"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
I stared out west, wishing I was there and not still here. Oceane is gone, has been for some time, and I hear the native Pangeans whisper angrily about it. She was stolen back. Someone cared enough about her to risk it, and I guess it paid off. No such luck for me.
I wander recklessly, dust coating my ragged scales and feathers as I traverse canyons and catacombs. The last year has been a lean one for me, the steady thinning of my muscles making the gradual swelling of my belly all the more painfully obvious. It's nothing that will be hidden or disguised when I return.
Whatever strength I've been running off of so far ran out when I felt the first stirrings of life inside me. My body seems to have decided that to keep that little life going is more important than keeping me going, and so I feel a little of myself leach away with every passing day. I think this is what's convinced me that I'm carrying a monster.
Not long after the blue-opal mare left, a new one arrived. This one copper and gold, and seemingly unaware of just how much shit she'd gotten herself into. I glimpsed her from a distance, but as with Oceane, I made sure it was never closer than that. No point making friends if they're just as likely to get eaten by the creepy aliens as they are to be set free. Today's different though.
"I'm going home tomorrow,"
The first words I said to her. The first words I've said to anyone in weeks. In the shade of a stand of spindly trees, I find her. Alone, as we all are. But it's true. I'm going home tomorrow, and not hell nor high water can stop me. I've served my sentence. My prize for the stupid games I've played and the nerves I've stepped on. I'm pretty sure that's why no one came to save me sooner. They are all sure that I did this to myself. That I deserve the imprisonment, and what all else happens while here. If anyone has noticed I'm gone at all.
I guess it doesn't matter anymore. When the sun breaks the skyline tomorrow, I'll be gone. I won't even look back once.
Anyway. I find her, and she's in as sorry a state as I think I myself am, and that's impressive considering she's been here less than half the time. Still, I know my duty to a fellow prisoner. A favor denied to me when the magnificent Oceane was rescued by her knight in shining scales. "I'm going home. Is there anyone you need me to find? Anything you need said or done?"
That's how I realize I've changed. A year ago, hell, six months ago, those words would never have crossed my lips. Today though, they feel important. Tomorrow I'll be gone. She'll still be here though. One day, one day, I'll see this place flooded back beneath the waves. Back where it can't hurt anyone again.
05-04-2020, 07:57 PM (This post was last modified: 05-04-2020, 08:00 PM by lilliana.)
you got a cold hard truth i got a bottle of whiskey but i got no proof
She is far too lean for a mare expecting a child.
And yet here she is with a stomach that cradles a foal. (Pangean devil or sociopathic shapeshifter; Lilliana tries not to let her mind go there. Not when her head is already rife with horrors, she refuses to leave it open for Draco to pluck another one from.)
The demonic stallion had driven her to a lonely canyon - a forgotten corner of Pangea that even Lilliana wants to forget - and she secludes herself there. The nights are bitter and cold and the days (the endless days, how her heart yearns for Nashua and Yanhua) revel in the heat. Carnage’s country doesn’t seem to be able to make up its mind and instead tortures those who remain here - burn by day, freeze by night.
She is hiding, trying to shield herself with what little dead shrubbery there is. Lilliana tangles herself in the brambles, her normally lustrous coat dull with red Pangean clay. That lovely firebright sheen becomes ochre and whatever strength she retains for her insolence (she still manages to call Draco a goat), it goes to encompass the child.
Lilliana wraps that child in whatever healing she can muster. She has been fortunate in that gift - whatever physical scars she might have otherwise carried - have been hidden away, just like so many other things with her. Here in Pangea, she conserves it and what she does retain goes to her foal.
It leaves her auburn pelt a tapestry - a tale to be told from the wounds that haven’t yet healed, from the scars that nick and slash that copper coat she had once been so proud of.
It’s been weeks since anyone - outside of Draco - has spoken to her. It has been weeks with no word from Nerine, no hope from Taiga. The silence is the worst part of this punishment.
The magenta pegasus finds Lilliana though. Her vibrant color has been one she has spied on the horizon when she has dared to look but she blinks and the mare would be gone. Here in Pangea, in this current condition, leaves her in a state that she wishes no horse to see her in and so she hasn’t searched when she might otherwise have.
I’m going home tomorrow, the winged mare says and part of Lilliana soars to Taiga. Part of her goes to Nerine where she hopes her boys are.
She swallows those hopes, douses them out before any other soul ever knew she dared to dream about the day that she would get to leave. Her blue eyes are edged when they look to the mare, weary and unsure of what this mare intends. Lilliana flicks her ears instinctively back and part of her is ready to run. Her gaze appraises the other woman, spies the swelling of her stomach and it is a melding of ice and fire when she looks up to @[Rebelle].
(Defend your kindness, Elaina had said. Protect your courage.)
She exhales, "Two,” her voice comes out quiet, unsteady from lack of use and what feels like sand lining her throat. The guarded smile that she summons for the colorful mare is as dry as the cracked soil beneath their hooves. "If you would be so inclined.”
"When the weather turns fair and you’re able,” her slender head dips slightly in reference to her .. expecting stomach, "if you could find Leilan of the Isle.” Neverwhere might not like this - she might be even more furious with her than their last meeting after this. "Ask him to meet Lilliana in Taiga in the autumn,” her heart clenches around that and something in her express breaks away from the steeliness. (By fall, how tall would Yanhua be? Would Nashua have shed the last of his baby feathers?)
She hopes the dragon stallion will come; he has a band of raiders and an Isle to rebuild. If she offers Taiga support in moving the kingdom seat to the Isle then perhaps he can be persuaded to help her, if not as a friend then atleast as a political ally.
Her second request has nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with the chessboard that Beqanna can become in a mind. "And if on your way back, tell the Queen of Nerine that-," she breaks, "I’m sorry.” There have been no introductions but Lilliana assumes that the previous use of her name could be interjected into her final request, as it finally does choke her voice and cause her eyes to burn.
The chestnut turns her head away, trying to regain the loose hold she has on her emotions before she addresses her fellow prisoner again, "Help me and Taiga will owe you a debt.”
I am not naturally inclined to kindness, or charity or any of the other things good folk do for each other. Surviving, first my own mother and then the myriad of horses I had met since escaping leaving her side. It was easy enough when I went around assuming all I encountered were either enemies or too weak to be anything but playthings.
Draco was another thing. If I had known, or thought to ask, we might have realized that the scars on our backs would match up next to one another. Might have pushed me to think of us as more kindred things in the hellhole we were bleaching to death in. It doesn't cry cross my mind though. My only motivation is a vague sense of prisoner solidarity, and perhaps a taste of gratitude behind it.
My ears prick as she speaks, face impassive, maybe even a bit bored, but I nod anyway. "Leilan of..." I scowl, one brow lifted. "I understand if your brain is boiled by now, but if you want my help you'll have to be more specific. There's like, a bunch of islands in the sea." At least the message was simple. I'd probably remember it by the time I was able to get it to Leilan of Wherever.
She's obviously thinking hard, and a bit mopey, and I'm sure she's got family worried about her. She's very clearly the kind of mare people care about. Maybe enough even to send a rescue party for, like lucky miss Oceane had been. With a short, I shake off the glum direction my thoughts are heading in. I know I said I was going home. But it really doesn't feel like it.
My tongue clicks against the roof of my mouth while she considers her next request, and I swear by gods and fairies if she's got me tramping off to another opposite corner of the country she's just going to have to live with the disappointment cause damn am I already tired of the idea. But she finally gets her ask in order and I shrug in acceptance of it.
"Meeting for Leilan, sorry for Neverwhere," I echo. Wouldn't that be an awkward thing to mix up. I pretend not to see her eyes glossing up, which is as close as I can get to being comforting. Plainly she has been through a lot and I might actually feel bad for mocking her tears. Yay, character development, I guess.
Not a lot, mind you. Not enough to stop a wicked, if tired grin from flashing across my face at the mention of a debt owed. I was going to do it for free, but this certainly sweetens the deal. Enough that I make myself silently promise that I won't mix up the messages.
Uncomfortably swollen, I roll my neck to relieve a little of the pressure my spine is resentful of carrying. Body and soul, I am very much over this whole pregnancy thing. Assuming I get the choice in the future, it's never happening again. The chestnut mare looks in similar condition though, and it makes me curious. "So Lilliana of Taiga," I say, demonstrating that I did in fact catch her name. "Got a lover back home worried sick? Or did one of the locals decide to embed their spawn in you too?" That could be interesting. I've seen the locals, and it's a rare one that wouldn't make for a freakish baby. Something to look forward to, I guess.
05-09-2020, 12:24 PM (This post was last modified: 05-09-2020, 12:32 PM by lilliana.)
The scars that mar her are, perhaps, the hardest part of this.
Lilliana has been good at hiding them. She’s had a whole lifetime to practice hiding the ones that have torn her apart on the inside; now there is physical proof that something is wrong. She can’t hide these scars and it only sears the shame deeper into her skin. Eventually, they will fade and the light will right itself but for now, everything about her is left exposed to the arid Pangean air.
The nicks in her crimson pelt. The faint outline of her ribs near her topline. A gauntness haunting her hips. An exhaustion burning behind her eyes from a mind that rarely stills.
"Icicle Isle,” she quips in return, "the one that was just razed by Castile.”
Stop, she tells herself. This stranger came offering help and certainly didn’t deserve a sardonic answer. Lilliana exhales, reminding herself that horses come from places like Ischia or Island Resort where islands dot the horizon like wildflowers. It’s not like the North - not where there is only one Isle.
"Thank you,” Lilli replies with a soft apology lingering underneath the words. The chestnut mare meets the blue eyes of the magenta pegasus briefly. Pangea, for as wide and far this desert kingdom stretches, seems to do the same to some of its captives; it’s a quiet connection of knowing they’ve both been probably stretched to one limit or another.
She could almost laugh at the mention of a lover. It nearly scoffs her tongue. The thought makes her stomach clench into a knot and her swollen barrel cramps in response. Careful, Lilliana reminds herself and shifts her own weight in response, moving from one hip to the other. She has to be so, so careful with this child.
Home makes her ache. Yanhua. Nashua. Her whole world is in those woods and she is stuck here, contemplating if there is anything worse out there. Lilliana, who had failed her family the first time, fails them again a second time.
Is there really anything worse than this?
No word comes from Nerine. Nothing from Taiga.
(Your fault.)
It’s like she’s back at her beginning: "No,” Lilliana admits for the second time, "nobody is looking for me.” She knows what the other mare is asking about, motioning to her swollen stomach. the copper mare would rather pretend to be oblivious. She’s learned that some things are better left to the unknown. Some questions are best if never asked at all.
"I didn’t get your name.” Turning her head to appraise the brightly-colored pegasus again, "I’d like to know who to thank when I get out of this Hell.”
