"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
Great grey clouds bury the far-reaching field beneath Xi's lucent wings in a dismal sheen. Her analytic purple eyes search for others, but she finds there are few items of interest that rest in the emerald expanse below. Good. The quiet prompts her descent towards the placid lake at the field's heart, and when she alights gracefully on the moist lakeside with a final flutter of her butterfly wings, Xi sighs in appreciation of the silence.
Birds chirp in the distance, the lake laps gently at its shores, the autumn wind sings subtly through blades of grass and faraway tree limbs. Otherwise, there is silence.
It's peculiar to be surrounded by so many scents but so few horses. She has arrived at exactly the right time, Xi decides.
She possesses no regrets or thoughts of her past as she wades hock-deep into the murky waters. She has left no attachments behind, nor important memories to tuck with care into the recesses of her mind for later preening. She is a blank canvas of her own creation.
Xi's drink from the pond is marred only by the subtle, but growing, sound of hooves in the distance. They fall rhythmically against the soft earth of the field, one gentle thud after another. She knows she has been spotted even before she turns to face the stranger who approaches, but when she does it's with a swift pivot of her ivory and peach body, and hardened purple eyes.
“Whisper,” Xi demands in her own quiet hiss before they have a chance to speak. It is not regular practice to warn strangers how to tiptoe around her ability, but assaulting this one with unexpected shrapnel would likely act as a detriment in this moment, when learning about this new place is more important than her devotion to remaining solitary.
The demand hisses out and the yearling bristles underneath it, feeling gall rise in her throat. It stops her in her tracks, a frown on her face, wings lifted slightly away from her dark sides with the quiet, shuffling whisper of feather brushing feather. She peers at the other curiously, then around at their surroundings. There is a softening of the noise around them. The wind in the grass grows silent, the birdsong barely more than a memory, though they flit and flutter and stain the skies with their false starts at migration.
"Why?"
Her own demand is not a whisper at all, but it sounds as dull as the muted birdsong around them, and without waiting for an answer she drops her head to the water and drinks from the still, cold pond. The chill on her lips makes her snort and wrinkle her nose, makes her ponder the splashed mare's interest in wading into it, but she drinks her fill and lifts her dripping muzzle away again from the water to find the stranger's purple gaze.
"Why should I whisper? I don't want to."
There is a childish petulance in her voice that doesn't match what sounds like easy compliance to the request, but Quietude has been too much on her own, abandoned young and left with only her brother to teach her manners. Which, of course, he couldn't do when it was so easy to silence him. She might smirk at the memory but it seems inappropriate just now, out of context.
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
His breath is quiet, but still clouds of steam rise in the chill air, betraying his position. This place is not one for stalking, at least not the type of stalking preferred by the water creature. Instead, he mimics the rest of the crowd, moving on four quick limbs. The tall grass of the meadowland brushes against the more tender scales of his belly, and the kelpie snorts irritably. The grass here on the mainland is worse than he remembers.
He nearly curses himself for coming here – and not for the first time – but his eyes instead settle on a pair of winged horses.
Ivar has a soft spot for winged mare, especially pretty ones. A two for one opportunity is too good to pass up. Perhaps he’ll leave with a pair of prizes, and not just the one.
The kelpie does hear the request to whisper, and complies with it even as he slips in between the two of them. He keeps far enough away that his intentions seem pure, though the way he looks both of them over is anything but. The one with the feathered wings, is too young too keep his attention, he finds after an inspection, but perhaps she can keep Isobell company for a few years, or even serve as a meal for one of his hungry children.
It has grown harder to keep them fed of late, which has spurred Ivar’s visit to the common lands. It is time to bring back something fresh, something to give him kelpies or to feed himself and his family. Maybe both in the end, especially if she bore him subpar children.
None of this shows on his face, which is white lipped and impossibly handsome. Though he wears the sharp teeth and scales common among his kind, kelpies rarely need those to hunt. Often it’s enough just to ask, and the prey comes willingly. Other times they require more convincing, and Ivar wonders which he might encounter today. It has been a while since one had struggled, and at the memory of it he smiles wolfishly (though it appears only as a charming prelude to his words).
“Maybe her ears hurt.” He says softly to the black-winged adolescent. “And even if not, it rarely hurts to humor a stranger, especially when they don’t ask very much of you.” The words about decency do not sizzle on his liar’s tongue. “My name is Ivar,” the golden-eyed stallion says quietly to them both.
@[Xi]
@[Quietude]
and i'll use you as a warning sign that if you talk enough sense then you'll lose your mind
Unsuspecting of Xi's abrasive temperament, the obsidian youngling is noticeably ill-prepared for the woman's singular command. The painted woman observes as the girl's iridescent wings lift away from her spindly frame to appear larger and at the way her youthful muscle defiantly grows taut. Xi's own hardened lavender eyes soon find company in a small grin that appears only just because she is amused by the girl's challenge (apparent, it is, that she does not have someone in her life to readily explain social etiquette), though it has a short life upon her beautifully harsh face.
The sounds of the surrounding area deaden unnaturally ─ the birds, the lake, the wind all falling flat in her angled ears. Why? the obsidian girl asks, and her quiet voice is the only thing that does not sound muffled. And despite what it is that has slipped from her lips, a single-worded inquiry, she does what Xi has asked.
Maybe her ears hurt.
Whatever had hushed the Field had extended to the stallion's hooves; Xi does not notice him until he is near enough to join the conversation, her irritation in his sudden arrival apparent in the way she flutters her lucid wings rapidly against the gleam of her hips. His honeyed voice, though reprimanding of the younger winged girl, feels almost too kind. Especially when paired with a face as admirable as his.
Ivar. She wonders what higher power he'd sold his soul to for a face like that.
“If you don't want to, it does not matter to me,” she darts her lavender gaze back to the girl's brief moment of petulance, “but perhaps you would prefer to answer my questions about this place without the distraction of explosions?”
Her words are clipped, and offer no additional explanation beyond the downturn of her lips and the tightness of her pupils.
“Now, if you would both be so kind as to tell me where I am,” a conspiratorial whisper as her gaze turns from the charcoal girl to the paint-splashed man and back again, “You'll be free to go and can both enjoy your day elsewhere.”
04-30-2020, 01:09 PM (This post was last modified: 04-30-2020, 01:13 PM by Quietude.)
Quietude
Her ears turn at the sound of Ivar's footsteps dropping softly into the water and the surprise on the splashed mare's face makes her grin, something she hides by turning suddenly to nip at her dark shoulder as though a fly had settled there to feed. When she lifts her gaze again, suitably recomposed, she lets her dark eyes fall on the stallion's fantastic hide. He scolds her softly and Quietude frowns with an audible Hmph! and turns away with all the imperiousness someone her age can muster - which is significantly more than they have any right to. She is too young for his interest and for his wiles and they slip over her, unnoticed.
The sharp-tongued mare's words do not.
"Oh! No, explosions would be so cool!" And although she is clearly shouting this, it, like everything else, seems dull and flat, as though she were shouting through the feathers of her wing, "Can you blow up whatever you want?"
Her dark eyes are bright and eager, curiousity suddenly lighting up the rebellious pout of her face. The adolescent is nearly vibrating out of her skin as she looks to Ivar to see if he is as excited about the prospect of explosions. Doesn't he want to see them too?
"I can make things explode sometimes too! But it's a lot harder than making everything quiet."
And then, because she has still not quite mastered the knack of using her power without moving her self, she extends her wing at it's wrist as if to capture the hushed call of a blackbird singing the outline of its territory in the pond's tall reeds, seeming to make it grow until even from outside the bubble of peace she has created around them there is a gentle booming sound and a small spray of soft wood splinters away from a decades-old rotten log at the water's far edge.
There is a sheen of sweat on her neck and she lifts heavy wings from her sides to let the autumn breeze flow beneath them. Making sound grow that powerful is difficult and she has little practice with it, but she turns back to mare and stallion beaming.
"You're in the Field, it's probably the quietest place in Beqanna so if that's what you like, you got lucky!" She says this ignorant of any place beyond the continent's common lands, "But I can make any place as quiet or noisy as I want so I never care too much about that."
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
It isn’t until Xi speaks that Ivar realizes there is something amiss with the way she sounds. With the way the world sounds.
Aren’t things usually louder up here? His gold-tipped ears flicker curiously. Yes, he’s very certain that sound should be better up here, and yet his auditory senses tell him he’s underwater. Ivar shakes his head sharply. That should dislodge any water in his ears – the usual cause of cause distortions. It does not help. The kelpie nearly opens his mouth to ask the others if they hear it too when he puts together what they’d been saying, shaking his head slowly as if in response to Quietude’s excitement about explosions. Well, he is shaking his head to that, but also to the realization that the black creature is the source of the unnatural sounds.
It is beautiful, her performance. There is sometimes a rhythm to wind, and there are many harmonies in nature, but this is something else entirely.
Ivar hates it.
He scowls – a very handsome scowl – at the beaming filly and then moves it to the peach mare who apparently causes unpredictable explosions. This is exactly why he does not leave his island, Ivar thinks. The world beyond his carefully manicured paradise is full of ear magicians and bomb-makers and all sorts of distasteful creatures. His belly rumbles, pinched tight with hunger after nothing but a meagre morning meal, but neither of the horses in front of him looking nearly as appetizing as they had a moment ago.
“This is the Field,” he agrees with the younger pegasus, “But it’s loud. Go northwest. You’ll find empty spaces. Maybe Hyaline’s mountains.” Anywhere but Ischia, he thinks, his slow step movement backward a clear indication that he means to take her up on the fact that he’s free to leave.
and i'll use you as a warning sign that if you talk enough sense then you'll lose your mind
Had Xi possessed any knowledge of children, she would have known that the prospect of explosions would be deemed more exciting than it was dangerous ─ or, perhaps, more exciting because it was dangerous. And so it's with an exasperated sigh that she responds to the obsidian girl's elation, however politely muffled it may be. “No, I can't control them.” Her words, while melodic, are clipped. Xi had not intended to become an exciting new friend to prod and bother.
But then, she is taken aback by the girl's unexpected confession. An ear twitches with interest, slowly pivoting towards the strange child. Her previously dismissive side-eye turns into a more direct observation. Her black pupils narrow in their lake of lavender, and she watches as the girl concentrates long enough to shatter a fallen log on the opposite side of the glassy water, while still surrounding the trio in their invisible globule of muffled sound. A small, short-lived smile twitches at the corners of her lips as she turns her gaze back to the pair.
The girl's display had been impressive, but telling her such would only invite her to continue exploding things ─ and there is only so much Xi can trust a child with the power to manipulate sound and matter like that. In time, though, it could be useful ─ a fact that she lingers on again, when the girl speaks to the extent of her abilities.
Unlike the winged girl, Ivar was blatantly unimpressed by the topic at hand. His syrupy smile had run for the hills, leaving behind a revolted scowl. Somehow, it accentuated his appealing looks, though Xi tries not to dawdle on that. “And if I wanted to live somewhere that could appreciate my talent?” Using the word talent to describe her spontaneous compulsion amuses the winged woman, despite the fact that her facade betrays nothing of the sort. “Where do you live?” she asks of the young girl, pointedly, before she turns her lavender gaze back to the scowling gold-flecked stallion who seemed to be inching towards a breakaway. “You can go.” She laughs under her breath, though the aversion is evident.
Xi has no time for those who shy away from unnatural abilities.
But oh, if only she knew the stories of the kelpie from the deep.
He contradicts her and it shines a glaring light on her obvious ignorance of her own country. The filly's keen interest withers back into a sullen frown and she resettles the dark, iridescent wings on her back, the feathers flicking and zipping against one another, exhaling a light cloud of dust into the air to settle back around them. Embarrassed, she turns to Ivar with an imperious scowl and blows air at him petulantly, ears laying flat and black cord tail flicking sharply, its short strands snapping against her hocks. She sidesteps as he pulls back from her, placing herself a step nearer the splashed mare.
Ivar offers them Hyaline and the name sounds like music in her ears, but she knows nothing about it beyond what he has already said, that it is north. For a moment, she lets her eyes turns to the distant mountain peak beyond which the Hyalinian range extends. Leave? But Nerve left. They fought and he left and what was holding her here except memories? She looks back to the mare with the sun glinting on her delicate wings, flashy and beautiful against her own gawky darkness. Where do you live?
"Oh, well..." She ducks her head, swallowing back the regret that rises sourly on her tongue, "I guess I live here." Then, with a shake, she pulls her head back again, mimicking the dismissive tone and hard edges as best she can, shrugging bitterly, "Mama said she'd be right back and me 'n' Nerve waited for a long time. Never saw her again, though."
Hardly an original story. Quietude scuffs a dark hoof to distract from the anger that shimmers across her face, burning in her chest. At least when Nerve had gone, he didn't lie about it.
