"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
04-19-2023, 11:31 AM (This post was last modified: 04-19-2023, 03:15 PM by Roué.)
we're death defying, coming in like lightning
Once, he had been careless and carefree in the face of the harsh realities of the world. Over time, the jaunty beat of a youthful heart had turned to the jaded pounding of a man who has seen too much. However, while carlessness may have faded into cynicism, he remained just as irreverent and spirited as ever.
At least, most of the time.
Even the spirited need a vacation from time to time. And today is that day for Roue. He had carefully selected the spot he now occupies, his draconic form stretched lazily over the tallest, flattest rock he could find. It truly is the perfect spot. The sun warms his shimmering scales, glinting over the gold speckling his hide, and the silence, eerie to some, is music to his sensitive ears.
A plume of smoke escapes his nostrils as he exhales on a satisfied sigh, basking in the rare moment of peace.
The world might have gone to shit, but there are still plenty of things to enjoy about this new Beqanna. And enjoy them he would. Jaded as life might have made him, he still has enough memories of a happy childhood to remind him existence isn’t always a cruel mistress. Maybe one day, he would get to experience that again in truth.
Today however, he wanted nothing so much as to simply exist without the world reminding him of all that waited beyond this isolated perch.
He was just as glad as most when spring had come. Not for its promise of new beginnings and sweet adventures; not for those new to life, or dormant and awakened. It was because, as the days slowly, achingly, lengthened, the struggle to survive had become less of a struggle.
It had been cold when he opened his eyes that first time. Instinct had driven him to devour what brown, tasteless grass he could find, bark and young trees falling prey to his frantic appetite. When the snow did come, it was not long before his tawny hide ill-concealed his hips and ribs, the effort of searching for food a task that required more energy than he could forage. He had found refuge in a small cave and avoided strangers. He had survived. The first few days of spring had passed under a dark cloud of suspicion - how could the sun feel so warm? - but now he is sure the misery of winter is well behind him. Though his gangly form and short-shorn mane speak of a yearling somewhere his second year, the time before his first autumn is a black void in his memory. And even now, as summer slowly fades into autumn, he still does not know that on the other side lies winter in wait.
He treads a landscape that is nearly as desolate as his soul, his unkempt, tawny form winding in and out of the strange, pockmarked formations. His gray/green eyes rove listlessly ahead, shifting from stone to stone to … dragon? An ash-colored plume slid from the overgrown lizard’s nostrils; it was the movement of this smoke as it rose to break apart that drew the young stallion’s unconscious gaze.
He jolts, skittering sideways to take refuge behind a column of rock large enough to hide his waifish figure. Throat dry, he peers out from relative safety to eyeball the gold-flecked drake, prepared to jerk back behind it should the creature notice him. He’s never seen a dragon before. Although, truth be told, there is little that he has seen before. He does not notice that he holds his breath while he contemplates what to do, absently rubbing a shoulder on the rock in front of him, not noticing the sand-colored scales that are slowly freckling his back.
The thing about silence is that even the slightest sound carries, much to his annoyance. At first, he ignores the faint shuffling in the distance. It isn’t until the distinct sound of hooves against scrubby earth grows too near to ignore that he finally begins to pay attention to it. When those hooves skitter across shale in a more abrupt movement, he finally lifts his head, vibrant green eyes roaming the columns of stone until they land on dusty red features that just as quickly disappear behind the sheltering rock.
A bubble of amusement rises through his chest as he snakes his long neck around to follow the young stallion. His scales scrape against the stone as he shifts his weight, sending several pebbles skittering away from his bulk. His long talons dig in, creating shallow grooves in his perch as he balances his weight in order to peek around ruins until he finds the intruder.
The boy is younger than he first believed, stuck somewhere between colt and stallion.
A mischievous glint lights his bright eyes, mouth stretching into a draconic grin, unwittingly revealing a row of sharp teeth as he leans precariously forward. His deep inhale is all the warning the young stallion gets before a sharp exhale sends a plume of smoke billowing towards him.
It’s cut off by an abrupt, coughing laugh, deeper and more rumbly in this form than Roue is used. It startles him from his perch, forcing him to snap his wings wide in order to catch himself before he thumps unceremoniously onto the ground.
“Oops,” he says, scaled lips lifting into another toothy grin. Stretching himself lazily across the stony ground, he tips his head towards the stranger. “Hope I didn’t startle you.”
He has never really considered whether or not he is a coward. He is a survivor, this he knows. Abandoned from birth, he had managed to reach this stage of life (later, he will realize it was his trait-snitching abilities and the plethora of magic-imbued nomads mucking about that saved him in those early days). But is he brave? He does not think so, not particularly. Another might argue that the fact that he does not immediately run in terror as the dragon draws closer is a sign of bravery … and he does try to steel himself to face the creature.
The beast’s chest rumbles and Meyer’s heartbeat races ahead of the sound. He reminds himself not to lock his knees, his dry tongue rasping along equally dry lips, drowned by the sound of scale on stone.
When bright eyes meet mournful ones, he hopes that he does not look as scared as he feels. The dragon bares his teeth, inhales, and Meyer misses the bit of mischief in the reptilian eyes. This is it, this is when I die, he thinks, and his regret is that his time here was so short. Nostrils just as wide as his eyes, his sides heaving … it takes him a second to register that his eyes are beginning to burn and water and he is, in fact, not dead. Letting out the breath he did not realize he was holding, he makes another mistake by immediately inhaling afterward, which sends him into a coughing and wheezing fit, eyes screwed tightly shut.
His adrenaline spikes again when the dragon rumbles, followed by the sound of leathery wings suddenly unfurling, and again the rasp of scale meeting rock. Meyer scrambles to the side again, in what he hopes is out of the direct line of fire, before squinting in the dragon’s general direction, the stranger little more than a black blur draped across some of the ruins. “Not at all,” he replies dryly, forcing sarcasm to overrule the tremble in his voice. “You’re hardly the first dragon I’ve met.” He does not know why he lies. The dragon shape grows more clear as he blinks away the tears. “Certainly the rudest one I’ve ever met,” he adds, muttering under his breath. He does not know why he says this, either, save his judgment may be clouded by the numbing wave of relief that comes with the fact that he, in fact, did not die. Not yet, at least.
Roue has never been a mean-spirited creature, though perhaps this stranger, knowing only as much as their brief meeting has allowed, may disagree. He had, however, grown up with many siblings. This is the kind of prank they had played on one another on a daily basis. It had been so easy to slip into old habits that he hadn’t even considered the young stallion might believe those few moments surrounded by his smokey breath to be his last.
Once upon a time, he would have been able to glean that from his thoughts. Now though? Now it is only the mournful gaze meeting his that tells him anything of the bay colt’s fears. And maybe the still wheezing breath and watery eyes.
The brief regret bleeds into his scales, a subtle wave of turquoise melting from skin to ground. The stranger’s words halt the spread, turquoise flashing to orchid before it abruptly retreats as an amused chuckle rumbles from Roue’s chest.
With another lazy stretch, Roue shifts sinuously across the rocky ground. His neck flips and a moment later, his body follows in an undulating roll that’s almost feline in nature. With a grunt, he offers an upside-down grin to his companion. “So am I the second dragon you’ve met then?”
Another grunt escapes as he flips once again, returning his belly to the ground. He eyes the young stallion speculatively for a minute before abruptly stretching his neck forward until his head is right next to him. “There’s an itch I can’t reach just here,” he says, presenting the space just behind the cartilage spikes crowning his head where it meets his neck. “Do you mind?”
04-30-2023, 08:04 PM (This post was last modified: 05-01-2023, 09:19 PM by Meyer.)
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Don’t lock your knees, he reminds himself again, watching with increasing trepidation as the scales run a short color scale before going charcoal. The color of burned things, he thinks with a gulp, leaning away from the stranger as far as he can without actually moving his feet. The thing’s words vibrate in his chest and he winces, squinting one eye open. The first thing he sees is teeth, upside down and bared in a grotesque smile-like shape. “Third, actually,” he growls, forcing both eyes open to glare at the smug creature and wiping the tremor from his voice. He’s seen this before in nature, the way the cats torture their prey. He cannot help but flinch when the thing flips right side up, and he snorts, lashing his tail and stamping a hoof in agitation, a unique blend of cowardice and bravery.
It stares at him then, for longer than Meyer thinks is polite, and his teeth clench together as he tries to subtly shift his weight. His shoulders itch something fierce, the skin across his back burning and uncomfortable … The dragon’s sudden motion makes him jump, and he skitters to the side with another snort and gnashing of his teeth. It wants him to do what?
After a minute of contemplation - a minute that seems to drag on for forever - Meyer figures he is best off doing as he's asked for now, and sidles closer to the beast. He tries to swallow, his throat sticking together. Rather than reaching up with his teeth, as he’s seen one horse groom another, it’s instead his instinct (for a reason that is about to become apparent to him) to reach up with a foreleg to scratch the scaled neck. He goes stiff at the sight of the scaled, taloned forearm that’s now where his black-socked foreleg used to be. The dragon's paw - his paw! - opens and closes, and he's frozen in horror. Run through with fright and fury, his wide eyes roll to meet larger ones. “Wait, I don’t want to be a dragon,” he says, and now he cannot help that his voice goes a bit higher, fear twining the chords. “Stop it,” demands, and please he thinks, forcing as much authority as he can muster into his young voice.
The young stallion’s petulant retort inspires another rumbling laugh, though it is short lived. With his proximity to the youth, he can now smell the waves of fear rolling from him, masked by false bravado. So Roue remains very still as his wary new acquaintance sidles up to scratch where he’d requested. After all, it is not his intention to frighten the boy so badly he simply drops from heart failure.
When the colt speaks again, his words shrill with horror, Roue retreats slightly. Eyeing the newly scaled arm speculatively, he tilts his head first one way, then the other. When the youth demands he stop however, Roue snorts with faint amusement. With a shrug, he replies simply, “I cannot.”
Scooting back a little farther, Roue lowers his head to rest on his clawed forefeet, eyes roving over his companion’s smaller form, watching the changes with open curiosity. After a moment, he says, “I don’t think nature much cares what we want.”
A little brutal in its honesty, but he suspects the boy needs to hear it. It is one thing that Roue has some experience in at least. After all, no one had ever asked him if he wanted to be a dragon either. Of course, some part of him had always been draconic in nature, but he had never once been desirous of becoming one in truth. And then, one day, he had woken up and discovered he could. What should have been an exciting discovery had instead resulted in days of misery. Days in which he had been stuck in a hazy purgatory between horse and dragon with no idea how to shift fully into one or the other.
Obviously he had figured it out. Eventually. Though he really hates dwelling on those miserable days before he had, Roue still decides to offer what little advice he has to the younger stallion, unhelpful as it may be. “You’re better off accepting it. It’ll go much easier for you than if you resist.”
