"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
You think I'll be the Dark Sky so you can be the Star? I'll Swallow you Whole.
She steps out into the open, leaving the safety of the red-rock cave and the curtains of peace that Tiercel had crafted for them. She is feeling restless, and even though she disliked the heaviness of this darkness (it did not feel like night — night was feather-light with the silver threads of starlight, while these shadows were thick, nearly suffocating), she also could not bear the confines of the cavern right now. The child that grew inside of her was equally restless, seemingly no longer content with her continuously constricting living arrangements, and she liked to make her displeasure known by constantly moving. Islas, already so unaccustomed to the endless torrent of emotion that the child sent coursing through her, wasn't sure how much more of this she could take.
She had thought that the wide-open space of Loess, dark though it may be, would ease the edge, but instead, it seemed only to sharpen it.
Because stepping out into the dark she is again reminded of what she is missing.
With eyes turned skyward, she is reminded that there are no stars to be found, that this dark stretches on forever with not an end in sight.
Still, she cannot help but to try again. She reaches up through the dark, reaches to where she knows the stars should be, and tries to pull the tendrils of starlight down just as she has a hundred times before.
And she is met with the same resistance, that same feeling of sinking into something but being unable to move it from where it rests. That feeling of knowing something is there, but it lies just beyond her reach.
And, for the first time in her life, she feels anger—anger of her own making and not something projected onto her by Tiercel or their unborn daughter. Anger that blooms of its own accord in her chest and flashes like electricity through her veins, in such a way that her ever-dimming glow suddenly flashes brightly in the dark, like a spark, though it dies just as quickly.
In its wake, her glow is all the more subdued, but so is her anger. She is left with her usual hollowness, with that darkness that fills up all the empty spaces of her just like the dark in Beqanna.
She hears movement, and that is the only thing that draws her mind back to earth and away from the lost stars. “Hello?” The dark seems to swallow her voice, and she stares into it with purple-black eyes, and she is suddenly reminded of the unearthly things that lurked in this new endless night.
Islas
@[Oceane]
hi don't mind me just posting to you without asking first! I thought since Islas lives here she should probably at least officially meet Oceane lmao
Oceane departs from Soran's side easily on this timeless day. Even when the days had passed in their regular diurnal rhythm, the man had preferred keeping to himself, but in this preternatural darkness he is less likely to venture away from the hovel in the canyon he calls his own. And though she loves him, the Loessian Queen simply cannot, and will not, remain coiled by his side when her Kingdom needs her.
The seemingly affectionate way she touches his cheek with her muzzle is stiff and icy before she moves away from the canyon and into the inky black. The viper she has employed with her zoolingualism rests nearby, coiled in the dark upon a cairn of rocks heated by the steam of the adjacent hot springs. He hisses quietly before unfurling and then serpentines himself so that he leads the opaline mare into the darkness with his infrared gaze.
She follows lazily, her lavender head slung low and her feathered wings half open as she meanders behind the serpent. He tells her occasionally of obstacles in her path, but otherwise the viper is silent and so is she. It's only when, so apparent in the long night, a strong glow flashes briefly in the near distance that Oceane lifts her head and presses her ears forward in interest. The viper amends their path, directing her towards this odd development, before hissing to her that the source was simply a horse.
Hello?
“Hello there,” she greets warmly in return as her gilded eyes settle on the now-faint glow of the ivory woman before her, “I'm sorry to disturb you. I saw a flash and-” she supposes the woman before her knows the rest. With a quiet sigh and an instinctive smile, despite the dark, Oceane offers a warm introduction.
“I am Oceane. And you?”
— @[Islas] (um i love surprise posts this is wonderful<3) “”
You think I'll be the Dark Sky so you can be the Star? I'll Swallow you Whole.
She was not accustomed to feeling anything even similar to fear, and she finds the emotion unsettling. It creeps in during those brief moments when her greeting is met with only dark and silence, and she does not know if it is emotions radiating from the child inside of her, or fear has taken root because of the child inside of her. Islas did not know much about motherhood; not in an instinctual way. But she knew that she had to protect her and Tiercel’s child. She knew that it was her responsibility to keep herself alive for the sake of their child, and in the heavy space of time where she remembers the creatures that lurk in the dark it occurs to her that perhaps being out here alone was not the best idea.
But the voice that greets her is clearly equine, and she feels herself exhale slowly, silently, as the tension that had built beneath her skin evaporates. “The flash was me,” she answers the mare that has now walked closer, her figure slowly taking shape even in the dark. Her own glow, dim though it was, was still brighter than anything else in this endless night. She knew it was fading, though. With each passing day her inner star seemed to weaken, and in response so did the glow she radiated; these were things she noticed, things that she felt. What she did not realize was the way her color was beginning to turn—that the dark was bleeding into her white, starting at the tips of her ears and along the crest of her mane.
That soon she would be as dark as the sky above them.
“Sorry if it startled you,” she says the apology, though her tone is still a touch flat. Though her unborn child seemed to possess Tiercel’s ability to project emotions onto her, it had not changed her entirely. She still had moments of emptiness, moments when her voice again rang hollow and the purple-black of her eyes went flat.
She does not want to imagine how dull she will be once her starlight fully surrenders.
“Oceane?” She repeats the mare's name, recognizing it, and a brief smile touches her lips. “You are the queen here, then.” She had not often interacted with Pangea's kings and queens; had never been tempted to. They were all the same to her, as many of Beqanna's residents were. She likely would have gone years without ever crossing paths with Oceane, either, had it not happened just now. Her understanding of kingdoms and their dynamics was still novice at best, and it would never occur to her that a queen would want to know who her residents are. “My name is Islas.”
Over the past few weeks, Oceane has shied away from the thought of navigating the terrain of diplomacy in such pure, inky blackness. Before the sun had disappeared, the worry of leaving Loess undefended in her absence had woven its way into her thoughts ─ a side effect of what their kingdom had endured over the last half decade, most certainly ─ and now, in the Long Night, the concern she feels for her fellow Loessians has only increased. But with the appointing of Fiorina and Tarian in their respective duties, the Southern Queen feels that the opportunity to offer individual support to her residents within the foothills may finally be upon her.
Perhaps a blessing in disguise, the sun’s absence has provided her the perfect excuse to be a homebody, and she finds herself hoping those who call this land home have decided just the same.
It’s this thought that remains at the forefront of her mind as she traverses the shadowed ground in pursuit of the flash of ivory light. The woman who claims its existence is soft-spoken, as if her tone mirrors the delicate glow that radiates from her. Oceane receives the apology with a dismissive flick of her lavender tail and a small shake of her opalescent head, opting instinctively to disregard the near tonelessness of her inflection.
“Startled, no,” she responds warmly and with a small bout of laughter, “It was perhaps the most exciting thing I’ve seen in Loess since the sun left us.” And that’s something she can be pleased about. Better quiet than uproarious, at least for now, while they await the sun to return, or Breach to command her kingdom to attack, or Pangea to strike…
She clears her throat, rending those thoughts from her mind and tossing them aside as best she can, though the anxiety lingers. You are the Queen here, then, the glowing woman is saying in that same monotone voice, prompting Oceane’s attention back to her. She gives a nod of affirmation but otherwise does not answer what had been perceived as a statement rather than a question before registering her newest companion’s name with the twitch of an ear.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you officially, Islas. Your name is familiar ─ perhaps Lepis told me about you?” She bites at the inside of her cheek with uncertainty as she tries to place the woman’s name. Far too much time has come and gone since Lepis’ passing, time that has swept away diminutive memories from their conversations but has done naught to lessen the melancholy she feels each time she remembers the gold and navy woman.
You think I'll be the Dark Sky so you can be the Star? I'll Swallow you Whole.
She seems kind, which to Islas feels like a rarity. Most that she has met felt sharp, or at the very least guarded. Everyone seemed to be surrounded by walls that they had little interest in letting anyone over, and for someone like her she of course did not try. She was fascinated by their emotions and the way they did things, but she did not care to know them.
They were not the stars and this was not home.
(That last part would have had more conviction behind it if it were not for Tiercel, and for their child that continue to grow and swell within her.)
Still, the queen draws from her lips a rare smile, though most of it is lost in the dark. “The stars are gone, too,” she adds, and there is the first color of emotion to her voice. A haunted kind of sorrow, a different kind of hollowness, the kind that came from losing something cherished. She has learned that many of the mortals here loved the stars; they loved to stare at them, admire them, spin dreams and stories for them. And Islas would smile and nod, but she would not try to explain that none of them could ever begin to love the stars the way that she did.
She does not tell Oceane that, either. She trusts that it is there, in the silver-wrapping of her tone, that she did not need to state the obvious that she missed the stars more than the sun.
The mention of Tiercel’s mother is perhaps the only other thing besides the stars that can bring that faint flicker of curiosity to her galaxy-dark eyes. It is noticeable the way her gaze seems to suddenly focus on the mare, as if she has blinked away a haze. “I never met Lepis, no,” she says with a shake of her delicate head, and without realizing it her head just subtly tilts and her eyes glance at the swell of her sides. “I know her son, though. Tiercel,” his name is the most familiar thing she has ever said, the only name she has ever really bothered to learn the shape of, but she is still surprised at the strange warmth that flushes beneath her skin.
She is sure it must be obvious; sure only because everyone else seemed so adept at reading emotions when she was not, but she does not try to explain anything. Instead, after a pause, she asks, “You were friends with Lepis, then?”
