"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
you and I both know that the house is haunted and you and I both know that the ghost is me
Magnus was beginning to realize that there was no one who was going to understand his personal brand of anguish. The moods that changed subtly and viciously during the day. The memories that settled into his bones and then filtered through his fingers like sand. He’d wake up and all he would see is Joelle’s face smiling down at him. Some days, instead, it would be Makai’s glowering face as a colt, or the fear in his eyes when he life bled for him, or it would be Novae looking at him with pure resentment on her face. Other times, it would be Librette staring back at him or Trashlip looking down at him right before the kill.
Memories would either come in like a trickle or they would flood him; either he could barely remember the names of past Gates residents or he would be so overwhelmed that his knees buckled. Despite the fact that it had been over a year since he had crawled out of the ocean, he still had not been able to learn more about whatever dark magic had made it possible. Somewhere in the back of his mind, in his gut, he knew that it had something to do with his brother (the one who should be dead but was alive instead), but that was the extent of it. And, to be honest, the buckskin just wasn’t ready to face Makai just yet.
Feeling nostalgic, Magnus veered from his normal trek to the Field toward the Meadow, wanting a simple conversation without the strings of recruiting attached. Today, with the weight of the world on his shoulders, he wasn’t sure how useful he would be to those milling in the Field. It would maybe be for the best that he gave them the chance to talk to someone else—be recruited by someone who wasn’t fighting their own head the entire conversation. To Magnus, recruiting was too important to do half-heartedly.
Frowning slightly, he walked into the Meadow just as dawn struck it. He could not help the small smile that came from watching the morning light filter through the trees. Perhaps this was just what he needed.
Her body is a black canvas decorated with intensifying red cuts and infectious wounds. Her skin is tainted with bruises and missing hair. Her legs are aching and her stomach twirling. She is suffocating from a thick layer of smoke and her eyes are watering from the haze of intoxicating chemicals.
Waking up never felt so relieving.
She is lathered from head to toe in a thick white sweat. Her body aches from what she can only explain as “nightmare” effects. Have you ever dreamt something so terrifyingly realistic that it is almost like it really happened?
She rocks herself up, slow and steady always won the race. It begins by an outstretch with her front legs, a heavy sigh and then an exhausting effort to lift herself from the dewy surface. Her hind legs follow and eventually she is on all fours, shimmying stray blades from her coat and stretching her neck out like an awkward giraffe.
It has been the second time in a row she has found herself asleep in the comfort of head dear Meadow.
But you have the Deserts as a home.
Ah, it is true. But she doesn’t feel home. She feels empty there, as empty as anywhere she has been before. She wakes in the scorching sun, bathes in the cold lake as her ebony body soaks up the afternoon heat wave, and then by the time the moon rolls around she is exhausted by the temperature and sleeps yet again. Until that feels like home, she will persistently hang in the meadow.
Or, until the meadow begins to feel strange and unfamiliar.
She has always been guilty of hiding in her comfort zone. Unwilling to try new things or make new habits.
Our little ebony mare doesn’t have any true memories that haunt her. She doesn’t have skeletons in her closet or regrets hung on coat hangers. Her biggest fault—unfortunately, I know—is her naivety. She is a blank slate, a white canvas. She has no devil, nor an angel to guide her off past mistakes and misfortunes. She doesn’t have the ghost of history haunting her from poor decisions. She is young, freshly a woman, and yet so many have already lived such plentiful lives in comparison to herself. She is but a child in an adult body.
And believe me, she is most definitely a beautiful adult.
And her blank slate, her white canvas is what the Meadow holds hostage. The Meadow knows she won’t fit in her kingdom quite yet, until she adds a few cuts and bruises a few limbs she won’t relate to the broken souls of the field. She cannot recruit, being so imperfectly perfect and infuriatingly polite. And she cannot bore anymore equines with her less-than-tolerable pitch.
The Deserts is good, it can give you a home…,
How can she voice herself so passionately when even she feels at odds with her residency.
She feels claustrophobic in the air of the field, and this is yet another reason to mark the Meadow as her desirable nest. Save herself from embarrassment and struggles. Make life a little easier, and hide away the slow to mature.
It is a fresh morning. She is wading herself in the water and soaking away her anxiety when the rustle of parting grass flickers her hazel eyes to alert.
Hesitantly, really, she walks herself from the lake with beads of water easing down her sculpted frame. Her ears twist like radar dishes hunting for sign and sound when a gold painted coat awaits her arrival.
He doesn’t truly await for her, but she can pretend he does.
Part of her yearns to run, fully outstretched and petrified. Another part of her wants to play around more with bravery and boldness, part of her wants to attempt to socialize.
The last man had been Tarnished, and while that conversation had seemed to run smoothly, she also had never seen him again.
Despite her inner contemplation, her body finds itself cautiously walking up to his side. She is elegant in how she presents herself, always had been and always will be. Her demeanor isn’t to be abrupt and sudden, it is to be careful and graceful. She wasn’t ever the warrior, but always the peacekeeper.
Her soft tune as she quietly greets, “hello,” is enough to prove that comparison.
“Exemplary,” she adds as if almost forgetting her name. Horses, horses are hard to talk to.
Stallions, though? Stallions are even harder.
Exemplary
I will be yours, and only yours, until the day I fade to black
you and I both know that the house is haunted and you and I both know that the ghost is me
If she is lacking skeletons on her closet, then Magnus has plenty to spare. He is overflowing with them, the devil on his shoulder having long ago set up residence. He was a study of conflicting emotions and overbearing guilt—the guilt of betraying his family, abandoning his kingdom, and always (always) the guilt of failing to protect those who he loved. On most days, the guilt was enough to drown him.
He feels it choking him as he walks through the meadow today and despite his best efforts, it is enough that he cannot ignore it. That is, until the slender black mare walks up to his side and introduces herself. Magnus almost sighs with relief at the diversion. “Hello there,” his gold-flecked eyes turn to meet her own, and his smile is as genuine as it is crooked, the lacerated lips pulling up lopsided in one corner.
“My name is Magnus.”
A name that would have once meant something but now was just dust in his mouth—a name only known to the few ancient souls that continued to haunt Beqanna. At first, it had been odd stepping back into a life that no longer remembered him, but he had found that he truly did not mind it. The anonymity was as pleasant and relaxing as he would have imagined. It was hard to disappoint those who did now know him.
Bringing his attention back to Exemplary, he tilts his head to consider her. She was beautiful, and he was not immune to it, but it was the kindness in her eyes that truly intrigued him—the simplicity of that enough to draw him forth like moth to flame. “So what brings a mare like you to the meadow on a day like this?” It was a question that he had asked before; it was one with answers that never disappointed.
Isn’t it scary though? That while he has his edges and scars—his history and lessons—she has nothing but emptiness? Isn’t it more beneficial to live a life of struggles and valleys than just “be”. While he has explored, ventured, learned, lived; she has stayed in this plateau of vacancy. She has occupied space, taken air, inhaled water and nibbled at grass. She has simply “been”.
Isn’t that scarier: while he has gotten to make the most of his life, she has only gotten to float amongst the victories, never earning herself a pretty scar.
She would be foolish to not acknowledge the experience that dashed in his well-practiced, crooked grin. She saw the way his features pulled together to be this rugged, handsome man. Like a hard working laborer with priorities of earning his keep, rather than fancying his lifestyle. She admired him before she learnt his name. He had a fascinating glow, an intensifying aura that drew her in like a child following the scent of fresh cookies. He looked hardened, well-lived, but he wore his appearance like a glove.
Unlike her, he did not look awkward in the body he was given.
He asks her a question, and she feels anxious to disappoint. What brings her here? Exemplary doesn’t really know. Our little doe is a wanderer, a ghost. She haunts everything and everyone with no real purpose or reason. Her legs continue to walk and she passively inhales the view. A doomed black beauty roaming the well ventured trail. A mare full of emptiness, gliding like a helium balloon across a parking lot.
“I,” she starts, but isn’t sure how to finish. She isn’t a liar, but she so desperately yearns to satisfy his curiosity. She is no trick of the trade, no magician or talent. As numerously stated, she has no dark and twisty story. He must have some woman to hide from, maybe some important duty to procrastinate about. However she? She has this horrible habit of walking. “I got bored of the scenery. I needed something new.”
She watches him, exfoliates his energy against hers. His musky, well-worn, masculine scent wafting into her nostrils with an odd sweet dash. As naïve, untarnished as she is—our white canvas appreciates the art of a well painted picture. It is a skill of hers; appreciating what most do not. Longing for the day her heart shatters to a mess of broken pieces, longing for a time where scars will taint her ebony coat.
One day, she will be appreciated for her finished artwork.
Exemplary
I will be yours, and only yours, until the day I fade to black
you and I both know that the house is haunted and you and I both know that the ghost is me
Magnus did not understand boredom—he was built to work, worked himself to the bone to distract himself from the pain—but he understand restlessness. He understood the need to wander. It was that same desire, although perhaps exaggerated, that had made him give up his throne. That and a burning guilt that he could not ignore. It was that same need to leave that forced his hand.
But, in the end, he knew what he had done. He had run.
So he maybe does not empathize completely with her statement, but he sympathizes, and it shows in the lacerated angles of his smile. “New can be good,” is all he says in his whiskey tones, his voice husky and deep and full of things unsaid. It was the voice of someone who had seen a lot—some would argue too much. It was the voice of a son, a lover, a soldier, and a King who had failed those he had loved. It was, at the end of the day, someone who knew that new could be good because it meant a fresh start. And more than anyone, Magnus knew that a fresh start was sometimes all that you had to cling to in life.
“How is new working out for you so far?” he jokes lightly, gold-flecked eyes flashing with humor. This was easy for him; this is where he shined. Although he was a warrior at heart, he had always loved taking time to meet others—and he particularly enjoyed the company of mares. He was, after all, raised in the jungle amongst the best of them. He loved their softness and their coyness and their hard angles. They were intriguing; even if she did not recognize it, she was too. She just couldn’t see it yet.
There is a God who makes things. He sculpts each and every soul, moulds their frame, carves their organs, and places them in the womb of a living physical being. And that living, physical being speaks, and feels, and then God’s newest creation feeds of what that character is. And then this new creature is born with this set way of thinking before it even knows how to grasp itself, and it is already apart of something so much bigger than it will ever understand. And that thought, that thought alone makes Exemplary question the very physical being that carried her for those months. It makes her question who her mother was, what she thought and believed in. How she acted when she was hurt, angry, happy.
Does she blink lots when she is nervous, does she find herself caught in the way of words and unable to speak, when she is angry does she illuminate fire from her eyes but the kind of fire that doesn’t look to be scary, no it looks beautiful. Is she the reason Exemplary acts in such manners, or was that something she learned absent-mindedly along the way?
Who is responsible for creating such an in depth man like Magnus, such a complex, intelligent being. Who taught him to speak so little, to manage words in a way much like a poet. Was she beautiful? He is handsome, so that must mean his parents were in some way, shape, or form, beautiful too.
And here she is again, lost in the universe of her own mind and incoherent to what is being said, and done around her.
A master of introvertedness. Introversion.
“It isn’t the new and the old that is scary, Magnus. It is the not knowing part that is scary.”
It is easy to handle life when things have a plan. She met Magnus, and he was unknown but since the beginning of the conversation he has proven to be of no threat, and therefore it is easy for her to continue to converse in him because he is new, but his intentions are known. And then there are physical beings that aren’t new, and are bad, and they are not necessarily scary either because she knows they are bad. She can therefore reroute her day to avoid these scary individuals. And then there are strangers, or strange situations, or just strange places in general that are unknown and that is most scary of all. Are they safe, are they dangerous, are they important or a waste of time; you don’t know these facts because they aren’t known to you yet. The scariest part of new is not scary, new is in fact exhilarating and fresh. It is the fact that by the end of the story you might be dead, and only because the intentions were unclear.
Secretive.
Unknown.
“New has introduced me to you, and I would like to think that is a good thing,” her voice is so harmonic, piano-like almost. She has a tone that can sing the most ugly, demonic song and it still sound like a choir version for church. Her voice is not husky and full of history and stories, it is like breathing a fresh of breath air and forgetting you had a story at all.
She will always be the one who attracts the broken ones. The ones who pick her because she makes them feel a high unlike anyone else.
The kind of high that numbs your heart and cures your ache.
She does not know of his history—his love, his son, his kingdom past—she just knows of this gentleman who has vocalized interest in her. Not in her. Interest of her. An innocent interest. The kind of interest a teacher shows in his student. The kind where they intend to help, to educate, and to maybe learn in the process.
And she has the sort of interest a girl has on a distanced boy at work. Where you communicate seldomly and smile occasionally, and make up a spark all in your head. An innocent crush.
Maybe not a crush on Magnus, necessarily. No, a crush on the fact someone has shown interest in more than her ebony frame.
Maybe a little bit of both.
It is a shame she will always be born to be a heart breaker. To die and then relive and never remember her previous life. A mare born to relive, and relive again and consistently wipe the chalkboard clean.
Magnus shouldn’t show interest in her, even if he only intends it to be friendly.
“You keep implying you have good stories, but you don’t seem to want to tell me.” Keep talking, little doe, you cannot walk away now.
Exemplary
I will be yours, and only yours, until the day I fade to black
@[Laura] I apologize it took so long to write this, but I finally found her muse again
you and I both know that the house is haunted and you and I both know that the ghost is me
“Not knowing does not have to be scary,” he muses, as he looks around them, considering the branches of the trees swaying in the wind and the distant chatter of horses reduced to nothing more than the rumblings of a tide. “There is excitement in the unknown because there is possibility. It is a chance to write your own destiny, to mold your own future. The unknown is nothing more than a welcoming opportunity.”
Magnus would much prefer the great unknown to the written in stone of prophets. He had railed against the heavens before for his fate, and he would prefer to master of his own destiny. Captain of his own ship even if he splintered it against the shallow rocks. “New introduced me to you, and that is definitely a good thing,” he counters with a friendly glint in his golden gaze. “But it was also the unknown. When I woke up this morning, I had no idea what the day would hold—and it turns out that it would hold you.”
It was easy to enjoy conversation with her. It was easy to fall into the stimulating talk, her eyes bright and her smile cheery. When she prompts him of his stories, he can only laugh, rolling his scarred shoulders. “How unfair of me.” Indeed, he had stories—stories of beneath the ocean waves and at the height of mountains. Stories of love and loss and cruelty and mistakes. Stories of redemption and bloodshed. Not all were stories he reveled in telling, but he had no reason to hide any of them from her.
“Would you like to hear stories from this life or my last?” There is a twinkle in his eye at this question, as he relaxes even further. It did not appear that he would be going anywhere anytime soon.
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