Almost a year he'd been in the same place, and the stagnation was beginning to wear on him. Itchy feet, that's what he'd been born with. Itchy feet and a broken compass. It was a recipe for being perpetually lost, and it was the life he'd gotten used to.
The vast maze that was the forest of Taiga had become a little easier to navigate the last season or so. Trails were navigable, if he paid attention. It was becoming possible to survive, and he figured if he stayed another winter, he'd do much better than he had the previous one. Still. It wasn't home. He knew it wasn't home.
The milky-pale marbles of his eyes blinked, hidden beneath the matted whiteness of his forelock. He needed to keep moving. The road needed to fall beneath his feet again, to lead him to new places. So he would follow the path his hooves didn't know, the one he would stumble on until he had no idea where he was any longer.
It was slow going, of course. It always was, when he traveled someplace new on his own. There was a prickly patch of bramble that caught him by surprise when the trail didn't go the way he thought it would. A rocky hill made him stumble. That was part of the adventures though, wasn't it? The not knowing was the thrill, the surprise of what he'd find at the end of his selfmade path.
Eventually, as they always did, the scents changed. The footing changed. You go far enough, and everything changes.
@[Neverwhere]
Wanderlust is a feeling that Neverwhere is familiar with, a driving urge that pulls her in and out of Nerine, although these days what draws her back to the kingdom is not the lure of seeing but something else, something harder to pin down. She still marvels in how easy it is to navigate the world with clear vision, how easy to judge distances, colors, emotions. There is something lost, too, though, and she has not forgotten that lesson, has not forgotten the stumbling and confusion that day in Taiga, her first trip back out of Nerine, when the blindness fell on her suddenly and unexpectedly at the border. She had been so angry, so frustrated.
Unintended, but important, lessons.
Don't trust your eyes. Because sight can fade, it can lie, it can overwhelm - it will tempt you to believe whole-heartedly what you see, to ignore what you hear and taste and smell and feel, to forget the instincts that kept you alive for years traveling alone and half-blind across lands. This lesson is seared across her memory. As she walks, her steps are careful and measured, she navigates dark woodland and moonless nights with ease, but when she runs - oh! That is something else entirely! It would have been impossible, once upon a time, for her to canter up a trail, and yet she does, today, her breath puffing clouds into the brisk air as she passes through Taiga and back to Nerine. Someone else has had the same idea, she can smell him on the air, and her pace slows to a trot as the path grows rockier and the tallest trees fall away, giving ground to gorse bushes and a few scrubby, low, evergreens, but it is not until she is well into the kingdom's southern edge that she finally catches up around a bend. The dark stallion stumbles and pauses before carrying on and something in her recognizes something in him.
Blind. She does not need to catch up - to see his milky eyes - to know it because she can feel it in every step, every stumble and every cast of his head, trying to find his bearings. The dappled mare draws nearer, sparing only a brief grimace for the delicate scrollwork that traces over the midnight blue of his coat.
"Tell me, would you know if you were about to walk off a cliff and into the sea?"
Neverwhere ...
@[Tyr] you may also have a weird sick post. I don't think I'm contagious through the internet.
She doesn't take him by surprise, not really, when her voice clips through the air. The scent of horse was hard to mistake, even through the saltwater tang that had been growing the deeper he'd gone. The footing had changed gradually from deeply bedded pine needles, to harder stone and packed earth. Easier to negotiate, maybe, but less forgiving of mistakes when they happened.
His forward progress halted as soon as the voice struck, the confirmation that he was no longer alone. After a moment of serious contemplation, he nodded with certainty. "Yes, I think I would. The wind changes at the top of cliffs. And the sea, well, that's easy enough to know when you're by it. The sound, for one, and the salt smell gets thick. The sound of water hitting rock rings a certain way." His head tilted toward where he thought the voice was coming from, more or less. "I've been smelling the sea coming closer. I reckon I should thank you for the warning."
His ears continued to twist restlessly, taking in the sounds of sea birds ahead, the breeze rustling trees to his right. The voice was female, he thought, brisk and no nonsense. His lips thinned with hesitation as he realized he must have left the Taiga, and wandered someplace else. Someplace potentially suspicious of visitors.
Rueful apology in his voice, the stallion flicked his tail as he addressed the air before him. "I've left Taiga, haven't I?" He asked, already pretty certain this was true. Oh well. He'd been trying to explore today, hadn't he? Hopefully his venture wouldn't be taken as acting but the innocent wanderings they were.
@[Neverwhere]
Apologies and hesitation ripple over him so strongly that she can see them on his skin, in the way he draws himself inward, assuming that he has made a mistake, but she knows that the blind do not make mistakes so lightly. Traveling alone in unknown territory is no small feat when you cannot see the strange places you are going, and something more than the usual wanderlust is needed to draw someone so impaired out from the comfort of familiar country. She wonders if he can see another way, another magic way, but his answer to her question ends that line of thinking abruptly. Yes, the wind does change at the precipice, the sound and feel of it like an invisible wall, but she tilts her head at his manner of speaking, and finds herself doubting him just the same.
"Well, come along, then."
She nods, though he cannot see it, and she wonders, installing herself to his right without a word, knowing he will - by scent and sound and by the air on his skin as it flutters between them - cede space to her as naturally as breathing when she presses into it, pushing him subtly away from the cliff edges far ahead. It will not be apparent from the outside what she is doing, appearing for all the world to simply be walking beside him, but it is possible he will find her a bit rude and bullish for so frequently forcing him to adjust his path.
Well, he wouldn't be wrong to think those things, so no opportunity lost there.
They walk in relative silence for a short time, though she knows he has returned her question with one of his own. He must know already that Taiga has dropped behind them, and she suspects that it was his intention all along, though he acts as though it was quite accidental. The only pinewood scent that lingers in the air is the one that comes from his dark skin, the redwoods do not color the air much in Nerine where the sea salt winds scour everything clean and clear. Perhaps he does not know what direction he is heading, that is something that Neverwhere herself never struggled with - but then, her eyesight never wholly left her and she could find direction on all but the cloudiest days and even most nights. It had rarely mattered, though, she had been aimless, too.
"What do you think?" The air around them smells of salt and sea and chalk cliffs, of the golden grasses sleeping beneath the snow. "Does it smell like Taiga?"
Neverwhere ...
@[Tyr]
There's a thickness in the air between them, the sense of the suspicion suddenly falling heavy on him. And he realized that it might look questionable when a strange stallion came wandering across borderlines. The mistrust in her voice was probably nothing more than common sense.
A moment of hesitation froze his steps. Was it too late to turn back? To claim ignorance and escape back into the twisted labyrinth that was Taiga's thick growth? The thought turned his stomach a bit, enough that he at last stepped forward to follow the tacit guidance of the one who had come across him. The steps are half a beat behind hers, his ears twisting and flicking to capture every nuance of her gait. A distant memory surfaced, the scent of his father by his side, teaching newly born Tyr to navigate the island by sound and touch and scent. Not so different from the way he was being guided now.
The moments of silence gave him time to adjust the length of his stride, to absorb the odors of what armed to be Nerine and the mare who was guiding him. The ground beneath his feet was hard as shell, almost brittle. So very different from the soft carpeting of needles Taiga claimed. They muffled every sound in the forest, a nuisance to someone who needed every auditory clue to guide himself by. The clipping of their hooves seemed almost too loud here by comparison.
They'd gone some ways before she spoke again, as he'd been unwilling to break the silence himself. He'd never been one prone to chatter, not after a life so consumed by isolation. Add to that the fact that he was already suspect here and the dark stallion's lips had remained firmly shut. Her question was not one he would have expected, though. "No. No, of course it doesn't." He began, tone less certain than the words they carried.
The wind caught at him, tugging the tangled locks of his mane and tail with greedy fingers. It smelled sharply of brine and mineral damp. The hungry ocean was near again, and that knowledge gripped him fiercely. It was so similar to Ischia, and yet nothing at all alike. He knew the island he'd been born on was worlds away. Still. It was the same sea that lapped at the sands of the islands that now crashed on the cliffs his guide had so kindly warned him from.
"This is this your home, then? Do you like it?" He asked, confirming what her confident navigation had already told him. It was a hard land, he could feel that in the relentless wind, in the solid earth beneath the layer of snow and ice. He'd found that most horses liked their homes. Lilli, especially, seemed to find a great comfort in belonging to the redwood land. It was a kind of security that had evaded him for a very long time.
@[Neverwhere]
"It..." She pauses. Home. "Yes, it is my home."
It's the first time she has actually said the words, and her tongue trips over them like a new foal gaining its legs. But it is her home and she has slowly come to accept that. Her burden, too, perhaps, but her home, first. The wind lives in her mane, the sea mist in her eyes, the cliffs on her face. She, like many of the other kings and queens, seems to embody the nature of her kingdom. She tries to swallow the thought away - Lilliana is rubbing off on her again, leaving poetic tendencies in her breast.
He would have no way of knowing that her home is written so plainly across her body, and there is a relief in that. By now, enough have come to speak with her that others, finding a brown mare with a white, scarred face, might feasibly guess who she is, but he cannot do so, and so she does not tell him. Instead she takes the opportunity to linger in the silence that he lets build between them, the silence of someone used to wandering the miles alone. One ear turns back to follow him, to catch the sound of the change in his step, the way he adjusts to her guiding without a word. She does not push him hard, only enough to make sure that he keeps away from the cliffs when their path takes them close to the edges. Not all of Nerine, however is cliff. There are flat plains, twisting caves, rugged and somewhat uninviting beaches. She takes no such guiding care when the danger is limited only to tripping.
"It is not a gentle place," she adds at last in response to his question, "but it has become part of me." And has she become part of it? No, she snorts softly at the idea. Nerine is Nerine, it is not its history, it is not the horses that have lived, that do live, within its borders. It made them, not the other way around. Perhaps once upon a time lands were nearly entities themselves and rose up in defense of residents, but these lands of what some may call "New" Beqanna, they hold no such sentiments. If these lands have hearts, they are cloistered well away, far from the reaches of those that would seek them.
And better for it, she thinks, remembering that not all of Lilliana's stories are untrue, that Eurwen's history lessons have their roots dipped in fact. This is a place of magic, after all, there is a Heart, somewhere, and it has broken before. It brought the Reckoning, and the Plague, so let Nerine keep its secrets hidden.
"You came from Taiga, but it's not your home. What are you looking for?"
Neverwhere ...
@[Tyr] Hi I have no idea what is happening.
His pale lips bowed upward at her hesitant words, the ground a little less ragged beneath his feet for a few paces. She sounded so surprised by the idea, and it tugged at something within his own chest.
Had he the eyes to see it, he might have noted some similarities between the two of them. Wind-snarled manes, and faces scarred by a life of finding things nose first. Sturdy, dark bodies and white as snow faces, outlined against the wintry landscape. It was a kind of congruous harmony that leant the scene artistic balance, the kind he might have appreciated if he could only see it. Maybe not. His only sense of aesthetic was in the way certain scents and textures aligned. To that end, he was certainly impressed with their journey.
The crunch of ice beneath his feet, the bare patches where their hooves clattered on stone and shale. It made a sort of music to him when set against the crash of waves and the screaming sea birds. It was cacophony, and it was beautiful. He hummed softly at the woman's words, and they seemed to be right. "I'm happy to hear it, Lady." He replied, having nothing else to call her. He was, too. She had a brisk way of speaking, and it seemed unlikely that she would wait on anyone who fell behind her train of thought. It was not a gentle place, and perhaps she was not a gentle mare. She was kind though, and seemed to genuinely enjoy the land that walked on.
They walked on for a while longer in the silence they both wore like a second coat. He let it go before she broke it once again, in a way that caught him off guard. His shuffling gait missed a step, before he returned to his place at her hip. "Is it that obvious?" His face fell into rueful lines while he determined what could be said. What to admit. In the end though, it seemed there was no point making things up. He had a sneaking suspicion that this gruff woman would appreciate it about as much as a fly bite to the buttcheek.
A groan sifted through his lungs before he carried on, plodding steadily by her side. "Doesn't really matter what I'm looking for. It's more a matter of staying out of the way." And there it was. The real reason the midnight stallion's feet never stayed in one place long. The answer to the big question that had. been dodged over and over again. "I'm no fighter. Even if I wanted to be. And most of the time I'm too afraid to say something that'll make someone else want to fight me that I either just smile and agree, or say nothing at all. I have yet to find a kingdom with time for a blind stallion with no talent for war or talking. Best just to keep moving along." A shrug rippled the gilded curves of his withers, the facts of his life laid bare. He wouldn't let himself become the ward his sisters must mind for the rest of their days, so it was walking the world that he was left with. Lonely at times, but it was at least a life on his own terms.
@[Neverwhere]
"It is."
If she were kinder, she might tell him that like recognizes like, that in him, she sees parts of what she was, and what she has become. Blind, a traveller, the stink of stagnation laying across him like a layer of pine pitch. The sea breezes will soon blow that away, but she does not say this, either, because there is a crust of cold salt in her mane, in her eyelashes, tethering her to the northern kingdom. What frees him - what frees Lilliana - traps her. But he speaks again, and instead of responding further, she turns to the stallion that cannot see the scowl deepening on her lips with each word, cannot see the way her ears flatten until their stubs are invisible in the frothy ocean of her mane or how the deep lines etched by her scars pull at her nostrils and lips, baring her teeth at him. She pivots quickly, her course changing to roughly bump her chest into his shoulder as he steps forward.
"You stay out of their way?" There is a hard edge to her voice, like ice grating on stone, she sneers and drives one rock-torn grey hoof into the earth, "Who is it that's blind? Is it you, or is it them? Why do you make allowances for those that can see?"
She has difficulty understanding, not understanding his fear - how many days was it anxiety alone that urged her steps onward? Rather it is how he has chosen to wear it like a cloak, as if it will make him invisible. But it does not. She has difficulty, too, remembering that not everyone is her, that something they have shared - this blindness - has settled differently on their separate personalities. Where blindness drove her to ever-increasing carelessness and bluster, it drove him instead to shrinking away. He is unwilling to be a burden, and unwilling to protect himself. She has bluffed her way into a crown. Her breath rattles in her nostrils like a growl.
"If you demand room, it will be made for you. There is room in Nerine, but only if you're going to carve it out yourself. Go where you want, say what you want, if you find anyone who doesn't like it, tell them to bring their complaint to Neverwhere and I will tell them exactly where they can go. But," she pauses and her scowl turns to a grin that bleeds into her voice, "I expect you to get in my way, or I'll chase you back to Taiga myself."
She has enough ghosts here already.
Neverwhere ...
@[Tyr] oh sweet baby Tyr. I'm sorry. I hope you wanted to be adopted by Mare-Face McGee. lmao
There was an uncomfortable energy growing inside him. The tugging, insistent pain of having his shields stripped away scale by scale. He was not the one who was exposed for the world to see, every flaw and feature on display. This mare seemed not to have gotten that message. She had flayed him down to the bone within minutes of knowning him, and it was not a pleasant sensation.
The thud of a hoof against the unyielding ground startled him to a halt. It was the only warning he had before she shifted, pushed her body to halt his. With a snort his head swung to face the sound of her, rarely displayed stubbornness hanging on him like an ill-fitting coat. "Do not judge me for surviving the only way I know how." He rumbled. The knotted nest of his forelock obscured his eyes, yet he still managed to hold her in his sightless gaze.
His own gold-tipped ears leaned backwards briefly, an irritated flicker. It was laughable, really, that he'd thought of himself as a mysterious being. He was not. Lying, concealment were never skills he had acquired with any real skill. So much was revealed by the subtle gestures of the body and face, and he could barely moderate his voice. If he had any secrecy to him, it was only because he had interacted with so few others.
With a hough, he stepped back, trying to navigate his way around the snapping mare. His tail whipped the air as he passed. "I wouldn't expect you to understand what it's like. I've never really enjoyed having my ass kicked, so yeah, I'm going to avoid that whenever possible. Fighting back gets a lot harder when you can't see the hits coming." He shot, head low as he attempted to continue the way they had been going, not caring if she followed or not. He'd made his own way such a while, it was never long that he let others guide him.
The milky blue orbs rolled in their sockets at her invitation. She was calling him to be what he was not. Was that not exactly what he'd traveled so long to avoid? "As positively generous as that sounds, Miz Neverwhere," he drawled, "I'm starting to think I'm not your type. I go where I want to anyway, and I'm not looking to be under yours or anyone else's feet. Never been my style and if you'll pardon my saying so, I'm not about to change that just because some ornery mare who doesn't know me from an apple says I should." His tone was kept light and conversational, like none of this really mattered.
Certainly, there was a draw to her abrasive suggestion. But he knew he would always be the first to roll over and submit. It had been the way he'd survived for going on a decade now, and it would be a hard habit to break even if he wanted to.
@[Neverwhere]
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