"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's a guarantee that he won't forget me. my body little, my soul heavy.
Citizen of Beqanna, wanderer of the unruled lands, now resident of Nerine: Naia, black and gold and bitter like the taste that never leaves her mouth. Not really a resident if I’m always avoiding being there. Her thoughts are as cruel as ever, her inner self corned by bloodied and ravenous wolves. She cowers within, wincing beneath the weak shadows her wolves can see directly through.
It won’t be long now; no, not long at all.
Whatever callous god that demands Naia bow is no matter: will she ever learn? Her restlessness seeps deeper and deeper into her muscles, pushing her further from Nerine by the minute. Her steps grow faster, a brisk walk melting into a practiced trot, then a hurried canter -
Am I galloping?
Naia comes to a scuffling stop, her breathe loud as her chest rises and falls violently. Piles of pine needles and damp soil formed at her front hooves when she halted, which she kicks away with a dramatic huff. The Tephra and Taiga border is close to where she stops: the sweet smell of the pine and the salty smell of the sulfur mingling in her nostrils. She peers through the redwoods to where they mix and soon end with the Tephra foliage. Naia does not belong here, not amongst the towering trees and not protected by the heat of the volcano. Sighing, she turns her head back to where she came, but the thought of the briney smell of Nerine leaves her nauseous.
At the border, the appaloosa whickers - not particularly looking for company but hoping she will be invited in to explore.
01-05-2019, 03:56 AM (This post was last modified: 01-05-2019, 03:58 AM by Chryseis.)
you were a vision in the morning when the light came through, i know i've only felt religion when i've lied with you and i'm still waking every morning but it's not with you
.
For the first time in her life, she didn’t really have a home.
She had multiple places she could go. She could go back to Hyaline, or even to the Cove, although she had never actually been there, but she knows Kagerus and Solace wouldn’t mind. She could stay at Icicle Isle, with Breckin, but obviously that meant her father would be there, too. Nerine had recently felt more like a prison, rather than a home. She loved her father – that wasn’t the problem. What she couldn’t handle was the way he was suddenly smothering her, so incredibly afraid of her being hurt that he can hardly stand to let her even breathe.
Chryseis hadn’t completely decided yet if she was staying in Tephra with Rhaegor, permanently, but it was better than any of her other options at the moment. She had freedom to wander, without being followed, or lectured after she returned. Rhaegor knew trying to keep her contained was futile – she had been chaotic since the day she was born.
Today, however, she has decided to venture outside of Tephra, for the first time in a few days. Rhaegor was busy, and because she didn’t want Magnus to think she was some giggly, lovestruck girl (which, she kind of was) that just followed him everywhere, she was finding her own entertainment. She steps lightly over the lava fields, which reminded her a little bit of the mountainous terrain of Hyaline, and she wonders if that’s where her legs are going to take her. She didn’t often put much thought into where she was going; she just traveled, and usually got sidetracked by something, or someone.
Even being winter, Tephra was warm, and her blue roan coat had begun to smooth and slicken even though the rest of Beqanna was much cooler. The further she traveled from the volcano, the cooler the air became, and by the time she reaches the border of Tephra and Taiga, it is almost a different world. The forest lays stretched before her, daunting in the way it looks like a wall of shadow and pine. She is about to mindlessly cross into it, when she hears a sound - a soft call, one that sounded a little unsure.
Sliding to a stop, she turns her gold-blazed face, her eyes settling on the spotted filly. She is immediately reminded of her little sister, Eurwen, and the resemblance is a little uncanny – this girl obviously doesn’t look like Breckin, but there was still something about her that just seemed familiar. She offers her a smile, bright and inviting, just as she does to everyone. ”Hi!” By now she has turned and is walking towards her, a little bit cautiously, as she tries to gauge the other girl’s reaction, wondering if perhaps she was just returning home, or if she was a newcomer. ”I’m Chryseis. Do you live in Tephra?”
01-17-2019, 01:27 PM (This post was last modified: 01-17-2019, 01:28 PM by naia.)
it's a guarantee that he won't forget me. my body little, my soul heavy.
One could not quite call her forlorn, though her tensed and feminine form is certainly dwarfed by the towering redwoods that still linger. Perhaps she is hesitant. Naia thinks differently: angry and pathetic are her adjectives of choice, those descriptions igniting the fire of self-pity in the pit of her chest. The border is an invisible line taunting her (you don’t belong, you’ll never belong, not here or anywhere). Thick golden hair slaps against the filly’s nape as she shakes her head, a desperate attempt to silence herself. The echoing laughter in her mind is something she might never escape.
Hooves scraping against the soft soil of Tephra interests Naia: perhaps someone to invite her in? Her eyes have the slow drift of an unmotivated individual when she turns to catch the smile of the one approaching. The smallest spark of interest changes her gaze: they mirror each other, gold highlighted by a dark background in their own ways. Certainly just a coincidence, though, for Beqanna has plenty of wild colors running amuck.
Naia flicks her tail against her hocks with a few quick snaps. The name Chryseis sounds familiar, though the filly cannot quite place who would have mentioned her. The desire to ask intrusive questions is creeping up her throat like a determined itch, but she subdues it with a quick swallow and a terse smile. Even the girl’s friendly nature cannot draw out a kinder Naia - especially when it appears she has locked herself into an ongoing conversation.
“I do not live in Tephra - I live in Nerine.”
A short silence follows, Naia flicking her eyes over Chryseis in cool consideration. She may be a little socially inept, but she is not entirely rude; so she offers her name.
“I’m sorry, I’m just looking to take a break from Nerine. My name is Naia. I was hoping to be allowed to explore Tephra.” Her words are silk off of her tongue, no trace of the doubt that poisons her veins and twists her innards. Her eyes leave Chryseis’, tracing the colorful flowers that begin to sprout just a few feet behind the roan woman.
you were a vision in the morning when the light came through, i know i've only felt religion when i've lied with you and i'm still waking every morning but it's not with you
.
Her eyes linger on the gold that graces the other girl, and if she is suspicious, she doesn’t let it show. After first meeting all of her half-siblings, it wouldn’t surprise her if there were more she didn’t know about. Her father had also more or less said that he lacked self-control at one point and had had multiple sexual partners with little to no intention of following up afterward, so it was likely he had more children he wasn’t aware of either. However, gold also was not limited to simply her family; this girl could have been anyone. But as soon as she mentions Nerine, her curiosity is piqued further. Her eyes flash suddenly to her face, and she was studying her a little more closely, though she tried to be discreet – which, granted, has never been Chryseis’ strong suit There was a part of her that missed Nerine, but mainly, she was confused on how she had lived there for over a year and never seen this girl before. And she was accented with gold.
”I used to live in Nerine,” she offers lightly, a mildly amused simper edging across her black lips when she says, ”Tephra is also where I ended up when I left there.” Of course, it hadn’t really been by accident; how could she possibly end up anywhere else, besides directly next to Rhaegor? But much like Nerine, Tephra didn’t really feel like home; nowhere ever did. Perhaps she did inherit some of her mother’s wayward soul, in that sense. Tephra was beautiful, but so were Hyaline, and Nerine, and even Ischia although she hadn’t actually lived there. Rhaegor was the closest thing she’d ever had to a home.
She asks if she can come into Tephra, and her smile lights into a laugh, as she steps aside in a gesture of allowing her to pass. ”I mean, I don’t see why not? I just walked in and Magnus didn’t kick me out.” The blue roan mare turns, then, taking a few steps in the direction of Tephra’s volcano, before tipping her gold-blazed face back to make sure she was following. ”So,” she begins a little hesitantly, but unable to set aside a lingering question, she finally asks, ”Why do you feel like you need a break from Nerine?”
