"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
Panting, his sides heave glossy black. Sweat and blood mingle and create a stench of deat. The entire one side of his body completely covered in crimson poke-a-dots. his black wing filled with holes that one could see through if they scrutinized him close enough. His hooves bloody and covered in the gore of other lives. He would live, but recovery would take a long time. No organs were punctured, his head and bones were perfectly fine. Just his hyde was completely marred with the results of trying to strangle a horse with spikes. He was lucky.
No one could doubt that he was lucky to walk away as he had. With his wings covered in icicles and his back sore from the stretch and quick rebound he makes his way back to his herdland slow and careful to not desturb anyone else. When he does arrive the oasis is his first stop, dipping in the cool water to wash away the blood, he begins to chew at the ice on his feathers, a few getting yanked off with the water. It had been a long battle, and as soon as the kings and queens had taken over the others simply dispersed. The idiots could finish it themselves. They didn't need him anymore, and besides not like he was going to be any use for anyone after that injury.
Head low he bites back each searing scream of his muscles. Collapsing on the shore of the pool blue mane tattered and chunks of cobalt hair and black skin missing from the shredding effects of the spikes. He had saved Weir, and allowed Ramiel a way of attack. It was something. In all the failures of his life at least he helped his king, and best friend.
Dark thoughts take over his head, and his brow furrows wtih the black clouds of hateful thoughts that turmoil in his mind. He should have stayed there must have been something that he could have done more. There must have been something that he could have done better. Watching Weir be knocked out, even after Phaedrus had sacrificed his wings for the man made him madder than hell. He was a failure, always would be. Everything good he tried the worse he made things.
He couldn't imagine that the mares here would be to happy with him either, not like he had been present for a long time. He had abandoned them just as he had everyone else. Being around him they would suffer, he just knew it. What was he to do? Should he give up his land and send the mares to a stallion that would be present for them? Should he just get up walk away and never return? It wasn't fair to them, he was a dissapointment just as he always had been.
03-16-2016, 02:23 PM (This post was last modified: 03-16-2016, 02:23 PM by New Romantics.)
New Romantics
She had been awaiting his return, it had been long since she had seen him. She had been a filly then, now she had grown into her own skin she was older her figure more graceful and perfected then before.
She had seen him coming, his ebony silhouette shifted at almost a limp. She felt sorry for him, less for those he brought pain upon. For he was special to her, he had renewed his friendship with her before he left, like an obedient soldier.
She weaved through the golden ferns, until she found him his body submerged in the spring of the oasis. Blood danced within the waters flowing out of his multiple wounds, holes in his once beautiful crow feathered wings were visible. It hurt her to see him like this, it was like her heart shattered into a million pieces. "Phaedrus." She spoke her words softened with sympathy for her warrior.
"Your..wings.." She spoke tenderly, stepping into the blood danced waters towards him. She halted as the water went up to her knees, "What did they do to you?" She whispered the blood beckoned her forwards and she followed. Whisps of blue and black mane tickled her breast as she edged forwards, her muzzle reaching out for him.
She tenderly nudged him, in a tone of affection before examining his ruined wings along with the multiple wounds that lay a map of sores upon his body. He wasn't the same man she remembered, he was different a warrior a man of a past war between two regions of which he did not need to take part but, he did obediently.
War did not call her out from the field; his offer to visit him is what tempts her to a trot, to hesitation as she nears a fork in the trail that smells all too familiar - the Dale, and her temper ignites to an inferno inside her as she balks at the branching path that will take towards his land and right by the edges of the kingdom in which she was born.
Blood calls to blood, and her bloodline is tangled up in the rocky reaches of the Dale.
She stands for a long time at the fork in the road, burning so brightly inside that it hurts to breathe until she shakes the memories from her mind and the hate recedes to brim just beneath the surface of her tovero skin. Riva then moves towards the plains that glimmer like their name - golden, of course - in the distance and her step is forceful in its determination to carry her straight passed the Dale without a further thought towards it.
(Riva will give him the benefit of the doubt and believe that he has no association with the kingdom she spurns, but a tiny part of her knows that he must share some counsel with them since they oversee his smaller land and for that, she could bite him for his omission.)
The tovero smells blood the moment she enters the plains and halts; her head lifts to sniff out the particularities that cloud the air - stallion, blood, water, war, and a mix of mares that she ignores. It was the stallion, blood, and war that beckoned to her and she licked her lips as she moved deeper into his land. Riva does not have to go far; she finds him in the water, a mare crying over the ruin that war has made of him and Riva nearly rolls her eyes - she has no sympathy for him, he fought and has the wounds to prove his might and mettle and for just an instant, she thinks a little more highly of him as she comes to a halt well outside of the water in which the mare and the stallion stand in. “He’ll heal,” is all that she says as the mare fusses over him; her eyes are drawn to the little swirls of feather and blood and fur that eddy around the pair that look like such a disgustingly sweet picture of something Riva wants no part of. “I’ll leave you two alone,” she mutters, shaking her head and moving away from them towards the plains.
It is plain to see that Riva is miffed at the stallion and all because he failed to tell her that his land lay under the shadow of the Dale, and she begins to wonder (which is a novelty for her!) if his allegiance does too… It makes her hate flare up in her, but it doesn’t show beyond the way her eyes burn in her hollowed out face as she moves through the tall golden grass.
He grunts, fighting the rolling pebbles towards the shore. Just as he does so, the... well not so little filly comes approaches. You've grown quite a bit little one. He tuffles her mane in affectionate greeting. Teasing her with the title. He was suprised to realize just how long he had been away. Honestly not knowing how to apologize once more for failing to be of more apropriate company. Before he can continue though he spots the mare that he had met earlier in the feild. Like she said. Its ok, just the regular politics of kingdom life. He breaks off for a moment tail swishing against the grasses. New Romantics, meet Riva, Riva this is New Romantics... but you probably heard me the first time He gives a cheesy grin trying to cover the tiredness that the battle had left there. Draping his injured wing over the newly developed mare.
What drew him to the Dale? Maybe because as far as far away from good could get was failure. The Dale was ussually not considered the top of the food chain. But not only was it not at the top of the food chain like the deserts or Valley, it was also everything the Deserts were not... or the Valley for that matter. His own mother and father having birthed him in the Valley. Lived their lives in the Valley, abandoned him to his Aunt in the Dessert for the Valley. Why not stay with the Deserts then? Because... Mimicry. He tried to make everything up to his mother, raise the child right, maybe then his disappointing habbits could take a turn and he would be excepted in his family once more. But no eventually even Mimicry disappeared leaving him in the dust.
Thus here he was. With a thin herd of fiesty females. All of whom had one or another reason for wanting nothing to do with him. And serving a kingdom that he continued to fail for as well. No need to leave Riva you just arrived. Would be nice to know how you are faring these days. His wings flutter out drooping to his sides kissing the long grasses as he strides closer to her hoping that Roma would follow and remain under the feathery black wing. He had no intentions of ignoring the other mare at all. Simply engaging everyone was something so deeply threaded into his nature that more often then not it would get him into trouble... oh wait... it already had. Well obviously that wasn't going to be ending anytime soon. And how are you faring as well Roma? I hop eyou were not to terribly bored.
03-29-2016, 01:12 AM (This post was last modified: 03-29-2016, 01:15 AM by riva.)
Riva is still inwardly seething; feeling tricked by the fact that he quite obviously doubles as a slave for some kingdom and her suspicions raise their ugly heads and tell her that it is most likely the Dale since it is a neighboring (albeit conquering!) land.
It is hard for her to look at him demurely like the other mare does; it is just not in the paint’s nature to look all moony-eyed over a stallion. What does come so naturally to her eyes is a look of pure anger because she knows that he has been withholding information from her and that peeves Riva to no end. She wants to stomp her feet, bite and kick at him, but something stays the violence that bubbles up so righteously (so she believes) inside her and she tamps it back down with a hard angry swallow of her throat. If only she had known they shared a common thread of abandonment to family members less likely to really raise them right and in the end, just up and leave them for good. But he kept his history to himself, as much as she kept hers to herself - it just wasn’t something that came up in conversation, aside from the fact that he seemed to think she would make herself right at home here.
Riva remembers committing to only a visit here; her life was given over way too easily to the Amazonian Queen and the Jungle would come first before the black stallion with the cobalt hair and wingtips. She doesn’t think he knows this though and it might be a pleasant little shock to him whenever she decides to hightail it back to the swampy heat of the Jungle. But for now, she is temperate (boiling really, below the surface of her skin) and eyeing him with the beginnings of something that might be disdain as he moves closer, encouraging the other mare to follow him close as well. Riva didn’t like closeness, but she tolerated him at times for some godforsaken reason that made no sense to her, but she balks at his invitation of the other mare to remain tucked beneath his wing and therefore, closer to the paint mare.
“I’m the same as I was when we first met in the field,” she tells him coolly, her eyes shifting from him to the plains and okay, she cannot help but admit that his land is rather pretty and the long golden grass beckons to be played in but when did she ever do something as casual and frivolous as play? Not even as a solemn shadow of a filly could she remember games or fun, and chalks it up to some inherent equine desire to possess the earth in fast ground-eating strides of a galloping run but she shakes it off with an imperious shake of her thinly shaped head. Riva fell far short of being pretty, she was too harshly made for that - all skin and bones and hatred wrapped up in the bay tovero body that made her what she was in shape and form (hatred burned up all the rest, shaped it out of still-hot coals and embers flaring to life and what she had for a soul - if she had one - was blackened and shrivelled from the hot hot heat of her hate).
“The war wasn’t exactly kind to you,” she says to him, stating the obvious.
He shifted disturbed by the tension that is present. Looking from one mare to the other. Uncertain as to what he should do about it. Roma having all but disappeared with her silence, and the other mare’s bite in her words. He isn’t quite sure what he has done to these to, but his maw opens and closes, once, twice. Then he shakes out his mane deciding that delving into a situation involving two mares is probably a bigger mistake then any that he could have made already. Hopefully they would work it out.
If only he knew how wrong he was. He grunts nodding his head slightly at her response. Shuffling in place a bit with the strain of the conversation. His memory failing him once more as to how she actually had been that day. Would you like me to show you around? Maybe if he could separate the two mares Riva would feel a little more relaxed. He would never force a mare to stay, they were welcome to come and go as they pleased. Didn’t mean that his foolish hopes didn’t attempt to influence their decision. If anything he was a very unusual creature, in that he encouraged kingdom activity, be it friend or foe of the Dale, it was no matter to him. It beat lazing about in the solitude of these lands for too long.
She makes a comment, and he ponders it for a moment. There were many lost. I think the Amazons took the brunt of it. He pauses loosing track in his thoughts, remembering how Weir had almost lost his life. How a filly had been snapped up, and gone without a chance to scream, how horses fell from the sky. The screams of horses as they watch their loved ones go down in the fight. A dark heaviness still clung on. It had been Weir and Ramiel that he had tried to save. Distracting Ronan had given Weir and Ramiel a chance to attack. Also giving Weir a chance to notice the shadow wolves before they ripped him apart. Though he can’t shake the guilt remembering how Weir had been knocked out before he could get to him. If only I could have done something more... He startles himself forgetting that his rants like to take form through words. If he could blush he would, but instead his skin settles in growing warm with embarrassment. With a snort he brings up his head The Dale was left out of the diplomacy for the most part. I do not know much of what has happened after the initial battle.
!
His association with the Dale is a thorn in her side, and the source of all her current ire. It smokes and smolders in her, as she eyes him and the plains alternating between the two because she refuses to rest her eyes solely upon him. She tells herself that he is simply not that interesting, but has no reason to argue why she is still here and doesn’t just turn around and go since that would be much easier. She is a glutton for punishment perhaps, or feels the first faint flush of curiosity as to why it is that she does stay when she is no match for the pretty empty-headed things he keeps the company of. Riva is so unlike them, thin and ugly, where they are plump and pretty in a way that is expected but not entirely understood by the paint mare, especially when they throw themselves at him because they’re in heat or they missed him - things Riva doesn’t pretend to understand, because she ignores her own heat and never thinks of breeding, especially not to further her usefulness to the stallion or her status within his herd that she still has not fully consented to joining yet.
Riva has no problem with his mares; she does not like them, does not like their closeness to her own self, and thus keeps her distance. It is just that simple. They have such base desires that she lacks and that sets her apart, and thus being aware of said differences, she declines their company and keeps more to herself than ever. Besides, she has the Jungle and plenty of sisters there to provide her with all the things she might miss if she was not around others like her but that’s the point - the Amazons are like her, fierce and independent, and his mares are not. They might appear strong in character and shape, but the paint mare finds them fiercely lacking because of how simplistic they are - they care only for his affections, the position of lead mare in his herd, and who gets to carry his foals, and Riva doesn’t care about those things at all. Plus, there is his affiliation with the Dale that still pokes and pricks her and incites her to no end. But he asks if she would like him to show her around and she bites back another scathing retort that she could easily learn the lay of his land on her own to simply accept with a nod which is not like Riva at all, but she can see the confusion in the set of his black face behind the navy fall of his forelock and maybe that, more than anything, stops her momentarily.
She doesn’t tell him how the Jungle was burned to almost nothing but ash and dust, or that the Jungle is rebuilding itself seed by seed as jungles do when razed to the ground. He seems to heavy with the weight of what-if’s and self-doubt and she does nothing to comfort him or tell him otherwise. War takes a heavy toll on those involved, especially those who fight and Riva knows this, but has nothing to say to take his pain away - that is not her place, let him go into the embrace of some sop-eyed mare who will tell him it’s okay and the world is better for all that he did and has done. He mentions the Dale and her ire rises to the forefront, flaming and fierce, as her brown eyes burn with hate at the mention of it. “Perhaps because nobody sees the Dale as having much importance in matters of diplomacy these days, they seem content to laze about and remain rather quiet.” She knows her words might be untrue but Riva doesn’t care, the paint has reason to hate his kingdom more than he will ever know.
She takes a step away, tail swishing with impatience against her back legs and she cranes her head around to look at him questioningly, “Are you coming or not? I thought you were going to show me your land.” The tovero manages to look rather bossy and imperious given the thin sharp features of her face and the way it pinches together in mock (maybe) annoyance.
He couldn't be more grateful that she didn't say anything about his apperant lose of time and space. It wasn't often that others tried to poke and prod their way into those thoughts. Those thoughts that he prefered to keep to himself. She was right though, war does take its toll. And while some would think that he went and moped and cried to the women in his herd looking for solace from the pain. But no, he didn't see it as pain, it was facts of life that liked to consume him. He had only one way of dealing with it, and that was surrounding him with company. Chatty noisey company. It was often that company that got the least of his attention.
The chatty noise would keep him present, just present enough not to loose his mind and wake up one day not knowing what time it was, where he was, are worst of all who he was. Yet at the same time the noise also gave him a sense of loneliness that would chase him like his own shadow, silent and flexible, but always there just visible in the corner of his eye.
She mentions something about the Dale, bitterly he might add. But he can't help a chuckle. Not wrong there, keeping that kingdom active is like trying to tell a snail to run. He pauses for a half a second, Doesn't matter if lives are on the line, it will take a heck lot more than a war to bring most of the members out of their hiddy holes. It wasn't the case for all of them though. To give it justice though, I do have to commend the two or three that attempt to keep it alive.
He nods to her having completely forgotten about his offer he had just made to her. Taking a few steps forward he begins to cut across the now empty plain and lead her to a overhanging ledge that had a very narrow craggy trail. It would take a little while there was no doubt about that, but it was probably the best veiw avalible, and if he guessed right, when they would get there the sun would just be begining its long kiss to the earth.
How do the Amazons fare after the war? Not sure if we have an alliance still with them, but I haven't heard anything, and I haven't seen them in the feild much either. It concerns me. If there is anything I could do... He knows how indepent the women are and ment no disrespect he could only hope that she could see that he genuinely cared about the kingdom he had assisted in that war.
