"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
Ruhr had noticed the change in his eyes immediately, as attentive to his appearance as he was to the Moon. His eyes were as brown as the earth below his hooves, and yet the sky in the wager’s reflection was a cloudless blue. Raising his gaze from his reflection, the feathered stallion had peered up into the sky.
Definitely blue.
And then looked back down at his reflection.
Definitely brown.
He’d blinked a few more times, shook his head, then pawed at the water. When it had resettled, his eyes had still the same inexplicable shade.
It took him much longer to notice the absence of the wind, of his Stratosian aura.
So long, in fact, that it is only tonight, as he lands at the base of a bluff, feathers streaked with sweat, that he realizes it is gone. He tilts his head, as if he might hear it, but neither in his ears nor against his feathers does he find the aura that his kind have always possessed.
The Moon has been changing him, Ruhr reminds himself.
If She takes back Her gifts, who is he to question Her wisdom?
Even if those gifts he had been born with.
Even if those gifts are part of his Stratosian identity.
Even if he does not understand, and She continues to refuse to show him any visions.
Already weary with the physical exhaustion of a day spent in the air, Ruhr can feel the tension rising in him. He shakes out his wings to diffuse it, then limps out of the windbreak that the bluff provides. When a breeze blows once more on his face, the stallion closes his brown eyes and takes several long, slow breaths.
yes i know that love is like ghosts, few have seen it but everybody talks —
Her mind has been quieter than usual.
As much as she was hesitant to admit it, being in the company of others hushed the voices in her head to a background hum. When her eyes were focused on another's face it was easier to ignore the constant glimpses of ghosts that always haunted the corners of her vision, but it also made their presence all the more obvious once she is alone again. But that brief moment of solace — it was addicting.
She isn’t sure if she liked that change in her; becoming the kind of girl that craved someone else. The kind that came into the meadow and immediately began to scan the strangers that mingled, trying to find anyone that might distract her.
And almost immediately she felt guilty for even thinking that; that everyone out here, to her, was only a distraction. That she isn’t sure if she even cares about them, about getting to know or befriend them. She wonders if there will ever be a moment that she is not in a constant battle with her mind — if it’s not the voices then it’s the nearly crippling shyness, and if it’s not the shyness then it’s this, this idea that she is somehow secretly malicious without meaning to be.
She is caught in the crossfire of these thoughts when she sees him, a brief flash of movement, and instinctively she turns to look at him. His limp is the first thing she notices, and she feels a twinge of worry in her chest — but also relief at the realization that he is not a ghost. Despite her earlier musings that it was cruel to use others for her own benefit she approaches him anyway, her steps still cautious as always, and her voice perhaps a bit too soft, as if she is giving him the option to not hear her. “Are you okay? You’re limping.”
Narya
— spirits follow everywhere i go, they sing all day and they haunt me in the night
Ruhr opens his eyes slowly, having heard the sound of hooves and caught the scent of an approaching stranger on the night wind.
He’d considered ignoring them, sure he could rely on their reluctance to disturb a sleeping, elderly stranger. The residents of this world are not so different from his last, and while these aged weeks are not his favorite, they are not entirely without advantage.
But he is in as much need of a distraction as the one who draws nearer so cautiously, and his white ears flick forward to catch the words she speaks so softly.
“It’s an old injury.” He replies, his own voice softened by age, as well as the recent exertion he’d subjected himself to. But tonight is the fullest moon, he reminds himself as he takes a near-rattling breath. Tomorrow he will last longer in the sky, and the day after that longer still. Youth will return to him, he is sure.
“You get used to such things, after a while.” Used to things like a limp and the pain of it, to the transfiguration of time, to hearing the Moon. Or to not hearing Her, as he has been of late.
“And you?” he asks, a faint wheeze accompanying his exhaled breath. “Are you okay?”
yes i know that love is like ghosts, few have seen it but everybody talks —
She nods in understanding at his answer, but the concern lingers. She wishes, not for the first time, that she had something other than ghost whispering. She wishes that she had something to aid the living, and thinks how much more useful she would be if she could heal his injury, or at the very least provide some kind of relief. For a long time she had felt that her curse had befallen her for a reason, thinking that at some point the pieces would fall into place and she would see, with full clarity, why she must live her life haunted.
But the fog is still there, and she remains just as confused and helpless as she ever was. He says that you get used to such things, and she wonders if it is a sign of her own weakness that she is still not used to her own, intangible type of injury; that she cannot just ignore the ghosts on her own but must instead drown them out with someone else. But she likes to think this is her first step towards getting used to it — that at least she is seeking out a way to cope rather than just hiding.
He asks he if she is okay, and she is almost surprised at how quickly her answer comes.“I think so,” she says, her words accompanied by a faint frown.
It feels strange, to be mostly okay.
There is still a leaden exhaustion in her bones that she is not sure will ever lighten; not when sleep is so hard to come by, with the ghosts always in her ears and her dreams. But there is a tension that has loosened, and even if it does not last forever, it is a relief to at least, for the time being, be ‘okay’. She wants to tell him that — that she feels more okay than usual, but she thinks of all the times others have appeared to feel burdened by her melancholy honesty, and so she decides to leave it. “I’m Narya. I hope I wasn’t intruding, I just…” she trails off on a pause, debating whether to stick to her earlier plan of not being quite so honest, but finally relenting anyway to admit, “I just didn’t want to be alone.”
Narya
— spirits follow everywhere i go, they sing all day and they haunt me in the night
Though she nods, her response sounds uncertain, and Ruhr’s tired brown eyes take in her frown. She thinks she is alright? Ruhr’s thickly feathered face hides much of his expression, but not the birdlike, curious tilt of his pale head as he takes her in. Uninjured, but perhaps afflicted in some other way?
Ruhr waits, knowing silence to be the best encouragement to continue speaking, and eventually the stranger admits that she has approached him because she does not want to be alone.
“And I seemed good company?” He asks with audible surprise, his brown gaze skeptical above the faint smile of his greyed face. The Stratosian stallion is accustomed to being an oddity in his new world, and there are few his visible age in a world so saturated with immortality.
Saying the words aloud amuses him, and they’re followed by a wheezy chuckle. ”You never know what the Moon will send,” he says, a familiar adage before his shortened introduction.
“I’m Ruhr, ” No longer of Stratos, and of late no Diviner of anything at all. But still, it feels necessary to let her know that she is not intruding. That indeed, her company wards off the exhausted sleep he knows soon awaits him, filled with dreams that will give him no rest at all.“And I could use the company.”
yes i know that love is like ghosts, few have seen it but everybody talks —
There is a small smile in response to his surprised question, averting her gaze as a sudden flush of embarrassment rushes to her cheeks. She isn’t sure why — there is no shame in admitting that she had looked upon his face and thought that he seemed friendly enough to approach, is there? Perhaps she is just so clumsy in her approach and conversation that she had created an awkwardness where it would not have otherwise existed.
“You did. I mean, you do seem like good company,” she amends at the end of her sentence. She hopes that he will not ask her why she thinks that, so that she does not have to say because you’re alive. Somehow that seemed insulting, and also, it was not entirely true. Although him being alive had been what first drew her eye, it was the fact that he had at least seemed approachable that had encouraged her forward.
“Ruhr,” she repeats his name, liking the simplicity of it and the way it felt in her mouth. He mentions the moon, and eager to grasp onto anything that is not herself or her ghosts or her thoughts, she asks him, “does the moon send you things often?”
Narya
— spirits follow everywhere i go, they sing all day and they haunt me in the night
“I am flattered,” Ruhr replies magnanimously, dipping his feathered head just far enough to be a gesture of acquiescence. It was a little too far to avoid getting a crick in his neck, but he has smiled unflinchingly through far worse pain, and his grizzled smile does not falter at all as he meets her gaze once more.
“Not often,” he admits. “At least, not lately. And She usually sends visions, not strangers.” His time in Beqanna has only strengthened the reality of his beliefs, and he is certain that it is well within the Moon’s ability to have unconsciously guided Narya toward this meeting. And yet given the scarcity of Her blessings of late, Ruhr does believe this encounter to be merely happenstance, a crossing of paths rather than fates.
“But you were not sent by the Moon,” he says aloud, clearing his dry throat with a hum that turns into a deep cough. “You are just looking for company, you don’t want to be alone.” At this age, his mind sometimes starts to go. It is a disconcerting feeling to be unsure of reality, to have only the hope that the cycle will continue despite Her absence in all other aspects of his life.
yes i know that love is like ghosts, few have seen it but everybody talks —
She does not find it at all strange or unbelievable that the moon speaks to him. In fact, rather than feeling even a thread of doubt, it is actually envy that she finds she has to swallow down. The moon is a beautiful thing; she thinks of all the times she has been guided by her silvery light, or gazed up in admiration at the beaming crescent tucked behind plush clouds in a garden of stars. What a lovely thing it would be indeed to be able to listen to her; it sounded far more peaceful than the whispering of restless ghosts.
When she looks at the aged stallion before her—and she finds that he is rather regal looking, with a dignified kind of grace that must have come with age, and all the knowledge the moon has bestowed upon him—she sees that it is no small wonder that he has been blessed while she has been cursed. He asks her if the moon has ever spoken to her, and regretfully, she shakes her head. “No, I’m afraid she has not. The only thing I can speak with are ghosts,” she tells him, and is a little surprised at how willingly she offers him this information. But if he can speak with the moon, surely he won’t find ghosts too strange? “What kind of things does she say to you? That must be remarkable, to be entrusted with something so important,” she tells him, the admiration evident in the almost wistful tone to her voice.
Narya
— spirits follow everywhere i go, they sing all day and they haunt me in the night
He’d known the answer to his question, and shakes his feathered head even as Narya does. The Moon speaks to few, and shows to even fewer. The odds that She might have Chosen this wingless mare to receive Her wisdom were slim, and he’d known it. The Moon has turned Her face from Ruhr, but he knows She is still discerning. She would choose only one that he would know on sight.
Narya continues, explaining that rather than the Moon, she speaks with ghosts. Ruhr has never given much thought to ghosts, but he has Seen the dead in Her visions, and Narya’s confession is yet another embodiment of the strange magic that empowers so many in Beqanna. It’s met with a blink, and a then faint lift of his pale feathered brow as he considers - then quickly decides it not odd enough to remark upon.
‘What kind of things does she say to you’. He blinks rheumy eyes, suddenly trying to remember what they’d been talking about.
Who she was.
That must be remarkable - it had been, he was.
Blank.
She’s still speaking, and sounds admiring, so he must not have been lost too long in whatever place his thoughts had taken him. At this phase of the moon, it can be seconds or hours, pausing midstep to let the magic of immortality heal the incessant degradation of advanced age, to restart his heart, rebuild his lungs, repair his thoughts.
This is Ruhr’s least favorite age to be and he swears he’s been this age for a decade now - unchanging. But can he trust his memory, or is that new as well?
‘What kind of things does she say to you.’ “She speaks to me of the future.” He replies truthfully, his voice rasping and dry. “All of the futures, though mostly of my own.” That he does not have much of a future seems apparent. The old stallion gingerly adjusts his neck, uncomfortable from his earlier efforts at civility.
He can feel himself slipping again, and he does not want to. He asks Her for a moment, for a sign, for proof of anything at all. He knows better than to test Her, but he’s mostly dead anyway and She seems unlikely to remember him.
“Would you like me to look for your future?” There’s a brightness to his rheumy eyes now, the intensity of his avian gaze warming. She has never denied him a Vision for another. He has not asked Her for one in ages, not since She began to ignore his calls.
