"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
05-18-2021, 09:59 PM (This post was last modified: 05-18-2021, 10:02 PM by Benjamen.)
I shine only with the light you give me
In the end though, the ocean couldn’t hold him. Water spouted from his lungs. (“See that water, James, those are whales!” It was the first sentence he recounted when he was made anew.) He watched them pull a body from he water. It was his own, water logged and limp. And had he not been a child, maybe he would have thought it to be strange.
Had he not been the son a dreamer and his golden wisher.
And he runs on limbs reborn not from ash, not from earth, but from waves. It is seen in the way he rocks and glides and rolls. If you look to Nerine’s ocean and to the little boy, you will see it. He stops his dance (“You look like your grandmother when you do that—dancing is in our blood,” his mother used to say) only when a flash of gold kisses the corner of his eyesight. So brief and so small a glance, if anyone older saw it, they might not have truly seen it.
But Benjamen, he saw it.
“Mom?” It’s a question as much a statement. A question because he is still small, a statement because he grew beneath those waves.
But be weary of the woman spun from gold, she is not who you think.
“Wait, wait, wait.” It looks so much like her. The waves are forgotten. The death is forgotten. He is no longer running along the cliffs of Nerine, scampering over loose rocks, but he is prancing along the cliffs of Terrastella, wildflowers kissing alabaster ankles. And that is not a stranger he follows, but his mother. And they are not walking into the unknown, but going to their very-secret-Elliana-doesn’t-know-about spot.
And he is not Benjamen, reborn from water filled lungs and salt ridden hair, but— “It’s me! James!”
Benjamen; my feet knew the path, we walked in the dark, in the dark
never gave a single thought to where it might lead
05-26-2021, 04:50 PM (This post was last modified: 05-26-2021, 04:55 PM by Aela.)
YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
This has happened to her before.
There had been a man - bathed in silver like the moonlight that had vanished during the Eclipse - that had approached her. Aela had entertained him for a moment because there had been a thousand memories radiating off him and they were a far brighter thing to behold than their current world. His mind had been full of places that she had never seen, faces that she had never known and then there had been that look.
He had looked at her and been awed (and when has Aela ever refused a little praise?)
But this is a boy that insinuates something. He dares to think that she could be his mother. That she would debase herself to do something as mortal as childbearing. The lovely lines of her golden face draw into disgust and she looks down to the child, beaming and bright and hopeful. She thinks she will rather enjoy watching that expression crumple.
Her face turns to look at him (blazed, where it should have been heart-marked; golden but without the lovely sheen of Elena's kindness) when she finally stops. His lanky legs couldn't catch at her with the brisk pace she kept but now he could come closer and see that she was not his mother. The palomino lifts her head and studies him, sees the blue eyes peering up at her, and sighs.
Another bastard half-sibling, she wonders?
"Oh," she murmurs sweetly with brilliant eyes that flash dangerously when they meet his. "And I care why, love?"
“Do you think it would hurt?” He had asked his sister one day as they sat on a cliff side. “Yes,” she had answered, “It would.” He watched his sister with their matching blue eyes. “The in-between though,” she says, staring back at him with something vacant in her gaze. “Between the ground and the leap, now that would be the worst of it.”
The in-between.
Like the moment you inhale all that water into your lungs, but still sit there, suspended.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
There had been some comfort—afterwards—in knowing his big sister was wrong.
Ben watches her with a mild curiosity as she turns to him. He realizes quickly it is not Elena, but none the less, she still gave him the attention he sought, as he knew she would. Perhaps it was arrogant of him to think that, but it was his thought all the same. His calm eyes trace the blaze on her face and the glowing markings on her legs. Did she hide sunlight in there? Still young enough to believe that such a thing would be easy to accomplish.
His scrawny legs march him in a semi straight line towards her. The large ears that sit atop his cranium twist this way and that, as his pale eyes search her face. He smiles. Its a smile that holds a certain amount of charm, and yet influenced heavily by all the star shine of his father. “Nice to meet you,” he says more quietly, uncertain if he should be proud of showing off those impeccable manners his parents bestowed upon him. Nothing less for a prince.
“You look like her.” He says. There is a beat, he should consider what he is about to say next. But Ben has fallen under the curse of being young and stupid. “You look like Nashua too,” and as if he needs to say it— “Future King of Icicle Isle!”
Benjamen; my feet knew the path, we walked in the dark, in the dark
never gave a single thought to where it might lead
image by Gary Bendig
@[Aela]
I am legit cackling at this hahahah
06-13-2021, 04:11 PM (This post was last modified: 06-13-2021, 04:12 PM by Aela.)
YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
Aela ignores his niceties outright; she rarely has time for them in any other situation and she makes no exception for the boy. Her blazed face gazes down on the black colt and the golden woman doesn't bother to hide the contempt lining the elegant angles of her face. She says nothing and it is only the lightning flick strike of her fine tail that speaks of her irritation.
An irritation that only grows when the boy says that she looks like her - another palomino that basks in the loving glow of his memories.
She decides to turn this into a game. He has detained her long enough so the striped mare decides to make the encounter worth her while. Aela smiles, though it lacks anything warm. Her face is full of frost while her blue eyes glitter with winter's chill. Perhaps he is too young to have any concept of how free his mind is but she plucks a memory from his mind, an image of the lovely woman she can only assume is his mother.
"Perhaps she looks like me," Aela defers to the youth, turning around further to face him directly. It makes her curious, because even if the faces she finds in Benjamen's mind interest her little, there are glances of a land that she has never seen, and the possibility to create chaos on foreign shores is a tempting thought.
It's only the mention of Nashua that gives her pause and the slender mare lifts her head, with her ears flicking neatly into the smooth silk of her mane. Aela would like to claim that the King of the North resembles her but even she can't deny that the two stallions from Taiga - Nashua with his golden stripes, Yanhua with his blue eyes - are strikingly similar to her. That had been one mark against her elder brother, their recent argument is another and the anger from it is still simmering beneath her skin.
Her eyes widen slightly, as if the mention of him is shocking.
"You know Nashua?" Aela suddenly asks, her mind delighting at this coincidence. The chances that she could teach her brother and this youth a lesson become twofold and then like the great mimic she is, she feigns fear. "He... he allowed you to leave Taiga?"
