"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
06-24-2019, 06:04 PM (This post was last modified: 06-24-2019, 06:05 PM by lilliana.
Edit Reason: updating
)
Lilli isn’t usually timid. She has a ready smile, one that spreads like sunshine. She loves to laugh and is often foolish in the way that young mares can be. But today, today is different. This is a place that she doesn’t know. The land before her is unfamiliar. She hadn’t expected the moment to feel this.. daunting. She wishes for her brave, golden cousin to be beside her – for her to look at Lilli with those amber eyes sparkling and ready, excited to see what would lay beyond them. She can conjure the image so clearly that she can almost see the palomino mare here, wild and bold and beautiful. The dainty ears of the chestnut prick towards the open field below and Lilli shifts uneasily in the shadows, torn between wanting to turn around and to keep moving forward.
Forward is her only choice. She refuses to let the past define her and if she lingers in the shadows of the trees, that is what will happen. The past will entangle her, refuse to let her leave and then keep her there, forgotten, alone, buried in darkness. She hasn’t traveled all this way to look back. She hasn’t sacrificed her family and her heritage to be afraid now. Elena, the crimson girl thinks, light my way now.
Her form stands still for a moment and then with her prayer said, Lilli tries to summon her cousins bravery. One crimson legs comes out into the sunlight, followed by other and suddenly, the sunlight hits her for a moment, blinding, dazzling, warming her. It hits her pelt in the familiar way it always has, sending the pleasurable feeling up and down her spine. She stops for a moment, lifting her head to get a better view of the scenery around her. It’s funny – it’s just another day here as it is anywhere. There are horses grazing, the birds here sing as sweet as they did in the land she had been born. The wind whispers through the branches, causing the leaves to stir and rustle as they always have. She finds some comfort in this.
Icy blue eyes look up, watching those same leaves ripple in the breeze. The sunlight breaks through their openings, inviting Lilli to come further into the long, swaying grasses. She can feel them tracing the underneath of her barrel, can feel feel them reach all around her as if they are embracing her. She no longer has her family around her. Another home has come and gone. One future she had even hoped for has gone with it. And as the long grasses brush around her, she can feel some of that pain that she had been harboring drifting away in the sweet sunshine. Her gait becomes freer, easier almost as if she has begun to trust this place. Perhaps trusting this place so soon is a mistake, but this is Lilliana we are speaking of.
She is a child with a wildflower heart. She is laughter and joy and summer sunshine wrapped up in a crimson pelt. She is a daydreamer and her mind is so often in the clouds that it has been said that she should have been born with wings. This whole thing might have been a mistake. Perhaps this land will offer her nothing more than hardship and trouble. She might even now be sauntering into a mess of her own making.
But that is Lilli – to her, this place (and this moment) are beautiful. And the most beautiful thing of all to her is that even if this is a mistake, it is entirely hers to make. Her own beautiful disaster.
06-24-2019, 07:30 PM (This post was last modified: 06-24-2019, 07:30 PM by Wolfbane.)
ALL THE DOUBT YOU'RE STANDING IN BETWEEN
What did he say to Castile? That being idle wasn’t in his nature? Something like that, maybe a bit more direct but something like that and it was true. Wolfbane has been at the helm of Taiga for perhaps a month now, give or take, and already he feels well enough in his new position to leave the redwood forest just west of here in order to stretch his wings.
The ancient woods aren’t like Loess. They don’t allow winged horses much room to practice and the canopy suspended countless meters above them is usually so thick it’s impossible to breach. But the territory he now controls has a few open spots for casual grazing. Breaks in the tapestry of branches that allow streams of sunlight and a horse not unlike himself to lift off the ground for a quick fly.
He’s relaxed when he takes off, letting his hind legs stretch out. His forelegs, wrapped in the same shimmering blue that gives him stripes and an odd mask, are tucked safely to his girth while his stark white wings lift up and then down in lazy, concentric arcs. Before he’d changed and assumed a new power, Bane had only been able to see little blurs of whatever was down below him when he flew. Now, coasting through a pleasantly blue autumn sky, he can still see everything so clearly.
That’s why he doesn’t miss the random appearance of the chestnut mare, or how her expression seems carefree despite her circumstances. She looks up. Bane looks down, deep into the recesses of her shockingly blue eyes, and then drops from the sky to land waist-deep in a sea of whispering grass.
“Morning.” He says to a few nomads, shaking out his thick neck and feeling the way his stiff, trojanesque mane bends from side-to-side with the motion. They nod and continue on with their business. For them, a blue and gold pegasus is commonplace. He marches on.
When it’s clear that he’s intending to approach her, the chestnut female with a dark nose and a rim of smokey eyeshadow, Wolfbane flicks his bright ears in her direction and smirks. The style of it seems both innocent and dangerous, wholly of his own making. He’s a creature who appears very secure in his confidence.
“I noticed you from there.” The stallion admits, glancing above them for a second and then back to her. A meager explanation, but he assumes she’ll understand since he’s still adjusting both wings against his sides. “Are you here looking for something in particular? Maybe I could help.”
06-24-2019, 08:57 PM (This post was last modified: 06-24-2019, 09:20 PM by lilliana.)
It's funny, standing here in Beqanna. She recalls Paraiso at this moment. She remembers the waterfall, the hum of it vibrating in her ears. She had heard so much about that waterfall. Her brother had called it a beacon, a sound that could always call them home. She remembers admiring the beauty of the land that should have been her birthplace. Lilli had appreciated its tropical beauty, the sweet breezes that smelled of running water. It had been lovely.. and yet, she remembers wanting something more. She had thought that returning to the land of her ancestors, the place where generations of her kin had been born before her, would stir something in her soul. But she had barely been a yearling then, an age when grand ideas are easy to come by and wishful thinking is easy to conjure. There had been an appreciation for the ancient valley. But that been it.
There had been no inner calling, no signs from the gods, nothing in this place where her father had been born and drawn his last breathe that told Lilli this was home.
She wasn't sure what she had expected when she came to Beqanna. Time has given and taken a little more from the chestnut mare. But there is still enough of the filly in her that thought.. maybe, just maybe something might tell her that this is where she was meant to be. That these steps forward she is taking are the right ones, that while they take her away from everything that she has ever loved and known, they are steps to a future and a life of her own. Such a large, looming moment that is spurred on by the careful steps of the chestnut mare. What had she expected? A whisper in the wind, an answer in the birdsong, a sign from the blue sky above? The meadow before her invites her further and the crimson girl allows it to beckon her further and Lilliana tries to let the thought think in, let the realization come that this is the setting of so many of her mother's stories. She tries to let the feeling dawn but the only thing that comes is the sensation of the grass brushing underneath her stomach, each golden tendril taking her thoughts further from the moment.
Lilli looks up, blue eyes staring searchingly into what seems like a vast azure sky. The clouds rolls here as they did as any other place she has ever known. It's an oddly comforting thought. She watched them billow and roll past and its so easy to remember every shape she has ever conjured, all the castles she imagined and the kingdoms that must exist above. As a young filly, she often created whole courts - kings and their regal queens, the noble knights and lovely ladies. Her cousin had often scoffed at her, ready to run and stretch her legs, ready to let her mane and tail fly while Lilli would have been content to dream and cloudgaze. But the musing is interrupted today, the recollections of her time as a filly underneath Murmuring Rivers sky left behind as the form of a flying equine calls her attention away. Her blue eyes go round, childlike as she she watches him.
He is a stunning creature, shining gold and brilliant blue. His wings give him a look of majesty and for a second, the young mare is awed. She sees his lip twitch upward and for a second, her heart hammers. Oh, she thinks. Oh, this has all been a mistake. But then the stranger points skyward, indicates that he had seen her from above. Lilli follows his gaze up, staring at the empty space where had once been. Her heart races faster but the chestnut eases her inner turmoil somehow, quells that wild heart and looks back to the winged stallion. The moment hangs as Lilli tries to find her words and somehow, she grasps them. "I don't know," comes the honest, chiming tones. "This was the only part I had planned.. once I got here, I hadn't quite thought about what would come next."
Over the wind and faint sigh of the grass, Wolfbane can hear the steady thunder of Lilliana’s heartbeat and it unnerves him for a second or two. Since his rebirth he’d become so overly sensitive to everything that at first, the change in her pulse worried him. His steady blue smile broke and then re-formed once he realized that the unnatural pulse echoing in his upturned ears was that way because of him. Bane didn’t mean to be so intrusive. It just came naturally now.
He relaxed, breathing deeply and smelling the pungent odor of poaceae, or meadow grass, and with one breath he could tell which species it fell under due to the stems flowering from the season. Their pollen tasted like sweet, heady hops on the back of his tongue, accentuated by the chestnut’s particular scent. She wasn’t a Beqanna native, if he had to bet perhaps four or five, and healthy but not pregnant like so many of the mares lingering in the meadow around them.
That final realization made Wolfbane swallow and grimace. “Whoops, fuck.” He thought, trying hard to reorient the focus of his elite senses away from odors and back to the sound of her faint, hummingbird-like heart throbbing. That was the problem with thinking you were ready to engage with strangers right after a major, life-changing experience. Sometimes overconfidence could be a hindrance rather than a help.
“Taking a leap of faith, huh?” He asked rhetorically. “This a good place for that.” Bane chuckled.
“If you’re not in a rush we could start from square one.” Came a suggestion, like they’d been old friends long before this moment and Bane didn’t expect them not to be afterwards. “I’m called Wolfbane. Just ‘Bane’ if you really get to know me.” Her companion smiled again.
Lilli keeps finding similarities between this place and the one she has left. The feeling it brings her is a simple one – comfort. There are obvious, comparable things. The sky is blue as it has always been, the sun rises in the east and falls in the west and the moon repeats the cycle. She hadn’t expected anything different really but that’s the thing about braving the unknown... how is one to know what exactly is out there? The crimson girl is not much of the adventurous sort. She had a childhood where she was tucked safely away in the heart of her family, always surrounded by brothers and sisters and family members who were careful to make sure she was never far away. And she hadn’t minded. Where else would she have gone? Everything that Lilli had ever known was in her own little world of Murmuring Rivers and while her dreams might have gone towards the heavens, she had been content to stay within the watchful and loving gaze of her family.
But they aren’t here now.
That thought always comes to her, unbidden and unwanted. It always hits her in the same wavelike fashion, crashing over like a breaker might against the jagged rocks. She longs for them in a moment of uncertainty with the approaching stallion. If they were here, if her brother were here, if her mother… And then another similarity has been found. Her mother has been here. Perhaps stood in this very spot. The child-like curiosity comes to play then, wrapping itself around Lilliana’s fears and anxieties. The rapid racing of her heart slows (though it remains somewhat erratic), the ringing sound falls away, leaving Lilli only to hear the teasing tones in his words. He seems to ask the question more to the autumn air around than herself, a question more for those fickle fates than a young mare.
Lilli lets the quiet hang, studying the painted male under her thick lashes. She still hasn’t quite got over the shock of him – all splendid, shining gold and that iridescent blue. The chestnut has seen unusual colors before, all colors of the rainbow bestowed on an equine form. She has seen the wings and the horns, the blessings, and curses of what they can carry. But there is something about him that is bewildering, like a riddle she can’t quite piece together. The curiosity comes again, playing across those icy blue eyes and she tilts her head up to his slightly, keeping a steady gaze.
And then the flower child smiles, appreciating the humor in his words. ”Lucky for you, I have plenty of time,” she teases back, a bantering reply that comes easily. She has missed this, she realizes. There has been none to talk to in her journey here, a journey that has taken a few months and has left the chestnut leaner than she has been. It has been only been herself and the birds and the sky to share her musings with. The words, the simple exchange of them with a stranger, make her feel a little lighter and help lift those silent pangs for home and family. The stallion offers his name and she nods a small, slight movement. Her smile warms at the mention of his nickname, pleased to find another similarity this day. “Lilliana," she offers in return, “but everybody calls me Lilli.”
Admittedly these two had more in common than first appearances would reveal. Wolfbane had been born and raised in a wholesome, loving family. Full of siblings both adopted, half, and full while his parents were a strong unit. Longclaw, his sire, had other mares but Bane can’t recall if he ever met them or what they looked like. That was the way his dad had always been. A man capable of keeping his identities and desires separate but equal, though as a boy he was always told that his dam, Femur, was his father’s alpha mare.
They’d lived in Tephra. The volcanic territory still existed and still remained a kingdom in its own right. Bane had left those sulphuric shores years ago, when it had still been an island and not part of the larger continent they called Beqanna. Never looked back, just kept flying and wandering until Arthas had found him and turned him into a Loessian.
Now that chapter was ending and he was still living while Arthas, his mother and father, perhaps even some of his siblings had passed away. He would never age, never get old or get tired. His youth and shining vigor would stay exactly the same as they were in this moment; a bright-eyed, robustly confident stallion that Lilliana tries so hard to unravel with her bluebell-colored eyes. Given time, she might just accomplish it.
She has plenty of it, apparently. “Lilli, the girl with lots of time. I like it.” Wolfbane admits in a few, short bursts of throaty laughter. He has a way of lifting his cheeks so that his hazel-green eyes narrow pleasantly, but his mouth never breaks apart to show teeth. It stays a firm, blue line that twists and glints in the play of light from the sun. “I live northwest of here in a place known as Taiga. Large forest, gigantic trees prone to mystery. Can’t miss it.”
One wing unfurls with a soft whooshing noise, pointing itself in the direction of the redwood territory. The long, narrow feathers seem to indicate an invisible path that could take her across the river and through the small forest on the horizon. “That way.” He jerks his chin aside, not exactly keen on looking away from her just yet. “A quiet place but not empty.” His ears flick aside; the faint whisper of a breezy current muffling the sound of his wing closing once more. “Are you the creative type, maybe? Pioneering?” Bane smiles, “I get the feeling you could bring a fresh perspective to my home… if you’re interested.”
The crimson girl has never been good at hiding her emotions. Whatever she feels weaves a tale across every plane of Lilli's refined face. She lacks the stony reserve her dam has, lacks the fire that always keeps Brielle blazing or Malachi's confidence, his assurance that everything will work out. She has tried all of these masks on before and each one falls right off, shattering to pieces the moment eye contact is made with those icy blues. She can be brave when she has too and the flower child has a sharp tongue, courtesy of her silver dam who had so often cut many down with her own. But these are Lilli's defense mechanisms and only come out when her back is to the proverbial wall, when she has nothing else to turn too. Luckily, she hasn't had much need of either. Her journey had been uneventful, if not lonely. There had been few travelers and perhaps it had been against her better judgment to travel when she had.
But it had left Lilli alone with all those thoughts. It had left her wondering what would have happened if she had said something, if she had only told Broch how she felt. She had wondered if he had known, would he have come back? Or worse, did he know and still chose to leave? She has tortured herself with this. And each time she banishes Broch from her thoughts, he comes back again and again, looming large and demanding her attention as he had done every time they had met. Lilli is good at small talk, at smiling and commenting on the weather, of the beauty around her. She is even better talking about others, drawing information about their own lives and away from herself. The chestnut mare has never been open with her emotions. They have always been concealed behind that smiling face because that is simply who she is. In her youthful ignorance, she thinks if she never addresses the things that scare her, that make her unhappy, then they can have no power over her.
But she is slowly learning, gaining the advantage of time and the experience it offers.
Broch has been a lesson well-learned. She hadn't spoken up, had avoided his own determined gaze when it sought her own because it had frightened her. And then he was gone, leaving Lilli with her first taste of regret and the learning of how to live with it. So, in a way, it his fault she is here. Elaina had returned to Windskeep. Her brother needed to dedicate himself to the raising of his own growing brood and her mother.. well, Aletta had never been the same after the loss of Brynn and the disapperance of Valerio. Lilli could spend a lifetime waiting or she could try and attempt a future on her own, try to find a place for herself and learn to find her own voice. So here she is, trying. The stallion is cheeky and because of this, her smile comes easier and quirks lopsided. He laughs and though the mare doesn't join him, her own blue eyes twinkle with the merriment of the moment.
She wants to ask the stallion, Wolfbane, something about himself. It seems the polite thing to do, the way a normal conversation should flow. But then, life is unpredictable and the current changes. "Taiga?" she asks, the sound coming out foreign on her tongue. She tilts her head up to Bane curiously, inviting him to tell her more. "Sounds intriguing," comes the playful tones, light and teasing. And then a wing comes flying causing Lilli to blink. She stares down, blue eyes taking in the span of the massive wing. Her gaze then follows the direction of the wing, staring towards the path that could take her to Taiga. She is quiet as she continues to stare down the invisible trail, only returning to look at Wolfbane with a rueful sort of smile. "Only when I have to be," she admits, thinking of all the events that have lead her down this path. But this could be a step in the right direction. Lilli takes one more long glance towards Taiga and then decides. It might be the wrong choice but it hers to make, something that liberates her.
Another look back at Wolfbane, her head already inclining towards his home. "I would like to see it," she says, the teasing and the humor falling away, replaced with Lilli's sincerity. "If you would be so kind as to show me the way? My sense of direction is somewhat legendary for my lacking of it."
He’d have to agree on the topic of Taiga and him being there. Intriguing was a mild way of putting it but somehow, when Lilli said it, sounded perfectly coined. He hadn’t foreseen that the woodsy, secretive place would eventually be his home. Never paid it much attention except the times he flew above it, on his way to Nerine. It even sounds funny, and though Lilliana is clearly teasing him he wonders, grinning, if she’ll ever understand how deeply true her assumption had been. Intriguing.
Her narrow, auburn head almost glints in the overhead sunlight as she turns to look. In the span of time it takes Lilli to first glance there, then back at him, and then away again Wolfbane has already glanced over her from tip to tail. He doubts she would have noticed it, the way his eyes flicked in their sockets bizarrely fast, but he’s careful anyways to keep the same, perfect expression each time she turns back.
“Is that a defect? Or just some mutated sort of magic?” He jokes about her southbound inner compass. He spoke while he stepped forward into the grassy sea, eager to get the miles underway but not so eager that Lilliana couldn’t walk beside him if she wanted. The journey went faster with a curious companion, and Wolfbane was ready to admit that the slender, waif-like chestnut he’d met had a sensible mind. Made up for a lot of the disappointment he’d been experiencing lately, meeting new types.
There was no question that he was headed for the forest. The one that loomed like a dark curtain on the far side of the River. A few common trails were easily found the way they were going, since thousands of horses before them had established a route between kingdoms. For the first leg of this journey across the meadow, Bane kept quiet in hopes of Lillie having a few more questions.
07-14-2019, 09:09 PM (This post was last modified: 07-14-2019, 09:46 PM by lilliana.)
Large trees. Dark forest. Mystery. While Lilli could most likely be found where the wildest and most abundant flowers grew, while she found the most peaceful of spots next to moving water, his words do interest her. Perhaps, at one point, Lilli knew exactly what she wanted, knew where she belonged and what her future would look like. But then everything changed. The world went upside down and what was once set in stone was suddenly blank, a whole realm of possibilities waiting for the chestnut mare to make her mark on the world. Lilli doesn't know what the mark will be yet, she just knows that she has already tried several things and failed. She knows that there had been so many changes in her life and that with each one, she lost a little more of herself and that future she had painted.
Perhaps that was the problem with imagining and wanting. What were the alternatives when the dreams fell apart; when the plans failed? The crimson girl was still a dreamer, she would always be. There would always be a story for Lilli to create and a whole domain for her discover, a place where the most unattainable, most unreachable things might come true. There would always be a place for Lilli to wonder what might have been, what dreams might wait among the clouds and what secrets the starlight might have to share.
Taiga might be very different than any home she might have contemplated for herself. But the future was blank - a bright, clean sheet that was ready to be written.
She does miss the way his eye glance over her crimson form, too absorbed in wondering where Taiga is and if this is really happening, if she really will follow Wolfbane. The gold and blue stallion moves forward, leading Lilli away from the expanse of the Meadow. And she follows, not even hesitating to take that first step. "It's absolutely a defect. I don't think either of my parents has ever been lost." It's hard for her not to laugh but the thought does seem ludicrous - her stoic father or commanding mother, lost? It seemed to her that they always knew what to do, where they had to be. She follows in tandem with Wolfbane, lost in thought for a moment as she sorts through her thoughts and memories. A nostalgic smile crosses Lilli's darkened maw, a fainter version of the one she normally wears. "I'm a bit of the black sheep in my family," Lilli adds, wondering if she is saying too much.
She glances sidelong at the stallion then, her head tilting and the blue eyes peer up at him while she still manages to keep the pace. "What about you? Were you the golden child?" The question is said in jest and Lilli looks up to him, the smile coming brighter and the curiosity brimming in her gaze. It's said in that playful tone she knows, an easy way to attempt to conversation. But she finds herself wanting to know about Wolfbane and Taiga, all these questions demanding to be set free. "Were you born in Taiga?" The interest comes again, Lilli wanting to know how Bane found himself in the enigmatic place that the chestnut is already imagining in her mind.
Wolfbane couldn’t think of failures anymore. Or he really thought of them less as failures and more as ‘learning curves’. Hindsight opportunities that helped him to make decisions here and now so that he could shape a different future for himself. He can remember each twist and turn that led him to this life, the same way he remembers each correct turn along the path they’re walking down. Each time he made a terrible decision it turned him in a new direction, and each time he’d walked the path home again he’d made a mistaken left or right. Then again he always eventually got back on track.
These days he can journey on foot and probably close his eyes, and these days he can see the right option when faced with a difficult choice.
If one was persistent and strong-willed, every failure would turn itself into some sort of success. He believes this of himself and he believes it lives in Lilliana too, or else he wouldn’t be leading her past the low edges of the meadow and down to the sloping bank of the River. “The Golden Child? Me? Nahh.” He laughs back just as easily, though in a much deeper tone. The sandy river soil felt good under his joints the closer he got to bubbling water. “I was supposed to be,” He shrugged, not really sure how truthful that statement was, “but my father and I always butted heads.”
He sighed ruefully and shook his cresty, exposed mane as if laughing at something that might’ve once bothered him. Bygones are history though, and like the water he sank knee-deep into, quickly passing through fingers that tried to grasp it. “And I was not born in Taiga.” He grinned back at the chestnut mare.
He waited a few moments for the initial splash of water to become normal, continued to forge the low waters as steadily as he could manage, and then raised his voice before continuing, “I was born in a place called Tephra, which still exists. There’s an active volcano there.” He explained in case she ever wanted to ask other horses about it. “My dad was a guard there… sort of. Seems like forever ago now. He and my mother have long since died.” Wolfbane explained as he neared the opposite shore.
He said it in a way that seemed factual, not sad or forlorn. His parents death was something he’d come to terms with long ago. They were happy wherever their souls resided, he was sure of it. And he was sure they were together in that place as well. “What about you, 'black sheep'?” He prodded Lilliana gently with a smile. Bane had come to a complete stop in the water, dug himself in and was waiting for the slender female to walk past him up the shore so she could make her way safely.
He’d follow afterwards and make sure she wouldn’t slip. There’s even a moment when he stretches his neck and reaches his nose towards her shoulder, imagining the sensation of her copper skin gliding underneath his lips while he helped her along... but he stops himself short. Instead Wolfbane pulls himself together and withdraws, back to watching her with curious hazel eyes. “Where’d you come from, and how did you end up here?”
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