the seed, but Vineine had given the life. She had grown the child with her own body, her own soul, all while Fiero whiled away his time without a clue. Perhaps it shouldn’t bother him that Trystane had grown up without his knowing. More often than not, the sires of Beqanna had little care for their progeny. Boys grew to be men none the wiser of who their fathers were (or even their mothers). Yet, Fiero isn’t bitter - not about that. He wonders whether being apart of Trystane’s early life would have done his son any good in the first place. This is what bothers him the most.
But, here is Vineine, all dressed in dawn, harmonious in her very existence here within the woodland.
He knows he cannot tame her. He knows that she is free - that she is not his. He wants her. He wants to make her stay, but he cannot. And she is oblivious. She is oblivious to the longing the steals the light from his eyes when she goes. Still, he cannot help the hope that surges through him when his eyes fall upon her after years of separation.
He is desperate. He is foolish. He is weak.
He cannot make her stay with him, but he will try. At least for a little while.
She flounders in her response, and Fiero’s chest wrenches painfully. He reaches out to touch her cheek with his nose: a soft, reassuring caress.
“You don’t owe me an explanation, Vineine.” He says gently, pulling away to look into her eyes, yearning for her to look at him. When she does, he smiles with a mixture of happy sadness. “We met in the Meadow. My father was there as well.” he ponders the situation for a moment. “Fate is a funny thing.”
She tells him that there are still things left to teach their son, and tears rise up to rim his eyes but do not fall. “I’ll be there for him.” he says, despite his worries of worthiness. He must be strong again, he knows, but not yet. Vineine steals away that bravado and leaves him naked and exposed. He cannot lie to her - not with words nor with body.
He wants to tell her that he has missed her. He wants to bring her back to the Gates with him - to make a family. He wants her to be his, but he knows that she belongs only to herself and the wilds. Instead, he reaches out to touch her withers, much the same way that he had before when their hearts were young.
Maybe the easiest thing is: we can make it before and he doesn't ask and she doesn't tell because reasons I'm sure I can come up with. It could be an elephant in the room between them, but because they are just re-meeting neither can find the way to bring it up? Fiero wondering if she ended up pregnant at all, and Vineine knowing that Fiero has a son. Then when they meet again after the reunion thread he can be like "you did not tell why exactly, woman?" .... although them meeting before the reunion thread doesn't really work with what you posted... I'm maybe overthinking this, but this whole family storyline is life for me right now haha.
