"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
The world he is born into is a dark one.
So he sets it aflame the moment he is pushed free from the womb.
Perhaps that is why he is here instead of at his mother’s side. He can’t remember her face, doesn’t know her name. Perhaps she might have even seen past his pyro tendencies and kept him if it hadn’t been for the added bonus of small leaves, twigs, and rocks that had suddenly hovered and swirled around him before they too burst into flame. He couldn’t quite catch the word she cries out, if she had pronounced it “fire” or “fear”. He decides it doesn’t really matter and Fyr he becomes, accepting both pronunciations as correct.
It wasn’t her fault really. He was a strange child who made things explode in a fiery inferno with a mere glance in their direction and seemed to talk to a plethora of imaginary friends. Even the fairies here tended to avoid him although they were kind enough and did the bare minimum to keep him alive. He doesn’t mind that either at first. It’s not like he can be truly alone when he can call souls from the dead. Sometimes the fae caretakers can see the transparent ghosts of those he summons, sometimes they think he is merely talking to himself. Either way, they murmur to each other about the unusual spotted colt. A handsome boy, they think, but a shame he is so strange. So creepy. So dark.
The moment they catch him glowing gold in the moonlight seems to only confirm what they had already assumed. Something spectacularly evil in the making despite the allure of his appearance, a fate that reeks of death and tragedy.
Fyr doesn’t understand of course. He doesn’t get why they can't see the beauty in the darkness, the enchantment of a flame, the way he does. But even he is scared of the things he can do sometimes. The ghosts he summons in his loneliness (sometimes unintentionally) can be frightening as much as they can be kind. Luckily the souls never stay for too long, his powers weak with his lack of understanding and experience with them. As for his fire, well.. At times it does get out of control but the fairies always put it out before it can cause too much damage.
He knows he is different and at first he doesn’t think it’s a bad thing.
But as he starts to notice the wide berth he is often given, the whispers when he passes by, the looks of fear and uncertainty…. He begins to wonder. Was he as bad as everyone thought he was? Was he born wrong? Were his abilities signs of an unavoidable dark path? Was he evil? In his heart he feels he is just as good as anyone else. He hadn’t asked to be born this way after all. As the days pass he starts to wish that he was more normal as he watches other foals play and grow up without him. As he dreams of what it would be like to have a family to go home to at night, to have friends he could laugh and go on adventures with.
He stands in the shadows as the others frolic and pulls the fire from that smoldering source within him, narrows his feral yellow eyes as a small spark grows from a tangled thicket before him. In a matter of seconds the entire thing is set alight and he focuses his concentration, trying to shape the flame into a small burning tree. The orange blaze begins to flicker and move but he only gets it as far as a trunk and a few curled branches before it sputters out. He sighs, disappointed, as he glances back out where the others giggle and chase each other. A few had looked his way and he frowns as he sees them looking at him, talking amongst each other. Knowing exactly what they must be saying. Feeling abashed and shamed, he lifts his small hoof and crushes the remaining evidence of what he had been doing, unbothered by the heat smoldering beneath him.
He didn’t want to be bad. He didn't want to be looked at like Carnage reincarnated. Maybe he should just ignore his powers. Maybe they would just go away on their own if he stopped using them. Maybe then he could be normal and stop living life on the outskirts and everyone would stop looking at him as if he was a Dark Lord in the making. The jaguar colt sighs softly, torn and sad, as he stands in the embers of his destruction and wonders for the hundredth time if everyone was right about him after all.
08-08-2021, 06:21 PM (This post was last modified: 08-08-2021, 06:22 PM by Aela.)
YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
Perhaps it's because Aela has spent such an extensive time in the progeny of Carnage that she knows who the little boy is immediately.
(As a girl, she had once thought that she was the daughter of the Dark God. So many had marveled at her beauty, commented on her ability to wield her powers, that Aela thought what else could she be but a demigod? But it had been Heartfire who told her otherwise - that her sire was just a mortal, that Carnage's offspring was legion.)
There are no stars on him, like Skandar. There is no unending well of egotism like Narcissus. Even her most recent acquaintance - fiery Erupt - boasted destructive magic like his notorious sire. This little spotted youth who keeps away from the other foals who frolic and toss their heads to the wind is not a child of the Dark God. Aela can see that plainly enough.
But it doesn't mean he is beneath her notice.
The spark smoldering beneath his small hoof ignites her interest. The emotions of the other foals are apparent; she can sense that they don't like this boy, whoever (or whatever) he is. Something sparks in Aela at that. She can remember being young. The palomino hadn't been able to speak and there had been those who liked to imply that since she couldn't talk, perhaps she couldn't hear. A few had implied that perhaps she was deaf and mute and therefore dumb.
(As she's gotten older, it has brought her particular joy to show those old acquaintances that she can now speak. She rather enjoys overwhelming them with the memories that had crippled her as a youth and if that doesn't sate her revenge, her new ability should prove useful.)
Aela has stolen for the Pampas and its Prince. She has even tried her hoof at recruiting. This - coming to the Adoption Den - is a new tactic for the striped woman. (And part of her wonders what Obscene would make of her here, what face he might make if she returned to the Pampas with a colt at her heels.)
"Why'd you put it out?" Aela asks, as she approaches the spotted boy with her blazed head dipped low enough that he can catch her brilliant eyes.
Like most in Beqanna he is connected by blood to many of this worlds prominent players even though he is not one of the Star God’s direct legion. The reverse dappled jaguar spots that cover the length of his pale body hint to the connection shared by the very Prince she serves, one he also shared with a starry winged Thane in the North and a grizzled one-eyed bear in the South and an angel in the East among many others. If it was bloodlines she was interested in then she would be pleased with the titles and names within his pedigree. However he is ignorant to such things, his mother had only given him one name to remember and that is his own so he cannot share these things that might impress her.
Luckily (or perhaps unlucky, fate had yet to decide) his powers spoke for themselves and caught the attention of the pretty striped mare who watches him from a distance. He is unaware of her, too distracted by his own misery to see the way she stares at him with interest. It’s not until she is standing directly before him, her brilliant blue eyes blocking his view, that he notices her. His feral yellow eyes stubbornly meet her own as he lifts his small head warily, unsure if this was just another disappointment in the making. That she too was about to scold him and tell him how he was destined for only terrible things.
“They don’t like it.” He finally mumbles sullenly, glancing at the group of foals that now openly gape in their direction and titter to themselves. His frustration gets the best of him and as he glares at the closest one, a little filly with dark eyes and vibrant pink splotches, her mane and tail suddenly begin to blaze with the heat of his manifested fire. The foal screams in terror which sends the rest of her friends scurrying in fright while a rather bored looking fairy puts it out without even batting an eyelid from what she had been doing. He hadn’t quite meant to do that, had been trying to pull the fire out around her hooves but perhaps there hadn’t been quite enough tinder to latch on to.
She should consider herself lucky that he hadn’t accidentally called another soul from the beyond, sometimes their tricks got out of hand.
“Everyone thinks I’m bad.” He finally says in his solemn way in the quiet that follows, the other foals putting even more distance between themselves and him after such an incident. “I don’t mean to be. I don’t want to be.” He looks back up to the golden mare before him, not knowing how to hide the hurt he feels. “Do you think I’m destined for terrible things too?” He fumbles over the big words he had heard his mother say when she had left him here, aching to be told that he was wrong.
Aela turns her head slightly, looking towards the other foals that had provoked the little colt. She has never been to the Den before, but she has heard stories. She had met others - like hypnotic Allucarda - who had spent their entire foalhoods in this place. The golden Empath might not have been raised by her biological mother and had never known the monster that was her father, but thanks to Kota and Heartfire, Aela had always known that she had been wanted.
She had never been casted off, or left to fend for herself.
It isn’t true for this little boy, though. There are others here who have been abandoned as well but there is something about the fire in this child that calls to her. He is blazing and beautiful; in that moment, Aela would have razed the entire nursery for those that disagreed with her. Thankfully, the young colt does it for her. The closest filly from the insinuating group screams as sparks fly at the end of her tail and mane.
The palomino casts an approving glance down on the youth.
”And what about them?” Aela asks, her lovely face turning towards the direction of where the other foals had stood. Where they had openly mocked the little boy. As far as she was concerned, they had gotten exactly what they deserved. But this a child who is still discovering his gifts and at the same time, trying to discover his place in the world now that his mother had abandoned him to it.
Foolish woman, she condemns the other mare.
”I think what they did was terrible,” she continues, reaching down to smooth out the child’s curling mane. ”And as for everyone else, let them think what they want.” She tells the boy, feeling his ache weigh heavily inside her own slender breast. She can feel the way that he is seeking validation and Aela will give it to him, but not until he learns a lesson that she has had to learn herself.
He had visibly begun to cringe away from the golden mare, fully expecting her disapproval in light of what he had done to the other foal, even though it had been an accident. Instead, she looks down at him with what almost looks like pride. He can’t help the way his little bottlebrush tail spins behind him, not use to receiving any sort of praise or kind looks. His expression turns into one of open confusion as he follows her gaze to where the others avoid them. What about them? He jolts under Aela’s unexpected caress, not use to being touched. Not use to anyone acting like they cared about him.
It’s strange but he likes the way she smooths his ombre mane and he finds himself settling under her calming touch, enjoying the rare affection. Her words are even more of a balm and slightly lessen the ache within him. They were rather terrible weren’t they? But they were the ones that didn't set trees on fire or talk to shadows, instead wielding less destructive magic. They weren't creeps like him. It leaves him with more questions then answers, more conflict muddling his small brain as he tries to sort out who was right and who was wrong. He had been told so often in his short lifespan that he was “bad” that he had never considered the alternative… That they might all be wrong.
What do you think you’re destined for?
He chews over that question like a dog with a bone, another quandary he had never considered before. He doesn’t want to disappoint this mare who untangles his forelock and looks at him as if he was someone instead of something. “I don’t know.” He finally says quietly and pulls a small fiery flower up from the ground between her front hooves as a dark shadow falls over him, watching the petals burn until the flames give out and leave only ash behind. Looking up at her with his wild yellow eyes. “Terrible things.” He says and wonders if terrible and bad must always mean the same thing.
08-15-2021, 06:56 PM (This post was last modified: 08-15-2021, 06:57 PM by Aela.)
YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
The way his little bottlebrush tail spins endears the youth to Aela and she conitnues to lightly groom him, removing the burs and knots from his fine baby mane. He's a rising maelstrom of emotion (and she decides to teach Fyr how to keep them under control, to teach him how to keep his emotions and powers in check so that the only one controlling them is him). But she continues to smooth the little boy's curling hair, brushing his fine forelock out away from his golden eyes.
He thinks over what she's asked him, very seriously, and the palomino doesn't bother to hide warmth in her blue eyes.
A small fire-petaled flower blooms below her hooves and Aela can feel pride swelling inside her slender breast. This is only the beginning of his powers, something that will grow to become as strong as he will be, she thinks. He's almost there, Aela assumes and resumes to grooming the small colt. Until he says that he is doomed for terrible things again, and the lovely palomino muses to the child, "Hm."
Aela keeps cleaning the boy, untangling another knot from his dark mane.
"Did you know terrible can mean many things?" she murmurs to the child, already knowing that he was hers. And Aela refused to let Fyr not to decide for himself what he wanted to be. She glanced down at him, patiently meeting his molten gaze as the colt looked up at her. "You could be terribly strong," she said, touching his shoulder lightly. "Or you could be terribly smart." Aela continued on, taking another step over the youth and flattening her ears against her poll when a doe-eyed mare stared at the bonding pair too long. (A warning flash of Aela's white teeth seemed to spur the other female to another part of the Nursery.)
"You could be even be terribly handsome, or terribly powerful." Aela smiles a little devilishly as she continued, the gleam of her own prideful nature shining out for a moment. She lowers her blazed head and plucks the name of the spotted colt from a memory, her expression softening slightly as she tells him: "You decide what terrible means, Fyr. Nobody else gets to tell you that."
He finds himself being lulled into a rather comfortable state despite his impending sense of doom as she continues to groom him, liking the way she frees the tangles from his unkempt mane. He had told her that he was bad and she was still here, didn’t seem worried in the slightest. He was confused but there were many things that adults did that he didn’t understand and so he assumes this falls under that. Sleepily he leans into her touch as she speaks and his ears perk forward to listen.
It’s as if she can read his mind, picking up the exact thread of worry and doing her best to unravel his confusion just as she untangles the burrs from his hair. He looks back up at her, suddenly wide awake as he considers this, that terrible and bad aren’t always the same thing. Another mare had started to wander over out of curiosity and he watches Aela flatten her ears and step over him, snapping her teeth as the other quickly decides she’s not so curious after all. He watches this with a thrill of delight, feeling the warmth that comes with being protected and wanted.
How long would she stay with him though? Surely she too would eventually see that he was wrong and not want anything to do with him either. As she lowers her head back to him, as she says the name he had not given her, he knows that he doesn’t want her to leave without him. This mare who seems to see something good in little old terrible him. “How did you know my name?” He asks her curiously as he tries to swallow down her words of faith and make himself believe them.
He pauses as the shadow moves across his dappled skin and begins to pick things off the ground around him with interest. A pebble here, a leaf there. He knows this soul, it's appeared a few times before and is one of the few he doesn’t mind. He calls this one Mr. Silence due to the fact that the soul had never spoken to him, had never made a sound, had not even given him a name. In fact he wasn’t even sure what kind of creature Mr. Silence had been before he died, his image was always somewhat disjointed but he felt certain it was at least a Mr at one point. He was mostly harmless and appeared to be fascinated with the living world, Fyr’s fire powers in particular. The ash before Aela’s hooves begins to stir as Mr. Silence runs a claw (finger? talon?) through it before moving on to explore other things around them, picking them up and studying them closely with his blurry transparent features.
He is thinking too hard to fully watch Aela’s reaction to all this, if she sees Mr. Silence at all or only sees things stirring with the help of an invisible touch. What kind of “terrible” could he be besides the bad kind? “Can you teach me how to be one of these things? The good kind of terrible?” He finally asks Aela quietly before dropping his gaze, wondering if she would find him impertinent and scold him for it or worse… Leave. So he quickly drops a polite ”Ma’am.” as if there wasn’t a ghost shuffling around them, as if he hadn’t just set another foal on fire, as if it didn’t matter if she left him here to rot or not.
08-18-2021, 02:22 PM (This post was last modified: 08-18-2021, 02:24 PM by Aela.)
The small colt leans into her, and for the first time Aela's life, she feels herself falling in love with something that is a kind of different dream for the future.
She continues to smooth his mane, thinking that if he bedded down here, they could both rest for a few hours before they made the short journey to the Pampas. But he is a child, and has a curiousity that rivals the short span of his young life. Just as his flames did, his inquisitive nature endears him to her. Aela has always viewed the world through a similar lens, wanting to know how powers worked. What happened when two different types of magicks were pitted against the other. How a Magician was even created.
Aela lowers her slender head again, enveloping Fyr in a light embrace. One with enough room that he could seek more, if he wished to. Or space, if that was what he wanted. But the palomino angles her head to the boy and smiles, taking note of the shadows swirling off his skin like fog. Her heart swelled with pride, for the child who was made of more than just fire and flame.
For this child who was hers.
"None of that," Aela says, addressing his last question first. She had never been adressed as ma'am in the entirety of her life and certainly wouldn't start now. "You can call me Aela," she tells him, while eyeing the supernatural way that the ash below her had started to move. Only when she was certain that it doesn't pose a threat to her or Fyr, Aela continued. "And I can teach you to be all of those things." The gold-striped mare told him. She had never settled for herself; Aela was always striving to be better than she was.
It was something she hoped that Fyr would adopt as well, given time.
"I know your name because they call me terrible, too." Her smile quirks, like she was tugging the boy towards a secret only the two of them knew. "I can see things that others can't - like your name - and sometimes others don't understand the magic behind it, so they call what they don't know terrible instead."
They doused your soul in water, but the flames raged higher. And they called you devil's daughter, such a pretty liar.
He has never felt affection before and the touch is strange as she wraps her neck around him. Uncertain, he steps closer to her and leans into her embrace, finding himself nestled against her warm golden body and discovering how pleasant it is. He can see the other foals in the distance staring at them in disbelief, unable to grasp that this weird loser had somehow found a home before them. He can’t quite believe it either but it seems to be happening and he is grateful for this sudden turn of luck.
Mr. Silence seems to be observing this heartwarming scene with his unreadable nonchalance and the spotted colt wonders what’s behind the blurry features of the soul. Approval? Regret? Fear? Just as soon as he had appeared, Mr Silence evaporates as the striped mare finishes speaking and the thin shadows that roll around him start to fade, leaving him alone in Aela’s hug. He is thoughtful as she tells him her name, as she says she can teach him not only how to be a good kind of terrible but ALL of those amazing good terrible’s she had listed before. And he finds he does want it, all of it, very badly indeed.
What really catches his interest, bringing his feral eyes back to her blue ones, is the claim that she is terrible too. “I think I understand.” He starts slowly, the wheels still turning in his still developing brain. “Something is bad terrible because others don’t understand it. But that makes them bad terrible, not the thing they can’t understand?” Sorting through these life puzzles hurts his head and he presses a little closer to her, finding her presence to be more comforting then he had realized. “Well I don’t think you’re bad terrible either… Aela.” He states bluntly and decisively to her, making a firm decision in his mind. Aela was beautiful and kind and could see things that others couldn't see, like him. How could there be anything terrible about her? How could she be anything other than wonderful? “And I want to be all those things you said. I want to try.”
He leans into her embrace, and Aela continues to groom him. Untangling the small knots in his curly mane, smoothing out the fine hairs that stuck out, and making sure the twigs and brambles were gone. She doesn't doubt that faeries do their best, but the palomino was coming to think that even that wouldn't be good enough for her Fyr.
"Everybody has their definition of terrible," she tells the colt, removing the last burr from his mane. It could be true for other things - perspectives mostly - but Aela has been accused enough times to know that each claim always had a different meaning. Sometimes it had been for the manifestations of her memories (or borrowed ones) and the way that she had pressed them into unwilling minds. Sometimes it had been because of her scheming or her thefts, or simply because Aela used her beauty to an advantage that left somebody else wanting. There was always a reason for it, but sometimes a soul could be shortsighted.
"But you get to decide what you want it to mean for you, Fyr."
If he wanted to be terrifying with his flames, then he should. If he wanted to scare with his shadows, then why not? Aela never saw any point in trying to be something she was not; she was a girl born with the ambitions of a goddess and she will never apologize for it.
She lifts her head, glancing in the direction of the Pampas. The journey back would take a few hours, but if they left now, they could reach the wildflowers before nightfall. Her golden head reaches down to point to the spotted colt where she intends to go and takes a step, glancing back with a soft expression. "How about we try at home?"
They doused your soul in water, but the flames raged higher. And they called you devil's daughter, such a pretty liar.
