Rain grey towns; Brine, Any

[Eyas]

Now the time has come.
She wakes from immortal slumber. Not the kind where her eyes are closed and her chest gently rising, falling, but the kind where she blinks into the present-tense. Literally, Eyas blinks her eyes and stumbles one step forward, tugging at the growing spring vines that have begun to clamor up her legs. They rip from the dark soil of the Forest easily enough, and a heap of dry leaves tumbles freely to the ground where they’ve been stuck in between the motionless feathers of her wings.

Months have passed and the buttermilk-colored buckskin girl has eaten nothing nor swallowed fresh water. She’s hasn’t slept; hasn’t moved from the very spot she’d anchored herself after being tossed aside like a play thing, moments away from being devoured by a dragon. She was thankfully aware that her immortality would lend healing to her wounds, but that meant stasis. Stasis meant she would be caught up in ‘the sight’, and once she began looking into the eyes of those horses she’d bonded with there really wasn’t any backing out for some time.

It was almost like the dreamworld Catcher had shown her. Except what she saw wasn’t a dream but reality: focused, vivid, and raw now that she’d gotten a bit more familiar with her gift.

Only the reality wasn’t hers… it was always someone else's.

Eyas’ reality was the sound of thudding hoof steps as they struggled to carry her at the slowest of paces. It was the tips of her wings dragging along beside her, heavy and useless while attached to a nearly-dead horse. She was nothing but skin stretched too tightly over what could’ve been a fine bone structure; a ragged looking thing painfully making its debut in the white-hot sunlight of spring. The day had only begun but Eyas knew her journey would be much longer than one sinking sun and one rising moon. She was incredibly weak and malnourished.

In the end she reached Nerine after a week or more had passed.

On that final day she could hear the faint crashing of the ocean, and though her head hung low between her two knees the now less-emaciated pegasus could picture the rising cliffs and the impossibly green scrub covering nearly every square inch of rocky terrain. The smell of the moors in her nose brought fresh tears to Eyas’ dry eyes and at the border she collapsed from exhaustion, happy just to be here finally and happy to lose herself in the never-ending blue of a clear sky.

@[Brine]

[Brine]

brine

I turned off my light, harder to find
that way

Nerine has cool mornings.

She stands stationary against the breeze coming from the ocean, facing the endless blue reaching far beyond her vision. It has been two years since she last saw her golden world, the way the rays kissed her skin and how her love for living kissed right back.

Ignorance has always been bliss.
(But, knowledge is power.)

Since…everything… Brine had found power by realizing she could choose where to go, when, and who to go with. It dawned on her that she could limit her risk of danger.

That if she was careful enough, nothing bad could ever happen to her again.

Nothing worse than losing her child to freedom, at least.

The sun slowly rose to her east, the softness of warmth tickling at her flank and ribs. The water rises into her feet, losing sight of her hooves before it falls back in a toss of rage and awaits the next push.

An hour passes before the sun rises high enough that the heat begins to feel more suffocating than soothing. Another reason she finds refuge in the shadows; they don’t burn.

Brine weaves between Jacobean painted tree trunks and emerald—practically fluorescent—moss, retreating back to the safety of her hiding place in effort to beat the afternoon social hour that draws everyone from their corner.

The sound of a falling bundle of weights crashes ahead of her, suddenly triggering her hocks to dip into the soil and slide to panicked halt. Eyes scower the forest floor, manically hunting for the source of the clamor.

She is female, once Brine finds her. A navy stripe accents her darker, dirtier gold hue in comparison to Ruth’s vibrant yellow. Her white socked legs tuck deep beneath her, as if to cradle herself.

And for the first time ever, Brine isn’t busy finding the quickest exit. No, instead she takes one step closer—hesitant, unsure—before lowering her head to get a closer vantage point on the mare’s smell.

Where are you from?

“Are you alright?” She asks instead, her hazel eyes falling onto the strange newcomer with slight fascination. Perhaps it’s the fact the horse seems too weak to pose a threat, or maybe it’s the familiar scent of estrangement lifting from her soul to touch Brine’s chest.

Whatever it is, Brine stays.

@[Eyas]

[Neverwhere]

Brine will not be pleased to see her.

Eyas, perhaps, will not be pleased, either.

But she comes, just the same, following a scent on the wind like a hound, intent to find it, and when she spies the emaciated mare with the roan, she pauses for a moment, snorting softly, before carrying on. A moment of warning for Brine - and for Eyas, though she is less concerned with her feelings.

When the silvered mare is close enough and Eyas's dark eyes meet her own, she regards the buckskin's poor condition, little changed from their last meeting, but sporting fresher scars. In silence, looks Eyas over with an appraising eye and the meaning is clear in the perpetual scowl of her lips, on the single ear turned back - that it's a wonder the blue and gold creature is not simply dead somewhere in the snow. But, as it is, she instead draws the sympathy and attention of the introverted Brine. Brine's voice is low and soft in her ears, makes Neverwhere's own gruff voice sound even rougher.

"You smell better than you did last time we met."

It's almost a joke, although it's true enough. There is less of the fear and sweat on her coat than that meeting in the Meadow where they growled curses at each other until... well, they didn't really stop, did they? Only distance had ebbed the flow of their insults. And time - so much time. Where had she been?

"Heartfire is gone, did you see?"

A strange question. The thin mare has a power similar to her great grandmother, she was coming to be with her, to learn from her and to help Nerine, but the best laid plans so often go awry. Neverwhere prefers not to plan at all for just such a reason. She inclines her head slightly towards Brine but does not look at her, sparing the pressure of eye contact.

"Brine, this is Eyas. Maybe when you have time, you can show her the best grazing spots, as she has a habit of forgetting to eat."

Neverwhere

...

@[Brine] @[Eyas] Did anyone order a thread crash Iwrote while drunk cuz here it is.

[Eyas]

I've got you deep in the heart of me

-So deep in my heart that you're really a part of me-

she’s almost sad that the unbroken blue of the sky above is suddenly interrupted by the underside of @[Brine]’s head. Eyas blinked and waited, expectantly quiet and thoughtful as a roadkill animal should be until the grating comfort of @[Neverwhere]’s recognizable voice overtook Brine’s much more gentle question. The tattered, buckskin pegasus laughed hysterically for a beat and, groaning, took painful efforts to raise her head and roll up off the ground. She got as far as dragging her forefeet up to steady her drunken swaying and stopped there. “Yes I’m fine, thank you-” Eyas swung her head over and stared back into Brine’s inquisitive gaze with black, sparkling eyes. “-for your concern. Queen Neverwhere...” she said bitingly.

Queen Neverwhere, she thought and let the phrase go hanging. She wanted to say more but the fight in her was past exhaustion, and what she had left to say wouldn’t be worth saying if it didn’t have conviction or emotion behind it.

Instead Eyas visibly wilted and her chin felt heavier than normal. All at once she was reflected in their eyes, faced with the glaring truth of her disgusting exterior as they could see it. They must be enjoying it, she thought harshly and her head sank lower to the ground, weighed down by their stares. Heartfire’s great descendant, filthy and unkempt at their doorstep. Too little too late, and reminded immediately that there was no Heartfire here for her, didn’t she see?

Her jaw clenched. Eyas shut her eyes and tried to keep her head from spinning, but the shadow she cast seemed to deepen even in the midday light. “There’s no need.” She muttered darkly to Brine and her instructor, cutting off the chance for a reply. “My habits are preferable to company. Excuse the offense, Brine.” She exhaled and looked up to wink at the speckled mare. Still alive, just not looking the part. “I can’t stay long is what I mean. But I’d hoped to rest a while, in any case.” And she slumped over again, leaving one wing splayed out and bent awkwardly away from her head.

“Wolfbane’s still out there, don’t you know?” She asked rhetorically of Never, listening for the silver dapple’s movement and enjoying the softness of the ground. Her smirk faded. Did you see? The Nerinian had asked. She saw everything, especially how Lilliana looked through her father’s eyes… “Solve your own puzzle.” She laughed weakly this time, soothed by the warmth of the earth and the rich smell of grass. If there was a reply it went unheard. From one second to the next she was gone. Eyas passed into a deep sleep, comforted on the way down by the knowledge that her heavy, inept carcass would be a silent irritant for at least a little while.

Even if Neverwhere left her where she lay out of spite.

EYAS