"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
10-19-2018, 09:39 PM (This post was last modified: 10-19-2018, 09:40 PM by Briella.)
Hours had passed since the girl, all wobbly legged and exhausted, had broken through the tall grass and thick briars. Stepping one way and another, bounding when she could and allowing the spring steps to leap small sticks and branches- even rocks. Not so fragile as a newborn but not sure enough on her legs to suggest time spent walking, Briella fretted when she began to tumble and her small body crashed down to the hard dirt ground. Weakly she cried out, but there was no response from anyone and instead she was forced to bleat and to whimper, to pick herself up and begin again.
Thirst touches her lips and she finds herself glancing back to the strange brush that she’d wandered through. Wild roses and ceaseless vines all tangles in moss and stone and the plants were thick enough that as she turned and started back towards them: she bounced off and back, stumbling and staring at it- at them. “Let me back in.” she states, a leg thumping the ground and her ears pressed back. There is yield though, and she is unable to bridge the gap between where she had been and where she was now… and so, she frets and kicks- tries too, but mostly falls.
Thus she listens and hears the sound of something running, of a tumultuous force of nature she remembers but knows nothing about. Turning and walking she guides herself through the reaches of warrens and wilds, and all the way through the forests and meadows with a boldness and profound newness to the world: a naivety she is unable to hide. With that same attitude however, she approaches the river and the rushing water and sniffs: lowers her nose and touches the surface. Tentative and shivering at the cold she steps down from the bank and submerges her hoof, splashing and backing up as the current pulls.
Briella is fascinated, enticed and beguiled, her eyes blinking and without ceremony she lowers her head again but dunks her nose this time and tries to imitate the desire to drink as instinct drives her.
The filly jerks back, tumbles and snorts water, coughs and shakes her head as she gathers herself: a scowl dampening her expression. “Bad.” she says, weak and strained.
His voice was naturally silky smooth, so opposite his appearance. As a teenager, his magic had begun to change him, his muscles and skin sinking in just as shards of bone started rupturing through his body. Once, a fine-looking colt, now made a monster, by his appearance and deeds. He had killed so many, and still would without hesitation.
He shook the water from his demon-black coat, washing the blood off into the river - some of it his, most of it not. His bone armor was still growing, perhaps always would, and so he was almost constantly bleeding from it, constantly in pain. He stepped out of the water, walking straight to her and peering at her evenly from behind a mask of bone guarding his face. He was built for protection, trained for it by a powerful magician, and he approached her with the quiet grace of a killer dripping in pink water.
"You little enough to need a Momma, you think?" he asked her, reaching out to brush his nose through her soft little crest of hair. "You lose where she went?" He liked her brown, there was something attractive about it, drawing him in like a curious gravity.
Those questions should probably be for himself, but it'd been a damn long time since he had a baby. Just the one. Only Atrani. And that was the way he wanted to keep it. The world didn't need any more of him running around, he was damaging enough as it was. Life as a single dad had been hard, made harder by his daughter's rejection. All he ever did was ruin lives, and she couldn't love a monster.
How could he blame her.
"You look pretty little to me, babe," he said, eyeing her all over, then admitted, "But it's been a long ass time since I had a kid. Just the one. And it didn't go so well for me." And even now he was expecting this child to scream and run as fast as she could away from him. It was probably for the best if she did. He couldn't help but try anyway, always so eager to put himself through the pain of it. He could never seem to punish himself enough.
"So what d'you think. You into milk? That your thing, baby?"
we're slaves to any semblance of touch
Lord, we should quit but we love it too much
just your neighborhood good samaritan :| nothin to see here
There is still a moment of exasperation, of struggle and of consequence- her nostrils flaring the water dripping as she snorts and coughs. Unable to speak in the bursts of it, she is forced to wait until all her little lungs settle and she simple feels a great wetness on her snout. Shaken by the result she barely notices the sound of splashing, of anything remotely outside of her direct surrounding; but the voice grasps her attention more so, and the faint scent of blood, too, makes her look directly at the larger stallion.
“Pell…?” she states, questions more so, but fades off: those wide eyes staring at bone and blood and at the strange markings on his body with intrigue and childlike curiosity. “Not Pell.” she continues, her tiny ears flickering as listens and takes moments to decipher his very words. Scared as she was, it didn’t show, and she noted the pale bone covering his face and all the strangeness of him: reaching that tiny snout as he got closer and trying to tap the very bone on his face and to sniff.
Her voice is weak, and no doubt she herself is weak, the fragile body shaking and her spindly legs giving out at a point to allow her to tumble backwards into an awkward sitting position. “Momma?” she bleats, blinking and looking around suddenly. “Momma? No.” lacking the words for it, she understands the question but knows not how to answer and so she very suddenly slides down and lays on her side- tiny body flat and breath held as she looks up at him. Quieter, suddenly, and speaking with a softness that carried the hint of a sob. “Momma. This.” death is no mystery to her, and less now.
With unease she gets to her feet, scrambling and balancing as she can. The stockings dusty and dirt covered, and bits of bramble and nettle cling in the silvery mane and tail… no matter how short of puffy it was. He touches her and she freezes, but more so out of shock, her small head canting to the side and eyes peering at him with profound wonder. He asks questions, speaks, and she deciphers; but to Briella she is silently imitating words and sounds.
As if instinct she does walk, not away from him however, and steps around him with abandon to survey his belly and ribs: to peer and wander just a foot or so to the side to stare at the wild roses. Her gaze travels back and she notes what blood remained, and the color of the flowers, her tiny mind putting senseless things together and the coppery smell makes her wrinkle her nose before she steps back towards his and reaches up with intense unknowing.
“Briella.” she speaks, remembering the last words of the creature she’d left behind- the mare whose breath left her with a name just as the lights faded from her eyes. Recalling brief conversations with Expelliarmus, she strings words and sentences: begins to speak, or try to. “Ate, tried.” and to the point her head lowers, young teeth grasping at the grass and chewing before she swallowed the small mouthful: her ears flopping to the sides and small tail flicking as she scowled at the greenery. “Bluh.” it’s more of a sound than a word, and she looks to Dovev expectantly or at least with fixated attention.
“Not-Pell, who?” she asks, polite but loud, a fragile leg scratching the ground and her tiny frame drifting closer as she wanders up with little regard.
For a good few moments, he'd thought she was taught some other language with the way she repeated that word, Pell.
Then he finally connected it as he watched her, after she lay prone on her side to demonstrate the last image of her mother. He nodded understanding, his face expressionless though he felt a pang of guilt. He hadn't been the one to do it, but he very well could've been to another little babe. He would've done it for a reason, most likely though. Even a selfish one. So he didn't feel the pang of guilt for long.
This Pell must've taken her in briefly, he figured, since she searched around for her. It. Him. It. Searched for Pell rather than her Momma.
She seemed terribly distracted, and he watched her silently as new things stole her attention away, as she returned to him and was distracted once again. She was pretty cute, though. And it was mildly entertaining to watch her mind work, see it in her eyes as she looked at different things and connected them, made sense of them in a way she would understand them. She hadn't run from him, and that was a good sign. Though he wasn't the type to take in a kid. Not ever. He'd only ever had Atrani. And that was so long ago.
What the hell was he even thinking.
Yet, for some ungodly reason, here he was considering it. She'd have to be a tough babe. His life was dangerous, always dangerous. But if he left her with Heartfire to watch over her, she'd be fine. Heartfire was a crazy ass bitch when she needed to be.
But he wouldn't be adopting her with Heartfire.
They weren't together like that.
"Alright, look," he interrupted her, needing to clear this up right away while it was on his mind. "This thing-- No, look. You don't have a momma, and I gotta place you can stay, okay? Sort of. Or you'll go wherever I go, or something. Anyway. I know someone that will help keep you safe and take care of you when I gotta be away. And I have to be away a lot." He said it heavily so she would be certain she wouldn't be trotting along with him on those ventures. No babies allowed on duty, she'd just get killed or something.
"But. This isn't a mommy and daddy thing, alright? This is a me and you thing. And she's just gonna watch you when I can't be there. You got that?" Probably not, but he said it anyway. She seemed too little to understand everything he said. He nodded her over closer with a jerk of his chin. He was gonna be the damn death of this poor innocent baby girl. That was just how his life went.
"C'mere, little love. Briella," he corrected himself. Then he hesitated on giving his name back, as he always did. A name could be tracked back to him, could be dangerous. Could set off entire manhunts for the terrible deeds he did and would continue to do. But he wasn't about to tell her to call him daddy or anything crazy like that. So, whatever. Danger was his life, he'd roll with it if it happened. Or rather, when. It was bound to happen at some point.
"Dovev," he gave back quietly, touching his muzzle to her shoulder, up through her little mane. "What do you think? You hungry? You wanna come with me and find you some milk or somethin?"
Heartfire wasn't exactly lactating so he'd have to find some other momma for her to nurse from.
He didn't even consider asking Heartfire if she was cool with it, with him bringing back a little child. Didn't matter. This was his little babe, now. Heartfire could take it or get over it.
Yeah, maybe he'd lost his damn mind on this one. Oh, well.
Prone to whimsy, there is a moment where her body sways akin to a flower in a breeze and much like it- she bends and walks to balance herself. To her credit, she can feel the stare, the way he watches and how he seems content to stand while she moves and traverses small distances between himself and the foliage. Soft purple and faintly pink she stares at the groupings of clover among the baby’s breath, onion grass, periwinkle, and moss: her small nose brushing it as she sniffs and vocalizes a sort of huff. Familiar to it, the lips and soft-teeth are quick to bite and she nibbles on the clover specifically: even a wild growing tulip; but the irony is that she takes the flower itself directly and leaves the stem. Explorative while he ponders she makes faces and grunts at different things, turning to look him over when he starts to speak.
Twisting herself she turns, and her back legs slide into the briars. Thought she doesn’t cry out she does take extra moments to shake and try to detangle the spidery legs from the grasping thorns and vines- kicking a few times as she steps forward with the same greenery now tangled around her limbs. His words carry a great deal of information and she listens, her small mind putting pieces together and trying to understand. Concept she grasps, but detail, she lacks and so there is a reaction in her ears pressing backwards and head tilting, all the while her body shrinks and she slowly bends down as if unsure and preparing to spring like a rabbit or deer.
“Go where?” she speaks up, babbling a moment and nonspecific as to what her question could mean. In time though she stands slowly again, still prepared to run but less likely to. Briella of course takes little time in waiting to speak, even cut off. “King Pell? Gone.” she realizes it in the moment, Expelliarmus is gone and whoever this man is means to do as he had before: to watch her, perhaps even. She recalls some memory of her former caretaker, and even of the Forsaken Valley and how she might’ve been a Princess; but now she seems to pay more attention to Dovev, overcome by reality.
“No home. Help.” she warbles, his offers she knows- order more like it, but there is a small swallow to push the metaphorical lump down her throat and she chokes up in a slight sob that turns to sigh. “Okay.” and with acceptance she walks forward in clear steps, letting Dovev touch her shoulder- ruffle the mane, and even stand closer than he had. “Dovev.” she murmurs softly, sounding out the name and peering up at him to take advantage of this moment, her small nose reaching up and brushing the bony plate.
Luke warm and firm she does not know what to think of it, and simply continues trying to communicate, “Flowerrr.” unintentionally she rolls the ‘r’ at the end, her ears flopping and much smaller body staying close, in fact so much that as she lowers her head Briella is able to begin to weave between his forelimbs and position herself to be an awkward roadblock that peered out from his side. “Food? Belly, grrr.” the word she does not know and so she makes a sound.
