[private] like the dawn, you broke the dark [astrophel]

[Solace]

Solace

Hyaline's Caretaker rarely felt the calling to leave her mountainous home, and with the steady stream of visors, she rarely had time to anyway. 

But today, after her morning patrol was completed, she didn't land by the lake to chat and spend the afternoon with the other residents of The Sanctuary - she just kept flying.

She could have asked Kagerus to come with her, or Svedka, but when the noon-day sun began to swing towards the summits she found she wanted to be alone. With every day that passes, it seemed like each of her relationships grew more complicated - overlapping with the others in ways she would have rather not have known about. 

The wounds Castile had placed on her shoulders and neck are still raw, but healing - easy to miss under the dark cascade of her mane and neat, cerulean feathers. But they still embarrass her. It must be easy to guess, she thinks, where one bite on the crest of my neck and a tear on each shoulder came from. 

She nearly feels the urge to explain away the marks to those she met - It's not what you think! - she cringed to herself when she sees someone's glance lingers on her pale shoulders. Despite her title, innocence still clings to the young queen in subtle ways - though she could not see it. 

But now the sun is growing heavily, gaining in size and spilling golden light along the horizon line, and it is about time for her to return home. 

The meadow stretches out below her and she decides to rest and eat before turning back - she had nothing against a moonlit flight. Four bone-white legs touch the earth lightly as she lands. Tucking her wings into their place above her golden topline Solace wades through the fragrant, shoulder-high grasses to finds a thin creek she had spotted from above. 

caretaker of hyaline

@[Astrophel]

[Astrophel]

Once time had no meaning to him. It was a continuous cycle, never beginning or ending. There was something magical about it—a timeless feeling. In those very moments, he had felt completeness. If he knew anything about heaven, he would have surely told you that is where it was. Heaven was among the stars, beyond the clouds and bright blue skies. It was being part of the creation itself, being one with the stars. Yet, time does have a meaning. There is a beginning and end for all things—good and bad. He had learned that eventually after trying to make sense of this world once more. Beqanna was nothing as it was before for him. There were new faces and new lands. Everything was new. The old world he had known vanished away. The very dirt of his home, the Dale, was also gone too. However, his home had never truly been among this earthly world. It was among the stars and galaxies above him. He yearned for them. Even years later he still aches for them—to hear their calls. It was only an empty feeling that buried deep within his heart—a black hole sucking everything into the pit of his stomach. It was sickening almost. Yet, he had to move on. He could not linger within the state of madness and yearning for something he could not simply grasp and hold onto. So he made a home for himself, somewhere in between no man’s land and Tephra. The edge of Beqanna had become his hide away. He promised himself he would return to the stars just as he had found his way among them before. Someday he would be there again. Astrophel muddles through his mind, thoughts scattered here and there, as he makes his way across the familiar meadow. He can feel the heat of the summer sun dwindling away. The light of the world fading away, as the night takes over. The night is when most huddle together, slumbering into dreams, but it is the hours of the night that he comes alive. It is the flapping of wings—a distant memory fills his mind of his own father’s wings for a moment—that draws him back to reality. His bright blue eyes search the tall grass that lays out before him. The sunlight is almost gone, barely lining the horizon. It almost seems impossible to find anyone, but he finds the winged mare. He ponders for a moment, deciding whether or not he should approach her. It seemed silly not to, he decides, after justifying his decision while she stood at the creek not far off from where he stood. The cremello boy moves towards her. Each step is soft against the shoulder-high grass, but he does not let it conceal himself in the night. Then again, he is easily spotted in the dark. He stands out like the stars do in the black of the night. When he reaches a suitable distance to her he stops. “Hello,” he says breaking what silence she might have had. “Are you often a night-dweller?” He asks with a simple tilt of his head, a boyish grin growing across his young adult face.

character info: here | character reference: here
@[Solace]

[Solace]

Solace

She is a child of the New World; she had been birthed into the warmth of Tephra's tropical confines and reached adulthood in the violet shade of Hyaline's wisteria trees. The Old Beqanna is nothing more than a story to her, distant and mythical as the wheeling stars overhead and the bottom of the churning ocean. It was a story to learn from - but little more. She had her own small collection of losses and disappointments to nurse when dawn was hard to find.

Solace's delicate face rises away from the meadow stream and she realizes she is not alone. The stranger who approaches her is hard to miss, his pale from sliding between the grasses in a way which lets her know he is at home here. She watches him boldly, but he does not change his path, and as he nears she lets her weight sink lazily into one hip. 

"No," she answers, although her eyes sparkle in a way which insinuates yes. "I don't like the dark," she adds, further contradicting the half-smile she is giving the strange boy. 

In the middle of the meadow, with droplets of moonlight reflecting off her pale feathers, she is nothing more than a girl far away from home - and the cheeky tilt of his head draws her closer. She licks her peachy-blush lips, removing from them the droplets of river-water which lingered there as she steps forward. One stride brings her just to the inside of what would generally be considered his personal space.

She doesn't give her name - it carries more weight than she wishes it did- and she doesn't want to be the poised queen now. But something about him, something distant in his gaze, makes her wonder if he would even be able to name one reigning monarch. He must be a wanderer, like Svedka, she thinks as the cool, dusky breeze brings her his wild scent.  

"But I take it you are..."

caretaker of hyaline

@[Astrophel]

[Astrophel]

The new world had been enticing when he had found himself back into the earthly world. He found himself awestruck about the way everything had fell back into place after the world he had knew had been torn. The boy had become child-like in his way of looking at the world again in wonder, as if he had been among the stars for the first time. But this world would never be like the stars. It likely would never fill the small black void he continues to try and fill. Fill, fill, and fill. It’s all he can try and do. Her smile gives away something else than her words do. It brings a playful grin to his lips. “You are missing out then,” he says, playing along with her words. “There is much that happens at night while others slumber.” There are things that others do not see—the good also roams the night, being watchful of all that comes and goes. The dark was certainly nothing to be afraid of. The boy watches as she takes a step forward. He inhales her scent deeply. It smells of a world he might have crossed at one point when learning of these new lands he had fallen back into. A place he might have travelled to understand what he was to call home again. She carried a scent that remained him of the Dale, something distant but familiar that was tangled in her mane and thick on her splashed buckskin body. He is lost in what she says. The smell of her is enticing. A sense of warmth fills him—something that urges him to hold onto, to not let slip away. It calls to fill the black void within him. Astrophel grins at her, a boyish smile barely touching the corners of his creamed lips. “Yes,” he says softly at first, “I am.” He shakes his head a bit, pulling himself upright a bit as he fully realizes how close the stranger is to him now. He doesn't care to pull away from her as he might have before with a stranger. There was something wrong, but felt right to have someone close to him again. The comfort of another, or the recklessness of having a stranger so close to him, he did not know. But it was not just anyone—she was someone while he was certainly no one compared to her. He lacks this information though. They are simply strangers together; nothing else, and maybe will always be that.

character info: here | character reference: here
@[Solace]

[Solace]

---

Solace

. . .

He returns her banter with easy-going familiarity, and Solace feels whatever was left of her usual self-protection slipping away. In Hyaline she was surrounded by the same faces every day, and while she loved these faces (she would protect them with her life if it was necessary) finding a charming stranger in the starlight gave her a unique thrill. She had a home, a beautiful home, but she had come here to get away, hadn't she? Doubts flick across her mind, but they are fleeting and do not dim the sparkle in her blue eyes.

Remember last time you fell for a stranger in the woods? Her inner voice scolds. Three years of questions and a bloodthirsty dragon on your back was what that got you.

But there is youthfulness to this stallion that is easy to trust, and the way he seems to lose himself in her eyes is like a drug. She had never used her femininity in this way before, and the sensual curiosity makes her reckless.

It's then, as she is about to move forward once again, that she recognizes a scent from her childhood. It clings to him, close to the skin where the intimate, hard to shake scents clung. She knows it, and the mystery of that scent is distracting.

Her mother had brought that fragrance home once. She slipped away one autumn night, leaving Solace and Svedka sleeping alone under Tephra's coconut palms. Solace hadn't slept that night, at six months old when she was left the guardian of her twin without a parting word, and she had been sure her mother was never coming back. Tangerine had returned, in the pre-dawn hours, with a wound on her neck and the scent of sex and stardust on her skin.

But Solace had never again found that scent, the ionized scent of the heavens, until now.

"Where are you from?" She asks in a more straightforward tone than before. She looks him over in the way she often evaluates strangers, trying to guess where she may know him from. "I feel like I know that scent... but I can't quite place it."

[Astrophel]

Perhaps he is too naïve of the world (a young heart, and mind is all he has) to notice what he is doing. He doesn’t know the repercussions this moon-lit night will have. Will the memories of her fill his aching void for only a time? He hardly knows what he is searching for either. It is only here he has his eyes on. And god damn, he does not want to take them off of her. There is something about her, the way she falls away from what might hold her back. It feels alluring, and he wants to fall right into it. He wants to become entangled into this feeling he has found around her. It feels familiar, but somewhat strange. He is clearly lying to himself without really knowing it. Fooling himself to the point that she is the same as the stars—the feeling of completeness that the heavens above had given him. There never would be anything in this earthly world that would give him what he most desperately wants and searched for. She would not be enough. Astrophel peers at her curiously, his crystalized blue eyes studying the way she looks and shifts at him. There is something that changes within her, he isn’t sure what exactly, but something the way his scent brings a memory to her. The question isn’t a rather simple one she asks him. How could he explain where he is from? It is quite obvious to his knowledge he had been born in Beqanna, but the heavens above are a place he has found to be his true home. The galaxies and nebulas is where he should have been born, and remained there forever—to be part of their life and death. A soft touches his lips in reply to her question. He cannot help but to think happily of the place he longed for even if the memories and his strongest desire to return there haunt him this very moment. Astrophel turns to look above them. The moonlights up the sky, but it is the stars that is shown in their glory. “There,” he says in awe, “I came from the stars.” He realizes, suddenly, what her last words were. “Wait,” he asks, his eyes light up with eagerness. “What do you mean you know the scent?” He steps forward, he must know. He has to know where she knows it from. Was she the key to his homecoming? “Tell me,” he begs, “Please, I need to know.”

character info: here | character reference: here
@[Solace]

[Solace]

---

Solace

. . .

He thinks about her question longer than most do, and she waits with more anticipation than she has felt before for this routine topic of conversation. It was a common question, which usually received a quick, predictable answer - but he is different. 

With his wistful eyes turned skyward, Solace takes a moment to study his upturned face as he searches for his answer in the constellations. But before she has time to be amazed by his words (they are as unexpected as they are unconventional) his pleading voice has moved on to questions her, and Solace is suddenly afraid she will disappoint the other-worldly stallion. 

"My mother," the pale mare replies apologetically. She sifts through the vague and half-forgotten memories of her childhood, reaching for clarity but finding none. "But it was only once, I'm sorry, I can't really remember... " her voice fades as she evades his eager gaze by turning her round, blue eyes skyward. 

"It was a long time ago," she sighs.

Solace's thoughts return to his unusual answer to her first question as her gaze again finds the line of his face. She realizes with a heavy beat of her heart that he has stepped closer, that there is barely a breath of night air between them. In the quiet which grows, her cerulean feathers rustle as she brings them tighter against her sides.  "I've only ever been as high as the clouds," she muses, as a soft smile returns to her lips. "It must be wonderful to fly among the stars."

She doesn't doubt the nameless stranger, the thought that he is telling anything other than the truth never crosses her mind. When he spoke of the stars there had been a depth of feeling in his voice that was hard to fake - there was love. 

 "I'm Solace, by the way."

[Astrophel]

He is used to disappointment. It isn’t the disappointment from others he mostly feels, but the disappointment within himself. Astrophel allows himself to get caught up in the moment. Every time there is a bit of hint into returning to the stars he has gone all the way in, believing with his whole heart that this is the answer. Every time the end of his searching, his quest, is not there. And every time after seems like it will always be a disappointment. The star boy listens with eagerness, but he can already tell by the mare’s words and expression it is a dead end. Astrophel sighs softly, watching as she turns her gaze away from him. He is silent for a moment, considering what she has said and scrambling through his jumbled thoughts. “It’s okay,” he says finally. “I cannot put too much trust in others to be the answer to my problem,” he says. It is more of a thought stated out loud to himself than anything. Astrophel cannot help the longing he feels to return to the stars. It feels as if he is not himself, his identity is stolen. He doesn’t know who he is anymore without them, without being part of the celestial matter itself that made him who he is today. Her gaze returns him, and he dares not look away now. Although he is unaware of his distance close to her—he has always been unaware of such manners. It her soft smile and next words that bring one to his cremello lips as well. Astrophel found happiness in speaking about this topic all too well. “It was nothing like before,” he says in a reply back to her. “Before I went to live among the celestial, I lived my entire life not knowing who I truly was. It was them that gave me my ability,” he pauses for a moment, “My identity, my life.” But they are now gone, and even with his star magic he has found no way to reunite with them. Love—perhaps that is what he felt for them. It was a love he knew like no other. The celestial had given him more of a love than his mother could, perhaps even his own father too. “The clouds are never the limit,” he says with another smile, a boyish grin this time. “Perhaps one day you will fly among the stars too.” Astrophel did not limit himself to such things, why should she? The mare finally identifies herself. She is no longer a stranger of the night, but giving him a piece of her (still he knows nothing of her ruling, simply she is just as she is—Solace). “It’s nice to put a name to your face now, Solace.” A name he would not forget since this night by far has been a pleasant one for him more than many others. “I am Astrophel.” The lover of stars. “Where do you come from?” He asks with a tilt of his head. Maybe he would get more than just a name out of her.

character info: here | character reference: here
@[Solace]

[Solace]

---

Solace

. . .

She allows herself to fall into his story, his reality could only be a fantasy for her. The constellations had been like a companion to her in her childhood, her mother and father both had often turned their faces skyward as soon as the hazy twilight had descended over Tephra. Solace had never been one to seek out adventure, but she could lose herself in the stars when Warrick had told her his stories. Never had she thought of weaving between the stars as she did the wisteria trees of Hyaline, but the reverence in his voice made her feel like an unmoored filly, ready to fall victim to a whim.

"Perhaps one day you will fly among the stars too."

At this suggestion, her smile grows a little bitter-sweet, and his comment works to settle her. 

"Hmm," she agrees, "One day I may, but not in the same way you do." Many of those stories her father had told her ended the same way - the hero made the ultimate sacrifice, and his soul to found it's way skyward to materialize as a brilliant new star.  

She hadn't given much thought to those stories once she left her parents to find her own way, but now that she is thinking about it as an adult, she hopes in some fashion they are true.  The nostalgia stings, and with it comes a thin wisp of dread for the day when her father will become a character in one of these stories of star-bound heroes. 

"Astrophel," she repeats so she will not forget it. Shaking her head, she clears her thoughts and tosses half her tri-colored forelock over one ear. 

"Hyaline is my home, the mountain kingdom to the west,"  she says with a nod in that direction. Her suspicion that he was not quite of this world had been correct it seemed, and she doesn't want to make assumptions about his knowledge of Beqanna's current geography. "We are a sanctuary kingdom, and I am the Caretaker there." 

She watches him carefully for a moment, not ready to leave him standing in the meadow alone and so ethereal. "I would love to show you," she adds, almost cautiously. " It's the most beautiful place this side of the stars, and maybe someday you could show me your home."