"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
hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
At first the world had seemed like a perfect place, a safe place. She can remember being tangled in the grass with her brother, spindle legs that refused to work and bright, new eyes wide enough to swallow entire worlds. She can remember other times, not too much later than the first, times spent tucked beneath her mother’s wings with her brother pressed close to her side and their fathers face smiling down on them. Those were the best times, the right times.
But life changed and the world fractured, and with the world so did her small family.
Dempsey was the first to go, but she didn’t blame him for it. He waited until Oksana was okay again, until the grief and hurt had all but vanished, until the other had returned and she had followed that pull like an ocean tide. Isle had not realized until then the difference between love and in love. Love was safe, in love was the total annihilation of everything else. After Dempsey had gone and Oksana found whatever it was that kept her tethered to Makai, even Wyck disappeared, her perfect, wordless other half. He had always longed for adventure and chasing the sun as it disappeared across the horizon, so even though his absence was like a hole in her chest, it had not been unexpected.
Isle had drifted next. But she lacked all the grace of her family, lacked the buoyancy that kept everyone else afloat. When she drifted, she crashed on shores like a lonely shipwreck leaving bits of herself behind to mark her passing. When her family had fractured apart, so had her heart and that loss gouged great chasms into her already shaky self control. For months she had found it impossible to control the ebb and flow of open minds around her, to shield herself from thoughts that filled her restless nights with nightmares. The loneliness in her chest, that feeling of not belonging, it made her impossibly vulnerable.
With a mind full of noise and static and thoughts she had no business knowing, she disappeared like a wild thing into the deepest parts of the forest, staying there until hers was the only voice she heard in her thoughts. When she emerged again it was to a stony silence, cold and unnatural, and it made her head ache. It was like a muscle clenched so tight, tight enough to bruise and break and still she refused to let go.
Somehow this seemed easier than the alternative.
Ahead there must be a gap in the trees because sunlight filters through the leaves staining the grass a watery gold. For a long while she watches it, long enough that the sun must move in the sky because so does that spot in the grass. But she doesn’t go to it. Instead she stays where she is, her brown and white body tucked uncomfortably against the bark of the tree pressed to her hip. It’s better in the shadow, she thinks with a frown, somehow the world seems smaller here. But her emerald eyes flash with something suspiciously close to loneliness.
Isle
this is all over the place but i swear they will probably possibly get better <3
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
He had only been back for a handful of days and nights that had stretched on forever. Night brought with it a chill that told of winter's unrelenting grip. It wouldn't leave without a fight while Spring just happened. It started with small green buds on the trees and then on the bushes. Tender green grass grew up through the snow, seeking the sun and it's warm rays. The snow melted. The sun shined more. And then there was the rain which seemed to drizzle constantly.
It reminded him fondly of home.
Today he moves through the cool drizzle, more like a mist really. Just enough moisture to keep everything wet as the weather warmed with the land. A small smile curled his lips as he wandered through the Meadow, the grass getting his hooves wet. The mist would go away. Spring would break into Summer and the sun would be so hot that they would miss this cold rain. A sigh slips from his lips, even as he moves deeper into the Meadow.
It had been so long. Willa had grown. Quark and her beautiful family were gone. Myrna had left as well as Madeline. He had left himself, too much of a shadow without his friends, without his family. He was more determined this time to start something, to be a part of something, but if his life was only mares, he would be content with that.
Self pity didn't sit well with the stallion.
He moved into the Forest, going deeper and deeper, merely walking and thinking until the sun suddenly blinds him as it creeps through the branches of the trees above him. He blinks, his legs moving him out of the way and when he opens his eyes he sees her there amongst the shadows. He blinks, thinking her like an apparition that suddenly appeared. But he moves closer, an automatic smile on his lips until it slips when he sees the tightness in her body and the lines that cross her face as she struggles with something. "Are you okay?" The lilt of his words obvious in the quiet of the forest. One hoof moving him closer until he feels that he is close enough to help but not close enough to startle her.
hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
She is made of self pity. Of broken things forced back together, edges too jagged, too incomplete to ever be the way they were before. And for a long time she thought she could be fixed, thought she wanted to be fixed, to be less like her mother who let emotion rule everything in her life and more like father with his smiles and levity. But whatever things he was made of, she was not made of the same. This weight suited her, drowning beneath oceans of sorrow and misbelonging. She was so much like her mother, entirely made of broken things forced back together.
Isle notices him long before he notices her. She can feel his presence like a pressure in her thoughts and it is almost reflexive the way her mind reaches to touch his, to cradle his thoughts alongside hers. But she flinches instead, closing her mind like a fist before it has a chance to peer inside his head. The action makes her stomach hurt, makes her chest ache and her bones weak. There is nothing right about denying who you are, and yet she must.
She must.
He notices her and she watches him draw closer, the line of her jaw tightening subtly beneath the shadow of her delicate brown face. There is so much kindness in the steel and pewter of his face, such warmth in the lilt of his strange voice. She can feel her chest caving in, can feel her heart beating itself ragged against her ribs with the ache to tell a kind stranger all the woes nestled like parasites in her soul.
But she can’t, she won’t.
And oh, she wants to.
“Are you?” She asks instead, avoiding his question altogether with a furrowing of her dark brow. "No one comes this deep into the forest unless they're hiding from something." She watches him quietly and those green eyes flash like emeralds buried in the earth.
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Her body language doesn't change. She is still tight and so tense he is afraid she might break something just standing there. But her voice, in her voice there is something there that he cannot quite decipher. A tone that is there just as quickly as it is gone and so he merely smiles, shrugs it off for now with what he does best, consoles.
"Oh aye. There's always something to hide from." His legs shift their weight until he is comfortable with one hind leg cocked slightly and his ears flickered towards her. He radiated calm and for now he put his own thoughts away to focus on her and do what he could for her. Always Tiernan with his selfless ways. It was almost enough to make his writer sick.
"Often I find, whatever I think I am hiding from, really is only just myself and not whatever I made it out to be...." He says with a tilt of his head, his brows (had he had them) would have raised themselves up slightly, acknowledging that she did not answer his question and very neatly turning it back upon her. "Of course, there are always real threats." He says, his words tinged with his brogue. "But some how I doubt that that is what you are out here for." He wasn't really sure, but it was what he seemed to keep seeing in these beautiful girls with their broken hearts and shattered souls.
The things they were most scared of was themselves and their memories. He is a patient stallion and so he waits until she might feel comfortable enough to tell him or enough to challenge him and his words. He did love when they found their steel and returned his words with fire in their eyes.
