"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
06-09-2019, 01:14 PM (This post was last modified: 06-09-2019, 01:42 PM by Eva.)
breaking like the waves down on the coastline breaking like the wine-stained glass that held my drink
Life had been rather peaceful for the young purple nereid. There was nothing more she would ever ask for than a bit of a peaceful life on a beautiful island named Ischia she called home. If it had not been for Adria, she would not have been there. She likely would still be roaming the waters that surrounded Beqanna.
Ischia was all nice and dandy. A peaceful paradise that anyone would wish to live their life on, but Eva became more curious as of late. Perhaps it was the boredom of living the life with few others on the island around her age. Sure, there was Adria and her younger siblings, but Eva was beginning to want more. More of something she wasn’t quite sure of. Maybe it was adventure or to see more of the actual world of Beqanna. After all, she has only known the seas and Ischia.
Eva decided today was the day. She followed the current of the waters, pushing herself across the ocean. The freedom she felt once Ischia was out of sight felt the same when she was just a filly. Before she knew she was the only nereid. Now she was part of a group. But still there was few of them. Adria had told her they needed to stick together, and she agreed, but she could not let herself be trapped to the island life when there was so much more out there beyond the waters. Even beyond Beqanna there was so more.
Swimming came easy to the young nereid. It didn’t take long for her to reach the familiar place where the river and waters around Beqanna meet. It was the place she had met Cosmos and Adria. The place where she had been called to the mountain when a plague had taken ahold of Beqanna. She knew nothing of what a plague was then, but now after it has passed, she has become familiar with just how disastrous it was.
Eva doesn’t wait a moment to push herself up the river, fighting against the current was easy. It was not like the ocean current during the storms she has faced. She pushes herself up, following the u-shape of the river until a small meadow with tall grass comes into view.
Moving close to the shore, Eva firmly places her hooves onto the land where water meets earth. She has mastered the skills of being able to move from water to land now. At first it had been a comical thing to watch, but Adria had taught her well this last year. Without Adria, she likely would be lost in this world. Her adoptive-mother was everything to her.
The purple nereid moves slowly at first. Eva was a sight to behold as she moves graceful. Anyone would find her instantly beautiful and charming. She glowed faintly of a purple-hue and her medium-length mane and long tail faded into the beautiful sunset colors found on the horizon of the ocean. Seashells also decorated her mane and tail. Her orange-gold eyes search leisurely across the open land that is filled with lush greenery. Moving further away from waters, the scales from her coat disappear (they only come out when she is close to the water, making it easier for her to swim). The meadow was empty, but her heart soared high above the clouds. Filling the young girl with happiness to explore Beqanna finally.
06-17-2019, 07:28 PM (This post was last modified: 06-17-2019, 07:28 PM by Velkan.)
lost in the dark
I’m wandering pretty aimlessly - or, well, it would be aimless if my aim wasn’t to wander. That’s the extent of the goals that I have set out for myself. There’s just too many wonderful things to see and there’s just so much I need to figure out before I can go around setting any other goals. I’ve been wandering for so long now that I’m a professional now.
How was I paid, you may ask? My mothers paid me in the years they allowed me to live. So long as I wandered, I wasn’t around for them to torment, to harden and callus the way they had all the rest of my siblings.
I mean, it’s pretty dreary stuff but it worked! I’m here now!
Currently, I’m in the river. Not beside it like any normal animal would but deep enough that my knees occasionally get wet as I move. I’m practicing my river-walking skills and, from the skinned wounds on my knees, you might be able to guess that I’m not very good at it yet. Certainly no professional. There’s been a small trail of black blood behind me for a while but it’s finally starting to ebb because I’ve finally learned that you should go slow around the big, slippery rocks and not try to jump over them. I don’t exactly have a lot of muscle or fat to cushion any blows.
My head is lowered fixedly to just above the surface of the water as I focus very, very intently on where I place my hoof in the next step.
I don’t really want to admit how long this goes on for, but I’m pretty thoroughly drenched by the time I take a break and see signs at the bend in the river I’m at that something has recently emerged from the river. Something with hooves. I’m something with hooves but this wasn’t me - maybe a friend though! There’s only one way to find out.
Abandoning my painstaking practice, I emerge from the river with a tiny bit more grace than when I entered it. My head is still low, like I’m a bloodhound sniffing a trail, but it’s only because my eyes are about to go cross-ways from focusing so hard that I need to get real close to see the trail of hoofprints among the mud and, later, among the plants.
When the grass truly starts to take over and I start to feel like I’m more in a meadow - I lift up my head, wondering what sort of hooved fish could walk this far, and spot someone. A filly! But… well, she looks about as much like a horse as I do, I suppose. Except she’s doing a better job at it because she’s all bright, warm, sunset colours.
“Woah!” I can’t help but call out - my voice all bright with youthful enthusiasm. I’d be the worst stalker in the world if I ever wanted to. I can’t not go over and say hello to someone. “You look like the sky!” I take a small step forward, my willingness to make friends driving me forward, but I hesitate while I’m still under the shade of some trees.
Will I scare her away if I move out into the sunlight where she can really see what I look like?
I hate having that thought, hate that it’s powerful enough to stop me from moving, but once it’s there I can’t get rid of it.
breaking like the waves down on the coastline breaking like the wine-stained glass that held my drink
With no one in sight, she found the emptiness of the meadow a small piece of heaven. Winter touched every part it could. The long grass of the meadow was buried underneath the blankets of snow. The thin copses of deciduous tress were naked, but snow decorated their branches with bits of snow here and there. In the distance, she spots the largest tree she has never seen before.
Curiously, she decides to make her way there. Eva had never seen such a sight before. However, before she can move any further into the meadow, a bright and cheery voice fills her ears. Her ear flickers to the back, catching the next words from the stranger.
She blushes before turning her warm and orange-gold gaze towards the stranger behind her. When her sight lands upon the black wendigo, a soft smile curls across her purple thin lips. A gleam of admiration fills her eyes for a moment.
“Thank you?” She says with a soft laugh that is warm and gentle, almost like a song. Eva turns fully around to get a better look at the black stranger. Her eyes carefully look over him for a moment, noting the different ways he is different from others she has met. But she is also different herself in many ways, and thinks nothing different of him.
Her smile grows a little wider as her gaze meets his once more. “I like your antlers,” she comments sweetly, glancing at the very top of them for a moment. “I think that’s what you call them.” Eva laughs again at her naïveness of the world. It is still all new for her.
Anyone whose smile grows instead of fades when they see me is a friend in my book, so I’m already really, very sure I’m going to light this sunset-painted mare. It was a compliment, of course, my comment about the sky and I hope she knows that! The sky is so beautiful and there’s so many incredible colours that get painted across it all the time. Even the night sky! Can you blame me for being a little colour-obsessed when there isn’t a single speck of it on me?
Like I did with Naia, when this mare mentions my antlers I try to look up at them – only to remember that I can’t actually see them. So I look back at this new-friend with a bright, shiny smile. “Oh hey thanks! Yup, you got it – antlers.” I’ve never met anyone who didn’t know the word for antlers before, but I guess all things considered that’s not very strange. Maybe I’m the first one she’s seen that has had them!!
I like the idea of being the first.
“Sometimes they get all tangled up in branches but they’re good for getting food out of trees.” Am I going to mention that the ‘food’ is squirrels and other hot-blooded creatures? Absolutely not. Let’s go with the visual of apples and other sweet fruits instead. I’m not going to walk up to a pretty girl and be like ‘hey guess what I have to eat woodland creatures to survive but at least I don’t eat my fellow horses like my mom and sisters!’
We’re just going to move right along. “I’m Velkan!”
09-20-2019, 07:55 PM (This post was last modified: 09-20-2019, 07:56 PM by Eva.)
breaking like the waves down on the coastline breaking like the wine-stained glass that held my drink
Her smile widens at his confirmation. “I suppose I know a thing or two then.” There is a delight in her words as she looks at the black wendigo with satisfaction. Eva was very much naïve of those that called the dryland their home. If she had not met Adria, she likely would not know more than half of the things she knows now. Adria had taught her all about the plants and animals that lived within Beqanna. She knew a lot about the open waters but even that was a big mystery to her.
“I have seen antlers on deer before, but never someone like you.” She comments as her eyes focus back onto the very top of the wendigo’s antlers. Eva admired them greatly, and also finding them to be rather elegant looking.
Eva laughs easily as her new acquaintance mentions getting all tangled up in the branches of trees. “Well, thankfully, it looks like you haven’t gotten stuck yet!” She wonders what it would be like to get all wrapped up in a tangle mess of branches with antlers. But she dismisses the thought and likes the idea of them being useful to get food out of trees. There had been some delicious fruits she tried since she came to explore the drylands more. Eva particularly liked the berries though. It was much easier to get than trying to grab the ones of the trees that were higher up. “Like apples then?” She asks wondering what sort of fruits he might like.
“It’s nice to meet you, @[Velkan]!” Eva says warmly. “My name is Eva.”
How do you tell a really pretty mare that no, you don’t use your antlers to get apples but sometimes you use it to shake a startled squirrel out of a branch so that you can eat it?
The answer is: you don’t.
Not unless she’s into eating squirrels too, obviously, because then you can prove how cool you are by going to get one for her. But I don’t think Eva eats flesh the same way I do – she doesn’t look like a monster like me, anyway. She’s far too cool for that!
So, I roll with the apple idea. I have, at least, actually tried to get apples with my antlers before so I’m absolutely not lying. Okay, so it was when I was a yearling and… well, pretty much every autumn when I get depressed that I’m a carnivore and try to eat some of the juicy apples that grow on trees.
But then they make me sick and it’s this whole big thing that I never learn my lesson from and yeah. I don’t talk about my eating habits.
“Yeah! Like apples. Just before they’re too ripe and fall down on their own I can kinda knock them around.” I shake my head a little bit to give her the idea, before my smile turns a little bashful. “Once I got one speared on the top though and I had to wait for it to rot off.”
Alright, maybe I could have left that part out. I wrinkle my nose a little bit as I remember the stench and I quickly try to move on in an effort to avoid her imagining the smell too. “I’m glad I’m not meeting you on that day, Eva.” I state rather obviously, but my smile warms up again.
Okay, Velkan. Time for a subject change.
“Do you swim a lot?”
Okay yes. We're back tracking a little bit to the beginning of this meeting but it seems like a much safer topic.
The sunset colored mare feels her lips curling up as they grow wider into a smile as the black stallion demonstrates how he gets apples from the trees. She feels a tickle in her throat, a soft laugh escaping through her lips as @[Velkan] then mentions waiting for the apple to rot and fall off. The whole idea of the process sounded strange yet fascinating to her.
“Perhaps next time you won’t need to wait for it to rot and fall off,” her voice is light and filled with warmth as she speaks to the black wendigo. “I could help you get one of the apples off your antlers I’m sure.” Eva imagined herself trying to get one of the apples off of his antlers. She laughs softly again. “Well, we could see how it works out!” She adds with a quick toss of her head in delight and another laugh slips through her purple splashed lips.
Her smile increases a little more at seeing his own black lips curl up into something cheery. “My offer still stands,” she says before considering his next question. Instantly, excitement fills her gold-orange eyes at the mention of swimming.
She loved everything about the water!
“I love to swim!” Her voice is high and obviously showing she is delighted by the topic Velkan changed the conversation to. “I basically lived and breathed in the water ever since I was born.” Her eyes glance towards the river in the distance and then back to Velkan. “Do you swim too?” Eva’s head tilts to the right as her eyes gleam with excitement. Say the word and she would soon be dashing off and jumping into the river without hesitation.
