"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
there’s a hole in my chest but it’s mine, baby, it’s all i got.
He has grown so much in his first year of life - both emotionally and physically. Yadigar towers over most children and he has adapted well to being without sight. But he cowers from things that move too quickly and he flinches at the way the wind sounds when it blows too strong through the trees. It seems the fire in his heart has learned burn hotter but it casts so little light, leaving him to his own personal darkness.
Today he has decided to give in to that darkness, but only just a little. He spreads his wings and he takes off toward the north. Father speaks often of how deeply he despises both the northern and the southern kingdoms, but Yadigar is wise enough to know Loess is entirely out of the question. Coming home with the scent of that realm clinging to his scales would be a death sentence. Nerine is detestable, but his defiance in going there is not so great he cannot be forgiven.
He lands with a heavy thud and the gust his wings kick up sends flurries of snow swirling around him. Snow is entirely foreign to him, living next to the eastern sea, and he finds himself intrigued by the world of deep blues and blacks. Gar sniffs curiously at the air. Slowly, he paws at the snow collecting around his talons with a cautious tenderness, as though a sudden movement might disrupt this moment. This place is the opposite of his father’s kingdom. The boy does not realize a smile full of sharp teeth has overtaken his handsome face. A gentle purr begins in the back of his throat as he meanders further north toward the sound of the sea, where the blue-black drops suddenly off the cliffs.
His talons find the very edge where the world seems to end and then he spreads his wings to savor the feeling of salt-laden winds across his body. Yadigar’s spiked tail uncoils from his hind leg and sways slowly from right to left.
you can run but you can't hide breath on your skin, I've arrived
For months now she has lived quietly, drawing so little attention to her waking that, except for the very few who she had revealed herself to, she may as well have been absent still. But as she stitches the edges over her far-flung visions together, she knows that is coming to an end. After all, fields could not flower if they remained unplanted.
As luck would have it, one if those patchwork pieces had come to settle nearly in her lap.
No one would see her passage along the high cliffs of Nerine save the boy who had so recently come to land on her snowy shores. To him she would appear the least intimidating equine to grace these lands. Bland, the color of mud in the spring, with short legs and a round body and more mane than should be allowed on a horse. Or pony, in her case.
Settling into the part, she stops a healthy distance from the youth, eyeing his spiked tail askance. Her voice, surprisingly melodic with it's smooth alto cadence, is perhaps the only thing that does not quite fit the stout little package.
"Hello!" she offers in greeting. "You're not from around here, are you?"
06-24-2020, 06:09 PM (This post was last modified: 06-24-2020, 06:11 PM by yadigar.)
YADIGAR
there’s a hole in my chest but it’s mine, baby, it’s all i got.
At first, only his left ear swivels at the sound of snow crunching beneath someone’s hooves. He forgets that monsters congregate in Pangea and the rest of Beqanna is made up of more beautiful things. In Nerine, he stands out like a sore thumb and perhaps warrants Heartfire’s investigation. Yadigar realizes this and turns to watch her small form draw closer, a spot of yellow and red in the sea of snow. He is aware that he is taller than most, but he is surprised at the difference between them. She seems too hardy to be a child his age. The boy lowers his head to what he presumes is her eye level.
Yadigar reaches out to touch his nose to where he thinks her temple must be. Curiously, he realizes his eye has not begun to tingle as it often does when he first makes eye contact with someone new. He blinks once, twice, and wonders why she cannot see her future. His purring stops abruptly as he slowly lifts his head until he is level with her actual shoulder. Still nothing. Yadigar lifts his chin until his blind gaze finds hers, and the fog swirls away from that milk-white eye. It illuminates a hundred different possible futures for her viewing pleasure - children, death of loved ones, a world set on fire.
But his brow furrows in confusion and he takes a step back. In his efforts to piece the mystery that is Heartfire together, he forgets the cliffs of Nerine end quite abruptly behind him. Yadigar tumbles backward and an awful screech leaves his lungs as he spreads his wings. Rather than simply lift him, however, the cruel ocean winds smash him right back to the cliff wall. He is too young and inexperienced in his flight to know how to properly navigate such gusts.
Luckily, fate saw fit to give him talons, which find their footing in a frantic scramble not to fall. He claws his way up the short distance back to Heartfire and flops himself before her. With heaving breaths and trembling legs, he lies there with no interest in moving anymore. A deep ache in his left wing tells him he has at least fractured the limb. Yadigar does not seem inclined to test it for a break, and instead lifts his chin to look at Heartfire.
“So, I take it you have some kind of magic going on. It wouldn’t happen to be a healing sort of magic, would it?” he asks, still panting and clearly unhappy with himself now.
you can run but you can't hide breath on your skin, I've arrived
She retreats from his touch, as much to protect her illusion as it is aversion to physical contact, but in the end it hardly matters. She couldn’t fault him for being startled. For the briefest moment, even she is unsettled by the visions that manifest as his milky eye finds hers. There are endless possibilities in that unusual gaze. It does not take her long to recognize the future in his sight. Perhaps her abilities do not extend so far, but she has seen enough to know what she is witnessing.
To know that these are the many possible results of the choices she has yet to make.
And then he is tumbling away from her, claws scrabbling against stone as his wings fail him in the blustery northern wind. Expelling an exasperated sigh, she eyes him as he claws his way back over the edge before collapsing in front of her, his panting breaths creating a mist in the air.
She had forgotten how heedless children could be. That their naivete had not developed into inhibition yet. Still, though this was not quite how she had intended it go, the results she had desired were achieved. Partially, at least. And so, with a slight shake of her head, she shifts from small and unassuming to her own taller, slimmer frame. While her true form is not especially intimidating (even in nothing more than heat signatures), it’s clear he no longer has the size advantage over her. Or at least, assumed size advantage.
“I’m afraid not,” she replies quite frankly to his disgruntled question. “But perhaps the ability to better see inanimate objects would prove more useful.” She pauses, tipping her head slightly as she eyes him with a faint amusement. “Unless you wish to tell me the cliff’s edge snuck up on you?”
