"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
Tiercel knows it isn’t a good time to travel, but his feet travel outside of Loess anyway. He is brainstorming; his mind is a turbulent ocean of thoughts about Islas and her vanished stars, about the swelling of her ivory sides, about the sudden darkness and its eternal night. He finds that he always thinks best while he is walking, so he ventures into the darkness with no destination in mind.
When he reaches the shoreline, he feels dizzy with the swirling thoughts of a growing child. Since reuniting with Eyas and Gale, spending more time with Islas, and learning of his parents’ death, the dunskin’s seething anger toward his family has calmed. Tiercel is preoccupied by too many other factors to spend energy on vengeance and jealousy (two emotions that have been old friends to the ocean of feeling he is constantly subject to). Yet he finds himself thinking about his childhood and Wolfbane’s parenting methods in those young, formative days. Tiercel is nervous for the day he will be a father himself — and he knows it is fast approaching, despite the fact that the darkness blurs the days together.
These thoughts stir his heart to beat quicker in his chest, but Tiercel forces himself to focus on the span of the ocean before him. The faint, looming shape of an island lies across the quiet channel. Although close to Islandres, the stallion is certain the nearly imperceptible form ahead of him is Ischia. His swimming has improved since that unexpected trip to Islandres (he’s spent his sleepless nights in Loess’s ocean, building the strength to protect his family if danger looms too close) and Tiercel feels confident in his ability to cross the section of ocean.
When Tiercel pulls himself onto the opposite shore, his muscles are sore but he feels satisfied. His pale eyes scan their surroundings, hoping to pick out a friendly face from the overpowering shadows.
01-04-2021, 07:29 PM (This post was last modified: 01-04-2021, 07:29 PM by Aquaria.)
aquaria
- THE TIDE IS HIGH, IT'S SINK OR SWIM -
She was not afraid of the dark. Or at least, she hadn't been. When it was a predictable thing that gave relief from the island sun, it had been a welcome part of her days. Things were different now, and she had begun to feel uncertainty about the night.
There was no answer she could think of to explain the darkness, and it was beginning to take its toll on the tropical territory. Her home needed the sun. It was as vital as fresh water to the lush jungle, and the coral reefs. Without the sun... Her heart had sunk a little more every day that went by without a dawn, as she felt the air temperature drop and the humidity with it.
The pearl mare found herself reluctant to leave the beaches. The dark was oppressive the further inland she traveled, at least on the shore the waves still danced with their glowing planktons. A blue glow that persisted with every beat of the ocean's heart, and fortified her own. It was the only reason she noticed him emerge from the water.
"Who are you?" she snapped as loudly as she dared to. Sound seemed to carry so much further in the dark. Her normally genial tone that she greeted guests with was gone. The sun had gone out and with it her trust in strangers on her shore. Not that anyone had visited recently, but she was off-kilter without her sight to rely on.
It was a grim sort of karma, maybe. Her first thought when the darkness had come was that her father's from-birth blindness had caught up with her. An unkind thought. With every day that passed, she found herself only marveling more at how confident Hod was without his sight. How easy her father made navigating a dark world seem. Did he ever feel as lost as she did now? Or was it easier with her mother by his side.
Chagrined, she shook her head unseen and tried again, with apology in her voice. "I'm sorry," she began, and meant it. "Every stranger seems like an enemy in the dark... But declare yourself, please. My nerves have not been this frayed in a long while." She finished on a dry laugh, amazed at how quickly the world changed, and never once did it ask permission.
It is strange how the darkness makes them all uncomfortable. They spend half their lives in the night, walking beneath the twinkling constellations or meeting under the distant glow of the moon. Yet the night has always ended; the constellations and moon had always given their control over to the sun so it could invite warmth and life into the soil. This rhythm has been their lives — the rise of the sun, the glow of the moon and stars, the rise of the sun — and it makes them all nervous when the ritual suddenly stops.
Tiercel hadn’t seen her on the beach, the shadows looking even darker outside the glow of the underwater plankton. Her voice startles him (the darkness has made him uncomfortable, too) and he sends a sharp arrow of peace in her direction. The emotion has kept his cave protected so far, and he has walked with it like an aura around him while he travels. Tiercel hopes that the emotion will subdue whoever has just spoken, especially if it is something dangerous.
But the voice speaks again, calmer and apologetic, and so he gently pulls the peace from her. He walks in her direction, still dripping with saltwater, and says, “My name is Tiercel. I’m not dangerous.” His only weapons are his emotions, which press and roll and seethe within him like a stormy ocean. When Tiercel draws close enough to see her pale face, he comes to a stop. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” There are much scarier things in the darkness, he is sure.
01-07-2021, 08:47 PM (This post was last modified: 01-07-2021, 08:47 PM by Aquaria.)
aquaria
- THE TIDE IS HIGH, IT'S SINK OR SWIM -
It's unfamiliar when peace she does not feel invades anyway. It's a flat feeling, one she can't help but accept until it's gone again, and a memory shakes loose. Peering into the darkness, at the figure that was outlined in a quickly fading blue glow, she wondered and measured the odds.
An idea occurred to her, one she figured couldn't hurt to try. With a gentle coaxing hum, the seamare gathered spinning orbs of water from the waves. Half a dozen of them, no bigger than small coconuts, and they spun dripping between the Dame and her guest.
They emitted very little light, but it was enough to prove that she wasn't blind, and wasn't talking to herself out here. Blinking at the angular face, she felt her earlier suspicion solidify. The colors were just this side of wrong, but the shape... "Are you related to a mare named Lepis, by any chance?" She asked without preliminary. Those features were ones she recognized, and ones she saw with fair frequency about the island.
The orbs of glowing water orbited them lazily, spinning shadows that took on disturbing faces when she looked too long. No, she didn't like this dark at all. Returning to Tiercel's attention, she nodded and swallowed before catching her mistake. "I'm Aquaria. This island is my charge, as are it's inhabitants." However few they may be.
She drew herself to her not terribly impressive full height, glittering blue where her sea lights reflected on her scales. "What can I help you with, Tiercel?" She asked, a little perplexed now that her anxiety was lessening. "This is hardly an ideal time for a vacation." That was why most horses visited Ischia, after all. For the sunshine.
There is a low hum and suddenly the shadows around them shift away, put back in their rightful places by the softly-glowing orbs of water. For a moment, Tiercel’s cerulean eyes move away from her face and watch how the water dances in the air around them. The abilities of this country seem to be endless and unfathomable. Flight and emotions and water bending; magic blurs the lines between normal in this world until they are left confused and staring into a night that doesn’t seem to end.
The captured ocean shades her face in blue, outlining the proud arch of her mane in a faint glow. And with this new light, comes the realization of his identity. Tiercel wonders if he really looks as similar to his mother as everyone seems to think — first Oceane and now Aquaria, two women who have picked out Lepis’s face from the angles and colors of his own. He resists the urge to roll his eyes or send a dagger of annoyance into her back. In fact, he finds that his tendency to react in such a way has diminished since Oceane had told him about his parents’ deaths.
So instead he lets a sigh roll out of his mouth, heavy and rushing against the constant song of the tide. “Yes, she’s my mother.” And if this scaled mare knows his mother and doesn’t know of him, it only further confirms his suspicion that Lepis had truly never talked about him among her friends. The opalescent Loessian mare hadn’t known about him either (her face just as puzzled as this mare’s). An empty laugh escapes his throat at this thought. “Apparently I wasn’t her favorite child to talk about with her friends.”
Tiercel didn’t think he was her favorite child in the first place… Not even her favorite triplet, for that matter.
But these are all things of the past, for Lepis is gone and Wolfbane with her. Tiercel turns his attention, and the rolling sea of emotions that accompany him, back toward their conversation. “I’m sure it’s a beautiful place in the light.” The sand under his feet is cold but silky and he imagines it would feel soft and warm beneath the glow of sunlight. And while he refuses to look too deeply into the shadows, he assumes there are slender tall trees and colorful flowers beyond the shifting darkness.
What is he doing here? It had begun as a simple walk to think — to think about the way Islas swells with a child, to think about the ways Beqanna gives and takes away, to think about the anger and guilt that has trapped him for so long — and then a simple swim to explore and now a simple conversation with a stranger. “I don’t suppose you could help me with the problems of life,” he says. His normally serious face (it takes a lot of effort to control the bitter, desperate claws of emotions) breaks into a rare smile. “The darkness gives me a lot to think about.”
01-08-2021, 05:57 PM (This post was last modified: 01-08-2021, 05:58 PM by Aquaria.)
aquaria
- THE TIDE IS HIGH, IT'S SINK OR SWIM -
The mermare nodded in acquiescence of his reply. It made sense, but truly it was the foreign emotions that had tipped her off. His face she's recognized more from the sibling she saw more frequently. It amounted to the same thing, though. Blood, family, and the tribe that had long held so much power in the land.
The way he spoke about his mother was tinged with regret. It was a feeling she knew intimately, though it was strange to hear it coming from someone else's mouth. It made her lips curve wryly in reply. "I was sorry to hear of her passing," she murmured, hoping she wasn't incidentally breaking the news to this relation. That would be incredibly awkward.
"I only met her a couple times though. I wouldn't have called us friends, I don't think. You've got a brother who lives here, though." She commented, keeping her emotions on the subject as neutral as possible. It was a hard ask, all things told. Especially when talking to a stallion who shared the same lines and angles on his face, and echoed the same timbre of his voice. Still. She kept a straight face with this familiar stranger.
She looked into the dark with him, and wished he could see just how wonderful her home really was. The crystalline waters, the secret-filled jungle. Beauty at every turn. Things she had been taking for granted without even realizing it. "It is," she answered simply, wondering if her home would ever be itself again.
She emitted a soft, painful laugh at his question. It was her job, wasn't it? To help others with their problems, and push her own down until there was no more room left for anything else. "Oh, I can try. I can always try." She groaned lightly, eyes shining in the dim glow. "How awful is that, if the worst thing in this dark is being stuck with our own thoughts." How long had she relied on the distractions of her everyday responsibilities just to get through? And done everything in her power to avoid facing facts.
With a sigh, she shook her head in dismay. "Sorry mate, I might not have any answers worth having." And who knows if she would listen to herself even if she did.
It isn’t very often that Tiercel finds himself lost in his thoughts. He has always been the feeling type, in every sense of the phrase. As a youngster, he would react in bold ways that most likely contributed to his family’s hatred for him, and as he has grown into a man, he has always followed where the power of his emotions have led him. Could he say that he is in control of this magic? Most days, it felt like the brewing, pressurized sea of feelings within him had snapped its saturated claws into the driver’s seat of his body, commanding his mouth and legs. With such a beast thriving within him, Tiercel found he didn’t have much time for thought.
The darkness seems to have jumpstarted his mind, though. There are only a few emotions that fall to the forefront of his chest while the endless night continues to press on them, and Tiercel has been able to regain control over them. Panic, worry, and fear dance together in the pit of his stomach, but they seem to refrain from completely overpowering him (or perhaps he has locked them there, in the low of his belly, for fear of what might happen if he lets them out). And with his mind clear of the tyranny that comes with such strong emotions, Tiercel has finally been able to think.
He laughs at Aquaria’s comment, smooth and yet bitter. “I can promise you; there are much scarier things in the shadows than our thoughts.” Though he carries a tenor voice, his words are laced with a heaviness that speaks to the emotions that lie tangled among his insides. “Haven’t you heard them? Or seen them?” He has heard them, practically licking what mouths they have outside his cavern, too subdued by the peace he has draped across the entrance to attack. But he knows they lurk, and he has heard the clicking of unfamiliar, sharp claws on the red rock of Loess. Tiercel had thought Aquaria’s initial fear had been because of the beasts, but she has yet to mention them, and he wonders if the monsters are unwilling to cross the channel of open water.
He finds himself curious about this water-mare. The proud arch of her mane and the blue glow of her scales draw him in, and Tiercel wonders what lies beneath her pretty face. She might not have answers to the thoughts that pull at his mind, but he knows she has her own questions brewing behind her shimmering eyes. “Certainly you have something worth sharing,” he says. “I could use all the help I can get. And maybe I can help you, in return.” And perhaps she can tell him more about this brother, whose mentioning tempts him to look deeper into the shadows as if the sibling might reveal themself at any moment.
01-16-2021, 08:46 PM (This post was last modified: 01-16-2021, 08:46 PM by Aquaria.)
aquaria
- THE TIDE IS HIGH, IT'S SINK OR SWIM -
Aquaria stilled at his comment, lips parted with growing concern. The dark had felt oppressive, hungry even, but she had written that off as the paranoia that seemed part and parcel when nature took a wrong turn. That there might be substance to the fear felt like a pellet of ice dropped into her stomach.
Her ears tipped backward, suddenly very aware of every creaking tree, every eerie bird call. The scream that she would have ignored as a hunting foussa any other time, but now... Was there something more sinister prowling her island? She searched the dimly illuminated expression on Tiercel's face, and found no lies.
"I thought the dark was playing tricks on me..." She admitted softly. It felt like a failure, to say that she had not sensed the danger that lurked. Hadn't even considered the possibility of it. "Thank you for telling me." She added, knowing that as much as it hurt her pride not to grace picked up on it herself, it was far better than being taken by surprise. Surprises were not a thing the nereid enjoyed, monsters or no.
A myriad of things ran through her mind now, the need to verify the threat, to determine how badly they were in danger. What she could do to keep the islanders safe. Would they be better off here? Or should she consider moving them to the mainland, where they would have the support of the kingdom? She almost missed the next piece of his conversation.
Advice? What advice could she possibly give to improve someone's life? It was a deer in the headlights moment for the seamare. She exhaled roughly, the beginnings of a headache blooming behind her eyes. "If the ocean is missing, don't go look for it," she blurted at last, a helpless shrug following the declaration. It was island wisdom, hardly universal advice. And it had nothing to do with dealing with everyday life problems.
Eyes crushed shut, she tried again. "Some horses are meant to be taken care of. Some are meant to take care of others. Even if it's lonely. Or thankless. If they're depending on you, you can't let them down." It was stupid advice. She knew that as soon as it left her mouth.
How many visitors had she advised the exact opposite to? That you couldn't ignore your own peace of mind forever without it biting you in the tail sooner or later. It was so much easier to advise than to follow that same advice though. Her entire job here was to help others relax. It was incredible how little time that left for her own relaxation. And now... Well. The pearl scaled mare was wound tighter than a boa constrictor on an unwary peccary.
Tiercel supposes he could have announced the unwelcome presence of predators in a gentler way. He honestly hadn’t expected Ischia to be so isolated from the mainland and how news travels. The sounds and smells of the creatures (whatever they were) seemed to be all anyone could talk about, aside from the darkness, and Tiercel had assumed those conversations had already reached the islands.
It seems he was wrong.
He feels bad for her, mainly because of how her eyes flash with worry and how she becomes skeptical of the shadows around them. It doesn’t feel good to tell someone their home may not be safe, and Tiercel shifts uncomfortably. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you,” he says quietly. “Perhaps they have not reached your islands if you haven’t heard them.” He wonders if children are still playing in the tropics’ wilderness or if their mothers have called them to their sides with the darkness pressing around them. It would make sense to draw your child close when the night lasts so long, even without the threat of predators stalking through the shadows.
Tiercel’s ears swivel at the thought of children — more a sign that he is thinking about something rather than listening past the whisper of the tide. If this darkness doesn’t go away soon, Islas will be having their child beneath a starless sky, and he may have to raise his child in the shadows. Will he have to teach the newborn to protect itself from what creatures stir in the night? Will the animals smell childbirth while Islas grows weary? Would he be able to protect both of them if it came down to it?
These questions and more are what had brought him on his walk, and the answers are what he hopes to find in Aquaria’s glowing face. Yet her response does little to soothe the worry that spreads under his skin like an itch he cannot scratch. Tiercel frowns at first, a look of confusion flashing across his cerulean eyes. He has never been an island boy, or even a swimmer until most recently, and her wisdom doesn’t transfer into a deeper meaning.
His dark navy mouth opens to reply when Aquaria continues, this time with the advice he can understand. And whether she thinks it is silly or not, Tiercel finds that her words help. Even without telling her the lengthy extent of his troubles, she has said something that fits. His frown brightens into something warmer and thoughtful. “I have someone who depends on me,” he admits.
As much as he wants to tell her more — tell her about Islas and the worry he feels over her pregnancy, tell her about how he isn’t sure if he’s ready to be a father yet, tell her about how badly he wishes the sun would shine again — Tiercel can see the tension that lines the scaled mare’s face. Hesitantly, he sends gentle fingers of serenity to ease the anxiety and stress from her muscles. This emotion feels different from the first; it is free-flowing, an emotion she can choose to accept or decline. “You must have a lot of islanders who depend on you. How can I help you relax, Aquaria?”
01-24-2021, 10:29 AM (This post was last modified: 01-24-2021, 10:29 AM by Aquaria.)
aquaria
- THE TIDE IS HIGH, IT'S SINK OR SWIM -
She did not grudge him his warning. There were far worse ways to realize one was being stalked in the dark, after all. She rather preferred this to being attacked with no warning.
Weakly, the mermare smiled at the aquiline stallion, her head shaking ever so slightly. "Don't apologize for making the world a more informed place," she chided dryly. These were strange days, and while the idea of unfriendly beings lurking in the dark wasn't a nice one, she couldn't say she was ultimately surprised. The sun had gone out, why shouldn't there also monsters on top of it? Why not make all the waters poisoned and really seal the deal? "At risk of sounding paranoid, it's beginning to feel like someone has it out for us," and it was with a grim sort of humor that she admitted it.
Idly, she spun the orbs of illuminated water a little faster. She had to keep them spinning. The unseen organisms that caused the light were brightest when they were a bit disturbed. So she kept them going, feeling the constant use of power like a slow leak drip, drip, dripping away. This would get exhausting if she had to keep it up long term. A problem for future her, she decided.
For now, current her was talking to this man on her shore, and she was afraid she was making a mess of it. Though the lighting was dim at best, she could see the lines of worry that decorated Tiercel's brow. They could have been copied from her own face. "And do you depend on them?" She asked, curious despite knowing she sounded nosy. "It's so much easier when the burden isn't carried on a one way path."
So very good at giving advice, so very awful at taking it herself. Aquaria laughed, and this time it was not the hysterical cackle that his power had inspired at their first meeting. This was her natural laugh, and it sounded like the first rays of sunshine breaking on the bay.
"That's very sweet of you to offer," she chimed after a moment, eyes warm with his offered peace. "But I think I will only be able to really relax when I know my folk are safe again. You understand that, if I'm not mistaken." And though she was tired, always so tired, she felt a little lighter. She was not good at taking her own advice most days, but this conversation had begun to remind her why she stayed.
