"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 is disappointed, to say the least. The lightning girl had seemed to enjoy his sort of fun and yet she is nowhere to be found. Maybe he should have scouted before convincing the entire serpentine clan to move their roots elsewhere. Crowns departs from the twins and his parents to better explore their new home, to see if perhaps there are exciting things here after all. He spreads his wings and takes a nosedive off the cliffs until the sea winds catch him and send him soaring through the air.
His bright blue eyes study the wide expanse of ocean north of the region. Varick and Katarine have always loved the saltwater and the tide, he knows, so at least they will still have a shoreline to bask and lounge on. Crowns tucks his wings and dips lower until he’s gliding above the abandoned sea caves dotting the beach. He wonders what sorts of mysteries they hold in their cavernous corridors - maybe some bones and forgotten memories? A grin overcomes his face and he decides to land gently at the mouth of one such cave.
“Hello?” he calls, only to be answered by his echo. A drop of water off a small stalactite stirs ripples in a pool of water left by the low tide. The rock formations almost look like a ceiling made of sharp teeth, he thinks as he creeps inside. His foxfire illuminates several feet of the cave before him but leaves the next turn impossibly dark, impossibly foreboding. Naturally, this draws a smile across his face and he continues onward.
That is, until he hears the echoing sounds of steps coming up behind him. He turns to look over his shoulder with his eyes burning bright in the cave’s dark pathways.
He makes no attempt at secrecy as he delves into the extensive network of caves threading through Nerine’s cliff faces. There is a dark and foreboding thrill curling through the entire place, though he’s not quite sure if it is the echo of another or his own reckless heart. Either way, it draws him onward, the thrill causing his heart to bound as the rush of blood sounds in his ears.
It is the glow that catches his eye first.
Leilan had mentioned others lingering here, content to keep to themselves. Only a small part of Reave had come here because of that knowledge. The large part bursting in his chest was the long-held need for excitement. The burning desire to explore - to find that which he hadn’t known before, to feel the adrenaline of something new and possibly dangerous.
But that glow is not the same danger of the tides rising and trapping him inside. No, it is something else entirely. And, reckless youth that he is, he follows it.
With the harpy eagle still on the cliffs (the bird had refused to enter the cave), Reave has no eyes ahead of him to spoil the secrets. Instead he had only his own enhanced vision, glowing cat-like in the darkness. But as he nears, the ’Hello?’ echoing from the cave wall startles him. Moments later, a deep curiosity begins to bloom.
It seems he had found one of the elusive others that lived here. At the sound of the second hello, Reave clips around the last corner - rife with rising stalagmites and falling stalactites - that separates them.
“Hello.” His own greeting, accompanied by the dripping of water and scuff of his own footsteps, is far more bold and certain than he truly is. “Admiring the caves before the tide comes in too I take it?”
They each glow in their own ways, and yet Crowns is surprised to find the stranger just around the corner shining in the dark. His bones burn bright and the sapphire boy is quite taken with them. It reminds him of a sun-bleached skull he once found, and how it reflected the moonlight so perfect in the night. There was something melancholy and beautiful about those bones that he sees, too, in Reave.
He offers a smile, charming as always, and begins to bridge the gap between the two of them. Crowns sidesteps the cave formations until the lazy orbit of his foxfire nearly brushes against the stranger. There, just shy of Reave, he stops. The other is taller and older and has a warmth about him. This is someone he thinks he could befriend if all is as it seems, he thinks.
“I am. I thought about staying after the tide rises, too, just to see what it’s like,” he explains with a glimmer of something eager behind his eyes. Crowns often loves to step just beyond death’s reach and remind himself of his own permanence in this world. It is a trait his mother abhors, but does nothing to dissuade. This is how his innocence has come to corrupt and fester at the edges.
“Have you ever waited to see just how high the waters go?” he asks, a light tilt of his handsome head and another flash of a smile.
If ever Reave were innocent, it had shattered the day of his birth when his mother breathed her last. At the tender age of only a few minutes old, he had known himself a murderer. Of course, the naivete of youth had lingered longer, but even that had faded far more swiftly than it should. When one sees the world as Reave does, innocence and naivety are a pipe dream of those who haven’t quite lost theirs yet.
But Reave is curious. It lies like a savage hunger in his breast, always craving more. And as the blue and red stranger rounds the corner, Reave recognizes a kindred soul. It is not a single thing he could point to, nor something easy to define. But it dances in the recklessness surrounding him, curls in the darkness of a yearning he recognizes.
The sharp blue of his eyes remain inexorably fixed on the other stallion as he closes the distance. He is so close that Reave can clearly see the defined edges of his youthful features, shadows shifting in the slow movement of the creature circling him. The sharp angles of erupting bone cast oddly against his own red and white skin, creating a strange and ominous illusion between them.
An omen not improved by the way a slow grin begins to curve across Reave’s features in response to the other’s words.
“Not physically,” Reave replies, his own head tilting to match the intriguing stranger. Perhaps he had not physically stayed to watch the waters rise (he unfortunately did not have the same surety he would survive the swelling waters), but he had seen. He hadn’t been able to help himself - not when the sea is so full of eyes. So he smiles a knowing smile, eyes alight with curious anticipation. “Have you?”
