"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
02-04-2019, 12:07 AM (This post was last modified: 02-04-2019, 12:08 AM by Sarkis.)
Sarkis
i won't be the one to let you go.
She shakes the past few weeks away from her mind as if she were peeling back a film from her eyes.
She had been locked in time, kept away from her home and her mother and her family for too long. It is only recently – a year? A year and a half? – that she had returned to Nerine, vowing to keep her kingdom safe alongside her queen and her family. A fierce loyalty had risen in her, threatening to choke her and destroy her, and the strength of those ties had frightened her. So she had hidden, like the child she once was, trying to convince herself that all of this is okay.
It has been entirely too long since she has shown her face in her kingdom; six months or more. She has missed the changing of the crowns and Leilan’s departure to rule over the icy territory to the northwest. She has missed her father’s return and her mother’s subsequent fleeing of Nerine. Oh, she has missed so much in those short months, and everything has changed. Though her brother is but a quick swim across the channel and her mother can’t have gone far, Sarkis finds herself alone once more.
She wants so badly to run through race along the beach and explore the cliffs as she once had in her youth, but there is a certain reluctance in her bones as she watches the waves crash below, the wind playing with her mane. She can’t keep doing this; running away when things get rough inside her head is not a solution. She has to be present, for her family’s sake if nothing else. If nothing else, she can honestly say that she is here to stay this time. No more running.
i am still getting a feel for her character so if this is cringe i'm sorry
It’s terribly easy to allow time to slip away. A fact she understands far too well, especially when one is never aging and too often a silent observer. She has made her mark of course, but for so long now she has vastly preferred the role of watcher. Only now that puzzle pieces have finally begun to click into place has she truly stepped forward into the world. Bringing herself into a role far more visible than any she has held before (at least in this world, in this body).
In a way perhaps, she can understand the desire to run. To hide. And though she had never truly hidden herself away from the world or avoided it’s many tales and secrets, she had fled in the face of her own personal turmoil before. And any who ever claimed they might do otherwise stood on a cracked and trembling ground.
If there is anyone who might understand that the past does not always define the future, it would be her. It’s true, she has seen the same stories told over and over again, but just as often those stories take a surprising turn. It’s why she has never been able to give up this particular foible of hers why. Why she still watches, despite having done so for years.
It’s also how she knows of her return, stealing from the shadows to bring her presence once more into the kingdom in which Heartfire had so recently ascended the throne. She knows her, of course. Sarkis. Her aunt.
She approaches her with an ease born of practice and confidence. She had settled into her own skin a very long time ago, and such a foundation, once accepted, is nearly unshakeable. Especially before one who is family, despite the fact that they had never been what one might consider close. Sarkis may know little enough of her, but Heartfire had always had a habit of keeping an eye on those most closely related to her.
“Sarkis,” she offers by way of greeting as she settles nearby, blue eyes serene, sharply focused. Curiously perusing. “Welcome home.”
Most days, most days stay the sole same Please stay, for this fear it will not die Down low, down amongst the thorn rows Weeds grow, through the lilies and the vines
It does not take her long to get acclimated to this northern realm, though the fact that it is the warm season helps plenty. In winter she will surely have to migrate or hibernate, for the winter breeze is not one the spring goddess is equipped to face, unless she sought death. Still, those cold times were months away, so for now, she spent her time exploring Nerine and getting to know the family she had emancipated herself from nearly forty years ago.
What can I say? Teenagers are prone to emotions, even good ones, and they definitely need loads of attention. And besides, now that she could fend for herself, she had no business making her son Daemron's life any more taxing by plaguing him with her unwieldy presence. She could not blame the grown man for his barely-hidden hatred of her, though she uses that word too easily since in truth, their relationship has mended some since she told him the truth. Still, though she sometimes misses listening to Pyxis' bedtime stories and snuggling with their own two trueborn children, she knows that now is a time to reground herself as a grown woman in a teenager's body. It is the least she can do.
Today, as she galivants across the Nerinian landscape with a little army of cliff-dwelling mountain goats frolicking behind her, two new but familiar scents pervade her nostrils. Immediately she sends birds to do her bidding, and grins upon receiving their report that it is her sister Sarkis and her niece Heartfire, gathered in a place not far from whence she now stood. Commanding the alabaster goats to be on their way, the juvenile delinquent sprinted haphazardly through the underbrush, the white-green-red of her coat blurring as she navigated deftly through the trees.
After all, it is easier not to run into them when you can just bid them disappear with but a single whim.
At last, she pulls up next to the two women, huffing mightily and grinning as though she knows the biggest secret. The two women have definitely never met her, and she can't count on her parents for having informed Sarkis as to what her eldest sister might be like; but still, exhilaration courses through her veins at the knowledge that she is meeting more family, a quite changed countenance compared to who she was in her past life.
"And don't forget me!" She bleats obnoxiously, cocking a hip and winking. Then, as though dramatically remembering herself, she looks to Heartfire and swoops down into a full bow, head to knee and butt stuck up in the air and all. When she resurfaces, it is with a flourish of flowers bursting overtop of their heads like fireworks, whose bright colours lazily float down to land carefully on and around the three women.
"Noori," the girl exclaims breathlessly and with an over abundance of pride. "Eldest daughter of Scorch, at your service."
She feels alone, so alone, but the feeling does not last for long. Kingdoms are busy, bustling places and even if Scorch and Leilan have fled to different corners of Beqanna, she still has family here. Heartfire is a devoted member of Nerine and the daughter to her brother Shah, and she is certain that some of her siblings are still around here somewhere. She has such a large family; she hasn’t even met some of her siblings, if she’s being completely honest. Her continual disappearances and the passing of time means that she has missed the world turning over several times – she has missed her brothers and sisters finding love and families of their own, and in turn their families making their own families. She wonders how many nieces and nephews she has, and how many of them she has never met.
It is only a few short minutes before her niece appears, her serene blue eyes washing over Sarkis like the tide. Sarkis relaxes with a smile, one hind hoof tipping as she shifts her weight to a more comfortable stance. “I should never have left,” she tells the other woman, her own hazel eyes drifting back to the cliffside and the sea beyond it. “I just... felt myself getting overwhelmed. I’m back now.” Of course she doesn’t know that she’s speaking to her queen now – and oh, how proud she is going to feel when she finds out – and that things have changed within Nerine. “How has the kingdom fared as of late?”
Before Heartfire can respond, a mare of red and white and green thunders into their presence, and Sarkis lifts her head in surprise as she slides to a halt near them, grinning widely. She looks to Heartfire and drops into a bow, and Sarkis glances at her niece; if she could cock an eyebrow at the woman, she would have. Has Heartfire ascended to the throne in her absence? She doesn’t get a chance to question her yet, though – the other girl rises to her hooves and a burst of flowers explodes over their heads. She can’t help but giggle as the blossoms rain down upon them, landing on her back and in her mane. How delightful!
Then she introduces herself as her eldest sister, and Sarkis’s giggles cut short in surprise. “Eldest daughter of Scorch?” she asks curiously, reaching out to breathe in her sister’s scent. She has heard of Noori, of course, but the two have never met. “No offense, sister, but I would think you’d be older than me.” Maybe Noori was time-locked like her; Sarkis should be a lot older as well, but she isn’t. “I’m Sarkis, by the way. Mom’s told me a lot about you.”
With a family the size of theirs, it is less surprising than it otherwise might be when one or two appear with little notice. After all, they have scattered themselves throughout Beqanna quite thoroughly, so to have not just one, but two of her aunt’s here today does not catch her surprise her perhaps as much as it should. In a way, it is almost natural, for such a far flung family to come together this haphazard fashion.
Sarkis avoids looking at her as she speaks of her absence, gaze wandering to the crashing waves that stretch beyond the reaching cliff. Heartfire does not glance away, her gaze bright and steady as she watches her aunt quietly, listening curiously.
Just as Sarkis is asking after the kingdom, another bounds up to them. A young girl, willfully spirited and bearing the hallmarks of spring. Even were Heartfire not as well-versed in the art of information as she is, she would have recognized this girl (woman). The eldest of Scorch’s daughter’s and by far the most flamboyant. Which she aptly demonstrates in her arrival, offering Heartfire an exaggerated bow before a wild burst of flowers explodes into life around them, fluttering to the ground in a wash of scent and color.
“Noori,” Heartfire greets her elder dryly, faint amusement tingeing the edges of her voice. “As though we could possibly forget.”
Her gaze tilts briefly towards the more modest of the sister’s as she greets Noori with a much more contained enthusiasm. In a way, it’s odd to be a party to such a meeting. Two sister’s who’d never had chance to meet, one niece who knew both but was nearly as much a stranger to them as they were to each other. The irony of the moment does not escape.
“Well,” she continues smoothly, humoring the moment, “didn’t this turn into quite the family reunion?”
Most days, most days stay the sole same Please stay, for this fear it will not die Down low, down amongst the thorn rows Weeds grow, through the lilies and the vines
And, with great effect, her entrance derails her family members' entire conversation. What fun! Her teenaged need for affection becomes superfluously met by way of Sarkis' enchanted giggles, and even by the faint amusement which colours the stubbornly serious Heartfire. The latter dryly offers a statement which implies that Noori is unforgetable, and frankly, the self-absorbed gremlin takes it as a compliment. Her laughter caws around them joyously at the remark, but when Sarkis steps closer, Noori tempers her flamboyance and quiets to listen.
"Yes the eldest daughter, little sister." Eagerly the spring mage stretched her lithe neck to exchange breath with the roaned one, ending the gesture with a playful shunt of her barked snout against the other's one of soft, delicate flesh. Her pupilless green eyes roll playfully at the accusation of her mismatched age, but they settle with an accompanying smile when Sarkis mentions that Scorch had mentioned Noori plenty. Her gut twists in a funny kind of way as she processes that last statement, and though the feelings inspired were questionable at best, she firmly decides to dissect their meaning later. Straightening her jubilant expression, Noori nods and speaks.
"Well, all I can say in my defense is that I have some kind of Spring-linked immortality... I died from the plague around midsummer, and awoke as a child that very next spring." The words seem heavy to the mare, so she lightens them with a joke. "Convenient! For me at least - I'm sure that the rest of the world is very through with my antics."
The voice of Queen Heartfire just beside the sisters snatches Noori's attention away from her eloquent tale. Again the wind-like sound of her laugh whips around them, her eyes squinting as the thickness of her cherry cheeks pushes up against the skin found there. "And what a nice one, don't you think?" Virtually instantaneously, Noori assembles a flower crown and alights it atop the monarchs head, lending her a distinctly girlish look. Then, not wanting to exclude by any means, the child turns with a laugh to decorate Sarkis' mane with long stalks of bluegrass and white lilies, adjusting them just so until her sister could also pass as a daughter of Spring.
Pursing her lips, the girl settles on to her haunches, indicating that she is through with being the center of attention - for now. "So, what have you two been up to lately?? Anything fun?"
