"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
I'll be almost to the ocean when you open your eyes
The girls had been plaguing her in their endearing ways to go, and she'd run out of reasons to say no. There'd been plenty of them, starting with the day she'd returned to Ischia to see that she'd missed the births of the girls. An odd thing to come to terms with as the mother, but that's oviparity for you.
They were astonishingly developed by the time he mermare had healed well enough to make the journey home (though her movements were still stiff even now). No clumsy first steps, no real baby babble to speak of. No, her girls were challenging the dark world by the time she was there to see it. But they were still undeniably hers.
Moira and Acionna was what she ended up calling them. Names she'd settled on alone. There had been no one to bounce ideas off of, to debate with. It shouldn't have hurt as much as it did. Hadn't that been the case with the majority of her children? Torrent had been the only real exception, but she'd been hoping...
So her reasoning for giving in had been two fold. Getting her daughters (who were apparently very tenacious when they worked together) off the island for a bit, and exploring the aching weight that she'd carried with her for most of her life now.
She realized as they made landfall that this was her first time on the northern most isle as well. Glints of her own young explorer's heart pulsed in her breast as the icy wonderland revealed itself to them. It was cold, but that posed little problem for the mares built to withstand the sea. It was the slick footing Aquaria found more problematic, but that was somewhat easily avoided. Especially once they made their way to the main fair ground.
It was truly spectacular. Magical, even. She did her best to keep her brood together, but once the maze gave Moira her chance to peel away, Acionna was not far behind her. This was freedom they'd been missing, and she couldn't grudge their wanting as much of it as they could handle.
Alone now in the wintry scene, she paused. The crowds milled about, chattering and interacting with the kind of fervor you only get after long deprivation. A familiar face caught her attention, and for a split second her heart twisted uncomfortably. Only to release when the face turned, and the familiarity was not what she had thought.
Still, it was enough to make her move in that horse's direction, a small smile softening her features. "Tiercel," she greeted, gentle as the waves. "How nice to see you in the sunlight." It made an agreeable change from their first meeting, that was sure.
Kamaria had begged him to take her to the Isle, even sending persuading emotions with practiced accuracy. It had taken everything in him to resist her, but his fatherly fear eventually overrode anything that stood in its way. Although the sun has returned so day and night may continue, Tiercel cannot suppress an underlying feeling of apprehension. He spends his nights staring at the horizon, wondering if the sun will truly rise. He spends his days watching the shadows, waiting to see them creep beyond their boundaries.
The Underworld has made him paranoid, and he finds himself doubting the revival of normalcy.
A set of twins running past startles Tiercel from his thinking. He becomes suddenly aware of how nice the bitter air feels on his warm skin. The brotherly games had given the dun-and-navy quite the workout, leaving a layer of sweat on him. His tired muscles ache slightly as Tiercel wanders the festival, but he enjoys the way the cold seems to soothe the soreness away.
A voice says his name, and it only takes him a moment to recognize who the voice belongs to. As Tiercel turns toward Ischia’s caretaker, he finds that she is just as much an ocean beauty in the sunlight as she is beneath the blue glow of her orbs. Aquaria stands out against the frozen, snowy landscape; she seems like an entity from another world.
The stallion nods his navy-dipped face downward respectfully, and his pale blue eyes catch hers when he raises his head. “Ah, Ischia’s loyal daughter,” he greets warmly. For a flickering moment, Tiercel sees a frightening memory in her blue-violet eyes (the pale mare’s lips and eye sockets had turned that color after enough blood spilled onto the oil-black ground). It chills him, making the air uncomfortable rather than pleasant, and the rhythmic pulse of his glowing heart and blood vessels speeds up to match the increase in his heartbeat.
Tiercel forces himself to hear Aquaria’s words above the familiar shriek that begins to wail in his mind. “The same goes for you.” His mouth has gone dry amidst his fear, so he clears his throat. “Although the tropics might be your home, you make this frozen island look warmer.” The stallion hides the rest of his panic behind a charming smile, which he follows by saying, “How have you been, Aquaria?”
I'll be almost to the ocean when you open your eyes
The darkness had left them all changed, to some extent or another. Haunted, if one was inclined to dramatics. Traumatized, if one wasn't. Whatever you called it, the darkness wouldn't leave them completely. It was easier to ignore when the sun was hot and brilliant on her scales. Less so when the moon faded in the night sky, when the wind whistled in the desiccated palms and the knotted scars on her thigh ached.
She wanted to bury herself in the sun. To burn away every memory of darkness and cold until she could breath again without her chest feeling the strain of it. The moon-white mare blinked at the taller horse, smiling softly. Ischia's loyal daughter? She was, wasn't she. And very little else, anymore.
Those blue-violet eyes began burning, dry and sore. Better than crying, she supposed, but it didn't help that she caught the flicker of something grim in his face. One she could see so much clearer today. "And here I was thinking I blended into the landscape," she replied with somewhat forced lightness. Lightness that crumbled at his next query.
Wonderful, how are you? She should say. Or, Fine! At the the very least. That was the kind, genteel thing to say. And when it was to a practical stranger, a horse she'd met only once before, that should go doubly. That kind of innocuous phrase refused to leave her mouth, though.
"Generally a mess, yourself?"
Her tongue stumbled on the words, but she felt better for saying them. It was true, wasn't it? Her leg was likely never to be quite as it had been. Not when she'd been so slow in healing it. She'd been delayed in returning home only to find that her twin eggs had birthed twin girls, and they'd been alone their first days in the world.
And even though he'd promised to be careful, that he'd come back. Pteron was still missing. Not here to watch his daughter's emerge with her, not here to intercept her patrols with his own, flirting in his carefree way. Not even emerging from the jungle with his real family, with Aegean and their ethereal brood.
She'd returned home. To a mostly empty island and another broken promise. All of that felt too much to share in one breath, especially when it was the brother she was speaking too. Wasn't it enough to say she was a mess? And lost, and barely holding together inside her own skin? The smile she'd placed so bravely on her lips had washed away, leaving only wide-eyed anxiety in its place.
Tiercel isn’t sure if it would be easier to pretend the last few months had never happened. He’d been able to push through the flashbacks to meet Mazikeen and Nashua, to balance his way across the rolling log, to chase his brothers while the bitter wind swept over his shoulders. The festival is supposed to be a celebration, after all, and his experience in the Underworld was not something to celebrate.
Aquaria’s voice is tight in her reply, and it gives him an indication that she’s playing along too. They’ve been invited to a day of fun, to forget the eclipse’s terrors, to laugh in the sun. But she crumbles in her next sentence, and Tiercel is grateful for it. He’d already been feeling the effects of playing the part for so long, and even while he played the part he had seen the Underworld in paranoid flashes. He’s relieved that the ocean-mare is comfortable enough that she can tell the truth, and that he can put his own guard down, and that he is not the only one who’s been traumatized by the eclipse.
The dun-and-navy sighs heavily, and though it’s full of the emotions and memories and thoughts he’s had over the past months, it still doesn’t compare to what he’s experienced. Aquaria might feel a softer dose of his emotions (longing, fear, loneliness, and hopelessness), but he pulls them back into his chest as he speaks. “Actually pretty terrible.”
How could he explain the Underworld to the pale mare? Tiercel is certain he isn’t ready to speak of the horrors; he hasn’t even talked to his wife about them yet. He feels instantly panicked even thinking about the oil-black clay, the harsh white lights, and the feeling of his heart sliding out of his chest. Aquaria’s anxiety flashing in her eyes feels like a mirror to Tiercel’s emotions, and he tries to take comfort in it. But it’s hard, especially when he can still hear the winged mare’s screaming echoing inside his mind.
His next breath is shaky and uncontrolled. “I’ve been… away from Beqanna. Not by my own choosing. When the eclipse ended, I somehow came back.” Tiercel’s cerulean eyes flick between her nervous face and the tundra landscape over her shoulder. “I… uh, I have nightmares every time I try to sleep.” He can admit he’s a mess, like Aquaria, but deeper than that he thinks he’s broken.
I'll be almost to the ocean when you open your eyes
A shiver wound its way along her spine. It was hard to tell if it was simply the cold she was unused to that caused it, or something more insidious. Meeting Tiercel's gaze, she saw reflected what she already knew: they would never be the same. None of them who had lived through the dark, and worse, would see the world or themselves quite the same way again.
The half-healed knots of tissue along her leg pulsed sickeningly. How long would it be before she could close her eyes and not see a blood red ring in the sky? If asked, she would be unable to untangle the emotions leaking from the darkly tinged stallion from her own.
They were, after all, simply different shades of the same experiences. There were pieces of them left behind in the darkness, and she wasn't brave enough yet to go looking for them. Not when the fire was so warm and bright. Not when the dark felt so close still.
Understanding, or as close as she can come to it, settles on her face. She may not have experienced what horrors he alludes to, but the truth was that none of them had had the exact same reaction to the long night. She did not know that for some, it had gone much deeper. That the hell had swallowed some of them up completely. Only a few had returned from it. Some in pieces. Some not at all.
Swallowing hard, she nodded, amethyst meeting sapphire. "I think we might have to admit that maybe the best we can say is we're alive, and go from there." She murmured, heart welling with every dark thing the eclipse had brought on them. She was afraid she'd never understood what they had done to bring so much tragedy on their heads.
It seemed impossible to talk about anything else, but the mermare realized she had to try. Otherwise they'd be worse than drowning, pulling each other deeper with every passing second.
"You need to come back to Ischia," she said abruptly, the words a surprise as they left her mouth. "I just mean... You should come, and see her as she's meant to be. Bring your family, stay for a few days. It would do me just as much good, to play hostess again." Her mouth tightened, the volley of words drying up again. So long away from the world had left her social graces somewhat wanting. More than somewhat, honestly.
It would be much too easy to slip into that dark frame of mind, especially if they continued talking about it. Tiercel nods at the ocean-mare’s admission, trying to ignore the doubt that creeps at the back of his mind. Could he even acknowledge that he’s alive? He knows he’s breathing and his heart is beating, even as it’s evidenced by the pulse of light sparking under his skin.
But he doesn’t feel alive, not yet anyway. Tiercel is finding that it’s very hard to feel alive when he knows what it’s like to feel dead. It’s even harder when he knows what it’s like to welcome death, to find relief in the empty darkness between torture and resurrection.
He hums his acknowledgment anyways, even if he doesn’t fully believe it.
A shadow of a smile finds Tiercel’s face as Aquaria invites him to Ischia. “It would be good to see your home in the sunlight,” he says. He had stumbled onto the shores by accident, but the dun is realizing that it’s becoming more of a gift. “Your generosity is something special, Aquaria.”
