"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
amanita
in the middle of the night - i go walking in my dreams
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It was the scent of pine and death that drew her.
Familiar. Comfortable. Her mother, who smelled of pine, had trudged to the beach to deliver her last child and died within days of the birth. And there Amanita had remained for some time after. Nudging the body, confused, curious. Soon she had been forced to leave, sustenance was required if she didn’t want to join the red mare. But her death had stuck with the filly and ever after that she would believe she’d see her dead mother or another of the bodies she’d encountered in her journey out of the Beach, just out of sight, hiding in the shadows. For a long time they were the only constant in her life. Those shadowy figures that danced just out of sight.
At least until he came. Her mind shied away from the name, for it would only leave her wanting. Then he was her constant, though she never forgot them. The visions of dead dancing in her head. When he drifted out of her life they came again. For a while she felt as if she was in-between life and death. Existing on the fringes. Never drawing closer. Until one day she shook off the cobwebs and crept from the shadows.
Almost nothing was the same. The land she knew had buckled beneath the weight of the injustice the residents had heaped upon it. She had found comfort in the Meadow. Familiar she had hesitated to venture beyond the borders, unsure of what she would find. No Dewdrop Deserts, no Chamber. But, as she flitted between the new territories the scent of pine had tugged her nose and more fiercely at her blood. As she had come closer it seemed that once again the inhabitants had wrought disaster and most of what she found was ruin. Yet somehow that suited her just fine.
She dug her nose down into the blanket of pine that somehow decorated the floor of a forest covered in redwoods. Familiar. Comforting. The red and black mare dropped to her knees and rolled to her side crushing the pine beneath her heavy body. She stretched her legs out and sighed happily. It had been long since she felt this content.
She, too, has found a deep comfort in this dark place.
It is similar enough to the land of her birth – the Forbidden Dale – that she feels a warm nostalgia soaking her lungs when she breathes in the crisp air. The splendor of the many shades of green reminds her of the saturated forests that once ringed the great mountains, the way they then diluted down under the cover of night. It is not nearly as open here, though. Often, Titanya feels squeezed by the way the trees gather around her. She misses the reaching sky of the prairie when she had been wild and free. But, she remembers that freedom had felt more like running, escaping. Freedom had meant the world was safe from the seal lodged within her breast, but she herself was alone – would always be alone. Every time she remembers her life outside of Beqanna, she shudders. She feels no remorse for coming back.
She is only glad to be home.
Even if home looks quite different than it used to. The dark mare noses the earth at her feet. It still has that acrid scent of burnt foliage, but it is becoming less so. More and more, there is the smell of healing rising into her nostrils alongside it; of heady, rich dirt that will one day sustain their environment. After all, such devastation and rebirth is necessary for a healthy forest. It is only the cause that had been unnatural, or rather supernatural (if the stories are to be believed). Titanya huffs and dislodges a small cloud of dust before lifting her head to peer into the shadows ahead.
It is eerily quiet.
Terran hadn’t prepared her for this fact. She is used to chaos and motion. Here, she is forced into silent reflection and meditation that unnerves her to her core. Her mother would say it is probably for the best. Rounding one’s talents and interests is the epitome of an ideal individual.“Blah, blah, blah,” the sabino says out loud, to no one in particular, hearing Talulah’s chiding voice in her head. The nearest tree suddenly becomes as dense as a cloud. With sudden violence, Titanya leaps and kicks out with her hindlegs, landing a fatal blow on the rising oak. It crashes down, hitting one, two, three other trees on its haphazard path to Taiga’s floor.
She is smiling even before she turns around, a devilish grin softening her angular face. When she does spin her body to face the destruction, she startles to see another mare laying down nearby. “Shit!” Her smile disappears as she rushes over. “Shitshitshit!” When she is close enough to realize the tree is blessedly far enough away not to bludgeon the stranger to death, she sighs loudly. The red and black mare seems unhurt, but who knows if an errant branch smacked her on the way to its earthy grave. “Are you okay? Man! I didn’t see anyone around!” “I’m sorry” doesn’t even cross her mind, not at first. She’s too high on the adrenaline that pumps through her veins. It’s been so long since her heartbeat raced so fast. And while she’s glad the other seems all right (she would have felt like a real asshole if the lady’s head now resembled a smashed and rotting apple), she did have to say she enjoyed it. Every bit of it.
War purrs in her chest.
Titanya
I've got no roots,
but my home was never on the ground
02-13-2018, 06:03 PM (This post was last modified: 02-13-2018, 06:04 PM by Amanita.)
amanita
in the middle of the night - i go walking in my dreams
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She wasn’t sure how long she lay like a fallen tree on the familiar bed of pine needles. The light had perhaps grown dimmer but she wasn’t really sure. Her mind had been occupied running through familiar faces of her past. Long dead ghosts or at very least, long disappeared. Sometimes she felt ready to join them, she wasn’t that old, but her soul felt so unattached to the body that held it.
A voice broke her out of her reminiscing. One ear flickered in that direction though she didn’t bother to get up. Even as a resounding crack rang through the quiet that had been the forest she still could not be summon the resolve to move. Instead she rolled her eyes in the direction of the noise and whuffed softly. Additional crashes made her close her eyes in the event of spraying dirt and dust. Her ears spun again as the sound of hoofbeats and that same voice drew nearer.
Green eyes popped open to stare at the mare above her who she studied intensely for a long moment. Without her knowing, just like Merrik in the Meadow, this was yet another distant relative. Perhaps something in the face of the unnamed girl, who had apparently caused the ruckus around her, was familiar because she knows she studied her for far longer than was polite. What she couldn’t know is that many years ago she helped hold this very mare’s grandfather hostage in revenge for her sister’s death. What a meeting that might have been. But, that piece of knowledge was most likely lost to history.
“You make a lot of noise.” Amanita eventually observed without inflection and still laying on the ground. She paused for another moment before rolling to gather her legs underneath and push herself upright. Another moment was taken to shake some of the needles from her reddish coat and tangle of black curls. “Yes, fine.” She looked around to see the fallen trees and her eyes became quizzical. She gestured with her muzzle, “quite the feat.” It seemed everyone she met lately had some sort of gift, save a few. It did make coming back from the outskirts of Beqanna quite interesting to say the least.
“Do you live here? Does anyone?” The crimson mare glanced around the surrounding area, she was almost certain there were few signs of life when she had entered the borders and most of it still seemed quiet. However, she hadn’t ever known a piece of the land to be completely uninhabited. Unless there was more at work here that she was not seeing.
