"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
It was her first big swim. Adria had kissed her pappa Hod goodbye, (after watching a much more elongated, cringe-worthy one given from her mother) and then the two had been off to adventure for the day. Nyxa, her strikingly beautiful and yet attentive dam, had ensured her the weather was perfect and that it was time for Adria to really gain her sea legs but the filly suspects that really, her parents had just wanted a day alone without her.
The tri-colored buckskin knows they’ll stop at the playground, even though she hadn’t really wanted to. “I’m not a baby,” she pleaded with her mother as they both swam away from the shore, “do I really have to go?”
Yes, Nyxa had insisted, and then she’d tried to tell Adria that she might even like some time with other foals her age. There wasn’t an abundance of other younglings to play with, especially in a world of Brothers, and her parents had begun to worry that Adria was developing an undeserved attitude of self-righteousness from being around adults all the time. Kids were meant to be kids, Nyxa had insisted.
So they swim, until at last they reach the shoreline of the Playground and Nyxa gives her hard-headed daughter an encouraging shove that the young girl is too tired to protest against. Shaking the salty water from her scales and coat Adria stands hesitantly as her dam slips back into the ocean and swims away, turning only to look at the other foals already engaged in play.
She was alone, and painfully so.
---
@[Drustan] seriously don't feel obligated to match this length wise or anything, I tried to keep it short and simple! I also don't have HTML for her yet sooooooooo ... bear with me xD
He, too, has been dropped at the playground pretty much against his will. It is not hard to imagine his uncle telling him to go socialize with others of his own age, that he has to learn that he couldn’t be around his mother all the time, and that he definitely had no more right to his mother than anybody else. Drustan disagrees, but hadn’t been able to do anything as his grandmother had fluidly led Vi away.
His pale blue eyes burn in their backs as their silhouettes become smaller and smaller. Maybe he should just run to catch up, to plead his mother to let him stay – Vi didn’t like it when he moved out of hearing distance anyway – but knowing his family, Dru knows it probably wouldn’t work. His hoof stomps on the ground, annoyed, and he shakes his horned head.
What to do now?
His gaze slowly moves across the playground, and the sight has him momentarily forgetting about what had just happened. The trees and ponds are very different than his home, and Drustan soon notices he isn’t the only one around. Most are already playing. Running after one another in a game of tag, others splashing in the shallow pond and rushing after whatever lives in it, but one girl is standing alone.
She sparks his curiosity enough. Golden and white, very different from his own dark pelt. “Who’re you?” he bluntly asks, pausing a couple of meters away from her.
Drustan.
if the sky could dream, it would dream of dragons
devin's∇designs
@[Adria]
He's kinda a bit all over the place, I hope the next one will be better! Still attempting to figure him out..
/aka how to write a neutral-dark character.
06-22-2018, 03:05 PM (This post was last modified: 06-22-2018, 03:05 PM by Adria.)
Adria
Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky
Adria had watched him approach and thought of perhaps a million things to say, some ranging from questions about his horns to questions about his parents, but when the roan colt comes to a standstill in front of her and asks, Who’re you? Adria can’t seem to manage her words. “I’m,” she begins, the dark crease of her forehead bending with the effort of remembering her name, “well I’m a filly!” She spits out at last, taking a shy step backwards.
From all her months spent on Ischia’s shores she’s never really seen another foal with such obvious traits. To be fair, the little sabino buckskin hasn’t really seen any foals to speak of, only mother and father. It’s infuriating and a bit embarrassing that she can speak to them so easily, but when it comes to this dark, horned boy the cat had her tongue in knots. “My … my name is Adria.” The girl offers, after a few moments of hesitance.
Politely, her ears tip towards the roguish youngster her age and she extends her neck - pink nostrils fluttering with excited, airy breaths.
“Who’re you, and how’d you get those horns?”
@[Drustan] Same for her xD I'm still trying to get a handle on her reaction to 'new faces'
Her lack of words confuse him. His horned head tilts to the side ever so slightly as his pale blue eyes lock on her almost matching ones. Doesn’t she know who she is? Finally she parts her lips, and speaks, but the answer does not follow as she falls silent almost right away. Drustan does not elaborate, just keeps looking at her rather intensely, trying to figure out what is wrong with her as silence stretches. Her answer does not really help her case either.
“I know..” he replies. Why would she tell him she’s a filly? He had been able to tell meters away. But oh, hey, she does have a name after all. However, it is not the name he’s interested in.
As she extends her neck, he steps forward to closes the distance between them. His dark muzzle reaches out to touch hers, his nostrils fluttering in an equal way as he breathes her in. When he pulls away, the blue roan colt does not step back, just raises his head in a way that has his neck curving. “I’m Drustan,” he tells her without hesitation.
Now it is his turn to collect his thoughts. His head tilts – yet again – causing the pointy things coming from his head to tilt sideways too. “Mom says I got them from my dad..” he eventually says with a shrug of his shoulders. Drustan had never met his sire, so who knows what that actually meant. “She says it’s a good thing they only started to grow after a couple of days.” Otherwise he would’ve ripped her apart during his birth.
Well, he’s not critical. Adria breathes a rather deep sigh of relief that bends the grass beneath them as Drustan arcs his neck out to greet her, and she feels a few of her nerves settles when he chooses to remain close. From here on out, the gold-laced-white filly is determined to just be herself as mother had said and she begins by perking her small ears towards him while he speaks.
“Oh, I see!” The girl nods, flashes of her own sire’s serrated teeth coming to mind. It would make sense then that Drustan should have such oddish things; suddenly her eyes are locked on them and she wishes that she had oddish things too. “And I agree with her … they look sharp.” Adria tells him, about as reverent as a child could manage to be. Meanwhile, her lilac-colored gaze roams over their pale, rough surface.
“Sometimes I get scales, but only when I go swimming.” The filly chirps, turning a shy cheek away from him to look at just about anything else. “Sometimes Scales” weren’t cool - horns were. “Do you ever swim?” She asks slowly, angling her fine little head back towards the shore she came from.
He was tired of Raul. His brother had gone straight to the worst case scenario as soon as he could, and now he wouldn't shut up about mom being dead. The parchment brother disagreed. If mother had been killed, they would have found her body, or blood, or something. They'd found nothing, and so Tana chose to believe that she was still out there. Somewhere.
He'd gotten sick of his brother though, and had wandered away that morning in a gift after Raul had finally said it. He'd finally called them orphans. Urg. His wings had carried him away until the earth opened up under him, and his head felt clearer in the thin air. A little tired, the colt stumbled in a sun faded meadow where others his age seemed gathered. He was mildly relieved to discover that he was familiar with no one. That was until a scent he recognized played across his nose. It smelled like him.
Nostrils twitching, the colt followed the scent trail to its source. Another colt, like and unlike him, with three beginnings of horns piercing his skull. The darker boy was talking to a female, prettily marked but otherwise ordinary in appearance. Boldly he came forward until he was almost nose to nose with the roan colt, curiosity alive in his mismatched eyes. "Who're you? Your not another brother, are you?" He asked, feeling like he'd had quite enough of brothers for one day. Still, he'd never met anyone like himself before, and had only heard that he'd taken his traits from his father. So... It made sense. They could be brothers. His membranous wings fluttered cautiously as he waited on the others reaction.
It does not even occur to the young dragon boy that stepping back and out of her personal space is the right thing to do. As Adria’s golden ears flick forward, so do his black ones. Her words make him grin mischievous, and before he speaks, he has already tilted his head so it’s easier for her to reach one of the two horns that sprout from his forehead and grow backwards between his ears. “Dare to find out yourself?” Of course, he thinks she wouldn’t be up for it, though he secretly cannot help but hope that she’ll be tempted just enough.
“Scales?” he asks curiously, head tilting as he pulls back to study her. Her coat is sleek enough now, but scales, really? How cool! “Can you show?” Drustan asks shamelessly, taking a small step closer to press his muzzle against her shoulder, to gently – but firmly – urge her towards one of the many ponds in the playground. Yes, he’d asked, but there is no ‘please’, only the assumption Adria would comply.
She is saved by the arrival of another colt. Adria does not get the chance to move – or protest – and Drustan finds himself face to face with a pair of mismatched eyes. On instinct his head rises, and ears flick back as he tries to make himself as big and tough as possible. For a moment the blue roan colt thinks of not answering, but eventually he complies, after snorting loudly. “Drustan. Who’s asking? And not that I know.”
It’s not a lie to say that he’s curious why the pale golden and white colt is asking him that. And really, what does it matter? The only family that matters to him is his mother, as his sire is unknown and he hasn’t met many of his other relatives. “What’s it to you?”
Drustan.
if the sky could dream, it would dream of dragons
devin's∇designs
@[Adria]
@[Santana]
Whoops, this got longer than I planned .. :/
No, she thinks as he tilts his dark and curious head near her, No thanks! Instead she squeals softly, hopping aside with the playful swish of her tail to tell him about her scales and he, surprisingly, seems interested. Drustan would like her to show him (no please or thank you,) and he insists with a gentle nudge but the spotted filly doesn’t speak up in protest. She’s too frozen by shyness and the fact that she likes being nudged by this strange colt.
Only, another foal interrupts them. Exhaling when Drustan turns to face the other youngster, Adria squares her feet and takes a long look at the new boy. He seems so similar and yet so different than Drustan - both of them equally rude, though. She watches the way they size one another up, listening intently to the horned colt’s reply but she doesn’t exactly like it.
“HEY!” She yells suddenly, stamping her hoof. The force of her shout is pure air, strong enough that it blows both Drustan and the Unknown colt’s mane’s into a flurry of action. Atop her pretty head, she’s buried both ears into the dark folds of her neck. “As my mother would say, you two should play nice.”
Shaking from pure nerves, the sudden burst of courageous adrenaline leaving her, Adria wobbles to stand alongside the blue roan and huffs quietly towards their new friend. “Now are you coming or not? I’m gonna show Drustan here my scales. I’m Adria.”
Alright, alright, he'd been a bit rude. Maybe more than a bit. Curiosity had taken hold, however, and it had felt ridiculous to deny it. Now though, they were both giving him affronted looks and he felt his own milky ears tip backwards in response. Frankly he hadn't been keen on the cavalier manner in which the darker colt had been handling the filly. And he was the rude one... "I'm Santana. Or just Tana. Either one." He answered with a half hearted shrug.
Eyeing the horned boy again, he decided he was going to keep an eye on him. Thin tendrils of smoke trickled from his nostrils as an unfamiliar burn bit the back of back of his throat. Danger, danger a little voice in his head cautioned. The instinctive wariness went beyond his equine senses, drawing on a deeper well. Mama had said he'd inherited his pearly wings from his father. Perhaps he'd inherited something else. "I'll play nice if he will." The colt replied with uncharacteristic steel. There was just something about this guy he wasn't sure he liked. And after this morning... well, he wasn't sure he'd say no to a bit of a brawl. Especially with a pretty girl watching. A loud girl, but still.
Shaking his scrubby brush of a mane back into place, the creme colt grinned at her offer. Scales? So she wasn't so ordinary after all. His tail flickered in excitement as he nodded his head, following the other two to the nearest pond gamely. The smoke that had filled his throat just a minute ago faded as the subject turned, until he almost believed it hadn't happened at all. With a little twinge he wished mother was here again. She'd know what had happened.
When she squeals and hopes asides, he playfully follows behind her. “You sure? Your last chance” he teases her with perhaps a bit too much enthusiasm. He does not follow her movement for more than a couple of steps, and his game of chase is long forgotten when she tells him about the scales. Drustan did expect her to move at his nudge, but finds himself puzzled as she stands frozen and suddenly all shy.
He cannot help his somewhat hostile reaction. This pale colt, whose presence and aura scream something at him that he cannot yet decipher (danger), has interrupted his time with Adria. And Drustan had quite looked forward to seeing her scales. Santana’s half-hearted reply does not ease him either. His lips part to offer another snarky reply, when a blast of air hits them.
Puzzled he blinks his sapphire eyes a couple of times, his gaze slowly finding Adria to look at her both surprised and amazed, his ears now pinned forward. Santana beats him to it by replying first, agreeing to play nice if Drustan would too, which is met with a shrug of the blue roan colt’s shoulders. “Sure,” he mutters (thinks whatever) eyes still locked on Adria. His next question soon spills from his lips, “How did you do that?” After all, that does interest him much more than her lecture about playing nice.
His horned head tilts as he watches her wobble, reaching out to touch her neck, with the intention of steadying her. He glances at Santana out of the corner of his eyes, but her words soon capture his attention. “You’ll show them?” he asks, perhaps a little too eager. He does not need more encouraging to ‘play nice’ as he follows her to the nearest body of water.
![[Image: drustan_by_devinsxdesigns-dclvkwd.gif]](https://orig00.deviantart.net/ed69/f/2018/245/1/c/drustan_by_devinsxdesigns-dclvkwd.gif)
