"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
Happy days seemed to bleed into one another for the silver girl. The forested Taiga had proven both guardian and friend. Mother and protector. She was content to move wraith-like beneath the boughs, spending her days bathed in dappled sunlight and nights tucked safely between towering roots. She had found a close companion in the predatory Ruan which brought her comfort, but something was still missing. Too often of late she found her thoughts drifting back to the Falls and the family she had disappointed so badly. Her memories were jagged pieces that didn't seem to fit together, and the shards that were still missing cut her deeply. It helped that she was no longer the guilt-ridden, melancholy mare that she once was. Thankfully the memories of her misdeeds remained among the ones repressed.
The change in Beqanna, and her dormant state throughout had changed her. Though most of the time it felt for the better, she was still plagued by nightmares that woke her in a cold sweat but slipped from her thoughts as soon as she opened her eyes. She could still hear the howl of her wolf and feel the brush of thick fur just below the surface of her skin, but when she reached for that power it vanished like a phantom limb. Something she could still feel but no longer existed. And that was what brought her creeping from her place in the woods. The loss of her most constant friend sent her seeking the company of others.
Tyrna's strides were slow as she made her way through the redwoods, each carefully placed step muffled by the thick carpet of loam and needles. She turns her gaze skywards, and not for the first time, laments the loss of her wings. How lovely it would be to see Beqanna from the air, wheeling on currents, and gliding through the dense branches before coming home. Her thoughts are introverted, and her movements automatic while she wends her way deeper into the forest, looking for somebody, anybody to pull her out of her own head.
Silver dapple sabino|Mare|Andalusian Hybrid
ooc: reusing a starter because I'm bad at this @[Cassi]
It’s a hard thing to forget, your own death.
Still, he does his best. Memory, in its own kindness, has blurred the worst of it, blurred the exact nature of his pain, so that what he recalls is the memory that he hurt, but not how the hurt itself felt.
And now, in a new body, remade in an image of flesh rather than glass, it’s even easier. He forgets his own fragility, under this armor of solid bone and thicker skin, with wings that know what it is to bear heavy things aloft. Things are better. He is better.
And oh, there are dreams – of course there are – where he dies and breaks and bleeds, where he screams her name. But not every night.
He does his best not to think of her – of her face and the way it distorted, a wolf at a door – because it is painful, the memory of her, the memory that is made of so many things. For he loved her – or thinks he did – and she is the thing that killed him first. Find what you love and let it kill you, the saying goes, but it’s not a saying he much likes.
But just because he does not think of her does not means she ceases to exist, does not mean their paths could cross again – and indeed, here she is, and here he is.
Crossing paths like strangers until he looks up and - oh - his breath catches and his heart speeds up, and he thinks of terrible jaws and terrible laughter, and he feels hot and cold all at once.
He stops – he can’t help himself – and looks at her. There are so many questions but they all lay on his tongue like dried, desiccated things.
Instead, he says only her name: “Tyrna.”
She barely sleeps, for when she does she dreams. Dreams impossible things. She has nightmares of padding through the shadows on predator's paws not knowing who the blood in her mouth belongs to. Of the shattering of glass and rending of flesh and not seeing the face that accompanies the sound. It has been a year or so since she has been awake in the new Beqanna, but her memories are still locked behind a wall that she can't open, and as the days pass, she is less certain that she wants to. She has a home now, some semblance of the family she lost, and a blue eyed wolf to plague her thoughts, really what more could she actually need.
And yet.
She was lonely, and in many ways lost. Perhaps that was why she spent so time hiding from others beneath the boughs of one forest or another. Lost or searching, for now she would never know the difference, and the confusion that brought kept her locked in her own head, continuously walking through the trees, until she heard her name.
Tyrna
It carries on a soft breeze twining through her ears and startling her from her thoughts. The soft voice causes her to raise her head, muscles tightening preparing for battle. But when she spies the stallion lingering behind the trees, she relaxes her stance and whickers a greeting. Her glacial blue eyes travel over the solid form of the red roan in front of her, a small smile twitching at the corners of her lips. "Hi there. No need to hide, I don't bite promise." Her smile is warm and welcoming, not understanding the effect her words could have. "As you know,my name's Tyrna? Have we met before?"
His dreams now are of things he hopes are in the past.
He dreams of being glass, of breaking in a dozen different ways. He dreams of his death, of a wolf’s snarl, of a woman crying out.
But when he wakes, he wakes in a body that is strong, with wings that bear him aloft. He wakes whole, and alive, and for these things he is grateful. He walks without fear of breaking, now, and the dreams stay dreams, distant things he barely thinks of.
But oh, she brings them back, and when he looks at her he remembers how his heart had lifted – and he remembers how her face had changed, contorted, and how her teeth had bared, hungry.
Yet her blue eyes show no sign of recognition, she greets him politely, but with no familiarity, no emotion (he doesn’t know what emotion he’d expected, exactly – dismay? Horror? Did she regret what she’d done, or had it energized her?). Instead, there is only this mild politeness - I don’t bite she says and a wicked part of him wants to reply I beg to differ.
He is dumbfounded, quiet, and she continues on, asks if they’ve met before.
Like she doesn’t remember that day, that awful day.
“Yes,” he says, voice hoarse, “yes, we’ve met. You were my queen.”
Queen, and executioner.
The words roll around in her ears feeling heavy with some unspoken meaning. A secret, a burden, a finality. Her time as Queen had been so brief, a mere blink in the timeline of Beqanna that could probably be skipped entirely. It doesn't help that she had been consumed by the wolf for a majority of that time.
She eyes this stranger more carefully now. There is a familiarity to him that unsettles her, an edge to his words like she should know him. Should, and doesn't. Her memories of that time are buried, how deep she doesn't know, but the way he looks at her tugs at the scraps of half forgotten dreams. The nightmares that keep her awake at night and the daydreams that remind her of home.
Her smile slips just a fraction as she takes in this stranger before her. His body is light but solid, his wings gorgeous shades of red that flutter at his sides, and his eyes that look at her with questions. She flushes with shame. Shame that she seems to have let this man down when he seems to know her so well, and she can't recall him in the slightest. She brings her bright blue eyes back up to meet his, steadily and unapologetically meeting his gaze.
"I'm sorry, but I still don't remember." She tilts her head slightly in concentration, "Perhaps if you told me your name it would help?" Her voice stays steady, but if he could really help her remember even a fraction of what she had lost to the ravages of the wolf and the changing of the land then she might just fall apart.
Maybe it’s better, that she doesn’t remember, that he is such a miniscule blip on her radar. It’s better that his death – his slaughter – be a forgotten thing. He is reminded enough of it (in nightmares, or in errant thoughts, when his traitorous mind replays her names and faces and says oh, remember how you loved them).
He considers leaving. Considers letting the matter die as he did – unceremoniously.
But no, he stays, feet planted before her and that blue gaze that betrays nothing. And then, worse, he gives her his name.
“Contagion,” he says.
Contagion, like a sickness, and he feels sick now, sick and strange. He is not scared of her, not exactly – he is stronger now, solid bone and muscle, thicker skin, wings that could grant him escape. And he’s not in love with her, not now, not when he knows what those eyes look like when slit wolf-thin, knows how her smile can fester and curl and show too-sharp teeth.
But looking at her causes something, and oddness in the belly, a pulse sped up.
The word roars and echoes in her ears. Shattered glass and splintered bone. Jewels glowing in the refracted spray of water at sunset. Blood and howls, first love so heartbreakingly sweet. Anger and jealousy, sorrow and ripping paper. Tender meetings in shaded groves, the press of butterfly light wings against steel.
The feelings are overwhelming, caught in glimpses before darting to the next. She feels more than she sees him, the memories of what was and never will be again. Her glass heart, so beautifully fragile, torn apart at her feet. Tears prick at her eyes at she stares at the stallion in a new light. Yes his shape is the same, but no longer does his pulse beat so clearly beneath his skin. His paper wings and glass body are gone and in it's place is solid flesh and feathers. He is the same, but so different now. Fragments of the love she once had for him surfacing, razor sharp and bittersweet.
She feels like she's drowning. The emotional flood proving almost more than she can handle. Without thinking, she takes a hesitant half step forward, lost in the hazel of eyes that shouldn't exist. Her throat feels scraped raw, her joints locked stiff, and tears starting to slip down her cheeks without notice. Tyrna watches the way he moves, the distance he keeps between them for an easy escape, all signs that point to how much damage she did. She sees this but in the face of him being here it doesn't matter to her, not really. Her voice quavers as it's choked out in a half sob.
Things break.
Contagion knows this better (or worse, maybe, depending how you look at it) than many others, a boy who was born to be broken. He walked for years on thin ice, counting breaths, constantly alert for danger – there were so many dangers.
Yet – as it so often goes – he was blind to what would be the ultimate danger, the last.
The last, until it wasn’t, until he woke up whole with no memory of how he became unbroken.
And then, more miracles – the glass body gone, replaced with stout muscle, paper wings turning to bone and feather.
A man, remade.
But things break.
Such a breaking plays across her face now, he sees, a crumpling of her features. His heart and breath lurch. So maybe she didn’t forget. Maybe he’s sorry for that.
(He wishes she forgot. Wishes he would forget.)
She asks an impossible question - how is this possible - and he looks at her and tries to stay steady, stay stoic.
“I don’t know,” he says, then, not having anything else in the way of explanations, he repeats himself.
“I don’t know.”
