"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 storm has passed, but his confusion has not. It has settled deep into his belly. Planted there like an ancient oak and began to curl upward. It branches through him until he can feel the edges of it on the tip of his tongue and through the crackling length of his veins. The storm still exists there. Just beyond his reach. When he wakes in the morning, he can feel it. He can close his eyes and reach for it, can feel the way that the flame of the lightning licks upward, how the thunder rolls, but it disappears before he can grasp it. Disappears so quickly that he is left empty-handed and hollow and alone.
He still rises though.
He pulls himself up each morning and sighs. This body is so much smaller than he is used to, so much more feeble, despite its relative size and strength. He is grateful that the fates gave him some concessions. That he was gifted these wings to carry himself into the skies is a gift, he knows, but it is difficult to be thankful for such things when he had once commanded them—lifted himself without any effort.
It is difficult to be grateful for the crumbs when he once had the feast.
Still, Morrowind has never been the kind to cower before a challenge. His spine does not bend so easily. So he meets it every morning. He explores this new land, these new horizons. He studies the inhabitants and finds he does not understand them. They are so different from his comrades before. So very different from the creatures of storm and sky and he feels utterly removed from them. A different species entirely.
But he knows that if he is truly stuck here that he will need to blend somehow. So he decides that this day will be the day that he finally breaks the space between himself and the others. He watches from the shadows during the morning, his heavy eyelids drooped close so that it was only the barest hint of white that flashes underneath. When he sees the girl walk in front of him, he stirs, shaking the dust from his coat as he steps forward. “Hello,” his voice booms and rattles in his throat and yet sounds so very quiet to him.
isn't it lovely all alone, heart made of glass, my mind of stone
She feels different during the day.
In the night she can at least see the stars, she can seek the closeness of them even if she cannot go back. She can cloak herself in starlight, can braid it through the tendrils of her mane, can let the starlight swallow her until the captive star inside of her chest almost feels sated. And in the night the light that surrounded her pulsated softly, matching the rhythm of the stars above, so that she might close her eyes and pretend, just for a moment, that she is suspended in a galaxy nowhere near here.
But daylight chases all of that away. Daylight leaves her all but entirely mortal, with the sun smothering her glow, and the starlight she kept close to her fading away with the coming of the dawn.
She thinks the word is ‘disappointment’, but the feeling only just barely touches the edges of her. It fades away as she falls back into her routine, the one where she goes somewhere so that she might watch them, to continue to learn ways to mimic them in hopes that someday it will become second nature – innate and natural. It has become easier, but she is afraid she will always be emotionally clumsy in this equine form, with her forced smiles and her too-dark eyes.
He appears from the shadows of the trees, catching her off guard, and involuntarily a flash of light explodes from nearly every pore of her. She spins, white mane flying like a cloud around her face, aubergine eyes sharpening onto him. She relaxes, though it is hardly visible – she is always intense and rigid, and the lack of emotion in her eyes does little to soften her features. “I didn’t see you there,” she tells him, and she wonders if she is supposed to apologize, or if he is supposed to. She isn’t sure if he was wrong for startling her or if she was wrong for being startled. Maybe neither of them are wrong.
Her head tilts, the boom of his voice still echoing in her ears. Her lips turn into a strange little smile, and she says, “Your voice reminds me of trapped thunder.”
All he ever feels is different. The lightning crackles in his veins but never sparks to life. It makes him feel dull, muzzled, and silent. It leaves a disquiet that he can never shake—something that follows him along and then reminds him at every corner how he is trapped here and in this body. But this frustration fades when the flash of light catches him off guard. He startles a little, taking a defensive step back and lifting his head in a protective sweep upward, snorting as he stomps down, the sound like a clap of thunder.
What he finds though is not something so concerning.
It’s just a young girl, at least by appearances. He settles, a little, but the energy of the bristling storm still lives just under the surface of him, trapped behind the white of his eyes. He remains still, his tail cracking behind him and his head still raised to reveal the deep arch of his throat. For a second, he just stands there and studies her intently, pouring all of his energy into trying to learn all of the different pieces of her.
She is more than she appears. He feels it in his bones, but he has no words to explain it. No ability to try and put it into words so he instead just tucks the feeling away, letting it soak into him. He settles, just a little, but enough to not look quite so on edge. “Clearly,” he simply responds—not once thinking that he should be the one to apologize and not holding it against her that she didn’t apologize.
The storm didn’t apologize for the damage in its wake.
The stars didn’t apologize for their light.
“I am trapped thunder,” he says, and it’s not nearly as poetic as it is truth. He doesn’t elaborate though. Just shakes his head, his heavy, matted mane falling down both sides of his arched neck. He looks down his nose to her, trying to find the words that do not come. “My name is Morrowind,” he still thinks at how strange it sounds in this tongue—how it feels so dull when translated to this world.
isn't it lovely all alone, heart made of glass, my mind of stone
He reacts to her flash, but she does not do or say anything further. He reacts similar to how she reacts to things – strong, prepared to fight, but not in a way that suggests any real kind of fear or panic. Because her light fades away and leaves nothing but the usual impassiveness of her, with no kind of lingering tension or apprehension. She is not guarded, she is not timid or meek. She matches the intensity of his stare with one of her own, and studies him in a similar way.
She has learned how to recognize the stars in others, but that is not him. He something fierce, of that she is sure, but whatever it is that simmers beneath the surface of him is something she can’t quite place. He reminds her of the stallion she had met in Pangea, the one she had asked him if it felt like a storm inside of his chest. She is not sure if it is similar for the man before her now, if the thunder he kept trapped was anger or something else.
“Morrowind,” and while she doesn’t like most things, she likes the way his name feels on her tongue. She can feel the promise of the power behind it, and though he does not have the pull of the stars to draw her in, she decides that he is interesting enough as is.
“My name is Islas,” she tells him, a simple kind of smile weaving across her lips as she states plainly, “and I am a trapped star.”
“Islas,” he repeats because she had repeated his own. Was that tradition here, he wonders, but decides instead that he likes it. Likes the practice of it, like a confirmation, and likes the way that her name in particular sounds on his tongue. It does leave him with question though and he peers down, trying to make out the details of her. His vision in this form is weaker than what he is used to—everything is so dull here, so muted—but it is functioning enough that he is certain he is not mistaken.
There’s a pause, more out of an attempt for him to gather his own thoughts than politeness, before he asks, “Did your mother think you without eyes?” It was not uncommon in his home for names to have such bare meaning, stripped to the core, but it was rare for the meaning to be so misplaced. “You appear to have them,” he says, voice without any true inflection. “At least what appears to be eyes.”
He shrugs again, a giant, sweeping gesture to point to his dismissal of the question.
Why her mother gave her such a name was not truly his concern.
It was, however, his concern what she follows it up with, and this he chews on. “Does this land always take the elements and trap them?” He takes an unknowing step forward, drawn to someone who seemed to understand his predicament at least a little. “Why?” There’a a touch of anger here, although it’s not pointed toward her—not the woman of the skies and the heavens who looks up at him.
“I heard there was a mountain where I could go for answers.”
He pauses, waiting to see if the mountain rings any bells for her.
isn't it lovely all alone, heart made of glass, my mind of stone
He comments on her name, and it is similar to what the little star girl had told her. Truthfully Islas had never noticed – she didn’t notice much. Having a name at all had been so strange and foreign to her that she had not put much thought into why she was given the name that she was. She learned some things as she grew older, though, as this peculiar mortal body aged and changed. “My mother has a warped sense of humor, sometimes,” she says, though she hardly understands the concept of humor. She grasps it enough to recognize her mother was maybe a little abnormal. “She said my father would get it.”
A pause, before she considers that perhaps she should acknowledge the actual question. “But yes, I do have eyes.”
“This land is strange,” she follows the shift in topic seamlessly, taking a moment to glance at their surroundings -- the trees, the birds that flutter from limb to limb, the watery sunlight that strains through the clouds. “I haven’t really figured out the magic of it yet.” She regards him carefully, admiring the faint undertone of anger in his voice; she doesn’t know why anger is one of her favorite emotions to witness. Maybe because it can blossom from so many different roots, though so many associated it with cruelty. Islas had learned, through watching, the anger seemed to be an outlet instead for trapped passion. “I have never met anyone beside you that is trapped in the same way I am. I have met others that harness powers similar to mine, in that they can control the starlight, but they were never stars.”
He mentions the mountain, and she tilts her shapely head. “I’ve heard of it,” she begins, combing through what few facts she had accumulated about what seemed to be the magical centerpiece of this place, “but I’ve never been. If I have learned anything about Beqanna, though, is that it will not give you anything for free. Not even something that is rightfully yours.”
She is nothing like him. She does not know the wonders and majesty of his past home. And yet—and yet—there is something comforting in being near her. Something comforting in just being in her presence. She at least knows what it is like to be stuck in a place where you do not belong. At least she knows what it means to find yourself trapped between the beginning and the end; in the place where the world ends.
At least, for him. It ends here, he is sure of it.
He towers over her, dark eyes unreadable. He shrugs his massive shoulders at her explanation of her name. “It is good that you still have eyes,” his tone has little inflection. “Although I am certain that you would still do fine without them. There are plenty of souls in my old home that do.”
Why her mother found such a thing humorous, he had no idea.
Perhaps humor was yet another thing different about this place.
He continues on the conversation though, the anger crackling below his skin. “That’s what I was told. It seems as though the deities of this place have a warped sense of justice.” Why would they feel the need to strip someone clean and then hold it hostage? Why take what was his by birth? Why bring him here at all?
“Still, it is worth trying, I imagine.” He watches her. “At least for a scrap of understanding, or a piece of myself. It would be worth the sacrifice, I imagine.” It would not be the first time he had sacrificed.
A pause, as he considers her.
“Have you ever tried? Returning home? To your former self?”
