"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
04-08-2021, 02:48 PM (This post was last modified: 04-11-2021, 11:29 PM by Ledger.)
Help me out before I drown Save me now before I give up
It’s been a few days now since the light had returned. The warmth of a summer sun heats the land and encourages new life to spring from the decay the endless dark had ravaged during its relentless reign. Years ago, the grass of the meadow would tickle his underbelly with its length, now it barely reached his hocks but it strained towards the light and he knows that in a few months, things should be normal again. Everything would go back to the way it had been before. He wishes it could be that simple for him.
Returning to Beqanna, returning to the living and leaving the graveyard of his past, was a choice that he was slowly adapting to. He had known it wouldn’t be easy but life wasn’t easy. Had never been easy, not for him. It’s been harder than he had anticipated though. He had hoped that letting go of Ellyse and everything that had happened would have been enough closure. Yet the weight was still heavy, his glass heart was still hanging in his chest. Heavy yet vapid. Cracked. He still remembers the deal that Carnage had offered him on the Mountain. A heart in exchange for your own. He had tried, tried and failed to complete the task, so desperate and mad and grief-stricken. (“You’re not a killer Ledger”, ghost Magnus had once whispered to him knowingly. So what am I? WHAT AM I?) Perhaps he would never get it back. Maybe it was easier this way… to feel that absence in his chest instead of the constant ache of pain and betrayal. To never be hurt like that again. Perhaps it would be better this way, to keep everyone at arm’s length. He’s not sure what would even happen, if he was to ever feel anything like love again. Love or heartbreak, if it might shatter completely. He still remembers the excruciating pain when it had cracked before, when he had been on his knees bleeding and confessing all his sins to her.
With a hard swallow, he shakes the remains of his devastated face, the empty socket hidden beneath a mass of snowy forelock as he forces those images to the back of his mind. Not today. He refuses to have another bad day. Not when the sun is so bright in the sky and the heat does its best to bring warmth to his cold body. He found he was always cold now and he preferred a cool environment. Perhaps it was the preference of his polar bear or perhaps it had something to do with the replacement heart that did not beat or bleed. Technically not having a pulse would make one dead so being chilly all the time seemed fitting. His heavily scarred body moves easily across the meadow, hooves digging into the mulch as he heads to the largest willow tree that stands rooted close to the middle of the territory. His brands seem to soak up the rays greedily as he moves from its blazing touch into the shade. He had noticed that the brands seemed to glow more brightly at night when he had spent some time in the sun. A soft sigh escapes his lips, would this place ever stop being so weird and chaotic? Would it ever just be calm and peaceful… God could it ever just be kind?
It is a quiet and thoughtful Ledger that stands beneath the willow, the gold flecks of his only eye regarding the few strangers that pass by with his usual wariness. Without anyone to interact with though, his mind crawls back to keep him company. In no time at all, he’s haunted all over again.
She had lingered at the cusp for an immeasurable amount of time, caught between Loess and the Forest with fearful expectancy that, as soon as she departed from her kingdom, the world would once again be plunged into darkness. That she would be caught outside of her safe foothills and canyons, and that whoever still remained in the Eastern kingdom would use her absence to their advantage. They had done it before, and though many months have passed now since her confrontation with Breach -- months that she has refused to leave the land that had placed the heavy crown upon her turquoise head -- the opalescent woman still refuses to relax her guard. She has yet to hear of the shapeshifter's departure from Hyaline, still expects her to retaliate for Oceane's own pilfering, and on her more anxious nights the Loessian Queen sleeps restlessly with dreams that combine Beqanna and Nau-Aib.
When finally she departs Loess, Oceane fights the urge to look immediately over her shoulder in fear that she will lose her nerve and return instantly to the warm embrace of her home. She forces herself to unfurl her feathered wings as soon as there is ample room, her shoulders taut with the weight of the appendages she had not used since the Long Night had fallen upon them, and takes to the skies.
Less graceful now than she ever had been in flight, the woman flaps excessively to compensate for the muscles that had atrophied during her landbound months. When finally she had cleared the forest canopy, her chest heaving at the exertion, Oceane finds her rhythm. She moves through the clear sky beneath the sun and her pearlescent coat shines like balefire in the golden rays.
By the time her amber eyes alight upon the Meadow, Oceane's shoulders ache but her mood has improved beyond what she had anticipated it could. Beneath the weight of her anxieties, thanks in part to Loess' politics but also to Soran's lengthening absence, she has not allowed herself even a moment of repose in months.
To land within the Meadow beneath the sun, despite the sad state of its foliage, fills Oceane with relief. She sighs slowly before grunting at the ache in her shoulders as she pulls the soft feathers of her wings back to her lean barrel and pivots in place, taking a moment to inspect her surroundings.
She's unsure why she hadn't expected to see anyone else taking advantage of the sun's homecoming, but regardless, the Loessian Queen is surprised to see the chestnut frame of a man standing within the shadows of a nearby willow. She clears her throat and clamps her jaw closed, dampening the heavy breathing from her flight before offering the stranger a terse nod as a greeting. Her amber eyes scrutinize him methodically, finding scars and an empty eye socket, prompting some concern to roil within her, though it lessens as she realizes that none of his injuries appear to be fresh.
“Was it the shadow creatures that harmed you?” she inquires, though the question is less doting and more invasive as she hopes to lessen the fear that the beasts could be closing in on Loess as they speak, to rend eyes from skulls and leave those she's supposed to protect to a life of an entirely different type of darkness.
Help me out before I drown Save me now before I give up
All he can see are feathers and he’s no longer in the Meadow. He’s in Tephra, the ash of the volcano falling around them in flakes as Ellyse brings him to her home, fluttering her white wings tantalizingly before him. He’s standing with her by the ocean, breathing each other in with soft caresses and false promises, feeling each feather tickling against the constellation etched on his flank. She’s chuckling softly, joy in her eyes as she tells him he’s to be a father for the first time and those white feathers embrace him as he pulls her towards him. There’s a cell, Carnage whispering in his ear, as he stares in disbelief at those feathery wings curled around Dahmer across from him. He’s in Tephra, bear claws shredding at his own chest that fail to remove the X that had sizzled deep into his flesh and she’s gasping for breath, crying, promising to fix something that could never be fixed. Those angel wings crusted with the dried brownish crimson of blood. It all happens in a flash and he can only stand there, teeth gritted, breathing harshly and trying to fight against the panic that assaults him as much as the trigger of his trauma does.
It’s so stupid because the pegasus that had landed before him looks nothing like her. A kaleidoscope of colors dance before his narrowed vision, an onslaught of purple and blue hues that bring to mind a bejeweled twilight sky. Stripes play along her curved nape before hiding beneath the violent splash of violet locks that fall wildly along her regal neck. Eyes of the brightest amber land on him, a soft clearing of her throat and a curt nod sent in his direction. She’s stunning but that’s not what’s caught his breath, he’s still trying to fight the onslaught of emotions that now hold him hostage. Unable to tear his eye away from those feathery wings. She speaks to him and there’s concern in her voice. It’s too late to hide the riptide of feelings that lay exposed on his features, the pain that flickers in the deep gold flecks of his one dark eye.
Still he tries, forcing himself to take control back of his body. Forcing the anxiety that rolls and crashes within him like a broken storm, stirring around the fragile block of crystal that lays dormant near his sternum. A thin lipped smile finally appears, finally bringing his gaze from her wings to the honeyed depths of her eyes. The words finally clicking as he slowly starts to calm. ”No.” Comes his reply, deep and rough (shaken) like whisky from the barrel. ”All this is from a long time ago.” He finally clarifies, gesturing slightly to himself with a slight dip of his muzzle and a soft laugh that holds no warmth. He had gotten use to the stares by now. How his empty socket, lined with claw marks, sparked as a conversation starter. Once they caught his brands and the various scars along his body, that’s when he would start seeing their pity. He hated that, hated the way it made him feel so weak.
Avoiding those feathery appendages along her back, avoiding her face so he doesn’t see that contemptuous sorrow that’s sure to come, he turns his visage slightly. Hiding the empty socket beneath the long strands of snowy forelock. The bear within him is suddenly restless, he hadn’t shifted in months and it hadn’t seemed to bother the beast much. He wonders what had changed, what had suddenly piqued its interest as it taps a long claw somewhere within him, a polite request to be let out. He ignores it, feeling no desire to suddenly morph before a beautiful stranger simply because he can. The silence is passing too long between them but he is stuck on what to say, the memories of the one he had loved still hovering like an oppressive cloud around him. Dark and ominous as the deepest recesses of his mind.
There was a time in Oceane's distant past that the power of observation was the only weapon she could wield. Though not omnipotent, it had saved her hide - and her life - time and time again. It's a skill she has continued to foster since then, taking special care to avoid growing lazy despite the comfort and illusion of safety Loess could offer.
But these finely honed skills are not imperative to spot the flash of panic that arrives upon the chestnut's face just as plain as the newly returned sun in Beqanna's bright sky. At the hiss of his exhale through clenched teeth, Oceane takes a tentative step backward but does not retract, nor apologize for, her intrusive question. Instead, her pointed ears press forward curiously and her own breath lodges itself expectantly in her slim chest as she gives the peculiar stallion a few moments to collect himself.
When he finally does so, or gives the illusion that he has, his singular eye seems drawn to her opaline wings. For a brief moment, Oceane's thoughts turn to Fiorina and the way the xenomorph's face will twist itself up with fleeting disdain whenever she finds herself faced with airworthy wings. But the stallion's averted gaze, flecked with gold, feels different.
It feels pained.
But the stranger answers, quite gruff, the question she had greeted him with, thus saving himself from a secondary meddlesome question regarding his aversion to her presence. “Good,” she offers succinctly in response, appeased now that she can be sure the shadow beasts have disappeared with the return of their closest star, though she remains regrettably unaware that her own rebuttal could be perceived as rude.
As they both fall to momentary silence, the molten amber of her eyes watches as the stranger continues to avoid her gaze. He even goes as far as tossing the tousled tendrils of his flaxen forelock over the space where his second eye should be, prompting the quietest chuckle from the opaline Queen. Unlike the stranger's, it holds amiable warmth. “I've seen much worse than your scars,” she offers him, dismissively, the opportunity to continue their conversation without the need to hide himself behind tresses or beneath tree boughs, before adjusting the lavender and azure feathers at her sides and turning her gaze to the Meadow.
It appears they have the place to themselves today, Oceane and this branded stranger. Only when she has finished examining the brightly lit meadow and its sorrowful grass does she realize, so out of practice is she, that she could use this opportunity for recruiting. “Do you have a home?” she inquires without preamble, subjecting the flaxen stranger once more to her ability to cut right to the chase.
04-11-2021, 07:48 PM (This post was last modified: 04-11-2021, 11:30 PM by Ledger.)
Help me out before I drown Save me now before I give up
“Good”. A single brow raises at her unexpected response and he fails to find the right retort in time, she’s already settling herself in front of him. He’s not quite sure what to make of her. Brash and sure of herself, confident in her own skin. It hadn’t been missed, the slight step back when he had been struggling to control the emotion on his face. However she stood firm against him, unwavering with her head held high and regarding him with an open frankness that leaves him feeling quite exposed. His gaze ticks back to her as she chuckles. It’s a lifeline, an offering for more. Hesitantly, he takes it.
”I highly doubt that.” He snorts but stops trying to cover the exposed socket and his voice is warmer, has lost its edge. A smooth bourbon instead of cheap whisky. She hadn’t even seen the fun drawing on his flank as most of his body remains in the shade and pivoted away from her. Made from a spoiled kid playing connect the dots but deciding on fire and flesh as its medium. Not to mention the scars that nobody could see. Or the crack in his literal glass heart. His brands even glow now, a new fun little reminder.
She’s ruffling her feathers again but he refuses to look at them, keeping his gaze trained to the lovely features of her face. The molten hues of her amber eyes draw him in and he can’t help the subliminal reaction as the gold flecks of his eye flicker in response. As if sensing it, she surprises him again and this time he doesn’t bother to hide the surprise that he feels. “Quite forward aren’t you? Amusement on his lips that reach the mahogany of his eye, a glimmer of warmth. “No.” He finally gives her. “That was also a very long time ago.” And he steadies himself for the wave of pain that’s sure to break across his chest but it’s faint, barely a ripple. Something about just talking to someone, the distraction, seems to help.
A sudden realization that he doesn’t even know a thing about this woman before him whose so nosily questioning and inspecting him. ”Are these your usual recruiting tactics? In my experience it usually helps to start with your name.” A slight roll of his shoulder as he gives a shrug, a hint of teasing in the depths of gold. Making a point of not offering his own.
Pleased that her dismissive comment about his scars has ostensibly given the stranger permission to relax, Oceane also settles a bit more comfortably into the conversation. Neither shadow beasts nor Hyaline are on the forefront of her thoughts anymore, at least for now, and she cocks her hip to rest casually in front of her most recent acquaintance. As they continue to interact, he shrouded in shadow and she in light, Oceane takes periodic moments to turn her molten gaze to their surroundings with both curiosity and suspicion.
The Meadow, while serene, has never been so quiet, and before she asks the stranger if he has a home she exercises her zoolingualism by employing a nearby robin to oversee the area while they remain within it. The orange-breasted avian, notably excited to take to the skies in the sunshine again, takes her new role upon her wings wholeheartedly.
It takes the chestnut man’s surprised countenance and amused rhetoric for Oceane to realize that she has charged headlong into the deep, leaving small talk behind and neglecting to carry any sort of finesse with her. She grins, the expression hemmed with apology though more blatantly awash with her own amusement, and offers the one-eyed man a casual shrug of her glimmering winged shoulders. “I do not find myself recruiting often,” Oceane asserts candidly, “But is it truly my name that would serve as the final determinant?”
She pauses to allow for a moment of gentle laughter before finally gifting her name ─ “I am Oceane.” ─ and raising a brow in the stranger’s direction, hopeful that he will do the same.
Help me out before I drown Save me now before I give up
“So you are recruiting me.” A brow raised but there’s a ghost of a smile playing across his dark lips. She’s more relaxed now, a finely curved hip shifting towards him and a gently sag of her body as she releases her tension. He doesn’t miss the way she’s constantly scanning the area around them, as if searching for something. Yet her attention never seems to waver from him even as her gaze flicks elsewhere. Her eyes are back on him now, searching him as she grins and he finds that he likes the way she smiles. The realization of that thought suddenly makes him wary all over again, even more so as he’s unable to avoid the smooth movement of the wing that follows her shrugged shoulder. Something darkens in his gaze but his features remain the same, the small smile still lingering.
“ Oceane.” He repeats her name, it’s clear and crisp as it falls from his tongue but soft in all the right places. “A name could absolutely be a dealbreaker, a name gives away much about its wearer.” He finally breaks into a loose grin, the spark glinting back in his molten flecks. “Lucky for you, I like yours. I’m open to hearing your recruitment spiel. Just keep in mind I’ve heard quite a few in my day so do try to impress me.”
He hasn’t spoken this much in years. The words hurt his throat, unused as it had been, but it feels good. Just to talk. Just to banter. Just to feel like a normal man for a few minutes before reality came crushing down around him again. The tattered wisps of his old self shine through and he grasps at them like water, knowing they would soon slip through his fingers and pool back into his darkness. It’s pathetic that he is suddenly grateful to Oceane, grateful for this beautiful stranger that decided to engage with him if only for a few seconds and brought the sweet relief of keeping his demons at bay. He hates the weakness of that feeling, hates the way it brings him to focus more clearly on the strange empty ache where his real heart should be.
He knows she’s waiting for him to reciprocate, to let his own name fall on her ears but he doesn’t release it. It’s meant to taunt, to continue this light hearted teasing they had suddenly fallen into. This buoy he’s clinging to so he doesn’t start drowning again as those wings sparkle with memories across her shoulders. So he keeps his brow raised, the good eye looking at her expectantly as he waits to be solicited. Waits to be drafted into whatever ranks she served and to hear about all the good and wonderful things her ruler was capable of, the promises that were sure to come to lure him into their fold. He had heard it all before but he's happy to give her a chance, hear what she has to say. Even if he would most likely deny her, knowing he was too unpredictable and therefore too much of a dangerous risk for any kingdom or herd to take on.
Oceane laughs, loud and genuine, at the stranger's quick rebuttal. It's been a long time since she'd felt the urge to toss her opaline head skyward and succumb to the sound of merriment, and to hear it erupt from herself again feels alien and uncomfortable. From the recesses of her mind come quick flashes of the last few times she'd found herself caught in the throes of laughter - watching Altum's first steps, sharing a private joke with Soran, lingering beside a recently-stripped prickly pear bush in the company of Lepis.
Each memory, uniquely bittersweet, causes a small pang of discomfort within her that she works adamantly to suppress.
“On the contrary,” she jests as warmly as she can in return, “You mentioned recruitment - I just wanted to know if you had a home.” Oceane's briefly unbridled joy is swiftly reined in and in its place remains a demure grin as she settles herself into the conversation and offers the flaxen man her name.
The one-eyed man repeats it back to her, low and gruff and more alluring than she would have ever expected it to be. Involuntarily, Oceane's breath catches for a singular beat before she forces herself to exhale slowly with the silent hope that she can disguise it as a meaningless sigh. Reasserting control over her own expression just as the grinning man - still nameless, she realizes - invites her to try her hand at recruiting him into her kingdom's ranks.
“I'm sorry to say that I don't have a spiel prepared to share with you,” she offers him a faux frown as she pauses briefly to watch the way the corners of his eye crinkle in amusement. Fleetingly, she considers telling him that he should feel honored enough to join her, simply by the fact that he is being recruited by the Queen of his future home - but the mystery of this meeting is too enjoyable to spoil with irrelevant facts regarding her status. “Though I do think Loess could speak for itself. If you're not too busy to come view it yourself, stranger,” her mock sadness has made way for a playful grin and a coy side-eye once more as she reminds the man, though she's quite certain he's already aware, that he's yet to reciprocate her introduction.
Help me out before I drown Save me now before I give up
Her laughter, her true belly laugh, is loud and wild and pure. For a second her regal and controlled demeanor slips into something else, something softer and kind and alluring. She regains her composure quickly but he finds himself wanting to hold onto that laugh, wanting to tuck it away in his cold crystal heart for the nights when sleep is elusive. When the ghosts fill up his mind and the world is a little too dark. He misses her sigh, the little sign that perhaps he had imprinted on her in the way she had on him. Instead, he watches her settle back into her cool and confident cloak, she wears it well like a second skin.
“Disappointing.” He huffs softly, pretending to be slightly wounded. “Perhaps I should give you some pointers, for future reference. You can thank me when you get promoted.” Of course he has no idea of the invisible crown that rests on her twilight head. However she holds herself with an assurance that reminds him, unfortunately, of Ellyse. Just a bit. Ellyse had been a natural born leader and Oceane… Oceane shares that same trait. There’s a sour taste on the back of his tongue and he fights it back. No, not now. He doesn’t want to think of her now. Instead he reaches for that laugh, that wild laughter that had fallen around him like moonlight and penetrated the crack of his heart with it's brightness.
“So you’re from Loess.” He finally says, aware that he’s been silent for a moment. Aware that his firm grasp on reality is vaguely slipping, the familiar sensation of anxiety slowly creeping through his stomach and up his chest. The beat of his pulse becoming slightly frantic. Resisting as he takes a slow deep breath in, trying to focus on just Oceane and her words. Trying to fight back the sudden overwhelming feeling of panic that threatens to settle in his breast.
Loess wasn’t one of the territories he had ever been that familiar with. He had always meant to go, when he had been Tephra’s Ambassador. Alas, fate had other things in mind. It's becoming hopeless, trying not to dredge up past memories but unable to avoid the many triggers that lay hidden like snares. Still fighting against the suppression that threatens to smother him, he latches on to her quip. He still hasn’t told her who he is. “Ledger.” His voice is softer, his smile a little strained, almost choking on his name as he tries to keep himself present. “My name is Ledger.” His good eye looks around the Meadow before he forces himself to return to her. “As for my home, your looking at it.”
He knows he must end this charade, as nice as it had been. He needs to release her and her laughter back to the world of light that she belonged to. “I would love to visit your home Oceane but it’s probably not a good idea.” He hesitates, the explanation of why becoming lodged in his throat. He can no longer take the scrutiny from the pools of golden amber that leave him feeling suddenly confused. There’s a flutter in the weird cavity of his chest, as if something stirs within the encasement of glass. It’s neither pleasant nor painful, just strange. Uncomfortable. “It’s been a pleasure but I won't keep you from whatever business you were attending.” His tone almost dismissive as his gaze becomes hidden within the messy tangles of his snowy forelock, the pressure from his anxiety building. It's because he finds her company so pleasurable that he needs to distance himself, needs to rebuild the bricks that had suddenly loosened on his wall.
Oceane relaxes the grip she holds on her controlled façade, letting slip the politely tight-lipped smiles to make room for amused smirks and small bouts of warm laughter with each jest the scarred stranger provides. Awash in the sunshine she had sorely missed, it's easy to allow herself a moment of relaxed repose in the presence of her newest acquaintance. The year had been a long and eventful one: the Alliance, the theft of Tarian and the beginning of the Long Night, her own conflict with Breach and the Eastern kingdom, the fear of an impending war.
She had refused to leave the foothills and canyons for fear of retaliation from Hyaline or Pangea, and so the familiar confines of Loess, blanketed in darkness, were all the opaline mare had seen for the entirety of the Long Night.
“I could use all the help I can get,” she feeds off his energy, thankful for the opportunity to feel normal for a time, “If you'd be so kind to share.” With this stranger, there is no need to discuss the politics between her kingdom and the East, nor does she need to answer questions regarding the disappearances of Soran and Altum. She doesn't need to worry about standard etiquette, about Castile or Lepis, about the history she hides that precedes Beqanna.
The red-breasted robin she had communicated with upon her arrival to the Meadow flits nearby, breaking Oceane from the thankful state she has found herself in and distracting her from the chestnut stallion's prolonged silence. The bird alights itself briefly upon her withers and her ears flick backwards to listen to the miniscule creature reiterate what she had already assumed - the Meadow is devoid of others today. Safe, at least, for now.
“Yes,” she confirms when the stallion draws her back to him. The robin departs, its task complete, “I've lived there for almost a decade now.” There's a change in his voice, a tightness that was not there before, that prompts Oceane to tilt her head ever so slightly to the side. As she lingers on the cusp of meddlesome and respectful once again, he finally gifts her his name. “Ledger,” she repeats with warmth, though there is still sharp intrigue in her amber eyes as he motions to the Meadow around them.
“You're not new to Beqanna, are you?” she finally puts a finger on what had been feeling odd - he hadn't asked about Loess nor what it was like, had even repeated the name in a way that felt familiar. Perhaps he hadn't ever been there, but he had heard of it.
And then Ledger dismisses her. The about-face of their conversation catches Oceane on her heels, tugging her coy smile away and replacing it with a furrowed brow and pursed lavender lips. “Of course,” she responds a bit tersely, “I'm sorry to have distracted you from-” a pause, her amber eyes sweeping the Meadow swiftly and dramatically before returning to the one-eyed Ledger, “-everything that's going on here.”
But she lingers before leaving, the silence stretching between them for a few moments before the Loessian Queen decides she deserves, at the very least, the inkling of a explanation. “If you'll humor me, though... why, exactly, would it not be a good idea for you to visit?”
