"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 cliffs are at her back, the ocean at her front. It roars as the gale strengthens and whips her mane into disarray. Like a statue, Nayl doesn’t move as though cursed by Medusa herself. Her autumn eyes are drinking in the distant horizon where it seems no other land lies. Even in this new Beqanna they are secluded. Some days she wonders if there is an entirely different world, but then she is content to think they are alone and never scrutinized by another kind. She wonders where newcomers stem from when they arrive to these shores and adopt Beqanna as their new home. The question has often come to mind, but never fallen from her tongue.
The uncertainty hovers like a cloud until there is a clap of thunder overhead. A storm is brewing and still she remains unyielding to the howling wind and groaning palm trees. It’s only until a pelting rain stabs into her skin like needles before she turns and takes refuge at the mouth of a cavern – one of many here – and continues to watch Mother Nature take its course.
It will take longer than a few months until they have all adapted to changing seasons and a coastal gale. Her skin is suddenly riddled by a chill, but it subsides quickly enough when she turns her eyes away for the first time in what seemed like hours. Sand churns roughly beneath her hooves – dry, grainy – and her jaws clench together in response to the change of terrain. It isn’t a moist soil that mutes her footsteps anymore, but awkward sand that she has only ever associated with death (mother and father’s bodies come to mind, swollen with decay). She says nothing; she doesn’t even search for company as she knows how minimal it is nowadays. The sisterhood is withering – they are no longer the Jungle Amazons.
Sunday is not so far away from the stone still Amazonian as the storm rolls in. Sunday turns her face to the gale, letting the sensation of the wind and earth blow her down. Once she felt so in tune with the elements, with the jungles' appointed magick. She could see auras, she could heal (albeit, limited), she could help. Now she is helpless and blind and deaf. She wasn't born with magick like some of the others had been, so its loss was not crippling.
It's not in Sunday's nature to be crippled though.
She watches the stone faced mare turn from the storm just as it threatens to crest and retreat to the shore, and Sunday follows suit. She knows the look of a woman deep in her thoughts. Nayl didn't want to be disturbed, at least not while staring into the abyss. Now? Sunday intercedes her path, falling into step with her.
"It's strange to watch the waves crest instead of feel the storm through the trees," she thinks out loud. "I wonder if I'll ever get used to it."
SUNDAY
never put your faith in a prince. when you require a miracle, trust in a witch
With her eyes cast to the mouth of the cave Nayl sees Sunday follow in step. They exchange glances and the piebald nods plainly but doesn’t yet reply. She hears what the mare says and tries to digest every word – every letter – of it before she even considers what to say. That one simple statement leaves her reminiscing of the humid storms that would periodically roll through the Jungle and how it would kiss Nayl’s sleek skin. There was a wild ferocity in their home that Nerine lacks. Here, they are left exposed and unguarded by the towering trees and babbling river. Here, they aren’t even Amazons. The sense of the word has quickly faded and Nayl breathes a heavy sigh before mustering the strength to speak.
”I won’t,” she admits with a hollow ring in her voice, ”I can’t.” It hurts to say this. There is a burning knife burying deeper into her heart with every breath she takes as she believes herself more and more. What had initially been preconceived doubts is now poison trickling throughout her veins and darkening her mind. ”This isn’t the sisterhood we know,” and now she wonders if she was replying to Sunday in regards to the land itself or the group of mares within.
Her autumn eyes blink heavily before rolling to stare placidly at her herd sister. ”It will never be the same,” but isn’t this what Beqanna wanted? It wants them to begin anew and to create something greater than they had. So why does this seem worse than what they had? Why does this seem like punishment rather than a Godsend? Her body shifts as a crack of lightning streaks the sky, illuminating the darkening cave. ”I don’t know what to make of this,” she is painfully honest and her shoulders roll in a questioning shrug, ”Do you?”
