"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
He’s asked enough strangers to be sure that this is Beqanna, but it is a far different place than the land he had visited before. Most of his time had been spent in the Meadow and Valley, but the once-familiar rolling hills had drowned beneath the waves. Or so says the local gossip, if the word of strangers can be trusted.
The ridge that Valdr stands upon is comprised mostly of broken stone, and the footing is unstable. It is the highest vantage point in the Ruins though, and his sky heart appreciates the view. The land that stretches out around him is lit by the late afternoon sun, but even the warm spring light does little to brighten the barren place. Scrub brush and bare earth, a place that looks as desolate as the Illumni Plains of old.
Valdr is obvious anywhere, but he feels especially exposed here in this empty place. Not for the first time, the spotted pegasus wonders why he had chosen now to return to this strange world. A nervous roll of his shoulder pulls the leathery wings tighter to his sides, and he exhales a shaky breath. It flickers with sparks, though they soon die and join the spirals of smoke that rise up past his roman norse, to his emerald green eyes that scowl out from beneath a leopard spotted brow.
Wrena aimlessly spends most of her time in the sky, playfully engaging with others; covering miles and miles everyday for no reason other than she cannot seem to stay still anymore. Gone are the days of her loyalty to a certain patch of land and the citizens living in it. Her only loyalty is to herself ̶ and sometimes, just sometimes, her kids.
Today is no different than any other day. A blazing sunset roaring in bright colors behind her as she swoops in and out of the gold-rimmed cotton clouds. She plays among the misty formations as she descends on the Ruins, a place she hasn't yet explored since Beqanna’s latest shifts and morphs. Her hooves land softly on the dry dusty ground. She folds her leathery black wings and tips her orange eyes to her surroundings, walking forward with her neck craned and her nose running along the rocky terrain at her feet. This was an interesting place, certainly.
A shadow to her left, above, catches her keen eyes and she directs her attention to the figure standing high above the rest of the land. She watches him for a little while before setting into a trot up the hillside and up to where the figure stands. Wrena took the long way, using those elegant long legs of hers. Immortality offers its gifts, keeping her athletic and youthful even at her ripe age.
The curious bay mare snorts upon her approach, announcing herself, but surely the dust trail and her padding trot gave her away minutes ago. She comes to stop a few feet from him, out of reach yet easy to hear. His matching wings (aside from coloring) distract her from making any sort of snarky introduction, as she normally would. Her head tilts while she mulls the delight she takes in seeing such a thing, brilliant white dragon wings like her own. She flits her unmatching ears forward, “Evening,” She sucks in a breath, a deep inhale and an exhale, looking him over still and then leveling her orange with the steady green of his. “The quiet here…it’s unnerving.” she takes her eyes away from him and out to the broad view before them. “I’ve never visited this place before, only flown over it. It doesn’t look as haunted as it feels.” she adjusts her posture, getting more comfortable.
The sound of hooves on rocky soil draws his attention, and Valdr turns to watch the bay mare ascend the lithic slope. There is no one else up here, so it seems clear she’s coming toward him, so he turns to face her. Despite her clear intent, she is as much a stranger to him as all the others of this world, and the uncertainty he feels about her intent shows in the skeptical frown that he wears as he looks her over.
Valdr knows that his wings are not the most common kind here; his father’s feathered limbs were more prevalent. The spotted stallion has his mother’s wings, which in turn she had inherited from a sire born on distant shores. That this stranger, too, has them could be nothing more than coincidence.
The openness with which she continues to look him over makes him feel oddly exposed, and he looks away before she does, shifting his leathery wings against his sides. She remarks on the eerie feeling of the place, and he nods in agreement.
“Are there places here that do not feel like this?” He asks he he surveys the desolate land lit by the fading sun. “I’ve begun to regret having traveled here, to Beqanna.”
05-02-2023, 11:48 AM (This post was last modified: 05-02-2023, 11:49 AM by wrena.)
When he answers, his voice seems to crack through the quiet like thunder, changing the energy she thought she might be finding when she started this conversation. Her ears tweak and tip, taking in what he says…Okay, so he’s more of a philosophical type than she might have guessed. So far all her assumptions she had when she touched down just a few minutes have been shattered, so she proceeds blindly as far as social grace.
“Uh,” her nose crinkles and her mind actually searches for an answer to that. “No?” Everything is haunted then? Okay. Wrena takes in another breath and if she had a brow, it would be furrowed by now.
“Is it because everything is haunted?” Ghosts everywhere. Which sounds funny as a thought, and even as she shapes the words and delivers them, it sounds comedic…but it is true. Ghosts have a hold of everything here ̶ is it not like that elsewhere? Where in the fairy land fuck did he hail from? A land of no darkness and only fulfilled dreams and desires? “I’m not sure where you’ve come from, but if here is escapable; let me know. Because I was born here and I also regret coming.”
His gaze flicks back at the sound of uncertainty in her voice, and Valdr’s green eyes narrow farther still. Everywhere is like this?
His parents had told grand tales of Beqanna, and he had been assured and reassured that his previous visit here had been an anomaly. The moroseness that he felt pervaded the very air had been his imagination, they’d told him; or perhaps he’d somehow spent his entire visit here in the area of the Beach.
And yet here he is, returned once more, and this presumably long-term resident says that it’s all like this?
But is where he’d come from really any better? Sure, there is no ever-present glumness, no oppressive scent of melancholy, but nor is there much of anything else. Just an island, and his immortal parents, and the siblings that remained. There was no future there, only an eternity of sameness.
Here, despite the ghosts, there is a chance for something new.
“I used to set fires, to see what grew back from the ashes.” The words are seemingly incongruous with what had come before, but he’s looking at the desolate wasteland around them once more, and wondering if perhaps there is something beneath it.
“Maybe this place just needs a spark.” He could be speaking figuratively, but the sparks that remain everlit in the depths of his nostrils have grown to encircle the rims of his pink nostrils, indicative of the fires he’d spoken of.
