"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
It’s raining above the canopy of the jungle but where Sickle explores along the ground, barely a drop touches her rich iridescent coat. She makes a game of seeing if she can catch the raindrops on her tongue for a time, until she catches too many in a row and then her attention begins to stray again.
Her two-toned gaze begins to wander, seeking something else to think about. Something new. She loves her family very much but she sees them all the time and she’s thinking that maybe, maybe today she’ll bother someone else for a while. There are a great number of other horses that live here, and for the most part she’s allowed their voices to filter through her head because she’s been focusing on other things. Like on the animals that she can sometimes shift into, almost exclusively by accident, until she’s not really sure that she is a horse.
Except she must be, right?
And if she is a horse, she should probably interact with them a little more.
She’s half keeping an eye out for anyone, half watching the water that’s dripping down off the thick waxy leaves overhead. She keeps forgetting what her mission is, keeps getting sidetracked by new questions that pop into her head and suddenly wishing that she had not wandered off so that she would have someone to ask why the trees were different colours or the names of the various animals that she sees.
Her coat shifts as she walks, the cool-green of the shadows bleeding into the iridescent colours that exist there normally as she tries to remember how to walk when her mind is focusing on so many, many different things.
He loves his family. He loves the gentleness of his wildflower mother and the strength of his father, he loves that he has a brother who is the twin of his soul, his heart. He loves that he has older siblings too, though he sees them far less often because they are busy with their own families or busy finding themselves. He loves home, but sometimes he finds himself wondering if there is something more than this place, more than these faces he knows so well.
The jungle is one of his most favorite places to explore, though he is certain he will love the sky more just as soon as his wings are strong enough to hold him aloft. There is something about looking up into that limitless aching blue that makes his heart ache inside his chest, makes wings flutter in his stomach. He does not think the sky has any corners, any edges, but if it does he has promised himself he will learn them all.
He pushes aside some overgrown leaves with the dark of his little nose, slipping beneath them when they sway and cringing at the water that splashes down onto his burnt-gold back. He is not particularly fond of the rain or the way it is so cold against the sunshine warmth of his body. It is almost enough to keep him from exploring, except that he knows once he has wandered deeper he will be rewarded with that feeling of finding a world within a world.
Maybe it is the dense forests or the thick undergrowth, all the colorful plants that aren’t quite flowers but somehow seem twice as vivid, but this place feels like a secret sanctuary within the larger sanctuary of home. There is no sound from the world outside, no stink of ocean brine or the sulphurous volcano. It’s all earthy and green and the sound of perpetual rain trickling through a maze of trees and leaves all the way up to the sky.
There is also a girl.
He stops abruptly, those deep blue eyes going wide in surprise and then narrowing in an expression of almost wary bewilderment. He never sees anyone in here except Kaz, and that's only when they come together to play games inside the dense forest. He’s certainly never seen a girl here before.
There is a small frown on his mouth, and it traces furrows over his brow and a line between lapis lazuli eyes that have forgotten to blink. He doesn’t feel annoyed that she is here in his favorite place, but he is surprised that he doesn’t recognize her. While he studies her she shifts from an iridescent blue that reminds him of the shell of a beetle he once saw, to something more green like the forest around her. It’s so subtle that he cannot decide if maybe he had imagined the blue in the first place just because it is his favorite color. The color of his eyes and the sky hidden from him somewhere overhead.
“Where are you going?” He asks, and the suddenness of his quiet voice nearly startles him, as though he hadn’t realized he meant to speak at all. His frown softens, the deep lines eased away with surprise, and then he’s making his way closer and trying very hard not to make a face at how wet he’s getting from the leaves he pushes aside. “You’re so shiny,” he tells her, and his face is all soft and genuine now, warmer because he is suddenly glad to have found a new friend, and pleased that she is nice to look at like the plants in bright colors all around them, “I saw a beetle that was this shiny once too.”
aeson
though your heart is far too young to realize the unimaginable light you hold inside
At first, she thinks the sun is coming out - but then she realizes that she is in the jungle and she wouldn’t be able to really see it if it were. She moving over to investigate before she even really starts thinking about it and jumps in surprise when a voice interrupts her own thoughts on the matter. In her surprise, a dozen new colours and patterns ripple across her coat. The owner of the voice emerges from some foliage, though, and she is delighted by the fact that it is a foal around her age that she doesn’t know. Sickle has forgotten her intent to find other horses, to see if she can tell if she is one of them.
All she feels is delighted by the next words that come from him as she stops nearby. “I’m shiny, look at you! You’re glowing like the sun.” She pushes her muzzle forward, seeking the sunlight glow, uncaring whether it is a bold or rude action to invade his space so readily. Malik never seemed to mind and that is her only real form of reference for these sorts of things. “I glow too but only when it’s darker out.” She informs him matter-of-factly, though he hadn’t asked.
The mention of a beetle has her straightening up again and her mismatched eyes shine with a wild grin “Was it a beetle like this?” She shifts then - delighted that the power answers her so easily as she shifts into an iridescent blue beetle and flies forward - intending to land on the colt’s shining nose. It is damp from the leaves, which she had not been expecting, and she yelps upon contact and falls backwards - becoming a lion cub and then a squirrel and finally into an iridescent blue filly once more.
Somewhere between the cub and the squirrel she began to laugh, so that the sound is bursting from her Once she’s herself, her laugh is a bright, bursting noise coming from her and it erases the embarrassment she feels at having fallen out of the beetle shape so easily.
Whoever she is she seems delighted to see him, and he cannot help but glow a little brighter at her easy bubbling warmth. “Well you are!” He says in a way that is both gentle and stubborn. But his eyes alight with his own delight at the way she has noticed how like the sun he is. “Just like my dad!” There is an almost shy kind of pride in the way he puffs his little chest at being so physically like his father. “I can also get really warm and walk through things.” He absolutely does not offer to show her the latter because sometimes he misjudges and just ends up walking face first into the trees.
He is momentarily surprised when she pushes so unabashedly close to him, but it passes almost instantly as he is once again distracted by her easy warmth. She is the first anyone he’s met outside of his own family, and the novelty of it blooms an unfamiliar kind of giddiness in his chest that he struggles to keep politely squashed down. “Is it like my glowing?” He asks, and those lapis lazuli eyes immediately move to study her skin a little more closely like maybe he’ll see something if he looks harder.
Which is why he misses her wild grin entirely and has no warning of mischief except for the tail end of her sentence that he dissects too slowly. She shifts, and for a moment he doesn’t understand at all where she’s gone until a beetle bumps into his nose and falls away like a dropped stone. But it lands as a cub, then changes again to a squirrel, and it is all he can do not to stare wide-eyed and mouth partially agape as the squirrel becomes the iridescent blue filly once more. “Woah.” He says, and his voice is harsh like a whisper but not at all quiet. “You almost went up my nose!”
But her laughter is absolutely irresistible and at once his dark face is a crooked grin and shining blue eyes brighter than even the most perfect fall sky. He knows the giddiness he had been trying to hold back is now spilling from him in the laughter that fills the space between them, but he feels surer now that she won’t mind. “That was really cool.” He tells her once the laughter has abated and he instead once more all crooked grins.
“Okay now it’s my turn, but you have to come here and touch my shoulder.” He shifts a little so she can reach more easily, lifting the wing on that side up higher in a way that makes light refract in strange patterns over her iridescent skin. “I promise it won’t hurt!” Mostly because he’s not so good at it yet and the most he can do is match the heat of the sand after it’s been sitting out beneath a noontime sun. “Ready?” He knows he should wait for an answer, but he’s too excited to show her one of his own tricks. So he closes his eyes and focuses really hard until a sensation not unlike friction starts thrumming beneath his skin. “Do you feel it?” His voice is a half-grunt as he peeks an eye open to look at her face as heat flares across his skin.
aeson
though your heart is far too young to realize the unimaginable light you hold inside
She’s distracted enough by investigating the sunny glow to not hear his mention of being able to walk through things - which is probably for the best because that is something Sickle would have immediately demanded a demonstration of. But the glow fascinates her well enough, and she’s enjoying moving her muzzle into the golden light, going cross-eyed with the wanting to see it play across her iridescent coat. When he asks about her glow she replies easily. “No, mine’s pretty but yours is better.” And she doesn’t mind admitting this - her eyes dancing as she does, both blue and orange illuminated by the boy before her.
Sickle is already thinking how she’ll be able to show him once the sun goes down, if she is not beckoned back to her family before then.
Her laughter doubles when he tells her she almost went up his nose and again when he joins her, the sound bubbling out of her in warm bursts before finally fading enough that she can breathe again. The sound fades, but her grin remains bright and blazing.
It’s only fair that it be his turn next and he brings it up before she can - which solidifies her like for him in her mind. She’s already stepping forward again when he tells her to touch his shoulder. And when he tells her that it won’t hurt she shakes her head and informs him seriously “I’m not scared.” And she doesn’t hesitate to press her iridescent muzzle against his shoulder, nodding excitedly when he asks if she’s ready. She isn’t sure what she had been expecting, but the warmth that tickles her nose causes her eyes to widen.
“WOAH!” She exclaims, shifting so she can press her whole cheek against his warm golden skin before pulling back with shining eyes. “That’s super cool! I’ve never seen snow but I’ve heard it’s cold so if it ever shows up, I’m sticking with you.” This is stated matter-of-factly because she’s pretty sure they just became friends. To make it official, she adds “I’m Sickle. Have you been living here this whole time too? How come we haven't met yet?!”
