Sometimes the heart can lead you astray [any]

[Memorie]

one lives in hope of becoming a memory

Weeks had turned into months, and months had quite possibly turned into years. It was hard to tell with the sun gone. Maybe we could have kept track of the dim glow of the sun in the sky behind the moon that blacked out much of its light, but everyone had kind of gotten used to the dark and no longer paid much mind. There was little to say that the seasons were changing, because without light, the world had grown cold. Bitterly so. Mother and I were keeping everyone in Taiga fed, including all the grazing wildlife that lived there with us. I think the elk had grown quite fond of their equine counterparts, because where ever we went, the grass followed, and so too did they. I had even played with their young a few times.

But those days were quickly passing, as I grew taller and thicker and started to settle down some–well, at least where the playfulness was concerned. What I hadn’t settled down in was my need to explore, and while Taiga was a large territory, and the darkness provided a new mystique to the land, I had explored pretty much every inch of it with Cheri and Reynard, and I was growing bored. Quite bored.

Mother would have killed me if she knew, but I couldn’t take it anymore, so this morning, I had risen early from our little den and set out along a well-worn path through the redwoods. I wouldn’t travel far, and not to anyplace scary, but Cheri had told me about where her and Targaryen had met, the Forest, and I figured that was as good a place as any to sneak off to. It was a neutral land, so I wouldn’t be trespassing on anyone else’s territory and stepping on anyone’s toes.

I can barely see the trail ahead of me as I move, even with the soft glow coming from my four white socks that bathe the ground in a very dim, golden light. I hoped I was going in the right direction, but there’s a small, nagging feeling at the back of my mind that tells me perhaps I am not. I had only ever been this way once, when I traveled to the Field with mother (which is what led me to believe I would be fine). The trail had seemed familiar…at first. Now, though, things were shifting. The ground was becoming dry and hard, and I could sense large structures closing in around me, like walls.

I could sense the plant life here as well, and it was…dry, mostly consisting of brush and grass. It was not something I would have expected to find in a forest. Something wasn’t quite right, and I could sense a trickle of fear beginning to seep into me. I try to look back, but the darkness only allows me a very short sight indeed. Then I hear the gravel crunch back in the direction I had been walking only seconds earlier. “Hello?” I ask the darkness. Could this be one of those monsters who had attacked Cheri? Could it be a friendly face that would help me find my way back?

memorie

Photo by Saffu from Unsplash


Was hoping to shake things up a bit. Since I know there’s been some bad blood between the north and Pangea, I was hoping someone could...do something mean to little Memmie, cause some chaos and strife.

[Aela]

Aela doesn't patrol the edges of Pangea often. She has never felt the need. The borders here had been protected by two fierce, knife-tailed creatures and she had always assumed that they would cut down any intruder. It wasn't until recently that Beyza had revealed that the pair occasionally left to hunt that the palomino had started to wander near where the Pangean border intersected with Hyaline.

The striped girl has never been to Hyaline but she has found herself growing more curious about it. There were rumors of a colony of shifters and part of her had wanted to validate them for herself. But kingdom lines are things to be respected and without an official reason to go, Aela has kept herself on the outskirts of the Eastern kingdom seat.

Perhaps one day a shifter will wander in her path and Aela will be given the chance to learn about the pack that dwells there.

Today, it is somebody else who crosses her path. It's the tendril of fear that Aela feels first and she follows the emotion, leading her to a girl who stands ahead of her. The young mare stops when the shadow does but the hard Pangean ground has given her away. The golden empath flashes an image of the stranger standing, looking around as Aela emerges in a dim glow of light coming from her legs.

It's the horns that her blue eyes linger on for a moment before they return to the filly. Her pale lips pull back into a thin line as the reek of Taiga permeates the air. "You're a long way from home," she says to the younger girl. "Are the Taigans finally coming out of hiding?"

image credit to footybandit

@[Memorie]

[Memorie]

one lives in hope of becoming a memory

It was only a trickle of fear, but enough to draw the attention of someone–someone with a very similar gift to mine. Even from the beginning, when the echo was but a subtle shimmer on the air, I could feel it softly embracing the span between us. It does not hit with the same subtle shift in which it was born, however. It hits hard and harsh, and instantly, I put up my guard; a guard which I had spent months honing with father that would keep her out of my head.

My legs stiffen beneath me while my head shifts upward. I have every expectation to be facing shadows when I look around to find her (for I know it’s a her by the faint signature of the echo), but there is no need to search because she glows, like me. Like my father, and my grandmother. Granted, she glows a more natural, soft yellow, while my legs glow to match my blue tail. The glowing markings weren’t the only things that were oddly familiar about the other mare, though. For one, she shares my echoes, echoes that had also been passed down to my father from my grandmother. And by the soft glow of her legs, I can see that she also bears an eerie resemblance to my father’s twin–though I’d only ever seen an echo or my uncle, so the memory is hazy.

Her obvious familiarity throws me off for a moment, but I pull my thoughts back to the situation at hand, storing my suspicions so I could focus on the mare, who was obviously prickly about my presence. “You’re a long way from home,” she says, and in it I can hear the threat on her voice. Her next statement makes me grin, though, and a bark of laughter leaves my lips. “Now why would you think we would ever need to hide?”

I pause, only briefly, contemplatively, then continue, “Or maybe you’re the one in hiding? I mean, you’re obviously ignorant of the fact that we are everywhere and have been for a very long time.” By long time, I really only mean for as long as I have been alive. But technically it is true for even longer than that. I know for a fact that Cheri and I have wandered to some pretty far corners of Beqanna just ourselves, and father was always disappearing to other lands (and I would beg him for details every time he returned home). I know that others within my family had also traveled outside of our borders, as well.

Memorie

Image by Calcifer

@[Aela] So, I realized that in my first post, I said Mem emits a soft “golden” glow, and I don’t know why, because she’s always glowed a soft blue. Lmao! But yeah, dunno if you noticed that or not, but figured I’d comment so you weren’t confused in case you did.

[Aela]

Aela doesn't move.

The smile on her pale lips barely lifts.

"Has the monster finally left your woods?" Aela asks and while her tone is warm, it is not kind. She had grown up under that myth. She had been stifled by shadows and borders and had never understood why Kota hadn't taken them both out of Taiga. Why they had stayed for so long in the damp and the fog. Even as a young filly, Aela had little patience or belief in superstitions like the ones that floated through the Redwoods. "Or have they finally stopped telling that fairy tale?"

It isn't missed on her that there is a familiarity here. Her blue eyes glance momentarily on the flaxen mane. Chestnut was a common color in Taiga.

How the girl uses the Echoes, well, that is certainly familiar. For Aela, it had been how she communicated until she found her voice. If there is something she understands and knows, it is an intimate knowledge of the gift that glimmers in the darkness between them.

When the Taigan stranger laughs, Aela can feel her brow rise but she doesn't join in. She simply watches and waits to see if the horned girl might elaborate. They have been everywhere, this traveler proclaims and then Aela does laugh. "Not here," she says. "You're the first I've seen in years." The last had been a young stallion and Aela studies the growing horns, remembering his and the golden star he had worn.

That had been the day that Straia had been swallowed.
Back when the sun still shone.

Narrowing her blue eyes on the younger filly, she asks: "For all my ignorance, I'm not the one wandering into the place that razed Taiga." A mischievous spark gleams in her gaze and in case the younger girl had forgotten, Aela reminds her. A bright, vivid memory of the Redwoods comes blazing to life as they burn.

A moment of light in an otherwise dark existence.

[Memorie]

one lives in hope of becoming a memory

If I could bristle like a cat, I would have right then and there. Instead, I grin slyly, unfazed by her needling. Even with my guard up, I can feel the malice embedded within her words that she speaks so sweetly. I honestly have no idea what she is talking about, a monster in the woods, but one wouldn’t have been able to tell by looking at me. As long as I had been in Taiga, I had never heard of a monster, unless you count the monsters that haunt the darkness in all corners of Beqanna while the sun is hiding away. Somehow, I doubt that is what she is speaking of, though.

“Hasn’t been a monster in ages.” My tone is bordering on smug. I shrug my shoulders and roll my eyes. “What can I say? Monsters don’t scare us. We scare the monsters.” I remember that moment that Cheri had been attacked by a Monster beneath the redwoods and how I had sprinted headlong into the darkness to help save her. She had screamed at us to kill the thing, but in the end, it shed its physical form and melded itself to the shadows that surrounded us, disappearing to seek out its next victim.

When the older mare quips that she hasn’t seen the Taigans here–wherever ‘here’ was, I give her a rather superior stare. “Well, then maybe here isn’t worth visiting.” Well, I seem to be feeling rather confident and cocky today, don’t I? Well, perhaps it was the thorns that spike the air around us causing me to act this way.

Her next words do catch me slightly off guard, though. I keep my face stony, though, unwilling to give her the satisfaction that her words had perturbed me in any way. The land that razed Taiga. It had been before my time, just before mother had come to these lands. Her and I had spent months at the burn scar, healing the wounds inflicted by the Pangeans, a story that father had told me. He had been there. I wonder if this mare had seen him, but that itch will likely never be scratched.

I stand before this mare, unwilling to give up any ground to her. When her memory hits the walls around my own thoughts, I let it caress the fringes of my mind for a second before I let it in. For a moment, I think on her words and the force of the memory. Then I grin, an expression that can just barely be made out through the shadows that separate us. “It wasn’t that hard to build back. And now we’re better than ever. So I guess that means I should thank you.” As I say it, I gather up my own memory to send right back, one of the burn scar almost fully healed before the shadows plagued the land. I give her a rather satisfied smile. Somehow, I don’t think this conversation is going the way she’d intended it to go.

Memorie

Image by Calcifer

@[Aela]