"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
Most days, most days stay the sole same Please stay, for this fear it will not die Down low, down amongst the thorn rows Weeds grow, through the lilies and the vines
West - she spends her days going west. The pull is incessant, resembling an old magic with whom she has become unacquainted due to death and rebirth. In the limited understanding allowed to her these first months, she tries not to question much, instead obeying the powerful urge to travel west.
The lands are not as her childish mind remembers them, for she spent the majority of her life and indeed the entirety of her childhood in pre-Reckoning Beqanna; so when unfamiliar lands and their accompanying smells pass her by, Noori worries.
Vaguely she remembers dark powers being afoot in this new land, or else something akin to death; she thinks of the pale mare she found by the riverside some weeks ago, of how the blood dripped from her nostrils and how her every bone could be read through the thin veil of her dying skin. Noori wonders sometimes if she, too, had been dying of a sickness; but for now the child remains untouched by the contagion, and her weak mind abandons the somber topic after only a moment's retrospection.
Upon the dawn of her second week traveling westward, a new scent bombards her thin bark nostrils: ash. At first she balks, turning and fleeing out of pure instinct; the smell of burning is akin to the smell of melting flesh to a horse comprised of wood and spring. It takes hours and courage from what remains of her adult-self for the tiny porcelain nymph to reappear from whence she ran, trembling and wide-eyed in an unblinking green glow of a stare. With each step towards Tephra, the dark green glow emanating from the depths of the blood red cracks lining the pale white of her bark flesh strengthens, pulsating and reverberating as she approaches her final destination.
As she nears the base of the volcano, that incessant pull that she has felt since her rebirth finally ceases: whatever she came here for is wont to find her soon. Exhausted and still troubled by the scent of burning, Noori walks tightly in a circle before collapsing in a heap, eyes finally closing. With the sun high overhead, the dogwood flowers lining the red willow-fronds of her mane and tail slowly open, accepting the energy of the celestial fixture with the efficiency of one a hundred times her age.
12-08-2018, 10:16 PM (This post was last modified: 12-08-2018, 10:40 PM by Daemron.)
At her bidding, Daemron had begrudgingly left Pyxis and the twins to go out in search of Lupine at dawn. He has spent hours scouring the ashen kingdom, cursing his nephew under his breath. Lupine, indeed. He huffed sourly. There was nothing wolfish about the young colt. Not only was his second form that of a small black kitten, but his impish disregard for authority was decidedly cat-like, too – and as such, their very natures were in complete opposition.
Still, while the chestnut stallion felt no small measure of chagrin towards Lupine’s outright defiance, he did share Pyxis’ concern for the boy. His nephew obviously didn’t understand the dangers to which he could be exposed by insisting on running away like this. Considering the plague that was rampant just beyond Tephra’s borders, the wolves the colt seemed to dislike so much would be the least of his worries.
Yet he hates being apart from his own family – from Pyxis, and from Brigade and Wonder. Having felt that they were somehow exposed without him, he’d left a small guard of Tephran wolves behind; a scrappy grey with distinct scarring across his muzzle, an impressionable tawny brown, and a mottled black who was quite clever despite being long in the tooth. Three with whom he had become most familiar in Red’s continued absence.
His brow tightens at the thought. Now more than ever, he needed the maned wolf here – but when he stretched his consciousness to its very reaches, there hadn’t been the slightest twinge to signal her presence. Years ago, with Pyxis, she had left of her own volition. This time, however, he had sent her away. It made him uneasy. Moodily pushing aside any speculation as to what could have happened to her out there, he ploughs on.
As he rounds the base of the volcano, head low to the grasses in case Lupine was hiding among them, he comes upon a different child entirely. For a moment, he doesn’t believe what his eyes tell him. He remains quite still, so near that he breathes in the familiar fragrance of dogwood blossoms and observes the willow of her hair (a prelude to his own), seeing the distinctively cracked and glowing flesh of bark that could only belong to one person –
Most days, most days stay the sole same Please stay, for this fear it will not die Down low, down amongst the thorn rows Weeds grow, through the lilies and the vines
As the sun bears down on the small lump of white wood and pale green-centered flowers, a stranger approaches. At least, Noori interprets the sound of the hooves colliding with the rock-strewn earth as such, figuring in her delusioned youth that no one truly knows of her. Though she holds some memories of her past life, the clarity with which she views them is not yet enough to allow her any true grip on how that reality and this one intermingle - she cannot identify who is who to her then, for these days, everyone is new to the her she is now.
The walking stops, and a familiar scent overrides the smell of ash. The tree stump's nostrils wiggle from where they are lodged between her knees; but her exhaustion momentarily demands her attention, successfully convincing her to ignore the smell and the silence. Fluttering between the land of dreams and the land where a volcano nearby spews ash and smoke, Noori's dogwood flowers shift lazily in the breeze, happily drinking up the powerful rays of light which re-energize the alien creature.
Mother?
That word, however, sufficiently rouses the babe.
Mother? She thinks to herself. Mother...
With a subtle cracking sound, she unfurls. Legs stretch and neck straightens, the motion of it absurdly tree-like as the process of awakening begins. The strange, lethargic movement continues for nearly a minute before her eyes open wide enough to see, and her legs move quickly enough to bring her to her hooves. When at last she does stand before the familiar stallion, it is with a frown of wonder and with parted, girlish lips.
Words bubble somewhere in the deep recesses of her conscious mind, but for now, they fail her.
Instead, the magician calls forth a creature whom she immediately recognizes but cannot immediately describe; it takes less time than she anticipated for the thing to obey her command. It must be eager, having lurked nearby. When it arrives, a sharp whine pierces the air between mother and son, perhaps sensing the tension that Noori cannot. He warns her with his cry, but she neglects to hear it.
The wolf is small, scrawnier than those which Daemron has been surrounding himself with as of late; a male, as black as night with luminous yellow eyes. His lips part and come together again in a show of need and submission, eyes flashing from she who commands him, and to he who he loves. Noori blinks carefully at the canine, then stretches her tiny nose towards him, brushing its firmness against his powerful jaw. Rest, she thinks, and the wolf obeys, falling into a heap of long black legs and closing his eyes immediately.
Noori looks up, considers the chestnut with willow-frond hair.
"Daemron..." she murmurs at last, frowning as the word befalls her lips without her permission or understanding. Needing to grasp on to something that does make sense, she looks sharply to the wolf, then back at her son. "You neglect members of your pack... why?" Something must be busying him, busying his mind; she wonders, uselessly, just what that which worries him may be.
He watches in dubious silence as his foal-mother unfurls and rises before him, impossibly small and as childlike as his twins. The prospect is an uncomfortable one, and a muscle jumps in the chestnut’s jaw while the glow of her gaze passes over him with vague familiarity. Her girlish brow wrinkles as if deep in thought, and from some yards away there is a rustling of underbrush. At the sound, Daemron’s eyes finally veer away from the disturbing child-version of Noori to see the creature she has summoned.
For a moment, the small black form that emerges might have been mistaken for his nephew – yet the scent that hits his nostrils isn’t feline, belonging instead to a bedraggled wolf pup whom he’s never seen before. The whine that the dog emits is one of need; yet he turns at his name, at the accusation that slips from the tongue of a babe, at how it sounds exactly like the mother he’d come to resent. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he growls under his breath.
If it weren’t for her obviously disordered state, Daemron might have unleashed a few more choice sentences he has dreamed up over the years – but as it was, he bites his tongue and swallows hard against the bitterness that resurfaces all too easily. After all, neglecting members of the pack had been her specialty, not his. His father, his brother and sister – everything had unravelled, and he has come to believe that it was because of her. As a boy, he had always suspected her of lies; though even as a man he has yet to learn the truth.
(A pack unravelled from the start).
“This one isn’t mine,” he responds in a cutting tone. The sound of her small voice slinging underhanded blame still rings in his ears, and he nearly snarls, “What the hell happened to you?” Curled in the grasses at their feet, the black pup whines again. Thoughtlessly he reaches for the young wolf’s consciousness – tells it to leave – but his command wars against his mother’s, and the creature yelps feebly, it’s body shaking with confusion.
“Let him go,” he orders, his voice coming low from between clenched teeth. Despite the resentment he harbours like coals that smoulder blackly in his chest, Daemron knows what must be done – and he’d be damned if he had to take in two strays today. “We’re leaving.” Abruptly he turns, striding off through the ashen field, his mood as dark as the cloud of smoke that spews from the volcano behind him. When he doesn’t hear her following, he pauses to glower over his shoulder. “Now, mother.”
It seems as though Noori made the wrong decision – but are any of us surprised? Mouth agape and pupilless eyes blinking, the reborn child lays claim to ignorance, as is her usual wont when the consequences of her actions make themselves apparent. Not even the literalness of her youth could excuse her insolence in this instant, and yet, she clings to it; finds herself spiraling further into a childish persona, so far that she fails to even remember what the name Daemron means to her and her past life.
She is lucky, in this way, that Daemron bites his tongue and resolves to yell at her later. When she can no longer justify her actions under the pretense of youth and, later, insanity.
This one isn’t mine. The petals of Noori’s flowers close abruptly, as if stung by what the Noorison’s words. Their cutting edge brings sap to the nymph’s depthless eyes, its stickiness causing the droplets to fall at both an amusing and a pathetic pace. What the hell happened to you? Sniveling, Noori dared herself to raise her eyes from Daemron’s hooves to his face, but only succeeded to stare at the angrily expanding and contracting width of his chest. It will have to do.
“I died, I think…” Her voices trembles, its pitch whiny and uncertain; as she continues, however, it descends directly into a wet kind of hysteria. “If I could only re-re-relax, I think I would re-remember more-re.”
Of course, what happens next does little to help her; but she has done little with her life to merit any help, even from those who came from her womb. As her control over the wolf is challenged for, a feeble yelp escapes her, and yet, a listener would not feel more than perhaps one twinge of guilt. Even with sap streaming down her face and with her knees now firmly planted in the dirt as she barely maintains control, one would not feel bad for one’s actions. The wolf cries, but it feels to Noori as though the keening comes from her own lips.
The Noorison commands her let go; her obedience is immediate. For a moment, the wolf pup’s retreating footsteps fills the silence, each beat felt in the veins of the fallen goddess. She imagines for a moment that her life shall continue like this forever, her existence caught in hyperspace with only the dirt around her knees, the sap in her nose, and the footfalls of a forgotten pup to guide the rhythm of her heart; but, such things are not to be. She doesn’t deserve something so placid.
We’re leaving.
Now, mother.
Feeling a sob building in the back of her throat, Noori attempts to lift a leg – and slips in the dirt, falling flat on her side. She sees stars as her breath fails her. When at last she manages to gulp the air into her desperate lungs, a high-pitched wail emits from her girlish lips, though the sound is anything but sweet and simpering.
“What did I do wroo-hong-hooong, pleeeeeease, I d-d-don’t understa-haand-haaand, uh-huh, I’m uh-huh uh-huh sorryyyyy-hee-hee…”
Suffice to say, she fails to follow, rooted as she is betwixt the dirt and the misery she has sown for herself.
This girlish version of his mother is all sap and sorrow, but Daemron stubbornly refuses to let her tears shake him – at least visibly, for there is something in her stuttering voice that speaks of genuine confusion – but how can he trust her? What if this was just another ploy of hers? Thus hardened by his resolve, he remains unmollified; that is, until he looks back and witnesses the child slip and fall flat upon the earth, the humid air suddenly rife with her high and keening cries.
Sufficiently discomposed, the wolfson circles back with a flustered sigh, coming to stand before the small and miserable heap of twig and leaf splayed prostrate at his feet. The child’s head lolls quite pitifully in the dirt, and the iron of his gaze tempers some. After all, while perturbed, he was a father now — he wasn’t completely immune to a child’s cries. There was nothing for it. He would have to console his own mother, though a part of him begrudges her even this. Once lost, Daemron’s loyalties were not easily regained; still, beneath the grit and steel of him it cannot be said that he is heartless.
Lowering his head to Noori’s level, his grey eyes square with her from behind a distinctively crooked blaze. The sap-ridden visage that lifts to his is muddled and bleary. Forcing himself to refrain from guessing whether those tears are genuine, the chestnut works to quiet the treegirl’s sobs. “I won’t be made to leave you alone here, mother.” There is a sternness to his voice that is meant to sound rough — yet perhaps his words are softened by the touch pressed briefly to the cracked bark of a young shoulder. “Not like this.” The irony of this situation is not lost on him – yet now that their roles had truly reversed, he felt he had something of a point to prove.
(To her? Or to himself?)
“I have a family now, you know.” No thanks to you. Daemron suppresses the last, drawing instead upon thoughts of Pyxis and their twins — and while he looks upon her, the harshness of his gaze lessens around the edges. Perhaps the stallion allows himself to see his own children in her stead for just a moment. “You’ll meet them, if you come with me.” Daemron doesn’t quite know how he’ll explain this to Pyxis, not to mention Brigade or Wonder. He had never cared to entertain the idea of introducing them to their paternal grandparents – though he supposes he would have to entertain it now.
Finally, the little sapling’s weeping abates, and she follows him out from under the volcano’s shadow on spindled whitebark legs. For his part, Daemron says little and falls to brooding. There wasn’t any point in dredging up a past Noori didn’t remember, and little else existed between them that could pass for common ground. Eventually they broach a familiar copse of trees and come upon his antlered mate. There is little to do now except grit his teeth and introduce Pyxis to his mother, god help him. God help them all.
He goes to her, huffs a breath against the warm slope of her in wordless greeting, though she would undoubtedly sense the brooding on him. With a tight-lipped look, he glances from Pyxis to Noori; but again, there was nothing for it. “Pyxis, this is Noori.” She would recognize the name, though she might understandably find the childlike figure attached to it somewhat confusing. He tries to explain. “Obviously, she’s not herself – something must have happened to her. She says she died, but she isn’t talking sense. I had to bring her with me.”
daemronlost to the hunt as I was to you
@[pyxis] because I felt like dragging you into this, sorry not sorry.
she'll lie and steal and cheat and beg you from her knees make you thinks she means it this time
Pyxis is growing into her role as a mother. It doesn’t come to her as easily as it comes to some, but she still embraces it. She still slips into the role and is able to configure it to suit her best. She doesn’t busy herself with watching them. Doesn’t force them to stay near, although she remains insistent that they stay within Tephra to remain safe, and she doesn’t reduce her own days to catering to their needs. She lets them run wild with the wolves, growing up tough and strong and independent.
But, regardless, she cares for them.
She watches them from afar and feels a strange warmth in her chest. When they come back, covered in wolf fur and wildfires in their eyes, she lets them come and sleep next to her.
And she remains.
She doesn’t run, even when she feels that familiar tug in her belly, that familiar burning in her chest that she should run—that she should shed herself of these responsibilities.
Today, she is relaxed, her icy blue eyes lazy as she grazes on the more lush of Tephra’s vegetation, and she softens even more so when she sees Daemron approaching. He presses into her and she pushes back, her own lips finding the muscular arch of his neck. She can feel the tension in him, the way his jaw is clenched and the shadows in his eyes. He is dangerous like this, she thinks. A storm brewing in him.
It makes her nervous, on edge, and she follows the line of his gaze to the strange child.
“Oh,” she exhales at his introduction, having heard him talk of his mother and knowing the strained relationship between the two. Her face folds into a frown and she simply studies the girl, listening as he explains what he thinks may have happened. “That—that doesn’t make sense.” Another frown clouds her features as she tears her gaze away from the child of spring to Daemron, searching his eyes.
“What can I do to help?”
she'll tear a hole in you, the one you can't repair but I still love her, I don't really care
Most days, most days stay the sole same Please stay, for this fear it will not die Down low, down amongst the thorn rows Weeds grow, through the lilies and the vines
I won't be made to leave you alone, mother. The words are by no means gentle, but their sternness quiets the girl's rampant sobs with a fatherly effectiveness. And indeed, her stuttering gasps are reduced to only whimpers when Daemron's muzzle meaningfully connects with the tiny slope of her shoulder. Not like this.
As a calmness rushes over her, inspired solely by the compassion of the wolfson, some irregular representation of understanding returns to the child. She knows, as she gazes blurrily up at that irregular blaze, that the stallion standing above her is her son. She knows, despite her poor, baby-like senses, that she has hurt him in her past life. And, worst of all, she knows exactly how.
Subdued now, and ready to obey her saviour, the small figure rises up from the dirt and the ash. He mentions family but it is all too clear now just how ironic and painful that is, for him and for her, but especially for both of them together. He needn't even speak the words he thinks for her to know them to her core - but some semblance of her adult self infiltrate's the child's body in the wake of her emotional outbreak, and she clings to the sanity found there as she follows the tall, chestnut stallion to wherever he might choose.
She is tired, despite having photosynthesized prior to Daemron's arrival. That is the price of adulthood, the babe realizes. A constant, undying exhaustion, though due in no part to a lack of sleep.
Eventually, he leads her to an unfamiliar copse of trees, though it smells strongly of him. Words burble into Noori's throat but she stays them as she has for the whole journey to this place, knowing that it would be better to wait for her son's lover to help him recover from what she needs to tell him. Still, the urge to spill it all now and to once again fall into a miserable, pitiful heap is undeniably strong; but she wrestles through it, heart rate increasing drastically as she realizes that which is about to unfurl.
Halting just away from where the mare he approaches stands, Noori watches the two embrace. It is automatically clear that the two hold love for one another in a way that the small creature knows that she does, too - but that information and the name Trekk remain yet elusive, evading her understanding despite her efforts to pinpoint the name. Instead, she is distracted by Daemron's introduction of her; shivering slightly, the girl's green glow intensifies, casting the red which traces the cracks of her alabaster bark a strange, bloody brown.
Pyxis expresses her confusion, and her desire to help; but the exhaustion from before is returning with a vengeance this time, and so Noori makes quick work of something that truthfully required months worth of discussion.
Leave it to her to fuck up the part where she tries to fix her fuck ups.
"Dae," she speaks, the word evidently clearer and more knowledgeable than the ones she'd spoken previously. Raising her sap-stained face to his, the girl's wide, pupilless eyes blink once, and then not again. "I love you, and I'm sorry for being a burden. I am also sorry, because - I lied." No tone of whining or keening enters her voice; she will not again lower herself to the level of begging for pity. "About your father. Eight sired only Cerva. Another stallion sired Nihlus. And your father - is Trekk." She speaks the name, and suddenly realizes that it had been the one evading her memory just minutes before. This revelation does not show on her face, for its white length is somber and, admittedly, tired. "We have many children together... perhaps someday, you can meet them."
Yawning, the adult Noori recedes into a deep, dark, unreachable place at the core of her being. In her place, the girlish nymph is left, blinking in a silly manner at the adults before her. "It was nice to meet you both... Thank you for taking care of me."
And, with sleepy steps, the child clambers over to Dae. Stretching, she kisses his shoulder, and yawns again; and, in the next breath, she plops down to the ground, legs folded neatly beneath her. Before long, the sweet sound of a baby sleeping serenade the couple - the couple, upon whom a bomb has just been dropped.
