"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
Nihlus' joints ached and cracked as he stretched that morning. They, more often than not, keep him here these days -- they being his aging joints, here being the island Heim off the shores of Ischia, the island which he has now called home for close to a decade. Three children grew up here in the warm embrace of family and have since embarked on adventures of their own, elsewhere and beyond even the wildest of Nih's guesses.
Had you asked him in his youth if he could feel the ache of missing someone in his breast as the skies feel the weight of gravity restraining them from the void of space, he would have scoffed, at best. Mocked you, at worst. As far as relations went during that time in his life, he did away with such trivial thing as mothers, faux-fathers, or siblings. In their place stood the cold and vast iciness of the unforgiveable Tundra. The brotherhood that came with could come or go for all the Nihlus cared -- in the beginning, anyway.
But his youth had fled him, slowly at first and now at a pace which frightened him daily. The fear worsened during the periods of Brennen's absences, expected absences which they communicate about to the best of their abilities, to be sure, but absences nonetheless. And today happened to be a morning of absence. With no children to keep him company nor a partner to love him into feeling young again, Nihlus faced the feelings deep in his chest which he ignored as a youth and which have therefore grown nigh-unconquerable in their greatness.
Before he even began his morning meal, Nihlus began to cry. The tears slipped from his glowing blue eyes and fell unto the shade-cooled sands of Heim's heart.
Will I live to see my grandchildren? Will I live to see my partner? What will happen when I am gone? Will I be forgotten by those who claimed to love me, will my name be erased from the consciousness of the living? How can I live knowing that I will die, knowing that my powers will not be able to help me from that place which I survived once, that grey and desolate beach of the afterlife? Who will greet me there except the other pitiful mortals? Who --
A sudden wave of something disrupted the rambling of his mind. A sensation that passed through each particle of his being with a gentle urgency, like a hand lifted to awaken with great care. Nihlus inhaled, sharp and alive as he it had not been before.
"Brennen!" He called, disoriented but with a heart sailing far above the tumultuous waves of existentialism below. Brennen had materialized somewhere on Beqanna, had returned, and had sent out -- whether intentionally or incidentally -- a pulse of his magical vitality.
And so, running full-tilt toward the beach with his aching joints long forgotten, Nihlus calls with the high-spiritedness of any love-struck yearling:
SO GIVE ME HOPE IN THE DARKNESS THAT I WILL SEE THE LIGHT 'CAUSE OH THAT GAVE ME SUCH A FRIGHT
Perhaps it is cruel, for him to use his magic to keep his lover firmly in this state of existence with him. Perhaps it is an abuse of power, something Brennen strives to avoid; but he refuses to lose Nihlus. He has loved and lost before, to both natural and unnatural causes, but now it is different. Before he was physically powerful, a warrior of renown, but with little recourse against age and magic. Now, he is magic, and it is worth the expenditure to him to prevent his partner's loss.
If Nihlus truly wants to die at any point, he'll probably have to straight up ask.
This separation has been longer than some of the others, though, and Brennen feels guilty about it. Sometimes, it's too easy to get caught up in his own head, stuck in a sort of limbo space, and his loved ones are the ones who suffer. This time he has vague recollections of pulling others into his magical space - Nihlus, occasionally his children when they were dreaming, it's possible he raised an entire set of children in magical nonexistence though he'll need to find them to confirm if they were a dream. (He knows they weren't - he knows that their creation is the reason for his magical coma this time, but he isn't ready to think about it). Even as he's blinking awake, staring at the River stretched before him, wondering why he isn't home, he can feel Nihlus across the physical distance between them; he can feel both his lover's mental turmoil and the way his body is betraying him, age especially sharp without Brennen's constant, if subtle, healing.
Another breath, another blink, and he's on the beach of home. Heim. The warm sand underneath his hooves gives away as he shifts and turns, until his amber eyes lock on the equine bullet headed in his direction. He doesn't call back, his voice still hoarse with disuse, but he reaches out mentally with an unmistakable warmth, enfolding the younger stallion's mind into a welcoming embrace even as he braces for impact of their bodies and anticipates a physical embrace. Simultaneously, he reaches within for the cool soothing powers of his magic, reaching out to ease aches and protesting body parts. "Hello," is what he does manage when he forces sound from his dry throat, the word low and rough. It's good that he has the mental feelings to share, for these times when words fail him.
BUT I WILL HOLD AS LONG AS YOU LIKE JUST PROMISE ME WE'LL BE ALRIGHT
Love and loss. The themes of Brennen's long, ageless life; stories which the Arabic pegasus sometimes shares with Nihlus. The stories break Nih's heart but try as he might, he cannot imagine the pain, not really. He finds it hard to imagine hurting for someone the way Brennen hurts for his past lovers. Perhaps Nihlus understands when he remembers Librette, his childhood friend, but when he thinks of Noori, his mother, or his siblings Cerva and Daemron, or his father whom he barely knew, Sinder, he does not feel much. They pass like shadows in the back of his mind.
Nuage, though... yes, sometimes it hurts to remember Nuage. What happened to his first true lover, to the man with whom he also sired children? He remembers their love like a passion destined for mutually assured destruction. So while an ache remains where Nuage left a mark on Nihlus' heart, it also sours itself; for ever since finding Brennen, Nih has known the intimacy of stability. The true love of kindred friendship and understanding. And yes, passion, too -- but not at the expense of his well being.
Such coherent thoughts cease to exist to Nihlus when he senses Brennen's return. In their wake, only a great and needy desire remains.
"Brennen!"
His lover's body appears as he calls again. Before he feels the warmth of Brennen's skin against his, Nihlus feels the familiar, comforting warmth of the magician's mind as it envelopes the churning anxiety of Nihlus'. Though the anxiety does not disappear, it lessens and changes, morphing into something manageable, faceable. Something which does not threaten to destroy Nihlus from the inside out but which rather motivates him to continue to find creative solutions to his minor problems.
Hello.
The simple word means everything to Nihlus. By now the larger stallion has his lover tight in his embrace, neck wrapped around neck, heart pounding against heart. Nihlus squeezes tighter yet, feeling the existentialism of his prior wonderings answered by the physical, tangible presence of Brennen. Everything's going to be okay, he thinks.
Shuddering back snotty tears, Nihlus burrows his face in Brennen's ebony mane. His lips work at the course tresses there, a well-rehearsed expression of familiarity and love. For a moment, he says nothing, feeling a sense of contentment he had forgotten existed. Then, he says:
SO GIVE ME HOPE IN THE DARKNESS THAT I WILL SEE THE LIGHT 'CAUSE OH THAT GAVE ME SUCH A FRIGHT
The Brennen who had first met Nihlus would never have imagined finding solace in his embrace, much less this encompassing love. They had both been different. Nihlus had been painfully young - the years matter less as they both age, but at that point Brennen had been at the end of what would have been a natural lifespan and weary of youth - and had all of the irreverence that came along with adolescence. Brennen had owed him only the loyalty he gave to all of his Tundra brothers, and even that patience had oft been stretched. Brennen, for his part, had been just emerged from a painful sort of love triangle, complete with the requisite betrayals on all sides, and had started courting another. He had been easy to type, then, with his penchant for attraction and devotion to mares who had strength and power in their own right.
Time had tempered him, and changed him, and he is beyond happy now with the man Nihlus has become, with a different type of loyalty, and a different type of affection. When he was young, he had many lovers and even more flings, and a small but not singular handful of long-term relationships with various levels of monogamy attached to them. He would not be able to put into words why Nihlus is different than his handful of other bond-mates, but he knows Nihlus will be the last. If he moves on to the next life, Brennen will follow or he his heart will be alone in this life until he does.
He wraps himself around Nih tightly. They become almost one creature - it would be nigh impossible for someone passing by to distinguish between them. Somewhere between Nih's much larger frame and Brennen's overlarge wings wrapped around them, they are simply together. "I'm sorry," he forces out through his dry mouth. "I didn't mean to be gone so long." He breathes in and out, the familiar scents of home washing over him. "I dreamed of you. It called me home."
BUT I WILL HOLD AS LONG AS YOU LIKE JUST PROMISE ME WE'LL BE ALRIGHT
01-26-2022, 11:41 PM (This post was last modified: 01-26-2022, 11:41 PM by Nihlus.)
Believe it or not, Brennan's old penchant for attraction and devotion to mares who had strength and power in their own right was not a fact easily lost on Nihlus. Although such matters did not occupy the stallion's mind at that exact moment, as he wet Brennen's mane with the salt of his tears, it had certainly come up in conversation before. Not easily, nor smoothly, it being a sensitive and uncomfortable subject and all; but conversate on it they did. Open and honest communication laid as the foundation of their odd-ball love of mentor/mentee to life partners in their own right. And so, Nihlus often contended with the idea of the fact that his lover, his life, had lain and born children with his grandmother, a force of nature whom he'd known personally during her reign as the Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle. But even recalling such ancient titles which once adorned the twice-forsaken Scorch bear a nostalgia so stale as to evoke a kind of time-worn uncaring. At the end of the day, Nihlus felt fondness over jealousy, trust over discomfort, and communication over rumination. And for that, the issue became effectively null.
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be gone so long. I dreamed of you.
Nih's heart and stomach pulled at one another in a dance of bittersweet and passionate agony, though the bitterness faded by the second, and the agony gave way to the joy of reunion.
It called me home.
Nihlus nodded, making a sound low in his throat to acknowledge what he could not with words: the depth of love he felt by these admittances, the mild confusion of how he, a simple man with simple ideas, could inspire such profound affection, and the overwhelming, blanketed feeling of wholeness once more. For a moment, Nih flickered between astral planes, lost in the effervescent turmoil of reunion. Only the grounding touch of Brennen clutched against him called him back.
Centering himself in this reality, Nihlus leaned back and pressed his lips to Brennen's nostrils, bridge, and forehead. A triumvirate of welcome-back kisses. Resting at the final destination, Nih breathed the following words:
"I forgive you. Always. Welcome home, my love."
Then, Nih stepped a pace away and grinned a fox's grin, though the fox could not make its way to his eyes; nay, in those blue depths, only unadulterated love and gratitude lay.
"For my part, dear heart, I dreamt of our future children..."
