"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
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
Silence is natural for him now. There is no sound as he slips beneath the cool black water in the lake north of the mountain. The moon overhead is barely visible in the brilliant glow of the sunset, but Ivar eyes it thoughtfully as he lingers a few inches beneath the surface. It is brighter by the time he emerges. The spindly tips of the redwoods reach toward the glowing crescent, spidery and foreign in a way that he finds fascinating. The base of the trees are obscured by the same fog that Ivar now moves through, and the pines stand like sentinels. There is a steady stream of water dripping from his sleek scales and tangled hair, but the sound of it is muffled by the billowing clouds that roll in from the ocean to his right. The water here is brackish – he’s come up from the depths where the river meets the sea. The salmon struggle upstream behind him, undeterred by the swiftly growing night. Ivar is sure he will find her here; where better for the daughter of a bear? At their last meeting she had asked if she’d see him again. He had wanted to tell her ‘No’. He’d wanted to say that she wouldn’t need to see him again because he’d stay – or maybe that they’d go together. He was not that confident though – not yet. For all his good looks and charm, Ivar is exceedingly cautious when it comes to things as complex as courting. Instead, he’d told her yes. Now he intends to keep his promise. It’s not been terribly long – autumn still holds Beqanna firmly and refuses to cede to winter – but Ivar is finished waiting. He has not been back to Sylva in the in between; he’s not been back to Sylva in months. He had bid his parents farewell – though not a forever goodbye – and has spent the spring and summer resting his head wherever he happened to be when weariness overtook him. The shore here is half sand and half silt, but the squelching of his hooves is muffled by the lapping of the water and the cover of the fog. The forest floor is as cushioned as Sylva’s, though the fallen needles are far more fragrant as he crushes them in his wake. His senses are dulled by the earthbound clouds, but luck is with him, and he catches a familiar scent only a few dozen meters away. Ivar comes up beside Azar, quiet but not intending to startle her. He says: “Boo.” anyway, but its accompanied by a disarming grin.
It was another quiet night. A night that should have been eerie, perhaps, and possibly would be to someone that had not been raised in this forest. The blanket of fog could greet many and give them pause, most especially if they were aware of the fierce beasts of the Taiga the stalked its shadowy depths. They wouldn’t harm her, she knew, not a fellow Taigan, though she couldn’t help but try to keep distant anyway. Always so cautious and quiet.
That was how she’d heard the soft noise lost and tangled in the other sounds of the night. Almost could have imagined it, and for a moment, she thought she might have after all. Just another lap of the water, down, down the river her daddy loved to fish in and near the sea. Just another whispering laugh of the waves greeting the beach and flowing away again.
But then there he was, that scent of water and salt and sea, those dark eyes and that smile that always seemed to tug one to her lips to match it. He came up beside her, and though she startled just a little, it didn’t make her flinch at all. She almost looked like she could have been expecting him, but then she never really expected him. Maybe he was wild in his own way, going wherever as he pleased. And here with her was where he wanted to be just then?
”Boo,” he greeted her, and she laughed quietly. She must have been emboldened by his spontaneous appearance, that he’d come back again to see her, because her muzzle reached out of its own and brushed a tangle of his hair from his face before she pulled back. Not surprisingly, a blush colored her cheeks and she glanced away, looking out across the dark water licked with streaks of moonlight. She was so used to caring for her father. That was all she really knew, in fact. But touching him felt a little different somehow, with a squeeze against her lungs and stealing her breath.
”Hello,” she murmured, still smiling as she peered shyly at him from the corner of her eye. ”It’s nice to see you again.” She shifted just a little, couldn’t help but fidget just for the moment, then resettled herself and studied him curiously. ”Do you like it here? I’ve only ever been in forests, but I know there’s an island out there in the sea. I bet it looks much different.” But that wasn’t really why she’d asked, so she repeated her question.
It’s not surprising that some are still caught in the lands once the wall of bramble and branch had formed up. Nor did he think it impenetrable, he’s aware certain things (wings for example) would be merely an annoyance. The wall was a deterrent, it sent a message. However certain insufferable fools weren’t receiving it. They continued to flaunt through his kingdom as if they were welcome, as if they belonged there.
They did not.
Already the forests had darkened, hardened, the mist thicker where it seemed to suffocate you like a wet blanket. The branches reached out as if to grab you, leaving scratches in it’s wake. Even the shoreline seemed angrier, the waves threatening as they crashed cobalt against the sand. They thought the woods would remember them but as long as he claimed the forest, they would not.
Quietly he slips through the mists, red eyes blazing with a certain hunger. Watching the two lovebirds (for they talk and touch as lovers do) makes the finely thinned patience rip entirely. There had been enough chances, more than fair for a man like himself. He prowls towards the winged girl and her two toned companion. Slipping through the fog until he’s suddenly appeared beside them, blunt yellow teeth revealed in a curled snarl. His displeasure evident in every fiber of his being.
”You two seem to be lost.” Crimson iris’s narrowed, pulsating as the old thirst of rage returns. She was not half bad looking and with the appearance of fall, his desires become quite bipolar. He could hurt the boy and then force himself on his lover, make him watch. Perhaps they could become the first of many experiments, it had been so long since he had ripped off a wing to see how it worked. She still has a chance to flee and his features become practically ghoulish as he creeps even closer. ”Perhaps you can escape the wall but I doubt your friend can…. Will you save yourself or him?” Spittle flies from his mouth, practically foaming with his growing sadistic anger. ”Since you disrespect my kingdom, I might as well show you what staying will entail…”
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
The sound of her laughter brightens his smile, though it fades as she reaches toward him. Not because he is unhappy – never that – but rather because the simple happiness is briefly swallowed by a swell of something else entirely. It is not something unfamiliar, but it brings with it recent memories of Heda and a less recent one of green feathers beneath the sea. Neither are unpleasant, but nor do they belong here with Azar. Ivar pushes them away with the ease of youth; nothing yet feels eternal.
Looking out at the sea, she probably misses that brief flicker of uncertainty, and by the time she looks back at him his smile has returned in full force. He tilts his head at her question, but he does’nt answer. They’ve interacted so rarely, and yet he already suspects that…yes. He’d been right. She continues to talk, filling up the heavy fog between them with more words, finally finishing with the same question that she’d started with.
“The island is beautiful,” he tells her. “It’s called Ischia. It has a forest too, but much different. Tephra has a forest too, a rainforest.” If there is one thing that Ivar has found in his ventures across Beqanna, it is that some things are the same everywhere. The type of trees might be different, but they still cluster together, providing safety for the animals that live beneath them.
“I do like it here,” he adds, because that is what she’d really wanted to know. It is the truth; the redwood forest is a beautiful place. A little foggier than he remembered, but he’s never been here at this time of night – perhaps it is normal. There is a strand of graying hair out of place on her neck, and Ivar is reaching toward it to gingerly tidy it when something moves in the fog.
The smile on his face falls away immediately, and his first touch to Azar’s soft skin is a crashing of his neck against her chest as he shoves her back, away from whatever it is that is coming toward them. The pied stallion has no time to lament that their moment had been ruined, for by the time he’s turned his head back to the intrusion he has much worse things to worry about.
Once, as a child, Ivar had seen a slavering raccoon. Rabid, his father had said, and the word seems apt to describe this pale stranger. Ivar reacts to it the same way Stillwater had to the masked creature – he stands his ground.
Gryffen’s yellow teeth and met with a matching snarl from Ivar. His handsome face isn’t marred by the ugly expression, and the serrated teeth he has to show are pristine (fine bones are a far better toothbrush that flat grasses, after all).
The cremello stallion is older, probably more experienced, and driven by what Ivar can only assume is insanity.
He is also smaller and flat toothed and covered in soft hide.
Gryffen is a prey animal – Ivar is a predator.
A predator with something to protect though, so the appeal of simply tackling the stranger head-on is tainted by the need to defend Azar behind him.
“I think we’re in the Taiga.” He says instead of leaping forward, each word clipped. This is not Ruan (who Ivar knows as the shady figure that stopped his initial theft of Azar). It is also not Azar’s bear-father if her reaction is any indication. “And since when is just standing by the river disrespectful?” The last comes out as a bit of a taunt; Ivar is young and brash and rather sure of himself against this rabid stallion.
kelpie mimicry | dragon scales | tactile hypnosis
ooc: The thread started before the wall was built so I just kinda skipped the wall references. If that’s not alright, just let me know and we can figure something out! I also kind of assumed that Azar wasn’t happy to see Gryffen but lmk about that too in case it’s not cool
08-23-2017, 11:43 PM (This post was last modified: 08-24-2017, 09:24 AM by Azar.)
She was watchful as he taught her things about that faraway island, the only other territory she could see from her recent hiding places near the coast. The only one she’d ventured into had been Sylva, where she’d met him as a child. But she did enjoy studying him. She liked to see his expression when he spoke, liked that it seemed to always soften hers too. He was her only friend, maybe, if that was what they were.
”Tephra has a forest too, a rainforest,” he told her. She smiled, her eyes alight with curiosity, wondering at the distinction between those types of forests. An island forest, her forest, a rainforest. Maybe she could see them all one day and know as much as Ivar did. Tephra, she committed to memory. Tephra has a rainforest.
”I do like it here,” he confirmed, which was met with a mix of pleased pride and uncertainty beneath her smile. Perhaps it was the forest he came to visit when he made these trips. Maybe he did it far more often than she knew and only happened upon her. She couldn’t help but feel doubtful anyone would want to see her when she’d been abandoned as a child, and now also by her almost-mother, perhaps. She’d never truly know.
He began reaching for her, and unlike the last time, she held still without flinching, showing a little trust in him this time, though her pulse skyrocketed and raced the beat of hummingbird wings. It almost felt like time had slowed to a dramatic crawl as her skin tingled and the flow of the fog shifted. Her attention caught on something, her gaze almost sliding to the side to see, but then she saw his smile quickly drop and locked back on him again with eyes slightly widened.
In the next moment, his almost gentle touch had turned rough and he shoved her back and stood before her, shielding her with his body. She squeaked in surprise, stumbled a little in a mess of willowy legs. Her wings shot outward, balancing and aiding her to right herself quickly. Huddled there with them bowed, she hesitated, ready to take flight. But Ivar held steady, so solid and sure, and she realized she hadn’t been afraid. Only surprised by the sudden movement.
”You two seem to be lost,” a new voice said, one she certainly didn’t recognize and had her peering with a puzzled frown from around Ivar. Far too sharp, too bitter, to be anyone she’d met here before. New to their home. But it didn’t sound like anyone the ice king would allow to be here either, and she’d seen how he was especially particular about who was welcomed into their Taiga. It had always made her feel safer knowing they were hand-chosen, and Daddy had yet to run into a problem with a single one of them.
”Since you disrespect my kingdom, I might as well show you what staying will entail...” he taunted, trying to come closer but blocked by Ivar’s larger form before him. The way saliva was flying after his words reminded her of a poor creature Daddy had to take away, put down so it wouldn’t infect the others in it’s helpless, mindless madness. It can’t help it, he’d said sadly, this is the best thing for it now. She watched him warily from where Ivar had placed her, remaining silent as she processed his strange words. This was not Ruan.
”I think we’re in the Taiga,” Ivar responded, standing resolute before her. She moved then, thrusting herself into the air and hanging aloft to watch safely from above them, her wings vanishing and sides turning as smooth and sleek as those without the same. If there’s ever trouble, just stay clear of it until it’s dealt with, another lesson affirmed her instinctive maneuver.
”And since when is just standing by the river disrespectful,” Ivar taunted back to the stranger. She wanted to point out to Ivar that this was not the king, was not Ruan, not realizing Ivar had already met him once before. But she held quiet for now, watching intently with alert, green eyes for any reason to dive back down.
