"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
Home.
A foreign word for the girl who has wandered her whole life, despite her father’s king-ship, her mother’s herd-swapping habit. She has often wondered if that is why she preferred to stay loose, free. Part of her still aches for those days, where she could do as she pleases, but as she glances at the foal next to her, she remembers why she has changed her mind.
The foal is not why she changed her mind; the foal is just a foal, her foal, and she has two other children wandering somewhere. The foal - Kidd - is almost identical to her mother; big brown eyes, bay coat with flecks of white, and a white snip that streaks across her muzzle like she’s wiped against something. Her father, nothing special, none of them have been anything special. Just mistakes that Merope has made.
She is the reason she has changed her mind. She is no longer a fresh-faced filly, ready to fight the world. She is older now, at least ten years - though time has flitted past her like a flock of birds - and no longer could she fight the world, even if it came at her and her daughter.
So she needs a home, she needs somewhere that she can raise Kidd, somewhere that, perhaps, she can find her other children.
She knows this is a dangerous time of year to be alone in the Field, but she risks it anyway, hoping that the sight of a foal will make some stallions stop. But she knows, with a heavy sigh, that this is mere wishful thinking, and she must watch her back.
Until she has someone to watch it for her.
@[Berber] all ready for herding ;D she's bringing along a baby so i can uncloset something else too haha.
The grand highway
is crowded w/ lovers & searchers
& leavers so eager to please & forget.
Home is not a concept of great import to him. Or, it hasn’t been.
When home was first the dark days of babyhood, fresh from the suspension of the womb; then the damp and sandy side of some rigid once-was...
Maybe his first real ‘home’ was the side of that similarly golden woman: without the wings, but with a heartbeat and body heat. But that had been a thing without borders, nondescript and fickle—if ‘home’ is a thing with no need of a place or any constancy, then though it had been sad and quiet, it was something in lieu of nothing (or, something worse than nothing), and therefore infinitely better.
That golden woman would have been home, then. But she never felt like it, though she had tried her best. It was still a shadowy thing. He did not understand the structure or mechanics behind it. What makes it and what bends and breaks it.
That he is here must mark a shift in all of that.
A reworking; there is no other reason to be here but to find a home. Or to offer one. It is an odd thing for him to suddenly be compelled to pursue, all things considered. But then, he has seen the faces of loneliness and aimless surrendered to depravity—it has steeled him against the pull, the evocation he has undeniably felt wrap around his throat and coo in his ear. That thing that sends him turning over stones to find thrills in darkness. He is searching for that thing to wrap around him like a shield.
A man swimming against a current and fight the undertow.
Maybe, like the child is the reason this mare quells her wanderlust, that is why he moves to them, now. Looking for the things, peice by piece, that will bind him down.
She is nervous. He can tell. He need not even take that knowledge from her mind for himself. It is apparent in the way her muscles tense and in the wary quality of her glances. His pale tail brushes across his navy hocks. Cold and interwoven with pre-winter.
“Hello.” He looks at the child, her spitting image. If he has a soft spot for anything, perhaps it is children most of all. One thing, most ironically and unbelievably, he shares with some of his more loathsome siblings. To differing degrees. “I’m Chessur. Who is this?” He turns his dark eyes slowly back to the mare, a smile faint on his blue lips.
It comes more natural to him than to his kin. It fits his features, even if he does not find much use for it.
It isn’t long until she is approached, and Merope prepares herself, ready to defend her child, though she is weak and tired. But this blue stallion moves softly, smiling towards her in a genuine way - and she has seen the looks that stallions will give when their only intention is trouble. He motions to the filly, and Merope beams with a nervous pride.
She wonders, for a brief moment, if her parents ever looked at her like that. But she expects not; Kain was a king, always too busy for anything other than his home and his love-child; Meera was too wrapped up in her own head to think of her sons and daughters. Merope strove to be a better parent - she has failed, on the first two counts, but this is her third chance. And she will get it right this time.
“H-Hello,” she says, wincing at her stutter - she prefers to be silent, to watch and listen, but this situation demands her to speak. Her parents, her siblings, they all told her that with age and experience, the stammer would lessen. They lied. “Th-this is K-K-Kidd. And I’m M-M-Merope.” She watches the stallion intently, hoping that her inability to get a simple sentence out in one breath doesn’t put him off.
The filly hides in the shadow of her mother, watching this blue stallion carefully. His colouring doesn’t interest her; indeed, in this land of oranges and greens and pinks, a pair of bay roan mares are the odd ones out. But her mother had told her - when she could get the words to come out - that they were to look for a home, to find a big, brave, strong stallion who would protect them. Fairytales, whispered words to help a child sleep, but Kidd has held onto that promise for weeks.
She is shy, too shy to speak just yet, but as she gazes at this stallion - big, brave, strong - she wonders if this is the one.
The grand highway
is crowded w/ lovers & searchers
& leavers so eager to please & forget.
Big, brave, strong.
He smiles, but it falters, quivering at the edges a bit. He tries for steadiness, looking from the girl to her mother. When one is so adept at reading the minds of others – and using that knowledge for one’s own selfish ends – to be read becomes a source of anxiety. To be used against him, a paranoia.
He would vastly prefer to hold his muscles and features at strict obeyance, than be betrayed by them.
The one. He lets out a small laugh, fishing into his mind – is this the first time he has ever been a ‘one’?
For his birth-mother, he was a many; he was one out of six, and the last at that, but they were just that – numbers. One after the other, crowding her world like vermin overpopulating. And then very soon after he was nothing, as her mind went quiet.
To the other mare, he had been something profound. But what exactly, he could never tell. Her mind was not clear. It spoke disjointedly and he figures now, that it was her hermitic life that made her so inept at reading lips. “Kidd,” he echoes. He could tell her not to put too much stock in him, because there are much bigger, and much stronger. Much and more.
But he is not so terribly inclined to quell her hope, so he winks instead. “Looks just like you.”
He was never told sweet fairytales, or anything soothing and motherly, as a colt. But he considers the pursuit of successful childrearing to be a noble one. Beqanna is too heavy with the walking unloved. The pride in Merope’s eyes would stagger him, if he were alone and it were nighttime. Where he could be unseen and unread, and let the jealousy and bitterness writhe through him like a charge of electricity. But the daylight makes him naked, and also more agreeable, so he feels instead a tug towards her.
To something in her, and its fairness sets off a warring clamour in his own chest.
One thing bays for her weakness, the other, her light.
“Merope,” if he could, he would tell her not to worry about her stammer. He could even tell her that silence was his milk and childhood – but he is reticent to reveal his ability, clinging it to his chest like something precious and he is needy of the power. But it is tentative, balanced on the edge of remaining unknown and undefended against. And, because he does not want to alarm her. “I imagine you are keen to have more pairs of eyes looking out for her?”
He could say that there are many who see her as easy as hatchlings in a nest.
But he imagines she already knows that. Maybe she knows demons intimately, too.
The filly is enraptured, wide eyes following the stallion’s every movement. She is not a silly child, Merope rarely finds her playing or chasing butterflies or laughing at nothing, as she herself used to do. Once upon a time, back when she only had to care for herself - even then she knew that the only horse looking out for her, was her - Merope was a foolish child, easily swayed by anything and everything. But she will not let that happen to Kidd; Kidd is a result of being so foolish.
The boys both left her, too quickly, allowed her to stay set in her ways.
Kidd is more dependent; Merope is grateful to the foal.
Kidd begins to move closer to the stallion, and Merope finds herself shifting, still slightly blocking her daughter. This stallion, he may seem to be that shining knight, but she knows that she should not trust first impressions - she has been wrong before, so many times. But Kidd, still so young, so lacking in life experiences, so curious, she loses her shyness and inhibitions and she twists past her mother’s legs, pushing her dark muzzle up towards the stallion’s own blue face, snorting at him. Merope, a shocked look spread clearly across her face, pushes her daughter aside. “I-I-I’m so s-s-sorry,” she tells him - Chessur - eyes wide with embarrassment. She dreads to think what he will make of this, of the bold filly who has no obvious manners, and has likely been dragged up, not raised.
She spends too much time worried about what others think of her, and then she worries about the fact she worries.
“She’s j-just very in-in-inter-interested in y-you,” she murmurs. “In the idea of you,” she wishes to say, unaware that the stallion already knows, that he is in their minds this very moment.
If she knew, she would likely shrug it off - Merope’s thoughts, though occasionally dark, are never bitter; even towards her never-there parents, towards the three stallions that took advantage, towards the endless number of wrong turns she has made or been forced to make in her life.
Merope’s thoughts are usually one thing; hopeful.
She hopes that the offer of a home is coming, she hopes that his talk of more eyes is a promise. She nods, smiling, agreeing that she would like more horses to watch over Kidd, agreeing that she will go where he offers, at least for a little time, at least until she has learnt what he is like. She is still nervous, of course, not keen to give away too much of herself - though she has little choice in this - but he spoke about Kidd and not about a home. Anyone that puts the filly first is worth a chance, Merope thinks.
It could all go horribly wrong, of course, but at least she can say she tried.
The grand highway
is crowded w/ lovers & searchers
& leavers so eager to please & forget.
He watches the girl, a mixture of amusement and concern bubbling up his throat.
He realizes he does not know children at all, though he feels a kind of tender spot for them (his ilk is prone to having youth cling to them like bad odors – symptomatic of shared, and yet different, childhood trauma). He does not know how to handle her image of him – her storybook image that makes him feel both charmed and small all at once. He does not know how to entertain her captivation, so when she slips past her mother’s hold he stays very still, letting her waft air at him. He smiles, dipping his head a bit to meet between their levels.
But he can tell Merope is uneasy with it all.
He is lucky he has been allowed this close at all. But then, he knows little about parenthood. Only that she treasures this girl and he is a stranger still.
“No,” he says, backing away to allow her more space to corral her daughter. “It’s fine. I am interested in being so interesting,” by all accounts, he is relatively plain. Kept safe and sound to himself, his mind-reading does not show and it is incredibly dull compared to what walks around them (drawn from nightmares or soft, starry dreams). His colour no more wild – tame, in fact.
He knows, of course, that he is man made semi-myth to Kidd; she knows too, of course, being the weaver of those same yarns. “I’d like to see myself through those eyes,” he says, nodding.
It could not be more true. That chivalry and that purity. The shine of white armour, unhindered by the worries and history that weigh him down so mightily.
He looks at the girl for a moment, his brows furrowing slightly. She sees the man he’s trying to fashion out of new memories and company – she sees a fiction. A thing that ‘doesn’t happen in real life’, and a kind of man that ‘doesn’t really exist’. He reads it from her, hungry; ripping pages from her books of princesses and knights and stashing them away to agonize over when he is alone.
Pollock would strike him for this inane little indulgence of someone else’s fantasy. Two-fold if he ever found out it was Chessur’s, too. Foolishness. He’d prefer to see his little brother wallow in his own misfortune until it coats and protects him like rusty and blood-spattered chainmaille.
He prefers the girl’s approach.
“I meant what I said,” he continues, looking back to Merope, “I’m not too familiar with all of this, but I’m a good bodyguard. I’m a good judge of character, and I have a weird way of knowing other’s intentions, sometimes before they even act on them. Very useful to have around.” He smiles, and there is a slyness in it, “I have a home, just past the Dale. Gemstone Ridge. You are welcome to come. Please, it could use some brightening.”
02-08-2016, 04:30 PM (This post was last modified: 02-08-2016, 04:31 PM by merope.)
MY HEART, IT WENT WILD
She doesn’t want to appear rude, keeping the girl away from this blue stallion, but she knows what can lurk beneath gentle eyes. She just hopes that it is a while yet before her daughter finds out the same thing.
He steps back while Merope brings her daughter closer, and she finds that she is warming to this stallion, despite her efforts.
Kidd huffs at being told off, even in such a subtle way; she is not - though her name and her mother may say otherwise - a child, and she should be allowed to make her own decisions (one day, she will long to be back under the care of her mother). She is nearly a whole year old, and that should mean that she can investigate anything - anyone - she wants to, even if she is too shy, too nervous to do so most of the time.
But she does as her mother wants, anything to avoid those big brown eyes full of worry and a hint of disappointment.
But she wants to go with this stallion, when he offers - she has waited for so long (nearly a whole year) for someone to protect her and her mother, for her mother often seems so disinterested in protecting herself. And so this big brave stallion, their knight in blue armour, maybe he is the answer; he is offering them both his home, and Kidd can barely control herself. “Yes, please!” bursts from her lips, and as soon as the words hit the air the filly is cowering away, away from her mother, away from Chessur. She shouldn’t have spoken so quickly, she might make her mother upset - it has happened before, Kidd’s overexcitement ruining the chance of a home (but that stallion was only interested in one thing, her mother said, though the girl doesn’t know what that one thing was).
But Merope laughs, lightly, a flash of worry dancing in her eyes that is gone as quickly as it arrived. Her daughter may be easy to please but so was she, at that age. “I th-think you kn-kn-know the an-ans-answer to th-that,” she stutters softly, smiling gently.
Somewhere to live, somewhere for the pair of them to be safe together. Maybe there will be children Kidd’s age, and mothers that Merope can befriend - she needs some parenting tips, for certain.
She looks at Chessur, then to her daughter, her smile stretching. “B-But I think y-y-you’ll be br-bright enough any-anyway.” She laughs again, amazed at how easy the sound is.
She thinks this might be what happiness feels like. It’s been so long she can barely remember.
MEROPE
i wasn't expecting that.
yay now it's official! I can get a post up in Gemstone ridge tomorrow sometime if that works?
