"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
Nerine remains quiet, except for the way her own voice echoes against its stone when she drifts high above it. She does not mind the silence, for a time, she does not mind that the handful of residents prefer to hide away from her. Perhaps they do not like her, but more likely (because who could not like her?) it is simply that they are too set in their own solitary ways. Popinjay is not a solitary animal, however, though she would never admit to anything like loneliness. Loneliness is too much like being bored. No, she simply prefers to have an audience; or to be an audience.
Not everybody hid themselves away - at least, not everybody hid themselves away from her successfully, the dark brown and gold pegasus boy was hostile and she had laughed at the way he growled and scowled, and then she singed his tail for him, though you can hardly tell - it was already short and colored like tarnished silver. Wherewolf, she had decided, was going to be fun.
The Rook lands in an enormous rustle of feathers, drinking deep the summer smell of heather and fir trees. The trees near the southern edge have been burned, but the northern stand of forest remains and it reminds her of Taiga. A small Taiga, and she likes to go there as a treat, to shed her wings and dance through the trees that bristle like angry cats. The scent of them fills her nostrils, it clings to her skin, wintry even in the height of Nerine's brief summer, it even flavors her breath as she chews at the budding chartreuse cones. Carefree, she curls her legs beneath her and naps in a bed of pine straw and the stab of the needles at her lips and her belly are like hedgehog spines, like electricity, buzzing sharp and bright in the late dusk of summer. If she drowses in her little forest, it is not because she is unaware, for she hears the footsteps that thud against the rocky soil, and she feels the vibration of them coursing through the earth where her sable nose is firmly pressed. Dark eyes gleam in the fading light, watching, but she does not try to move or speak before they reach her.
And when all the lights are broken, You keep the fire going
Nerine is one of the few places Yanhua felt free enough to stretch his legs. When he took to the craggy hillsides full of summer evergreens and made his way up from Taiga, he had little to no expectations for the journey. @[Amarine] had mentioned she might join him, and he welcomed the idea of bringing their children to visit their mother’s birth home, but he hadn’t stayed to wonder over the possibility before the pleasant weather and agreeable day soured. Yan would rather take advantage while he had the opportunity, and for once he reveled in the notion that he - unlike Ama - hadn’t suffered the curse of having to constantly feed their children.
A stallion’s way of thinking, for sure, but he was so often ingrained in their little family and moving them about here and there so the twins could expand their world and minds that he hardly felt terrible at all for leaving. When he came home before sundown later, he’d make it up to Amarine one way or another.
In the present, he’s at one with the exhilarating feel of cantering through the woods. The world was a hazy blur around him, all varying shades of green, and the scent of sap and pine was mingling with the smell of his sweat as he climbed up, up, up towards the sky.
He rounded a corner by throwing his body into the leaning curve and would’ve passed @[Popinjay] by altogether, had he not turned his head a fraction of second later and seen the dark form of her body curled up in the distance like some unnatural rock. Yanhua flicked his tail and dug his heels into the pine-covered turf, skidding to a halt out of sheer curiosity before turning back to peer through the boughs of the tightly-clustered trees. He tossed his head, wild-eyed and not yet spent from his morning run, calling out:
“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” As a way of greeting the new leader. He couldn’t be sure - the echoes of her memories were comparable to lightning strikes under gray skies when he opened himself to them - nothing about her looked familiar, but maybe she could unlock the subtle, nagging mystery at the back of his thoughts. Walking back from where he’d just come from, Yan brushed aside the stinging needles with his horns lowered and wandered closer to Popinjay, listening for her response with a smile already prepared.
And when all the nights feel like they're closing, You're leaving an opening
Popinjay waits in silence, waits to see if she will be noticed by the enormous stallion cantering through her little wood with abandon. She knows who he is, son of the Taigan Guardian, Nashua's silent brother, but he's grown to an impressive height that dwarfs her even when she isn't lying silently in the northern grove chewing at the bitter petals of the pinecones strewn about her. Even if you cut off those pointed goat horns jutting from his skull - which, if she may have an opinion, are not even comparable to the opaque gleam of Asphyxea's jade-tined antlers. Still, she wonders if she could do it, cut them off. The golden mare had planted a seed in her mind of what her power could do beyond what she knew.
The possibilities seem endless.
But, like all things, there must be a disappointing limit.
He's seen her, now, and her dark eyes follow him, full of laughter and reflected lightning. He asks if he's seen her before and her smile cuts a bright slash across the dark grey of her lips.
"I should think so." There's an enormous bird that owns the skies of Nerine, her shadow patrols its purple-grey heather, its wind-worn black rock, its moors, and its seas, with red-struck wings and lightning in its wake, "You'd have to be blind to miss me."
And that is to say nothing of the other times they have been close, during Elio's attempted coup and just after Pangea's marauders left. She has not stood up and her color blends her into the woodland just as well here as it ever did among the Taigan kingwood. Only that dazzling, laughing, star that rests wide across her brow and the crooked crescent moon of her smile gleam out into the dusky shadows. There is nothing to look at now that backs up that bold claim, though it is true enough of her other form.
"However," the Rook pauses and tilts her head to one side as if considering the caprine Taigan, "I don't recall you at all."
And when all the lights are broken, You keep the fire going
You wonder about what kind of creature mindlessly considers maiming another, but you never expect them to smile back at you in the midst of a forest dwelling. Yanhua had no idea what @[Popinjay] was capable of, he only knew that her nature at this very moment was one he had no concern about. She seemed aimable, at the least. Could she kill him? Certainly. If they’d met under less-spirited circumstances and their powers were put to the test against one another, logic would see Yanhua burnt to a crisp, and Popinjay would have her question answered in a heartbeat. She could more than likely strike the horns off his head; could most likely strike his head off the broad, copper shoulders it rested on.
“Not blind.” He smirks. Nerine is far away from where he lays his head most nights, and her storms are something he chalks up to neutral phenomena. The redwoods tend to blot out the sky where he’s from, and in the same manner he’d been blocking out Nerine and her recent ‘activity’. “Just… unbothered.” Yan laughed in a way that sounded like tumbling boulders.
Had he been thinking similar thoughts as Popinjay, this conversation would have taken an interesting turn. But Yan would only bore her: he was satisfied with sarcastic re-introductions and made that obvious by dipping out from under the low-hanging branch, already turning away from where the mare lay in her section of woodland when she gave him reason to pause. He flicked his ears and threw a sly sort of expression back at her, one where his usually soft blue eyes sparkled with a hint of mischief. Very unlike him.
“Oh you wouldn’t, even if I’m hard to forget.” He shook his horns, and his beard trembled as well. “This may be the first instance I’ve come across you where you weren’t a little busybody.” Yan’s nostrils flared, but he held back from making any outward noise least he truly offended her. There wasn’t anything wrong with how Popinjay acted, he thought as he recalled some of their brief meetings, it was simply that the two of them operated contrarily to one another. That didn’t necessarily mean they couldn’t be compatible or cordial with one another. Just… different, that’s all.
“Now could you recall me? Or should I dazzle you somehow, just to be sure?” Yanhua eased his body back around, unusually quiet for such a large creature in a tight space. “If we ever meet again, you know, I’d hate to be forgotten.”
And when all the nights feel like they're closing, You're leaving an opening
Not a busy body? The idea of it makes her snort. Perhaps he thinks that because she has not bothered to rise up from her nest that she is not busy. She is certainly still a body, though and for a brief moment, she wonders if he really is blind. If he is, she could add his eyes to the pair she found in the Meadow, as well as the softly curved horns clinging firmly to his skull. Perhaps she should ask for them, after all, there could be no harm if he is so unbothered that he finds seeing unneccessary.
But why ask? It gives people the opportunity to say no.
Another day, then. The stallion begins to turn and she takes the opportunity to roll onto her back in the pine straw, legs akimbo and needles prickling her back with that sharp electric feeling, and when she rolls up again, he has stopped, he has turned back. His blue eyes find her ebony-wood gaze once she is on her feet with pinesap adding to the witch's knots in her curled mane. He asks if she has remembered him yet and she laughs as though it's a joke, she dances closer to him with her face twisted up into a parody of thoughtfulness. Should he dazzle her?
"Oh, could you?" her quick legs make short work of drawing a circle around him. Her curious head tilts to one side, bird-like, as if waiting, and she stands almost as if there is a single bone in her body that knows patience.
There isn't.
"It would be so embarrassing for you if I forgot again."
And when all the lights are broken, You keep the fire going
“Embarrassing for me?” Yanhua gives into her, game enough for the reprise of stupid questions with stupid answers. Wasn’t she supposed to be the one remembering things? Nevermind; he enjoyed the uselessness of this conversation anyways. Cat-and-mouse with this mare was exactly what he’d been looking for today. Yan smirks and twists his head around to watch her go, merry-like and whimsical but an echo comes to him in the midst of their sarcasm - there lies an image of prey scurrying to the burrow, trying desperately to outrun the clutches of a deadly catspaw. It gives Yanhua the undercurrent of something sinister from Popinjay.
Her face, however… those eyes and that laugh. Yanhua decided toeing the line was worth more of those.
“Sweet reprieve / Lady lead,” He hummed playfully, hoping to catch her off-guard with an impromptu song. What had she expected? Magic? HA! “Song of storms and wild nature.” The tune grew softly, rolling like thunder in the back of the throat with a strangely accompanying melody. The tune vibrated up from his skin, unexpected and sweetly woven for their ears. Yanhua’s mane glimmered a bit brighter, encouraged by the nonsensical whimsy, and he lowered his eyes to meet hers with a strange intensity.
“Danger lurks / Death precedes,” The song dropped into a low note, each word drawn out on Yan’s tongue dolefully. “She forgets, but I’ve not forgotten; Popinjay / Spirit me away / and all my cares are…” He paused, at a loss for the next word.
“Naughton?” The horned stallion laughed, breaking his concentration and the melody all at once. Ah well - this was a first for him. Could Popinjay blame him for being horrible at it? Probably. “There you go. Your very own song.” Yan nodded, flicking his short bristle tail. “Are you sufficiently dazzled?” He smirked.
And when all the nights feel like they're closing, You're leaving an opening
