"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
Altissima doesn’t care for the gratitude that she feels when she notices Tarian move his gaze after she had shifted uncomfortably. She sees what looks like fascination there, but he appears to be trying to be less obvious about studying the twinkling light around her. Was he… being polite? Maybe he had learned two new tricks - the glow and some manners.
Well, momentarily he had manners anyway. Still, she’s privately glad for the rough laugh and the quip he gives back to her - this is the Tarian she knows. Not the one sulking about glowing like the moon, not the one showing her any kindness (though that last part isn’t true, she knows this and she’s making an effort to continue to put off the actual very real thank you she owes him).
If he’s watching, he’ll see her eyes warm to a happy violet again even as she rolls them and emits a scoff at his comments. “Did I hear that right? You fought off a hundred beasts just so I could die slowly instead of quickly?” She tilts her head a little to the side, eyes dancing as she enjoys twisting his words a little. “How chivalrous of you.” She lifts her leg, but instead of stepping back she performs a small bow - her white wings appearing at her sides and unfurling as she does, those feathered limbs joining the farce of those court manners they both knew she lacked. Her voice is heavy with false sarcasm as she bites out the words she actually means “Thank you, Sir Glow Worm. I am so, so grateful.”
05-09-2021, 07:41 PM (This post was last modified: 05-09-2021, 07:43 PM by Tarian.)
On some deeper, darker level, there is a reason why the glowing matters so much to Tarian. He'd like to believe that it doesn't bother him, that it won't bother him later. But the truth was that he had been born with other abilities, with other gifts: he had once been praised by his grandfather - one of the best airbenders in Legado's line - for his ability to call and craft the winds.
It had been taken from him after the loss of their home, just as easily as his glowing has now come.
(And though he won't admit it, it makes the Loessian glad that Altissima managed to surprise him. It distracts him from those other thoughts of what was taken and what was given; of how after all these years he still doesn't understand any of it.)
He cranes his silver to look over at her and Tarian does notice the way her eyes change this time - back to that rich violet he is coming to associate her with. If she glances up long enough, she might notice that while he stifles back another grin, his blue eyes have crinkled at their corners. "I did my best, Lady Wildling." He tells her (Tarian considers just calling her 'Milady' again but he has started to think that this word - Wildling - for the woman who speaks her mind so easily, who seems to brave any thought or stranger so bluntly is more fitting than anything else.) But if he is to be Sir Glow Worm, it's only fair that she have a rank of her own.
Tarian is about to ask her if that was something she did often, nearly dying. Ask if it was perhaps her idea of fun.
But @[Altissima] dips into a graceful bow with a pair of wings suddenly emerging at her pale sides. He lifts his head as the Champion peers at them, remembering the way that they had emerged in a similar way at their last meeting. His mind remains there for a moment - remembering the way that she had draped them around her sides when she had gone to the ground. The Loessian remembers mentioning the hot springs to her, a place that most horses enjoyed and the pegasus wonders if she might prove him wrong a second time.
Surprisingly, he wants to find out.
"Are those actually usable?" Tarian asks her as his wings and a grin flare, "or are they just a pretty decoration?"
She hisses a little at the Lady even though it is followed by Wildling, which she had liked the first time he used it with her in the forest and she finds that she still does. It is easy to maintain her glare though, even if her eyes are still warm violet and have not yet cooled off. She’s enjoying this, even though it irritates her that she is. Their last conversation had involved her head swimming with fatigue and it’s enjoyable to not be thinking about dying quite so much when they’re talking - for her mind to be sharp again.
She straightens out of the bow when Tarian continues speaking, mentioning her wings and she watches as he flares his own. She focuses on them, rather than his annoying grin, her eyes trailing their grey feathers. Altissima is a little confused by why her mind focuses on the word pretty, like it matters to her what Tarian thought of her wings. Or her. That silly, simple word hovers there in her thoughts before she brushes it aside. He’d probably just been baiting her with that comment, anyway - like when he had called her Lady.
She flaps those white-feathered limbs, brushing them forwards to send a rush of air at him, before folding them neatly at her sides when she replies cautiously “They’re usable.” and wonders just where he was going with this line of thought. If he took off now without another word, she'd refuse to chase him out of pride. At least, she's pretty sure she would refuse to.
Tarian - an experienced fighter on the battlefield - finds that he has to struggle to restrain his grin. His addition of Lady is met with a hiss from Altissima and he wants to smile so badly at her, that the Loessian Champion has to war within himself to fight it off. She is so unlike the women of his youth: his soften-spoken Aunt Cherish who imparted those court manners on him, his stern grandmother who had few words to say at all, his bashful sisters that averted their blue eyes too quickly when he walked by.
She is a creature that baffles and yet entices him - Tarian, who had always been so serious, to be this way with her. Dueling with smiles and stifling the banter that comes easier for every moment that he spends with her.
But as he flares his wings and notices that where her ever-changing eyes fall, Tarian feels a twinge of pride. He spreads them even wider as she opens hers, glad to catch the wind billowing from them. (It's in his blood, after all. There are generations of his kin that have loved and laughed and learned to speak with the breezes. When she blows it towards him, this is a language knows. The white feathers move and it sparks a question beneath his blue eyes, one that is waiting for her if glances up.)
"Good," he replies when Altissima states that they are. That smile he had been fending off spreads and beneath the moonlight, it can be seen warming his gaze. It's funny - because as the moon emerges from behind the clouds and Tarian starts to glow again, he finds that he doesn't mind as much as he did before. "So you should be able to keep up," he muses to her. It doesn't take long for a pegasus who is accustomed to coming and going. A few strides and those wide wings of his are open, ready to embrace the starlight.
He's as bright as the moonbeam he dubbed himself - glowing brighter than any star - when he finally looks behind him for Wildling and her radiance.
If he had just left, she wouldn’t have chased him. She would have been disappointed - and she’s surprised by that realization - but she would have left Loess and… well, returned to her quiet life, she supposed.
But he spoke and it wasn’t much but it was just enough to get her curious. Her eyes narrow and warm to an irritated pink when Tarian smiles and then moves a few strides and takes off. He doesn't smile often - smirks, sure, but an actual smile is a rare sighting. Annoyed with herself for having noticed this, she stays where she is for a few heartbeats, head tracking his movements and that wonderful glow, and then with an over-exaggerated sigh she follows. Her white wings unfurl and with a few powerful strokes of them she is not far behind the grey pegasus. The twinkling air trails her in the air, like it is just a blink too slow to keep up fully - which she doesn’t mind because it lets her keep her focus ahead. On Tarian.
When he looks back at her, she scowls.
She wants to ask where they’re going but she won’t. The curiosity is right there on the tip of her tongue and she can feel it want to bubble out of her. But Altissima has (some) patience and she doesn’t think it likely that Tarian is just leading her on a chase that does not have an end in mind. She think she'd try to knock him out of the sky if he did. She can't puzzle out what the end could be, can't figure out why he'd want to show her anything or why (why!) she wants to find out.
So she follows and while she does she tries to play with the glowing light around him - seeing if she can make it fade or intensify. She normally can't absorb any light at night and quickly finds out this is still the case. Still, it's something to distract her so she will not ask him anything.
05-12-2021, 08:38 PM (This post was last modified: 05-12-2021, 08:43 PM by Tarian.)
Some part of him is mindful that she had almost died during the Eclipse. Tarian wouldn't call himself the fiercest or the highest or the fleetest of flyers, but he has always considered himself competent; better than average. When he had taken off, the silver pegasus hadn't looked behind him and if he were honest -
If he were honest, he had been slightly afraid to.
What if he glanced back and she had simply scoffed? What if she had taken off but flown for those Common Lands that she had so proudly claimed affiliation to? She could, he knows. It is entirely her choice and it is her free will - how fierce she can look when deciding something - that he finds that he rather likes about her. She isn't rash or brazen in her choices and when daylight returns to Loess tomorrow, Tarian will think of how he'd like to talk to her about others things.
About not dying, about not monsters but rather things like: what was Pangea like when she had lived there? Had she always disregarded borders and boundaries and wanted none of them? Was there something about the Common Lands that she enjoyed, that she didn't find in a kingdom?
For now, though, Tarian turns to look behind him, and the scowl that greets him makes him smile in return. He hadn't taken off too quickly or flown too far because she is right there, as capable in the air as he is. The night air surrounding them is brimming with questions and the Loessian thinks that he might answer one.
But his glinting eyes and the bright smile says: Wait.
They spend some time in the air, as he glides towards the Loessian coast. The sound of waves can be heard when they land, a sort of nautical lullaby that invites those nearby into sleep. He's done it enough and when the weather is warmer, Tarian even enjoys a dip in the surf to keep his silver coat clean. But those aren't the things that he wants to show @[Altissima], who had surprised him by sneaking into Loess. This was a place he had found entirely by accident and now he intends to surprise her with it.
Turning his head to look behind him, the gray stallion tries to whisper (which he is horrible at, Tarian has always spoken to be heard): "You have to keep quiet." His wings close against his sides and the Loessian motions to small, dim glowing dots that line the beach ahead of them like stars as he stops in between dune-grass. Not unlike the sparkling that takes place around Altissima. They are small turtles, recently hatched from nesting mounds as they make their way to the sea. An ear flicks behind him, "I was going to show the hot springs, but I wasn't sure if you could handle that level of enjoyment." Tarian murmurs as he watches the newborn Fluertles, "but I thought you might enjoy this more than Not Dying."
And there it is again, that habit that seems to becoming common in her presence.
Catching that unspoken wait is infuriating and makes her curiosity all the more potent but she continues to hold her tongue. Her attention is on him rather than the moonlit scenery, and she frowns a little more in confusion when they land near the coast.
It’s amusing to hear Tarian whisper, or try to - it doesn’t suit him in the least. But the fact that he’s trying intrigues her. She’s momentarily distracted from what she’s supposed to be looking at, however, when he continues talking - when he mentions the hot springs and her not being able to handle that level of enjoyment. Her eyes shift as her mood fluctuates - joy and intrigue mixing with irritation - and she rolls them. And yet, it is only Tarian’s mention that they have to be quiet that stops Altissima from blurting that she would like to see the hot springs. It had sounded wonderful when she was sort-of-dying, and she had ended up dreaming of what it would be like to wade into them when she had eventually passed out after their conversation. It still sounds wonderful now.
Altissima was not overly fond of being chilled, despite her rather frosty aesthetic and the fact that she is occasionally followed by a snow owl - who is off enjoying cooler weather right now. It had been difficult to feel warm in the darkness and she is not looking forward to winter. When the nights are long and she has too few hours to soak up the sun.
She shakes her head and focuses on where they are, and Altissima moves to stand beside him to get a better look, thinking that if the creatures aren’t deterred by his glow then they won’t mind her twinkling. She is uncomfortably aware of the (lack of) space that separates their wings as she stands there. She doesn’t meet his gaze and tries her best not to fidget because she’s close enough that if she moves her wings too much they’ll brush against his. Why didn’t she move a little further away?
Because she was too curious about what he was showing her to think of it when she stepped forward. Thankfully, there’s the excuse of watching the little turtles as they make their way out to the sea.
“They’re so… small.” Helpless, she thinks, though this feels a little unkind to point out. Unless she's talking about Tarian. After this very brilliant observation, she’s quiet for another moment. And that’s all she can really take because she’s still thinking about the hot springs.
“What makes you think I can’t handle enjoyment?” She asks quietly, but pointedly keeps her gaze forward on the ocean as she does. There's a challenge in the words even as the corner of her mouth turns up slightly.
05-14-2021, 11:14 PM (This post was last modified: 05-14-2021, 11:17 PM by Tarian.)
Tarian is looking ahead, watching the softly-glowing turtles as they emerge from their nests and venture towards the waiting sea. The Loessian ocean isn't as clear as it might be in more tropical places - like Ischia or Islandres - but there is still something magical about watching the little creatures submerge themselves and then eventually vanish beneath the surf.
On the sand, it is hard to hear her hoofsteps. He's certainly aware that she is close by; Tarian still can't stop thinking about his surprise at seeing her here.
He's so immersed in the sight of it all - the baby turtles, the steady cadence of the waves (easier to focus on than how close Altissima really is). The Champion forces himself to keep staring ahead, to count the hatchlings as they scuttle over the sand, to keep a mental tally of each wave that comes crashing to shore. It is so much easier to do that than -
Glancing over his shoulder towards her makes him forget it all. All the turtles, all the waves.
His mind reaches for the first thought: "Well," Tarian tells her very matter-of-factly, "they do get bigger."
Exhaling softly, he looks away from her and suddenly it becomes to think again. Has it been so long since he's kept company with a woman? No, he thinks. As Champion of Loess, he spends plenty of time with Oceane. There are the politics of her borders to discuss and the coming and goings of them. She even graciously asks him a little more than politics from time to time, though Tarian has always been a horse who hated to broach protocol.
Why is it with @[Altissima] that he is making jokes and taking late-night flights?
Why is it that the soft glow still emanating from his silver hide isn't bothering him as it had earlier?
The pale woman (thankfully) is staring out at the sea, not at him which makes it much easier for Tarian to say, "I never said you couldn't have fun." His blue eyes are watching her silhouetted shape carefully, ready to look away if Altissima attempts to look back at him. "The hot springs might be more than you can handle though," he murmurs quietly. His wings move and though he is almost painfully obvious at his attempt to keep them from brushing against her feathers, he feels something stir against the edges of his.
How had this topic come about in the first place?
Damnit.
"What if it sends into some kind of shock?" he manages after a moment. A joke hidden between a truth and a stare that is looking anywhere but Altissima and her radiance.
While watching the little turtles, Altissima wonders why Tarian was showing this to her. It was a magical, interesting sight and if half of her attention wasn’t on their proximity she’d probably be able to think of more questions to ask. She attempts to focus on those questions in her mind, even though none of them escape her. Were the mother turtles waiting in the ocean? Or did they leave their children to fend for themselves? Just how big did they get?
Her ears twitch towards him when he replies to her question but the brush of her feathers against his utterly empties Altissima’s head of everything else except awareness of that contact. It was such a small, breeze of a touch and yet it makes her forget for that brief moment to be annoyed about his teasing that the hot springs were more than she could handle, or that she was eager to go there at all.
And then Tarian keeps talking and that momentary haziness evaporates instantly.
Her ears flatten and her eyes are a vibrant shade of furious pink when she turns her head to look at him - though they flicker with another darker shade when she’s reminded of just how close they are. She is distracted from those distracting thoughts by how much Tarian’s words have rattled her. It was a joke, some part of her mind tells her, but it hits too close to the truth that she hates.
Altissima is not a violent mare but for a short moment she considers biting Tarian. He’s close enough that she could do it easily and it might be worth surprising him. She doubted he considered her much of a threat. “I am not that fragile.” Altissima bites out with her words instead of her teeth, only just barely managing to keep her voice down and it kills her to have to add the that. Because he had seen her fragile, he had seen her close to death, and now - now did he really think she was so weak that just enjoying herself could send her into shock? Did he think that she was just that incapable?
The way it stings her is a surprise, though she supposes it shouldn't be. She can't imagine he thought very much of her, despite - well despite whatever had inspired him to share with her the baby turtles racing into the sea.
Although part of her certainly wants to, she doesn’t look away from him. Altissima exhales noisily through flared nostrils before commenting in a voice that is meant to be mild and indifferent. It most certainly is anything but - the casual challenge she had spoke with moments ago forming into a version with harder edges. “I guess there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?”
05-15-2021, 10:54 AM (This post was last modified: 05-15-2021, 10:58 AM by Tarian.)
He doesn't even think.
Words are nearly impossible though they are there, simmering just beneath his granite-colored skin, warming it. It's hard to find them when she is so close to him instead. So his mind ambles and stumbles, really blurting out the first thing that he can actually think to say. It's only after he has said them - that he realizes Altissima might think that is Tarian is referring to their meeting during the Eclipse.
That isn't what he's speaking of; Tarian has just never been the most well-spoken outside of court manners or battle strategies. As he glances down at her, the Loessian highly doubts that she wants to talk about either topic. Perhaps, he thinks, it might be best to think of this conversation of the latter. Tarian understands battles (aside from the rampant Magic that seems to permeate into everything) and the former soldier knows when to acquiesce.
"No," he tells her quietly, still trying to keep aware of where the edges of his wings are. Tarian had found her close to death, but even then, dying seemed to be done on Altissima's terms or not at all. Even as weak as she had appeared then, her eyes had still shimmered a wild array of color. Every hue and shade had seemed like open defiance to Tarian - it had seemed like @[Altissima] was daring a world drained of light and illumination to try and take hers.
There is nothing about her that he finds fragile.
Tarian has seen broken before, broken bodies and broken souls. She is still very much in the fray of the fight.
One silver ear swivels towards while he keeps forcing himself to watch the turtles - still marveling at the endless cycle of life - but there is a force pulling on him that tugs relentlessly on Tarian. He is only painfully aware that her always-changing gaze is fixed on him and Tarian exhales, a slight flaring of dark nostrils. His gray brow arches but the pegasus doesn't move, can't move because he finds that there is something in him that doesn't want to step out of her sight. The expression on his illuminated face - from the moon, from his glow, from her glittering - does nothing hide the stoic way he watches her; the way that Tarian is trying to guard so much of himself and failing so badly at it when a wry smile quirks a moment later.
"You're just hellbent on proving me wrong, aren't you?"
![[Image: willowsticker_by_space1993_ddeo27s_small.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/Rq5q2nVX/willowsticker_by_space1993_ddeo27s_small.png)
