"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
you’ve got a second chance, you could go home
escape it all, it’s just irrelevant..
Nyxia watches the swirl of dust and pollen in the slants of sunlight. She lifts her nose from her puddle of cool, damp shade, pressing her muzzle into the mote. She imagines those tiny specks coming to rest on her nostrils and bridge, and she snorts at the little phantoms of their tickles—they dance away from her, spinning off into the mossy green behind the bright shaft.
She is alone, but not for long. She has become familiar with the moments of errant wildness in her fox and rabbit and deer friends; but also with their internal clocks. How they tick and tock and send them out to eat or put them down to sleep. She counts the moments in breaths and in beats of her heart, quiet in her ears. She can tell the time and guess their return by the shades of the sky—now pale yellow and cornflower blue. Early morning and not long now.
She pushes herself up, her hip and side dampened and stuck with dark earth, gritty and rich against the pale grey-lavender. She leaves a depression in the white windflower and litterfall, the soft cradle where she sleeps without worry because once her father told her he would never let anything happen to her. And she if she believes anything to be true, it is this: nothing can touch her as long as her father exists.
(He once told her that he was one of the scariest things in all of Beqanna. She doesn’t think so, but just as long as everything else does…)
She waits anxiously for the shrill excitation of their gekkering; the tumble, one and two, three and four, from the underbrush like red and black tumbleweeds. And their mother in tow, weary and panting, her dear friend. Until the sun rises too high, and the air gets too warm; her stomach complains noisily and she turns, apprehensive and sluggish from her den. More and more often, her friend does not come back. She finds a place to still her young family for a moment and rest her eyes.
Nyxia frowns, stopping for a moment as the panic of loneliness, and the dull ache for comfort, urges her back to her nook to wait, just a tiny bit longer.
But it would not do, she knows. So she shifts and curls around birches and scratchy pines, glancing over her shoulder now and then, hopeful for a glimpse of them. Of the vixen and her young pups, playfighting; maybe of father...; or of the herd of whitetails, from whom she picked up the soft and delicate grace of her own steps when she found nurturing and company among them as a girl.
Hoping so go as silently as they do, unnoticed and undisturbed like a wooded ghost or a blossom tucked away in a high-up place.
it’s just medicine.
just getting the idea of her so prepare for a learning curve
02-11-2016, 03:59 AM (This post was last modified: 02-19-2016, 12:22 AM by Dalten.)
I yearn for something simpler than this.
The morning sun is heating my back as I exit the icy shadows of my kingdom. Frost still lingers on my fetlocks and white fluff has yet to melt in the middle of my back, but I feel the sun begin to defrost my entire body.
The climate change will take some adjusting, surely.
I am surrounded by a pearly white canvas, hues from the grayscale making up a majority of my landscape with few hunter green pine trees dotting the horizon. The pathway feels long, but it truly isn’t. It will take me all but half an hour to find myself indulged in the shadowy escape of the forest.
Something draws me, perhaps because deep down I will always be better at wandering than staying committed. I have a fear of settling down, this dark gloomy feeling that once I am dedicated, I will never resurface to the social world again. Much like my family, I will follow in the footsteps of leadership and become overrun by diplomats and kingdom priorities. I need to embrace the freedom while I still have no chains attached to my heels.
Even if every day I spend procrastinating means another day of disappointment for my parents.
The sky is a mixture of violent pinks and oranges with a faded shade of yellow dampening the quality. By the time I smell the fresh scent of evergreens and poplar trees, all proof of my snowy oasis has melted off my skin and left a dried crusted memory atop my back.
Here, I don’t blend in as easily. The Tundra consists of my coat colour casted across the land, dark shades of charcoal, grey, and white. Here, I am greeted by a refreshing change of strong pure tones and vibrant highlights. There isn’t much I don’t miss about the scenery here.
Every step I take, I feel a little more at ease. I am like a teenager practicing their addiction of rolling the joint and smelling the unique but soothing scent of my guilty pleasure. Instead, the feeling of moss sinking beneath my weight and the way the leaves crisp together at the slightest breeze is my kryptonite. It hits me like a baseball hits a back catcher’s glove; firm and definite.
It isn’t until I snap back into reality and acknowledge my surroundings that I realize I am accompanied by a pale violet stranger.
She is peculiar in a way I cannot describe yet, like the aura I get from her is quirky and off base. Beautiful, nonetheless in the most simplistic way I can begin to describe… but yes, perhaps different than the amazon warriors I am so used to.
Almost refreshing. Like drinking iced tea for a long time and then suddenly taking a sip of lemonade. The same genre, completely different taste.
A soft nicker rumbles from deep within my throat, a baritone hum escaping into the air with slight vibration tingling at my nostrils. A greeting, simple and appropriate. I will never be a man for words, I am so much better at the traditional way.
my friend makes rings, she swirls and sings
she’s a mystic in the sense that she’s still mystified by things
She is like a doe caught, Stayed by the shock of his greeting and then his silence. She turns, stops mid-step and blinks. If stillness could ward him away, she wishes it would soon—and wishes at once that it does not. She watches him with wide, golden eyes until he does not leave but stands and remains as true as rock or wood. So apart from the mossy gloom of the forest (like snow gathering on dark loam) that he must be so, and more than that, he is waiting for her. To respond. To yield to what he might think is natural and easy, but to her is odd and unwieldy, indeed.
But she puts her hoof down finally and chuffs back.
Her father would probably have preferred she get more used to this, to the companionship of another horse. Even to the natural ways of communication. He had tried, bringing her to the playground and hoping that she opened up. But he had raised a queer and quiet girl. He had let her nurse from deer and feed on the company of things that bark and gekker and sniff the air tirelessly. And from just himself. A family of two, happy... but not; she does not recall that hall of light and darkness—in that strange and will-up dream world.
Nor the second body, so tangled up in each other they were as intimate as any two can possibly get.
Or, of course, her expulsion from that place. That womb and that made-up utopia. Fortunate, it would make her ever so sad to know that her mother (she has one!—just one that stays in the places she makes for them, of castles and birds) had left her and kept that colourful other girl. Nyxia had not been the one that mimicked the one Heartworm had lost, and so she had been unlucky. Or, maybe lucky.
She loves her father and knows nothing of her loses.
“Hi,” it is softer than she meant it to be, so much so that she wonders if he could have possibly heard it. She clears her throat and tries again, “hello!” She shifts, through god rays and familiar shade, testing the air for scent. Glancing behind him, and around them, but they are alone. In the sense that they are surrounded by all her friends and yet she has been jilted and left to do this on her own.
She is old enough, but she would be lying if she said she did not feel a certain amount of annoyance at all her no-shows. Sometimes, it is as if she is suspended. Something in her still seeking that world away from theirs, and growing up means severing it one blade-drag across the cord at a time...
But she is here, and he is too. This thrillingly new stranger.
and I pray to blades of grass to find forgiveness in the weeds.
deer shifting daughter of davorin and naga
twin to iluna
Among the two newly acquainted equines was a small herd of deer, grazing lazily about and mostly ignoring them. Horses and deer coincided naturally. There was no domination or competition. Just a simple understanding, a truce amongst them. Besides, it was always helpful to have more sets of ears to listen for hungry bellies or scent ravenous bodies craving for flesh and blood.
The white doe stood among the band. Pure white blinding against neutral browns and greens of summer foliage. Dark pools interested in the tender shoots as large ears swiveled tirelessly. On the occasion, she would bump lightly against another doe or perhaps one of the younger bucks that had not been driven off yet. Life had grown simple and quiet. The animals moved as one, relying upon each other and their kinship.
Eirwen seemed to spend most her time in her alternate shape. She can not recall when she had slipped into the familiar feel. Perhaps it had been when her moon twin Iluna, and her mother had gone off to talk to the Amazons but it had been a long time since Eirwen had set her eyes on either face.
Eirwen was not hurt but she knew that Iluna was more like their mother. Eirwen did not want the hard Amazon life that seeped from every pore of Naga. Eirwen was gentle, more suited to fight with her words rather than hooves.
But-
That is neither here nor there.
The snowy doe lifts her head when the tangy scent of equines touches her muzzle. The deer knew all the forest's secrets and it had been some time since she had seen horses and her curiosity was much too great. A soft bleat is traded off to her new deer companions as she moves silently towards the mare and stallion, watching wordlessly. Each thin limb places among the moss and mushrooms with the ease of practiced grace.
Lobes flick as there is a rather small exchange of words. Eirewen's sensed riveting with stimulus. Her sensitive being picking up the shyness of the mare and the intrigue of the stallion. The doe wondered briefly if they were old lovers having bumped into one another again after years lost...but no, no that is not right. The mare is timid but trying, trying, trying. The stallion is yearning for the connection as well and Eirwen is breathless to witness the sacred beauty that is blossoming like the silky petals of the gardenia flowers.
The white woman does not intend to interrupt as she nears them but a misguided step and a small snap of a twig gives away her position. Shock sends the doe off instinctively, bounding away in a flash of white. The doe senses the end of her movement once she has put some distance between the equines and herself, turning to watch intently, curiously.
Deer could be such odd, flighty folk.
((weird post haha but I wanted to get in on this ))
02-19-2016, 12:19 AM (This post was last modified: 02-19-2016, 12:20 AM by Dalten.)
He is careful with her. He isn’t scared of her, or fearful; not even remotely skittish or cautious. She just seems like a doe—wary, introverted, easily spooked—and he feels like a ravenous buck.
The air around them is muggy, and humid. He isn't used to it, he is used to masculine scents and an overwhelming amount of dry air. The temperature alone is pecking at him with unfamiliarity and the time cannot move slower. He just wants to acclimatize so that his comfortableness can be one less thing to worry about.
She speaks, delicately and clumsily. He hears her the first time, the soft “hi” hardly louder than a church mouse, followed by an almost bellowing hello with such vocalization that for a second Dalten flicks his ears away to accommodate for the sudden change. He is a softer spoken soul, introverted. Perhaps he is the doe.
He is blind to the small pack of deer grazing off in the distance, his attention inadvertently on the female before him. He had always been taught to mind his manners, especially to females. Growing up in the Jungle with a mother such as Lagertha could do that to a man.
He had been raised properly, his mother had been sure of it.
“Hello,” he mimics with a husky darkened tone that floats into the air with a sense of smoothness. Dalten has always been intriguing, but his voice is arguably his most daunting trait. It has a deep set that is always recognizable and favourably heard in a large crowd of conversations. It has a raspy husk that catches the attention of those who care enough to listen, or the attention of those desperate enough to hear anything.
His tunnel vision is what blocks him from seeing the onlooker now lingering in his peripherals. Of course, the smell of a female doe wafts daintily into his nostrils, but he pays no real mind. He is assuming the source of the scent is probably surrounded by the herd, absolutely engulfed in their grazing formation.
He has no idea he is the spotlight of a reality episode.
))