"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
His arrival in the field is not totally un meditated. The stallion has sat upon the thought of this coming like a stool. He twists his way through gnarled roots, and the low hanging branches of his forested home, his mind is empty of thiught as he makes his way towards his destination. The stars above his ebony head prove a wonderful guide for the painted stag who has neber been to this location before. Tenebris relies soley on what his gut tells him, and when he arrives in the sleepy field he is thankful for such a good sense of direction.
He watches those sleeping peacefully in the field for a moment before making his way to the bubling creek that split the land. While he does not move to drink from it, the stallion finds comfort in the noise it provides. The field was so deathly silent at this time of night. It seemed as if even the crickets held theor breath in quiet anticipation of the sunrise.
He waits here at the creek for quite some tome before moving to settle himself beneath a copse of trees, azure eyes watchful for anyone approaching. He waits now, boredom evedent on his features
((Tis short and written on my phone, sorry for any spelling mistakes!))
Keeper has not left the field in a few days.
She is beginning to feel a sense of commitment to a place that she hasn’t even been fully granted permission to join. So it is an odd sense of obligation that keeps her coming here time after time. That odd sense makes her do odd things, like paw at the earth with a hoof to disguise the restlessness that snakes through her. Keeper can feel herself beginning to change into a different creature, one that is starting to conform to the requirements for participation in a place all because she lacks a true sense of belonging, at least, that’s what she tells herself it is.
(Really, she just misses how the deer have already gone for the upcoming winter and how she hasn’t laid eyes on his skin in quite some time but that was typical. Him and her revolved around one another like cycles of the moon, waxing and waning but never quite nearing the fullness of their short spectacular moments together.)
Keeper looks up to the sky, banishing thoughts of him from her mind and realizes with a squint, that day has become night and the sun changed itself out for a multitude of stars. They twinkle on, bright and unconcerned with what transpires below them, because stars are stars and have no care for the lives of horses who’ve mastered things like language, magic, good and evil. Long after the last horse is gone, the stars will still be, she thinks with a faint smile. Same with the earth and the rivers that run across it, like the creek that talks in a soft watery tinkle not far from her and reminds her of a thirst she hadn’t realized she felt until just then.
The little dunskin mare passes the blue roan tobiano by in the night, not fully aware of him leaning against the tree. Her black eyes are on the creek and only that until she bends her slim neck to it, submerging her muzzle and feeling the cold water run down her throat, soothing an ache that was greater than she’d first realized. Once finished, Keeper lifts her head, droplets caught in her whiskers catch the starlight and sparkle before she gives a light toss of her head and sends them scattering away from her in little arcs of water and light.
There are a few smells here, of horse mostly, but one is recent and her nostrils work to pick it out of the tangled skein of new and old. A stallion, he’d been here not long before her and she swings her head about, casting her gaze out for him until she pins him beneath the copse of trees with her black stare. He seems bored, even from at this distance and she can only imagine that he is waiting for something to happen or someone to happen upon him. Her smile broadens, it is evident that Keeper will happen upon him this night because why not?
So she walks over to him and throws her pale dun hip against a tree opposite him, gives it a good scratch and cannot help the sight that falls out of her now open mouth as she relieves an itch. “Mmm,” she murmurs because it felt good, rough bark on her not so soft skin - her winter pelt is growing and it makes her hot and itchy at times because winter is not quite here, though notes of it blow through the colder wind and chill the creeks, sometimes even frosting the grass so that it crunches in the early morning hours when the horses first wake and stir.
“New here?” she ventures, casual as a calm in its shell as she glances sidelong at him before peering back out towards the creek and the wide expanse of field softened by the starlight.
He watches the night pass with a lazy interest, sapphire eyes often roaming over the rolling grass of the field. He is in a space between wakefulness and sleep, a mystical area filled with dreams of cotton skies and cherry meadows dotted with petals dipped in gold. He is quickly pulled from his dream world when she approaches him, a dunskin mare with eyes black as pitch. She holds his curious gaze for a moment before finding her own place amongst the evergreens.
While Tenebris is completely aware of her presence he allows her image to go unnoticed for quite some time as she becomes situated. It is not until the mare speaks that the stallion turns his dark head to her, dark tresses tossed unto the ivory splotches of his face.
"New here?"
Her voice is quiet as though she is aware of the sleeping creatures around them. He is curious as to whom exactly the mare was and whether or not she too was new here.
"That I am,"
His voice is the rocks that make the river bed, and yet it is the water that smooths them. His words hold a curious tilt as he watches her, gaze empty yet so full.
"And yourself?"
Tenebris offers the question softly, satellites flicking to catch the small noises in the ink splotched night. He falls silent once more as he awaits the others reply. While he has not offered up a name she has yet to ask, so he sits in a contempt anonymity
Evergreen needles begin to mix with the snarly hairs of her tail as she rubs her haunch against the bark. It roughens up her fur but calms the itch and maybe calms something more in her - that restlessness that had built itself up, been gathering over hour upon hour the longer she had stood there in the field, seeing all the horses go by without really seeing them.
To him, she attaches some measure of interest if only because he had the foresight to shack up beneath the evergreens and stand watch against the night though for what reason he stayed more wakeful than most, she could not begin to guess at nor would she ask him - each had their reasons, and Keeper’s was that she slept beneath the now bare arms of a red maple in Hyaline and did not trust herself to sleep in a place such as this.
He answers her and in truth, Keeper expected no less than what he admits to - yes, he’s new and she had known that. Few of them that come to the field are anything but and she’s met one or two that were born here, before the face of the earth changed at the mountain’s uprising. Most though, have never been here from before and come now only after. Her ears fixate on him because his voice is a combination of gravel and water, hard and smooth, and she could listen to stories come from his mouth for hours on end. If he has those stories to tell but again, some things Keeper does not ask - not yet, for all that she is curious to know.
“No,” followed by a small lilt of a laugh. “Not new at all.” her assurance is brief but friendly as the quiet ensues for a few moments more until Keeper breaks it. “I take it that means you are in need of a home, huh?” Still no introductions have been made but those come in time. She will remember her manners before decisions are made but she is eager to suss out his intentions here, to linger longer in the field staring at those who sleep and dream, or does he long for adventure beneath that brooding exterior? Keeper grows curiouser and curiouser!
Home. A four letter word that meant almost nothing to the monochrome stag. He had felt nothing that ignited that word within his chest in a long time. Not since he was a boy existing in the orbit of his long passed mother. But the mare before him spoke the term with such an ease of familiarity that he couldn't help but be intrigued.
"Well I suppose I am,"
Tenebris replies with a rolling tongue. He relaxes once more into the earth, his posture falling though his height is still imploring. He finds no threat int he mare but remains with a close watch on her ebony eyes.
"Im going to assume you know where I could find one of those?"
He asks pale orbs finding the field and its inhabitants once more. She had chosen to speak with him despite the sheer number of those before him. He sucks in a gentle breath as the sky begins to bleed the soft orange and pink of the rising sun. The moon kisses the sky briefly again before slipping beyond the pale horizon. The others awake to the brisk chill of the winter morning, their coats fluffed with the rising winds.
He observes with quiet fascination. Families who needed nothing more than the breath in their lungs and the heart in their chest to function drifted so carelessly about. He supposed that once upon a time he had looked as dreamy-eyed as the foals that meandered about them, he had supposed he knew a home once.
"I'd be willing to find one again,"
If she was listening maybe she would catch him say this, but he whispers it faintly to the four winds that pick it up and scatter it like stardust. He would be willing to try again.
11-02-2017, 08:58 AM (This post was last modified: 11-02-2017, 01:00 PM by keeper.)
Keeper-
He is a quiet companion to her and the night.
Their talk is as brief as the breaths they breathe or the toss of someone in fitful slumber whose eyelids first begin to flutter than remain shut against the thing that sought to stir them from their dreaming. She knows it isn’t their voices, too hushed to travel far enough across the field and wake anyone. There are other noises though, common to the night that makes for fitful sleep and Keeper lets her black eyes stray across the cocked limbs and slumped backs, lowered heads and hardly moving ears, of those that sleep and dream.
Keeper might be a bit envious of them.
They find sleep so easily. Or sleep finds them, however it is. She would never think to do more than get a drink here, snatch a mouthful of grass, and rest for a moment with her hip thrown against a tree like it is now. But so sleep here? The air holds too much memory of the smell of broken hope and eagerness to let her do more than look and leave. Few come smiling and trusting; their smiles and trust broken like a stalk of corn, snapped just that easily. She has to wonder, in the lapse of their conversation and the way she stands there companionably with him, how many came bright and eager and left as something else?
It must be too many, she decides.
But not him, as he answers her about home and the like. Her gaze slides back to him, noticing the slouch into deeper relaxation though he remains distinctly taller than her. Most are, since Keeper tends to the smaller side of horses and her breed in particular. She’s almost a pony but manages to gain a hand or two beyond that to just be labeled enough of a light horse and she certainly lacks the plumpness that is customary of most ponies! Her shape is lean, carved from skin and bone by wind and centuries of wild unconcerned breeding.
Back to home;
He’s looking at her with a greater measure of intent now and she can read his interest in his face as plain as day. “I might…” she trails off with a sly quirk of her lips. It happens that this is when morning comes, first begins to touch this corner of the earth in pale blushing colors that gain and swell as the sun rises. If it is brisk outside the evergreen copse, Keeper does not feel it. She is warm here, beside him even though their sides not touch. The evergreen needles have trapped the heat of their bodies within and she is pleasantly warm from the fuzzed tips of her ears to the tips of her naturally shorn hooves.
“Would you?” she asks him, not quite sure she heard him right. The words had come out soft as a whisper so eagerly snatched away by the wind but not before Keeper’s keen ears had heard it. He has a heart-longing that she’s never known but can almost taste, a queer taste that sits on her tongue like a fat stone of sorrow. It makes her move closer to him, removing the scant inches that were between them so that their shoulders can touch and her nose finds his neck. “I could help you find that again.” she offers softly, companionably.
Of course, the mare had caught that. She (unlike many) paid attention, she seemed as though she wanted to listen to him. He shifts against the aching bark of the evergreen and pulls deep breaths into his chest as she speaks. There was a possibility that she would take him to her home. A possibility that she would find him a place to belong.
But if he knew anything, it was to not build a home upon a feeble foundation. So he takes her words with a grain of salt. Yet he looks forward to what she has to say next.
"I have such a fascination with this place.."
He speaks, changing the subject momentarily. He stands once more to gaze fully at the awakened patrons of the lands, his head swarmed with long since past years.
"Such a zest for life in such a sleepy little field."
A soft 'humph' escapes his throat. Not in disgust but in wonder. He had felt that way once, no matter how long ago it may have seemed.
"I wish once more to find that, and I would like to think you could assist me in such a search."
It is now that she approaches him, her muzzle finding his neck in a friendly way. He does not move from her touch, nor does he reach to further it. She shall stay where she would be comfortable, and he would not push her away as many other would. A smile tugs at dark lips as he dreams of what could be for him later in life.
"Thank you."
He whispers when she finishes speaking. A total stranger, one who doesnt even know his name, willing to help him... He would accept it, and in due time he would offer her a name such a powerful word that she could use. But until then,
"If you wish, you may call me Bri."
((OOC: While it is spelled Bri (br-e) I say it as (brye br-eye) like it is said in his full name))
Keeper has rather keen hearing; keen enough to pick up on his wishful murmur that the wind had almost plucked from her ears’ grasp - almost, but not quite quick enough was the wind for she still heard what he had mumbled to it. She felt that palpable sensation in him for belonging, to someone - to somewhere, and knew a little of that same sensation in her own pale dun breast where her heart beat slow and sure behind the bars of bone. To belong was as much the same as the instinct to seek out a herd, and as horses, they are given to this most basic of instincts though most see it as a simple desire now - a stepping stone to greater conquests, like positions and power. She is not sure how he sees it, except that she heard the note of longing in his gravel-slick voice and something in her answered it.
The evergreens sway in the wind, and he shifts against it and against her in their small pocket of the field. Tucked away, she thinks, as he mentions his fascination with this place of all places to be fascinated with. Her head tilts to the side, a curious expression on her face as she tries to see what it is that he sees out there amongst them all. She cannot fathom it, that zest he speaks of that seems to be out there. It is because she does not see it, none look to be zealous for the air and second chances - they sleep and snore, heads drooping low, backs slumped, limbs cocked, and none of them wiser to the goings-on in the evergreens where two horses watch them, a stallion and a mare.
“I can try,” she concedes, making no promise but this is hardly a challenge that she has to rise up to. He can see things that are not there, things that Keeper cannot see for herself and she finds the magical and the mystical in things as common as a caterpillar's hole in a leaf or a root breaking up through the dirt. She cannot see the common good in them that rest there, slumbering and lacking the life that he thinks suffuses their limbs and brains, but if he thinks it is there then it must be. Who is she to argue otherwise? She remains tucked up close to him in a companionable fashion as he thanks her and she shrugs it off. Keeper needed no mention of gratitude though she answered him with a smile and another brush of her muzzle against his neck.
“Bri.” she echoes back to him and her brain prompts her to memorize that short moniker while recognizing that she must say hers in turn. “I’m Keeper,” she says by way of honest introduction but leaves it at that. “You should come with me back to Hyaline if you think there is a zest for life here, wait until you see the life that flourishes there!” Keeper finishes with a rare sort of gusto that is not common to her, but she is energized by the mention of that place that has slowly begun to steal into her soul. It could be the lake or her red maple tree, or the trails the deer carve out of the mountainsides that Keeper tries in vain to follow. Nonetheless, if she is enamored of a place, it is that one.
He nods slowly and listens to her speak as the field continues to awake. He is unconcerned with where life would take him, the world had a curious (but never wrong) way of doing things. She offers her best to try and help him, and he smiles gaily. He shifts in the winter grasses and allows his head to fall to the earth. She is still against him in the friendly way they found comfortable.
"It would be my honor, Keeper."
He raises his head once more gratitude in his faint sapphire hues. The world falls back into a peaceful contempt as they rest in silence for a few moments more. While he has not found the need to sleep in days, he feels more awake than he had in years. Possibly it was the delusion of sleep deprivation, or the cold winter air crystalizing his lungs... Or maybe it was the fact that he had been offered a second chance. A chance to escape the barred reality he had lived in his whole life. The twisting maze of never-ending unhappiness.
"Im am sure it is magnificent."
((OOC: this is short and crapy, sorry! I was thinking one of us could throw up a post in hyaline to wrap this thread up?~))
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