"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
gone was the way we were, just like the days we'd burn
The gift of his mother is what has always protected Elio. From the magic she passed on to the fierce way she looks at him, Lepis has always been his rock. He thinks that in the end, his mother will always be the most stable rock he may cling to. This family she has built around him, this family she has built in his head—it molds the dangerously loyal and quiet boy he is becoming.
And yet, it lacks the hero of so many of those stories: his father.
Elio cannot say he hates Wolfbane, or that he even has any particular negative feeling—but that wonderment he felt upon their first meeting has certainly slipped away. Now, he sees a distant and frightening man, even if Bane’s behavior is not outwardly aggressive. Being the intuitive creature his emotional projections force him to be, he can see something is not right between his parents. If it was not the juxtaposition of the actions of the legend with the actions of the man, it was the complete lack of seeing his parents love each other. The Wolfbane of his mother’s carefully woven stories was valiant, protective, and affectionate. This one . . . this one’s smile did not meet his eyes. This one—outside of his thoughts, Elio shakes his head in frustration and pain—he cannot bring his heart to swell for him like it did for his absence.
He tries so hard to reconcile the myth with the man, but he is so young, and it takes all of his energy just to not shoot his feelings all over the place.
It is in these moments that he wishes his mother would brush his mind clean with a sweep of her peace. It is in these moments that he wonders why he cannot go back to when the only reason he cried was over a knocked head.
He feels small, so small, like a gasping babe freshly born.
A world spins and spins in his head, passing and passing by, all while he tucks his wings quietly against a tree.
the rain that falls upon your skin it's closer than my hands have been
As though the day has not been long enough already, the first of her children that Lepis finds is the one with whom she is least prepared to face. The other three are older; she knows how to tell them. But Elio? He’s a child still, and a child burdened with his father’s invisibility and her empathic projection, not to mention the hurdles of the situation he is about to face.
“Hey ‘Lio,” she says, stepping up beside the bicolored boy. The Comtesse’s blue muzzle passes gently along his dark red dorsal stripe, and then along the golden stripes of his neck, and finally a kiss pressed to his golden mask. So like his father’s, she thinks, a piercing reminder. Affection with her children has been done without thought, a trait she’s seen present in them as well. Even though Elio might be old enough to want to squirm away from her in front of his friends, she thinks he’s still young enough to let her wrap her neck over his and bury her face in his golden shoulder.
“What’ve you been up to today?” She asks, unable yet to tell him of the enormous change that is about to overturn his life as he knows it. Elio will not be the first of her children to move at this young age, but it has never been something that she enjoys doing. Children should have one home until they’re old enough to leave it on their own, she thinks, that is surely best. Yet she’s been able to give it to so few of them, and she had been so certain that Elio would be one. Lepis has no favorite child – they are each the very best – but she cannot deny that it is Elio she pays the most attention. In the absence of his father, Lepis has done her best to fill the roles of two parents. She spends nearly twice as much time with him as she recalls doing so for her other children. Celina, who has her own memories of her father, had not needed so much, but there is no doubt that she has spent far more time with these two than the other five.
lepis, comtesse of taiga queen of loess | queen of sylva | queen of the south lover of wolfbane | mother of six
gone was the way we were, just like the days we'd burn
It is interesting, to say the least, to compare Elio’s perspective of his father against his sibling’s. Celina (his favorite sibling—but don’t tell her that) still seems to carry that unconditional love for Bane that her younger brother so envies. He sees that innocence and longs for it.
His mind is black as coal with a new wave of emotion: panic. His thoughts are dark enough to match the black sheep’s wool he wears.
I’m not one of them.
And perhaps that is the crux of Lepis’ stories: Elio now grows differently from his family. They were a family carried together by the basket their parents’ weaved, that strength evident in all of the dunalino’s siblings. He cannot help but to think he is the reed that snapped, and his beloved family will tumble to their painful fates all because Elio is not strong enough to keep his parents together.
Of course, the boy is not quite emotionally intelligent enough to think these things clearly, but the suffering is present in the way his chest clenches.
Lepis’ familiar voice draws the colt from his reverie, a hesitant smile curling one side of his mouth. He peers up at her with almost sleepy eyes, a film that might mask the constant rush of thoughts uprooting the once firm saplings in his mind.
“Hey, Mom,” he replies with a voice just on the cusp of puberty. She smells like home, like Taiga, like his mom. “Nothing, really. Just thinkin’.” His wings ruffle against his sides and and Lepis’ chest when he leans into her embrace. “What have you been doing?” is his final retort as he cranes his neck around to brush his muzzle against hers. A grin paints his face.
@[Lepis] this was so hard to focus on so here's some weird rambling
the rain that falls upon your skin it's closer than my hands have been
He might not need the calmness that Lepis exudes, but she certainly does. It seeps toward him due to their proximity, the barriers that the dun mare has against accidental projection fallen apart as surely as the basket her son almost imagines. He can’t know this, or know that the inquiry he so neatly turns on her cuts so deeply.
What has she been doing? Arguing with Celina, with Aten, with Pteron. Flinching from every golden figure in the woods and every copper one and especially the two together. Weeping when she thinks she is alone, or alternately battering the thick trunks with what feels like endless rage and frustration. The calmness quiets some of that, but she feels it chattering inside her. These days, she longs for the emptiness that had settled on her in the two weeks of Wolfbane’s absence. Feeling nothing was better than feeling everything. She is more sure of this now than almost ever before.
“I’ve been thinking too,” she tells him, smoothing a wayward lock of his red mane back into place. “I was thinking maybe we might go to Loess.” The dun mare has always spoken of the place fondly to her children. It is her birthplace, her beloved home, full of hills and rocks and ridges and wide open skies.
“Maybe even to stay.” If she breaks the words up like this, it is just a little easier, it gives her time to watch his young face for a reaction. Though she stills sees the red and gold child he had been, it becomes easier each day to see the man he will become. “What do you think about that? Do you think that might be fun?”
lepis, comtesse of taiga queen of loess | queen of sylva | queen of the south lover of wolfbane | mother of pteron, marni, tiercal, eyas, gale, celina, and elio
gone was the way we were, just like the days we'd burn
Elio could wait for ages—no, eons—for the validation of his father. He could spend years feeling wistful over not searching for Wolfbane the moment he was born, or not trying hard enough to be a better son, or . . . Lepis’ peace reaches him, and his mind quiets. The softest, most relaxed sigh escapes his lips. Elio’s golden fur and crimson ears ruffle against the warm surety of his mother’s chest. He looks the perfect picture of a perfect son.
When she mentions Loess, Elio imagines the cacti that dot the border it shares with Taiga. He can see the gray boulders and hardy greenery. It is a border he does not cross (because at his core he is an obedient boy), but one he toes often. Mother always makes it sound so enticing; it is hard for a growing child to not be curious. The striped yearling prickles with the idea of change, of leaving behind the home a family he does not feel he fully belongs to has claimed as their own.
And yet, the fires of rebellion surge in his veins: he the green soldier with armor that does not fit and a sword too heavy to swing.
“But isn’t this where Dad lives?” He means to remain casual, to speak as if he does not know what is coming; but that crippling insecurity creeps into his voice, and it is clear he is only asking to hear what he already knows out loud. “I don’t think I . . . I don’t know, Mom. Why? Do you want to go?”
A single hoof digs into the pliable soil and prickly pine needles. Elio leans away from Lepis and bites his lip.
“It would be cool to go somewhere new, I guess.” This he concedes with a shrug of his shoulders and a barely visible smile.
the rain that falls upon your skin it's closer than my hands have been
The little sigh that he releases catches her flicking ears, and Lepis reaches out once more, smoothing the soft hair of his mane. She’d not meant t project, but of late she often does so without thought. While she is glad that it has helped Elio, she is torn between worry over her own lack of control and the fact that he has even needed it. A worried life is not one that Lepis wants for her children, and disappointment in herself simmers internally.
She allows him quiet to think, knowing that what she has offered is worth consideration. That he doesn’t give a flash answer pleases her; the ability to think critically is one that his older sister still doesn’t seem to have grasped. The thought of Celina causes another clench of her heart, and she is grateful that Elio answers now before her mind slips further down that trail. And yet this path is no better, for Elio asks about his father as though it is the most natural thing in the world.
Lepis has told her son the most splendid stories of his father since the moment he was born. He knows the tale of Wolfbane’s rise in Loess, of the great success of Loess under his rule. He knows how Wolfbane had led them to safety during the Plague, of how he has kept them safe against all threats, of how he is smart and charming and brave. To tell him those stories, and now to tell him that they will leave him behind? Does she want to go, her intuitive little redbird asks, and Lepis hugs him tighter so that he cannot see the shimmer of tears in her eyes.
“Sometimes these things happen,” she tells him when he asks why. “Sometimes families change, and there’s nothing we can do to stop them.”
Nothing she could do, the mare thinks with unexpected malice, but there was plenty Wolfbane could have done. Not leaving them would have been a fine start, and not seeking comfort in the arms of a woman not his wife another. But he had, and there is nothing that Lepis can do to reverse the wheel of time. So she bites down on the anger that rises in her chest, stuff it down tightly where there is no danger of passing it to Elio.
“But you and I will always be a family,” she reassures him. “Nothing will ever change that. I could show you all the places in Loess where I played when I was little, and you can meet your cousins.” Lepis tries to make it appealing, even presses the very smallest dose of excitement, and a bit of anticipation. Soft enough that he is unlikely to even feel it, this at least she can control.
@[Elio]
lepis, comtesse of taiga queen of loess | queen of sylva | queen of the south lover of wolfbane | mother of pteron, marni, tiercal, eyas, gale, celina, and elio
gone was the way we were, just like the days we'd burn
Sometimes these things happen.
With that, Elio drops his gaze to his shuffling hooves and shrugs his shoulders. A weak smile turns his mouth upward, and his teeth bite fiercely into his bottom lip. These things do happen, and the golden boy knows just little enough to accept that answer without a serious fight. He swallows his trembling child soldier and blinks away the apprehension.
This confusion is just a part of his life now: emotions he does not understand, an arguing family, the hard line between reality and fantasy.
“I don’t think it’s a very big change,” he murmurs in between two of her sentences. It isn’t, not to him. Changing homes will take its toll, but his siblings are always wandering off, and he cannot live under the illusion that his father belongs here. The truth is that he does not know where Wolfbane belongs, other than in the stories in his head; and now he is not sure he even belongs there.
Lepis’ projections are just tiny fizzles beneath his skin, little unconscious fingers that point him in the direction of Loess (even if only for a moment).
“I would like that, I think,” is his quiet response, followed by yet another half-smile. The short locks of his mane fall into his eyes when he steps away to look at his mom. “I know we’ll always be a family. We take care of each other.” This he adds with a firm and certain nod of his head. Elio’s still-forming chin tucks to the slowly maturing lines of his chest, and now he genuinely grins.
The sun casts a warm glow around his face, shining yellow in the tresses of his crimson mane. He is beautiful in this innocence, untouched by the knowledge of his mother’s tearful escapes and just how much his father has split their lives in half. Lio nudges his mother’s shoulder with his muzzle then asks, “What are my cousins’ names? And when do we have to go?”
the rain that falls upon your skin it's closer than my hands have been
Elio doesn’t know how sharp his words are, Lepis reminds herself, but that does not make the cut from them any less painful. Not a very big change, he says, and to him it is not. To him, a move to another land is just a change in scenery. He has never truly experienced what they will be leaving behind, that particular glow that is unconditional familial love. He only has hers, and Lepis knows from her own experience that a mother’s love is not quite the same. It is enough, but it could be better. There aren’t words for what it feels like to be loved by Wolfbane, and it is not something that she can recreate, not even with her magic.
So rather than explain, she presses another kiss to his forehead and smiles wordlessly at his words. We will take care of each other he says confidently, and Lepis nods, blinking back the tears before they can fall. “We will. Always.”
The smile he wears now feels more real than the ones before, and Lepis lets it soften the words he’d not meant to hurt. He is a good boy, she thinks, sweet and gentle and nothing like the monster that his father is becoming.
“Well, I know there is Reia, and I am sure that your Uncle Castile has a few more close to your age running around. We’ll have to meet them together.” The dragon’s children are not their blood-relations, but the ties that bind them are no less close than if they were. Lepis considers the black and white king of Loess as much a brother as an uncle now that she has grown older, but that her children know him as she had is important to her. Elio asks when, and the dun mare pauses for a moment before answering.
“Summer,” she decides. Summer will give her enough time to plan, to call together the residents of the redwood forest and make ready her departure. “We’ll go in summer, which is the very best time to play in the springs in Loess.”
@[elio]
lepis, comtesse of taiga queen of loess | queen of sylva | queen of the south lover of wolfbane | mother of pteron, marni, tiercal, eyas, gale, celina, and elio
gone was the way we were, just like the days we'd burn
The redwood leaves and fresh green pine needles sway comfortably above the mother-son duo. Springtime is fresh and pungent in Taiga, Elio’s favorite season (and not just because this is when he was born). The winged boy has spent a little over a year beneath his family’s shadowed canopy, and the green and freshly bloomed flowers continue to bring him joy. The warm arms of the season soften this blow, though he does linger on how he will miss clumsily galloping through where the trees are tightly packed.
“Castile!” he gasps in wonderment the moment his name is mentioned. Though naive, he is well aware of the dragon king. An excited smile twists his lips.
As Lepis continues, Elio hangs on every word, growing more excited with each syllable. There is a Reia and other family his mother cannot name, but the thought of a new family thrums excitedly in his chest.
While his immediate family means everything to the red and gold yearling, the thought of blank-slate relations offers him a guilty sense of relief. His most poignant memories are with Lepis, with Celina a close second—that disconnect of their father’s presence divides Elio more starkly from his much older siblings.
“Summer it is, then.” Another firm nod and a brilliant smile follow suit. Elio pauses, flicking his ears backward as the chatter of birds briefly distracts him, then turns back to his mom with a curious stare. “Is Celina coming with us? And is, uh—” he stumbles here, the title “dad” feeling clumsy in his mouth, “dad ever going to visit?”
the rain that falls upon your skin it's closer than my hands have been
The excitement at his uncle’s name elicits a smile. It feels like only yesterday that it had been a young Pteron who was excited to meet the famed dragon, and yet a half-dozen years have sped by in the interim. Elio grows more excited, and Lepis allows herself to get swept away as well, nodding in unison with her golden son. They will have a good life in Loess, she thinks; it is a good place to raise children. The best place, really, and so it is easy to tell herself that this is a good thing. A good choice. The right choice.
He asks about Celina then, and Lepis pauses her nodding for a moment, and then grows still at Elio’s mention of his father. Not suspiciously still, not enough to make her boy wary again, but enough that she requestions her so-recent certainty.
“I hope Celina will come with us,” Lepis tells Elio. Her youngest daughter is too old to force into obedience (Elio probably is as well), and she has shown a rebellious streak since her father’ sreturn. Well, rebellious with Lepis anyway. It sounds as though their toothsome daughter still worships the ground her father walks on, as though he had never left them at all. The second half of his question is less difficult to answer, and Lepis shakes her golden head.
“No. He will not be visiting. But if you want to see him, I think he is going to be staying in Taiga.”
@[elio]
lepis, comtesse of taiga queen of loess | queen of sylva | queen of the south lover of wolfbane | mother of pteron, marni, tiercal, eyas, gale, celina, and elio
