don't lose faith; TARNISHED

[Willa]

"Baby, we were born with fire & gold in our eyes"

The Meadow and now the Forest were her home more than any place here in Beqanna. Except for so long ago when she had more friends and family, and then she called them her home. She missed Strange, every day like she sometimes was missing half of herself. She missed her sunshine mare. And she missed her father. But life was like that, one day they are all there and time passes and it's all you can do to remember their faces. Remembering was hard. It made her heart ache and leap with joy, thumping loudly in her chest.

Most of the time she tried to just live, but when she was lonely, the normally social girl would grow melancholy with her thoughts. Today was a good day. She had happened to find a small pond hidden within the forest and it had brought smiles to her face. The air was warm enough now that she could wade herself into it and not freeze.

So she did.

She stayed in the cool water until her limbs grew tired and she lurched from the pond with water splashing every where. A giant shake freed her of some more of the water and she contemplated the dirt and rolling before deciding against it. She moves over to a place where the sun shines through the branches and smiles, standing beneath it and letting the warm sunshine seep in through her black coat.

She really ought to get out and about and find herself a new home, with new friends. She knew this. Perhaps even allow herself to be taken into a herd. She was indecisive still and probably would be until she felt it was right. She had often thought about going back to the Amazons to see where she had played with Strange-thing. But still, she was indecisive if she wanted to live there where just the thought of it hurt her heart to go back to.

" Even in the dust we shine with fire & gold in our eyes."

Willa

Meh I dunno about this one. She was rough to write today <3

[Tarnished]

This the story of how, when the wolves knocked,
I met them at the door and I became the beast instead.

It had taken him a long time to admit it to himself, but he had loved that girl.

He thought about her sometimes; wondered, deep down, what might have happened between them if the worst hadn’t happened to her. What their children might have looked like—if they would have had any at all. If he would have become King like his parents intended him to, if she would have ruled alongside him; the mild to his wild, soft enough to smooth over all of the feathers he would have likely ruffled and still the rage budding inside him whenever he wanted to wage war against someone else. There would always be someone else. But it would not be her. Not Else. Else was long gone from his life now, her children grown and no longer in need of his protection while the ghost of their mother (dead to him, dead a long time now) continued to haunt him still.

Echoes of her cornered him in his sleep, begging him to tell them why everything had happened the way it did; he had no answers for them, and so there would be no nightly reprieve, no sweet escape. He could only learn to live with her ghost and with what he had let happen. He could only carry on—pretending the ache would eventually dull, pretending to be strong when he wasn’t. He missed her more than he had ever missed anyone and though she lived within the same borders, she was simply out of reach.

Remembering was hard.

It was harder still when you had to walk past someone like you’d never known them in the first place.

So he leaves, as he is prone to do; he ventures further from the Deserts than he has in weeks, his father probably expects him to return a few years from now, weary from travel with a brand new brood of children in tow—but that isn’t the case. Tarnished intends to return this time, some time, probably within the next few hours unless a portal opens up and spits him back out in hell.

Just like last time.

Tarnished cringes.

He doesn’t like thinking about last time.

Screwing his face up thoughtfully, the dark horse decides that it’s probably safer to take to the air; almost nothing bad ever happens up there, right? Unless, of course, there’s a thunderstorm or something of the like. But the skies are clear as they’ve ever been these last few days, save for a few white wispy clouds stretched thin across the vast expanse of blue. He sighs, sprouting wings—large, leathery things that match the color of his coat; the stallion starts forwards, gathers a quick burst of speed then leaps into the wind. One, two, three beats of his wings and he’s surging up and out of The Meadow.

Away, away he goes, until everything below looks like a map he’d seen once in The Doctor’s chambers.

He shivers, and not because of the cooler air.

No, definitely doesn’t like thinking about it.

He flies low over the tops of the trees, skimming the tips of the leaves with his hooves before shooting upwards again; birds scatter, squirrels chatter up at him angrily, shaking their tiny fists—annoyed at being so senselessly spooked. So Tarnished does it again. Again, and again, as if he’s got nothing better to do than pick on creatures not even half his size until he grows bored with the game and decides to sail in for a landing. It’s a snug fit, so he shrinks himself as he nears the trees—no bigger than the squirrels he’d been bullying, he shoots between branches like a bullet and then flares out his wings before he hits the ground. They change shape, acting as parachutes; he glides through the air and before his hooves ever touch the ground, he’s back to normal size. Skipping, almost, down a well-worn path and humming his Jungle Mother’s songs to himself.

Oh, how merry.

Tarnished flicks his ears back, his heavy head turning towards the sound of splashing. Probably a foal, he guesses, remembering how much Nyxia liked to play in the ponds around here; he doesn’t hear a weary mother urging her child to get out of the water, however, nor does he hear the usual laughter or squeals typically associated with a child at play. So he grows curious and, as always, his curiosity gets the better of him.

As it turns out, it’s not a foal playing in the water.

It’s a mare.

A mare he’s seen before, he thinks.

Somewhere, somehow, he’d met her a lifetime or two ago.

“Hello,” he says, casually sticking his head through a blackberry bush. “I think we’ve met, maybe?”

TARNISHED

[Willa]

"Baby, we were born with fire & gold in our eyes"

She hadn't ever loved like that. At least not someone that wasn't almost like family to her. She hadn't experienced the take your breath away kind of love, the kind that made your chest feel empty when they were gone. The kind that made your stomach grow butterflies. It wasn't even something she was necessarily looking for, but should she find it it would make her happy. She didn't have the regrets that losing love gave you. She didn't have the emptiness or the pain that he had. She didn't have ghosts, unless you counted Strange.

And then she supposed she did. Strange was her sister, in every way but blood. They had rarely argued, Willa had often felt the stirrings of jealously though. With the large family that Strange had, the close knit group of them all, each ready to die for the other. The love there, she knew it, had it with her own da and mam, but that was all. She had never quite felt like she belonged with Strange and Quark, but she had loved them with the fierceness only a child could.

Still did.

Her heart hurt, and wasn't it the most fitting thing for him to land before her when she had thoughts of his family. She wasn't sure but there was something always so familiar about him. She had thought it the last time she had found him, the way his mannerisms were or the shape of his face. A ghost of a memory floated through her mind, someone she might have meant once early on in her life. She thought it again now as he stuck his head through the blackberries and manages a smile.

It was only forced for a moment before his words register and she laughs softly. "I think so too." She tilts her head, moving closer to him, but staying in the sun as she allowed her coat to dry. "Perhaps in the Meadow last time?" She says, mentally shrugging. "Tarnished right?" And another ghost of a memory, something so long ago that Strange might have said in passing. NishNish. The nickname curling in her mind and she takes a critical eye over what she can see of him. "Are you okay?" The shadows in his eyes mirroring her own.

" Even in the dust we shine with fire & gold in our eyes."

Willa