"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
05-08-2020, 09:44 PM (This post was last modified: 05-08-2020, 10:06 PM by lilliana.)
There’s something wrong.
She’s known for a while now that something is wrong. Lilliana is far too slim, lean to be this far in pregnancy. Her ribs show at the top of her copper frame and while her last pregnancy had been with multiples, this child she carries doesn’t settle. It sits wrong on her bones, where her hips have started to point. There is something wrong and the only thing she can do is let her gift drain itself.
(Not that she can see the way the light pools within, not that she can see how it cradles her unborn child.)
As she enters the latter stages of her pregnancy, she moves to Silver Cove. She moves away from the wasteland of Pangea with its angry, fractured ground and turns her eyes towards the north. If she can’t go home, she becomes determined that she will not drop her child on the red dirt that coats her throat and lungs. At least in the Cove, there is a view that lets her see an evergreen glimpse of the Taigan forest.
Not home, but close.
(So, so achingly close.)
And then there is the ocean.
By the ocean, there is always the chance to send a hope out on the waning tide.
Winter here is still bitter. It bites against all the sharp angles of her body, the wind growls its bitter anger in her ear. When the days (despite this one not being so bad - if she wasn’t so lost, Lilliana might have admired the pristine beauty of winter here, of frost sparkling on the black pebbled beaches) seem too frigid and long, she tries to warm herself. The chestnut mare tries to protect herself in the divots of the land, staying in between the gentle hills where the surf is only a soft murmur in her ears.
But Lilliana remembers the days of dreaming of oceans while she lingered by rivers and it doesn’t take long to call her back. The song of the sea calls her again and again and Lilli becomes as regular on these beaches as the tides.
When the winter wind comes racing off the ocean, when a clean blast makes her flare her nostrils, the copper mare tries using her craft (even if she won’t call it a gift) to keep herself warm. She remembers the last lessons she had been teaching her youngest son, trying to pass along what she knew of the storyweaving to Yanhua. Don’t focus so much on the picture as a whole, she had shared. Think of the softness of the grass as it danced. Think of a delicate curve of an ear. Touch helped pass the memories along, especially when a bond already existed. An emotion tied to the memory made it more vivid, more vibrant, more beautiful - something easier to paint with the mind.
So as she walks with the wind calling her someplace wild, that’s what she does. Lilliana paints with her mind.
05-10-2020, 11:18 PM (This post was last modified: 05-10-2020, 11:18 PM by Rhaegor.)
Not home, but close. (So, so achingly close).
The Silver Cove. A young land which, when born, welcomed Hyaline's Sanctuarians without hesitation when the plague struck. A prince three or four years of age at that time, Rhaegor remembers much, or would if he allowed himself to. During recent times he prefered to forget (or at least to ignore). What parties, courtships, heartbreaks, and family gatherings he'd once had here no longer offered him solace as once they may have.
Solace.
His mother's name sounds foreign in his mind and for a moment, he wants to go to Tephra. Of course he knew that his mothers resided there now, returned as of the last lunar cycle and expecting twins; Kagerus' dreambound news-bearing knew no boundaries, to say the least. Not that Rhae had minded the intrusion; during those hours, he felt at once elated and rested for the first time in months, joy at his mothers' presences (for Solace accompanied Kagerus that night) and the heavy dose of peace that came with his bay mother's touch granting him the perfect lullaby.
The birth had gone awry, however, and the delivery of that news brought less joy and more sorrow. More ignorance. More deflection. Though he yearned to go and meet his younger brother, Indius, he found himself travelling to the other side of the godforsaken Beqanna continent, back to his own birth home.
Past it, actually.
He could not bear to see the land's laken heart just now.
So, he wanders further, shivering despite the full fluff of his wings. Winter whistled around him with a frigid tune, buffeting him to and fro with nary a concern for his well being. He could sympathize. When a warm gust of air interrupted his mindless goings, however, Rhaegor paused. The first act of intentionality that in weeks.
A step further revealed that here, winter died. Or rather, not here, but inside of himself. Nausea came over him, the wordless sensations projected by another into himself an alien feeling.
Stop, he broadcasted, using a radius far larger than necessary to reach Lilliana. Though he could not see the mare, he hard her thoughts: Think of the softness of the grass as it danced. Think of a delicate curve of an ear.Stop, please stop.
He had gone far too long without feeling to be prepared for this barrage of emotion, invisible yet poignant as it reached him by accident. Reeling back on his heels in an attempt to rejoin the winter, Rhae's reflexes took over and, with a panicked curl of his neck, he vomited a light beam unto his chest, burning and cauterizing the flesh there, where multiple marks already lay.
All at once, the warmth ceased. There Rhae stood, his nose just brushing that frosted earth, exhausted.
05-12-2020, 09:46 PM (This post was last modified: 05-12-2020, 09:53 PM by lilliana.)
Stop.
She hears the command - it cuts clear through the winter wind and resonates in her mind instead of the ears that immediately pin. Her back had been turned and her eyes had been towards evergreen Taiga. Even as far along in her pregnancy as she is, it doesn’t take the chestnut mare long to pivot and turn.
The Magic that touches her mind feels different from the one that Draco has used; it doesn’t feel like something unseen, waiting for her to say the wrong thing. It doesn’t feel like a darkness that is hovering in the back of her mind, waiting to snatch a word. When she turns away from the gray sea and lonely sky, there isn’t anyone there.
Just a thought.
Her ears flicker forward and then back, moving forwards and ahead. Lilliana had heard something. One of those winter breezes reveals she isn’t alone. It whips down the beach, over the obsidian pebbles and past her. She isn’t alone and the chestnut mare takes a careful step back and another. One more until the seaspray flirts with one her pale socks.
Stop, please stop.
Lilliana casts one glance down the beach and then the opposite way, finding it as bare as branches for this time of year. She waits and waits.
For several minutes, the copper mare doesn’t move. Lilliana remains still and nothing comes down the jet-black bank. Her dark nostrils flare and she knows that upwind is her answer. Another Pangean that is probably best left alone, she thinks. They will only scowl and sneer if she ventures too close (and that could be considered a kindness).
Still.
When she finally reaches the top of the knoll, the Taigan is almost blinded. A beam of light leaves her ambling forward, trying to stop but her hooves can’t seem to grasp the ground. Instinct tells her to run; when the light recedes, there is only a buckskin stallion.
Was he.. the thought-giver?
The pegasus stands still, not making any motion towards her (or appearing to have any awareness of her at all, really). Run, some part of her thinks. If she gallops now, even if he does notice her, she could be halfway down the beach and then…
Elaina lingers in her mind, arguing with her. Defend your kindness.
There was no kindness in leaving a stranger like this.
His head still hangs with his nose hovering above the frozen ground. Lilliana casts one more look down the beach and then grits her teeth together. The burn that is seared into his flesh is fresh and she can still smell it; the fading tang of his Magic as it smoldered against him.
A cold blast of air blows past him and Lilliana swallows her fear, trying to control the erratic pulse that keeps telling her to run, run, run."I can help with that,” she offers quietly, lowering her own head as her blue eyes search to meet his. It’s only when they do that she points to the scorched skin. "If you'd like."
Nothing good will come of this, thinks the part of her that is already racing down the beach.
By the time she approached, her echoes had quieted. This alone made her presence bearable. Her hoofsteps brought a gust of wintery wind with her -- though other parts of Beqanna had turned its face towards the sunlight of spring, the Cove seemed trapped in a perpetual winter. This fact troubled Rhae more than the chestnut mare across from him. It wasn't like this when we lived here.
He missed the we. Warlight. Sviko. Mothers. The serenity and innocence of youth. All gone.
The residue of this mare's empathy (so linked to what felt lost to him) reminded him more of her presence than the sound of her hoofsteps. Than the silence of her arrival next to him.
His head jerked up at her words.
I don't know what you're talking about. These words spat from his mind to hers before she managed to find his eyes; the genuinity he found in the sapphire depths of Lilliana's gaze only made him more defensive. He resented her willingness. Her naivety. Here serenity and innocence. Wanted it. Would kill for it. Didn't know how to have it back.
I-- Nothing good will come of this. Run, run, run, run --
Rhaegor's head flung back, ears pinned, his eyes ignited in pain. The part of himself who hated her for seeing his wounds so fresh and for caring (the others hadn't cared!) cried, pushed him to extend his wings and to lunge towards her.
If you want to run so badly then why don't you! Go! Run!
But maybe, just maybe, if she stayed, Lilliana would notice that Rhaegor's lunge ended short. That the fire in him died out just when he ought to have burned her.
05-18-2020, 04:56 PM (This post was last modified: 05-18-2020, 05:08 PM by lilliana.)
She hasn’t always known the Cove this way. Lilliana had been here once as an aspiring, bright-eyed diplomat with every promise for an equally-bright future. She hasn’t always known the Cove - or Pangea - this way just as she hasn't always been this way.
If the chestnut mare knew that he mourned a youth gone, perhaps they could have grieved together. They might have bonded over that - the last of Lilliana’s girlhood is buried beneath a pile of lake pebbles in Hyaline (the kingdom of his mothers) like his innocence seems to be left somewhere along it's lakeside. (A reminder constructed of a hideaway from her youth. A place where she and her cousin left flowers and shells and pretty stones if they couldn’t find the other to trade a secret.) The last time she had gone to Hyaline - on a cold, clear Winter night with only the silver stars for company - there had been nothing left to find.
As if they had never been there at all.
The copper mare - so often compared to that peaceful, pristine lake - had sent her anger and her fury rippling across its mirror surface. She had shouted and screamed until she had returned to Taiga in the morning, still seething and unable to voice anything at all for a few days after.
Her crimson face returns upright immediately. Lilliana reacts almost the instant that he does; the Taigan mare means to give him no time if he intends to hurt her. Her heart echoes in a rapid succession, the sound her hooves should be making as she turns to run. Instead, she angles her stomach away from him to protect her unborn child and pins her ears.
There are thoughts in her mind that aren’t her own and her dark lips curl to reveal a flash of white, that no matter how sick she feels at the thought, she will bite him. This is a bond like she had once shared with Craft - though that bond had felt like a gentle tether. This feels like being harnessed to a tornado.
No, mind-talker?
The fire in his eyes catches and blazes hers to brilliant blue as Lilliana stands her ground - her ire speaking plainly, no thoughts needed.
The chestnut mare decides to repay the favor and lets the image of how he had been just moments prior slip between them, how she had found him, how he had looked through her eyes.
(His pale face, hanging low. His buckskin pelt shivering. The way he had held his wings. The freshly burned skin on his chest.)
She stays firmly put - but the slender mare flinches visibly when he tells her to run.
Lilliana’s delicate ears remained hidden in the waves of her red mane and though her jaw is clenched, she finally relents with her thoughts. What does it say of me if I left you like that? While the red mare doesn’t move towards him, her expression could pen odes for the ages about her distrust of anyone in Pangea. Are you the kind of monster to prey on empathy? I didn’t think you were, she brightens, growing angrier with each biting thought she projects back at him. But forgive me, if I’m wrong.
The impressiveness of the effectiveness of her defenses waned in comparison to how her mental rebuttal crumpled Rhae's urge to fight. While it flared at first, an extinction burst of rage, defensiveness, and fear, it held no candle to the flame of Lilliana's projected emotions. Images emerged from them, images of himself as a forlorn and dejected creature who stood as though his heart had fallen into his mouth and he could no longer breathe for fear of its inevitable drop. Its inevitable escape from his being.
The words which accompanied her projected emotions brought tears to Rhaegor's eyes. His heart tasted shattered in between his teeth.
What does it say of me if I left you like that? Are you the kind of monster to prey on empathy? I didn't think you were, but forgive me, if I'm wrong.
Memories. Flashes of his childhood in Hyaline, then in the Cove. Midnight races from the mountain grotto to the lake with his triplet siblings. Beach days, dances, winter parties. Chryseis. Dawn. Chryseis. He felt the loss of those two with such poignancy that he feared he might lapse into a panic attack, a visceral expression of his profound internal turmoil which would be rendered almost imperceptible by way of his muteness.
He felt his throat tighten, his eyes glaze, his thoughts collide into one another at light speeds yet going so slow that the loudest voice of all berated him for not being able to speak even a single word. From over his shoulder he heard and watched himself behave in an acceptable way, watched as he straightened and apologized for his terrible behaviour. The longer the mirage wore on, the louder the angry voice in his head punished him for his inability to speak.
Unknowable time passed before Rhae's central nervous system -regulated. Long enough for Lilliana to have left a dozen times over. Long enough for his mouth to bleed from the places his heart cut it. When he raised his head and blinked for the first time since he could remember, he began to shake all over.
I'm so sorry, he managed to broadcast to the mare. He failed to meet her gaze, the one which had been so full of anger what felt like just moments ago. That voice in his head continued its assault of his confidence and self-understanding. You are worthless. You are beyond repair. Leave and find somewhere to die.
Memories of Warlight holding him while he cried over Chryseis reminded him that he needn't listen to that voice. But its presence exhausted him and he found that in the present moment, he could not bring himself to silence its harsh words.
I'll go now, please, go back to having those warm feelings. His words blurred in Lilli's head due to his haste.
05-21-2020, 09:44 PM (This post was last modified: 06-10-2020, 07:31 PM by lilliana.)
Lilliana fully anticipates him to lunge. Everything in her rigid stance - the taut muscles, the way she angles her stomach away from him, the fire burning brightly in her blue eyes - shows that she expects this. It’s easier to come to this assumption than anything else these days. And perhaps Rhaegor is doing her a kindness - at least she sees him coming.
But as she is so prone to do these days - swinging from one emotion to the next - the leap leaves her vulnerable. While she would protect herself in this anger, it leaves a crack for the buckskin stallion to slip into and the images he projects into her mind sends her reeling back. He doesn’t need to physically lunge at her when he overwhelms her with the very thing that keeps Lilliana from falling apart: memories.
She doesn’t know the faces. There are flashes of Hyaline (and how her heart lurches at that), of the Cove that doesn’t align with the present they stand in and other places that Lilliana isn’t familiar with. (How could she when there is still so much of Beqanna she doesn’t know, that she is still coming to understand?) There are forms that dance through his memories that she has no way of knowing who they are but she feels his ache for them. (She doesn’t know the stories but she doesn’t need to - not when her own pages are littered with loss. Like calls to like.)
The two of them might not have clashed physically but Lilliana feels the impact of his memories like a blow.
The copper mare takes another step back and then another as her mind recovers from the images, the jagged lines of her own vulnerability shines through her eyes as she continues to move away from him. Those serrated edges hurt, she's learned. They wound and leave scars behind and she has no intention of inflicting that harm on either of them.
(How can she do anything when he shakes like that? How can she just let him walk away when he looks like that?)
"Don’t!” her voice sharply manifests as silver plumes of smoke from her dark nostrils as they flare. Whether she says in reference to his apology or that she return to the warm memories that she barricades herself with on this bleak shore (she can’t), Lilliana doesn’t specify. The white of her blue eyes shows momentarily before she lowers her head, visibly torn between wanting to let him leave and yet...
When he turns to go, her blue eyes drop to the fresh burn on his tawny chest.
His voice hitches on a sob and it gets stuck somewhere between her own heart and throat, a hollow thought that leaves her too quickly. It slips before she can grasp it. A metaphysical bruise that lingers between them. I can’t help with that. Fighting within herself, she finally lowers her head and takes a tentative step closer. Her dark maw points to the burn, but that I might be able too.
Just- , she cuts herself off. Moments before she had been ready to run from him, hurt him if it was deemed necessary. That conflict still lines her copper face. But now, @[Rhaegor] trembles and looks so lost on this lonely beach that Lilliana just wants him found. Don’t you have something like that? she tries. Don’t you have something to protect yourself with?
LILLIANA
if i ever get to heaven i've got a long list of questions
Her words in his mind continued (he realized somewhere around her offer to help heal his chest that he could choose to stop hearing her broadcasted voice but he lacked the mental energy to sever their connection) and managed to keep him stuck in place for a few moments longer. His memories flowed without reserve in his mind, no longer retained by the boundaries he wore when he attempted to maintain his composure.
When she asked about his abilities - something to protect himself with - Rhaegor could but shake his head no, no, he didn't have something like that (not that he could think of with any sense right now). From the outside, it became obvious that the stallion had, in effect, "turned off." Dissociation writ itself with painful evidence across the blankness of the stallion's painted face, in the scrawl of his pink, flattened lips.
When she reached to heal him with her light, he pressed his mouth into her mane and felt something intelligible pass from the trembling of his psyche into the physical reality of the world he found himself in at this time. Thank you, he mouthed into her mane; and until she finished he remained pressed to her as such.
At a later time, he turned to leave her company; but a vision overtook him (as though he had the capacity for further mental stimulation right now) and caused him pause. You're having a daughter, he murmured into her mind, confident that it was true despite the fact that his vision could have been from years in the future. With that, and a last flash of his eyes in her direction as thanks, he unfurled his wings and flew into the night, eager to find somewhere quiet to settle down and lick the invisible wounds in his mind.
06-10-2020, 07:30 PM (This post was last modified: 06-10-2020, 07:33 PM by lilliana.)
She doesn’t have any composure, not anymore.
Precious, practiced Lilli has burned away her defined edges. She is nothing but fraying ends, unraveling threads that keep coming undone. Pretty Lilli isn’t the same girl with that quick (wildfire) smile or those bright, laughing eyes. Not anymore.
There is something in her - like a plea - that watches as Rhaegor shakes his head 'no.’ He has nothing to protect himself and as wild as thoughts and memories flow between them, she wonders if they are alike this way; that they let themselves become battering rams against their own emotions.
He startles her when she reaches down to touch him. The healing might have worked without touch but her abilities have been draining since the night she was taken from Taiga. Stress, heartache, nerves - all things coming unwound during her captivity in Pangea. It’s with a tentative touch that she reaches out to his chest and as the burn subsides (as the skin returns to what it was, what it should be), the thought-giver touches her.
Murmurs something into the tangles of her copper mane. Lilliana can’t tell what he is saying but she can guess.
If she had any doubts, a thought coils in her mind. You’re having a daughter, the stranger thinks. It’s the last thing he leaves her with and when he vanishes into the endless depth of night, that is where her mind will be. Where her heart will linger. To daughters and mothers, to the boys left behind her in Taiga.
Maybe years from now when this is all behind her, when she can reflect and reconcile, she’ll realize that they crossed paths without leaving each other worse than how they had been found.
LILLIANA
if i ever get to heaven i've got a long list of questions
![[Image: rhae]](https://66.media.tumblr.com/c013fae479a9e0c775688ff921306b4e/tumblr_pivbqpgHuG1xsr748o1_250.png)