"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
Here it comes with no warning; capsize, i'm first in the water
Tephra—a home that was no truly a home yet.
There in the distance lays the small volcano, bursting with life as if it could explode within any minute. A very grand spring also spreads across this land. It is beyond warm here all year long and keeps the land fresh with greenery. However, it is wise to watch your step with the crisscrossing streams of lava that follow down from the small volcano in the distance.
Her gaze, those familiar colored nutmeg eyes that pass from generation to generation in her family, watch carefully at the scene before her. She looks across the tropical greenery, flickering her gaze here and there. There is a deep silence surrounding her. The only sound she can hear is the rising of the steam from the spring and the distance noises of the lava rushing.
Tephra was not home yet, but he was growing to appreciate it.
He liked the heat that made even the winters mild. He liked the humidity that made his coat slick, even now with the morning barely beginning to roll across the land. It reminded him of a land that had been home, of a time when things were simpler. He had risen early again, watching the steam curl up into the air, taking his morning stroll along the border, although he felt fairly protected here.
There were not the same vulnerabilities as there had been in the Gates, where they had been open and vulnerable to attack. Here, there were only two options: arrive by sea, which was exhausting, or come through the meadow. Even that was difficult, with the rivers of magma and temperamental land.
It was during this journey, his head lowered to brush along the vegetation, that he saw her, brightly colored and silent amongst the steam. The smile that curled along his scarred lips with natural and genuine, warming his features with pleasure. He veered toward her quickly, walking up her right side to look out across the land. “It is different,” he offered with a nudge to her neck, “but you get used to it.”
He was silent for a breath before he tilted his head toward her. “I am glad to see you again, Lucrezia.” He would not forget her bravery in being the first to join the meeting, to stand up to that intruder. He would be always grateful for her loyalty, her strength. “Tephra is always better with you around.” Magnus meant that. He had grown fond of her in their meetings; he liked her intelligence, that she did not bend easily, that she made up her own mind. “I would love to learn more about you, about who you were before the Reckoning—before we met in the forest.” His gold-flecked eyes met hers. “If I may be so bold as to ask.”
11-30-2016, 10:11 AM (This post was last modified: 11-30-2016, 10:25 AM by Lucrezia.)
Here it comes with no warning; capsize, i'm first in the water
Tephra also reminded her of the land she had once called her home. The heat was welcoming and a reminder of her old home in the Deserts. It was something she was grateful for when the weather became colder. She wonders, however, if this new home will bring more danger. It is something to worry about considering the fate the sandy kingdom had in her absence and the also when the intruder had come to take away Tephra.
Yet, for now, she does not dwell on that thought. Her ear twitches slightly in the sound of approaching hooves to her right. Lucrezia’s gaze follows quickly in the direction of the sound. She had never been fond of others sneaking up on her. Then again, she doesn’t think the familiar stallion, Magnus, would ever intend that. A warm, friendly smile is quick to draw on her lips as she recognizes him right away. Magnus greets her warmly as well with a nudge to her neck. It’s hard to think once what these lands were, she wants to say but she does not. The thought that Tephra could be the Deserts was ideal, but even so it could be such a far fetch idea too. “In time,” replies with a soft smile to him.
She is surprised to hear such statements from Magnus. He was still a stranger to her and who she was. Their time from the beginning, however, had always been genuine. Lucrezia had felt sure about one thing since she had come here and that had been Magnus. He was honest and helped those in need. If anything Magnus stuck to his word, which was quite obvious since he has always been here from the beginning of Tephra. She remembers clearly that Eight and Offspring had stepped down. It took a strong heart to lead others into an unknown future.
“Thank you, Magnus. I am glad to be back too.” This place was what she needed, and maybe by chance Tephra needed her too. She is unsure of what will come from living in Tephra. There will be ups and downs that is for sure. With anything though, she hopes for the best. Lucrezia has always been open-minded about the future, and highly optimistic that everything happens for a reason for the greater good and bigger picture of it all.
Her head tilts slightly at his next words. Lucrezia meets his gold-flecked eyes with her own nutmeg gaze.
“Bold indeed you are, Magnus, to uncover a wound that is still healing.” She says quickly and firmly. Her reaction is quick she realizes, an over-stepping, as she cannot blame Magnus for not knowing. He had only been trying to get to know her. A part of her did not wish to open the old wounds that have healed and break open the healing ones. She confesses, to herself, that he has given her so much without even asking for anything in return. “I’m sorry,” she begins with what little words she can manage to speak, “I have always preferred to keep my past behind.” But this was the beginning of something, a friendship or road to redemption, that she must let go of such grudges.
“I was—still am not so sure who I am before the Reckoning.” If he is to be so bold in asking, then she must be bold too. Yael had always reminded her that she was brave. “I was born in the Chamber when my father ruled as king. I loved it there, but my father eventually shipped me off to live in the Deserts. My presence there sealed an alliance between our two kingdoms.” She knows the way everything from here goes and it leaves an obvious sour taste on her face. “I was left there simply as a pawn and to do the bidding for the greater good of the Chamber. My own sister, Straia, did not even have the guts to come until years later to visit me.” She shakes her head, disappointed still at the last meeting she had when Straia ruled as queen in the Chamber. “I was abandon by my own family. A family that had given me so much love and life… but in the end it had all been for the Chamber.” And when she had been used she had simply been forgotten.
“But the Deserts then became my home. Yael, Vanquish, and everyone there gave me hope and loved me like I was family. I began my own life there and fell in love with the golden sands and open blue sky. I climbed the ranks and started a family of my own.” She pauses for a moment, turning her gaze away from Magnus as her eyes begin to water. She did not want him to see her cry. “I had found peace there with myself, but it wasn’t enough. I had given up time again and again on the Deserts, never letting go of the fact that my own family had given me up so easily. Their promises and love had been entire lie all along.” Lucrezia sighs softly. “I had been too late when I came back one day after a long absence. The Deserts was gone and eventually the Mountain had come.”
She looks forward towards the volcano now. Her vision is blurry from the tears that streamed down her face. “I cannot tell you who I am because I do not know really.” Lucrezia wants to say she is the person who she always wished to be. In itself that was a lie. She had never come to be completely the person she thought she could be. “But I suppose this is my second chance.” Her gaze turns back to meet Magnus golden-flecked eyes. “I have always tried to believe there is still something good I can do.” She is silent for a moment before she takes another breath. “A chance for me to find out who I really am.”
He is steady as she reacts, showing no outward signs of discomfort at her mentioning of his bold line inquiry. He knew better than most the danger in asking about the past, his own was not always a pleasant conversion, but he also knew that if he was to trust her, really trust her, he would need to know what lie in her yesterdays. They could not work as partners for the betterment of Tephra if there were secrets between them, and he truly did want to work alongside her. He needed diplomats of her skill and experience.
So he does not flinch or react, his own gaze unwavering as it remains on her. At her apology, he gives her a warm smile, his head dipping. “No apologies needed, Lucrezia. I know that the past can be an emotional subject.” He himself often preferred to skirt around it, and thus he was grateful that she opened up before him. He felt quiet as she began to speak, the only reaction being the tipping of his ears in her direction.
At the unfolding of her story, he remained silent although much of it resonated with him. He knew what it meant for the Chamber to come before everything; his father too had ruled the Chamber and the kingdom had come before everything for their family too. It was a lesson Atrox had learned the hard way. The one time that the panther-King had put others first, the Chamber had stopped his pulse cold. Eventually, the kingdom had felt the need to reanimate him, but her punishment, and the lesson, had been swift.
He is moved by her final admission. He knew all too well the need to find redemption, the need to find your own truth. So when she turns back to him, he does the only thing he can think to do, which is to reach across and nudge her neck gently with the velvet of his nose. “I understand,” his voice is low, quiet, meant to be shared only between the two of them. “For what it is worth, I think there is plenty of good within you left to give, Lucrezia. I would like nothing more than to help you find yourself here.”
For several moments, silence fell between them, rich and meaningful and untouched by the awkward tension so often shared by those newly aquatinted with one another. Perhaps it was because so much of her story, her desires, mirrored his own, or perhaps just the ease of her company, but either way, he found that it was simple to be in her company. Finally, he brought his gaze back toward her, one corner of his smile lifting. “I suppose it is only fair to offer something in return for you sharing that with me.” A genuine offer that he laid between them. “Is there anything that you would like to know?” Sharing did not come easy to him, but it was the least he could do to repay her for the bravery of her own admissions.
12-13-2016, 05:01 PM (This post was last modified: 12-18-2016, 02:14 PM by Lucrezia.)
Here it comes with no warning; capsize, i'm first in the water
Lucrezia feels a sense of calmness over come her when Magnus touches her neck again and encourages her. It feels reassuring to her, especially to have someone like Magnus at her side. She had always needed someone like him in her life. He has proven to be someone she could rely on from the very beginning when they met. “I would very much like that,” she says with a smile when he offers his help to her.
“Have you always been so kind and helpful, Magnus?” She asks but certainly more curious about him. Lucrezia has truly never met someone who had come close to someone like Magnus. There had been Kreios. However, she cannot find a way to compare him to Magnus. There is something more to him than she could imagine Kreios relating to.
She does not feel awkward in the several moments of silence that falls between them. Lucrezia enjoys every part of this conversation if nothing is to be said. His question draws a smile on her lip and then into a curious look upon her face. There are many questions she could ask and dig for, but she finds it much easier to ask a plainer question. A question he could answer freely as she had answered his. “I want to know what you were like before.” She finally says after another quite few moments between them. “Why are you the way you are now?” Lucrezia wants to call him a hero, but she remembers the way he reacted to that when they first met.
When she asks him if he had always been kind, he laughs ruefully and shakes his heavy-jawed head, the tendrils of his sun-bleached mane slapping against both sides of his neck. “I wish history could remember me in such a way.” Heaven knows he vied for such things, but it always seemed just inches out of his reach; he could try and try with all of his might, but at the end of every day, he was always bitterly reminded of where he lacked. The rough edges of his personality, the darkness that ran beneath it all.
“It is kind of you to say such things though.”
He did not dive into it just yet though; perhaps he would one day be comfortable enough to pull all of the skeletons out of his closet and let them dry in the day, but for now, he could not bear to face them. He could not bear to think of those he had failed, of the way he had crumpled beneath Atlas’ task. There were so many times he had turned the wrong way—so many times he had let things slip between his fingers.
“I have had a long life.” His mouth quirked in the corner and he tilted his head to the side to regard her. “If I am being honest, I have had long lives.” Magnus didn’t often think about the multiple lifetimes that he had lived or the death that had once claimed him, but that was one thing he did not need to keep from her today. “I would be lying if I said that I had remained stagnant throughout the years. I am a product of my upbringing, the decisions that I have made, and the people that I have met. They’ve all molded me.”
Perhaps for the better. On some mornings, looking out at the way Tephra folded out around him, the sun dappling the land, he liked to think so. He liked to think that it had all been for something—that he had not been given so many second chances for naught. Still, he brought his attention back to her and lightened the mood with a roguish smile. “I like to think I’m still the irrepressible jungle child beneath it all.” The same one who raced his mother’s jaguar. The one who tumbled through the mud. The one who raced beneath sun and vine and shadow. The one who wasn’t afraid of anyone. Anything.
Maybe he was still that stallion. Maybe he still could be.
out of the blue out into the loneliest place that you'll ever know I carried the world just as far as I could but the damage had taken its toll
Here it comes with no warning; capsize, i'm first in the water
Lucrezia has always had a deep curiosity of others. She wondered what their deepest secrets and desires were. Did they wake up in the middle of the night and question who they were? Why they were the way they were at that moment? She is more curious of what has shaped who they are today. What stories does another one hold that they would not tell another soul? And perhaps it is the very soul she wishes to know more than anything.
If she is being truthful, this was the first time she had let someone into her own mind—to know what she has felt and what she desires. It is a strange thing to simply let the walls comes down when she has built them up for most of her life. However, there is relief in letting them crumble around here. Some sort of serenity had filled her.
She merely nods her head at his reply to her words about him being kind. Lucrezia has always thought highly of others and has been optimistic of the world truly. Sometimes she isn’t sure why she held onto a little fragment of hope when all had failed and fallen around her.
The mare’s body shifts, finding another comfortable position as Magnus speaks again. She nods her head at his words. There is truth in everything he says. Even the own event of her life and crosses paths with others has always shaped her. If one of those moments did not happen she might as well not be the same person either. “A good man you have been molded into,” she says with a soft smile. “No matter what you might think,” Lucrezia shakes her head and laughs playfully.
When he mentions being a boy again in the Jungle her smile returns. “What it would be like to be young again, huh, Magnus?” She often thinks of what it might be like to be, especially knowing what she knows now. Then again, what would she be if she knew all that she knows now? Lucrezia does not know truly. “I’m sure beneath all the walls and shadows you are still that wild child.” Her eyes bright up as she speaks again, “I for sure I have never lost my love for adventure. And why should you not still have a wild heart?” She tilts her head at him, considering what he might say to that.
There are secrets lost away in his chest that he does not touch; that he does not even approach. They lay dormant there, locked away from even him on most days. It was to painful to look at them, to dredge them up and dissect them. It was too painful to think of the blood and the loss—to remember it all. So he doesn’t with her now, instead enjoying the ease of her company and the friend he was creating in her.
“To be young again?” he responds, musing on the question. What would it be like to be young again? To feel that fire in his veins? To race along the jungle, or the Chamber, or the Gates? To love so fiercely and without reservation? He smiled at the thought, his scarred heart responding to the idea as it thumped in his chest. “It would be magnificent,” his lacerated mouth lifted into a smile. “I hope to feel that again.”
He laughs lightly at her admission. “I hope you never lose it, Lucrezia. The world is a brighter place for having you, and your love for adventure, in it.” He dips his head slightly. “As for my heart—it is still very much a wild thing.” Too wild, too often. Too responsive and crazed and feral; too bloodthirsty. So much of his life had been spent living out its commands and apologizing on its behalf.
But he would not have it any other way.
After a moment in thought, he directs the conversation back to slightly more practical things, his eyes glinting. “You know, Lucrezia, we are in need of someone to step up as Head of Peace.” He regards her, evaluating her response to the query—testing the idea out. “If only there was someone capable.”
out of the blue out into the loneliest place that you'll ever know I carried the world just as far as I could but the damage had taken its toll
02-01-2017, 08:08 PM (This post was last modified: 02-01-2017, 08:08 PM by Lucrezia.)
Here it comes with no warning; capsize, i'm first in the water
“To be young again,” he says, “It would be magnificent.”
A smile spreads across her pale cream lips. Her eyes light up with excitement at his words. Truly, Lucrezia could not agree more with what he says. There are parts of her, just like parts of Magnus that often want to feel what they felt before without reservation. She wanted nothing to hold her back more than ever like did when she was a young filly. There was nothing that had held her back, until she grew older and expectations became something part of her life. Lucrezia had begun to feel the coldness and heaviness of family duties before personal desires. It had always been that way—“For the greater good of the Chamber and our family,” her father had always told her.
Now though, in this very moment, she can be what she has wanted. She can choose to be the very individual she has always craved to be deep within herself. Lucrezia always had it within her heart to be that person. It was covered behind the curtain of self-doubt and buried beneath the cold, dark shadows all along. All she needed to do was believe, and to live her life choosing to be that person.
Lucrezia nods her head and says nothing more on the matter of being young again. Some things did not always require more words, just simply knowing that one felt the same as she did was enough for her. The amber champagne mare turns to consider Magnus’s next set of words. Her smile, still lingering at the edges of her lips, spreads across once more, though wider this time. “I don’t think I could ever do so,” she says and believe it all too well. Adventure commanded her, just as Magnus’s own heart commanded him for such things. “Don’t ever stop being that wild child then,” she says to Magnus. It is more of a demand than anything, a promise beneath her soft spoken words for him to keep. Lucrezia would never want to see the fire within Magnus burn out—not someone that was becoming a dear friend of hers.
The direction of the conversation is overturned. Lucrezia, surely displaying a sign of surprise on the subject, considers what he says. “Head of Peace?” She asks out loud more to herself than to the buckskin stallion. She zones out just for a couple of seconds, barely hearing the next words he says to her. The memories of once having the position offered to her come back—she feels failure tug at her heart strings and guilt suffocating her lungs. But, all at once, it is gone—STOP! She tells herself—and she turns to look to Magnus, confident and eager.
“You know I am the right one,” Lucrezia says proudly. Her words are not arrogant, but she is more sure than ever that she fits the position better than anyone right now. “I have knowledge and experience for the position.” She adds though likely she did not need too at all, Magnus, she thinks, thought her capable of it. “I will be the Head of Peace, be the one that Tephra needs. If—” She smiles at Magnus, “If you will have me that is.” And then she falls silent, waiting for his answer.
To say that he found their friendship valuable would be a vast, painful understatement. He had grown to trust her, to turn to her for advice, to find her hands capable when it came to the running of Tephra. He knew she would be there when newcomers crossed the border and knew she would handle the situation with the grace and intelligence he had come to expect from her; she was a diplomat, to her core.
More than Magnus would ever expect himself to be.
Still, he was not surprised when he saw her grapple with the idea, turning it over in her mind. She was highly capable but perhaps not always trusting in her own capabilities. She was too hard on herself, he thought, but he didn’t voice such concerns out loud. How she dealt with such insecurities was her own business. If she ever wanted to discuss them, he would listen, but he was not about to pry into them.
When she finally spoke again, accepting his unspoken offer, he grinned, his smile infectious. “I was hoping you would say that, Lucrezia.” He took a step forward and nudged her neck, taking in her scent, and finding it both familiar and comforting. “Consider yourself the first Head of Peace for Tephra then.”
It was a private ceremony, and an informal one, but still a precious one to him. He didn’t take such things lightly, and he felt confident in his decision. Confident that it was the right one for himself, and for the land. Those who called Tephra home could do no better. “I have some things to attend to, but we should touch base soon—to discuss formal alliances and such, if we choose to go down that path.”
He gave her another smile. “In the meantime, try to keep yourself out of trouble, Lucrezia.”
Then with a wink and a grin, he was gone.
out of the blue out into the loneliest place that you'll ever know I carried the world just as far as I could but the damage had taken its toll
Just to wrap this up. (Did you know we've been doing this one since November?! D
![[Image: gqYjsHr.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/KjqNDKxc/gqYjsHr.png)
