"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
stars, hide your fire; let not light see my black and deep desires
She leads Sheika back to Pangea. They mostly follow the river, though Iris cuts straight where the river meanders around. The path to Pangea is an easy one though, her new home located not far from the Field. Convenient, if nothing else, particularly for a girl with no quick means of transportation. Iris is happy to chat or answer questions as they go, and she points out the various locations they pass. There aren’t many, just the Meadow and the Playground, and soon enough the landscape begins to change into the red and yellow canyons of Pangea. It is a wasteland, a mistake of a home really, though Iris doesn’t know the details of its history and she does not care.
”Welcome to Pangea,” she says with a bit of a flourish, tossing her head in the direction of the territory. Iris leads them into the paths that wind through the canyon, taking them along the large, slow river that slithers through the canyons. ”River,” she says, with a mock matter-of-fact voice and a slight grin on her face. ”Possibly fish. We can look.”
She listened as Iris introduced her to the area while they walked. Some of the horses in the Playground and Meadow they passed sported wings, horns and bright colors, which greatly intrigued her. As they moved further along, the ground began to show cracks caused by drought, and small clouds of dust billowed up with each step they took. The black filly then declared that they had reached their destination. The sun had already been setting when they left the Field. While their journey had not taken too long, by now, it had dropped below the rocky outcrops that surrounded them, and the sky had become a cold shade of light blue and purple. Sheika marveled at the large, wide river. The crystalline water looked almost surreal in the dim light of dusk, so seemingly out of place in the otherwise dry area.
”Wonderful! Yes, yes, there must be interesting fish here.” She started to move towards the riverbank, scanning the watery surface eagerly with her pale eyes. ”So this is your home?” She cocked her head slightly, listening intently but hearing little but the rush of the water. Somehow the atmosphere seemed somewhat different from the places they had passed through before, but she was not sure in what way exactly. Was it...Less friendly? More stern, perhaps? Or maybe just a bit tired? ”It seems a bit different?”, she half-questions vaguely, gesturing with her head in some random direction and looking at Iris curiously. Of course, this was a pretty obvious statement in itself, seeing how the rocky canyons differed greatly from the lush Fields, yet this was not the difference she was referring to. Or was she just imagining things? The arrival of dusk could play tricks on more than just the eyes, after all.
Iris
![[Image: vis.png]](https://www.linkpicture.com/q/vis.png)