"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 ice-coated stallion had pointed Alcinder in the direction of Loess and he hasn't stopped his gallop since; he had been lucky, too, that he has been running toward his home right from the start. Northwest he goes and finally the Forest breaks away to the familiar foothills and the young colt whinnies, shrill and loud, to announce his arrival as he runs. Coming over the crest of a smaller hill just passed the border, the blue-and-white boy spreads his feathered appendages wide and is suddenly skyborne ─ scarily, almost, as his fatigue adds to the weight of his wings.
"Mom! Dad!" he continues further into the land, toward its center and, what will be his ultimate destination, the northern sandstone den his Mama had first brought him. Alcinder repeats the call to his parents every so often, but finally pauses to alight near a small spring about halfway across the territory.
Folding his opaline wings to his narrow, jagged sides, he drinks from the spring for a moment before the sound of a bush rustling behind him causes the boy to start.
His legs splay a bit wider than normal as he faces the noise head-on, ears pressed tight against the top of his small head. "Who's there?"
@[Castile], @[Lepis](?) ""
neamrel
i have slipped the surly bonds of earth
and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings
again you’re gone, off on a different path than mine i'm left behind wondering if i should follow
Lepis is grazing on the golden wheat when she hears the high-pitched cry. Falling still immediately, she lets the autumn-drying meal drop away, as her quickly raised eyes and flicking ears search for the source. There – a blue shape against the bright blue sky. For a moment her heart races, but the boy is pied rather than brindle. Without pausing to assess the situation farther, Lepis takes to the sky. She does so easily, a result of nearly a year of practice: a single leap and she is airborne. Following his is no more difficult, though she refrains from catching up to him before he lands. She is coming from the west and lands a few dozen meters from the colt.
The sandstone is not a gentle landing, so Lepis is slower in her landing than take off. She no longer has agile young joints, and lacks the immortality and the regenerative ability of her family. Though she’s not seen the boy before, the Cleric recognizes him in an instant. This is the son of Oceane and Castile, from his opalescent wings down to the pied blue of his coat. He is family.
She loses sight of him as she descends toward the spring he’d landed beside, and pushes through a tangle of monstera and holly to reach him most directly. Alcinder looks startled, and she does not blame him. How is he here, she wonders? Surely Lepis would have been told if his location had been discovered, surely she’d have been able to fulfill her promise to Oceane. Yet here he is, entirely alone and mostly (she thinks) unharmed. Physically anyway, and having been held in captivity herself, the dun mare doesn’t rush to embrace him as she might have. Instead she hangs back, not wanting to further frighten him.
“Your parents will be here soon,” she tells him, for surely both the King and the Lady had heard their son’s calls. “They’ll be so glad to see you.”
And then, because he had asked and Lepis has always believed in treating even the very young with respect, adds: “I’m Lepis. I’m friends with your mom and dad.”
LEPIS i’m the one who sees you home-- but now i’m lost in the woods and i don’t know what path you are on
Hath in her veins, to beat and run, the glad indomitable sea, the strong white sun.
The woman who pushes herself through Loess' shrubbery, dun and blue and winged and kind, instantly puts Alcinder at ease; he raises his small, pointed ears from their bed of wind-swept navy mane and offers her a breathy, excited smile as she mentions his parents. Alcinder pulls his lanky stilts beneath him (he has grown into them, but at only six months they are still nimbly, knobby things), settling into a more comfortable stance as his silvered eyes curiously analyze the woman before him.
"Mama told me about you!" he blurts in excitement just as she finishes introducing herself, pleased that, despite his time in Pangea, he has now met all three of the women that his Mama had told him had impacted her most while he'd still been growing inside her: Aquaria, Ilma, Lepis. "She said you showed her the secret den with the prickly pears," he adds, proud to remember that it was Lepis who showed his Mama the place that they had explored thoroughly during his first few months of life.
Oceane's loud whinny, emitted from above, interrupts their conversation. With folded wings, she plummets toward the sandstone ground and lands with a painful stumble; when she has risen from her front knees, the opalescent woman throws her wings wide and pulls Alcinder's tiny, winged frame to her chest. She curls her neck down and holds him tight with the underside of her chin, smiling and crying and laughing all at once. "You're home," she whispers, her throat tight, into the boy's ear. She continues to hold him, hesitant to break the contact, and rocks him gently to and fro. When finally she remembers they are not alone, the opaline woman turns her amber gaze gratefully to Lepis.
"Did you find him?" she asks, "Where was he?"
"I was in Pangea, Mama, and Cormorant was there, too," the young Alcinder responds before Miss Lepis is able to, "And I escaped from the claw-foot man and the angel-dragon lady! And then I found another one of your friends in the Forest, and he─" The blue-and-white colt peers around Oceane, both through the shrubbery and into the sky, for Leilan, "Well, I must have accidentally left him behind when I smelled home, but he said he is a dragon, too, like Dad!"
Oceane listens intently, her blood running cold at the mention of Pangea and Cormorant's presence there, too. She will have to find Castile again, and Aquaria, to see if the young finned boy had returned to his mother, as well. But she peers behind herself at the mention of another friend, one her son had seen in the Forest, and her first thought is the nomad Soran, but then ─ a dragon, too?
Her amber eyes flick back to Lepis, hoping that the Cleric would know which dragon he speaks of.
@[Lepis], @[Castile], @[Leilan] ""
neamrel / thedayofshadow
i must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
and all i ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by
and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was
The rhythmic drumming of Castile’s wings are all that he hears high above the clouds where he is unseen and his thoughts uninterrupted.
(Hunt)
(Feed)
(Kill)
A groan passes through him in response to the clawing words, barrel rolling and altering his direction effortlessly. As tempting as it is to succumb to his primal needs, Castile suppresses it beneath the concern for his missing son (yet another, taken and missing).
(Hunt)
The instincts push harder against his consciousness, but Castile merely dips below the clouds, casting his eyes toward the ground far below. From here, the world is littered with ants. Such tiny things they all are, insignificant.
No, no. Not insignificant. Family.
(Prey)
Another groan, another wave of resistance. It lowers him more as he takes note of details, admiring the canyons and hills before he glimpses Lepis and Oceane. A fleeting consideration to resume his aimless flight crosses his mind, but Castile abruptly twirls when he recognizes Alcinder clutched tightly to his mother’s chest. Both surprise and joy inject themselves into his every thought, masking all else that existed. Shifting his immense body, he descends rapidly toward them. His perilous dive and excitement washes him of color, paling him to a ghostly white except for the bronze of his spines and wings, and obsidian talons that grope for the ground as he looms nearer.
No matter how skillfully he tilts himself for his hind legs to first alight, closely falling to fours, the ground trembles and resonates through their immediate area. Hanging out of his lips’ reach are his predatory teeth that forebodingly catch the sunlight as he lowers his head to their height. ”Alcinder,” he croons, his son’s name falling like boulders from Castile’s mouth – a deep and demanding baritone that ripples through their bodies. ”We missed you,” a deep breath sighs from his lungs while he blinks and admiringly observes their son before glancing to Oceane, then Lepis.
He says nothing, but his lips stretch back in a toothy grin. He cannot embrace them, cannot press his face into their manes or trail kisses along Oceane’s neck in the heat of this moment. A slight tilt of his head returns his attention to Alcinder. His heart aches. Not yet has he even been able to pull his son into his side or ruffle his Mohawk.
It hits him suddenly, the things that he misses and the opportunities he loses in this body.
Resting his head down on the rocky soil, Castile simply savors being here, with all of them.
again you’re gone, off on a different path than mine i'm left behind wondering if i should follow
Alcinder mentions the prickly pears, and Lepis smiles. “I hope you’ve worked up an appetite,” she gently teases. “They’ve grown wild in your absence.”
The dun mare mentions this only as she sees the nearby descent of a familiar blue figure. Oceane will be here any moment, and indeed Lepis steps aside to clear the way toward her son. In non-verbal response to the other mare’s questions, Lepis first shakes her head, and then adds a shrug of her shoulders. The appearance of Alcinder in the center of Loess is as much a mystery for the golden mare as for the boy’s mother. There is a scent on him that she almost knows. It is much altered though, and she is misled by the smell of dragon-kind and the tale that the boy tells as Oceane holds him tight.
Cormorant, an angel-dragon, a claw-foot man. None of these are familiar to Lepis, but she does recognize the smell of Pangea on him. It’s the same smell that the red-eyed stallion had, the horned creature Oceane saved her from hailed from that land as well. Is this a concentrated effort by Pangea against Loess? The dun is distracted, and not until she realizes Oceane is looking at her, waiting for an answer, does she race through the memory of what he had said. A dragon in the forest, and friends with Oceane. Friends, she thinks again, and the pieces click into place.
Lepis nods, her unworried expression not belaying the silent answer she gives. [Leilan] says Lepis’ voice, though the word do not pass her lips. Instead the name arrives in Oceane's mind. This is her first effort with someone trustworthy, and after a moment her blue-grey eyes turn questioning, as though waiting for acknowledgment of her silent action. When she finally does oshift her tongue to speak, it is second before a wing shadow passes her over, and she looks up to see a pied dragon overhead.
“Speak of the dragon,” she says aloud, the uncertainty and hesitation of a moment before drowned out in amused fondness that only Oceane will hear. The man certainly has a knack for making an entrance, the Cleric thinks, though why he remains a dragon she’s not certain. “I don’t appreciate being reminded of my insignificant size, your majesty.” The mare says, glancing at him from the corner of one blue grey eye, obvious insincerity in her formal address and the same teasing light as before in her steel blue eyes. “Why don’t you join the rest of us as something more natural shaped?”
LEPIS i’m the one who sees you home-- but now i’m lost in the woods and i don’t know what path you are on
We got older and I should have known that I’d feel colder when I walk alone
Lost Boy Cinderella sure knows how to get lost. Gritting his teeth for a moment, the dragonesque stallion had accepted the boy’s need to see his mother after those months in captivity, and made sure they weren’t followed while the painted colt crossed the Loessian border. After all, a quick switch of vision allowed him to see perfectly well that he’d safely make it; not one other form bigger than a hare was near, and said hare made it’s exit quickly enough for Leilan not to be able to determine its gender.
The frost-covered stallion then triple-checked their surroundings before nearing the hill kingdom’s border. Would he be allowed in in a time where stealing children was apparently the order of day; then he shook away those hesitations. He came bringing back a child and seeing him home safely, so they’d have to deal with his apparent trespassing for now and suck it up.
He finds the trail back quickly (too quickly - more Pangeans might still wander to Loess) but by the time he played catch-up, several others have already arrived. He spies Castile first; the large dragon-shape is hard to miss, and just as Lepis asks the question, Leilan takes his form in with similar puzzlement on his features. Is something off? There’s definitely something odd.
His gaze meets Alcinder’s when the boy cranes his neck to look around, though from the distance he’s still at, perhaps only Cas would make out his shape as sharply as Leilan spies theirs. He closes the distance with a light trod, first addressing Oceane’s boy. ”Lost your glass shoe, Cinderella.” He shakes his crest as he nears the pair, looking from them to the lounging dragon. ”Hello Lepis, Cas. What’s up?” The corner of his mouth dragging into almost a smile as he addresses the huge figure of the dragon exactly while saying up; no-one is to say he doesn’t time the little reference well, but he is also quick to see he doesn’t really have much to add to the conversation. A boy delivered to his parents, a Lepis hanging around being probably just as relieved as Oceane. Well if that’s not a happy ending to Cinder’s little fairytale, he wouldn’t know.
Still, it couldn’t hurt to just linger a tiny bit, just in case there were any questions. Or, whatever. It just seemed weird to say hi and leave as quickly as he came, he supposes, even if he isn’t exactly friends with Lepis, and unsure where he stands with the fire dragon in the moment.
Leilan
no. 7 | ice forged in fire
@[Alcinder] @[Castile] @[Lepis]
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
Hath in her veins, to beat and run, the glad indomitable sea, the strong white sun.
Alcinder grins up at the blue-and-dun woman.
"I can't wait!" the lanky young boy can hardly contain ─ nor does he want to ─ his enthusiasm as he swiftly realizes he is surrounded by all things home. "Pangea didn't have any prickly pear. Not that I could find, anyway," he adds as a dejected afterthought. He'd taken the liberty of exploring the red and yellow sandstone caverns of Pangea while he had been held there: the acacia trees had made him even more homesick, and the way the wind howled through the rocky tunnels spooked him more often than not.
He'd always expected the aliens and their clicking, morse-code tongues to follow in the wake of the canyon's howl, their long necks extending from around the nearest rocky bend.
He runs through a continuum of emotions, from enthusiastic to a bit melancholy, and then he's suddenly pulled tight to his mother's familiar, warm bosom. He gasps at the comfort that washes over him and nestles quickly into her encircling embrace, listening intently to her rapid heartbeat with an ear pressed to her chest.
Lepis, catching Oceane's inquiring gaze, deposits the sought-after information easily into the Lady's mind: Leilan. She twitches an ear as she gazes upon the Cleric, and then the corner of her lip follows suit into a short-lived smile, at this new ─ though not unwelcome ─ intrusion into her mind. She nods her thanks to the woman but refrains from commenting aloud out of respect for Lepis' discretion just as the trio is joined by another pair.
Castile, first, arrives with the grace of a natural-born dragon. Alcinder's knobby legs protest the rumble of the earth at the wyvern's landing and he stumbles slightly away from his Mama, recovering splay-legged as he gazes upward at the ivory dragon donning an expansive smile. "I missed you too, Pops!"
Oceane laughs under her breath at Lepis' comment toward the dragon, her own brow arching expectantly for his response; she had, after all, only seen him massive and scaled ever since she'd returned to Loess from the Forest with Alcinder, though she'd not thought much of it now that she was aware of his secret.
Sochi's face, her hardened and uncaring eyes, flash in Oceane's mind.
Her thoughts are interrupted by the second half of the pair speaking out just as he comes up near her side. Oceane throws her lavender head to the side, her amber eyes colliding with Leilan as she nickers for him. The sound, and her echoing expression, are full of warm appreciation.
"Does that make you my glass shoe?" the boy asks.
"Leilan," the Loessian woman says at the same time, "I am in your debt."
Oceane keeps her amber gaze on the ice-encrusted stallion ─ a dragon, she now knows ─ in case he has come with information from the Forest or Pangea, but Alcinder has turned his attention back to his Dad just as the great beast lays his massive head against the Earth. The colt closes the distance between he and Castile and presses his blue-and-white face against the leathery, scaled space in front of the dragon's eye.
@[Lepis], @[Castile], @[Leilan] ""
neamrel / thedayofshadow
i must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
and all i ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by
and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was
The torrent of wind whips across them all when Castile alights, but they adjust quickly with curious flickers of their eyes. In turn, he acknowledges each of them with slow, calculating blinks and sighed breaths. It’s Lepis, however, that breaks the stoicism of his face. His lips stretch back into a grin for a cluster of heartbeats before regressing into a mild frown. ”Can’t,” he simply replies as a shrug ripples through his powerful shoulders. A hesitation follows, reluctant to indulge deep information. Leilan, as nomadic as he is, may let slip the rumors.
But there’s more.
(Opposition)
We know him…
(He’s changed. Competition)
No.
(Trespassing)
Like a territorial dog – how can he be compared to a creature so low? – Castile regards the frosted male with skepticism at first while his mind battles relentlessly until a victor arises from the cloudy depths of his thoughts.
”A lesson from the faeries,” he finally claims, obviously taking victory over the crude and primal thoughts buzzing through his brain. It’s a humbling experience, one in which he has not expected to endure, but this moment reminds him of everything that slips farther from his grasp the longer he is stuck like this. Idly licking his lips as his head rests on the hill, Castile cannot help to admiringly grin at Alcinder as the boy stumbles, regains balance, and presses his face to the scaled plane in front of the dragon’s large left eye. He would agree with Oceane. They are, in fact, in debt to Leillan for his uncharacteristic efforts, but to echo the testament would be unnecessary and repetitive. A mere rumble punctuates the Lady’s gratitude from the draconic king, his gaze resting on the male intensely.
With a shuffle of his leathery wings, Castile attempts to console their wandering thoughts with a calming, though rolling, baritone. ”Soon, I will revert back and not make you feel so small.” But part of him doesn’t want to return as he was. He savors the prowess that courses through his veins and his immense size and power. What spurs him to remember the task is the fear of losing his memories, of losing himself. A forced grin wrinkles the corner of his mouth, but if they blinked, then they would have missed it as a somberness traces the outlines of Castile face.
staring at the ceiling in the dark same old empty feeling in your heart
The patter of hooves draws her attention away from the reunion, and she is not surprised to see Leilan. It’s been a decade since their first meeting, and while there are some things she cannot forget, his assistance in the safe return of her Prince makes quite a difference in her general attitude toward the golden-haired stallion. It’s clear he knows Oceane, and perhaps rather well, for the three of them have an inside joke about a princess and a shoe. Her attention is not on them for long though, as Castile’s recent habit of being exceptionally large is seemingly not consistent.
“You never learn your lesson, do you?” She asks with a faint shake of her head and a laugh. His somberness is not so different from when the fairies had done the opposite, she thinks, when he had been deprived of his dragon-self rather than his horse-self. She imagines he is distracted too, glad to see his child safely returned but constrained by the presence of outside eyes.
“I will leave you to your reunion,” she tells the gathered family, then just Alcinder. “I’ll try to save you some prickly pear, but no promises.” The lightness in her voice remains even when she addresses Castile before leaving, though her blue-grey eyes are less jovial. “We will meet soon,” Lepis tells the King, “To decide how to prevent this from happening again.” Castile will agree, she knows; this is not acceptable and will not stand. With a last smile and a silent [Give him an extra hug for me] to Oceane, the dun mare leaves the gathering.
@[Leilan]
LEPIS staring at the bottom of your glass-- hoping one day you’ll make a dream last but dreams come slow and they go so fast
We got older and I should have known that I’d feel colder when I walk alone
As always, the ice-scaled roan puts children first, and so when the boy and mother talk roughly at the same time, he first addresses the question. ”I already look the part, don’t you think?” he grins a bit, his brown eyes shining almost mischievously before addressing Oceane - with a quick shake of his head.
He hadn’t really expected a thank-you from anyone else but Oceane herself - the boy too excited, Lepis and Castile too reserved. So when the dragon before them rumbles in recognition of the mare’s statement, he almost shows surprise - but he blinks only once more than he should, careful with the large predator as unseen tension slowly does creep up on him, making him finally realize that perhaps the old dragon does not see him as something similar (built for a different climate), but as a threat, like males of lesser-evolved species might.
He tries to ignore the idea, focusing back on the purple mare. ”Don’t worry about it, Pond. He’s not too much trouble.” Heck, he’d been much worse as a child, and all he had ultimately done was point the way and make sure they weren’t being followed at the time.
Still, what Castile says troubles him. ”That sucks, man. I’m sorry.” Leilan has had his fair share of fairy business in his life. Each time he swore this would be the last time, and something would then happen. Humility before the cosmos, where one life was just a speck of dust and hardly noticeable, was the only way to survive those fickle little magicians.
Just like Lepis though, he doesn’t feel like staying. ”Take care, you guys.” he nods to them - then to Lepis, as well, as he takes his leave.
Better not stick around for the political part of this steal and escape, he decides. Though he has an ominous feeling about the whole ordeal; this might be the least of the trouble, and he’s too close to them: dangerously close to being sucked back into the kingdom life of Beqanna.
Then again, he’d already guessed that finalizing his decision about where to live might set a similar thing in motion. So why the heck not defend your friends anyway?
Leilan
no. 7 | ice forged in fire
@[Oceane] your turn, if you guys want to continue
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
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