"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
Winter is over, spring has come. The change is metaphorical perhaps, for one of his kind. He’s ruled the lands of the north for the cold seasons, and if he was chosen just to be a threat to the southern dragons, well, it failed. With it, he failed certain implied expectations - visions he hadn’t shared with them - and the opinions differed. He means well - but everything he does has a darker side, too.
Once upon a time there was a fairy. Once upon a time there was a goddess. Once upon a time there was a young and stupid stallion involving himself with magic. Once upon a time there was some idiot who hated politics, who claimed a land and left a piece of himself there, every time his feet carried him away.
What a disaster.
Birdsong (he never cared enough to know each species by heart, by sound) wakes him out of his mesmerising, his feet having carried him from one forest to another, and another. This is the open place that once helped him out of imprisonment, the safety of green canopy hiding him at the time. Right now, his red, silver and golden appearance isn’t easily concealed, but he has a little gift that helps him drape the shadows over himself. He doesn’t in fact fully hide away, the darkness just a bit of a shadow, hardly deeper than this part of the forest anyway.It just helps take away the obvious metallic and icy shine of him, or so he thinks.
Dew still clings to the leaves, this morning, even if it’s almost noon. The roan stallion meanders between the trees looking for... well, he doesn’t know. Perhaps the forest will yield something to him today, perhaps it will only help him realise how badly he doesn’t belong.
He makes a left without really looking where he goes, his hoofs leisurely taking him one way or the other. Old leaves and branches are shuffled away where he passes, new sprouts are shunned in hopes they will grow.
He hasn’t seen a lot of green, lately.
I make no promises I can’t do golden rings
Image commissioned by Vanilla, made by AshesDrawn on DA
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
09-26-2020, 02:54 PM (This post was last modified: 09-26-2020, 02:55 PM by Sheika.)
The fish told me...
Still new to the lands of Beqanna, she had gotten lost the moment she’d stepped foot into the forest. She had left the large river bordering on it on a personal quest to find calamus, a plant with healing properties that often grows at the edge of ponds. Sheika always thought ponds were like the little hidden jewels of the forest. And just like with real jewels, you had to put in some effort to find them. Thus, she had left the riverbanks she so dearly loved to explore the looming woods.
That had been yesterday. It soon became obvious that her compulsive-tracking-of-rivers behavior was probably the only reason she had ever gotten somewhere in the first place. Without the sound of rushing water to guide her, her sense of direction turned out to be quite non-existent. She had ended up spending the night in the forest, sleeping between some bramble shrubs.
She was currently straying through the forest at a slow pace. Her coat contrasted starkly with the greenery, just like the pale-colored birch trees scattered among the old oaks. Even though she had been lost since the day before, with no idea where she was going exactly, she didn’t feel anxious. After all, she was one used to wandering without aim. She was, however, disappointed that she had found not even one pond yet. That was a pity, because she really felt like having that healthy calamus snack now.
Suddenly, she noticed something in the corner of her eyes. At first she thought it was just shadows originating from the ever-moving canopy, blocking some and allowing other sunrays passage to the forest floor. But upon closer sight, it turned out to be a stallion. While the shadows seemed to envelop him more densely than one would expect, there still seemed to be a faint gold-and-silver tinge to his mane and tail. Fascinated, Sheika immediately forgot about her pond-quest and stared at the stallion. Just stared, narrowed her eyes and blinked, trying to make out whether it was really gold she saw blinking in his mane or just a trick of the light, and what was up with those shadows? ”Hmm...Interesting..” she mumbled, so distracted she didn’t even think to greet her current object of interest.
The forest yields, giving way to a brighter road, and on it a bright mare. He should have spotted the perlino way, way earlier (he has that kind of vision, and he is cloaked in shadows), especially with her coloration against the darker tree trunks. Nevertheless he is a little surprised with her appearance (literally, as she suddenly is quite close), his light-colored eyes taking her in as she... stares. Just stares. It takes a while, a while in which he starts to realize how odd he may look to newcomers to Beqanna (he hardly ever considers his coloration and his ice-made scales and his light-sucking black tattoos anomalies, but they are). Dropping the shadows now that she is openly drinking it all in, he blinks at her when the one thing she says is... interesting.
Well, that’s a new one. He chuckles a bit, tilting his head at the oddly staring mare, but when she refrains from further comments, he shakes his crest and steps forward. ”Leilan. Good day, Interesting.” he breaks the ice with the one way he knows, and that is a little tease to get her out of her comfort zone - or, her being stunned, whichever it may be today. The ice-covered roan studies the mare in turn, but finds no other oddities about her appearance.
Blessed woman, he thinks. Life can be so much simpler without the magic of Beqanna in one’s bones.
I make no promises I can’t do golden rings
Image commissioned by Vanilla, made by AshesDrawn on DA
@[Sheika] Yes you’re totally fine! It was an open one for that reason <3
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
She blinked again as the shadows finally lifted and she could actually see who she was looking at. ”Yes, thank you, that’s better, now I can see”, she said with a look of satisfaction. Indeed, it seemed like the fish hadn’t just made up some fantasy stories after all. There really were some pretty out-of-the-ordinary horses in this place. When the stallion greeted her, it was like she for the first time since their encounter realised that he was an actual person. ”Oh, got a little distracted there.” She smiled sheepishly, then added as an afterthought, ”Excuse me.”, thinking this may be proper etiquette.
He had addressed her with ‘interesting’. Sheika gave him a puzzled look. She would have to get used to talking with horses again. Fish were much easier to understand, she thought to herself. Probably because they are mostly concerned with finding good foraging grounds and spawning areas. And gossip.
She flicked her ears and remembered she should probably introduce herself as well. ”Good day. I’m Sheika.”, she said in a rehearsed, but good-natured tone of voice. She tilted her head, only then realising what an opportunity this Leilan formed. Wandering was good and all, but she’d rather return to the big river now, preferably after having found what she came looking for.”Do you, maybe, know if there’s any ponds around here? Like the nice ones, the small ones, you know?” She looked at him hopefully. Who knows, maybe he knew the way around here and then she wouldn’t have to sleep in her bramble bush spot again tonight! Since waking up this morning she had passed it twice already, and thus the odds of that happening were pretty high.
The moment he drops the aura - seeing it is pointless when you’re already in the open and meeting someone - is the moment she blinks out of her stare. Not the moment he speaks up or otherwise makes a movement - he holds in a chuckle when she responds that that is much better, though his eyes show a bright green colour when moments before they were the color of bluish ice. Such is is downfall, that the ones who have the experience will instantly be able to tell how he feels. Amused, he finds that the little joke (okay, it was a lame one, but still) goes right over her head - or she chooses to ignore it with a rather wide-eyed stare. Instead, she calls herself Sheika, so he nods. That’s what he’ll do too, then.
Then she asks for ponds - and it’s his time for a puzzled look, though it is much briefer and, he hopes at least, a little less obvious. The nice ones, the little ones? He’s never had a need for one, and the forest wouldn’t be his first choice looking for one. ”I don’t think so. There’s a small creek, I think.” There’s several, all leading towards the larger river, but the way she inquires for a pond, he assumes she wants only the smallest one, if any. ”If you’re looking for a pond, the meadow is probably your best shot. Larger bodies of water are also an option, of course.” Heck, he lives on an Isle with a small lake. Curious now, he tilts his head slightly to look at her, the normally blue returned to his gaze in the meantime. ”Why a pond, specifically?” She wouldn’t quite fit in one - not the smaller ones. And why drink trapped water, all muddy from the bottom being kicked up by bird and trapped fish alike? She didn’t look the type to be hunting those - she didn’t have a set of shark teeth, no claws to indicate anything beyond your regular horse.
I make no promises I can’t do golden rings
Image commissioned by Vanilla, made by AshesDrawn on DA
@[Sheika]
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
10-01-2020, 05:52 PM (This post was last modified: 10-01-2020, 05:53 PM by Sheika.)
The fish told me...
The stallion seems to overthink her question. ”Hmm..A creek will maybe also do...Though I like the ponds better..” she thinks out loud. She could try going for the creek, before heading over to the meadow. She catches the gaze of the other when he asks her a question. She blinks, looking suspiciously at his face. Did something change just now or had his eyes been blue the whole time? Shaking her head, thinking she probably imagined it, she focuses on the question again.
”Well, that’s because I’m looking for calamus. You know, this morning- wait, yesterday morning, I forgot I slept here.” She turns her gaze to a point somewhere in the sky, a bit to the right of the stallions head, as she recollects the previous events that lead her to this exact place. ”Okay, so yesterday morning, I was walking along the river. Then I got a bit of a toothache.” She shortly flashes him her teeth to support her story, as if he would be able to see the toothache, which was, ofcourse, not the case. ”And the fish, they have told me that for good health, one should eat some calamus. Now I’m not sure whether it also works for my toothache, I mean the fish said it would, however..I’m actually not sure whether fish teeth are similar enough to ours...” she confesses, then halts her rambling for a moment as she tries to remember what the actual question was that she was trying to answer with this story. ”So yes, the calamus, it likes to grow in places where the water doesn’t run too fast, you see? It likes to have its feet in the mud! And ponds are all about calm and muddy. And thus, I have been searching for ponds ever since yesterday morning.”, she finally concludes her somewhat lengthy explanation, confident that this would be a very relatable situation for the other horse in front of her.
There’s a number of reasons, Leilan might think, where looking for a pond in the middle of a forest is reasonable. Finding a possibly-hallucinogenic weed reed is not one of them, especially not when she adds forgot I slept. His face shows little, but his eyes transfer from icy blue to purple, green and some sort of messy grey. She is unlikely to notice, choosing this moment to show her flat molars and continuing her story with talking fish. If he hadn’t reached his current age, if he hadn’t met Oceane and her deer-talking, he would have assumed she’d already had some plants too many. Not necessarily all calamus.
”I’m no expert on healing plants - I only know the fun ones.” he grins a little, remembering Trekori and Andulvar. Those had been mushrooms, but Leilan remembers one other funny plant, or rather a plant with funny flowers (and a distinctive smell). He’d threatened to even give them to the two who were floundering about, but they’d been too far gone if he was honest, so he hadn’t.
Nevertheless, he shrugs a little when she continues. ”I guess we can try the creek then. There’s probably a calm curve somewhere.” He nods northwest, where one used to be normally. He’s not entirely sure about it’s width and depth during summer season, but she was looking for mud anyway. The scaled roan still doesn’t know what to make of the funny mare, but honestly, really... well, he’s strange to some others, too, he guesses. Sheika herself had wondered about it and she wasn’t wrong, but his true weirdness was that on the inside. Lucky for him, many seemed able to live with it. If Sheika was one of them, he’d soon find out. ”Reed-y to leaf?” he grins at her - green eyes curious if she picks up on it or stays as indifferent as with her introduction.
I make no promises I can’t do golden rings
Image commissioned by Vanilla, made by AshesDrawn on DA
@[Sheika]
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
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