"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
— I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night —
In all her years Agetta has never faced the problem she currently is - the mystery of who has sired the foal growing within her. It is early days yet but she has been a mother enough times to know the signs, and it has only been a year since the last time she has gone through it so it is fresh in her mind. There’s joy in the knowledge that there will be another foal, that Beyza and Caledonia will have a younger sibling, but it is laced with guilt.
She’s been avoiding going back to Pangea, avoiding seeking either of the potential fathers out, hoping that a day or two of space will help her figure out what she should do. She knows she cannot dance the knife edge between heartbreak and happiness forever, that she cannot avoid what is to come.
Just another day more, she thinks. Then she’ll know the right words to say.
It’s only chance but it feels like fate when she spots the angelic mare, a sense of relief pulsing through her. She’s felt a kinship with the other mare, strong since returning, and it feels like friendship. Agetta’s recently realized she hasn’t had a lot of friends so she’s not sure where the lines start and stop for labels - but, at least, whatever she has with Ryatah is close enough to it.
“Ryatah! It’s so good to see you.” She is careful not to ask how the other mare is doing as she comes to stand nearby - although she is genuinely curious, she has no wish to answer the question should it be returned. So, instead, she launches into another topic before the simple niceties of conversation can even begin. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you - do you know what a cocksucker is?” Agetta’s tongue fumbles with the word, much as it had when she had first repeated the term ‘bullshit’ which the same stallion had used soon after. “Someone used that word and, well, the context wouldn’t help because he was just shouting expletives more or less constantly. Is it a curse?”
she fell for the idea of him and ideas were a dangerous thing to love
She is so used to being weighed down by a strange kind of sadness that she hardly notices it anymore. Not even when it changes and takes a different shape, not when it shifts to a different quadrant of her heart. Her sadness was self-sustaining, usually, but sometimes there were things that breathed a whole new life into it – things that reminded her that it was living and viable, and the right amount of fuel and the flames of it would burn her from the inside out.
It had been easier to hide herself away in Hyaline, away from everyone. In places tucked so far away she could almost feel alone, she could almost erase this unbearable weight anchored inside her chest. But she has never been good with solitude. Her mind was a dangerous place when left to its own devices, and so, artfully avoiding all the places Atrox typically haunted – not that he would notice or care that she was gone – she left Hyaline for the meadow.
She isn’t here for long when she hears a familiar voice call her name, and instead of feeling relief, there is a prickling of anxiety along her spine. She turns to take in Agetta, and she wonders if the other mare can read the secret she hides on her face – the secret about Anaxarete and Beyza, that Agetta’s daughter shares her DNA and not Plume’s. But she wills the ghost in her eyes away with a smile, meeting her friend half-way and with a gentle bump of her nose against her neck. “Agetta,” she returns the greeting, and slowly she feels the previous tension fade away. “It’s good to see you, too.”
But what she asks her next is something that she had never expected her to ask. For a long moment all Ryatah does is simply stare at her, trying to figure out if this was a genuine question or some kind of set up to a (really bad) joke. She doesn’t mean to laugh, but she does – mostly out of disbelief, because she cannot believe she’s having this conversation with Agetta. “Um...it’s not considered a compliment, I’ll just say that.” Tipping her haloed head quizzically, she dares to ask, “Who in the world were you talking to? That...doesn’t really sound like someone you’d hang out with.”
— I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night —
It is such a small thing, having a friend greet her with a gentle bump of her nose, but it has a significant effect on Agetta. It warms her so thoroughly she’s sure she can feel it in her heart. How did she survive so long on her own without these little things? She didn’t know how much she missed just having a friend until she found one again. Didn’t know how dark those years were until they were put in contrast with the small acts of love she was surrounded with now.
Even in her present, confusing and shameful circumstance she wouldn’t choose to go back for anything.
During the moment where Ryatah just stares at her, Agetta goes over what she asked in her head - wondering if it made any sense. Or perhaps the word ‘cocksucker’ was just so awful, so extremely unheard of by all of polite society, that she had stunned Ryatah into silence just by uttering it outloud.
Thankfully, the moment does not last forever. The laughter from her friend startles her and Agetta feels a rush of embarrassment, though she cannot help but smile along too. She’s distracted from noticing that Ryatah really answer the question except vaguely, though, and she cannot help but huff a bit at the memory of who incited this inquiry in the first place. “Some winged jerk, I couldn’t believe some of the words he was saying. It not being a compliment seems to fit.” She hadn’t heard so many curse words strung together in such a short period of time before in her life - which, long as it was, was saying something.
She still prickled at the memory of being called boring for admitting that very thing out loud.
“I accidentally blinded him for a moment and he was a big baby about it, but thankfully our conversation ended soon after. It was tempting to blind him again on purpose though, I will say that much.” Though she's smiling by now, there's enough of an edge to her voice to make it clear she's far from joking.
