"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
12-29-2020, 10:16 PM (This post was last modified: 12-29-2020, 10:18 PM by lilliana.)
Leilan had finally indulged their twins on a long-awaited trip to the Isle. Oren and Roselin had passed their first birthday and Lilliana knew they'd be fine with their sire. Her youngest set of twins share many (icy) attributes with him and really, it had only been a matter of time before the journey happened. She had been telling herself that for months.
What she hadn't been prepared for was the silence that followed.
It settled and scattered around her like the leaves that fell from the trees. Lilliana tried settling it by walking the edges of the Taigan territory, always careful not to drift towards the path that she knew the Freyr and their children had taken. The chestnut mare had ventured towards the south with the idea of visiting Tephra again before deciding against it. Yanhua and Amarine were somewhere within the vicinity of the Redwoods, as well as Borderline, and it was with that knowledge that she promised her youngest child a trip.
Ischia held fond memories for Lilliana and her boys, Yanhua and Nashua. It seemed fitting that she bring her youngest, Reave, for some of his own. The growing (and obvious) absence of Neverwhere is troubling. Brazen's death is still something she is struggling to make peace with and the theft of her gravestone is something that weighs heavy between her and the littlest of her children.
But for today, she tempts the roan colt with a gentle smile and the journey to Ischia is an easy one thanks to the low tide. While autumn has started to frost and set the tone across many places in Beqanna, the tropical island that Aquaria watches over remains one place that the chill does not touch. The main island and the smaller islets remain lush and green while the rest of their world grows dull and weary, tired under the bronzed season of fall. While the rest of their world waits for snow and sleep, Lilliana brought her youngest child along for a long over-due visit with the Dame and some respite for them both.
A storm the night of their arrival keeps them to one side of the island. And when dawn emerges, so to do mother and son.
The boy makes quick like the tide and he is already ambling down one side of the beach before Lilliana can tell him to not drift too far. Once the sun is further up, they'll make their way to the main side of the island and find Aquaria. She looks out to the sea and something pale glints in the corner of her eye; turning her head, the Taigan sees him. Pteron. It's been years since their last meeting. Aten disappeared some time ago and Lethia now seems to exist at the edges of where those memories linger. Ruth is much like the debris watched on this shoreline; she washes in and out after the storms.
Neverwhere had been the only one left (aside from herself) in the North from those turbulent years and she is-
There is a moment where she considers stepping back into the lush greenery of Ischia. But the sun is too far in the sky and when she looks at Pteron, there is ample time for him to see her. Casting a glance down the beach, she makes sure that Reave is still within her sight and then nods towards the cremello pegasus. "@[Pteron]," she says carefully. "I didn't think to find you in Ischia."
She hadn't thought to see him again at all.
i had a half-written reply from last night while watching bridgerton so here ya go
and since you’re the only one that matters,---------------- ----------------tell me: who do i run to?
With his large feathered wings, Pteron is not often found deep in the waters of Ischia. He prefers to wander the warm shallows and the open beaches when he has time, and in Ischia he always has time.
This morning he walks atop the white sand, a faint sheen of sweat all but dried from the pale and white of his skin. As is habit, the broad white wings that he wears to either side of his tobiano figure are visually absent, hidden by the carefully practiced layer of invisibility that he lays over them. His blue-green mane hangs across his face as he meanders along the shore, though he tosses it behind one matching dun ear when he sees someone farther up the beach. Though Pteron no longer worries about things like guarding and patrolling, he does run (and walk) this perfectly straight section of beach nearly every day, and he has never before seen that foal down at the water or the mare that follows it.
Never seen her here he corrects the thought as he draws near, but the chestnut mare is not a stranger.
“Lilliana,” he replies with a polite smile, and then glances once more at the water near the boy to be sure it remains clear. Old habits die hard, even with children that are not his own, and the pale pegasus knows the dangers that once lurked in Ischian waters. The smile he wears is neutral, and it fades into something that settles just above benign, which when paired with the casual way he stands, suggested a sense of ease that has all but seeped into his bones. In Taiga, he had been ever-ready, ever-watchful, but there is none of that here.
“I came here a few years ago,” Pteron tells her, having lost count of the exact number (why bother keeping track, when time never truly seems to pass?). “Aquaria’s allowed me to train our sons and the other children of the island.” Pteron does not specify what he trains them in; they both know that of his few skills, his best is battle. His second best, he likes to think, is parenting.
The boy down at the water is Lilliana’s, but the other parent (if there even were one; all things are possible with magic) is not his own father, and Pteron wonder if it belongs to the Dragon King like her last two. He hopes so; Leilan has always seemed a rather cheerful fellow to Pteron, if perhaps a bit abrasive. The chestnut mare he remembers could do with a bit of cheering.
“Are you here to see the Dame?” The stallion asks, referring to the nereid he’d named earlier by her honorific. He’s never been quite sure how to refer to Aquaria to others, but he is ever proud of her and her capabilities, so he most often defaults to the title. That seems especially safe here, given the history of romantic and political entanglements. Still, Pteron adds: “Nash was here not terribly long ago. He looked tall.” He’d looked like an adult, Pteron thinks, but it feels strange to say as much. Sometimes Pteron himself does not feel wholly grown-up, for all that he’s nearly a score of years under his belt.
01-04-2021, 05:48 PM (This post was last modified: 01-04-2021, 05:55 PM by lilliana.)
There had been a time that horses had once gone without names.
It was when the Old Ones still ran with the wild herds and equines responded only to the call of nature. They measured their days by the rise of the sun and its surrender to the silver moon, by the times their hooves would strike the ground as they galloped. Those ancestors knew each other by their coloring: rich mahogany brown that was the envy of the soil, blazing gold that was the emblem of the sun, gentle white that refllected the drifting clouds above (and for a lucky few, some were cast in multiple shades because their gods could not decide).
When the gods did eventually retreat (because in what story do they remain?), horses started to take names in the absence of their deities.
Her eyes linger a moment too long on those white wings. Lilliana catches herself by the disruption of a blue feather nestled amongst its pale counterparts. If they had been in those ancient times, the Taigan thinks that the pegasus stallion might have claimed a name from the sky. His wings, his coloring all mark him a creature of it. The chestnut mare blinks and there is nothing within her that wants to recoil away from Pteron. A year or two earlier, the sight of them might have had the slender mare take a jarring step or two back. Now, she only blinks.
A delicate ear tips towards Reave's direction, glinting fire-gold beneath the Ischian sun (or what is left of it with daylight waning by the hour). She can hear her youngest child splashing over the waves and there is experience gazing out from the green eyes of the painted stallion as he watches the boy. It's been years since she has last seen him and Lilliana notes the changes; the easy-going stature, a diplomatic smile.
At the mention of boys - sons, he shares with Aquaria (and she immediately thinks of Cormorant is who most likely not a boy anymore) - her expression shifts. Pteron and Aquaria? It isn't a pairing she would have imagined, one of fin and feather but it makes her smile soften and a warmth reach behind her blue eyes. The Pteron she remembers from Taiga had been a father there as well and so she wonders about his eldest child. Both the filly and her mother disappeared not long after the tobiano had. It had been a relief to have a dragon-born away from the Redwood territory but she had often wondered at what happened to the girl.
But there had been so many things to wonder (and worry) about in those days.
"I'd hoped to see her," Lilliana shares. "We had heard she was in the Alliance and I wanted to see for myself how she fared." There had been the possibility of a discussion about a formal treaty extending from the one she has planned to make with the Watcher from Tephra. But then Reave had wanted to see the ocean and Lilliana had gotten distracted by memories from earlier times.
"He told me that the two of you met," she says, carefully, but her smile begins to relax. The young pegasus had been beaming and brimming with a bright smile and the excitement at meeting the eldest of his half-brothers had apparently eclipsed the mention that Aquaria's newest son was Pteron's as well. Typical Nash, she thinks. "You should see his brother," Lilliana says as a gentle tease and then takes the moment to glance towards Reave. The darkness is growing but he still remains close enough that she could reach him within a few canter strides.
Close enough that she can still hear him stamping and snorting at the rolling sea.
The moment quiets and the chestnut looks back towards the pegasus. Had it remained still, Lilliana would have said what she was thinking: that she had been sorry to hear about the death of his mother, Lepis. But the world goes dark - the light gone out - and as the moon and sun eclipse, she asks @[Pteron]: "Have you seen anything like this before?"
and since you’re the only one that matters,---------------- ----------------tell me: who do i run to?
Pteron watches her response with interest, thinking that Lilliana does not seem unpleasantly surprised by the realization that he and Aquaria share children. He knows that Aquaria thinks well of this red mare, and perhaps cares what she thinks about such things, so he is pleased by this realization. At the same time, finding that Aquaria had not spoken of him at all brings with it a strange sort of heaviness that settles just behind his heart. They’d said they would start over, he reminds himself. The past is unchangeable, but the future is not.
Lilliana speaks of Aquaria’s participation in the Alliance, and Pteron glances out at the water. He’s not spoken with the nereid of her loss, though he knows from Gale how she had faired. He worries he might slip up, and mention that he is grateful she had been home when the darkness had come, so he avoids the topic. Avoids it even now, except for a small nod of understanding.
Nashua has seen his mother since their encounter, Pteron learns, and his brother as well. Yanhua, he thinks, a blurry image (shared from eyes that shared from eyes that saw it true) rising in his mind of a capric golden face. Or another brother, like the one down at the beach? “I would like to,” he answers truthfully. “Does he live in Taiga still, or on the Isle with Nashua?”
The piebald stallion knows that there had been happenings in the east, strange rumblings in the earth, and flashes of magic and shadow that ran cold fingers of fear down the spines even of the most hardened of warriors. Pteron shakes his blue-green mane as one does just that, shivering in the cool winter wind. He fluffs the feathers of his wings about his chest and barrel, feeling the familiar brush of his pinfeathers where they meet behind his trailing mane. The stallion had grown accustomed to the warmth of his home, and it’s been some time since he was so continuously physically uncomfortable. It’s not harmful (nothing is with his familial healing) but he doesn’t enjoy the way the wind whips across the exposed dampness of his neck, wicking the moisture aware and leaving him even colder.
“Never. I’ve not even heard stories of anything like this.” He answers, turning his head up so that he might better look at the faint ring of light far overhead.
01-09-2021, 06:04 PM (This post was last modified: 01-09-2021, 06:11 PM by lilliana.)
Her gaze follows Pteron's across the cystal-blue ocean, lightly capped with iridiscent foam as the waves break towards the beach. Life is lovely here, she thinks. Different from Taiga, she knows. But her love for Taiga is because of it's imposing trees and craggy shores. There is something wild about the wood, like the Fae ran out of Magic by the time they created redwood forest (though some Magic had to go into their height). The shores were rough-cut, with ledges that rose and sank into the sea with the kind of unpredictability it was known for. The fog created a veil that softened everything when it came rolling in, often with the morning tide.
Taiga was nothing like Ischia; but then the moon was nothing like the sun. You could love them both for the light they brought into your life and not mind their differences, the moon's glow or the sun's shine.
The tobiano stallion nods subtly at her mention of Nashua and his younger brother. "You'd be hard-pressed to find Yanhua outside the Taiga," she offers with a slight smile, glancing down the beach to watch Reave again. Not many horses, herself included, had the desire to call the Isle home and it seemed her star-marked shared that with his mother. Winters in the North were hard in the best of times - without the cover of a dense forest? With nothing but the sea and the edge of the world to separate them from frigid storms? The chestnut nearly shivers with the thought and finds herself all the more grateful to be basking beneath a warm Ischian sun.
A sun that is slowly being consumed by the moon.
She calls out to Reave, beckoning her youngest child to come closer. (He's old enough that he doesn't need to cling to his dam's slender sides but Lilliana wants him nearby enough that she can make out the startling white of his tobiano coat, the brilliant blue of his eyes despite the increasing dark.) The winged stallion looks up and Lilliana follows his stare again, studying the dimly-glowing ring that wreathes the center of their sky.
Lilliana half-hopes that Pteron will know something. Maybe this is Magic from Mountain. Maybe this is something that has before in Beqanna. This land had a long history and was full of many Immortals; maybe one sought respite along Aquaria's beaches and had mentioned a time that the sun and moon rose together in calamity or omen. But if there is a prophecy to accompany this happening, it is not something the pegasus knows. There are no stories for something like this.
"A friend saw this," she says in a hushed tone, not wanting to alarm Reave who stared curiously at something. Lilliana peers curiously towards the taller stallion. "He said it will cover everything. That no land will be spared," not like the fires or the previous wars that had been directed at the fault of mortals. Warden hadn't known how the dark came to be; only that it would come as the future always did. "This seems like a God's work," she murmurs, an idea conceived with notions of vengeance and wrath and doom.
What else would be powerful to control the pull of the sun and moon? To bring them together and leave the world below to stumble in the dark?
(She doesn't invoke the Dark God's name but she does wonder.)
and since you’re the only one that matters,---------------- ----------------tell me: who do i run to?
The shrill cry of a parrot startles Pteron, and he turns back to where the distant birds shelter in the foliage. They are the loudest of Ischia’s residents, but they have been abnormally quiet as the eclipse draws near. Their silence contributes to the overall sense of unease that permeate the island, and Pteron is grateful for the distraction that Lilliana’s words provide.
So Yanhua is in the Taiga, Pteron thinks. Perhaps he will visit.
(He will not; there are too many memories there, but today he thinks he might)
The chestnut mare calls out to the colt, who comes quickly enough that Pteron knows he must trust his mother. The pegasus smiles at the boy, grateful that Lilliana has been able to find romantic companionship even after his father’s assault, the one that had resulted in Nashua and Yanhua. He’d responded to his own by turning what had been a weapon into recreation, though he somehow finds it difficult to imagine Lilliana reacting in such a way. She is too serene, he thinks, still and settled in the way he imagines everyone older than himself to be.
So the uncertainty in her voice is disconcerting, and a frown settles on his face as he finally takes his eyes from the sky. He fixes his olive gaze on Lilliana, steady and quiet as she speaks of Gods and a Seer. When she finishes, he can only shrug. The solitude that Ischia provided from the rest of Beqanna will not be enough to keep them from the Darkness that has been lurking on the mainland, it seems. That his seemingly eternal relaxation might end is not a welcome concept, but Fate has never cared much for what he desired.
“Perhaps,” he replies, “That would explain such a vision.” Aegean has Seers in his family, Pteron knows, and while the future is a changeable thing, he also knows enough to realize that some parts are more certain than others to those with the gift to see them. “I know little of gods, except that the magics of Beqanna have always been enough to keep them in check before.” That something will block Beqanna’s sun seems to imply that would no longer be so, for what magic is there in a world with devoid of light.
01-21-2021, 06:09 PM (This post was last modified: 01-21-2021, 06:30 PM by lilliana.)
He smiles at the shadowed silhouette of her youngest before the boy settles somewhere along the shoreline again, where Lilliana can still hear his forelegs splashing in the surf. There is something about Reave that often puts her in mind of Nashua - her eldest - and yet the tobiano yearling has a presence all his own; a talent he uses to remind Lilliana of often with just a flick of his vision.
Her son won't go far and that knowledge allows her to relax a little, despite the unusual circumstances the trio currently shares.
It's her knowledge of what Warden sees that unnerves her. For every vision that he has had, it has always been about death and destruction. He had seen Nerine burst from Magician's fire and he had seen her home burn from the flames of the Pangeans. He had seen Nashua fall from the sky and Brazen's last strangled breath. The Watcher had only glimpsed the dark (or rather, Lilliana only saw glimpses of it from Warden) but it troubles her. The winged stallion only shrugs when she tries to explain it - whatever this stalled eclipse might be called - and her expression only grows more obscured by the looming night.
"His visions are...," she starts, trying to explain, and cutting herself off as she glances to the troubled sky above. "Unusual."
Warden had even foreseen the death of her mother, Aletta. ('It's alright, Lilli.' The gray mare had said. 'We all have an ending.' Hers would come as she lived; on her own terms.) She isn't sure what other Seer's can glean from the future. For her cousin, it had always been hazy and unpredictable, as changeable as a summer storm. A single step could change the outcome of everything but his visions had been accompanied by other things besides demise: knowing where to find Elena by the river, the return of Valerio, the road that lead to Windskeep.
It isn't her place to share what Warden sees.
"I'm afraid that this will be more insidious than it looks." Lilliana shares instead. The words come out a mumur that is barely audible above the surf. An ear flicks towards the colt before she looks up into the olive eyes of @[Pteron] again, who somehow seems to be so steady despite so much growing uncertainty. "There will be things out there," and her voice drops, "monsters."
and since you’re the only one that matters,---------------- ----------------tell me: who do i run to?
When she mentions monsters, her voice quieting to keep it from the boy, Pteron replies, his voice lowered to be hardly audible above the waves. “There have always been monsters here.” The boy looks old enough to know about monsters, but Pteron understands more than most the desire to keep one’s children safe. He had come to Ischia as much for the peace as for his love of the tropics. Here, with Aquaria, Aegean, and all of his children and even grandchildren, he has felt safer and more content than ever in his life. He has had time to spend with his family and need to waste any of it with the trivialities of governing.
The coming of an eclipse threatens that, but the threat is not yet great enough for Pteron to truly feel fear. Not even with Lilliana’s worry and the visions of her unusual friend. Concern, yes, but he had been truthful in her earlier reply. There are creatures with shiny black armor, fire breathing dragons, and Taiga itself is known for the shadow creaturess that are not really shadows lurking between its misty trees, children of brether. There were monsters with the ability to shapeshift and crush their son’s throat between vise-like claws and wrap tentacles so tightly around a body there’s no hope for escape.
Pteron has face monsters before, and he is still standing.
“There’s a whale skull a little ways down the beach,” Pteron says, and this time his voice is loud enough for the chestnut colt to hear them. Then, more quietly, he adds, “You’ve a dragon as your king in the north, surely he can light a blaze large enough to give you light if what your friend saw truly comes to be.” That the first beacon will be lit in Nerine he can’t know, though later, when he sees it, he will wonder if perhaps Lilliana had been the one to light it.
"I know," she tells Pteron, a steadiness rising from her voice like the incoming tide.
Lilliana glances at Reave while she contemplates what to say next (or rather, how). Her youngest child seems content to study the waves rolling in from the Ischian sea and the chestnut looks back to the winged stallion. Lilliana has known monsters all her life and it seems like they have been following at her heels since they had left Murmuring Rivers.
These had been... different.
"They have something to do with dark," she tries to explain. Her knowledge is what Warden had shared with her and even what the Watcher had known was vague. It had been dim shadows and glinting teeth. Lilliana swallows and says, "You tried to warn us." The last time she saw Pteron had been at the Taiga meeting with Aten and Neverwhere, he had tried to warn them that Pangea wasn't the only thing to be worried about.
(She had known that but by then, Lilliana had never thought to see it again.)
"And you and Aegean kept Neverwhere safe when-," she stops herself here. She had been a captive by then and the rumors of the former Khaleesi's disappearance had spread across Beqanna like wildfire. Lilliana had feared the worst, that the dappled woman was dead. That Neverwhere and Wherewolf had survived was something she attributed to Pteron and his mate. "When I could not."
An ear flicks towards the colt again before she levels her gaze on him. He had warned them once - cared for Neverwhere - and now Lilliana tries to repay some of that debt. Maybe there is something that the cremello stallion can do with this information. If he tells Aquaria and shares it with their family, maybe this island paradise might be prepared for what comes in ways that others will not be. "Thank you," she tells him.
When the Ischian mentions a whale scale, Lilliana smiles and tilts her head towards the end of the beach. It might be hard to see with the fading light but she hopes that it is enough that the chestnut colt is intrigued. At least enough that he doesn't notice the way his mother's face is shadowed with concern. "Leilan?" she asks the pegasus, a soft expression overtaking the troubled one. "They have the Aurora on the Isle," Lilliana says with a faint hint of her old humor. "Perhaps the Freyr could harness that and use it to guide us when the darkness falls."
