"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
It turns out that the answer to Moira’s question of “how far will her scales recede” is “however far she wants them to.” It had taken many months of practice - frustratingly slow and boring practice. There are many more exciting things for a young nereid to do in a tropical paradise than hone a skill she might never need, after all. Perhaps if she’d been more focused it might have taken less time, and she might have mastered it before summer.
That doesn’t matter, she reminds herself.
She’s mastered it now, and in time to visit Loess before the mainland is shrouded in winter. Moira has heard of snow before, but she is not at all eager to experience it.
Fortunately there is no snow at all on the red hills of Loess. There is only sunshine, sunshine and heat that feels like it might smother her before she can find any of the springs that Helion had told her about. He’d been right about the sky being large, but he’d neglected to mention the way the sun here was so very Big as well.
By the time she’s made decent headway into the unfamiliar land, the young mare’s grulla coat has darkened to nearly black with sweat. The colorful purple and gold markings of her legs are obscured by red dust, and her impossibly pretty face is twisted into a scowl.
“Hello!” She calls out, hot enough to not mind if it isn’t Helion who finds her first. “Hello, could someone please fly up and tell the sun to calm down a little? I’m very hot!”
Helion is stretched out in some grass, silver eyes closed as he lightly dozes with his wings unfurled around him. This is, very likely, a vulnerable position to be in. Anyone could walk over and step all over those pretty metallic limbs, but this is a thought that does not occur to the young stallion. All he is thinking of is how nice the sun feels on his skin and whether or not he should get up and have a snack.
Really, these are the only important things to be thinking of.
He’d just talked himself out of getting up when a familiar voice calls out. For a moment he thinks the hello is a hallucination - Moira had said she’d visit, but he always assumed she’d swim up on the beach one day and he’d find her there.
When she continues, a bright laugh escapes Helion and he scrambles to his feet, looking down from the rock formation he had been dozing on and spots her. Pretty as ever but also looking pretty pissed, sweaty, and dirty. He calls down “The sun told me he doesn’t care.” But while these words on their own may seem cold, Helion’s expression is alive with a shining smile as he extends his wings and then drifts down to land in front of her.
The silver horns on his head have grown enough to curl, and they glint a little in the sun as he regards her - not paying much attention to the fact that he’s just produced a considerable amount of red dust.
Some things he liked about Loess, but the fact that it took no effort to get dirty was something he tended to ignore so it didn’t drive him right out of the place. Now he looks down at his dusty legs and frowns. “Well now we're both messy! Come on, dear fish, I'm no good to you like this. There’s some springs with cool water in them near the coast.” He frames it like it would be a favour to him, his silver eyes dancing, but there is the added benefit of hopefully separating Moira from the scowl on her face if she got a nicer introduction to this place.
The answering voice comes from overhead, and for a moment Moira thinks that the sun itself is answering her.
It turns out that it is the sun answering her, but one that is far closer than the distant orb in the sky. Moira cannot see him, not with the brightness behind him, but she recognizes Helion’s voice instantly.
The sun doesn’t care, the distant pegasus says, but she can hear the smile in his voice even across this distance. The smile doesn’t do anything to cool her down though, and even her delight at so quickly finding Helion does nothing to diminish her discomfort. Her mouth is too dry to form a comfortable reply, and when she smiles back at him she feels her lips crack.
The clouds of red dust that herald his arrival are met with a dull sort of disbelief (this terribly dry and dusty place is where Helion calls home?) and Moira is too shocked to really look at him. Not until he mentions cool water and springs and the coast does she really snap back to herself and meet his eyes.
Helion is smiling, and his silver eyes are brighter even than the sun that silhouettes him and highlights the new curl to his shining horns. Moira suddenly feels much dirtier, and is all the more grateful for the invitation to water.
The young grulla mare nods enthusiastically (if a little delayed) to Helion’s offer.
“Yes please. I didn’t expect it to be so warm here.” The springs were near the coast, he had said, but Moira is not quite sure where that is. She looks at Helion - up at him; he’s grown taller than she is sometime since they’d last met - and she feels the warmth of his presence right down to her very bones.
Moira smiles, and when she says: “I’ve missed seeing you,” she means it. “Now show me these springs before I dry up and you can’t tell me from these rocks.” A flick of her finlike tail toward the pale and piled stone accentuates her joke, and the humor dancing in her purple eyes is much brighter than the discomfort from moments before.
She still doesn’t feel quite good yet, but at least she has Helion here now, and he makes her feel much better.
Helion discovers that it’s a nice feeling, being missed, but before he can get a chance to return the sentiment he’s laughing at the visual of Moira turning into a rock after drying up. “A rock fish? Now that’s tempting to see.” Helion begins to move off though, making it clear there would be no stone-turning today under his watch as he casts another smile her way and motions for her to follow. There are some springs near here that are warm, and they’re great in the winter, but that wouldn’t even make a very good joke today.
Helion prattles on about nothing very important on the way, naming the handful of plants he remembers from his lessons. Most of it hasn’t really stuck - this is an odd place, with cacti and trees and flowers - but it’s all just the backdrop, really. And truthfully, Helion isn’t tied to this place - he lives here because his dad had brought them all back and he just never really thought about leaving. He could soon, he supposed - go back to the wandering way they had grown up when they were small or find somewhere that wasn’t quite so… dusty.
It isn’t long before they reach the coast, Helion’s legs picking up into a trot now that he knows they’re close. He had mapped out most of the springs. Temperature had been easy to determine but whether they were fresh water or salt water was a test he didn’t care for. He hadn’t yet figured out if there was a way to tell without taking a sip, and it often resulted in a lot of sputtering.
Helion leads Moira to a cool, freshwater spring - one of his favourites. It’s relatively large, more than big enough to accommodate the pair of them, but he pauses and makes a flourish with his wing (which casts a small cloud of red dust out). After a small cough, he gives his friend another bright smile as he says “After you!”
Moira scowls at his eagerness to see her as a rock fish, but the forced wrinkling of her forehead does nothing to dim the laughter on her face and the amusement glittering in her sea green eyes. She follows behind as Helion leads the way to the coastal springs, her steps eager.
Her feet are sore from the stoney ground and the dripping sweat streaks the dust across her coat, trickling across her skin. Moira would be quite uncomfortable if she focused on those things, but instead the young nereid is watching the land around them and smelling cacti, jasmine, and hibiscus on the hot air, and listening to Helion’s voice as he tells her their names.
Loess is beautiful, Moira thinks, and almost reminiscent of the coral groves of her reef with its red sandstone spirals. The vast expanse of blue sky could well be the sea, Moira thinks, and she smiles happily. Her pace picks up to match his, for she can smell the water in the air, and it lends new energy to the nereid’s weary feet.
She falls behind for just a moment to stare at the bit of ocean she can see from the crest of a hill, and when she catches up, Helion has elegantly lowered his wing to draw her eye to a glittering spring.
“Oh!” Moira says, and that is all she says before she grins and leaps forward and into the water. There’s no splash at all upon entry. She’s been practicing that, pulling the displaced water down with her using her manipulation. The spring is large but shallow, and she flips about almost immediately, but when she breaks the surface she has already transformed.
The drooping fins of her mane are upright and glittering now, and beneath the water the long train of her gold and violet tail shimmers and sways. The sweat and red dust have been washed away, and as she shakes the water away from her eyes, delicate grey scales shine along the underside of her neck and jaw.
She’d not paid any attention at all to the temperature, caring only that it was water. A few steps bring her closer to the edge of the spring and toHelion, with Moira stopping when the diamond-shaped fin that grows along her side rises half out of the water.
“This is a wonderful spring, Helion.” She tells him with sincerity and a contented smile, “Thank you for sharing it with me.”
Helion’s bright laughter follows Moira into the water while he remains on the edge - wonder shining in his eyes as he watches her disappear under the surface without so much as a splash. Could she teach him how to do that? Or was that a particularly special fish trick? He files it away in the back of his mind to think of later, right now he is enjoying the obvious joy displayed by his friend and the captivating display that she makes, twisting about in the clear water. He’d seen her tail once before, but it was still beautiful - still impressive - and there is more room for her to twist here than there had been in the river where they’d met.
He waits until she’s resurfaced before joining her, wading into the water and feeling the refreshing water curl around his legs as he does. The glow from his golden body shimmers across the surface in the ripples caused by their movements and still it pales in comparison to the smile that brightens his face.
“You’re very welcome.” He moves away for a moment, so he can stretch out his wings and get the feathers wet before folding them back at his sides and rustling the feathers, sending water droplets flying in all directions. It was good to be clean once more, or at least from the chest-down. Dirt still smeared his neck and cheeks as his silver eyes dance. “Loess isn’t all bad, even if it is rather dusty.” He tells her with a grin, drifting a little closer. “I'm glad you came to visit, even though it came with the risk of being turned to stone.”
09-25-2021, 08:30 AM (This post was last modified: 09-25-2021, 08:32 AM by Moira.)
She watches Helion wade deeper into the water, as admiring of the way the water glows around him as she’s ever been. The red dust washes from his golden hair nearly as quickly as it had from her scales, and the nereid watches as he soaks his wings. They turn from amber to gold before her eyes, and she smiles at the change, and at the water.
He shakes his wings unexpectedly, sending a spray of water into the air that glitters like a thousand little rainbows. Moira catches them without thinking about it at all, holding the reflectant droplets in the air where they shimmer and quake in the afternoon breeze. She holds them up, admiring how pretty they look overhead, and lowers her gaze only when water laps at her chest from Helion’s return.
The pegasus is smiling at her, his silver eyes bright in his dirt streak face. She feels her chest warming in a way that at first seems familiar (Helion has always radiated warmth) but after a moment she realizes he is too far away. It is not the water to blame either; the spring is far cooler than the glow in her chest, and doesn’t at all explain the sudden desire to move even closer to Helion.
Swallowing, Moira allows the water to fall around them. She’d never thought of Helion as anything but her friend, the sun. But this is different from friendship. These are the sorts of feelings that lead to babies, she is very sure, so Moira - who does not want babies anytime soon - thinks that maybe she should avoid them.
So she tells him:“I’m glad I came too. It really is beautiful.” and then looks anywhere but directly at him.
Eventually (only a few seconds later - it only feels like an eternity) her amethyst eyes find the streaks that the falling water have left on Helion’s still dusty cheek, and Moira cannot bite back a grin and a playful: “Even if the locals might need a little help bathing.” With her words, an orb of water begins to emerge from the spring. It glitters faintly with Moira’s manipulation, and begins to float toward Helion.
Helion’s silver eyes widen when Moira catches the drops of water he had sprayed out from his wings. He reaches out to nudge one of the iridescent droplets, his grin growing a little brighter. He had known she could move around water, but this was a particularly pretty trick.
When the water eventually falls, a small laugh escapes him - delighted by this slowing down of time, and it is with that laugh still dancing in his eyes that he had moved closer to her.
It is good to have a friend visit his home, and Helion is busy thinking this and enjoying the feeling of being mostly clean and doesn’t notice that Moira avoids looking directly at him for a few seconds. But he does notice the playful glint in her eyes and his own narrow in mock-suspicion before widening with another bright burst of laughter escapes him when the water forms an orb.
Despite the fact that he takes a small step to the side and away from the orb, his smile hasn't faded. “I don't know what you mean, we're a rather pristine lot.” Says the golden stallion with red streaks of dust and mud on his head and neck. And sure, the rest of him was already wet, it wouldn't matter very much to also soak his head - it just also wouldn't be very fun to just stand there and allow it to happen. His silver gaze remains on her, though a few glances are spared for the orb to keep up appearances.
“Haven’t we played this game before?” He asks, remembering how she had splashed him with water upon their first meeting.
Her smile expands into a laugh, and though her control of the water isn’t yet good enough that she might move it rapidly, she does manage to give it a good shake, enough to sprinkle the stallion below with a few drops.
“Have we?” She asks with wide-eyed innocence. She tries to appear pensive, but the smile breaks out again quickly.
“It’s one of my favorites,” Moira tells him, “and you’re such a nice target. I’ve tried throwing water at the other sun, but I can never get it quite far enough.” At this she looks up to the sky again, to where the bright orb rests in the bright clear sky. She must narrow her jewel-bright eyes to look at it, and even when she lowers her gaze she can still feel it, lingering burning white hot in her vision.
Helion, in contrast, is a warm golden glow. Moira wonders if he dims himself, or if, like the moon, he cycles through dark and light. If she closes her eyes, would she still see his face like she can see the sun overhead? Without thinking it through, she does so, and the lack of concentration causes the watery orb to fall back to the water with a splash.
It lands beside him just before she can tell if she was seeing Helion’s imprint or just the glow of him through her closed eyes, and her eyes fly open with a genuine: “Whoops!” followed by a quick laugh at the slightly-less dusty stallion. “At least this time it was helpful!”
The imagery of Moira tossing water at the other sun is an entertaining one. “Well clearly you need to practice more.” Helion replies as he watches Moira look up towards that other sun. It may be brighter than him but at least he does not burn to look at. And at least he is closer - these are all things he rather feels makes him the superior sun. For the most part he keeps these thoughts to himself, though. After all - just because that sun is a little bit further away doesn’t mean it is not listening.
He’s still watching her when she closes his eyes, his face turning into an amused frown as he wonders what she’s doing. Helion doesn’t get much of a chance to ask, though, because his attention shifts to the falling water orb and he makes a small shout of surprise when it falls beside him, splashing him a little (but not nearly as bad as the first time she’d played this trick on him).
Helion doesn’t know why he was surprised - he knew it was going to fall - but it’s still a little startling.
There’s a good natured grin shining in his silver eyes as he shakes out his wings and hair again. “Very helpful, thank you Moira.” A slight pause as he peers down, attempting to check out his reflection in the rippled water. “Did you at least get all the dust?”
