"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
After her apology, it took him little time to draw some space back between them, and the action causes her rueful smile to grow somewhat goofy. It's large enough to meet with her eyes, and she can't help the carefree laugh that works its way out. She hopes he doesn't take it the wrong way, but it was entirely too amusing. It crosses her mind that maybe it's a ploy to draw her in again on her own accord, but his sudden interest in a piece of driftwood leads her to believe otherwise. Still, for a moment she does consider moving closer, wondering if he'd take another step away. But Breckin refrains in order to reassess him through her dark grinning eyes. Interesting fellow.
"Oh lovey, I wouldn't dream of it. That problem is mine alone."His statement of love not being anything more than an over-complication of a good time is spoken with some wisdom. And the issue of her love for Leilan was a confusing mess she would have to sort out eventually, ultimately knowing that she would have to decide whether to confront him about it or keep her feelings hidden. That choice could be made another day, she concludes. And maybe she didn't need to find the waterfall to find some clarity after all.
She finds and holds his gold-flecked gaze easily, tilting her head in humored curiosity. "My sad truth didn't scare you away after all. Since you've stuck around through my ugly emotions, I'm not entirely certain but, I think," she pauses for a moment as if seriously collecting her thoughts, brow furrowing in slight concentration, "that makes you a somewhat decent person." Maybe that was her opinion alone; oh well, who cares, didn't matter. Smiling brightly, she corrects her features back to amusement, "Don't worry though, I can keep that a secret if you have a certain image you'd like to maintain."
A dizzying sense of deja vu washes over her, but she blinks to clear the thoughts in favor of glancing beyond the golden blue stallion towards the horizon. The day was dying, and low tide would be rolling out again soon. No longer did she have the intention of finding the falls, simply contented to have a brief distraction from her troubles.
After a moment, she looks back to him, she sensed there was so much more to him than a handsome face and charming words. Something had been weighing on her mind and just like any other time, curiosity was her crown and she wore it like a queen. "Ivar, why are you still here? I know I'm hard to resist and all," she jokes, "but the evening will be falling soon and I'm sure you could've spent your time on better things than me."
Her standards for decency are surprisingly abysmal, but the kelpie has ever been adept at subterfuge. Were there a chance he might get away with it, the spotted mare would already be resting on the pale sand, miles below the turquoise surface, where the water meets the sky. There is a chance he might not get away though, and so the mare who would be missed remains safe and dry on the beach where they might be seen.
Still, Ivar finds her interesting, and with the boldness of the magpie whose colors he had once worn, the kelpie steps closer. The piece of driftwood is left forgotten. "I can keep secrets too," Ivar tells her as he closes the space between them with a sapphire blue nose. His warm breath ghosts across her shoulder, only to lift as he tugs away with a stray piece of seaweed between his serrated teeth. It had been tangled in her mane - presumably from her swim - and though Ivar drops it to the sand, he does not move away.
Breckin is looking out to sea now, and Ivar follows her gaze, to where the tall palms of his island are silhouetted by a sinking sun. There are three hundred yards from that shore to this one, and Ivar knows each one as well as he knows the pattern of scales on his forelegs. When she looks back at him (he sees this from the corner of his golden eye) he is still searching the lengthening shadows for movement, and not until she speaks does his turn to meet her gaze.
Better things? He has a mate and newborn foal less than a half mile away, and paramours scattered across the breadth of Beqanna. There are most certainly other things he could be doing, but he's not certain that any of them are better.
The kelpie has always lived in the moment. So it is easy, when she makes a joke of her resistibility, to lean forward and press his nose to the curve of her jaw and this time to leave it there. She smells of the sea and drying blood, with the sharp bite of Nerine beneath them both.
"I want you to come with me," he says, with the softest touch of hypnotic demand.
There are plenty of reasons for the invitation, and his attraction to the freckled mare is not the least of them. Empathy is not one of the reasons, but the jewel-toned kelpie suspects that her recent assessment of him as a decent person might bias her thinking in that direction. He's equally interested in how long it might take Nerine to realize their Advisor is missing, or how interested her love interest might be in getting her back.
Ivar draws away for a moment, only to say: "You said you wanted to clear your mind. While I don't have any waterfalls, I find that western isle fair more interesting than the big island. I'm sure we could find something there to distract you."
Ivar is quick to recover the lost ground between them, suddenly closing the distance as his heated breath works it way over her shoulder. With a solemn gaze, she watches as he reaches beyond, and feels a gentle tug on the strands of her pale tresses. She remains steadfast as his retraction comes away with a stray piece of seaweed.
The cooling winds graze upon her shoulder in his absence where he'd momentarily lingered, but a fresh heat stirs when his nose finds the point of her jawline. Closing her eyes slowly at his touch, she does not press into it, but tilts her head slightly in the opposite direction, without breaking the connection completely. The warmth of him seems to force itself into her cognisant desires, and she finds herself wanting to follow him--wherever that may be.
When his pressure is no longer riding into her, and his contact releases, her eyes reopen to align with his; the minute coquettish light her deep gaze now holds is unmistakeably now. The leopard woman's gaze finds his golden one easily, holding it with unfaltering attention as her telekinetic inclinations reach outward, searching for the seaweed where it lay upon the sands at their hooves. Once found, she raises it between their gaze for a moment, before delicately placing it back into the tangles of her alabaster mane. Did she really want it there? Hell no, but she was a subtle (open for interpretation) stubborn broad, and the small defiant action in and of itself was a testament that in spite of whatever mind fuckery game he was playing at, she was not entirely willing to deviate from her person. Yet his influences were still heavily upon her, and he only need say his wants one more time, and she'd willingly follow him wherever.
Breckin cannot help the steps she's already taken a few paces past him, in the direction of the western isle he had alluded to. She'd been careful to pass the length of him closely, but remaining a hairsbreadth fraction just out of immediate reach. A part of her game, she knew, always a game. For the brief time she had spent in Beqanna, and for lack of memories in general, it would be assumptive that she was still a virgin. But this label rang with undeniable untruth in the deep recesses of her conscious self. She understood this dance well enough.
"What if," she dares, stopping and turning her head back slowly with an inquisitive tilt, "I've already found something to distract me."
@[Ivar] Sorry this is not great. I lost the original and was half asleep trying to remember what the first draft said. >.<
At first he does not see the rising bit of seagrass, and is instead preoccupied with the curious light in Breckin's smile. Once he notices it though, hovering there in the same way that the shell had, the piebald stallion's expression shifts to an unmistakeable frown. Ivar does not like that, and he continues to scowl even as the spotted mare moves past him, toward the western island.
There is no attempt to hide his distaste from the Nerinian; he is half a pace behind her as she draws nearer to the sea. The waves on the white sand are growing higher. A few more minutes and they'll both be fetlock deep. Low tide is already slipping away, and he knows that Breckin likely should have headed out already if she'd been planning on returning to her kingdom before night fell. The sun still hangs above the horizon, and the air around them is warm and still. Later, when dusk crawls in, it will bring with it a breeze to cool the otherwise balmy night.
Ivar means to be home by that time, and while he still intends to have Breckin with him, the heat of his earlier intentions have faded somewhat with her display of magic. Those embers are easily fanned again though, especially as Breckin glances back over her shoulder. The kelpie knows an opening when he sees one, yet rather than answer truthfully or pressing a command into her just-within-reach shoulder, he takes another few steps into the water.
"I still want you to come," he says, following the path of a pair of seabirds as they settle into the water at the horizon. Ivar flicks his tail to shake off a bit of sand. A few still damp hairs brush against Breckin as he says: "You'll like it." That little bit of contact is all he needed, and there is no sign of the hypnosis as he glances back at the mare, tinted gold in the fading light.
"What do you know of bioluminscent plankton?" Ivar asks, taking another step into the water. It splashes at his knees now, wiping away the dried crust of salt that had obscured the jewel-bright appearance of his scales. The kelpie doesn't glance back, though he does pause. He's certain Breckin will be with him after all; there's no reason she wouldn't be.
the truth that you'll find will always be the truth you hide
She couldn’t stop the stupid one sided grin that had touched her lips or the small laugh fell from them as he moved up beside her. Obviously, he was not a fan of her telekinesis; she had suspected as much, but his last show of distaste further proved her suspicions. It felt like a small victory to be able to get under his skin a degree, even if hardly held any meaning at all; she still felt compulsed to follow him to the island in the distance.
The smile runs away from her face however, when he replies to her question. Not entirely the answer she had secretly been hoping for. Scowling deeply in her own fashion, Breckin watches him through a narrowed gaze as he regards a duo of birds and his tail brushes lightly against her freckled bodice. You’ll like it, he says, which elicits little more than the meeting of their eyes evenly and a slow inquisitive tilt of her head.
”I will go with you, but I will not stay. And are you always this arrogant, or did I catch you on a bad day?” She’d begun to think she’d actual thought him decent, perhaps she had been wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time, definitely wouldn’t be the last.
But she follows him further into the water’s embrace just the same, burning the abrasion with biting pain as the salt bled into her wound. She held her tongue despite the hiss that she wanted to make at the assaulting sensation, but the fresh pain fades rapidly.
The waves roll gently against the rest of her body, cool and feathery, and not entirely unwelcomed. “Next to nothing,” she replies, except maybe that it was in Ischia and that it glowed.
Breckin searches for his golden gaze again, finding her best reticent voice, and leaning towards him slightly with a faint coy smile, ”Don’t let me drown, shark.”
your world is still lacking of me, how do you love?
"Oh Breckin," Ivar says with a laugh. "You caught me on an exceptionally good day." The kelpie grins at her over his shoulder, mouth open just wide enough to show her that there are too many sharp teeth in his mouth, and that his jaw opens wider than any herbivore would ever need. He'd warned her, after all, the same way that he warns them all. Ivar has never pulled down anyone unwilling, and while his conscious is lacking in a plethora of other ways, he's also always warned them first.
It's not his fault if they make a dangerous decision.
Ivar had not missed the narrowed eyes, the way the easy smile had slipped off Breckin's face when he hadn't given her the answer she'd wanted. When she agrees to come with him anyway, he decides that the opportunity might not be entirely lost. Breckin could have refused, after all, but instead she steps farther into the water beside him.
For a moment he is distracted by the way the waves splash up her sides, marring the pattern of her dark spots for an instant before swallowing them entirely. A wave pushes him against her and Ivar doesn't immediately pull away. She is warmer than the water, a result of the warm tropical sun, and she feels smooth against him. The water draws back for another wave and tugs Ivar with it. The kelpie does not fight the current, and instead gives in to it entirely, ducking his head beneath the water.
He is gone in a single flick of a finned tail where hind legs would be. There is barely a ripple (not that one would be visibly in these frothy ocean waters) and then he is surfacing ten feet ahead of Breckin, the water streaming down his dredlocked mane as he meets her brown gaze with bright eyes.
"You're a terrible swimmer," he tells her, but his tone is jovial and light. "I'm surprised you made it to Ischia without help." At that he flicks his tail just above the surface, sending a few drops of water falling toward Breckin. "You're rather lucky I'm here." He adds, allowing himself to drift backward with the waves, ever closer to his western island.
08-30-2018, 10:37 AM (This post was last modified: 09-01-2018, 08:18 PM by Breckin.
Edit Reason: Major typo sorry lol
)
Breckin
the truth that you'll find will always be the truth you hide
Why the bloody hell did she want to go with him again?
The thought crosses her mind as he grins his predatory Cheshire smile at her over his shoulder and her glance skips beyond him towards the unknown island in the distance. Had it only been today that she had purposefully put distance between herself and his watery terrain? But all of her logical thinking seemed to be becoming more elusive and increasingly slippery to her grasp, a sensation comparable to the warmth of his scaled body forced into her by the push of the ocean’s strength. It’s unsurprising at this point, how she no longer minded their close proximity. And in spite of her internal questioning, her she stood, in the increasingly deepening water, captivated and entranced by the handsome melding of blue and gold that held her in an eager fascination all the same. It was her curiosity, she realized, maybe something even a bit more.
As easily as the waves had pushed them together, it pulls them apart, and where Ivar seems to let the sea have her way with him, Breckin resists the current in favor of watching how seamlessly he shifts into a creature worthy of a child of the sea herself might. She can’t help but wonder, if such a quick change is painful, but the question dies upon her lips as he disappears from view. With a light sign, she treads further into the warm water in the direction he had headed, giving into the draw of the currents at long last.
Resurfacing just in front of her, his bright gold toned eyes meet easily with hers, attempting and failing to duck away from the spray of water he sends at her. Breckin huffs indignantly at his critique of her skillset, but cannot prevent the shadow of a smile that tips the line of her mouth upward, ”No one bothered to spare the time to teach me properly, so I am self taught. I can’t help it if it’s not done as prettily as you.” It’s a small effort, but she attempts to send a splash in his direction with the over extension of one of her forelimbs, already knowing it wouldn’t phase him in the slightest. Still it made her feel better.
The kelpie’s last statement causes her brow to raise slightly, as if to ask Is that so?, watching how effortlessly he glided backwards in the water, in comparison to her own poor technique. And she sighed again with the briefest roll of her eyes, admitting that he was correct—she was a terrible swimmer.
your world is still lacking of me, how do you love?
The attempt she makes to dodge the water he splashes her way are useless, but Ivar suspects the motion wasn't full-hearted. There's no point in ducking a few drops when she is already chest deep in the water, though the effort does broaden his chesire grin.
No one taught her to swim, she says. This seems a common theme among the equines of Beqanna. It is one that Ivar is grateful for, of course. There are few better methods for drawing them to the water than an offer to teach them; Kylin is evidence of that. But Breckin already knows how to swim - albeit badly - leaving Ivar to pursue other avenues.
Then again, she is already on her way to his island and she's not protested his proximity, so the pied kelpie considers the battle at least half-won. The latter half is arguably more difficult, but it is also the most enjoyable. The spotted mare's political ties make things more complicated, but it is clear from the interest in Ivar's gold eyes that he has no intention of abandoning this particular hunt - at least not any time soon.
"I forgive you," he tells her with mock sobriety, as though her inability to swim is personal affront to him that he must forgive. Her raised brow suggests to him that this might amuse her and laughter is always an easy in.
Her effort to splash him is meant with a quick grin and a snapping at the water the surges his way, his teeth clicking audibly shut around the salty liquid. The golden and sapphire stallion had to lunge forward for this, and he is now that much closer to the spotted mare.
"You Leviathans are supposed to be like the old Amazons, no? Fierce warriors, and all that?" He asks as if he is genuinely curious, as if he hadn't grown up along the coast with a mother who even now calls the iron shore her home. "But you'd make easy prey in the water." He'd told her he was a seamonster, after all, though his pointed assessment is paired with an amused smirk - as though he suspects she might find it offensive.
"Or are you an Advisor of things other than warcraft?" At this he drifts closer, knowing he can make up the distance he loses in a few quick flicks of his tail. Ivar isn't genuinely interested in the politics of foreign kingdoms, but he's curious about Breckin, about how much of a fight she might put up about staying - and how much her kingdom might mind.
@[Breckin]
so apparently when i take forever to write a post it ends up a novel. my b.
