"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
07-25-2021, 03:42 PM (This post was last modified: 07-25-2021, 03:44 PM by Neverwhere.)
No.
What makes everything seem so different?
She wakes in Nerine, but she doesn't stay there, this strange child with wicked scars raking across her skin; with the half ears. She wakes in Nerine with the taste of dust in her dry mouth, choking on the memory of her death and the Nuckelavee's poisonous breath that sealed shut her furious throat. Those pale blue eyes are wide still with panic, the heart beating overtime between her ribs. Her lungs are on fire and when she coughs, there are leaves and - worse - beetle shells on her lips. Her legs are slow to respond when she wants to stand, too used to lying dormant, too used to death and being scattered, shattered bones. It's the cold, too, the snowy nest she finds herself in, numbing her legs, and if she had bothered to come back with her ears they might already have burned off again but luckily she didn't find the tips even in death. When she finally stumbles to her clumsy feet, it's with a disgusted sound to see their frailness. Her coat is thick against the worst of Nerine's bite, but the snow is already deep enough that she has trouble breaking through and she's wheezing by the time she finds cover.
Like all winter storms rolling across the Northern Sea, this one drives itself back out again, though the sun that peeks between the heavy layer of clouds is weak, anemic, and offers her very little. Neverwhere, small, alone-- and where is Lilli? Is she also back in the place where she died? Better question, was any of it real? The Afterlife already feels like a static-y dream. Not a real thing except...
Well, except that she's still shaped like a child.
Not just shaped like one. A tremor runs up her spine, a fear the silver filly doesn't remember as she picks her way through the lightest snowpack. She doesn't remember being afraid to be alone, does it come of dying or is it the girl she's become again, full of fanciful illusions? But who needs this imagination when monsters are real? Small, soft lips twist into a deep scowl, and the cynic that she was tamps down on the childish terror as best it can. Somewhere between rage and dread, she loses herself to the mindless and mind-numbing task of leaving the northern territories behind. Not even the thought of finding Lilliana in Taiga can stop her weary feet, not until she's in the nameless forest once again.
The long journey south awakens the world around her, spring creeping in slowly, though the dense woodland fends off so much of its warmth. It's only when she steps free of the oak and the brambles, among the smooth, worn stones of the river, that Neverwhere can find spring, feel the sun and its breath on the still-cool air that ruffles the soft curls of her coat. Here, too, she finds others and maybe she should be less surprised that they are attracted to the sight of an orphaned foal (she remembers finding Amarine in much the same way,) but she spits curses at them until they withdraw. When they don't, she bites and throws her tiny hooves up into their faces until they do, leaving the belligerent girl to disappear again into the forest where she curls up beneath needled hawthorn branches and wonders what to do.
08-29-2021, 12:48 PM (This post was last modified: 08-29-2021, 01:18 PM by Wherewolf.)
Let's be better strangers
'Have you seen your mother?'
Lilliana's voice had been full of unwarranted hope when she asked him, standing by the river with her red hair tumbling in the wind that boiled up from it. Recent autumn storms had filled the banks to bursting and the cool ground underfoot was soft and squelching, giving away every uneasy shift of his body weight as she detains him.
She had always been kind to him.
There's a part of him, in the face of the former Guardian of Taiga, that wanted to be better than he is, than he possibly ever could be, and it was this alone that kept him there, entertaining her questions with something less than bare civility, but Lilliana was too used to his mother to be much bothered by his short replies and clipped tones.
She had been looking for Neverwhere all summer. There had been sightings, at first, enough to imply that she was in the area, but she was changed. A child? The thought had made him laugh out loud, a sneering, unkind laugh that he made no effort to hide from Lilliana, but he was forced to admit that he had not run into her in his wanderings.
'Have you looked anywhere else?' He had asked, and it was a perfectly reasonable question. Had she spent the whole summer mooning for her dear friend here at the river and never thought to check anywhere else? His mother had always been a wanderer, why would she stay here? But he agreed with Lilliana's assumption that Neverwhere would not remain or return to the North very willingly (one's first death likely lingers, especially when it's at a Nuckelavee's hands,) and so he had suggested that perhaps she look West. Tephra and the Islands would surely be the safest place to go? And then he had rather bluntly taken his leave of her, becoming invisible as soon as the summer overgrowth hid him from her sightline, and turned into the Forest instead of away.
Lilliana is kind, but she is foolish, filled with too much optimism. The gold-dappled stallion stalked through the wooded trails, his usual level of frustration heightened dramatically. He hates the tight tangle of trees, the way they grab at the feathers of his wings, the ways the saplings and the vines wedge between his body and his wings like rope. There's a vague panic in his throat that sets that irritation aflame, but he stomps forward bullishly.
He has no plan, he never has a plan, but a vague goal of finding his mother fills him with unmeditated single-mindedness. He splits apart, breaking to pieces of himself, careless of the way the duplicates come together. None have wings, they slide through the trees more easily without them so he removes those on purpose, but each is missing other bits; an ear, a tail, a mouth. One is not dappled at all and another shines in the darkness like the sun. It is not important.
Ultimately, it is chance that flushes out the bald-faced girl, gangly-legged and scowling, surrounded by stars that give her away in the gloaming. It is the mouthless one that finds her and they stare at each other in silence until Wherewolf can reach them.
A memory stirs, unwilling to waken from its slumber. Six duplicates circling a foal. Threatening. He is not ready to remember this yet.
Neverwhere glares at her grown son, her child-body unable to contain itself and affect that bored nonchalance she had perfected as an adult.
"What do you want?" She asks him at last and he snorts sharply, returning the self-same scowl that so marks him as part of her.
"Lilliana has been looking for you by the River all summer so I sent her off to Tephra" his pewter tail lashes at his flanks, eyes turned a steely green, "I want to make sure she doesn't find you."
