"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
04-08-2021, 02:38 PM (This post was last modified: 06-22-2021, 07:41 PM by Beyza.)
Beyza
Relief spreads through Beyza when the sun returns. When it keeps returning - when the stars shine above once more at night so that even then the darkness is not consuming. It brings a smile to her crystalline features still.
Her children will not have to grow up in shadows.
She hasn’t yet let herself wonder what this means after what she had done trying so hard to bring about the darkness, those thoughts become locked up for a future day. Which is easier to do now, to pick and choose which emotions she wants to deal with, now that there aren’t three lives growing in her and sending her fracturing into a million different directions.
So now she can allow herself the simple joy of a warm summer morning, with the sun filtered behind large fluffy white clouds overhead and casting patterns of shadows below.
Beyza cannot quite bring herself to go back to the forest, where she's usually pulled to whenever she leaves Pangea, so instead she follows the curve of the river - absentmindedly wandering along the bank, watching the surface glint in the sunlight and using her magic to cause it to reflect in the air above the water, adding a slight sparkle. There's a soft glow to her, though she does not need it to light up anything anymore. It's become a habit more than anything, a small comfort that reminds her of one of her mothers - and it is nice too, for a change, to use her powers for such simple purposes.
Of all the emotions returning to Tiberios since his rebirth, he felt Anger most acutely. It was a sharp blade of constant pain that ran him through over and over again, each time he thought about his last minutes spent living. He thought about them often. So much so that the anger subsided into something familiar as Tiberios travelled away from the beach in the endless dark. It mutated into normalcy, reminding him that this was how he’d always felt when he’d been alive. He’d spent all of his time trying to please others either out of shame or responsibility until he’d finally had enough and quit. Quit a Kingdom, his title there, and the mare who loved him more than he deserved to be loved. The pieces of his memory are jagged when he recalls them, sharp and full of bitterness, but they remind him of the truth and for that, Tiberios is quietly grateful.
Once he was free of the coast, the painted stallion headed inland. He paused for a rest in the common lands, or what he assumed was now the common lands — In the light of day everything looked different from what he remembered — and asked briefly for directions to a place that apparently no longer existed.
The Falls? Another horse had snorted in response. Never heard of ‘em.
Tiberios was left with so much to ponder after that conversation. No Falls or Dale anymore, though apparently there were still Kingdoms here. The lands weren’t pitted magically against each other anymore, either. Apparently magic itself wasn’t a rarity anymore, which Tib had seen with own eyes when the nomadic horse he’d been talking to showed him directions by making the tree limbs of the Forest point the way. “And you’re sure I’m in Beqanna?” Tiberios asked incredulously, which the other horse just laughed at.
He pondered all the way through the wood, diverting the dark heart of the forest with a shiver and a turn to the right that had Tiberios trekking along through the base of the Great Mountain. Here the ground was uneven and rocky, and the muscles he hadn’t had a use in over ten years were burning. “Fires of hell.” He thought, crossed at himself. He stopped, propped himself up against a tree with a few snorting breaths, and then stretched the enormous, purple-red scar covering one side of his body with a painful grunt.
“I should rest.” He told himself, pushing off the tree to stumble-trot downhill. The kind traveler he’d met before said that the River curled up right along this route like a happy cat, and with the heat of a summer day reaching excessive temperatures Tib thought that sounded as good a place as any to bathe and catch a nap. It was only when he broke free of the treeline that he caught sight of her — Beyza, the white mare who shone with the light of a star — though what she saw of Tiberios he could only guess.
“Oh.” He stopped, looking up. Out of habit he turned his cheek to show her the unmarred, unburnt right side, and light played across his blaze in holographic arcs of rainbow color. “Hey.” He muttered. The other horse had said this was a gray area, unpatrolled or claimed. Seemed like he was wrong. “Have I come to the River?” Tiberios asked her, wishing she’d just say yes and disappear so he could sink into the water like he’d planned.
Beyza stops her slow meandering when movement catches her attention and she turns to see a stallion that has emerged from the treeline. She notes how he turns his cheek and curiosity flares within her about what is on the other side that he does not wish to see - or maybe there’s nothing and it’s just an odd little habit. It’s an idle curiosity, though, and she does not move from her spot to circle him and see whether there was anything worth hiding. Her own scars, iridescent as they are upon her neck and legs, have never been something she considered using her magic to conceal.
The sparkling air over the river continues as her attention turns more fully to the stallion as he speaks - a practice in being able to do two things at once, she thinks, though sometimes Beyza just liked to use her magic for pretty superfluous things around others just because she could. Because she wanted to draw out a compliment. It's innocent fun or she wouldn't be able to do it at all.
At his question, Beyza just grins at first, her white eyes glancing to the river she’s beside. She doesn’t really think about how he’s probably referring to the land and not just the body of water - The River and not just the river.
“I would say so.” She replies smoothly, and then adds “Do you need help finding it?” Beyza is not precisely known for her jokes so the delivery may come off as a little awkward, but she hopes at least her voice is more kind and curious than it is mocking.
Tiberios had forgotten what it was like, being taken by surprise. It was neither good nor bad, just an instantaneous sort of reaction to the unexpected that had his mood and head lifting in one motion. His eyes widened marginally, framed by the black length of a forelock that hung haphazardly on either side of his mismatched face, and his ears lifted in the same fashion as his mouth. He could hardly explain why, but he laughed once and then exhaled.
“No, I’m good. If you know anything about removing sticks from dark places though...” He humored her with a self-made jab at his initial attitude, realizing (quite suddenly) that he was in the presence of a mare who deserved more respect than he’d been giving. Tib dipped his head. “Apologies.” He expressed wordlessly.
“I haven’t been here in such a long time.” He told the white mare vaguely, tearing his eyes away from her to glance out across the gleaming river. The beauty and brightness of it all seemed so unreal, so much more colorful and alive than he’d remembered from his past life. Even the water itself looked impossibly tantalizing; had water ever been so perfectly blue? “It certainly never sparkled.” He thought. “Everything is so… unreal.” He told her, lost for a moment as the breeze swept down the embankment to tousle his hair and tickle his black hide.
He should’ve been an old stallion by now. The Gates would’ve been his home and Talulah his resting place. Their children should’ve had a father and their children a grandsire, but instead he hardly looks a year beyond the eight he’d spent alive before being murdered. He is healthy and gleaming, caked to the knees in mud that covers mostly all of his white markings and somewhat obscures the patch under his belly. Everything he knows and everyone he loves is probably gone. His world has disintegrated and disappeared, like grains of sand tossed about in the ocean’s depths.
The pain of it would cripple him if Tiberios were less of a horse, but he and pain are old bedfellows. It’s the only sensation he recognized in this new life, and so he refuses to let it go.
“You wouldn’t mind me cleaning up a bit, would you?” He asked with a halfway smile, turning to look back at the mare. He secretly doubted her capability to understand, but appreciated her presence and how it had lifted him momentarily from a sour mood, so he hoped she'd stay despite his earlier thoughts. “I won’t need help with that either, in case you were wondering.”
Beyza is delighted that her joke goes over better than she worried and she finds that it is not hard to maintain her grin as he replies with a jab at himself. It does not take long for her idle curiosity about him to grow into something stronger as he continues to speak. She tilts her head a little to the side as she regards him, wondering what it is that seems so unreal about this place - because she does not think he means now that the sun is back.
And then, a bright laugh escapes her at the comment about him not needing help cleaning up - and Beyza is startled at the sound coming from her. She’s not clever enough to come up with a witty response to that comment, nor bold enough to speak any that might appear in her mind by chance. Still, once the laughter fades, it continues to shine in her eyes as she gestures to the river. “Go ahead, I don’t mind at all.” She lets the sparkling air fade a little bit (though she keeps up a twinkle every now and then, just for fun).
She does not plan on disappearing now, not when this stranger has already proven to be both interesting and delightful to interact with so far. Beyza remains where she is, watching him with her white eyes and reminding herself to blink every now and then so she’s a little less odd.
“When was the last time you were here? If you don’t mind me asking.” If he did mind she’d find another topic but she’s already incredibly curious and will be (privately) disappointed if she doesn’t get an explanation as to what he means. Especially since she does not think her magic will allow her to grab them without permission.
The moment she accepted, Tiberios slid casually down the bank and into the river. There was no disguising the ragged burn mark covering one side of his body any longer, but he could avoid her eyes while passing by and he did so, uncomfortably. Clouds of dirt bloomed up and into the water, a mixture of his hooves digging up the clay at the bottom of the riverbed and the clumps of hardened mud breaking free from his skin. He sighed, content though the river was cold, and swirled lazily through the eddies until he was facing the white mare further upshore. “I don’t mind.” Tiberios reassured her, shoulder-deep and at an awkward vantage point from where he was before. The curling water lifted his dark tail to the surface, tugging the long strands of black hair downstream. “But the answer might surprise you.” He warned her, grinning.
Or would it? He pondered. Now that he could see her appropriately, Tiberios noticed little things he’d overlooked before. How her body, magnificently healthy and suspiciously well-groomed, was peppered with glinting marks all over. Little slivers of raised skin, twinkling in the light. Beauty marks, he thought. He also noted how she seemed so unnaturally still and poised, as if the world was alive and moving around her; a little white star fixed in a galaxy of cosmic energy. For a moment he even thought she might be hovering above the earth, but then he blinked and the absurd notion vanished instantly. It’s just my eyes, playing tricks on me. He thought.
“The last time I was here,” (And he means Beqanna, not just the river, though she’s free to interpret that however she liked) “horsekind was divided by moral alignments and there were six great Kingdoms, not four.” He told her cryptically, wondering if anything he said would register. He remembered the look on the nomad’s face when he’d asked for directions to The Falls, fully expecting to see that expression once more on this stranger’s face. It hardly made any sense to Tib, after all. He’d been dead long before the Reckoning; his idea of normal was myth now.
Does that make me a legend? He laughed at himself, only grinning for the pale mare. “I’m Tiberios." The sabino stallion decided to introduce himself, “And apparently I’m a nomad out of time.”
Her eyes snag on the scar and Beyza tracks as he passes before her eyes shift - watching the water as he enters, watching the dirt that clouds it. Is it worse to stare or worse to be caught looking away, she wonders? She thinks about that but now how it's probably impolite to stare at someone as they’re bathing - though she makes some effort to be looking nearby and not directly at him. Even when the corner of her mouth twitches upwards at the sigh he makes as he muddies the water around him.
Her own scars were small and so subtle in comparison, iridescent claw and teeth marks on her throat and legs. She had died when she got hers and she wonders how such tiny things had taken her down but here he was looking like he had fallen halfway into one of Tephra’s magma flows and was still alive, still smiling.
Or had he carried his out of the afterlife too?
Her attention returns to his face when he begins to speak, thinking this must definitely be a cue that it is okay for her to look at him directly again, and her smile grows a little when he uses a cryptic tone to mention the six kingdoms because this is a story she knows.
And though she doesn't mind terribly that he’s forced to look up at her from her current vantage point, Beyza moves - drawn in by her curiosity and fascination and with it a desire to be friendly (though she has forgotten to blink in some time). She descends the bank but remains where the river is only as shallow as her hooves - a little closer to eye level, anyway, while still giving him space. She falls utterly still again but there's life and interest in her voice and eyes when she replies “My parents are all from that time as well. I don’t know if it is comforting or not, but you aren’t alone.” She didn’t know what it was like to be out of time, wasn’t sure if there was any comfort in knowing that there are some out there that not only recognize the names of the old kingdoms but had lived and died in them. Or whether it wouldn't matter at all unless they were someone he knew, family or lovers lost.
“I’m Beyza.” Her smile is bright with curiosity when she follows her own introduction with one of many, many questions “Which moral alignment did you fall under, Tiberios?”
You could hardly miss the way Tib’s eyes widened at her statement. It was comforting to know that only a few generations separated him from his past, awkward as that knowledge was. “Her parents…” He wondered about them, who they were and where they’d been. And then he wondered how deceptively young Beyza might actually be. He blinked, lifting himself slowly out of the water to further level himself with her eyes that never seemed to flutter against the wind, and let the water begin to dry off his skin in the natural way he was used to: by boiling it off. He didn’t need to necessarily start a flame, just had to build his body temperature until the liquid puffed itself into tiny coils of steam that rose off his black pelt. Of course, the water around him went from icy to lukewarm in a matter of seconds, but he reasoned there was enough of it between them that Beyza might not be affected … or she might think he’d pissed the river.
He stopped drying himself immediately at the thought.
“Neutral I suppose.” He muttered, trying to cover his embarrassment as the river swept away his earlier mistake. “I bounced between the Falls and the Dale until…”
Until what? Tiberios wondered at the way things were here, in this time, as compared to the way things were in his time. It seemed as if magic had permeated every living thing in this world, no longer divided between specific lands or kept hidden from other horses. It was strange to think he could just blurt out the reason for his leaving one Kingdom for another, odd to share a part of himself that used to be tucked away - if not for the garish scar that he’d gotten in the process of gaining his powers.
“... well, until I was pulled into a quest. Nothing was really the same afterwards.” He huffed, content. It felt kind of good to just let it out. “That’s how I was disfigured.” He tilted his head to one side, pointing out the obvious. He knew Beyza had looked; everyone always looked, but he also knew that her intentions so far had been kind. Tib didn’t blame her - he’d stared long enough at himself as it was.
A moment or two of quiet overcame him then, and the pied stallion listened either to the melodic sound of his companion's voice or the gentle rumble of the river before he spoke up again.
“You mentioned your parents,” He hedged curiously, “Where were they from? Are they …” Tib paused, trying not to be insensitive (while seeing no way around it), “Um, still around?”
Beyza is fascinated by the steam that begins to drift off of him and even more fascinated when it suddenly stops. She smiles a little, but doesn’t ask about it - not yet. It feels as though she’s becoming more and more interested by the second, though, and the list of things she’s curious about continues to grow.
Neutral, he tells her, and Beyza thinks this is likely where she would’ve fallen in too.
And when he continues, the smile on her crystalline features softens. “I’m sorry.” She says automatically, though she knows she had nothing to do with what happened to him. But she finds that she’s sorry all the same - and she doesn’t think it is inspired by pity. It’s because, at least in part, she knows what is like to be drawn into a quest and have it affect everything after. Her voice is quiet when she adds. “Quests like that still happen.” Beyza almost gestures to her own scars but… they’re such small, delicate things compared to his. She does not want it to seem like she’s gloating.
Especially since she does not think his scar ugly. She finds it interesting and is still wondering about its texture, even though part of her also wonders if she should offer to see if her magic can get rid of it. Would that be kind or insulting?
It's a line she's having a little more difficulty distinguishing lately, now that she cares a little more which side she falls onto.
At his question about her parents, her smile brightens again. “They are. Though I think all of them were dead once, for a time. They’re very old, though I don’t think they’d appreciate me saying that.” A grin dances in her pale gaze as she says this. She wasn’t sure any of them knew for sure how old they were, but enough for Beyza to have some siblings that were old enough to be her great-grandparents at least.
She pauses, trying to remember what bits of her parents' histories she’s been told or that she had accidentally gleaned when she was young and still learning her magic. “My father, Plume, was from the Gates - as was one of my mothers, Agetta. And my other mother, Ryatah, I think was from the Dale and Valley.” Her strange collection of parents has stopped seeming so strange to Beyza - all three of those she has listed were her parents to her, even if her father wasn’t truly related to her by blood.
Beyza tilts her head again, watching Tiberios for any reactions to the names - curious if he might have crossed paths with any of them, or if he had come from another time altogether.
To be honest, Tiberios was sorry too. Sorry that quest ever had to happen in order for him to find out his own self-worth, knowing damn well it’d been there all along. In the midst of Beyza’s company those memories feel like faraway dreams, but Tib knew better than most how real his experience had been and his scar is the constant reminder. Had he known what the white mare was thinking (concerning the matter of healing such a terrible wound), Tiberios would’ve thanked her but politely declined. He’d tried many times himself to rid his body of the thing, but fae magic and the subsource of Beqanna’s magic weren’t on equal playing fields. He was stuck with this marking for life, part of him begrudgingly understanding why.
Tib had lived with the scar longer than he’d lived without it, anyways. “Mm. A shame, that.” He frowned at the quietness of her voice, hating that arcane methods of gaining power still remained largely unchanged since his previous life. Tib shifted, sensing himself wrinkling, and drug himself up the shore and out of the water back onto dry land, giving Beyza her space but finding the matter a delicate one given the small berth of the sandy bank.
“I won’t tell them you said so.” He chuckled with her, gently shaking the remaining water from his mane. Curious that she would mention her parents having died at one point as well, considering Tiberios had recently come back from an early, prolonged grave. It made him wonder if his circumstance wasn’t as unique as he thought, and then his brow furrowed. He’d never assumed that waking up would be harder than going to sleep forever. “This place.” He flicked his ears, thinking of Beqanna.
“Hmm … I think you underscored just how old.” Tib smiled partly, looking over his shoulder to find Beyza staring back at him. The intensity of her gaze (though he assumed it was meant with good intentions) unnerved him. “Your parents pre-date my generation. I lived right before that Reckoning catastrophe. All of this,” He looked away from her and swept his eyes out upon the bright and shining world, “is new to me. My father was Tiphon and my brother was Ramiel, the last of the Dale lineage.” He sighed, turning around to face his companion once again.
“I was … I was murdered.” He admitted. Tiberios told himself that he was spilling everything because of what she’d shared with him, that had it been any other horse he would’ve kept this secret tucked away. “My spirit started to fade but being alive again, I can remember it clearly. All of it.” He simmered. “And now that I’m back, I want what’s due to me. Maybe once upon a time I was neutral, but now?” He scoffed, flicking the wet strands of his tail sharply against his hide. “Now all I want is revenge.”
