"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
She stands beneath the broad arms of a red maple that has all but lost all of it’s leaves.
Those that have fallen to the earth lay like dead soldiers that have gone out in a bright blaze of glory. The rest blanket her back until she seems part red maple and part horse, but Keeper is nothing as extraordinary as that - she’s just a pony-sized little mare that has taken up residence beneath this particular tree out of all the rest.
For once, she is quieter than usual.
For once, she is still and not chasing after deer or mushrooms.
Keeper is content. Not quite but almost asleep because what better place to take a nap than beneath an old unconcerned tree? She can move closer, throw a hip out against the bark and take some of the weight off her feet if she wills it, counting on the red maple to hold her up long enough to take a nap. Keeper can feel herself close to sleep, blinking eyes that seem heavier from lack of rather than flat out exhaustion. If she stopped doing odd things and slept just a bit more, took a bit better care of herself, she might not be so tired.
Except that Keeper sleeps less and less. Dreams more and more, awake or asleep. Deer and mushrooms, moonlight and lakewater, amethysts and mountains. Mares and stallions prance and parade across the backs of her eyelids, some she recognizes as those that she knows and holds dearest to her pathetic little animal heart, and others have no names or faces that are known to her - strangers, even in her dreams, but ones that she might otherwise one day meet.
Despite it all, the red maple holds her up.
It shakes in the breeze, spilling more leaves down onto her back until she gains an odd blazing hump that doesn’t match the pale gold of her skin but also doesn’t contrast too terribly with it. But every time she breathes, a few leaves fall away from her and flutter down to join their bright brethren on the earth. She'll hear someone coming, the leaves will give her enough warning.
As menacing as he can be, as he usually is, he is truly not intending to hunt anyone down today or find a girl to warm his side for the moment. He is simply exploring when he stumbles upon the sleeping woman leaning against the hibernating skeleton of a red maple. He stops, like a deer caught between fleeing and freezing, mid-step with his leg curl in anticipation of a gentle next step. His ears press forward and his teal eyes drink her in for a moment, he has never seen her before but she seems awfully comfortable. She must indeed live here, he presumes to himself as he lingers there like a fool.
He doesn’t necessarily want to wake her, or even get caught staring. He breathes carefully and picks his steps as silently as he can, flashing through what shadows he can find. There are not enough leaves to cast big clouds of shadow to conceal him. He isn’t the lightest or smallest footed individual in the land, but he tries his best to slink away like a cat. His magic does him little good with only skinny shadows about.
Keeper dreams;
Sometimes, she finds herself as a doe following her sisters through the fields.
Sometimes, it’s just the dreams of a horse that has found a good patch of clover to eat.
Most of the time, Keeper doesn’t remember what it is that she has dreamed of. She never questions if she does dream, because she comes awake with a good feeling as if the world is as right as rain. Sleep does her good, refreshes the mind and the muscles. So it is good that she has found the staunch shoulder of the red maple to hold her up for the length of time that she dozes off.
It never occurred to her that she might have taken a few liberties since she’d come here. Such as shacking up beside this tree and snoozing without so much as a by your leave from the bronze king she’d met her first day here by the impossible blue of the shimmering lake. His scales had contrasted beautifully against the lakewater and the backdrop of a kingdom caught in the blush of a mild Spring. She liked it just as much now in the autumn, ablaze and almost shorn down to bare mountainside and tree-bark.
Regardless, sleep had beckoned and Keeper never thought herself less than safe here.
She might have stayed asleep had it not been for the faintest rustle of leaves nearby that caused her to crack open first one black eye than the other, trying to blink the heavy pull of sleep from them and not settling her gaze on the shadows that seemed too many and too few all at the same time nor the stallion half-hidden in their midst.
But a flash of black stippled with white causes her to notice him and for a moment full of breath held back as she stopped breathing, she almost mistook him for someone else - but he was older than first thought, not in a bad way, just more seasoned than the someone she had hoped it would be. Disappointment does not flash across her face, just a slow easy smile as she calls out to the stallion trying to hide in the shadows (she doesn’t realize this is a greater talent for him than it appears), “Hello there.”
11-03-2017, 03:31 PM (This post was last modified: 11-03-2017, 03:31 PM by Chemdog.)
“Hello there.”
Her voice chirps softly off of her lips to mix with the rustling of leaves and whistling of birds. His ears flatten at first and his muscles clench, his jaw too. Chem’s head snakes around his white-splashed shoulder, a wry grin contorts his onyx lips and the evening light dancing in his mischievous teal eyes. “Hi.” He chuckles the word, “Ya caught me.” He spins around to face her properly and approach just a few feet closer so he may look a little closer. He’s never been good at stopping his hungry gaze from straying over a girl’s body and now is no different. Her small body, so much more delicate than his, holds the smoothed edges of a feral heritage. Nothing selective, he observes, only adaptation and capability. Every woman’s shape makes him rather drunk, especially those first begging sips, but he does so love those carved by the world around them.
He chews his thoughts for a moment before bringing his eyes to meet hers. “I’m Chem.” He squints, tilting his head in mock confusing. “You new here, miss?” Somehow the deviance is evident in his glassy stare, those long milky lashes do nothing to veil it.
There just wasn’t enough shadows to hide him from her. So Keeper saw him, called out to him, but did not expect his ears to flatten against his head or to bear witness to the visible clenching of both his muscles and his jaw. Oops. Perhaps he had no desire to be seen but she, quick to notice, had caught him and called him out on it and now, now he must be engaging. Keeper holds back a laugh even as his head snakes around to her and he grins. Good, he wasn’t too surprised or upset at being caught - even jokes about it which then, elicits a laugh from her.
His eyes are teal and twinkling; he’s a mischievous sort from what she can see of him as he spins around to face her better. He even bridges the distance between them with a few steps and then, she feels the hunger in his gaze as it roams over her and that, for her, is a new experience. It is a bit of an unsettling one too because no one has ever appraised her in such a manner, as if she was nothing more than a broodmare to be gotten fat with foal season after season. There is a faint hot itch beneath her fur, a sudden rearing of a head more feral than hers and something like a roar that bites back - the grizzly in her does not respond well to the look he’s given her.
Keeper though, tamps down this odd other self that she is still coming to terms with. Her black eyes never leave his face, just stare at him as she stands with all manner of patience beneath the stallion’s hunger until his eyes come back to hers. She doesn’t hold it against him; he’s male and in some ways, weaker than a mare because they abase themselves continuously of their most basic nature - to covet, to snake and herd, to breed, and perhaps, he cannot help himself. Perhaps he is more basic than most she has encountered thus far that so seem far more civilized than he does.
In fact, it is almost refreshing… this is a first for her to have been looked at for so long in such a way as he’d done. He introduces himself then feigns confusion and Keeper really cannot help but laugh again. His deviance is rather amusing, at least to her as he tries to come off charming and he is! To an extent, but she answers him in a blithe girlish tone that is simply Keeper’s way of talking - no charm, no coyness, no flirtation - just Keeper. “No, not so very new now. I think we’ve managed to never cross paths until now though. Shame, isn’t it but the land is rather vast and the days are rather short…”
Okay, now she’s teasing just a little. Stooping to his level of charming camaraderie. Then she remembers that she hasn’t quite introduced herself so she does now, “I’m Keeper.” and leaves it at that.
He can see that familiar glint in her dark eyes – the one that reads him as predictable, led by hormone and desire. He suppresses his chuckle as their eyes meet, as they analyze each other. He doesn’t mind hiding beneath the guise of some dim-witted hard on, to let her think that all he may want to do is collect her and put her away with the other shiny breeders.
Her laughs draw his eyes to hers, no longer malingering across the hills and valleys of her body. He’s always liked to sip on the laugh of a pretty woman, to watch her lips wrinkle at their edges while her throat bubbles that sweet little sound. She’s like looking upon a bright and innocent fox of the deep wood – dazzlingly pretty, wild-eyed, so curious. He can tell that she wears no veils, or that she thinks she does not, anyhow. She fancies herself a Plain Jane, yes? His grin tweaks more on one side while she speaks, nodding. “Oh yes,” he voice growls, “…a shame indeed.” And he leaves it silent, her name comes next and still the silence persists for a few long minutes further.
“So what do you do here then, Keeper?” He smiles crookedly, “Are you a pupil or a master? Perhaps neither?”
The one thing Keeper would never think him is dumb enough to be little more than a mass of hormones and muscle. No, he seems far too cunning for that! From the twinkle that never leaves his teal eyes to the way he is quick to meet her gaze, even when all she does is laugh just a little. She can see that has distracted him for continuing to look her over like a piece of meat which had been a new and fascinating sensation for her, one that could not quite be acquainted with the slow crawl of maggots wriggling in the dirt because his look had had much more finesse than that and was deserving of something more poetic in description.
Each dip and peak of flesh that had garnered his teal attention had done so in a manner that was hot enough to confuse the sudden rush of blood beneath her skin with the warmth of the sun. It hadn’t quite made her weak in the knees or ready to swoon in his masterful presence, but she had to give him credit that it made her look at him in a new light. Yes, he was crafty from the quirk of his lips to the way the breeze blew and played with the forelock on his handsome face. But if she thought to covet that face, another rose up from the deeps of her brain and superimposed itself over this stallion’s and almost wrung a name from her suddenly desperate lips.
Keeper had to swallow back both the name and her desperation to say it. She could not give it life here beneath the red maple tree with him looking at her like that and her thinking it should be someone else that looked at her that way. It is fortunate for her that he growls out a response to an earlier statement of hers' and she welcomes the distraction of his rough voice in her ears. Chem, that is his name - she remembers now, given that he’s only just said it moments ago, asks her what she does here, if she is pupil or master and Keeper can only give a small shake of her own head and a laugh. “To be honest, I don’t know. I’ve been given some rank and responsibility here by the King himself, for which I am eternally grateful but usually I just come and go, and somehow, by virtue of that alone, I seem to bring others back with me. Some stay and some go, but it’s the effort I suppose, that counts.”
She had not meant to ramble like so, but once started she couldn’t just stop until she ducked her head a bit beneath his gaze, (so bright, so beautiful!) and tried to hide the sheepish look that came over her face. It took only a moment for her to recover some sense of decorum and turn her face back to him, eyes black and piercing as she questioned him in turn, “What about you, Chem?” and his name comes out in a bit of a croon. "What do you do here?" Her interest is genuine, evidenced by the way her ears remain attentive to him and the way her eyes never leave his face.
