"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
The singing her her bones grows stronger as she makes her way down the beach. It draws her in, pulling her towards a seaside cave that she has passed a dozen times in the last few weeks. It looks no different than it ever has, but she is pulled in regardless.
Her hooves make a hollow tapping on the damp stone, and she continues on even when the light from the entrance has faded entirely. Djinni trusts her hooves and her heart, and when at last she begins to doubt herself, she feels it.
It is not a familiar sensation. Too much time has passed for that. As a newborn, the sensation had been overwhelming; it is no less so for her as an adult. There is a bubble of laughter as the air around her burns with a smokeless fire and then...nothing.
Djinni is left alone, seemingly no different than she had been a moment before.
Yet as she turns her head, she hears a soft clink, and she raises her front hoof to turn back towards the see and there is a long-absent jingle. The chains around her hooves - always more decorative than captive - have returned.
With a burst of joyous laughter, Djinni disappears in a puff of yellow sand, appearing instantaneously at the mouth of the cave. It looks just as dull as it always has, but Djinni knows better. Her djinn was here, comfortable enough in this seaside cave to return what it had granted her decades earlier. She has not been abandoned; in turn she cannot abandon this place where her magick has returned to her.
A maze of caverns – some underwater during high tide, others are dry, but separated by a channel from the main beach – still others are simply there, though the Sisterhood is still small enough that they are rarely occupied. Lagertha rests in a smaller cave, one just beyond the hole that Djinni seeks. She is still half-damp, her mane stiff and matted with sediment stirred up by her hooves. Swimming is excellent exercise, and in this heat it feels quite refreshing. The thirst afterwards is annoying, but some things can’t be helped.
The scarred General had every intention of ignoring whomever it was that came to the cave beside her, but the joyful laugh piques her interest. Whomever it is seems to be elated – and then there is a soft, barely-heart tinkling. Her ears flicker towards the opening and to the right, and Lagertha comes to the mouth of the cave. She’s missed the magical poof, but finds Djinni standing there, the glint of the chains around her hooves catching her eye. How odd (but perhaps no more odd than the crown of thorns around her thigh). Were those there before? She found the woman intriguing, and knows that she possesses a unique perspective on how the past couple of months have gone. Which is vital information for leaders.
“What’s the occasion?” she asks the grulla mare, while a light-hearted, curious smile spreads across her face. Yes. Lagertha does indeed smile. Occasionally.
"I was starting to think you didn't know how to smile," Djinni says, the teasing tone of her voice clearly lighthearted and well-intentioned. She has turned to see the scarred General approaching, shifting her position in the sand to better face the taler mare. The first time she had met Lagertha, the scowling mare had left immediately for a nap, and the second time she'd barely stuck around long enough to instruct Djinni to lead a stranger back to the coast. Neither meeting had cemented and opinion of the steel grey mare in Djinni's mind, but she is pleasantly surprised to discover that the other mare can, indeed, smile.
She's not forgotten the question that Lagertha had asked, but it is not in her nature to be entirely forthcoming. instead, she turns her grullo coat a pale shade of coral (complete with darker primitive markings and tobiano splash across her withers) in less than the time it take her to say: "I just got back something that I'd lost."
Lagertha purposefully pauses, dropping the smile and reverting back to her stone-faced mask. Just for a moment. Then she chuckles and lifts her shoulders to a slight shrug. “I do have a certain reputation to maintain… whatever would they do if the Stern Old General suddenly started smiling all the time?” And there is some truth in what she says; it is an image which she has cultivated as much as it was thrust upon her, through the circumstances of her reign. There were those who knew the softness behind the hard lines, but those few have either died or disappeared. With that little tidbit in mind, what reason had Lagertha to try and alter her resting bitch face? There is a lone individual she would like to continue to make a good impression on - and she sees them only every once in a blue moon.
At least her armor is back. The Iron Lady feels as much at home in her steel spikes as she does in bare skin. And it’s saved her ass a hundred times over. She she can imagine the relief Djinni feels at finding whatever it is she’d lost.
The gray mare huh’s in the back of her throat, tilting her head a little to one side to take in the new shade of Djinni. “Lovely.” Every now and then, Lagertha has privately wished that she might be a little more.. Exotic. Her horns had been a fun change of pace, even if they were always getting caught on low hanging vines and branches. She’d seen her reflection in the river and loved every bit of fierceness it projected. But we are not here to talk about Lagertha and her many shades of gray. “Glad you’ve found it again, then.” She takes a couple more steps out of the mouth of the cave and towards her fellow gray (now coral). “So. How have you found the Sisterhood? I’d like to hear your honest opinion, if you don’t mind.”
Because unlike some, she can take criticism with a stiff upper lip.
It has been a long time since Djinni has had something close to a friend in Beqanna. but as Lagertha's face returns to its stoney expression, the grullo mare suspects that perhaps she might be close to making one.
"Kick you out, I'm sure" she replies with an equally serious expression, "Everyone knows a good warrior never smiles."
Stereotypes have never been particularly interesting to Djinni ,but she knows that one for sure to be false. Though she's far from skilled herself, she's spent time with enough veterans to know that humor is often the only thing that keeps them going.
She nods, accepting the compliment graciously, and again to agree that yes -she is glad she's found it again. There is nothing quite like feeling whole after being empty for so long.
Lagertha asks how she thinks of the Sisterhood, and Djinni takes her time to answer. This is not like her quiet chat with Vakarian, where the two mares had spoken freely. No, this is one of three ranking leaders; Djinni is inclined to tread cautiously.
"It's not what I expected." She finally says, keeping her tone neutral and her eyes on the sea.
"I'd heard that stallions had been allowed before the Change, which never seemed quite right. What is the point of a sisterhood with so many brothers?" The last question is rhetorical; she doesn't really expect Lagertha to answer, and that is clear in the way she continues on. "That doesn't seem to have changed at all with the creation of Nerine. I'd hoped that we might revert to the origins of the Amazons, but it seems the intention of the leadership to blue all lines of gender."
There is nothing in her tone to indicate her own opinions on the matter. Djinni, it seems, could not car any less what direction the sisterhood took. That is, until she adds:
"I do wish it could be a haven for women again, like it was in the stories of my childhood."