"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
02-07-2019, 12:18 PM (This post was last modified: 02-07-2019, 12:33 PM by Eurwen.)
Eurwen
the secret to walking on water is knowing where the rocks lie
Life, she thinks, can take so many weird turns. Like this one. Put a girl outside her comfort zone, just to see what happens. Have her grow up and shrink down, like it’s nothing, and expect her to grow from it. Give her some magic and a pretty look to compensate the horrors.
But it’s not like she ever really forgets.
She hasn’t seen Dagen or Brazen since those days. She wonders if they’re okay, if they’re all right, but mostly the yearling can wonder if either or both of them had chosen to stay adults. Life might be easier for them if they had. Independent from overprotective parents. People looking up to them? She can only wonder.
Now she has people looking at her, too, but moreso with expectations of her to grow and learn how to rule.
How does one learn to lead? As far as she is concerned it’s either in her or it isn’t. That’s just something she’ll need to find out. Sometimes she thinks it was the wrong choice and she should be allowed to stay a child.
But she was never really a child to begin with. Careful more than curious and the one time she was more curious, it had been easy for her to see why being careful was much better.
Healthier.
She wanders outside of Nerine today, the kingdom of rocks in the sea. It is sometimes a little too similar to the Cove for her, even though it is much rougher around the edges.
But she knows that with time even sharp rocks will grow smooth, and perhaps the same goes for her and the Nerinian people.
And perhaps with time she’ll be a good heir, even a good queen.
For now, she steals whatever time she has, a little ways away. Far enough to try thinking of something else, she hopes.
Life is a fickle beast – a thing to be mourned and feared. (but frolicked with; oh always frolicked with). Life, like most things (like He), gives and takes. It will take your comfort, your down soft memories and innocence of pearls (take it all, skin it alive, pray for the best). But it will give; give you your dusk flecked body, your sun tinged skin, your melding of stone and ire. You will grow, life will flow (giveandtakeandtake) – and you will learn.
There is much to be hung on expectations – a hat rack settled so surely in the corner, always there (rarely used). What will you be? What will you do? What will you etch so permanently in those stubborn rock walls? You can stray as far as you might, fighting the tide of the kingdom, but there is always that tether (that title- heiress, heiress, heiress). Will it be inside you – a warrior waiting to spring forth from your mother’s rib – or will it fester like a wound (failure feels hot on your skin)? “You cannot escape the mind, my little rose-thing.” He comes forth (as foreboding as your future), His dark skin clashing so violently with yours (giveandtake). Your venture (escape?) has led to you to your future (your fall?). “Such a far way to come to still have them embittered inside you.” He could take too, you know. He could take each and every one so delicately from your mind – the give and take, the ebb and flow.
Life- it takes, oh yes it takes so damn much. But life also gives you Him.
the secret to walking on water is knowing where the rocks lie
She’s young still, but not so bold and daring as most of her age - never had been, but perhaps her life not being easy on her had also caused her to mature... prematurely. But the past is unchangeable, and there’s no way to know what she had been if events had been different. Such, in the end, is life.
And it’s not bad, per say. She could only grow. From her past experiences, but moreso from the present ones. Babysitting, talking to the residents of Nerine - asking their opinions, wondering what upsets them and what eases them, what makes one choose this kingdom over another. She’s curious enough, for things like that; just not very extrovert. She approaches softly and leaves just like that; it’s much the same in the meadow, where she ventured just to be away (but, that she also views as such a public place that it provides the comfort of normalcy, of simply grazing and of small talk, and then leaving). If she meets no-one new today, that’s fine, and if she gets to chat with someone who will distract her, then that too.
But she’s never careless and when a large, mature stallion (to her young self, he looks old but she wouldn’t actually say so - her sister might) approaches, she is wary. Perhaps it is in the way he adds the possesive word, ‘my little rose-thing’ isn’t something she takes all too well to.
Now, he could have just read her face when he says that she cannot escape her mind. But to know how far she’s come (or did he guess?) she isn’t quite sure what to think. His wording is... unique, that way.
She is quiet, when the deep dark of her eyes skid over him in an attempt to place him (she finds that she cannot - not without further conversing) - the only think dark about her appearance, and even that with a warmth to it. A small smile grazes him, before she answers. ”It’s not about escaping.” Escaping wouldn’t be possible, or she would not have had memories as soon as she crossed a border. (That’s a silly thought.) She wouldn’t even want to - her retreats are of self-exploration, about puzzling what has happened together - in a sense: to process, analyze, and then to find a goal, if she might be so lucky. She wouldn’t miss it for the world; but as a natural introvert, she needs some time to deal with it all.
Not unlike her older sister would sometimes need to stop playing to cough and catch her breath, she would think.
His word-choice still resonates inside her mind, until the question she wants to ask, pops up. ”Why would you say they’re bitter?”
02-13-2019, 10:20 AM (This post was last modified: 02-13-2019, 10:24 AM by Eight.)
no matter what they say, I am still the king
Things can be changed - can be melded and folded like a supple, searing metal. Nothing is ever quite set in stone- at least, not when there is some kind of might flowing through your veins, such as He has. There is little that can be undone, there is not much that can’t be swayed. What would you have budded into, had events unfolded differently?
You are poised and succinct in your age, as if you were plucked from the womb and placed into the world with purpose. No, there was no time for you to frolic like a child. No time for playthings and jousting jests with others akin. While they grow from gangly-legged does, to more sturdy juveniles, you grow in another way. You are an oyster opening your mouth, begging for the grit of life of others to create your pearl. You seek out something stranger than what you have known - you are a twisting mix of yearning for life’s lessons, and content to be on your own. How strange, how strange.
There are few who feel at ease near Him, and for good reason. He is a mercurial beast - mellifluous one moment, and marring your mind the next. It is no surprise that you are no different. He moves as if there is no question that what he wants, is His (you are not excluded from this category). It is good to be wary, to sidestep his possession, to query how He knows so much without speaking. You are not wrong to be unsure of quite who He is, or where He may have come from. The question is - how much do you worry? You are not young and bold, shirking off the idea that nothing bad in this world exists. But have you proverbially aged enough to know just how dangerous He before you could be?
Such a self-reflecting thing you are. Steadily digesting the actions of your days; stealing away to rest with them peacefully (to learn, to grow, to flourish). Wise beyond your years, perhaps. He no longer does this - He has nothing to reflect on, to divulge of his days. They all weave into one another in the same way. Day in - day out - He ages, years yawning before Him, but can He truly learn much else? The world is bound to Him through magic, he is all-seeing, all-knowing; it would be a delight for something new and unknown to bound into his world.
Perhaps you, little rose-dusted thing, would be something new?
Your mind reels - still too young to learn how to not sift easily from one thought to the next. “Try as one may; you cannot keep all resentment from memories.” Not an answer you were looking for from Him, maybe. But an answer nonetheless. Your mind clouds slightly, and he hears the echo of a cough (your sister, He sees, no doubt her body swimming with the plague). “Bitter may be a mischosen word. There’s certainly enough inside your head.” He moves fluidly past you as he speaks, a silent invitation for a walk through the hot summer land. “Trouble at home?” Was your sister gulping down blood yet? Was her skin roiling in the rot? Had she given it to you, yet? Or was that a trouble still around the corner?
the secret to walking on water is knowing where the rocks lie
She contemplates. She carefully weighs. The man in front of her is not ordinary, though in perhaps a different way that she herself isn't ordinary. Her childlike youth cut short, most time spent in adolescence, indeed. In becoming something. Something that had not yet finished growing, but took a liking to some that she already knew.
He says something. Assumes that she is trying to ditch all her feelings and separate it from the memory, as far as she can tell. Her head slightly tilts. It might be that that is what he did to his memories; detach. That might be what he (nearly) is now - a shell of the past only looking for the future, but she's not looking to become like him. She's sure of that, although she cannot pinpoint what exactly she would like to become instead; but time would tell.
He also tells her that he reads her mind, though in not so many words. Now she is indeed wary, because the same cannot be said the other way around. A shy and easily-scared girl like she used to be, now actually had cause to be afraid. Yet she comes no further than wary, because he's a mystery just as well. Yet his steps are not followed, the simple gesture now inviting her perhaps a step too far. She shakes her head at his question, though it might as well be denying him herself, her loyalty, following in his footsteps.
For sure, with any other girl this probably would have worked. He posed enough of a mystery to be solved to spark her curiosity, a simple kindness in joining her for a walk, yet she - she's different. Always had been, never had cared to be. Her sister would have followed, would have pushed further and beyond. But they're not alike, they're night and day, even if the rose-spotted girl indeed has caught the spark of infection - from her, from Him, from any other horse in the Meadow, or in Nerine - she's not hallucinative enough to just go along with a stranger in the Meadow.
Heck, she doesn't even know his name, and she has the awful suspicion that he knows hers.
@[Eight] sorry for the lateness, I moved this slightly forward to her having caught the plague but having no symptoms yet since I got her rolled for
