"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
07-06-2017, 07:28 PM (This post was last modified: 07-06-2017, 07:28 PM by Castile.)
”Damn,” another uncomfortable jerk of his leg and the one reptilian toe shifts back into a hoof.
”Dragonborn,” he grumbles with mismatched eyes staring intently at the grass. A few scales climb up to his elbows, flicker, then fades. ”Like dad,” his voice strains now and he blinks hard in concentration; alas, only one reptilian toe before it, too, reverts back into his hoof again.
It has only been in the recent months that he has learned of being dragonborn, but not what it entails. He has never seen father shift into a great beast or soar across the skies like he belongs there. Lior occupies the caves of Nerine, secluding himself unless mother is alone and without business to be done. He lives a more somber lifestyle without ever reveling in what being dragonborn is.
Castile only remembers his smile at the realization, but then their conversation ended not long after. Often the boy wondered, but never asked.
What is dragonborn?
How does he fulfill that?
Why do only parts of his body shift?
He has noticed how his bones and skin rippled only when embarrassment and anger sunk into his soul. It was as though he lost control of himself. He became something greater, something stronger, but he couldn’t harness it or recall it on his own accord. The gladiator battle reinforced that and flustered him.
”Dragonborn,” he murmurs again, this time under his breath, but only a single wing loses its feathers to the leathery feel of a dragon.
Castile is awkward and trying to figure out how to shift lmao
07-06-2017, 10:33 PM (This post was last modified: 07-06-2017, 10:35 PM by Brine.)
She awakes, her body encased in an inch of snow like a heavy down blanket. She isn’t aware of why she has slept for so long, why her forelock is dusted with morning frost and why her mane has minuscule icicles hanging. Brine has not noticed that what lies beneath the soft blanket of snow is no longer hair, but instead feathers. Feathers like when she was young. And what she has not realized is the slight weight is not from snow, but from wings that have fully wrapped themselves around her in a way to shield her from the chilled wind.
Her front legs outstretch like wooden pillars, feeling the turf beneath her and the slippery texture. She rises, unaware of why suddenly it feels harder to get up. Did she hurt herself? Is she sore from walking so far the other day? Her mind is a whirlwind of curiosity as she turns her head to face what she can only assume as swollen muscles and aching bruises.
It is not though. Like I said (and I did tell you so), she is now decorated with wings, hanging nonchalantly like ornaments on Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. Her heart skips a beat, like seeing colour for the first time. They hang there, large and yet so incredibly delicate. One morning she woke up completely bare without them, stranded to walk for years to come. Now she wakes up, gifted with her unique characteristics once more. It almost makes her feel like herself again.
Almost.
She spends a majority of her morning flying. Brine once felt like a child stolen from walking, tied to a wheelchair and forbidden to ever feel free again. Now, she feels like the same child being gifted legs once more. A feeling unexplainable, unimaginable. Like a flower finally healing from a broken petal, or a dog finally finding his long lost ball. She is both excited and scared. Petrified, yet courageous.
What once held her back, or at least… what she blamed held her back, had now been returned. What more can she blame, now? There are no excuses. There is no crutch. There is just the horrible, terrifying truth that if she fails now… it is her fault. It is her doing, and her failure.
Petrified. Yet, courageous.
There is hope for her now. He has taken an empty vase and filled it with water and lilies once more, but what if the lilies die? What if the water runs dry?
Her thoughts, a constant internal battle, keep her occupied for many minutes. Hours. Perhaps even days. She is too easily lost in her own head, and has no one to pull her back to reality.
By the time she lands, her wings ache, her ribs cringe, and her mane and tail are a wind knotted mess. Her feet feel weak, and wobbly. She is a toddler remembering how to walk, or a child attempting to ride a bike with no training wheels. Her legs quiver and her knees knock in desperate attempt to find balance and tranquility. Brine is not a filly; she is a full grown woman. Her robust curves and prominent feminine features say so. However, nothing has ever made her feel so little, and childish.
By the time her composure has been found, she is standing knee deep in snow, center of the meadow surrounding by nothing but overcast clouds and a wide open landscape. Her blue-toned feathered coat, dark from the winter growth sticks out like a sore thumb, her large black wings hanging heavy in exhaustion. Her hazel eyes set on a multi toned horse in the distance.
She is not one for conversing, she never has been. Her tongue gets tied in all the wrong places, but yet she feels like either she will converse, or fly again. And considering her incredibly embarrassing show only moments ago, conversing is her best bet. If only for a second, she can be social.
Her approach is cautious, as if he is a lion and she is a hyena. Both predators, but both on very different levels of danger. A word is muffled out, circled with frustration emitting like smoke from flames. Her head slightly tilts, curious but yet completely ready avoid investigating.
“Frustration always prevails when success will not,” her voice is soft. For someone who does not talk often, she certainly has a singsong tune to her tone. It makes her appear more mature, and compassionate than what she considers herself to be. “Can I help you?”
Her voice is silk twisting around his ears, smooth tendrils that ebb away his frustration, even for but a moment. Castile’s mismatched eyes blink as he stares at the snow-covered ground first before raising them to look at her. While he is a mere two years of age, she is an adult. Slowly, he drinks in the sight of her. From her curious face down her feathered body, to her wings, then finally her tail. ”Hullo,” he mutters fairly awkwardly as though caught in something he should not have been doing. Most often his company is with other boys such as Amet and Ivar. Only a handful of times has he been around a female with the exclusion of his young sister and mother.
Her searching gaze distracts him briefly until he reels back in his memory to answer her. ”Do you know how to shift?” There is no shame in admitting his faults to her. While it’s still traumatizing to be so futile in front of her, at least she offers assistance rather than laugh and tease. It softens the blow to his pride, perhaps, but his heart still patters anxiously against his ribcage.
”Father never got around to teaching me. It sort of happens on its own,” and while Castile sheepishly confesses this to her, his mane recedes and is replaced by spines tracing down his neck toward his withers. Of course, he takes no notice of this. The change, albeit unwarranted, is graceful in its transition. Obsidian scales climb up his legs, but then Castile takes a settling breath and everything reverts to as it was.
The snow sends a chill along his back, but upon lifting his eyes again, the frigidity almost melts away. ”I’m Castile.”
She sees him, a young one. Older than a child but younger than an adult. He is a cross between wise and ignorant, does not yet have life experience but yet has enough knowledge to continue living. He continues to flicker into a partial reptile, before it diffuses away like a waxless candle; begging to burn, but failing to hold.
Brine is certainly odd looking, but standing next to the oddly forming reptilian she feels somewhat normal. She was a brittle toy amongst shiny dolls, and flashy toy trucks. She was the toy with a broken part, and a dusty surface with a weird smell. Never tossed away, but never played with either. Perhaps this reptilian has felt the same too. Or not.
She flickers her attention downwards, almost embarrassed at his discomfort. He seems awkward towards her arrival, as he should. As if she has walked in on him naked and exposed; maybe she has. A pause fills the air as he responds with a choked hello, the naivety of his tone echoing off trees and into her ears. The silence is deafening; suffocating, even.
He speaks again, that silence broken and Brine isn’t sure if relief or fear should overwhelm her. Perhaps a little bit of both. Her ears twitch backwards to the sound of a few birds fluttering from their perch, her tail swishes out of habit and perhaps a little bit of irritability. If there is anything she understands, it is the absence of a father. The absence of parents in general, really.
She hardly remembers what her father looks like, only his name whispers into her ear from time to time: Tarnished. Her mother is hardly any different, Exemplary, only with her name comes a faint memory of beauty and grace. Her mother had been around much longer than her father ever had. That was no shock, they wouldn’t see her starve. They would just provide minimal support until she could wean herself away. And then her mother left, as if horse’s were like turtles who never needed to see their parents after fleeing the nest.
“It cannot be hard. Can it?” Brine is not sure; she has never transitioned. Her feathers once left, along with her wings. Had she meant to do that? Likely not. And years later they returned, only today in fact. She hadn’t done anything different today either.
“Brine,” her head bobs with her name, partially from excitement to introduce herself, but also because she had been holding it high and stiff the entire time and it felt good to relax and move.
