"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
On the morning of the Midsummer Fair, Targaryen wakes with a stomach full of butterflies and a messy bed. There is an ache behind his eyes, mild enough to fade by the time he stretches out his legs — yet it speaks of a restless night. Since asking Cheri to go with him to the Fair, Targaryen has felt tense. He thinks it is for a good reason, but he tries to ignore what those reasons are during the day. As the dark green stallion begins to carefully nudge his feathers into place, he wonders if his purposeful avoidance has caused his mind to spin in his sleep.
Hopefully tonight he will sleep better than the past weeks. Targaryen makes his way to a nearby stream, watching for a moment as the water rolls itself down toward the ocean. Focusing his eyes on his reflection, the tobiano gives a snort of amusement at the sight of himself. It seems his restless sleep made an impression on his outward appearance as well; his forelock lies mussed between his ears and various plant life pokes around his face from his mane. It takes Targaryen a moment to make himself presentable, and by the time he has finished, the sun is high enough that he heads toward the north beach.
He hadn’t felt shy asking Cheri to go with him — in fact, it had felt natural. It had seemed like it would be obvious they would go together; they do everything together anyway. Yet as Targaryen comes to a stop on the open beach, the butterflies in his stomach create a chorus with the thumping of his heart. As his soft brown eyes search the treeline for Cheri’s familiar face, the stallion thinks he shouldn’t have ignored his tension.
Cheri had also been sleepless. Dreams plagued her. Some were sweet: scenes bathed in buttery yellow light where she was either flying or stretching her dark legs out to meet the rolling turf of an open meadow. Sometimes Targaryen flew beside her, other times one or two of her family members joined her. These were the pleasant kind that always left her feeling fuzzy-headed the next morning, as if the dream itself had been reality and not the other way around.
Some, however, were dark. Last night, she was running scared through a black forest. The Eclipse was still overhead, though it cast a strange glow like a bloodred moon might. Gone were the emerald greens and rich browns, replaced by a world bathed in crimson light, so powerful that it snuffed out her glowing skin. Her wings refused to work, but she knew that she was running from a monster in the nightmare. The same one that tore her apart had come back for more, and its breath felt so real on the skin of her hide that she turned her head to look behind, but when she did there wasn’t any monster - only a horse billowing smoke and glaring at her with eyes as red as the moon overhead.
She woke with a start and blinked away the early rays of dawn, just barely coming down from above to illuminate the chilly forest and the mushroom she’d taken refuge under the night before. Shuddering, Cheri had replayed the terror through her mind until it disappeared and then she moved out from her makeshift house to go looking for Memorie. In the light of day it was easy to forget her problems: the scar that used to pattern her hide had disappeared by now and her ghostliness vanished as well, leaving her substantial again as if the Quest and the Eclipse had never happened. Taiga itself had transformed entirely; nearly every creature had taken on some of the evergreen traits of the woods they called home, and just the other week she’d found little glass frogs! Tiny, translucent creatures that croaked and bellowed at dusk.
With so much to discover Cheri hardly had time to realize that she was changing as well. Her baby awkwardness was fading slowly, her limbs growing daily (it felt like), and now she made faint clinking sounds when she walked. The crystal formations that’d started to sprout up from her skin were elongating and multiplying, but they seemed confined to her lower legs, rump, and the area of her forehead just above her eyes stretching up to her svelte ears. It wouldn’t be long now until she was a mare grown. “Yan’s worst nightmare.” She’d joked with Memorie after the two had found each other.
The sibling horses chatted and lounged about, Memorie playing the part of dutiful sister by helping Cheri manage her mane and tail. With her magical gifts, Mem grew a smattering of little white flower buds and arranged them carefully throughout the plaits of Cheri’s hair, then sent her a memory of what Cheri looked like through her eyes so that Cheri could appreciate the handiwork. Kissing her sister on the cheek in thanks, the young appaloosa mare bounded off again with a nervous, twittering heart to the meeting place she and Targaryen had agreed upon.
“Yenny!” She called out to him, laughing and cantering down the shoreline until a few buds came flying loose from her mane. They twirled in the air and settled behind her, leaving a small trail, and when she stopped before him the remaining few framed her eager face and clung haplessly to the now-loose tendrils of her mane. “You look… clean!” She teased him with a smile. “Very clean, and athletic, and suave…” She thought to herself, her heart squeezing itself into a ball of nervous energy.
“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting long. I’m ready to go whenever you are.” She told him with a breathy sort of excitement, then glanced out to the calm gray ocean. Her wings unbound themselves from her side and flared carefully, testing the slow breeze and sensing its direction almost like a second-nature. She hardly had to think about it anymore; these days Cheri flew whenever she could.
“Yenny!” Cheri’s voice snaps the tobiano’s mind away from fully concentrating on slowing his breathing to avoid hyperventilating. Not only his mind but also his neck; Targaryen’s moves so quickly he is certain he’ll feel the effects by the end of the day. The sight of Cheri eases any momentary pain, leaving behind a warmth that fills him completely.
Each time Targaryen sees the appaloosa, she seems to have gotten prettier. And each time, he becomes more aware of a growing adoration. He isn’t entirely comfortable with emotion, mainly because he isn’t sure it should be associated with his best friend. Cheri is more like his sister than anything else, so he thinks, and it feels wrong to feel the extremely protective, masculine, obsessed ways he does about her.
The tendrils of her hair make his heart twist, and without thinking, he leans forward to brush them away from her face. The flowers smell sweet (her skin smells even sweeter), and Targaryen accidentally lets out a smooth, warm nicker that might belie the deeper corners of his heart. As he realizes what he’s just done, the tobiano takes a quick step backward and looks nervously toward where the ocean and the sky meet. He hadn’t known his heart could beat faster than it already was, but he’s surprised to find that it does.
When Cheri suggests leaving, the stallion clears his throat and unfurls his wings. His soft brown eyes catch the warm glow of her wings, and his gaze lingers there. Targaryen cannot help but think — again — about how beautiful his best friend is, about how lucky he is that she accepted his casual suggestion to visit the festival together. “You didn’t. Let’s go freeze our wings off,” he says, hoping the humor will offset the nerves and confusion that is building in his stomach.
They take flight together, and the ease of their movements highlights just how many times they have done this. The natural dance of their take-off and the similar pattern of their wing-strokes bring a sense of comfort to Targaryen. As they head toward the frozen island, the tobiano tells a story about one of the times they raced from one end of Taiga to the other and how he very clearly had won.
When she’d been younger (and for Cheri that wasn’t so long ago) Targaryen had always playfully tussled her. A nudge here, a shove there. As she grew, their contact with one another changed subtly from playful interaction to guiding gentleness. Cheri had gotten comfortable using her powers for small injuries or fevers, and in turn her wings filled in until they’d become substantial and ready for flight. At that point, Targaryen had turned from playmate to instructor. Cheri was desperate to learn and as always, Targaryen was patient enough to teach her when they had spare hours to practice. She remembered the firm but natural way he’d educated her, lifting her wings with his nose to simulate what movement she should make when dipping, or lightly tapping her in the areas where she needed to build the most muscle for the kind of flyer she wished to become.
On more than one of those occasions, Cheri had felt a strange sort of tingling in her limbs or she’d feel her own heart kick up a beat in response, but never had she flushed with heat the way she did when Yen impulsively reached out to brush the loose strands of her forelock away. His nicker vibrated against her skin, tender in an unexpected way, and for a brief moment Cheri had nearly reacted by lifting her dark mouth to lip softly at the edges of his. She’d gotten about as far as leaning forward when he’d jerked away again, and the reaction left her a bit confused … but not put off entirely.
He was just being nice. “Yikes.” She thought, slightly embarrassed. “Can’t believe I almost did that.” Cheri shuffled her hooves through the silver shoreline and shook her nerves, along with her wings, out. Could she imagine? Kissing Targaryen … how absurd, right? “Totally absurd.” She smiled quietly in his direction, noting how his gaze lingered over her outspread wings. Probably checking to make sure she wasn’t carrying a loose twig or something, like a good teacher did. For a moment she studied him: the noble slant of his attractive face, how smooth and masculine his cheekbones were, the way he held himself with a pleasant, casual charm befitting a stallion of rank, and then she pictured herself curling up against those muscular shoulders, peppering tender kissing up the arc of his distinguished neck as lovers might … and her heart constricted, painfully.
She resolved not to think about it anymore, quick to take to the air and lift herself up beside Targaryen as his equal. In the clouds her head could be clear, focused. Cheri let her confusion and fear slip away, allowing for the simple joy of life’s enjoyments to take its place. She and Targaryen were naturals at this, and in the heat of their discussion about who’d won that race - Her, obviously - she threatened to knock him out of the sky with a bold, enchanting laugh. Nerine passed quickly underneath them; time always passed so quickly when they were together.
Icicle Isle took her breath away the moment it appeared through the heavy clouds of ice, quite literally. It was more intense then Cheri had expected, having never really been very far north herself. She followed Targaryen down toward the stretch of Tundra and then navigated carefully across the plains of snow and ice, never far behind her companion. By the time they both hit land, she was freezing. “I t-t-thought it w-w-was sssupposed to be sp-spring?” She tried joking through the chatter of her teeth. Tired as she was, Cheri didn’t want to stand still for long. In the distance she saw the maze made of reflective ice and she tipped her head in that direction, wings quivering and tightly bound against her sides. “W-wanna get l-l-lost?”
Targaryen had hoped the flight would unravel the knot of emotions from his stomach. Instead, it heightens them. He uses their conversation (though it is more of an argument) as a buffer to control his mouth from spurting out something that would change the mood of their day. In between his sentences and during the chatter of her replies, Targaryen cannot stop his eyes from studying his friend. He hadn’t thought she could get more beautiful, yet their closeness to the sun seems to draw her even closer to perfection.
Her jewels seem to capture the sun’s rays so they glitter above her electric green eyes. The slender curves of her face, neck, and chest are edged by pale gold from the late-morning light, yet the dip of her flank and the lithe muscle are accentuated by the shadows the sun creates. Cheri’s wings look as if the sun has placed itself tenderly along her sides and willingly flung itself into the air to bring her body closer to the sky. Each detail of her feminine face, each curve of her maturing body, the shimmer of the sun on her dark skin — they draw him in until the rest of the world feels blurred and distant.
Perhaps if he knows what love looks like (if he had seen the way romantics draw each other close and spread kisses along their heated skin), Targaryen might fall into a similar fantasy world as Cheri.
Cheri’s laugh dazzles the stallion, and he feels like lightning has struck him from above. With heat blossoming from his core, Targaryen is grateful for the cold sweeping over them as they approach Icicle Isle. He dips lower into a bitter wind current as they begin their descent, grateful for the chill that cools his skin. But by the time the pair land on the ice, the tobiano is also freezing. He pulls his wings tight and begins to feel the warmth as his feathers insulate his sides.
Targaryen’s multicolored feathers don’t protect his face and legs though, so his answer to Cheri’s question comes through mildly numb lips. “You’d think the thun would warm thith plath too.” The stallion’s ears moved into the tendrils of his mane in his embarrassment at the strange sentence, but there was no preventing the effects of the bitter wind on his face. As his soft brown eyes follow Cheri’s toward the maze, he wiggled his facial muscles to encourage warmth.
“Maybe the ice will keep us out of the wind.” He truly had to work for those words, but Targaryen is satisfied he got them out. As his gaze moves back toward his friend, he can’t help but notice that she looks just as lovely among the ice and snow as she does in the sky. In fact, she looks like a walking piece of Mother Earth, crafted from black sand and pale gems and emerald grass.
His heart both sighs and screams.
So the tobiano moves toward the ice-maze before he can act on it.
Cheri doesn’t hesitate to follow. Targaryen left large, round indents in the snow and she placed her own hooves inside of them, looking down at the way the crescents engulfed her steps. It was easier to concentrate on walking rather than to concentrate on how freezing it was this far north. Her wings, made of light but not the heat from the sun, served only to protect her from the worst of the chilly weather and she pulled them as tightly as possible to her sides for any extra warmth they might provide.
There seemed to be a large assortment of horses gathered. Some bands had been on the tundra side of the large island, others - like herself and Targaryen - were trekking through the snow towards the maze on the eastern side of the territory. There was joy here, that much was as clear as the laughter and shouts ringing out in the air. Cheri smiled at the commotion and breathed deeply, her limbs warming up after a little exercise.
Brushing one of her wings against Targaryen’s, Cheri trotted up to his side and did her best to match his long, even strides. “So,” She eased her way into conversation as they passed through the entrance together, “I have some good news.”
The time had come to tell Targaryen of her intent to leave Taiga for good. Cheri had held this secret close, debating about it with her father and talking it over with her mother until the timing seemed right. With a new season approaching and the light returned to Beqanna, Cheri couldn’t think of a better opportunity to begin that grand adventure she’d always dreamed of as a filly. “My parents approved my idea of moving out of Taiga, finally.” Cheri gushed, tilting her head up to better see Targaryen’s reaction. She’d shared her intentions with him once or twice before when they got to talking about the future, but never had it been so real as it was now. She was actually leaving. “Loess is going to be my first choice, and then Tephra if I’m declined.” She told him with a hopeful sigh, stopping herself right before she would’ve slammed into one of the glassy panes of ice.
Cheri looked to their left and then to their right, unsure. She looked back at her stalwart companion and smiled, waiting for him to decide and take the lead.
It’s a work-out to cross the wide plain, and the snow piles high enough to reach Targaryen’s knees. By the time they reach the entrance to the maze, the tobiano feels warm from the exercise. He’s thinking about how being warm and cold at the same time feels very strange when Cheri moves next to him. He’s grateful the bitter cold swipes away any perspiration he has as her wing glides against his. And as they begin to wind through the maze, Targaryen notices how the wind leaves them, caught in the barriers of ice that they wander through.
His brown eyes find Cheri’s face as she speaks. Targaryen watches excitement brighten her green eyes, and he keeps his face carefully neutral for a moment. When she’d first told him about her thirst for adventure, he’d been excited for her. He’d told her to pursue her dreams, to find Yanhua and mention it every chance she could get, to fight until she got what she wanted. Targaryen cares for her; despite the way he feels upside-down right now, both confident and severely nervous, he’s always wanted to see her happy. Cheri had told him she would be happier away from Taiga, exploring places she’s never been before and discovering who she is away from her family, and he couldn’t deny her that.
But now that the possibility is real, Targaryen finds he feels less excited for Cheri. The appaloosa had made Taiga feel like home to him. She had breathed life into the redwoods and made them familiar to him, and when he’d gotten lost during the eclipse Targaryen had missed her even more than he missed the ancient woods. When Cheri healed him on that first night at the river, she’d mended the loneliness inside him as well. And, if he’s being honest, he’s scared the loneliness will return when she leaves.
There’s a possibility he could go with her, but Taiga truly is home to him. He’d feel guilty for leaving the redwoods, for neglecting the responsibilities Yanhua has started to give him, for leaving the life that he’s beginning. And underneath it all, Targaryen wonders if she’s leaving to get away from him. It’s a doubt he can’t shake, and it, unfortunately, shows up in his brown eyes. He tries to rearrange his reaction from one of fear into one of optimism, but he’s always been too good at being honest.
His efforts only work partially, enough for him to give her an animated smile even when his eyes suggest otherwise. Targaryen uses their crossroad in the maze as an opportunity to think about his response. He chooses the path to the right, which seems like the best option simply because the snow is less thick. As they begin walking again, his voice comes out soft. “I’m excited for you, but I can’t say I won’t miss you. Cheri, you’ve made Taiga feel like home to me. It’s not going to be the same without you.”
Their childhoods were very different — he grew up alone and wandering, while she had a family and a single place to live. The redwoods are a comfort to him because of his untethered life as a child, and perhaps the redwoods feel like a prison to her because she has spent all her days under them. So he takes a deep, cleansing breath and says, “I can understand why you want to leave, though. There’s so much of Beqanna to discover. You’re going to do amazing things, wherever you are.”
Standing abreast one another, Cheri could see the slight pinch between Targaryen’s eyes that he was trying so gallantly to hide. It was useless; they knew each other too well to disguise deeper emotions with false expressions. She knew he was hiding a deeper feeling, but what that feeling was she couldn’t guess. Confusion? Sadness?
Each of the Targaryens reflected back at her from the surrounding panes of ice-walls could’ve been the truth. She smiled a bit more earnestly at the real one, and reached quickly to bump her nose against his patterned side as he led them away to the right.
“You sound so terribly sad, Yenny.” Cheri responded with a mixture of tormented confusion. In truth, she’d had a small amount of hope that he’d jump at the opportunity to join her - but her thoughts quickly aligned with his and she realized that out of all the requests she’d made in the past, asking him to leave the only real home he’d ever known might’ve been asking a bit too much. “You know I’m going to miss you too, right?” Her gaze wandered up to glance at Targaryen’s profile beside her.
He was right: there was too much of Beqanna to discover, too many hidden wonders to see and chart out, and her whole life ahead of her. Taiga would never be grand enough to keep her grounded like her father. But to go it alone?
“I never thought…” Cheri’s mind drifted away like her eyes, losing itself to the quiet serenity the maze induced from walking in random directions. She’d never really considered the fact that an adventurous life was a lonely sort of existence. Most mares her age were securing mates for the first time, planning families or joining herds. This new realization was a hard one for the young pegasus to swallow, but she did so anyway. It truly was what she wanted.
“So you’ll stay in Taiga then?” Cheri asked Targaryen after a while, speaking up above the crunch their hooves made while walking through the snow. She didn’t know why but she needed that confirmation from him, the assertion that he wouldn’t leave and she could come home to find him waiting whenever she longed to see him again (which would be often.) He already knew where she would be if he ever wanted to return the favor.
