"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
Of long slow marches, of dust baths, of hot sun baking the cool mud on their skins to a hard crust.
Sometimes, she is alone in these dreams.
Alone, because he has no other self like she does, that big beast that is trapped beneath her skin.
(She can see the tusked might of it in her shadow, sometimes.)
For the most part, they are inseparable: Eyetooth & Snout. They are twins of course, except they do not bear much resemblance to one another - only in their shapes, in the parts of themselves that are missing but are sometimes found when they step onto the mountain. She is the elder of them, dark green giving way to purple ombre and he is bay, with glowing white points that hurt her eyes, sometimes.
(Other times, the pale glowing parts of him are a beacon in her darkness and to them - him, - she is drawn.)
Snout though, is far more the sullen of the two. He mopes and mopes, and nothing Eyetooth does can shake him from his moods. She thinks, that at times, he is more crocodile than mammoth’s son, because he is so foul in thought and look. He, thinks she is too ridiculous in her green-purple skin and the way she always tries to make him smile and laugh. Snout thinks he ought to have been born first, like it is some kind of contest between them and that Eyetooth is too outlandish to be his relation (never mind that their mother was a mammoth-horse and their father a galaxy-draped mad god).
Eyetooth forgives him though; she cannot help but love him - he is her other half (besides the half of her that remains in the mountain’s grasp). Sometimes, Snout loves her back but he loathe to admit it - she is his other half, for all that they look nothing alike!
They certainly don’t move as one, and there is no grace in their ground-eating steps. Eyetooth is bulkier than her brother, slower too though she never envies him the grace and lightness of his form. She was heftier for a reason, more like their mammoth-mother in that regard in that she was a dwarfed draft and Snout was much more lighter, airier somehow, like the galaxies that swirled through the father-god’s fur. So Snout is faster, and Eyetooth moves glacially slow compared to him, so much so that he is constantly doubling back to circle around her and nip at her haunches in attempts to make her hustle along. She never gives in to his furious fits of haste, and just plods along, set in her elephantine ways.
“Hurry up!” he’ll shout.
And she only smiles.
“Hush brother dear,” she murmurs to him.
And he doesn’t hear, too far ahead in his need to be first at something (even if it is just in getting to somewhere ahead of her). Then he’ll stop, look back, shake the pale glowing strands of forelock from his eyes and open his mouth to call out to her again. Except she’ll be right there, throwing a shoulder into his in an attempt to knock him down, or at the very least, sideways. He’ll rear up on his hind legs and bat the air around her face with his front hooves until she snaps her teeth at him, and their shadows fence with tusked faces that neither of them currently show (it’s in the shadows, always in the shadows, where things made secret are often revealed).
Their bodies will crash together in waves of muscle and might.
A dark green mouth will slip up beneath the glowing white hairs to plant a kiss against the soft brown of his neck. His own mouth, aglow, will find her neck and kiss it too, then nip deceivingly at her skin until she shrugs him off and they regain some distance between them, a chasm that neither is too keen on bridging.
this would be a great place for a quote if I had one
She flits ahead of her sister, skirting the very edges of the Meadow, purposefully out of sight of her ever-watchful great grandfather. Brennen worries, of course, as he has always worried about his descendants, but perhaps rightfully moreso the purple girl and her strawberry colored mother. After all, Kellyn was a troublesome and mischievous child, and the first time she truly escaped the careful eyes of her father and grandfather, the time-traveling girl had whisked herself off to a quest and come back talking to the dead and with a strange, too-long pregnancy that had culminated in the birth of a purple filly who looked half dead, even though she thrived, and was constantly turning into a ghost and back again.
Now Cassady is stuck solid, with only memories of the flights of fancy that had led her to go ghost and back again, but on the upside (in her opinion), she has also been relieved of the appearance of being half dead. Instead the fae have left her ageless, forever young, and she is taking advantage of that. Some have already rushed to the Mountain, pleaded for their magics back, but Cassady hasn’t decided if she wants hers back. It was never really under her control, anyway, the ghost shifting, and it came with that nasty side effect. She fancies maybe the immortality is a better deal anyway…only time will tell.
Something draws her to them, brown eyes curious in the purple face; she doesn’t have the words for the feeling of kinship, but she feels the same draw to them as to Carwyn. Half-siblings, Carwyn her mother’s second child, and these two brightly colored creatures the children of the father she never met. “Hello,” she calls, slowing and stopping by them, wondering; do they feel the same strange tug to otherness, to magic, to relation, whatever, as she does? “I’m Cassady.”
“Cassady!” She calls after the fleeing purple form, frustration clear in her voice, but her older sister does not slow or stop. The purple is easy to track, mane and tail waving jauntily behind, but she is perpetually behind. Carwyn mourns, not for the first time, the loss of her wings. It was easier, before, to keep up with her big sister. Even as a child, she had been able to keep up, her wings allowing her the edge she needed to go anywhere except to cross to the realms of the dead. Now, though, the playing field has been leveled and while Cassady is used to flitting from place to place, the shorter and less agile pinto girl is often left behind.
It’s not malicious, that much she at least knows at this point, but Cassady tends to lose sight of the immediate needs of others. She would eventually return to her sister, full of sorries, but not until the current adventure has run its course. No, Carwyn has learned that she must keep up or miss out, because as loyal as Cassady can be in the long-term, she is as fickle as they come in the short-term. Grandfather says that she comes by it honestly, the fickleness, that thin vein of meanness even, but Carwyn can’t imagine what he means by that. She supposes it’s the part of the family history that causes tension between mother and grandfather, the one he doesn’t think she needs to know.
She is out of breath when she comes to a halt, finally, beside the purple mare and follows her gaze to the others; blinking back surprise that her blue roan coat is the tamest of them all. Intrigued, distracted, she doesn’t even think to introduce herself, just stands quietly in her customary spot in Cassady’s shadow.
It tugs at them;
Magic. Relation. Blood.
It would always be blood that beckoned them because blood calls to blood, no matter the relation.
They turn their heads, one after the other; too distinct and divided to move as one. Twins ought to share similar movements, but they share nothing but a sire, a dam, and discordance. Now, they share this sense of otherness and relation that comes in the shape of a purple roan filly. She looks like them, or they look like her - do all his sons and daughters look like him? Eyetooth’s eyes slide to Snout’s, his roll in exasperation at not one, but two fillies now and there seems a third in the distance, trailing the purple roan. Great, he thinks, more fillies, which means more shrill voices and nonsense. He turns to go, but is stopped by the touch of his sister’s nose to his shoulder and he gives her a caustic look but he remains, planted at her side.
A pinto joins them, slips in the other girl’s shadow and they perceive her to be a sister too. Maybe not to them, but certainly to the purple one and thus, in some unique way, to them also. Relation begates relation, somehow. She is certainly the tamest of them all in her painted fur, though Snout might come a close second if it were not for the glowing white points he possessed instead of the traditional black ones. Eyetooth and Cassady though are far more fetching than either of their siblings; dark green with purple ombre and purple roan… It is almost as if those two should be the pair of twins, and the two, just siblings. Snout is definitely thinking this, even if Eyetooth is not.
“Hello Cassady!” she says, smiling.
Snout just nods at her, silent. “Don’t mind him,” Eyetooth laughs, just a tad bit nervously. They’ve never talked to anyone beyond their mother who could hardly carry on a conversation, as she wasn’t altogether bright to begin with. Sinew, their surrogate mother was rather quiet and calculating, speaking only to them if it benefited her. That is not to say that they are loveless or lacking, for they’ve always had each other but there are faults in their upbringing that have left them at a loss as to how to conduct themselves accordingly.
“He’s gruff,” she finishes lamely, which earns her a snap of teeth in her direction from her brother. “Gruff she says, I’m not gruff.” his eyes flash in his brown face beneath the pale glow of his forelock (he is ever aware of the glow of it, it sits like a halo of purity between his eyes and he is certainly a stain of darkness on this earth, or so he feels like he is).
“I’m Eyetooth and he’s Snout,” and just like that, she ignores him - talks over him almost, as she introduces them to the others. “Who’s that hiding behind you?” her curiosity has gotten the better of her.
Cassady ignores her sister’s call, knowing that Carwyn will simply follow her anyway. It’s what little sisters do. It’s what daughters do, too, she supposes; Carwyn follows Cassie the way Cassie had always followed their mother. Except, of course, when Kellyn had left them in the care of the Tundra. Then, Carwyn had preferred to follow Brennen around. They were much alike, Carwyn and Brennen. The purple girl had always been different – always wanted more. And while Carwyn had the same magics as their Brennen, Cassie had something else.
Cassie talked to dead people.
Sometimes, it was frustrating. There were a LOT of dead people in Beqanna, and they weren’t particularly polite when they wanted to be heard. And sometimes, if she wasn’t paying attention, she could be drawn into the afterlife with them, because she was able to travel between the two worlds, and there, Kellyn couldn’t mediate for her, because Kellyn could only talk to the ghosts in the land of the living, not move back and forth. And that was where the others came in – distant relatives (dead ones) who had followed Kellyn and Cassie around: guiding, nagging, protecting, giving advice.
She kind of misses them – which is why she is so glad to meet these new people, to maybe fill that void. She grins at them, not even phased by his ‘gruff’ manner. “It’s okay,” she says brightly. “We grew up in the Tundra – and I’ve always sworn they were a brotherhood of functional mutes.” Carwyn must have arrived, given the next question. Cassie turns brown eyes to her sister, briefly, and then back to Eyetooth and Snout. Like Eyetooth, she doesn’t really give her sibling a chance to make her own introductions. “This is Carwyn, my little sister.” It might seem silly, since they’re both young adults, but Carwyn will always seem little to Cassie. “Where are you guys from?”
Folded wings into flattening veins and fluttering eyes
It is clear from her arrival that Eyetooth and Cassady are going to carry this conversation, for the most part. Carwyn takes the opportunity to take a long look at them.
The boy has a glow of glowing bits and a rather grumpy demeanor, even snapping at his own sister. Perhaps, Carwyn thinks, he is not so different from Cassie. She is known to take a grump swipe at people on off days as well. That bit of Kellyn and Elite that Carwyn didn’t get. (Maybe, she thinks now, it came from whichever ancestor these three colorful creatures share – Cassady had said she felt the kinship, as she was rushing off).
The girl is more colorful, purple and green, with a bright personality that Carwyn envies. How easy would life be, if you could simply strike up a conversation with anyone anywhere? Brennen does it, but not with this much enthusiasm. He has told her that it’s simply a matter of diplomacy and polite small talk, but she likes grandfather Cagney’s quiet way better. He is so taciturn that people often speak just to fill the silence.
The word “hiding” makes her self-conscious and she steps forward to stand even with her sister, just barely taller even though she is a good two years or so younger. She is closer to the age of the two near-strangers than to Cassady, though she supposes that it doesn’t much matter once you reach adulthood and before you reach old age. (She doesn’t realize, yet, that she will never reach old age). “Hello,” she offers, smiling, though Cassady has already spoken her name. “Pleasure to meet you.”
Snout grows surlier by the moment as the two females take over the conversation. He has half a mind to bite his sister, but as if she knows his thoughts, she rolls an eye back at him and he ducks his head, not quite sheepish but in an attempt to hide the displeasure that is so plain to see on his face. The colt hates this, hates mild manners and pleasantries and Eyetooth’s pathetic attempts at happiness and friends - he’d rather be sulking in the dry dusty wastes of Pangea, stirring up shadows and trouble and appetites more interesting than a purple roan girl and her way too quiet sister.
Eyetooth throws back her head and laughs; this Cassie had spunk! She liked the comment about functional mutes even though she doesn’t know a single thing about this Tundra place. Both Snout and her are too infantile in brain and age to recall places they’ve never been to or seen, like the Tundra (they were born on the new Mountain after all…). Except she knows that they recall things from the other half of their genes, the non-horse parts that beg for hot stifling climes, cool mud baths, and long silent treks through endless grass and days; these are things that they talk about together, sometimes, because she remembers more than he does.
(An elephant never forgets!)
“Well,” she drawls, stalling; she knows they were born on the Mountain but it’s not like they’ve ever really had a home. The closest thing to it is Sinew’s side, two little shadows trying hard not to tug on her tail because her nips hurt like hell and the looks she gave them were withering. Eyetooth glances at Snout but he’s ignoring her, deep in his sulk, pouting lips and all. She shakes her head in exasperation and smiles at Cassie, “Pangea I suppose, at least that’s where we live now. What about you guys?”
Snout ignores his sister and the purple roan, they seem perfectly capable of carrying on a conversation as if the other sister and him were not there. He figures they might as well not be, and risks a glance at Carwyn. Seems she found her backbone, as she greets them, smiles, and tries to make pleasant. He snorts in exasperation, the same kind that his sister felt a moment ago because all he does is glower (even as parts of him glow, like a glowworm in the dark, all bright and insufferable). “No one cares where we come from, I doubt they even do.” he jerks his head in the sisters’ direction before stepping away from his own sibling for a bit.
Eyetooth’s mouth drops open in shock at her brother’s retort. “I-I’m sorry,” she stammers out, still surprised that he possessed that much audacity to say the things he did. “He just means that he doesn’t care where any comes from but I do, are you from here or somewhere else?” She sidles closer to the sisters and leans in towards them, angling her head so that only they can hear what she has to say as she says in a conspiratorial whisper, “I’m pretty sure he was kicked in the head as a baby.” then she starts giggling which draws more glares from Snout standing just a ways away from them, starting to sneer.
She doesn’t want to live in the Meadow. There is not nearly enough excitement, as she has told her great-grandfather many times. But Brennen has raised enough of his own children to be unfazed by the tantrums of a bored adolescent, and so here in the Meadow they still reside. Cassady longs for adventure; even the questionable adventures the Tundra had offered to a curious child had been better than this.
Now, she doesn’t even have the escape she used to have, the ability to flit away into Death for a jaunt when she is bored (and ghosts, she has found, are never boring). No, she’s stuck in the here and now with a mother who is missing, and a sister and great-grandfather who are disgustingly content with boring. At this thought, she shoots Carwyn a dark glance somewhat reminiscent of Snout’s moody looks, but it is mercifully brief as her attention is drawn back to Eyetooth when she speaks.
But where Eyetooth is bright and enthusiastic, her twin is sharp points and dark thoughts. His acidic comment doesn’t phase Cassie, who simply gazes at him through impassive brown eyes, because she is used to it. Mother has similar sharp words and dark sulks when she’s not getting her way. Cassady is often tempted by them, but her dark moods have been tempered through her great-grandfather’s disapproval and contrasting example.
Brennen doesn’t tolerate anything in his granddaughter’s daughters that reminds him of Elite.
Cassady looks away from Snout only because Eyetooth is speaking again, and because she wonders if dismissing him as if irrelevant makes him as angry as it makes her. It doesn’t even cross her mind that making people angry on purpose might be a bit not good. “We’re living here, I guess.” she responds, frowning. “Grandfather is still sulking about his home being destroyed, so he hasn’t picked a new one, and Carwyn and I live with him.” They are well old enough now to strike out on their own, but they have not. Cassie couldn’t articulate why, even if she tried. The conspiratorial way that Eyetooth sidles closer, then, only makes the little purple mare smile wider again, pretending she can’t see the way it bothers him.
Folded wings into flattening veins and fluttering eyes
Carwyn is immune to the dark looks of her sister, or as immune as she can be, because she is used to them. She is used to Cassie being a great big sister one moment, and a moody creature as liable to bite your head off as play with you the next. But she is the only playmate or sibling Carwyn has ever had, and so the blue roan sticks gamely by her side, for lack of any other friends. Eyetooth seems like the kind of friend Carwyn would love to have, but the way that her purple sister interacts with their new friends seems so much easier, so much more natural, that Carwyn doubts she even holds a candle to her sister’s appeal in the other’s eyes.
She is not as immune to the dark looks of Snout, but she does feel relief in that he seems to share his ire equally between the three of them. Still, she turns wide, surprised and somewhat hurt blue eyes on him when he reacts so angrily to their friendly chat, and keeps her eyes on him afterward for several long moments, considering. She contemplates everything from his glowing appearance to his sour attitude, and wonders what is going on in his head. Is he simply back-and-forth in mood, like Cassie, or is he impossible to please? She finds herself wanting to know the answer.
But – her attention is drawn back to the other two girls when Cassady says that they live in the Meadow with Brennen, and she shakes her head a little, reaching out to tap her older sister on the side with her nose and then flash another quick smile up at Eyetooth. “Not quite true. Just before you went running off over here, Grandfather said he thought we would move to Nerine, and see if we like it.” She wants to add, why weren’t you listening to him, what if we’d been left behind and never known? but she does not want to invite censure from her sister while they are in the company of others, so she does not.
What she does notice is the way Cassie is baiting Snout, and she does not approve. Hoping it doesn’t seem too rude to Eyetooth, she flashes her another quick smile and then edges closer to the glowing boy, caution in the careful way she approaches him as if he might strike at any moment (if he’s anything like Cassady, he might!). “If you don’t care where we are from,” she says with a tilt of her head, “What do you care about?”
