"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
He had settled into the darkness as easily as he had settled into the light. In all honesty, he might have been perfectly content to continue on this way into eternity were it not for the widespread destruction even he could not ignore. The monsters wreaking havoc might have been perfectly manageable had they not stolen the sun. And without the sun, spring had never truly arrived. The air had remained cool, warming only infinitesimally with the changing of the seasons. But the farther north one traveled, the more bitter and inhospitable it became.
Without heat and sun, the wild variety of flora that flourished across the continent had begun to wither, unable to sustain itself. Food grows scarce even as the shadowy beasts grow plump and overly confident.
Reave has watched it happen from the relative safety and comfort distance provides, but as the days pass (though who could truly tell anymore?), the circles of safety and comfort have begun to shrink. For a boy not given to worry, he had certainly been doing his fair share of it lately. Not nearly as much as either of his parents, but it seems to be infectious.
Still, he cannot stay his legs from wandering. Even if he could, the food in Taiga had already begun to grow scarce. Though Taiga is home to inhabitants possessing talents for growing things, they could hardly work with what did not exist. Unless one developed a taste for wood, of course (which, speaking from experience, Reave could say with certainty was not a particularly good idea).
And so he leaves more and more frequently, finding himself in all the strangest corners of Beqanna.
Today he is not in a particularly odd place, even if it is one he hasn’t visited frequently. Bright blue eyes tracing the choppy current of the swiftly moving river, he trails almost absently along the muddy banks. He is caked near up to his knees, his belly heavily splattered, masking the way his skin seems to stretch too tightly over bones that protrude much too sharply (it would be easy to believe it is because he is underfed, but the truth is much less pleasant). In any case, the mud or the rapidly growing bone is hardly what interests him. On occasion, his gaze goes distant, eyes growing glassy as he seeks… something. He’s not entirely sure what it is, but he’s certain he’ll know it when he sees it.
it’s a lonely road, I know,
and nothing ever stands between a bullet and your soul --
It was not like her to leave Tephra, but the moment that they—her family—had made the connection that it was Rare causing their nightmares and restless sleep, the guilt became impossible to ignore. Her mother and father both had tried to reassure her that they did not blame her; they knew she couldn’t help it. They knew she would never do anything like that on purpose.
And yet no matter how many times her mother pressed a kiss to her forehead or her father offered her a sympathetic smile, it did nothing to ease the guilt that was lodged so uncomfortably in the center of her chest.
She noticed that Worship had started to wander away more often, and she did not ask him to take her with him. She suspects that everyone is a little bit tired of her presence; of not sleeping, of having their dreams twisted into a nightmare, as if their waking world was not bad enough already. Since her mother was always especially attentive of her she waited until Casimira was fully engrossed in a conversation with her father—curled against him and looking at him in a way that told her for once Rare and Worship was not what she was thinking about right now—before she slipped away.
Even though there is darkness pressing all around her, she is amazed at the relief she feels once she is away from Tephra. A sigh eases from her chest, and though the guilt does not lift, it does at least seem a little lighter. She knows it’s only because she is avoiding the situation, and she has no idea how similar she is to her mother in that regard.
She spends the next few days simply drifting, not really having a particular destination in mind. When she finds a river she decides to follow it, considering she has absolutely nothing better to do. There were monsters that roamed, and she did her best to remain quiet and inconspicuous, but even in the dark, it was hard. Her coat still managed to somehow reflect the white opal even with the absolute faint amount of the light that there was, and her pale, flowered mane and tail shifted and stirred like fog in the night. She kept her blue eyes downward as she walked, using one of her favorite tactics that she did when she was having a nightmare—if she didn’t open her eyes, whatever was there wasn’t real.
If she doesn’t look at them, they won’t be real.
When she comes across the boy treading along the river bank—much closer than the path she had been walking, as she preferred the hard, dry area—she startles her at first. It makes her stop short, but with an involuntary soft gasp. Even with the rush of the river right next to them it should have been loud enough for him to hear, and realizing that it would be impossible for her to escape, she makes herself known.
“What are you doing?” she asks him, her voice so quiet that he might not hear her, but she is too timid to speak any louder.
-- rare.
@[The Monsters] can you mess with her serial immortality please <3
Reave hadn’t been expecting company (though given how widely traveled this particular thoroughfare is, undoubtedly he should have). His gaze is somewhere else entirely when the gasp startles him back to reality. He jerks around abruptly, barely keeping himself from lashing out with his surprise and alarm (he had already learned that lesson). His sudden movement causes mud to splatter around him, feet slipping in the damp as he attempts to steady himself while simultaneously seeking firmer ground.
It’s only when his feet finally manage to find purchase he recognizes the newcomer as a fellow equine roughly of an age to him. With a snort, he slogs to higher ground before shaking himself somewhat violently. His reply, spoken perhaps a few moments too soon, is muffled and a bit gruff from his jostled vocal chords. “Just… looking at stuff.”
Finally, after having spent the first few moments of their encounter in a decidedly graceless battle with himself, he takes a moment to actually look at her. At first glance, she seems almost painfully shy, uncertainty radiating from her like heat from the missing sun. It mixes with her fear and shame and guilt, memories drifting and jumbled, waiting to be pieced together.
That, more than anything, intrigues him. This is the first time he has encountered someone so young with such an emotional burden already weighing so heavily.
Moving closer, he tips his head as he eyes her with an openly candid expression. An expression made even more curious by the frown that has begun tugging at his lips. “Nevermind what I’m doing though,” he replies, his voice prodding. “You look like you're running away from something.”
As far as observations go, it’s perhaps not the most astute one. But he is learning.
it’s a lonely road, I know,
and nothing ever stands between a bullet and your soul --
If she wasn’t so out of her element she would have maybe laughed a little at the way she had accidentally startled him, but given the circumstances, it only serves to make her feel more guilty. Shrinking back as he fights for his footing she bites her lip, ducking her delicate head. “I’m sorry,” she says in the flower-petal soft of her voice, before lifting her bright blue eyes again and saying a little more clearly, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
She moves closer just as he does, finding herself intrigued by the blue of his eyes. Her eyes were blue, too, but they were more similar to her mother’s—pale and icy, lending a sharpness to her face that she didn’t particularly like, though the pastel opal and the femininity of the flowers in her mane served to soften it again. His eyes were different, though, bright as the nearly forgotten summer sky in Tephra, and she feels guilty all over again for running away.
“No I’m not,” she finds herself answering a little defensively, her small ears tilting backward not in aggression, but uncertainty. Could he read minds? What exactly about her made her intent so obvious? She looks at his eyes again, studying his young face, as if she was going to find her answer hidden there. Finding nothing she wilts a little, her gaze fixing on the ground at her hooves. “I just didn’t feel like being at home.”
She felt like she was being rude, though, since he hadn't really done anything to deserve such (what she thought to be) a sharp answer, and so she meets his gaze again and says quietly, “My name is Rare.”
-- rare.
@[The Monsters] can you mess with the intangibility ;(
Reave, having the rather dubious gift of great self-assurance, feels no particular shame about his unexpected clumsiness only moments earlier. So little that her apology is shrugged off as easily as a dry leaf in late autumn. But it is curious that it would drag the memories of her own perceived guilt to the fore, making him wonder once again why.
He is not one that cares to wonder however, and as luck would have it, he is perfectly capable of rooting much deeper than she might have cared for. Deep enough to find why she feels so guilty. And why she is running, even if she wouldn’t admit it.
Reave has known emotion since the day he was born. Has watched the play of others’ most powerful and sentimental memories until it had become next to commonplace for him. But he has never before met one that can cause such emotional change in another. It is a fascinating quandary she finds herself in.
If Reave were a better horse, he might leave it be. But he is not.
“You are running away,” he insists, more certain now. If she had been rude, he does not notice as he counters her denial. If anything, his own rudeness far outstrips hers, though he is not yet self-aware enough to recognize it. Neither does he recognize her attempt to make up for it by way of introduction.
“I’m Reave,” he replies distractedly, automatically responding to her introduction with one of his own. But his thoughts are far from focused on such banalities. Instead he’s focused on something else entirely, brow furrowing as he tries to determine things that prove impossible to determine without a great deal more experience than he has. “Why don’t you want to go home anyway? They don’t look mad at you.”
Though he can see her shame and guilt, can even sympathize with it (he had killed one of his own mothers after all, but she had never blamed him), he struggles to understand why she would choose to flee rather than stand and conquer it.
