"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
Ruhr can see it, shimmering and alluring, dappled silver light on smooth earth, and a beckoning cool wind that feels impossibly warm as it ripples across his winter-chilled skin. It is gone far too quickly, leaving the dappled stallion shivering and miserable.
There will be a pool at the end of that path, a body of still water that will show Her glorious face. There will be a vision, an image in the water of what is to become of him. She has shown him the same thing, time and time again.
The world, bowing before him.
But what She never shows him is how, exactly, that future will come to be.
Each time She shows it he asks, and each time he is shown only the faintest details. Some parts of the vision have become permanent, remaining steady in a way that Ruhr has learned means they have been promised to him. Demi appears like that in the visions, her position varied but constant. He stays with her for a myriad of reasons but that - the Moon’s promise - had been the very first. For a while, the pretty palomino had appeared, but when she had stopped being shown to him by the Moon, he had chosen to stop seeing her as well.
He knows better than to question Her. And he especially knows better than to doubt.
The light glitters brighter now, a summons that he cannot ignore.
- - - - -
Hours later, Ruhr returns down the same now-dim path. Though he limps as he always had, the pegasus can feel the new power thrumming through his blood. It is enough to soften the constant pain of the old injury that caiss his limp, and a satisfied smile plays about the small horse’s brightly colored mouth.
The ability to turn others to Her stone, to precious moonstone.
She had Chosen to bless him with this gift, the ability to turn his enemy into statues that would forever remind the earth of Her beauty.
The future She’d shown him feels far closer than it had the night before.
ooc: an IC explanation for him getting my birthday trait, also open to anyone!
Though Zohariel has no issues with daylight in theory, the nature of her gifts certainly create a bias towards the night. Enough that she does her best to only socialize in the moon’s hours - when she’s more awake, more energized. And lately there seems to be more energy around Beqanna as well - an intoxicating hum that is speaking cautious promises of life. She enjoys seeing the foals again this last year or two, though there does not seem to be as many as there had in previous years, and she is looking forward to spring and the sound of bright laughter once again.
Tonight it is still cold, however, and she is wandering in search of a distraction.
She remembers that there is a pond somewhere nearby, and wonders if it’s frozen over - she loves to send starlight shapes dancing across icy surfaces in plays and ballets. For her own entertainment, if nothing else.
But someone else is moving down the route she begins to head up and she stops - noticing his limp but it is the smile that encourages her to call out instead of moving out of the way. “Hello!” And then, because even though speaking to someone would be better than her other plans, her mind is still half filled with stardust so she asks, peering over him - “Is there a pond back that way?”
Ruhr finds his mind wandering as he makes his way down the moonlit path. The power to petrify, to turn his enemies and opposition to stone. The power is a strange one, an ability borne from this new world he lives in, gifted by the Moon. There had been no sign in the vision of how he should use it, of when.
Can he undo it, he wonders, or will the victim be moonstone forever?
His attention is split between finding clear footing and mulling over the ramifications of permanent petrification. He has not been paying attention to his surroundings, and though he smiles at his fortune, the expression opens into one of surprise as he flutters back.
His brightly colored wings flap once, carrying his slender body a few feet away. His wings return to his sides but he does not quite tuck them against his dappled barrel as he watches the smiling mare.
The sharp features of Ruhr’s feathered face are made more severe by the frown that grows as he looks her over, from glittering hoof to starry opal ears.
The consternation of his expression is accompanied by a tone of awestruck curiosity as at last he meets her golden eyes and speaks.
“I think you might be the most fascinating creature I’ve ever seen.”
She had said something, Ruhr remembers suddenly, but try as he might he cannot recall what it had been.
At first, Zohariel has assumed she’s offended him - she feels a pull of disappointment as the smile turns into a sharp frown as he flaps his impressive wings and carries himself backwards a few feet away from her. Her own bright expression falters, uncertainty mixing with discomfort and guilt in her stomach. Some star-flecked shadows begin to curl around her body, as though she could simply obscure herself enough to make up for her social blunder.
The reaction to her presence and his expression are somewhat at odds with the words he speaks, which are not in response to her question at all, and she finds herself forgetting what she had said as well in her confusion. She tilts her head a little to the side, her smile more uncertain than it had been just moments ago.
“... Thank you?” Zohariel believes she is pretty but hardly someone who stands out - her entire family is composed of beautiful, ethereal looking horses and despite the fact that her wingless sides set her apart she knows her opals and stars just mark her as being one of the family and that has always brought her joy.
Unsure of what to say now, she defaults to basic manners - hoping that talking a little more will show her a way out of the confusion muddying her cheer. “I’m Zohariel.”
There is not a place for a creature like Zohariel in Ruhr’s understanding of the cosmos, and he continues to stare at her with unwavering focus. It is the hesitation in her voiced thanks that shakes him from his trance, forces him to process what he sees rather than simply marvel at it.
Her smile remains, not quite as easy as a moment earlier, and though she looks just as Ruhr imagines the Moon given flesh might look, she does not act at all like the Moon acts. She glows, and yet her light is visible on his own white legs, and he suspects it illuminates the aged planes of his feathered face, the grey hair and faded feathers that mark him an old man beneath the full Moon. Old for now, at least, until the moon begins to wane and the years will fall away.
“You look so like someone I know. Knew. ” The stallion shakes his head, the self-correction quick and unremarkable. “Sorry for being strange. I’m Ruhr of Stratos, Diviner of the Moon and Futures.”
Zohariel instantly wonders if he has met one of her family members - there are a handful of the colour-flecked residents of Beqanna. She’s met some, knows of others, and has glimpsed a few more still. They do all share a passing similarity, especially her siblings.
This thought doesn’t linger, though, out weighed by his introduction. It is the most impressive introduction she has ever heard - and she does not hesitate to tell him that as those star-flecked shadows fall away from her and she settles more comfortably into this chance meeting. “I’ve never met someone with so many titles before.” She thinks it has also been a long time since she’s met someone who had a home they could name. The sea took so much of Beqanna, and gave back such strange versions. This, however, seems a little depressing to vocalize so she keeps it locked inside, next to the worry that he will find her disappointing - especially after (presumably) meeting one of her more dazzling relations.
She glances upwards at the full moon, once again voicing the thoughts that come to her without even a hit of anything other than curiosity. “Does the moon have a lot to say?”
In his time in Beqanna, Ruhr has learned that the place is a primitive one. The Moon had shown him why; he had watched their countless calamities in Her glittering reflection. It was difficult, he supposes, to keep a society going in such a world, and yet the Moon has kept him here. He thinks, sometimes, that She might want him to help rebuild it.
He thinks it, and yet he has never dreamed it, never seen it in a vision.
And so he does nothing.
Nothing but wander, and wait, and seek out those touched by Her silver glow.
“There are fewer than there once were,” admits the aged stallion once called Cloudbreaker, Seventh Tribune of Stratos, Cardinal of the Southern Windwalkers. He does not think of them often, those markers of a lost world, and he does not especially miss them.
The mare looks up toward the Moon, and Ruhr watches quietly. She will not speak to the mare, Ruhr knows, but he wonders if perhaps Zohariel will try. If she had, there’d been no answer, and Ruhr pulls his gaze from the mare to look back at the Moon as well.
“Sometimes.” He replies somberly. “She is louder here than she was in Stratos, but she speaks less often.”
