Let the shadows fall behind us - wound, any

[Tangerine]

Tangerine

In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep

Even in the autumn dawn dreams cling to her. Even as she walks across the open grassland, under the rays of golden sunshine, a host of spectral companions accompany her thoughts. They never leave her now. Her thoughts are not her own in these days when unrest grows and blood has been spilled in the name of pleasure.

When she sleeps the unwritten names of the countless dead pass before her - merrily they march into the darkness rising in the West. With veiled eyes, she mourns, on her knees, as the stars wheel above and time passes her by. She dreams of battle cries and vivisection and her rest leaves her weary.

But she always has a smile for him, her medicine, her love. For in her waking moments he is her shield, he is her angel and her comfort. 

Tangerine had never called land or other's bodies her own - she had never believed that anything other than her own skin belonged to her. She will not step forward, proud and jealous, to stake claim to his flesh with her voice;
He is mine.

Even if she knows - deep below these mortal jealousies- that he is already hers. 

Even if their quiet smiles and gentle camaraderie are a thorn in her side.

Even if she had once, in a dream, and it felt so good

But her dreams are not always true, they are only vivid. He needs her; this diligent honey-bee, this woman who fills a void Tangerine could never even aspire to half-occupy. It is undeniable. This woman makes Warrick happy. 

So as she calls her name, a few years later than she should have, it is not with venom or with pride.

"Wound," She exhales the word into the wind and the invisible ghosts fall away from her. But she is unsure if it has reached the dark mare upstream, unsure of what to say next - she only knows that it is time. These two souls love the same, profoundly, severely, and that it cannot be wrong for them to finally meet. 

@[Wound] or anyone other than Warrick

[wound]

T here is often a rose-gold memory that will flutter to the forefront of Wound’s brain without her control. It’s one of her childhood, when she had spent her days surrounded by the walls of her brothers’ shoulders and cocooned against firm, dark tree trunks. She’d managed to sneak away from the endlessly protective gazes of her older siblings to dance through the thick forest, only stopping when the sound of bright giggling kissed her ears. She had peered through the shadows to spot a family — glowing amid the murk of the woodland — relaxing in a clearing. There had been a gentle mother (a woman Wound would have loved to have as her own mother rather than the neglectful, vanishing one she did have) and a strong father (one which could have easily replaced her nonexisting — little did she know, evil — one) and two twin children. The twins were alternating between chasing one another and being chased by their father, but there was no terror between them. Wound had seen the warmth in their eyes and the glee in their throats as they laughed and tousled and ran. She’d eventually slipped away, hearing the frantic calls of her brothers, but the memory had never left her mind. That moment of spying had become a moment (one of several) that Wound aimed her life around as a child. Things never did swing the way she’d hoped — her one daughter had left already for another kingdom, that daughter’s father already the head of a different family — but the silvery mare is content with how things are now, for the most part. Her relationship with Warrick is a curious thing, written with questions without answers (perhaps more-so questions neither of them wish to ask), but she enjoys it nonetheless. Wound knows the Overseer isn’t the one her heart truly longs after, but he has been a good father to her daughter and her closest friend in Tephra. She isn’t sure where she would be without the bay stallion, regardless of their deeper affections. But Warrick has responsibilities outside of his Head of Peace and their daughter, such as his own, more deeply-rooted family. Tangerine’s voice only further reminds Wound of that side of her daughter’s relations. As the silvery bay turns toward the sound of her name, she reflects on the startling facts that, although she and Wishbone have both met Solace and Svedka, she has never met Tangerine. Fluttering tendrils of anxiety begin to fester in her stomach and chest, pressing against Wound’s rib-cage until she wonders if it might burst. But she is a grown woman and no feelings of unease will be uncontrolled by her own hand. By the time Wound reaches the dreamer, she is considerably more calmed. A warm smile finds her lips while her coffee eyes take in the other mare’s appearance. Tangerine hasn’t been as politically active as some of the other Tephrans and thus Wound hasn’t seen her as frequently as she might’ve assumed. Still, she knows of her. “Tangerine, it’s a honor to finally meet you.”

credit to nat of adoxography.

@[Tangerine] / I wasn't sure what this was going to be, but here it is