"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
Chasmata shakes off his apology, and though he’s sure her words are meant to be kind - they trouble him. He didn’t like the idea that being himself meant bringing harm, no matter how small, to someone else. He wanted his presence to bring nothing but joy and pleasure - it didn’t seem right that it would be anything else.
Laurelin maintains his smile while these thoughts plague him for a short moment - mostly because he’s not quite sure what else to do with his face while he’s thinking. He’s not usually one for deep introspection. In fact, these troublesome ideas end up completely evaporating when Chasmata asks him a question.
“Nowhere and everywhere.” He says because he likes the way it sounds - and it’s true enough. But he explains anyway, happy to talk about himself, even when he does not have anything particularly interesting to say. Then again… if it’s about him - isn’t it all interesting? “My mom and I didn’t have an official home when I was little, we just sort of wandered wherever we wanted and I’ve just sort of kept up that tradition.” He hadn’t really given a thought to settling into one particular land over another. How do you even choose?
Perhaps his pretty companion had some insight into that. “What about you?"
She wonders what it might have been like to grow up with only a mother. She had grown up in the Cove with both of her parents, the three of them a solid unit by the water under Hyaline’s rule. Had it been lonely for him? He doesn’t seem the type to be plagued by such trivial emotions but she doesn’t ask. Surely he made the most of every moment rather than waste any amount of time feeling sorry for himself.
She chooses instead to imagine him wandering across Beqanna, charming as many souls as he could. This seemed more in his nature. She cannot fault him his wandering, certainly, for she had chosen to do the same the moment she’d left the Cove.
“I have become a bit of a wanderer myself,” she tells him, rolling her shoulders in a kind of shrug. “I grew up in Silver Cove with my parents.” She remembers seeking out the magic entities and asking them for glowing because she had hoped that it would help her see. It hadn’t. “I followed a call to the Mountain and found a gatekeeper there and then I…” she trails off, hesitates, then shrugs again before finishing, “I just never went back to the Cove.” She does not specify what happened at the Mountain or how her life had been changed there.
“Where’s your favorite place to go?” she asks, swiftly changing the subject.
the moonlight, baby, shows you what’s real
but there ain’t language for the things i feel
Even though Laurelin’s favourite part of any conversation is when he’s the topic of discussion, or when he’s the one talking, he does like listening to Chasmata talk too. The mention of a Silver Cove inspires some very pretty imagery.
He catches how she trails off, and her comment about how she never went back to the Cove is confusing - he wonders what happens. But, once again, his thoughts are interrupted by a question and the gold-accented stallion forgets entirely that he had been thinking about something else.
As for his answer, that does not require any thought at all. “The ocean.” And his grin grows a little at the thought of it. “I’ve always felt drawn to the water,” He glances away momentarily to look at the river, “but the ocean most of all.” He doesn’t know why this is, what it is about bodies of water that fascinate him. He doesn’t know about his father, and has already forgotten about the kelpie that he had met on the beach, and Laurelin is not one prone to worry about things he does not know about.
Speaking of, one of the words Chasmata said caught his attention. He was actually listening to them all (you can quiz him if you want!) but there was one he didn’t know.
Curiosity about others was still new to the blue boy but he finds that it is becoming easier around his pretty friend - he’s not even faking it! “What’s a gatekeeper?”
His answer suits him, she thinks. There is something beautiful about the water, something electric. She finds she can imagine him at the ocean’s edge more vividly than she can imagine him anywhere else and she smiles despite herself. (Maybe she should be embarrassed that the thought makes her smile, even if she doesn’t know why, but she seems to have outgrown her embarrassment through the duration of their conversation.)
She wants to tell him about the ocean in Silver Cove but she refrains. She suspects that the ocean is the kind of thing that is the same no matter where you are. Powerful, all-consuming. There is something about knowing that it’s her favorite that puts a pang of regret in her chest as she acknowledges that she did not appreciate it as much as she could have when she lived in the Cove. She rarely ventured down to the shore because the things that interested her stuck mostly to the shadows at the edge of the woods.
She makes a mental note to return to the ocean, to really appreciate whatever it is about the ocean that calls to him. “It suits you,” she says, nodding, “the ocean.” The churning surface, she thinks, the unknown depths. But she doesn’t say either of these things out loud.
She had hoped they might simply skate past her mention of the gatekeeper, but he calls the conversation back to it. She tries not to cringe, swallowing thickly. “I’m not sure,” she admits. “That’s just what he called himself. He had us pick trick or treat and I picked…” she pauses, biting back a grimace. “I picked trick.” She draws in a long breath, hesitating, wondering if she should continue. “And I got… I got these.” She pulls back her upper lip to reveal the fangs she had sprouted as she left the Mountain but she does not mention the taste for blood she had developed soon after.
the moonlight, baby, shows you what’s real
but there ain’t language for the things i feel
Laurelin grins when Chasmata says the ocean suits him. He’s not thinking of the depths or the churning surfaces, he’s thinking of a still water - the sort that he’d be able to see his own reflection on, or the one that perfectly mimics the sky (if he’s not feeling particularly narcissistic in that moment).
He listens, curious, when she replies to his question about the gatekeeper. He is, unfortunately, distracted by the fact that he’s sad to see her pretty face wearing anything other than a smile, because her story sounds awfully familiar.
She shows him her fangs and his bright eyes widen a little, but not in disgust. Just surprise.
Maybe there's enough of his father in him (though he'd never met him) to not be worried. Not to mention this is his oldest friend - he's not worried about whether she's a threat. “I mean those are pretty cool, I bet they come in handy.” For what, he wasn’t sure, but it seemed like a good thing to say? Whether or not that is accurate doesn’t matter because a moment later it finally clicks why her story sounds familiar - he just had never thought of the creature as a gatekeeper and had blocked out the memories of that day. “Oh!!! I was there too! I picked treat though. That’s how I got my glow.”
