"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
-So deep in my heart that you're really a part of me-
mmmhm, she smiled. Just like Look-see. Why had she struggled to explain? It was obvious Catcher was clever in more ways than one. Her spiral-horned friend accepted, in an instant, what Eyas considered too obtuse to say outright. Without a blink or a moment to consider it all, the truth was taken in a single dose. Afterward, the weight of all her unspoken secrets left Eyas’s conscious just as quickly; she felt physically buoyant, now that one person aside from her twin knew the exact definition of her gift. A gift Heartfire had given her, and one that tormented her. A gift whose burden now seemed equally shared and respected by the present company. For the first time in many, many years, Eyas felt herself placing that rare, fragile bud of trust into the welcoming soil of Catcher’s own heart, and it rooted there.
She felt breathless as the scenery around them changed, and the giddy smile drawn over her black lips related that her happiness in this instant was infinitely boundless. Together they lived their first moments of friendship over again. Together they watched it fade away into the present reflection of that friendship - something stronger, wholly unexpected but fully welcomed by Eyas. The crippling feeling of loneliness wouldn’t haunt her anymore.
Catcher could ask her anything, and Eyas feared she’d answer it without delay. She could lean into the buckskin mare and not fear rejection, because Eyas wanted that same closeness as well. She actually shifted her wing up a bit, allowing a hollow pocket of space to open up where Catcher could fit comfortably into her side, and leaned her suddenly heavy forehead into the tangle of Catcher’s cosmic mane, sighing contentedly. The weight of the mare beside her reminded Eyas that this dream was more like reality than anything, and she wished (more than ever) that it could continue on like this always.
Reading her unspoken thoughts, the graying unicorn spoke up. “Oh it is, and I’m glad I haven’t spooked you.” The little pegasus eagerly replied when she was able, not yet reading the room or the unspoken question in the silence soon after her friend fell quiet again. She only lifted her head to rub her cheek gratefully into Catcher’s nose, satisfied as any cat could be when they'd found a particularly warm ray of sunshine. But when the hesitant question did come at last, Eyas hardly expected it.
Her small, fluttering heart clenched with despair.
“Oh…” Was all she could manage at first, though Eyas did her best to mask any extreme look of displeasure from coloring her golden face. She fought for control and, after a second or two, found it. “Catcher,” The sight-seer spok her name no higher than a whisper, reverently, “I had no idea you felt like this.”
Eyas did her best to think and stay focused. It wasn’t that the idea of it upset her - quite the opposite - it was just that… well, “Right now, I’m not sure that we can.” Her throat tightened at having to give such an immediate refusal. As if she could possibly make up for it, Eyas did her best to smile. “As soon as I wake up I need to be on my way again, and I won’t stop until I’ve gotten a hold of Wolfbane and brought him to justice. There’s… a lot of family issues I need to work out first, before I’m free enough to explore my own wants and needs.” She managed to laugh just a little. “And I do want to try. Very, very much. But I won’t risk losing someone else I care about - I wouldn’t dream of putting you in harm’s way.” Eyas told her dearest friend.
Her expression had turned despite her attempts at keeping a neutral stance. The glint in her black eyes hardened from determination and her mouth set itself into a reserved line. To some it might appear prideful, but to Catcher she hoped it appeared as what it was: an expression of earnest love, of the deepest kind of commitment. She’d lost Gale, now Heartfire. How could she go on without the dreamweaver? Impossible. She gave the silvering mare a moment or two to think and reply on her own, then Eyas asked, “Can you wait for me until then?”
EYAS
@[Catcher] ugh just take her poor little heart already <3
Rendered into silence, the night stained unicorn settled into Eyas’s side. The admission had come with no thought of consequences behind it, and therefore had not come with the baggage of any preconceived expectations. In its simplest form, it was what it was. Though there is a sliver of surprise woven into the fabric of her contemplative mask - a surprise in how heavily weighted and deeply rooted the emotions were behind those words, and a surprise in recognizing the sudden gaping vulnerability it made her feel. It was uncomfortable, but inexplicably liberating.
And she marvelled at having discovered such a thing. With Eyas.
“I had no idea I felt like this either.” With her eyes turned downcast, her mouth settled into a stoic line. Her grasp on the pitch coloring that marked her poured away, revealing the shabby unicorn that lied beneath the illusion once again. It didn’t feel right holding onto it any longer.
The idea of the seer going off on her own brings a flood of bitterness to her mouth. It lingers there, in spite of how many times she tries to swallow it down. The thought of a world without her best friend was ugly and incomprehensible, and it made her heart feel hollow to imagine such a thing. And she wonders if she should become adamant to join her - would that make a difference? But the expression on her friend’s face is enough to still her tongue. Jaw clenched tightly against an unseen battle, her unreadable gray eyes rise to scrutinize the faux aurora, as if the answer she sought might be hidden there.
But an easy answer is not forthcoming in the sways and bends of the lights, and the young unicorn simply nods in agreeance. She would just have to settle on trust and blind faith to stitch the fraying hole in her heart. “I’ll wait,” her voice hardly above a whisper, is nearly lost into the tawny gold of Eyas’s neck, “for however long you need.”
Reluctantly, the dreamweaver pulls away slightly, shivering at the brush feathers along her withers. “Eyas, before you decide if I’m worth returning to, there are some things about me that you should know.” She’d already made herself vulnerable in a way she couldn’t have imagined before tonight, And Eyas had been brave enough to share the darker parts of her life, so why leave the rest of it left unsaid? “Back in reality, I’m a snake shifter. I try not to use it often, because...because, it scares me sometimes. There are impulses and instincts there that I don’t understand yet. Not like in dreams, where I feel mostly in control.” She steadies herself, thinking back to Kagerus and everything her granddam had selflessly took the time to teach her. “I can also visit the Afterlife through dreams. The line between dream and death is apparently very blurred.” She pauses to take a deep breath, her expression darkening and suddenly turning serious, her eyes begging the pegasus to understand the magnitude of what her heart was trying to convey. “I’ll know if something happens to you” she says, physically unable to say exactly what that would imply, ”and I can’t promise that if that does happen, I won’t track down what’s-his-face while he sleeps and drag him into the worst parts of the Afterlife myself.” The world grows calm around them in an eerie reflection of the dreamweaver’s resolve.
There’s a looming sadness behind that resolve, one that makes her mouth curve into a smile, sad and sweet. Catcher knew she’d have to let Eyas go soon.
And she wishes she didn’t.
The unicorn sighs, long and plaintively, “Did I just go and ruin the night?”
-So deep in my heart that you're really a part of me-
catcher’s dream coat had been a beautiful thing. Woven from stars and the galaxy itself, forming dancing constellations Eyas could’ve stared at endlessly for hours. Her dark eyes would have drank in the splendor of the universe all night long, and Eyas would have happily commented time and time again on the loveliness, but when her friend slid off the cloak and returned to the granite gray-and-white (still peppered with a bit of bright red here and there) she'd normally been, Eyas felt herself sighing aloud.
Yes, the wonder of time and space was a costume fit for an empress - but plain Catcher was the filly who Eyas had fallen into friendship with, and plain Catcher was the same mare who was making her fall even deeper. Eyas loved every inch of her mottled skin just as it was intended to be. No dream could possibly take away that truth.
The buckskin mare felt so lucky to know her at all. Now she was offered something precious from the other horse, and despite Eyas’s stupid reasoning Catcher was still giving her more. More space. More time. More trust. Could I do the same if the situation was reversed? The pegasus wondered, feeling a moment’s worth of selfish rejection at the role-reversal. Could she agree to leave Catcher to her own problems, if the unicorn asked it of her?
For now, the answer was an uncertain one. All the more reason to wait and be sure of these feelings. Eyas thought, re-adjusting her wing as the overo mare separated herself from the warm embrace. When they met again Eyas would know for certain if she could give everything in her willpower toward something so fragile and precious as true love. The concept scared her, admittedly, because she hardly knew who she was without this life-long goal of bringing Wolfbane down, but it also exhilarated her to know she had something - no, someone - to look forward to once her purpose had been completed.
She could hardly expect the moment to turn serious even when it did, so she smirked at Catcher when the other horse grew hesitant. Some things I should know, huh? She grinned mischievously, her black eyes sparkling with the idea that Catcher - sweet, doting, always-caring Catcher - was preparing to unleash a dark secret. Did she accidentally step on a butterfly once? Eyas guessed to herself, biting her tongue to keep from laughing aloud at the stony expression on her friend’s long face.
The truth, as it turned out, was a bit more serious but not alarming... at first. Catcher told her that inside of her lived something else, another spirit bound to her own that brought out unusual urges and sometimes made her fear herself, which Eyas could understand. Beqanna had plenty of single-animal shapeshifters; that her newfound crush was one of them (and a predator at that!) made very little difference to Eyas. Compared to things she’d seen? Eh… watching her unicorn gal-pal swallow another creature might actually be entertaining.
Really, the only time that her confident grin stuttered and dropped from her mouth was when Catcher mentioned that along with visiting the living, she could also visit the dead in her dreams. That was the rug pulled out from under Eyas’s hooves, and her smallish head rose with the quick, forward flick of her ears. “Hot damn, you’ve been holding out on me.” Her astonishment brought her voice up a pitch or two. “This is a lot to process all at once... but don’t worry. I won’t let the big, bad wolf get me. Not when I have someone like you watching over me.” Eyas shook her head in disbelief. She chortled and gathered her thoughts together.
“No, you haven’t. Don’t go saying that or then it’ll be true.” She lowered her voice again, this time having the sensibility to read her companion’s emotions as they were literally reflected in the imagined world around them. Planets hanging in the sky slowed their dizzying rotations, spinning their rings and moons a bit more carefully from the tension. “Snake-lady, Dreamweaver… whatever you are, I clearly like it. And if you think you might be losing control, then don’t worry. I’ll come and make things right. I won’t abandon you in the woods of your fear.” She promised, boldly stretching out her dappled gold neck to plant a firm kiss on Catcher’s spotted shoulder.
“We all have our own darkness inside. I do too, even without my second sight. A while ago I met with a magician named Set and he showed me my own soul.” Eyas withdrew, mirroring that same tension from earlier, “There’s something, some part of me, that can physically possess another horse. I’ve tried it before…” Eyas admitted with a twinge of shame at the memory. She’d taken another living, breathing creature’s will away from them. “I liked it: the power, the control. All of it. And that scared me bad.”
Since they were in the strange habit of sharing secrets, Eyas figured she might as well share hers, too. If Catcher felt it was necessary that her inner demons be barenaked in order for them to progress into something deeper than friendship, then Eyas would let her know exactly who it was she was dealing with. What was it that ‘Tana had called her? “I’m literally a witch.” The admission exposed itself in the form of a bitter laugh.
EYAS
@[Catcher] Oh I'm sorry, were you under the impression that this thread was ending? Because I wasn't, ha ha ha.
“Yeah, you’d better not let him win,” she threatened (half serious, half in jest), twisting her face into the best bully-esque, menacing, heated stare she could imagine. Catcher’s sure she’s fallen short of the expression she was aiming for, but it doesn’t phase her, and her features soften to something far more stoic and contemplative. Truth be told, she had no idea if she could actually pull something like that off as an amateur dreamweaver. Kagerus had taught her of it, brought the possibilities to light and got her little mind whirring; but the execution was another obstacle entirely - and she just wasn’t sure if she was capable yet. Hopefully, that’d be a bridge not needing crossed anytime soon.
The gentle pressure on her shoulder is unexpected and Catcher finds herself in a surprising dilemma. She ought to step away, she ought to do or say something that’ll make walking away easier when the night would inevitably close. But the dreamer can’t - and she simply just doesn’t want to. Right now, what she really wanted, was to be so stupidly selfish and just enjoy the waning time her oldest friend was willing to waste on her. And so her own lips stayed still and she offered no comment about it. Instead she closes her eyes heavily, accepting and grateful for the expression of comfort and the warmth that had chased away an impending chill.
Eyas goes on to explain the trials involving her own darkness, and fear, and powers. “Your soul?” the unicorn questioned, turning to regard her with obvious curiosity, wondering how something like viewing your own soul was possible. But even at a young age, the overo mare had learned that Beqanna was a strange place with strange magic, and she discards the previous thought entirely, knowing fully well that such a thing was definitely in the realm of possibilities in a place like this, along with the other gifts the seer was sharing with her now.
“Did they deserve it?” she asks, letting go of the galactic images that spun around them, and watching has Hyaline’s tallest mountain dissolved back to the sea washed cliffs of Nerine. The dreamweaver was tiring, the hold on her slumbering magic was beginning to slip, and her limits were being reached; holding onto the images that long had begun to take its toll. But she held onto the full moon in the sky, feeding it’s pale glow until it shimmered brightly and hauntingly beautiful above the grey sea.
“I think you’re right though - we all have some darkness in us.” Her stormy gaze studied the moon where she left it hovering in the pitch night sky; it was impossible for it to burn so brightly without the embrace of darkness. “But I think we all have a little light too. And maybe someday we can explore the darkness a little more. Together." Smiling, she looked back to Eyas, “After you put down the wolf, of course.”
“And if it makes you feel any better, you’re in great company, at least,” the dreamer said, joining in the pegasus’ laughter with much less bitterness. Catcher bumped her nose delicately against Eyas’ golden cheek, hoping it’d be taken as a sign of gentle reassurance. “Apparently I’m a witch too, or at least, that’s what Firen says I am.”
CATCHER
caught in the afterglow
@[Eyas] i keep telling myself i'm not going to write such a long reply but here we are
