"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 shouldn’t. Shouldn’t what?
I shouldn’t be out here, shouldn’t be wandering, shouldn’t be wondering, shouldn’t be asking questions that I’m not confident I want answers to. Why not?
I just shouldn’t. Shouldn’t what?
Pausing, her line of sight carries southbound, past the groves of sentient monsters resting on Taiga’s grounds. Somewhere beyond laid Loess, and further, still, the places where vagabonds traveled and gathered. Skyward her eyes turned, becoming lost in the vastness of pure, simple blue. And for the shortest of moments, she understands the peace of clarity through something so common and mundane.
“Be here”, she breathes, answering her own question.
As it had already done before, the river led her south further and further until the shadows of Taiga cast across her back have no choice but to let her go, devoured by denser ones shed by the highest peaks of Hyaline. Eventually, the jeweled peaks release her too, and she is lost between the reaching shadows of the Forest. When the River sprawls wide and volatile in front of her, the ragged woman crosses at its lowest point, drawn back to the place where she had first thought herself found.
Going backward to move forward. How contrary.
The right path had been simple enough to find and Breckin joined the withering oak that had sheltered her before, resting her head against the coarseness of its bark. There was no gentleness when she leaned against it, forcing herself into it until she felt the pain of splintered wood pushing between her eyes, testing the bounds and solidity of the sentinel that stood a lonely guard. A small path of blood wound its way down and into her eye, burning and bitter she closed them tightly, hardly minding the sting as she pressed harder.
There’s no give, and Breckin finds a small solace in its absoluteness, something aged but still concrete and unyielding in spite of everything it had endured. But there is no mind or heart to become plagued, no burden of regret or remorse to darken it, no need to check and dredge out the slime of guilt that came to be harbored there. It was alive, but unfeeling.
With a sigh the haggard mare stepped away, turning to rest a boney shoulder against the trunk.
There was nothing here for her.
The leopard mare is about to shove off and try to make her way elsewhere when there’s an abrupt absence of the evening symphony. She’s reminded of the time in the Forest where she had ran into her alleged son and had denied everything that he had claimed of her - all for the sake of Arthas, the phantom grey stallion. Her mood dampens and sours tenfold, but still, she steadies herself against the inevitable. “Might as well join me,” she said morosely, turning exhausted eyes towards them, “I’m not going anywhere fast anyway.”
Wolfbane wasn’t looking for anything in particular when he’d first spied @[Breckin] in the woods. He hadn’t been going anywhere in particular either, just keeping close to the tight borders of the northern territories that interested him most because of who was currently living there. If he was correct in his assumptions, he’d have three distinct reasons to keep prowling these borders, too; all three reasons having to do with his “encounters” between Lilliana, Lepis, and (surprisingly) Neverwhere. Three very good, very solid reasons as to why he’d be in the Forest during a bleak winter season.
Breckin seemed directionless to him, though. No reason or rhyme that he could guess at when she first passed underneath the branch he’d perched upon. Disguised as your typical barn owl, the shape-shifter Wolfbane peered down at the speckled, knabstrup mare with his infinitely wise eyes and said nothing, did nothing but watch. “Not her.” Wyrm tried to dissuade him from lifting off the branch into a silent, swooping flight to follow after the wandering horse once she’d moved on. “Perhaps a great-granddaughter.” Longclaw also tried to reason with him. They saw no reason in pursuing the unknown.
“What’s she doing out here?” He and Lupei wondered to themselves, alighting on another branch just shy of the River to watch her wade into the water’s current. To the chagrin of his other two personalities, Bane and his great-grandsire’s thoughts aligned on the impossible. This horse was Breckin, somehow? Wasn’t it?
He flicked his brown wings out from his sides and soared over the tumbling river stream, flapping a bit as he extended his claws to touch down on the other side of the River where Breckin had emerged and kept on her way. If anyone had seen him land they would’ve seen a glimmer - like a metallic shiver of light - as it passed over his skin, and then they would’ve had to look again to confirm what their eyes saw.
A stallion had taken the place of the owl, and his still-brown wings were rapidly melting back into the skin along his spine and over his shoulders, as if he were absorbing them. Wolfbane sighed a pleasant gust of air as the final few feathers morphed back into the familiar gold-and-blue of his coat pattern, and blinked away the amber color of his eyes until they had returned to his pleasant olive green drab. He whuffed the crisp air, tasting it on his tongue to distinguish Breckin’s scent, and followed the ribboning trail through the sparsening trees until his arrival gave her a reason to notice him.
“Doesn’t look like you’re going anywhere at all, really.” He commented on her earlier path which had brought her to the grandfather oak. She seemed lovely and out-of-place underneath its bare, stretching limbs. He stepped forward, lengthening his stride since this one particular tree had pushed away any nearby competition, and left tracks on the bare, ruddy ground beside Breckin’s own. “And you’ve got a little…” Wolfbane nodded his head in the direction of her own, indicating the thin trickle of drying blood between her eyes.
For this thread: Sex: M ◉ Appearance: Normal, no wings ◉ Mood: Subdued
While she waited, Breckin pondered what the chances were that this visitor might be another child of hers, or rather, if they might claim to be another child of hers. She loathes to admit it, but that last encounter had shaken her more than she had led that poor bloke to believe - some part of her had been struck by hazy familiarity. For days after the ragged mare had considered what he had said, weighing the claims against her heart on a rigged scale. The balance was so skewed, so heavily tipped in favor of poignant uncertainty, that she had let those stacked beliefs of his fall and scatter. But they wouldn’t be forgotten entirely, just tucked away for another day, for when and if sweet lady veritas should ever show her fickle face again.
But he is nothing like she had envisioned her visitor to be when he breaks away from the treeline. Blue lines atop gold and green eyes that seemed intent on making her believe she’d tried to find answers in them before. His presence pulled the dull ache in her head out with a sudden jolt, matching the tempo of her heart with every pounding beat. The surprise is enough to make her wince lightly, though she is quick to recover and deliberately suppresses the annoyance, moving to fully ignore it when his voice cuts through the murk.
“Hmm, you’re right,” she mused slowly, casting a sweeping glance over and up, stopping to marvel at the barren limbs and the harsh winter winds that moved them to sway. They creaked and clamored against each other almost hollowly, spilling a grey dusting of snow across her narrow back. Sugar dusted and mildly perturbed by the chilling assault - particularly by a hefty clod of snow that had landed atop her poll and stayed there - her dark gaze searched for his, “It is quite cozy.” Nevermind the fact that she was far more depleted than she’d initially assessed - that ceaseless traveling had taken its toll, and this aging girl wasn’t made of the same brand of vim and vigor that she used to be.
When he bobs his head in her direction, it takes her foggy brain a second to catch up, following up his indication with an absent, “Oh. That.” Her head lowers, and when it does she can just make out the falling trail of blood as her head tilts simultaneously, “Just a monthly maintenance check to make sure I’m still alive,” she replies, sweeping the infliction off as though it were nothing. But a slightly amused smile tussles at the corner of her mouth when her attention shifts back to him, and though the grin doesn’t bloom beyond a flat line, a telltale curiosity reflects in her eyes when she pries, “I can’t really remedy it myself, unfortunately. Why do you mention it? Does seeing me like this make you uncomfortable?”
His suspicions confirmed, Wolfbane watched the knabstrup mare respond to him with a mixture of curiosity and caution. This horse was @[Breckin]; of that he was positive. But the atmosphere surrounding her felt alien, almost. As if a stranger inhabited her body. “The irony.” He thought, flicking an ear around and back up again. She commented dryly enough about her situation, and Bane waited patiently for the spark of recognition that never came. A scattered wind blew, chilling him right through his sleek hide, but the stallion with a bristling, white mane never shivered. He just smiled.
“Some type of maintenance.” He laughed stiffly.
He moved closer, each falling hoof a dull thud because the ground had grown so hard in the colder temperatures. The sound echoed quietly around them, moving with him as the space between the two grew smaller and smaller, and the woods felt as if they were leaning in too - towards the only source of sound and movement in the otherwise deadened forest. Breckin hardly stood out; Wolfbane looked like a handful of brilliant jewels thrown out across the snow. Even his stripes twinkled, glinting and flashing whenever the hard muscles underneath made them jump.
Now that he could inspect the injury to her forehead from a closer angle, Bane replied truthfully, “Not at all. Just thought you’d want some recognition on a job well-done.” His smile faltered. “Good job, Breckin. You’ve finally knocked some sense into yourself.”
For this thread: Sex: M ◉ Appearance: Normal, no wings ◉ Mood: Subdued
The night was growing closer and Breckin was growing colder. Shivering against the same wind that had failed to shake him, her head lowered, and the odd trinkets caught in her mane rang melancholy in her ear.
He approaches, and she watches. Unlike the time before, the withered mare doesn’t cower behind the trunk of her sentient guard as she had when Arthas found her. Instead, she leans deeper, heavily against its grounding. The splinters protest beneath the pressure of her shoulder, but it’s a welcomed distraction. It’s almost enough to make her forget about the stubborn ache in her head, the one that grew a little stronger with every quiet pace he stepped nearer.
Almost.
And it’s almost enough for her to miss that he had drawled out her name - her actual name - a name she hadn’t heard said aloud for a few seasons now. Both ears swivel forward and her dark eyes narrow contemplatively from beneath the tangled mess of her forelock. It was strange to hear it spoken from the lips of a stranger, but apparently he wasn’t a stranger at all. Or at the very least, he was someone who had known the woman that had lived before her. There’s still a part of her that begs to deny that name, but a larger part yet that finds relief realizing she didn’t have to go the route of the Roz bullshit she had been serving the few that had the misfortune to cross paths with her lately.
And she had left Taiga with a craving for answers.
Hadn’t she?
“That’s kind of you to notice,“ she said, finally drawing out a shallow smile. The snowmelt spiraled down from atop her poll, mixing with the narrow path of blood to stripe her dingy coat with trails of muted pink. A growing drop held precariously to the curve of her chin, finally dropping to stain the earth at her feet when the fledgling smile faded from her lips.
The closeness of her company had begun to rattle some repressed part of her, enough for her waxing curiosity to cause her to shift against the weight of the giant oak. The strength she needed to find to push away from the tree came surprisingly easy, and her speckled shoulders roll to align with the square set of her counterpart’s. Unsure of the why behind it, she dared another step forward, reducing the distance between her slight frame and his brilliant gold further, until the deep set of her brown eyes are able to make out the contrast of green tucked into a mask of blue. “Your eyes are so strange,” she murmurs, tilting her head in slow observation, studying him as he had done to the cut on her brow, “but beautiful.”
Something beyond his shoulder moves and her line of vision follows the disruption, her body leaning slightly to better peer around him. It was as if looking into the glassy plane of an agitated pool, the visions behind him are brightly colored, foggy and distorted beyond allowance for significant detail and sound, but the shadows are recognizable to her. It’s them, in the woods - a different, denser wood - but that is not the only thing changed in the fluttering image.
Could he see this too?
“Something...,” she starts before trailing off, taking another step closer with her brow knitting furiously together. “Something’s different. You look.....different,” she says, noticing the lack of something white against his barrel, and noticing the prouder set of her head she held. “I was different.” That annoying pain held captive in her mind began to lessen, though the poignant ache felt as though it had only migrated lower and settled into the most hollow part of her chest. She let her gaze drop from the vision to the snow-covered litter underfoot, and the inquisitive brightness in her eyes softened beneath a flush of sadness.
“Somehow, I can feel that you were important to me, even though I don’t have much to claim for memory.” The ragged woman’s head rises before turning to face him again, a myriad of unspoken questions written over her expression, though she asks him just one.
“Who are you?”
B R E C K I N
it’s the false side of hope, where believers concede
Everything about her in his memories was tainted and out-of-focus. The Breckin he remembers is covered by a dappled sheet of glass, her image distorted and blurry when he thinks on it. Right here before his eyes she stood! Alive and breathing, walking closer, talking in the sound of her voice and saying things a Breckin would say. How was it that she could be so real and yet, so unreal? Was she a ghost? Everyone and everything from your past is. Wyrm reminded him with a whisper.
Wolfbane watched the speckled mare tiptoe nearer, quietly breathing gusts of sparkling air from his dark blue nose, waiting for any sign that she might suddenly disappear in a cloud of smoke. He wouldn’t be surprised if she did, but no; her hooves left solid prints in the dusting of snow and like him, warm air spilled out from her chest. His intelligent eyes followed her carefully.
“Strange,” He agreed on Breckin’s comment about them, lowering his voice, “beautiful.” Wolfbane said, though as he watched Breckin the expression wasn’t meant for himself.
Now the full force of her came back to him like a second crashing wave, all of it: Loess and their twining conversations, riddled with double-meanings. The Riverlands. Her coronation. Leilan. He remembered acutely the instant their parallel lives split apart - but not the irritated burn usually associated whenever he used to recall that encounter. Even before the curse that wound had been healed for years. Lepis had done that and so much more. He hadn’t looked behind him where Breckin had, though he’d turned his ears and heard nothing, but he was frowning when she finally spoke again.
He was different? She was the one who was different! Bane laughed a few times, deep in his belly. Breckin seemed unhappy with this - with herself - but her problems weren’t his anymore. He could easily make light of them for his own benefit. Not even her darkened expression could sour the ironic situation they found themselves in, Wolfbane thought. He considered her final question with an upturned brow and a boyish half-smirk, hardly believing her to be in any position of demanding answers but feeling generous all the same. After all this time she still gave him a reason to smile… that was worth a little story.
“Once upon a time,” He began theatrically, “when we were much younger, I tried convincing you to fall in love with me.” He shrugged and turned his ears sideways. “Shocking, I know.” He told her, what with his beautifully strange eyes and all, “But it wasn’t meant to be. I wasn’t your type.” The sarcastic stallion scoffed.
“Don’t worry darling, no hard feelings. This was literally ages ago. We moved on.” He quickly told her, reaching down out of habit to brush away her trail of blood with his tongue. Delicious. “Though it's nice to know after so many years I held a special place in your heart.” Bane chuckled again, surprised at how time folded back on itself when given the chance.
For this thread: Sex: M ◉ Appearance: Normal, no wings ◉ Mood: Subdued
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