"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
08-24-2021, 01:18 PM (This post was last modified: 08-24-2021, 01:18 PM by Cheri.)
Flying home from the Northern territories, Cheri decided to drop out of the sky and land inside the Forest for a break. Not that she was tired - she hardly ever grew tired anymore and never really felt the urge to sleep, though sometimes she did because it felt strange not to. She came to the crowded, shadowy woodland in order to pass some time before returning to Loess. On her previous visits there’d always been something to enthrall her for a little while, and as she folded her wings carefully into her sides the slender pegasus believed this time wouldn’t be any different from the last.
Walking underneath the autumn boughs reminded her of Anubias, the dreamy stallion with a coat like polished green metal. She wondered how he and Creature were faring together out in the wilderness, suspecting that both were fine and happy. It’d been some time since she’d last met with the pair and she made a note to remedy that.
Soon enough her quiet journey led Cheri deeper into the heartswood, where the air felt frigid to the touch and the communal chatter of forest animals had dimmed. This was not the exact place she’d met with Sorren, but it was close in appearance. At the base of a twisted, elder oak she stopped and lifted her head to the sky, the memory of their encounter fresh in her thoughts. She smiled.
Behind her something skittered through the underbrush and she turned, curious, to see what it was. Her vision only caught the light of a faint blue glow before it disappeared. Not one to be disappointed, she took off through the woods in chase of the magical creature, twisting her way past the cluttered trees and leaping over uneven ground. At every turn the blue glow avoided her capture which only increased the young immortal’s desire to hunt it down, their speed increasing relative to one another until the world was but a blur around them, then Cheri turned a corner and slid angrily to a halt.
The glow had disappeared.
Suspiciously, the black mare held her ground. She flicked her ears and shifted her eyes left to right, combing the silent forest for any signs of life. Nothing.
that day even the sun was afraid of you and the weight you carried
His magic is a constant ache between his shoulders, but none more so than during the day. It begins like a dull throbbing behind his eyes and it slowly grows the longer that the sun hangs in the sky. It expands and expands, feeding on itself in an endless loop—until he is nearly blind with the agony of it. He does his best to expend small pieces of energy, which he finds helps. Small bits of magic that twist and turn and are a release valve, but the light always ends up agonizing regardless, and he does not learn to cope.
So when dusk comes, Firion always finds himself wound tight. The tension fizzles along the surface of him and there is a desperation to sink into the night. To cut his teeth on the evening hours until all of his magic has righted himself, the world has turned upright, and he is himself again.
Tonight, it occurs in the form of a chase.
As the sun begins to make its descent, he swallows himself up and turns into a floating ball of flame. Burning blue, he bobs and weaves through the forest, all the pieces of him roaring to life with every second that he floats along. And when he feels the presence of another give chase, he is spurred into life. He moves faster and faster, thrilled to find that the other keeps pace with him, pushes him onward.
He could fly for hours, he thinks, nearly dizzy with relief as the energy that has simmered within him all day finally finds reprieve. As he shoots around a corner, he continues, never giving pause but realizing too late that he had pinched the path before him and teleported to the end of the forest. Bobbing in the air for several seconds, contemplative, he reaches out with his magic, sending the shadows skittering forward. He waits for a moment, then two, until the answer comes back to him and then pops back toward her.
This time as one of the shadows stretching long and forward before her.
He arrives just in time to hear her whisper and the more playful aspect of his personality sparks to life. If he could grin, he would, but instead he just lets his voice whisper through her mind.
“Only the ones that I can win.”
And if she were to pay attention, perhaps she would notice the shadows warp unnaturally.
Perhaps.
so you saluted every ghost you've ever prayed to and then buried it where bones are buried
It was legend that the Forest of Beqanna housed dark and dangerous secrets near its center. Young colts and fillies were warned not to stray from their parent's side when walking through, and the bands of nomadic horses living outside the kingdom territories told fantastic tales of delight whenever they agreed to stop overnight in Taiga at her father’s behest. Cheri remembered coming here herself many times as a young foal - the most vivid of those being her journey up the river with Anubias after the Eclipse had covered the sun. The Forest always drew her in and it never served to disappoint.
This instance was no different from the others, but it quickly took a turn of intrigue to become one of the more exciting ventures when a voice filtered through her head.
Stupidly she turned to look behind her, hoping to catch a glimpse of either the blue orb or the horse responsible for magical antics, but instead she found nothing. Just as quickly she returned to looking ahead, wondering if it was the hours passing by that made the woods seem a bit darker or if it was something else.
Either way she was cautiously intrigued. Her posture relaxed and the appaloosa slid her pink quartz hooves carefully across the leaf-littered ground, drawing them closer to one another so she could stand upright and collect herself. The dim light of her markings and the faint green glow surrounding her wings hummed brighter, not quite so glaring but certainly enough to turn her dark curves into sharp illuminations. Aided by the luminosity, her crystal surfaces caught and reflected the beacons with glittering, winking sparks.
“Have we met before?” She asked aloud, comforted by the sound of her own voice unaltered and clear as ever. There’d been something about his tone … something that’d immediately registered with Cheri though she couldn’t quite place the strange speech. Familiar, almost as if she’d heard it before somewhere. Intuition told her to listen carefully this time around, so the pegasus refrained asking any further questions and decided to wait quietly, invested in the quarry she still felt an urge to capture.
Firion had become that dark, dangerous secret too young to worry about what else the Forest may hold. He was the thing that stumbled through the dark—gnashing his teeth and hunting for things that would make his stomach turn when in his right mind. He found that he far preferred to be this kind of secret. The kind that skittered along the shadows—that followed young magicians like Cheri. That whispered in her mind and then floated away, watching from afar with keen eyes despite the darkness surrounding them.
He feels her curiosity and the fact that she is not afraid stirs his excitement.
He was tired of being the thing that others were frightened of.
As if in response to the thought, he sends out a wave of that excitement toward her. A feeling of coy intrigue. Of playfulness. Of his own curiosity. It wasn’t an invasive emotion, but it was a signal toward her that, at least tonight, he was not anything that she would need to fear—would need to fight.
“I think I would remember meeting you,” his voice whispers into her mind once more, a dark chuckle near the end of it. As the shadows once more, he winds toward one of the trees and then rises up it, skirting along the branches so that he can get a better vantage point. When there, he shifts into something slightly more tangible, a lizard whose feet stick to the wood, gripping it easily.
His still unnamed companion slinks behind him, refusing to take a form as though it could voice its disapproval of his antics by not partaking. Firion’s amusement is not affected. “You look like a beacon in the middle of the Forest,” he remarks from above, the wind the only sound around them. Angling his reptilian head and looking down, he stays quiet once more, wondering how she would react.
so as our grief falls flat and hollow upon a billion blooded seas all our worst ideas are borrowed (you do and don't belong to me)
It’d been so long since anyone had pressed their feelings into Cheri. The unseen thing she was hunting down couldn’t have possibly known her upbringing (she thought) and he’d found the right one to magically express himself to. The glowing pegasus actually leaned into the sensations, tasting them like a child torn from her home and starving for a sample of something her parents used to whip up for dinner. She inhaled and breathed a sweetened “ahh” into the shadows.
His dish was exquisite. Intrigue, playfulness, a parallel curiosity to top things off. The emotions heightened her palate and soothed her thoughts; Cheri allowed the foreign energy to alter her state of mind, smiling in response.
She liked where this was going. Even better, the sound of his equally disjointed voice murmuring through her consciousness brought up a nearly-forgotten memory. “Distraction,” she thought. The way he spoke reminded her of a single word, but the meaning or reason behind it no longer intrigued her as much as his next comment did.
“I don’t shine half as bright in the light.” She assured him, appreciative of the compliment if, in fact, he intended it to be one. It was only the dark that allowed her to beam, and for that reason Cheri harbored a healthy respect for the witching hours. Some would say nothing good came after night; the Loessian mare thought it was a shame to waste more than half of any given day. After all, there were certain things that only revealed themselves once the sun had set, and she lifted her chin toward one of them - a lizard, peering down from the crowning branches of a tree towering over her.
“Won’t you scuttle closer?” Cheri asked, advancing until her stone hooves touched the roots of the mighty forest timber. “I enjoyed your empathy. Very nice work - It’s been a while since I crossed paths with such a talented weaver.” She told him. A compliment for a compliment.
He grins as much as a lizard is able to grin, his reptilian eyes bright with amusement. “I doubt that you do anything but shine bright,” he whispers in her mind, the words husky, but at her request and upon her finding him, he gladly obeys. With a small flash of smoke, he disappears, a similar one appearing several feet from her. Once it clears, Firion is standing there in his regular form. The gold glinting barely in the dim light, his eyes just as bright as before, the golden and onyx hair roping over a shoulder.
“I have never been complimented on my empathy before,” this time his voice ringing through the distance between them, and there is something ironic in the twist of his mouth. “The comments I usually get are the opposite.” He finds that he doesn’t mind it though—this idea that he might be talented at the very emotions that he usually bumbles so poorly, tangling them up until they cannot be comprehended.
He takes a step closer, unabashedly studying the magician before him—feeling that crackle of her own power in the air. His own magic slips from him as if to weave amongst her own, observing it the way that he observes her now. The magic weaves around and through her own as he takes in the jewels and the wings, the brightness of the mare with the glint in her eye. “What brings you to the forest today?”
There is a half-smile, his eyes sparking.
“Surely it wasn’t to chase down a lizard in a tree.”
so as our grief falls flat and hollow upon a billion blooded seas all our worst ideas are borrowed (you do and don't belong to me)
Stranger and stranger still, the hundred acre wood of Beqanna finally produced an odd stallion for Cheri. It was a he, or at least the form he took confirmed her suspicion of his general sex. With powers like his she reasoned anything about him could be fluid, though. In the short span of time they’d spent with each other he’d already gone from glowing orb, to reptilian, to natural equid shape. Impressive was a word that scratched the surface of his personality. With the wide flash of her eyes Cheri considered him and then shook her head gently, a habitual response so she could see him more clearly from underneath the curtain of green forelock covering her face.
At that moment, something entirely unexpected happened. For the very first time Cheri felt it - the sense she’d spoken to Reave about, the quiet humming at the very edges of her awareness - press up against Firion’s and curl like a living thing. It was the most peculiar sensation she’d ever experienced, and Cheri admittedly caught herself stupefied by it.
“What is that?” She murmured, spellbound by the look in his eyes. Had he been asking her something? She wasn’t sure.
Then she recalled his words, the forest; what brought her here. That’s what he wanted to know, she remembered with a fluttering blink or two. Firion was right, she hadn’t come all this way to chase down lizards in trees. The wandering mare had come here in search of adventure, perhaps a way to satiate her restlessness. A single glance in his direction and the charming shifter would be able to tell how satisfied Cheri was with the outcome of her efforts.
“I didn’t have anything particular in mind when I touched down.” Nothing like what was unfolding, anyways. “Why do you ask?” She smiled. “Have you got any plans?”
