"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
for every tyrant, a tear for the vulnerable in every lost soul, the bones of a miracle
It is summer again and Kensa has brought her children to play on the beaches and in the fields of silver cove. Hyaline is vast but there are days that a nice trip to the capital is just what her rambunctious brood needs. She’d turned them loose after crossing the border with the usual admonitions and then roamed off on her own to see if she might find an old friend or two to reconnect with. She’s been in Hyaline a long time now and misses many of those she’d known before they had all become The East.
The day is cool and windy for summer. The liver chestnut, now marked all over in white and gold, makes her way along the coastline where she can look down on the black beaches and familiarize herself with the boundaries of the peninsula. It is the first time she has come here without feelings of fear or anger creeping under her skin or riding her like demons. Thinking of this Kensa snorts softly and pushes herself into a gallop that consumes the Cove’s hilly terrain effortlessly.
At the furthest most point she slows, stomping and breathing hard from the pleasure of a pointless race along unfamiliar ground. It feels good to have her head clear and just fill up on the pleasure of living.
kensa
for every dreamer, a dream. we're unstoppable with something to believe in.
everything we are, it just went away with a slide of the tongue and a sour taste
Dawn has been... coping, so to say. Since the encounter with the cremello stallion on the beaches of Silver Cove – Litotes, she knows now, after her trip to Nerine, but she is appalled that it had taken so long for them to finally learn the other’s name – she has been feeling marginally better, but the wounds Rhaegor had made upon her heart (oh, how teenager of her) are still raw and painful. She cannot think of her best friend without wanting to break down in tears, but she has to be stronger than that. The Sanctuary has lost many members lately, with several of them returning to Hyaline and with Rhaegor living within Tephra now.
I didn’t want to lose you, either. The words had been bouncing around her head since the moment Sunny had projected them to her, and it gives her hope yet for their friendship to continue. They’ve not spoken to each other since that night on the beach, but she sincerely hopes that he had meant those words and that he’d be willing to talk... if she could just get up the courage to find him. So far, it’s been all she could do to drag herself from her resting places each morning, and carry on within the kingdom as if nothing were bothering her.
Today in the Cove is like most others – bright and sunny, if a tad bit windier than usual. Dawn lifts her head as she hears the thunder of hooves and watches as a white-and-gold marked liver woman races along the shoreline, only slowing once she begins to run out of beach. Breaking into an effortless canter Dawn follows her, whinnying so that the other woman knows she’s there. Her big strides cover the distance between them in minutes, and she is delighted to see that it is Kensa – one of the first people she had met when joining Hyaline.
“Kensa!” she exclaims as she slows to a halt, taking in the woman’s new markings with a studious eye. “You’ve changed since we last spoke.” She has grown from a gangly teenager into quite the beautiful woman, and Dawn smiles as she meets her eyes. “How is Hyaline life treating you? How is the lake?”
for every tyrant, a tear for the vulnerable in every lost soul, the bones of a miracle
A wind comes of the sea smelling of salt and clean clear air. She wonders a little if the air smells different in the places the plague cannot touch, but while this is beautiful, it is not Hyaline. She is still too deeply in love with her mountains to concede that any place might be lovelier. Wind whips in her ears but she turns them back to catch a bright young voice and she turns back towards the sound to find a pretty filly cantering toward her.
Kensa’s face lights up with recognition and she laughs and takes a few steps to bridge the gap between them. She reaches out to press the side of her face against the girls, smiling joyfully. “Dawn! I can’t believe it! You’ve changed too, you’re almost grown.” She pulls back to look at the filly. Kensa remembers being drawn to the sweet little polar bear shifter who loved Hyaline’s cold winter lake.
“Hyaline is lovely. Now my little ones play in the lake, though none of them like it quite so cold as you did!” A smile, remembering fondly that day they had first met when Dawn was just a little older than Kensa’s eldest daughter. Time tries to put wide canyons between friends, but it seems to fail as warmth suffuses their meeting. “How are you? Tell me about your life, it’s been too long since I last saw you.” Her topaz eyes flick around them. “Lets walk, show me around if you would, I don’t come out here often.”
Or at all. Her heart is unfurling though, and the Cove seems a little more welcoming as she is reminded of friends that wait here.
kensa
for every dreamer, a dream. we're unstoppable with something to believe in.
everything we are, it just went away with a slide of the tongue and a sour taste
She has to admit that she misses Hyaline, despite her growing attachment to the Cove. The waves that break the shore are much warmer than the mountain lake of Hyaline, even in the midst of winter, and not as pure and clean. Her bear longs for the cold and the mountains, just to roll amongst the ice and the snow, and she has to tell herself that she must return to the beautiful kingdom before long. She knows that Kensa would welcome the company, with Litotes being stolen away to Loess – that, and she doesn’t know what has befallen them.
The young mare – still barely more than a child – is finally growing into her legs and filling out in the barrel, and the childish awkwardness of her body is finally beginning to fade into something womanlier. Her horn, even, has grown longer than ever, its deadliness glistening in the sunlight that reflects off of it. Just as Kensa has changed since they were children, so has she, though she doesn’t notice the changes in herself as easily as the others do. Especially when the one she wants... rejected her as if she were the ugly duckling. That has been a hard mountain to climb, but each day gets a tiny bit better. His silent words in Tephra spoke volumes.
Kensa smiles as she recalls the day they met, and a matching smile grows on Dawn’s face. “I remember that day,” she says, a twinkle in her eyes as she recalls Kensa’s words to her: Aren’t you cold? And she hadn’t been. The icy mountain waters had never felt more welcoming to her, and she had giggled when Kensa, not much older than her, had pawed at the icy water as if wondering if Dawn had lost her mind. It was probably then, more than anything, that Dawn knew she had found lifelong happiness, at least wherever she decided to call home. She had friends.
The other mare asks about her life as they begin to walk, and Dawn lets out the smallest of sighs, looking away towards the horizon. “Rhae and I... had a falling out not long after we came to the Cove,” she tells her friend, hesitant to talk about it but needing to get it off her chest all the same. “He wanted me to come to Tephra with him, to be there with him... and Chryseis.” She is pointedly avoiding Kensa’s gaze now, both wanting and not wanting the other woman’s sympathy as she feels tears well in her eyes. “I... I told him I loved him... that I was in love with him. In not so many words. And he left.”
She pauses, both in voice and body, blinking hard to regain some control of her emotions. “We’ve not spoken since.”
Feeling the need to change the subject, she picks up a trot and heads to the west. They are near the top of the peninsula, and if she times it right, they’ll be able to trail the beach to avoid the cliffs that ring the western shore of the Cove. “Come, let me show you something. The obsidian sand here is absolutely beautiful.”
