"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
These are her haunts, not so much the first because it was swallowed up in the Reckoning and only the common lands and those shrouded in mist were spat back out, along with all of them, the dispossessed. It had not bothered her as much as it did others, because Spear was there at her side and she found Giver not long after, and somewhere her mother and father had come into it all too, so she had not lost the things that mattered to her - they were found, as easily as all the stars in the night sky can be found, one by one, as certain as the next.
She cannot imagine the snowy realm of the Tundra now, and how it could be house her. Since her transformation, she has come to relish the heat of the volcanic island more than the other lands that beckon of large lakes and rolling hills, of a sea ringed by caves and cliffs and an island tropical and savage as an untamed atoll. Her imagination does not run rampant and rife with explorations of them, and her feet remain planted firm in the ashen soils upon which she stands.
But every so often, she pulls up her roots and sojourns into the common lands, sometimes running as if on fire (and sometimes, she is - a creature of flame that seethes and shimmers, hot and burning) through the forest like she’ll burn it down to ash around her. Sometimes, she makes a long slow trek through the meadow just to stop and smell the flowers that are as wild as she is, or thinks she is. She might be more tame now, tamer than before now that she is almost elemental, fire incarnate and chained to an altogether new and unasked for shape that comes unbidden to her as the most unlikely of times.
Walking could make her mane burst into flame.
Arguing with her twin brother could make her skin burn up and away until she stood there, the embodiment of fire.
It was this lack of control that bothered the little medicine hat mare the most; she felt like her fire mimicry ought to be something that she could handle but it seemed too elemental, too wild, too hard to handle. She, once dispossessed, had become possessed and not by anything she could ever have imagined! Was this what it was like to love? She once thought so, but Giver had soured that a bit for her and she preferred her newfound fire to the heat he roused in her, a heat that had gone cold from neglect in his absence.
Perhaps this and this alone, is the very thing that drove her forth not in search of wildflowers to sniff but something else to break the tedium of her days. That might have been why it was easy for Spark to find him the coming dark, because the soft chestnut of his skin was not hard on the eyes but rather, inviting. It held no hard metallic sheen to it and the forelock that fell across his eyes (she has yet to divine the dark pit where once an eye had been, now only sunken and thrice scarred by rent and ripping claws) was tangled cream unlike anything she had seen.
A flaxen chestnut stallion should not have interested her like so, but Spark reacted to the way he stood alone against the oncoming dark and she moved towards him, pale but for the black shield on her breast and the black bonnet that encapsulated her ears and brow. He seemed a better choice than the flowers that began to sicken and rot beneath the heat of the summer sun, though she tipped her head up towards the night that began to close in on them and she thought she caught the faintest whiff of the first fine chill that spoke of the next season to come full circle.
But she shook it away from her nostrils and breathed his odd smell in, of horse and some other animal scent that could not be separated from his - ripe and old, snowy almost, and she thought once more of the Tundra and almost felt it snow behind her eyes in a memory that played across the gray matter of her brain. “Hello,” she called out to him, as she came closer but kept a respectable distance between them.
Bound for trouble from the start I've been walking through this old world in the dark
He remembers a large tree, of bright light and the soft singsong of birds. That feeling of peace that he had only been able to grab snatches of, unattainable. The Gates had been the closest thing to sanctuary he had ever found. In truth, it was a mockery. Magnus and the childhood dreams of the life he could have had was what drew him there. It was silly to hold on to those, his childhood had long passed. Time only moved forward, what was done could never be undone. The Gates had given a beautiful life to Magnus. It had shown him love and children and happiness. For Ledger it would only be a brutal reminder that he had not been a part of it. Could never truly be one of them with all his flaws and disturbances.
The Dale had been no better, his cage. His captivity growing up. And then there was the dark sands of the beach, the sound of the waves lapping gently against the shore. The bodies, the smell of decay. His birthplace. All tainted. It was here, open fields of grass and flowers. This was truly the only home he had ever really had. This was his true pathetic sanctuary.
Of course most of these places don’t exist anymore. He’s slowly coming to understand that from bits and pieces he picks up in passing conversations. Now they are simply memories, something to be written down in history books. Something to be read by a person who will never truly grasp their importance or what they meant to someone who actually lived there and experienced it all. Now he truly has nowhere to go, no destination. Summer makes him uncomfortable but the season seems to be losing it’s edge. Ever since the change, he has a hard time in the heat. Cooler temperatures put him much more at ease. The beast within him agrees although it has an understanding with that burning pit that hovers between stomach and chest. That seeping anger that weeps into his blood like an open wound. It flares and recoils and the beast waits, knowing it’s his opening into an unpredictable world.
Burrs have tangled into the mess that is his mane and forelock, he can see them out of the corner of his eye. He is unkempt, grizzled. There has never been one to lovingly look after him, to gently tease the thistles from his tresses and smooth them till they were silky smooth. He has never cared about his ragged appearance, why start now when his body was disfigured. What was the point in impressing anyone, it’s not like they truly cared for him. It’s not like they would stay.
Thoughts interrupted by a call behind him, he hesitates before arching his neck and swinging his thin frame partially around. It’s the good eye that warily looks at her now. The crater in his skull hidden from her, pieces of forelock lazily falling over it like a horrific waterfall. Flecks of gold glinting ever so slightly from a murky cold brown. She is different. Painted. He had not seen many of her coloring before. His gaze traces from sable kissed ears to the milky sheen of her neck. A soft breeze catches her scent. Ash, sweat, flowers. An unusual perfume which makes her more of a curiosity. Now he remembers something he had tried to forget. That of a tree burning, soot clinging to his nostrils, ash stinging festering wounds. Panic. The scream of a girl when the beast first showed it's snowy head.
He is wary to approach her, the bear inside him is disturbed. Oh his magic was gone (which he does not know, unaware that the beast currently has no power over him) but the polar bear was a part of him now, forever. This stallion was promised to ice, that which had pierced his heart and claimed ownership as it melted into it’s thick veins. The bear senses the fire in her and while it can control the flames in the chestnut, it has no power over her. It understands that she could melt him, make him weak.
”Hello.” Rough words returned towards his polar oppositie. His weight gently shifts from one back hoof to the other, betraying his anxiety. ”I’m Ledger.” He finally manages, tilting his visage ever so slightly, extending a soft tanned muzzle as he lays his confusion on the table. ”Why are you here?” It’s almost rude depending on it’s context. He simply wants to know why here. Out of everyone, why him?
She too, is flawed but not in the same ways or for the same reasons.
Her childhood had been happy.
Long hours of hide-and-seek and chase-your-tail, and the tiring rounds of play fighting and argumentative debates that dissolved into giggles and childish nips from milk-teeth. The milk-heavy teats of their medicine hat mother whom she favored (only black instead of red); the way that she curled her long legs beneath her belly and he laid down beside her, their heads hung close together in sleep. Her childhood had been a good one, the best kind of one to have - carefree and loved, kept close beneath the watchful eye of their mother or their father who was, at the time, a king in his own right (and was a king again, here now).
Remembering the snow and ice of the Tundra, makes her remember these things in the space of a breath and a heartbeat. Her mismatched eyes have never left his face and the way it hides beneath that tangle of forelock that allows her to glimpse just one eye of his and not a full heavy gaze like others tend to have. The more she looks at him, the more she thinks he looks as wild as she used too, before the fire burnt up all the burrs and knots in her hair and all the dirt in her fur. Fire cleanses, and it left her sleeker than she has been in years.
He though, is as grizzled and unkempt as her brother often is and it endears this unknown stallion to her further, that and the secrets that he keeps, like the animal in his scent that is not horse but, bear maybe? There is a musk there, that instinct cautions her against approaching closer as if touching her muzzle to him could spring an iron trap. It fascinates her; no - he fascinates her, the danger of him that sings through her hot blood like an alarm that bids her to back up the moment he turns to face her, turns that gold-flecked eye upon her and greets her in return. Spark cannot turn back now; fire and ice, destined to forever be drawn together but repelled in the same breath.
Her gaze flicks to his fidgeting hindquarters and she wonders why he is so anxious around her; Spark hardly is the kind to unnerve another, at least she doesn’t think she is. He extends both his muzzle and his name to her and she offers forth her own slim muzzle to touch his own for just a second, before jerking back a little shyly. “I’m Spark,” she murmurs, feeling chastised by his next question and her mouth opens then closes, as her head tilts to the side, considering.
“Why are you here?”
Because, she wants to say, why not? Here is as good as anywhere else.
What comes out though, is “You smell like snow, and I remember snow from long ago.” A frown troubles her face, as she thinks - but I don’t remember you, and she knows he was never one of her father’s subjects in that frozen kingdom of off-limit caves and towering ice.
Bound for trouble from the start I've been walking through this old world in the dark
For a moment he wonders, as her floral musk triggers a memory, if she was the mystery girl. The one from the party that smelled of petals and dew. Surely he would have felt her heat or had that changed as well when they had all been transformed? Had that party even been real? He’s not really sure, it could just be another delusion. It happens sometimes, his dreams bleed into the pages of reality. Usually though they were unpleasant and he would panic. This had been different. If it wasn’t real, he wonders if he will ever dream of it again. If he will know her name this time.
Her fire wipes her clean, makes her smooth and unblemished. What could ice do? It collects things in it’s path. Wraps it’s cold fingers around them, drags them into a blue abyss. Freezes over to be found again in another lifetime by pure chance. Perhaps it makes sense that he collects the twigs and debris, that it clutters to his plumage and reddish coat.
Her eyes burn into him and the bear roars, pawing at the bars of his cage. What can she see? Does she know? It takes a moment to place that look. It’s intrigue. Never in a million years would Ledger think he could be thought of as dangerous or intriguing. It was almost laughable. Even in his brief kingdom interludes he festered under the side of Peace. Magnus was the warrior, the hero. Ledger had relied on intellect. Things were a little different now. There was carnage and destruction inside of him, a way to protect himself now. A shield. The one thing he had always needed and lacked.
Her breath is soft and inviting as her muzzle reaches out to his. Like slow motion, he is stuck. Unable to move as the velvet of her muzzle barely brushes against his own. Rising warmth, heat creeping into the core of his being. It’s followed by the sensation of melting, as if the mere presence of her fire will destroy him. The bear demands release, he braces himself and pulls back. This is something he’s never felt before and it distracts him. He is not in control. Her name is Spark, he catches it faintly as he battles himself. How fitting a name seeing what she had managed to spark and bring to flame within the few minutes of knowing her.
Swinging his head around with a grimace, exposing that ravaged hollow of his face to her without realizing it, to try and distract the animal within him on something else. A few seconds pass. The swell of emotion still swirls in his chest. But it doesn’t come. It roars and swipes it’s claws to no avail. It’s locked away, it can’t come out. No longer able to make itself physical. Now he is more wary then ever, throwing back his skull with flared nostrils. The murkiness of his brown iris’s clearing from muddy to russet, narrowing on her. ”What did you do to me?”
Was she a witch, a painted gypsy that roamed the land and played with others magic for amusement? The bear had been a curse, a painful reminder of a trial he wished to forget. Then why does he suddenly feel so empty that he has lost this power? This hated thing inside of him, surely he should be pleased. The soft touch of her voice vaguely registers, he smells of snow she says. How can he? The polar bear is tranquilized. And while he can’t see the constellation on his flank, he knows it’s still there. The mark of what he had become. But who was he now?
He is quiet - too quiet, and she almost squirms in the length of it, certain that he could hear her quickening heartbeat if he listened closely. However, the longer she looks at him, she thinks he is not listening to her at the moment, or even looking at her but seeing something else, maybe remembering. She is amazed at how quick and how far the tide of a memory can carry them, far off on a sea of gray matter and long-ago minutes all tied up inside their brains. Maybe, she even envies him just the slightest little bit because he looks mesmerized and not in an altogether unpleasant manner and she has nothing to mesmerize her that way any more, not even the stars in the night sky that could never hold a candle to the stars that Giver could make dance around his head as it leaned in close to hers.
Spark almost sighs, snatches it back on the rolling motion of a swallow and looks away from him for just a second - maybe even two, before looking back at him again. Her mismatched eyes catch on the twigs and burrs and knots in his red dead-flame hair; he looks something like fire made flesh but softer somehow, as skin usually is and fire is usually not. But he also looks like she used to, before the fire cleansed her and left her sleek and new. She misses that wild and woolen look, that of a life well-lived and carefree, though Spark suspects his is not as carefree as hers’ had been. He seems rougher, harder for the things that he’s seen or endured, though she can only guess at this.
Something inside him seems to snap; he braces himself and draws back from the light touch of her muzzle. She is not insulted in the least, recognizing that she was at times, rather intrusive and the fire only made her bolder in doing things like that. Her face falls though, the moment he grimaces and swings his face to her but no horror fills it when she looks upon the ravaged eyeless part of him. Spark grows quieter, softer, even sympathetic as if she understands on some level, how it is for him. He seems to be battling something, and her touch was the catalyst to a fight that goes on inside him but is evidenced by the way he flings back his head, forelock flying, and flares his nostrils as if all the air in the world could calm him now.
She ducks her head beneath the narrowing of his russet eye (he is all reddish tones, from leaf to clay to fire and he almost too much to look at, even underneath all the grime and dishevelment he hides behind), chastised by the one-eyed glare and his question. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs, but it comes out no louder than a whisper but even whispers have a way of being too loud and her ears splay sideways in uncertainty. Spark stares at the ground, almost on the verge of scuffing a hoof in the dirt just to dispel the anxious feeling that overtakes her but all that happens is that the fire starts to build, to burn right through her and she flings her own head up and snaps, “Nothing! I did nothing to you!”
Her skin feels tight, fit to burst and she backs up a few steps from him, her little body starting to shake from the anger and the fire that she just barely holds beneath. “One touch,” she mutters, one touch and… and what Spark? She doesn’t even know, but it leaves her just as uneasy as he is, and she pins him with a fiery glare, unaware that the breath comes huffing out of her as if forced, and that her own stance is braced, but against what - him? He reacted, and she reacted to his reaction, and somehow, they have become catalysts for one another in a short amount of time that leaves her deeply uncertain. “I did nothing wrong,” she pleads in the tiniest of whispers.
Bound for trouble from the start I've been walking through this old world in the dark
He’s never been after sympathy or pity. It’s too late for all that. He’s accepted the cruel joke that is his life. She recoils from him, he should feel sorry. Should feel something. Once he would have felt shame and horror at his own faux pas. While he is still soft on the inside, he is rough around the edges. Harder. Colder. Everything about him should speak of fire. Just another one of Carnage’s little tricks. Another punishment for his refusal or inability to choose. You feel too much Ledger. Let’s freeze those emotions, then they won’t effect you. He still feels, quite a lot, but the expression is muted. Muffled. The bear always seemed to take care of them in the end. Until it couldn’t.
If only he could have read her mind, seen what she saw in him. Carefree? Well-lived? It’s probably best he can’t. It was hard for him to hate but those thoughts would easily provoke it. Take my life, he would plead and beg. Go ahead, trade mine for yours. Your beautiful life with joyful moments. A family. A brother, what was that like? To have a sibling that was always by your side? To have known warmth and affection? Carefree, he has never been free and has never known care. Just neglect. Weighted down by the chains of his own misfortune.
With the beast locked up tight, his anger starts to fade. He’s still cautious of her but a little of his old self starts to emerge. His eye starts to dull as his rage fades and he brings his muzzle to his chest, tangled forelock hiding his thoughts once more. Curved ears slowly lifting from their flatten position to swivel towards her. ”What power do you have?” He begins quietly. ”What power do you have that has dispelled my curse?” He still doesn't know that it’s not just him. That it wasn’t her touch that had both quieted and ignited his soul. The old ache of his brand returns to haunt him and his body sags as he slowly exhales. Defeated. ”Who are you really Spark… And what do you want with me?”
Spark recoils from him - no, not him - his insistence that she has caused him some kind of harm though a single touch. Harm might be the least of it, she thinks, incredulous that she could sort of be bemused right now as angered as she is by how he pummels her with question after question as if she had bewitched him. She! Of all the horses in the land, lowly Spark could bewitch someone with a touch of her small whiskery muzzle. Now she scoffs, still braced against further accusations that she had done something to him, every breath still forcefully huffed out of her like a derailed locomotive.
She stares him down from beneath her forelock, but begins to notice a change come over him - something like defeat? His eye dulls, his muzzle slumps to his chest and before she knows it, she’s lost him behind his own forelock and she flings hers up and away from her eyes, her own stance less bracing now. He asks her about power, and mentions a curse before collapsing inward on himself and she knew then, it was truly defeat that had taken him so quickly after his own anger. Anger, like fire, cleanses and exhausts, as she is learning and it almost pained her to see him so small and lost like that. “No power,” she murmurs, emboldened enough to reach out towards him again… “What curse?” she queries, close enough to blow a breath out upon his face.
Then she turns from him, all in an instant! She performs an about-face and paces out a safe distance from him before answering, “I’m just a mare and I just wanted to talk.” It is easier to show him, only because she doesn’t know how to explain it to him - that she had caught her beloved in a quarrel with his sister after having knocked her up with twins, or how he’s disappeared and left her? That afterwards, she grew so full of spite it made her belly ache as if she’d had too much grass or a bad apple. So full of spite that she slept and dreamt and fevered her way into something new and uncontrollable?
“Look,” she implores him as she bursts into flame and there is little left that is recognizable of the medicine hat mare that Spark once was; now she is fire, and nothing else.
06-25-2017, 10:49 PM (This post was last modified: 07-05-2017, 03:45 PM by Ledger.)
Bound for trouble from the start I've been walking through this old world in the dark
Anger always tires him. The familiar embrace of sadness, the caress of his sorrow, the heavy hug of exhaustion. It comes so quickly after his rage, putting out the flames and leaving heavy smoke in his lungs. He doesn’t see her move until her hot breath is mingling with her own. Although he tenses visibly, he doesn’t move. Becomes as frozen as the ice that has solidified around his heart. No power she says and still he is doubtful. A slight shift of his head exposes his eye once more, letting his doubt be known. She asks about his curse and he hesitates. He has never talked about it before, had never openly discussed what had happened. What had been done to him. Only Magnus but that story is far too painful in itself to bare.
She has turned away from him before he can form anything to say and so he merely remains quiet. He wishes she hadn’t moved away despite her uncomfortable warmth. It had been so long since he had felt the heat of another against his own skin. It threatens to thaw him out. He’s unsure if that can even be done but the thought is most desirable.
Look, she murmurs and he forces himself to raise his head up. The sight that greets him, the flames that flicker in the reflection of gold flecks. She is fire incarnate and he can’t look away. Entranced by the element, snared by it’s allure. He knows it will hurt him, melt him. He want’s to be cleansed. He wants to burn. Slowly he moves closer, the heat painful despite the small gap between them. He searches for her face amongst the flames. ”What did he do to you?” He whispers softly, thinking only of Carnage’s cruel tricks. While he remembers the faces of those that were tortured at his side, he’s not stupid enough to think that others wouldn't have followed. That he wouldn’t have found new toys to break.
