"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
Atop a red mesa in full sun, shadows swarm suddenly, spinning and swirling angrily, hissing at the light that whips them and tears them to shreds like war torn pennants, though few would notice their snarled whispers. Beryl does not know if they hate the sun so - she is sure they do, of course - or if they only echo the discomfort that etches her sharp-featured face into a deep frown as she steps from the damp, cool, air of Nerine and into the thick swelter of Pangea. Her skin prickles with sweat and her tail is alive with agitation, snapping side to side against her golden flanks. Like the air, panic chokes her and her breath is short through flared nostrils, but she steps out from the boiling shadows and lets them go, watching jealously as they rush away to the cracks and crevices between the rocks.
Red mare. Blue eyes. Golden flame.
Beryl swallows hard and grits her teeth together. A red mare in a red land. The dust of the place settles on her coat like ash and snow, dulling the white of her mane and tail, and the young mare thinks bitterly that everyone who lives here must be red as the sandstone cliffs. But she had said that she would look - no one else in Nerine could easily bring Lilliana home if she were in trouble, if she were sick or injured or trapped, so it fell on her shoulders to find the crimson woman. Beryl is not a bloodhound, however, and if Lilliana's scent was ever here in this particular spot, it has long since been baked away by an unforgiving sun. Dark eyes scan across what can be seen from her perch and the barrenness flavors her fear with gloom. Where to even start?
water
The palomino's golden head nods to nobody visible. Yes, water, the shadows are right - find water, find someone. At the mesa's edge she finds a crude slope and descends on careful hooves into the maze of canyon where once sea but now wind has carved the impenetrable rock, her heart fluttering like butterflies caught in a jar. Not her first time among these impassive stone walls. Curled ears pin back, tracing the curve of her poll until they almost disappear among the white and gold and dusty red, giving her a snake-like profile. Can aliens be torn apart as easily as dragons in dreams? A glimmer of teeth shines between her lips, a grimace, but she knows that it will be easier, faster, wiser to simply disappear again into shadows.
A tired wind brings the scent of something green and she follows it, finds the wide secret river at the kingdom center. Red mare. Blue eyes. Golden flame.
At the bank, a white wing lies severed - no, not severed, torn. The scent of blood is faint and rot has found the limb, though there is not much flesh on it to be dissolved. Bone and sinew and feather, drying out in the sun, only the ragged fleshy base of it black and soft. The sodden earth is churned, but offers no answers and though she pauses to consider the horror of what is before her, there's no reason to assume it has anything to do with her search for Lillianna. Surely Eurwen would have mentioned if she'd had wings, and yet, the disembodied wing is the closest thing she has found to any living body within the wretched canyons, so she investigates it warily, distaste written plain as day across her face.
Everything is angry.
The world is angry.
There is nothing to be satisfied about (is there ever?).
There is gold in the air, and He latches to it immediately. A glistening tinge on the horizon - a spark in the desolate landscape of Pangea. He forgets, sometimes, whether or not he resided over this place. There is too much time in the space between his bones, too much age in the grit of his blood. He simply remembers the bleak and vast barren of her achingly long stretch of land. There is nothing here ( was there ever?) - there is little to be found.
He never knows why He returns - there is not much left here for him. The boredom can’t be placated - his heart will never know a thing - his loins only carry the trace of magic. The Beqanna he once knew is too far gone; there is nothing left. And yet, still, he returns. His ancient bones and his weary magic and his history that he has long forgotten.
He watches her - red and blue and gold (a flurry and a forest of color). She picks her way gently, uncomfortably, unsure (but so steady in her trek) - and he waits. Something quiet and soft in the corner, studying her so sure journey.
“Looking for someone?” His voice slithers into the air as she broaches the feast of feathers along the shore. He is languid, a relaxed posture in the poignant red of the desert. He shifts his weight, hooves sinking in what little damp earth exists in this barren place. His head tosses slightly upwards towards the abandoned angel wing that this golden thing studies. “Wasn’t me.” He says with a shrug.
∞
and now the storm is coming, the storm is coming in
Whispers hiss in her ear, but they are unsure, little more than indistinct murmurs. They don't read him as they read other things, and perhaps it's the magic that makes him too bright for them to see, or perhaps it's just the shadows being true to their nature and hiding information. She is not a perfect diviner of the darkness that stretches its fingers towards her in this awful place, but she suspects that what is following her is not one of the hard-shelled hunters that frightened her so badly as a child, and that - though she does not want to admit it - frighten her still. The golden mare thinks the shadows would not hide that from her, but just the same, she gathers them in the grip of her power, ready.
She does not need to run faster than a Xenomorph, she does not need to fight more savagely, she only needs a bit of darkness well in hand.
With no more information than that someone is watching, she listens to the soft grinding of hooves on the sand and fine gravel, her coffee-dark eyes flicking up at the sound of his voice. Her muzzle still hovers just above the torn limb, her breath imparting life into rotten feathers that will not feel the sky beneath them again. He materializes nearby in a corner of the red canyon and irritation licks the back of her throat - what about him kept the shadows from speaking more clearly? - and she does a poor job of hiding the vexed frown the drags down the corners of her grey lips. Horns, wings, the shadows are not afraid of these shapes. She wants to ask him why, then, they skimmed him like oil over water, but she only lets his words hang in the thick air between them unanswered for a moment too long.
If the shadows couldn't tell her about him, he may be stronger than she is. Her heart skips, but she is not the same helpless filly that jumped here by mistake before, lost, confused, crying out for her piebald dam. Instead, she lifts her head high atop her long neck dark eyes cool as they trace the lines of his ageless face, and she does not pull the darkness around her as she so desperately wishes to do. Rather, she is the sun, light radiating away from the burnished gold of her back and the glimmering stars that drip down her shoulder.
"I hadn't assumed it of you," she says, softly, wary, "but now that you've denied it, it seems distinctly possible that you did."
How much do you tell someone when you are trespassing?
"I am looking for somebody, yes," someone she has never met, "'Red mare, blue eyes, gold flame on the shoulder.' No mention of wings. Seen anyone like that here?"
08-22-2020, 09:40 PM (This post was last modified: 08-22-2020, 09:56 PM by Eight.)
no matter what they say, I am still the king
Red mare, blue eyes, gold flame - a description that tears the world asunder. It echoes in his mind as the glass of her thoughts defog. Something so visceral - so absolutely definite in her world. And what is it to him? A string to grasp on to, something to tug the hinges of her heart and soul. Red mare, blue eyes, gold flame - adjectives and nouns to twist into persecution. It is a hope - a bright light in her darkness - that this red blue gold will come again (despite the facts so clearly before her).
“Haven’t seen a thing.” He says easily, shrugging off the shadows and stepping towards her. Give him the shadows; bathe him in what you hold strongest. There is nothing about him to hold dear - there is nothing to hold sacred. The shadows lick his skin, but cannot crawl inside (you can feel this, you can taste this - and you simply know that there is no fight).
He means no harm (he never does, really). He is a spector - something on the sidelines of your sight, a visitor in this implacable moment. He wants nothing more but to watch your discovery - to taste the coppery lick upon your tongue, to feel the soft tickle of feather upon your lips. It’s a thrill, discovering the demise of another (something he forgot he desired). Red mare, blue eyes, gold flame. There is more though - and the shadows crawl upon his skin and turn his mouth to ash, but he knows. “What about the wings?” There will always be wings - there will always be angels. It is a simple statement - like the red clay beneath their feet, the achingly tall caverns at their side. It is in the shadows crawling towards her sides, it is seeping through the sucking mud at their feet- there is no explanation.
Some of us will not make it out alive - but those with the shadows at their back have a better chance (this he knows). But what does she know? This galaxy before him, with her mouth open wide welcoming death.
“I swear,” he says, with another step forward. “I did nothing.” A rare statement for the magician (when is ‘nothing’ ever a truth with him?). Everything always seems to be his fault - a gape in the galaxy, a scar stretched too far, a mar that will never be more than a liability. “I could help, I suppose. If you are looking for something in particular.” And his own shadows fall away- he seems a bit lighter, his dark pelt a tint brighter. You could call his name and pull him in.
∞
and now the storm is coming, the storm is coming in
She's wary of everything in Pangea, she can't help it, and although he promises that he doesn't mean - and hasn't done - any harm, the star-marked mare is skeptical. She remembers a day long ago with hard-shelled hunters, with deer's blood and sweat and the sharp tang of fear, of inevitability.
To Beryl, everything in Pangea is Death. Everything is suspect.
But he is innocent, at least of this. Maybe. She can't forgive him the simple crime of existing here among the red-sand dunes and the angry salted earth raised up from the sea. Carnage's poison bleeds into Pangea (it bleeds into all of Beqanna, but it's harder to see the magic in the blood of the God-born than it is to remember the storied history of this land.) Red dust settles around them, staining their air, staining her golden coat to something darker, but, like the shadows, it seems to slide away from him. He comes closer to her and the rich bay brown of his coat brightens impossibly, and though she keeps her fears from staining the bright features of her face, she knows they are not far from the way her teeth turn sharp behind grey lips and cut her tongue. She sidesteps around the discarded limb.
"She doesn't have wings," The expression on her face turns wry, peering down at the rotten feathers, "Didn't. At least, I don't think she did." And then she grins, flat-toothed again, "Actually, I have no idea, I never met her. Nobody mentioned wings, though."
It doesn't seem like a detail that would be missed. Her hooves scrape in the sandy gravel at the river's edge. The shadows hadn't been wrong, she had found someone near water, but what use was he? There is something Other about him, the way the shadow skim over his skin and won't tell her his secrets, something concerning, but she's so tired of being afraid all the time. So tired of hiding within herself. Instead, she cocks her head and copies his actions, stepping closer, almost enough to touch.
"If you haven't seen her, I'm not sure how you can help me."
