"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
As the moon shifts away from its embrace with the sun, the northernmost lake in Loess begins to steam. A family of dingos scatters from where they had been drinking, tongues burning from the sudden heat of the water. They yip in fear when the all-consuming darkness splinters in the face of sunlight. The lake begins to froth and boil when the light hits the water’s surface. Its depths abruptly change from ice-cold to burning-hot; while the rest of the world becomes an explosion of color, the lake remains just as inky-black as it has been since the sun first vanished.
In the seconds following the eruption of light, something — rather, someone — emerges from the boiling, black water. It feels much like Tiercel imagines birth must feel like as a newborn; there is deep pressure that aches in his bones along with the sensation of being pulled through a very tight entrance (or exit?). There’s a conflicting feeling as if the place he used to be is tearing at the pieces of him that remain in-between — a desperate, gnarled, bloody hand trying to drag its prisoner back into its torturous chambers.
As his navy muzzle bursts from the water, Tiercel sucks in a breath that finally feels like life. It feels like the first real breath he has taken in over a year, and his lungs fill with joy, so he exhales it into the air. With that first lungful of air, the water ceases to boil. The rest of his face follows, appearing from the dark water like a ghost from the shadows. And though his body aches and burns, Tiercel manages to swim to the shore and weakly stand in the shallows.
The sun warms the air around him, kissing his skin with a blissful heat. As the light hits the water, the dark sucks itself dry from the lake, returning to its rightful place. Tiercel’s navy legs shake, and his nostrils quiver with exhaustion he has felt for the past year. Yet her voice is still in his mind, a metronome against his hazy thoughts. I can’t leave you. I can’t leave you. I can’t leave you.
And his throat, ragged from screaming and crying and pleading and whimpering, whistles air past his mouth to speak her name.
04-12-2021, 08:23 PM (This post was last modified: 04-12-2021, 08:27 PM by Tarian.)
Tarian tries not to think of Lepis often.
He doesn't mean it a sign of disrespect. It's just the oppositive for the silver pegasus - he holds a great deal of it for the former Loessian Queen. But there was an old proverb he had heard once when he had been small, from a story that his grandmother told when he and Liam had still been boys. (Where Tarian had always been quiet and solemn as a colt, Liam had been wild and defiant. Where one brother took his lessons earnestly, the other fidgeted and looked to the horizon. Their parents had learned in those early days to keep both boys still, all it took was a story and who better to tell them than Malachi's mother? The silver mare who had supposedly traveled to a hundred places and told tales such as these: of lands where the world went so frozen and white, that even bears and foxes shed the colors from their coats. Of a place where horses lived on peaks so high - so close to the heavens - that on deep nights, one could hear a star fall and clouds sigh during the day.)
There are many stories that Tarian knows, thanks to the sterling wanderer.
But this proverb has stayed with him from those first days after Paraiso fell to his first battle, when he came back from the fray and a friend did not.
Think too often of the Dead and you invite them to linger.
It's a foolish supersition, he tells himself and his gray ears flick back before coming forward again. It's one befitting of his bloodline - a dynasty of windtalkers and healers and storytellers - but it isn't fitting for serious Tarian who leaves Ashhal with nothing but a few words that he will return and a nod. The gouge on the other pegasus stallion heals but the Champion of Loess would feel better if more experienced eyes would look at it. His knowledge of healing extends only so far as the Eucalyptus leaves that he had found and he can't quite imagine that the grizzled gray would enjoy Tarian wreathing him in its branches.
His thoughts move to the present - on the request that Lady Oceane made of him to journey to the Pampas soon and even spotted Altissima - before they come back to Lepis again. There is much of her story that he does not know and had he not arrived at the end of it, the pegasus would have scoffed at it all. But Tarian was here for the dragon flames and witnessed the death of two former monarchs. It was a story so fantastic that even Aletta would have appreciated it and carried it with her, he thinks, to some far-off jungle or deep valley. To wherever the wandering go (because does a searching soul ever truly stop?)
With the light so newly returned and the dark still too close for comfort, it is easier to consider Lepis and then banish the thought. From what little he had learned of the former Queen, she deserved her peace.
A sound distracts him and then Tarian (unfamiliar with projected magicks, with the way that the joy prickles against his dappled hide and glows against his mind) abruptly stops.
Turning his pale head towards the lake, a blue-and-bronze horse cuts through the surface. It surges to life and this alarms him. His dark nostrils flare before he approaches, allowing the stallion the time he needs to find his legs and the shore. Tarian considers the stranger just as murky as the depths that he has clamored from but his blue eyes don't give that away just yet. Settling his white wings against his broad barrel, he comes to stand directly before the dunskin with a disapproving stare. "Not some kind of kelpie, are you?"
It is a pale face that greets Tiercel, but it isn’t the one he’s hoping to see. She has been in his every waking moment, ever since the rock-beast pushed him off the edge of the ridge and the inky-black lake swallowed him. His memories of the Underworld are stark and full, but Islas’s soft, glowing face brings moments of peace among the pain. Even now: although he’s slipped back into his home-world, the Underworld’s dark hands feel tight and choking in his mind. He aches for Islas, for her quiet understanding and vast emptiness and gentle touch.
There is a moment where all he sees are pale feet, and his heart quickens. At the exact moment, the sun pulls itself into the fibers of his heart and blood vessels, threaded there by the hands of Beqanna. It sends his heart and blood vessels aglow beneath his skin, each heartbeat bringing a pulse of light. The sun’s warmth seeps into Tiercel, but it leaves just as quickly when his eyes meet a disapproving, masculine face.
I can’t leave you. I can’t leave you. I can’t leave you.
He hadn’t been expecting Islas to wait for him on the shore, but the hope of seeing her makes his disappointment feel even sharper. The dun almost misses what Not-Islas says, too consumed by the roar of emotions threatening to overcome him. “No,” he rasps. His pale eyes are pleading. They seem sunken, making the angles of his face jagged and drawing attention to the intense exhaustion that lies there plainly. “Islas,” he says again, and his chest shudders with an emotional exhale. “Where is Islas?”
05-01-2021, 03:55 PM (This post was last modified: 05-01-2021, 03:57 PM by Tarian.)
Sometimes he misses his soldiering days.
Not that he misses the muck and the death, not that he misses living with the very real probability that his career would only end when he finally died on some battlefield. But that lifestyle had been regimented and structured; Tarian recreates it as best he can but Beqanna loves to throw wrenches into his routines.
Settling into a home that very shortly catches on fire. He thought the Alliance would be straightforward - as cut and dry as his early sparring sessions had been - and then the damn sun had burnt out. And then, not only had the world gone dark, but there had been those foul creatures prowling.
Tarian should know better, especially after his experiences with Ashhal and Altissima.
He isn't entirely sure what it has been lately but each patrol or trip he makes, there is something that happens like this. Ashhal had a chunk swallowed by a monster. Altissima looked near-death when he accidentally stumbled across her and this stallion looks no better. He appears like he needs some sort sustenance but he is muttering a name and Tarian lifts his head. He's not familiar with it but if this man had been near Death, it doesn't surprise the pegasus that he's calling out the name of a woman. Most of his wounded comrades - especially the ones closest to their graves - called out the names of their loved ones. Mothers, sisters, aunts, sweethearts.
The silver stallion assumes that this is who 'Islas' is to the dunskin.
"I don't know of any Islas," the gray gruffly admits. "But there are many I do not know in Loess."
The Loessian Champion thinks that the stallion in front of him could use a meal but he doubts that the gold-and-blue will settle until he finds this Islas. There is something in his face that reminds Tarian of the few devoted souls that came looking for his Uncle; they came to his sacred cove to ask questions and search for answers among the stars. It makes him uneasy and so the winged horse shifts his weight while further assessing the stranger with a swift glance. "I am Tarian," he says, "and you are?"
It's an uncomfortable silence that follows but Tarian has never claimed to be a social animal. "If I know who you are, I might have a better of how to find who you're looking for."
Tiercel has never really molded his life around routine. He’s tried establishing something in his life, a way to count the days and bring simplicity into the unruly ocean of his emotions. He’s hoped a routine would help control him and simmer the wilderness that fills him up until he must release it. Yet he never found pleasure in that lifestyle, and he’d always grown bored knowing what the next day would bring.
“More of the same” has never been a phrase Tiercel enjoys saying. The only time he’s appreciated routine is during his stay in the Underworld. Their guardian (though it was more of a torturer) established its pattern with Tiercel and his fellow captive in the early days, when they were still full of hope for escape. And eventually, the pair had fallen in step with the guardian’s actions.
It was ‘more of the same’ during those endless days with the stark, white light blistering his eyes. It was waking to the thousand-eyed creature looming over his rejuvenated body, mouths layered with sharp teeth. It was feeling his skin and bone give way so the creature could pull his heart from its home with a slow slurp. It was watching his heart beat upon a pedestal of black clay, while he is burned or sliced or broken or ripped. Tiercel had never felt relief in a routine until that final, bittersweet moment when the guardian placed its killing blow to that barely-beating heart and the dun could feel a few moments of nothingness.
He would wake every time with her face pressed against the back of his eyelids. Tiercel cannot help but crave Islas now when he knows she is somewhere in this world. The stallion does not know who she is, and Tiercel wants to tell him that she is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, that she’s born from the stars, that she might have his child trailing her heels. Exhaustion keeps his tongue tied and he can only exhale a raspy, “Oh.”
Tarian (the dun-and-navy struggles to catch his name, and he works even harder to lock it away as a memory) asks him who he is. The guardian had asked that same question in the early days of their captivity, with a voice of a hundred voices. “Who are you?” The wrong answer (“Tiercel”) had the consequence of the torture that hurt him the worst. The right answer (“Nothing”) left him tensing for a pain that never came. It didn’t take long for Tiercel or the winged mare to catch on — in this world of bright light and dark clay, they were nothing.
Tiercel flinches instinctively, feeling the word form on his tongue — I am Nothing. He tries to crawl the rest of the way out of the lake instead of answering. He hopes that the guardian cannot reach him on dry ground, though Tiercel’s cerulean eyes still roll toward the depths of the water when he says, “I’m T… Tier — uh, I’m Tiercel.” His muscles shudder, and he uses the last of his energy to skitter further away from the water’s edge. “She’s here, somewhere.”
06-11-2021, 07:28 PM (This post was last modified: 06-11-2021, 07:32 PM by Tarian.)
Death has lingered around Tarian for almost his entire life. (Doesn't it for all mortals?) It has never come for him, even when he had been young and brash and careless with his life. That recklessness had been the reason that he joined the Guard in the first place. The entire regiment had been made of misfits: those that no longer any place to belong. They were the jagged edges of society - the bastards and the castaways and those with nothing left to lose.
Tarian stepped onto the battlefield again and again, hurling himself into the slaughter and carnage. He didn't care.
And yet, for each fight he fought, there was always an after.
A moment where he would stand near the dying; wondering why he stood and they had fallen. In those quiet moments - (or they should be, though there is little peace to found around strewn innards and death cries) - the silver pegasus learned that he could become whatever they needed. They would look at him with some part of their soul already fled, looking back into the past; they would ask Tarian: 'Do you remember?' and he became a face they knew, possibly a face they had loved. A brother, an uncle, a childhood playmate. They would ask if he recalled that day by the river, that moment in the woods. Before they went wherever the departed go, they drifted into the past and Tarian let them take him, too.
Tarian with the deep, serious eyes and a face set in granite would smile a little, something in him breaking: 'How could I forget?'
He can nearly feel Tiercel's disappointment as it hangs heavy in the air. The older stallion doesn't blame him; if Tarian had returned from whatever horrible place that the dun has, he wouldn't want to be greeted by himself, either. For a moment, the gray thinks of dazzling Altissima and his jaw sets firmly. Even if he were to be on the brink of Death, it is not her he should consider. It is Loess.
His blue eyes watch the other stallion, spying some kind of visible battle playing out across his gold-and-navy face.
The other speaks and he nods in acknowledgment of it. @[Tiercel]. His steps are unsteady as he draws away from the water but he finds the ground. Each step he takes is one away from Death and whatever the dunskin needs, the Champion is ready to offer.
"Many took shelter in the hills towards the East," Tarian says, offering a place to start their search. (The location was ironic, given the history between Pangea and Loess.) Those hills had offered secluded canyons to hide in from the monsters while still being near enough to water and some forage to survive. He flares his wings partially, stretching them before settling them easily against his silver sides. "The Queen included," Tarian adds, remembering a ledge that she seemed to favor. "If we can't find her, Lady Oceane will know where to look."
Before getting sucked into the Underworld, Tiercel didn’t think he had a place he could truly call home. Loess had once been home, many years ago, but he had driven himself away from the red clay and canyons before he was barely a man. It had been easy to cut ties with his family, easier than he had expected. He’d fallen into the lifestyle of homelessness, of wandering with little intentions besides survival, of discovering a new place every day until every place became familiar.
Yet somehow he’d made his way back to Loess. And somehow Islas had been among the barbed brush and clear-blue lakes, eyes as empty and dark as a starless night. Tiercel can say that this place is home to him again, though he can’t say if it is because of Loess or Islas. Does he feel relief seeing the rocky kingdom because he knows she is here somewhere or because this place means safety? More than that, is the source of his relief from the simple fact that he is no longer trapped in the Underworld?
Deep down, he thinks Islas is the real reason Loess feels like home. Tiercel thinks that there’s one place she can likely be found, and it’s a place that has visited his dreams frequently during his absence. The cavern comes to his mind immediately when Tarian suggests a place to begin their search. He knows he hasn’t been as active in the kingdom as he could be, especially if he’s going to call Loess home, but he assumes Islas returned to their cave after he vanished.
His heartbeat slows as he watches the lake remain soft and clear, unblemished by any guardian limbs trying to drag him down again. He is truly free. Tiercel turns toward the gray stallion with clearer eyes, despite the exhaustion threatening to pull him to sleep within moments. “I know where to look,” he says with confidence, and it’s a drastic change from just how hesitant he’d been moments before. “Thank you for your help, Tarian. I hope we can meet again, on better terms.” And with a nod, Tiercel turns toward the trail jaggedly cut against the gorge’s walls and heads toward the cavern he’s started calling home.
