"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
06-30-2018, 09:54 AM (This post was last modified: 06-30-2018, 09:54 AM by Sibyl.)
Fall had become winter in the time between Sibyl's encounter with Tahti and now. When she returned to Warrick's kingdom that evening, she had been a little quieter, a little more grown up - and she had been careful to wash every trace of the other girl's blood off the short spike of her budding unicorn's horn on her way home. In the short weeks which passed, she had continuously thought over what she had learned that day, but instead of seeking explanations from her parents, she had decided to find answers for herself. And soon.
So, the moonlight and midnight filly crosses the channel and into the meadow once again. In the common lands no one knew she was a princess, and she needed to find someone who wouldn't tell her parents about what she needed to do.
Today she is intent on traveling further than she ever has before, to enter the sullen, cold embrace of The Forest. But she doesn't make it that far - not before the sight of someone not that much older than herself draws her terrible curiosity.
He is little more than a speck on the horizon when she spots him, but still, she is drawn to his lanky form. She lengthens her stride and the grasses whip past her knees and belly as she canters.
Sibly was a child who yearned for the company of other children. She was rambunctious with a quick smile, and adults often looked down their long noses at her with polite laughter. She was tired of being held at an arm's length, she needed to be taken seriously - she had a mystery to solve.
"Hello!" She calls to the colt before she is even certain her voice can reach him, unwilling to let him slip away. "Wait up!"
Dreams are a lot like the tides of a sea. Pushed and pulled. Subject to moon and nature. Dreams are like that too — pushed and pulled but it is where they would be subject to the dreamer’s nature that things get interesting.
He has only ever manipulated dreams in small doses. For familial good like keeping his father happy even when the golden stallion sleeps. If anything he experimented more so on himself by manipulating his own dreams until the nighttime feats left him exhausted and grouchy in the morning. Growing pains, he supposed as he exercised his gift and pushed it to the limits time in and time out again.
Abysm was even daydreaming at a greater frequency now.
Before he knows it, he’s dreamed himself right out of spring and into winter. Not really but that’s how it feels with the loss of time hitting him hard. He doesn’t think he’s missed much but knows that so much can happen in the blink of an eye. Has he really missed much as one season became another? Abysm doesn’t think so mor can he quite find it in himself to care — politics were not half as interesting as dreams...
Yet something drew him out this day.
Out of Hyaline as the sense of adventure dogged his heels. The snow might have slowed him down but certainly did not stop him! Not even as that adventurous sense pushed at him eager to pull a dream from him as much as each and every certain step he took.
He seemed years older than a child should but his dreams had begun to age him that much quicker.
He could have dreamed as he walked but there was danger in that.
Then he heard her and the high yearning note of girlish sweetness in her voice gave him reason to pause. His dished face swings in her direction as his bold curious eyes find hers - his eyes are full of unasked questions and a smidgen of surprise that she even spoke to him at all. Usually adults talked to him, comparing him to his mother. He wasn’t sure what he saw in her eyes but his face lay somewhere between wariness and hope.
“Hurry up!” he calls jovially to the filly. “It’s too cold to just stand around here.” a hint of a smile plays about his lips.
08-01-2018, 04:44 PM (This post was last modified: 08-01-2018, 04:45 PM by Sibyl.)
Sibyl
a splash of promise
As if he had been expecting her, his momentum slows and he heeds her call. Sibyl considers herself lucky as the strangers champagne features turn in her direction, and she is able to catch a glimpse of his expressive, warm eyes.
Encouraged, Warrick’s daughter musters another busy of speed. Her thin chest and fawn-like legs dance through the snowdrifts with little resistance, and Sibyl gives a defiant little snort to his comment on the cold - mustang blood runs hot after all.
But it isn't long before she is near enough to catch his strange scent, and realize that this is the first colt she has ever spoken with.
“Hi,” she says, a little breathless from the way he had made her work to catch him. But happily, she falls into place at the stranger's side, matching his trot by extending her strides in a way which had gained her a compliment once. “I’m Sibyl, who are you? Do you live here?”
His wisp of a boyish grin does more to animate her than any of the civil, adult smiles she had encountered until his.
She decided that he is perfect for her experiment.
The filly has enough sense to give him time to respond, but once there is a lull she decides to bring up the topic that has been on her mind continuously for the last few weeks. "So this weird thing happened to me last time I was in this meadow," she starts casually as if they had known each other for a lifetime, "I met a girl, and I think I saw her future."
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
His expectation had been for something, not necessarily someone.
But she is just the kind of distraction that he’ll welcome at the moment. Anything to keep his mind from dipping into the abyss from whence he came.
(he’s almost certain that when he passes from this flesh, he’ll return to that prison of nothing and shadow. though shadows are something...)
Abysm has not yet been totally soured on the sweeter things of life. And she is certainly a sweetheart to look on with her navy-blue and cloud-pale fur. It’s the first time he’s found himself unable to look away from a face that was not family or some friend thereof.
(which reminds him that he himself is friendless)
She’s the first filly he’s talked to. Mates always talk to him. Mostly they just compare him to his mother and mentioned how strong of a resemblance he bore to her. As if there was none of his father in him besides the champagne on his skin and the decidedly male shape of him.
He marvels at how easily she falls into stride with him as they tackle the snow-mounds together. It’s even easier to smile back at her. Both her voice and her grin put some kind of teenage spell on him and he likes the way her own name rolls freely off her tongue. “Abysm,” he answers her with a hit of his chin.
“No. I’m from Hyaline, I guess. Though my father and I used to roam far and wide from the river to the meadow and back again.” all of a sudden he shuts up, surprised at himself for revealing so much upfront. That wasn’t his style. Not that he really knew considering he only ever spoke with those that assumed they knew him. He found it refreshing to be so casually honest with a complete (cute!) stranger.
He’s about to ask her where she lives but this weird silence stills his tongue from flapping behind his teeth. Luckily she seizes that silence by the tail and sends it running for the snowy cold hills. His ears prick at the secret she divulges - no, entrusts him with as if they hadn’t just met but had known each other forever.
Abysm halts to look her square in the face. “You saw her future?” there is awe in his voice and that boyish grin breaking across his mouth akin to how dawn breaks across the sky - wild and loose and beautiful. Or handsome in his case.
“That is so cool! Do you think you can do it again?” already his mind is churning with the possibilities.
08-23-2018, 02:33 PM (This post was last modified: 08-23-2018, 02:36 PM by Sibyl.)
Hyaline
The word sparks some recognition, but not enough to distract her from the task at hand. She will remember it later when time has passed and she turns this day over in her mind. For now, she is too absorbed watching his every move. His steady gaze turns to face her with enough force to knock the lie out of her if that had of been the case. But only honesty shines in her innocent, dark eyes as she halts beside him.
"I would like to try again if you don't mind."
With a sure step, she closes the gap between them. The sunburnt skin of her muzzle presses into the line of his shoulder. She feels the bone shift below the skin and decides to find a more suitable place. Her touch drifts upward, moving to the thicker hide along the young stallions crest.
"There," she mumbles, before withdrawing her touch. With a deep breath she tilts her moonstone spire to rest on his pale coat, and with a quick flick from its sharpened point, it is done. A small cut opens just below his hairline, deep enough to send a ruby droplet racing down the canal of her spiral horn.
Again, just like with Thati, she is transported. Her head feels light and her vision darkens and Sibyl enters an endless plain of nothingness. "Abysm?" Her voice echoes, and echoes again, growing louder with each repetition. The sound is deafening and she cringes away, closing her eyes and pinning her ears, until there is another voice which silences it.
"I'm here."
Sibyl's eyes flash open to meet his, and she sees herself reflected in those glossy pools. She is a mare there, tall and well-built, a melding of Morgan and Mustang. And he sees her, he knows her.
"What is this?"
Her voice cracks as she speaks, it is not a child's voice and it feels strange in her mouth. He smiles, a knowing smile that somehow breaks her heart, and with a shake of his head, the world is changing around them. He shows her things, places she has never seen, places which don't exist. He is in charge here, in this world, she understands that in the way that some things are just understood in dreams. He presses information onto her, although as his mouth opens words do not form (just like in Tahti's dream) and she understands that he is trapped. That something is keeping him there in this dreamscape. She wants to help him, her lips part to as how. But the magic is fading, and with it, her strength.
Once again she is a girl in the meadow, and she is deeply, profoundly sorry. The navy painted filly takes a stumbling step backwards as her vision clears and she finds herself looking up into his face with tears in her eyes.
"You're leaving."
@[abysm] this is all over the place, but please let me know if you want anything changed! Also there can be errors in precognition, so this is just one possible thing which could happen. Usually I don't have her "interact" with her vision, but because of his trait i thought it was fitting
08-25-2018, 08:26 PM (This post was last modified: 08-25-2018, 08:26 PM by abysm.)
Her eyes could be his undoing.
The honesty in them is soul-crushing and he doubts she has ever lied or hurt anyone in her short life. Unlike him. He’s not so innocent and not so very nice a lot of the time. It makes him wonder how it is he’s managed to stumble across her in the snow and not someone more darker to match his usual mood. Stranger still that he’s not in one of his usual petulant moods either but she’s like a breath of fresh air blown across his face and he finds her entirely too refreshing. Even at this age.
“Not at all!”
He’s quick to reply because the more time spent in her company, the happier he seems to be. She’s a strange balm to his soul that he never thought he’d find outside his dreams. Plus the fact that she could divine his future is rather intriguing enough to make anyone, especially him!, stay that much longer. He freezes at the first touch of her velvety muzzle to his skin, so unexpected! There is a churn of feeling in him that he cannot explain but he holds himself very still as her mouth climbs up to his crest.
Abysm misses the feel of her muzzle on him the moment it is gone as she’s mumbling and pulling away. There is a prick of pain that he had not counted on either from the pale tip of her horn as it sliced him with an ease he hadn’t time to prepare for. He can feel the droplet of blood squeeze out and leave him, but it seems such a small price to pay for what she is about to do for him. Which is momentous in and of itself! No one has ever been so selfless in using their gift for the greater good, or so he hopes it is for the greater good and that she does not see anything horrible about him.
He has not so very nice thoughts at time.
Creatures spawned of the abyss do not know niceness very much.
But he keeps himself very still even though he longs to call her name because the look on her face is one that scares him. Sibyl is there but not there. He can see her breathe and knows that she is very much alive but she is so still, so absent. She’s gone to a place he cannot follow and he hates the way that makes him feel all of a sudden. These visions must be the cousins to dreams but for all that he can manipulate dreams, he cannot manipulate or join her in this vision that takes her away from herself. Absym can only wait and he hates it.
Enough time has been spent to make him wonder about touching her or talking to her to disrupt whatever it is that she sees. It concerns him but just as he is about to act rather than think, she is stumbling backwards a step and he is instantly thinking only of her. The tears stop him dead before he can even ask if she’s okay. Surely those tears aren’t for him?! Concern and confusion war with one another on his face as her statement stops his heart for the space of a beat or two. He is stunned, to be sure. Stunned right into inaction and stillness again. It’s a moment before he’s even certain he’s still breathing.
You’re leaving.
He has a thousand questions that he wants to ask her but his mouth is mute. Abysm can only take a step forward and close that cold gap between them as his face finds hers and their cheeks rub together. “Do I ever come back?” is all that he manages to ask her because for the first time, he’s afraid to hear the answer. He’s always been afraid of going back, or of getting trapped. Part of him wants to probe further to find out what exactly she saw but the tears in her eyes just won’t let him. He doesn’t want to see Sibyl cry anymore so he just shuts up and figures it’s the smart thing to do.
@[Sibyl] it's perfect! i almost thought of ending this here but... i kinda don't want to lol.
She had no words to describe the place he had been traped. Even her mother's stories of far-flung places and monsters had not prepared her for what she had seen. His dream travel was a concept too grand for even her active imagination, and for a moment she finds she is speechless.
His reaction mirrors her own in its seriousness, not allowing her the time to feel childish, or ashamed of misty eyes she wasn't refined enough to hide. He strides forward, pressing his cheek against hers, and the touch sparks a flutter in her heart which is enough to make her forget her vision anyway. But his question calls her back, and she feels a building frustration at herself.
"I don't know," she says with all the disappointment she feels behind the words. Her ears burn hot as anger (at herself) bubbles in her chest. If only she was stronger she could have stayed there, figured out how to help him, or to at least give him the answers he needed. For a moment she thinks of trying to go back, to take a better look, but her body has already lost too much energy from the first attempt, and she is smart enough to recognize the feeling of defeat.
The pulse in his cheek thumps against the sensitive skin of her own, and she takes a deep breath. Sibyl is not ready to draw away, for reasons she doesn't think to question, she moved forward instead, bringing her slight chest to his and her head to tilt against his withers.
"But I was there with you," She suggests quietly, hyper-aware of their closeness. "I want you to show me that place someday... wherever it was."
@[abysm] Feel free to reply or call it closed, I know you are a busy lady!
Thank you for taking me up on this! It really helped me get a feel for her & I expect they will meet again down the road
Probably because she had yet to falter in speech and she seems robbed of words at the moment. A moment that becomes tortuous as it drags him down into a mood that is bleak and black. It might have been the mist in her eyes that he longed to wipe away but couldn’t quite reach out to her just yet. It seemed too personal to touch her face and whisk away the sadness he found there, despite however much he longed to. Or it might have been the longing that frightened him too, because it was too new and he did not know how to process it in the seconds and minutes that they’d been given.
I don’t know.
Her disappointment makes him bristle. It needles at him, teasing but certain. He doesn’t fault her for it. No, he faults the vision that she has seen but cannot fully explain. Part of him doesn’t want to hear those explanations anyway. They all seem so very paltry compared to the way her face shimmers and deepens into a sadness he cannot brush away with any amount of concerned touches. He tells himself it is concern, but it is more than that - something budding and tender that he’s not quite sure how to tend to so he lets it squander in his chest.
Almost as if he can hear her thoughts, he dismisses any notion she might have about trying again. “Don’t even think about it.” he warns her. Now his concern is apparent. So is that something more that he thinks he could keep out of his voice but it creeps in anyway, refusing to be pushed down and stepped on. It looms, growing and growing and oozes out of his every pore as he looks upon her with a fondness he hadn’t known he was capable of for anyone that wasn’t his father, or secretly, the growing brood of siblings he finds himself with.
Then he can think no more as she moves into him. Their chests touch, and her head tilts into a light touch upon his withers that he knows he’ll miss the moment she moves it. “That’s good,” he murmurs into her skin, not quite sure where exactly he’s touching her since his eyes are closed to hold this moment forever inside his mind. “Someday,” he promises, once he knows where it is and when and if it is safe to take her there. The dreamlands weren’t always that so it concerns him that she just saw him as gone, away, absent.
But wasn’t that the very thing he’d always dreamt of? Almost like a return to the abyss that birthed him. No - the nothingness did not give him this life, Kagerus had the second she stole him out of the dreaming dark and planted him inside her uterine prison. “Someday,” he vows as he shuts out the dark and the beckoning of the dreamlands spurred on by her mention of going there. He can feel the dreams call to him in siren notes of enchantment. It makes him wonder just what all she had seen but he trusts that she’d have told him all of it, tasting not falsehood in her truths.
He’d gone away. Not now, but once before. It must happen again. Not might, but must because she’d seen it. Whether it was in dreams or this life, he’d gone away. He hopes that he’ll return - to her, for little else seems to matter in that moment but the press of their young bodies together. “I’m sorry,” he whispers into her skin, not sure why he ought to apologize but knowing that somehow it’s just the right thing to do.
@[Sibyl] same! this was a joy to write, this thread. i'm fully happy to continue it or wrap it up and plan on them meeting up later on. cannot thank you enough love, for letting them interact and things to build up that'll shape their characters later on. <33
