"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
In the quiet moments somewhere in between monitoring Borderline’s good health and waiting for the rest of his family to return, Yanhua found time to inspect the redwoods. His simple herdland full of ancient trees and their quiet secrets had changed in the dark year, and not at all for the worst. True; the forest had shriveled from a year without sunlight and the work necessary to revive it properly would be a large goal for the future, perhaps months or even years of work depending on the depth of damage to the root system, but in the absence of the light something wondrous and surprising had taken place.
Something unexpected and revealed by the dark, which Yanhua thought ironic given the circumstances. That evening, the faun-stallion of Taiga made his way deeper into the heartwood of the territory he called home in search of it, and (as he went) the dying rays of daylight illuminated some of the changes he’d discovered since coming home. The trees in this section of the wood were once uniform and naturally colored, a mix of cedar and pine that smelled as pungent as they were beautiful. Now, Yanhua could see that their bark was silver and their needles were an array of brilliant colors: purple, blue, and orange. As he passed, the winged stallion ducked beneath the low-hanging boughs of one particular Silvergreen to touch his lips against the bark and taste what looked metallic.
“Hmm.” He chuckled lightly, betraying his position in the woods to any nearby listeners or horses passing through. So far he’d not seen anyone out. Cheri, his daughter, was probably out flapping around with Targaryen. His celestial son Reynard checked in often, but Yan had already seen him that morning. He assumed he was alone out here, and so his inhibitions fell away. The Yanhua most would see — serious, searching blue eyes and a firm but kind expression — had been replaced. In his hooves was a curious stallion, licking the bark off trees. “Interesting.” He concluded as night fell.
When the last vestiges of the setting sun had gone away and Yanhua moved out from underneath the twisted rainbow of needles, a cacophony of interesting noises crept up from the navy shadows. “I’ll never look at the color black the same way again.” The stallion thought as his deft hooves picked their way through the litter of the forest. The first night after the Eclipse had passed was a rough one; Yan remembered it clearly as he paced along, but it hadn’t terrified him like the dark had before. This dark was as different to him as anything could be. These shadows, the kind that didn’t form shapes and leap out to tear apart unsuspecting horses, were nothing like their predecessors. They stayed put, save the ones that danced along beside him in the overcast glow of his self-made light.
These shadows he could stride confidently through, and Yanhua did — becoming a lantern-bearer in the warm summer night. Crickets chirruped pleasantly in time with the little croaks and bellows of frogs that’d come along, and soon enough Yan found himself humming gently as well, his mane and tail and golden wings all beaming with the pleasant energy he exuded. He thought of Lilli and how much she would’ve marveled at this all, especially the particular thing he was hunting for tonight, and from the core of his soul a pleasant noise drifted through his mind. It was like… a tune. Yan really had no words for the feeling, but he felt it all the same and with such an intensity that it permeated his skin and hovered around him like an invisible aura, adding melody and harmony to the natural sounds around him. He was producing music for the first time since the Eclipse, and instead of being surprised Yanhua let his emotions flow into song.
This one he would dedicate to her: to Lilliana. His dam and the guardian light of Taiga, and he named the noise in honor of her until she came back to hear it herself. She might be missing, but Yanhua had hope beyond measure now. He knew nothing was impossible, and so he believed that some day, somehow, he and his mother would be reunited again. The music drifted and curled with a sad, simple gentleness and Yanhua walked on, into the heartwood in search of a mystery worth solving.
And if you're homesick, give me your hand and I'll hold it.
Taiga. It was the land that Ori had followed her cousin to in the darkness, the place that Lilli called her home and had raised a family. Although the gold champagne had taken her first steps into the land of ancient, towering trees in the shade of the eclipse, she had also come with the hope to someday see it for herself, rather than just in the memories that Lilli had shared with her.
True to her hope, the sun had returned, bringing with it not only light and warmth, but also having bathed the champagne in its glow (quite literally!). She still wasn’t entirely sure what to think of the new glowing marks on her body, but the sun’s return meant that now she could drink up the sights of Taiga for herself, that she could explore and find every little beautiful thing she knew lay in wait somewhere, so it was alright, she was sure.
There was so much to learn, and so many places to explore, but for now, the girl of burnished gold was taking it all one step at a time, wandering through a piece of the woodlands and occasionally stopping to observe the way that the sunlight hit a particular leaf or listen to the birdsong that filled the woods. It was all so beautiful, and well worth the wait to see.
She picked her pace up to a trot, changing the direction of her head this way and that to take in as many sights as she possibly could. There was so much to see, and the stretching shadows were a reminder that she was running out of time to see it all today. It was the next sight she found that made her stop in her tracks and utterly lose her breath.
A part of the forest that had several trees, as massive as their redwood brothers, but whose bark was instead silvery, and whose needles appeared in vibrant shades unlike any she had ever seen on a tree before. She had to take a closer look, so the cantering steps that shortened the distance between her and the incredible trees was the natural progression of events.
A blurry figure of her colors was reflected in the tree, and she couldn’t help the laughter that came from seeing the very distorted collection of colors that vaguely echoed the scenery around them, but was still mostly bathed in silver. She swayed a bit to the left and right to see just how different angles looked, and probably would have continued doing that for longer than she would have cared to admit before something else caught her ears in the wind.
Some kind of sound… a song? It was something more than the crickets that warned of the waning light of the day, and it was much clearer than a distant cacophony of their music. (In fact, the relative closeness of the music was the most surprising part! Although she hadn’t been paying too much attention to her surroundings, Ori hadn’t noticed anyone especially close) It was such a gentle sound, and Ori knew her next task of investigation for the day. She quickened her pace towards the sound of the melody, keeping it slow enough so she wouldn’t trip over a stray branch in her inexperience navigating Taiga.
The music became more and more clear as she continued to close the distance between herself and the source of the song, and memories of the songs that her mother would sing and teach her and her siblings played in the back of her mind. Although there was certainly a resemblance between this song and the ones she heard in her youth, there definitely was a difference between those songs and this one. Exactly where those differences lay wasn’t clear to Ori, but the fact that those songs and this had some key factor that separated them was certain.
The tune grew more and more clear as she grew closer to its source (not that her search had been especially long), and she slowed her pace before pushing aside the final massive fern leaf that stood between her and the song. With a swift movement of her head, she found herself before a tall, bronze-ish stallion with horns and glowing wings, mane, tail, and star-shaped marking upon his chest. There was something so distinctly familiar about him… and then the odd-eyed champagne realized exactly where she’d seen him before.
He didn’t have wings in those images, but when Lilli had shared memories of her children with Ori, she had seen a figure of a flaxen chestnut colt with the same horns, short tail, and glowing marking on his chest. The stallion standing before her definitely would fit the bill for a grown-up version of that foal.
Lilli’s son. it still felt weird to say, even in her own head. However, the fern leaf she had pushed aside assuming its place back once again - a place her face currently occupied - startled her back into the present time. After a moment passed for her to process what happened, she ducked under the frond and took a step forward so all of her was in front of the fern and before the taller stallion.
“It’s such a pretty song,” She explained, a somewhat sheepish smile appearing on her face, lyrics somewhat apologetic in tone, “I wanted to see where it was coming from and… well, I guess I found it.” Her smile shifted into one of happiness as she looked at the stallion before her, hoping that her intrusion wasn’t too unwelcome, and always happy to meet someone new.
Yes, a pretty song. Cut short in the midst of Ori pushing her way past the jurassic ferns (not that Yan minded being interrupted), the bronze-ish stallion with arcing horns and an uncharacteristically long tussle of cornsilk chin hair stopped mid-tune to swing himself around and glance at the golden mare. He had changed in an instant, carefree to cautious, and the lines of his neck and shoulders seemed to tense with embarrassment at having been found out when he’d thought he was utterly alone.
“I was, er, practicing.” Yan laughed from the back of his throat, producing a sound that further cemented a sense of awkwardness between them.
“I didn’t even hear her coming.” He thought less of himself, realizing the song must’ve swept him further away from the present than he would have liked to admit. However, upon further inspection of the curious mare with skin as warm and golden as the lion's proud pelt, Yanhua felt the embarrassment leaching away. She appeared just as apologetic in expression as he was: her for having interrupted — him for subjecting her to ‘pretty’ noise in the first place. Ori smiled; Yanhua shook out the tousle of forelock covering his ancestor’s blue eyes and returned the favor.
“I sense something in you.” He told her politely, warning the stranger aloud that magical work was at play where he was concerned. Stepping closer, Yanhua breathed deeply and switched into a mode of openness. The echoes of her memories came quickly then, transforming the forest in a way that only he could see. Yan saw times past and gone, portrayed from her point-of-view: Lilli, Yan’s mother, running wild as a young filly alongside this mare. The ghosts of Ori’s past leaked into the emotional residue of the present, called forth by Yanhua’s ability, and they shone in radiant colors of amber and ripe wheat.
“You knew my mother.” Yanhua’s smile warmed. This was said as a matter-of-fact, not an estimation. Perhaps she would note the past tense, perhaps not. Yan had only just begun to use it himself. “She told the most wonderful tales about Murmuring Rivers, Paraiso, and her family there.” He sighed as the echoes drew out longer and longer, then disappeared altogether.
He was back in Taiga, and the mare with an effervescent glow surrounding her was the reality that remained. She looked lovely amid the dark swaths of green and brown, Yan admitted to himself. As lovely as his mother. His eyes rose and swept across her face calmly, like a character trying to read between the lines of what’s obviously in front of them, and in her gaze he felt the same sort of depth his mother had always had in hers. A well of knowledge beyond his own, though Yan considered himself a learned sort of horse for the times. Ori reminded him of Lilli, but she was not the mare with a brand of scorching fire etched into her shoulder. She was not Elena, who had raised him as dearly as any aunt could when Lilli had been stolen away. She was not Aletta, who Yanhua had the pleasure of meeting briefly, once.
But she was otherworldly.
“I’m Yanhua.” He told her, stopping near to where she was. From her location, the mare with mismatching eyes stood atop a small hillock and so their gaze leveled as equals. “Have you just arrived in Taiga, or am I truly the worst at my job?” Yan wondered. This time he laughed with ease.
And if you're homesick, give me your hand and I'll hold it.
Music was something that had colored the champagne mare’s very earliest days. Some of her oldest and fondest memories were filled with its sound in the grove that her family occupied. To hear songs and to sing them would always hold a special place to her, but in her eagerness to hear more of the song, she had committed one of the gravest wrongs in interrupting it.
As soon as her head emerged from behind the large frond and the sound stopped, she was met with the tensed glance of the goaticorn before her. Although she had offered an explanation and hoped that he knew she liked the music, it appeared that she had stopped it (If Marcelo had been here, he certainly would have told her it was a bad idea to run towards it, but then, between the pair, he had always been the more reasonable and responsible). She dropped her head and looked towards the ground, not sure if she could take meeting his azure gaze. The guilt strangled her heart in her chest as she suddenly felt so small in comparison to the one before her.
“I was, err, practicing.” He held laughter back in his throat, and the invisible wall that stood between the pair (the one that Ori had so innocently, accidentally constructed), grew larger, but also formed a crack as the golden girl heard the lack of anger or agitation in his voice. She managed to find the courage to lift her face and green and brown eyes to more steadily meet his, and in those oceanic eyes, she could not find any irritation or sternness as she had originally assessed, only a guarded expression of having been exposed to an awkward encounter. She could breathe a bit easier as she offered a silent apology before smiling, and the wall disappeared on her end on finding it returned.
“I sense something in you.” Although the phrase itself was spoken in a polite manner, there was an undertone that something was about to happen. Ori cocked her head slightly as she tried to understand exactly what he meant by that, observing as the taller stallion of brilliant bronze and gold approached her. He took a deep breath and seemed to observe something, and although the exact nature of that something was unknown to Ori, she could recognize it was likely some magical sight beyond what she could see, and waited for whatever he was looking for to be made clear to him.
She stood like that, watching him, trying to figure out exactly what he was attempting to find before he broke the silence. “You knew my mother.” The statement was frank, surprisingly matter-of-fact, considering the pair had just met (although the champagne had an inkling that some kind of magic had been involved, it was still strange to hear) and Ori nodded. (She noted the ‘knew’ he used, but simply assumed it to mean that she knew Lilli as a child, which was true, and it was also true that it had been a while since she had seen Lilli, and much had happened in their time apart) After that statement, his expression warmed, and Ori couldn’t help but reciprocate.
“She told the most wonderful tales about Murmuring Rivers, Paraiso, and her family there.” He sighed, and Ori could feel her heart go out to him. He was family, and the way he carried himself implied some air of responsibility, it was similar to how her brother and cousins would carry themselves, tall and strong, protectors and beacons of stability to be followed. She also knew that often meant there was a lot carried on their shoulders, so she offered her kindest, softest smile, the one she always reserved for Marcelo, her mother, or whoever else she felt needed it after a long, hard day. “Well, they were wonderful days, and even more wonderful souls to be around.” She offered, her voice soft and nostalgic, but with a gentle note of happiness underneath. Those days were gone now, and this wonderful - if at times tumultuous - present had come in their place, and Ori was thankful for it.
“I’m Yanhua.” He stopped before her, and it was easy to tell how much he outranked her in the height category, even though their eyes could meet from the small hill she found herself on. She perked up a tad for finally having a name to his face. “A pleasure to meet you! I’m Ori.”
“Have you just arrived in Taiga, or am I truly the worst at my job?” He laughed, and the ease of the sound cemented to Ori that their awkward encounter had been left behind (or so she hoped), and there was an easy reply to be found. “Wha- No! Absolutely not!” She laughed as she shook her head. From what she could already tell, @[Yanhua] took his duties as seriously as any knight or guardian of Paraiso, and she refused to believe that any of them were bad at their duties.“Lil- your mother,” she began, correcting herself from using the crimson mare’s childhood nickname in front of her son, unsure if it would be entirely appropriate. It was taking a bit of time to get used to referring to Lilli as a mother, but the champagne swore that she’d get it right next time, “led me here during the eclipse, so I’d say I came here fairly recently.” She knew that the eclipse had been very hard on everyone, and although she wasn’t really sure what had been going on, she knew that she hadn’t been under its shadow for as long as many of the Beqannan residents. She didn’t know much of the frantic efforts to fix things, but she knew that everyone had been busy doing their part and wouldn’t hold it against anyone to have not known of her coming. The only thing that mattered to her right now was the meeting that was happening, and hoping she didn't mess up too badly.
What could he do but nod in agreement? Wonderful days, she told him. Wonderful times to be alive, young, and free. Were it not for his gift, Yanhua might’ve said something along the lines of: “I could hardly imagine it, Lilli as a young grasshopper.” But he knows better, thinks that this mare probably understands that too, so instead he says nothing and tips his head up and down.
She called herself Ori. Yanhua repeated the name three times back to himself: Ori, Ori, Ori, trying not to forget it later on, and smiled at her assurance that he wasn’t entirely slipping out of his duties. “Well that’s good, then.” He thought, noticing how the newcomer paused to correct herself when referring to his dam so casually. Yan wouldn’t have been bothered. He wondered if Lilliana would’ve, though. “She always had a habit of being exactly where she was needed most.” Yan conspired with his mother’s friend, edging closer a few strides through the ferns so that they could see each other properly in the dim light of the forest.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Ori.” Yan flicked his ears rid of a few hovering pests and readjusted the wings hanging useless over his back. Not much room for flight when the canopy was mostly shrouded from the clouds above, or when the fog got thick enough you could breathe it in, but they came in handy when the nights were especially dark - as they had been, before the sun’s return. “I hope you’re finding Taiga more hospitable since the Eclipse ended.” He sighed, tilting a hairy chin. “Terrible business it was. Overwhelming for us all, I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for you, coming into the situation.”
Even the long-time inhabitants of Beqanna hadn’t seen the likes of something as horrible as the Eclipse. They’d lived through a reckoning, losing all their powers, had survived a plague that crippled half the nation and saw it reborn anew, only to witness the depths of depravity and darkness that came from a hell unlike any known to horsekind. Crops withered in the dark, animals died en mass, shadow creatures known as monsters crept up from the blackness and stole lives as well as a sense of safety. Terrible was a rough understatement for the truth of the matter.
But things were better now, or approaching a sense of normalcy so as to be called “better” once more. Thanks to the efforts of the Taigan clans and the unity of the northern territories, they were able to see the return of the light and live as freely as they had before nightmares came to life. Yanhua could see that Ori was in one piece, and so he assumed the best on her behalf.
“Is there anything I could help you with?” He wondered. “Now that you’ve been here and seen the sights. Any questions or problems?”
