"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
05-24-2021, 05:49 AM (This post was last modified: 05-24-2021, 05:50 AM by Chemdog.)
The Cove is a quiet place as of late and he enjoys it. His mind drifting gin and out the like the flow of the sea, going away and coming in again. Optimism and pessimism playing with his thoughts like the toiling of a stormy sea. His body is slashed in fresh scars, slashes and rips through his painted flesh. This is what it is to have something of your own these days? His skin twitches as if to deflect an insect, but it’s a recoil of his anxiety.
Spring, the children are arriving, some may even be his children. It’s something he’s usually alight with, but this year it seems a dull even comparatively. He fears, and can feel the dark loud loaming, he may have made a mistake by leaving the Isle and taking the Cove for himself. It laid abandoned, and still, te moment he came crawling into the silver light; new enemies came crawling forward too.
He doubts himself tonight, tipping his bright eyes up to the grinning moon. A pair of white ghostly ravens gush from his chest, at first a mix of white smoke like material and floating liquid. They float up to take full form, still pale and translucent, they extend their long wings and circle above him as he watches the sea from the black sand shores. Irisaen is wrapped around his scarred ear, her iridescent scales reflecting the moon’s strong glow.
He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes, “Grandfather,” his gritty voice begs for help with just one word.
Sadly for Chemdog, it was not his grandfather that approached him through the silvergrass under the light of a half-born moon. The other celestial bodies orbiting their world loomed farther back in space, varying in colors and cycles of their rotations, but the moon closest to Beqanna seemed to burn especially bright that night. Cheri whickered softly to the stallion at the edge of his domain, noticing only his head cast up into the sky with an expression of despair. She hadn’t heard his whispery plea, but now that her visit to the Cove was drawing to its end Cheri felt driven to meet as many new faces as she could before she left.
“Could I join you?” She asked politely, close enough now to see the ravens in their flight and the glinting python curled around his ear like a jewel in the night. He seemed so forlorn out here all alone; Cheri felt a strange sense of obligation to keep him company for a little while.
“I’m Cheri.” She smiled halfway, her inky lips almost too dark to see. Her wings, glowing softer than ever, lay folded neatly over her back like a springtime cape, and her glistening mane clung to the tight curve of her bowed neck. “Just visiting.”
His teal eyes open halfway, exhausted, and out of the corner of his vision he sees her glowing wings. Her hair catching the moonlight so well, as if it might be made of pure malachite alight with melted chrome. The sight of her, a beautiful woman suddenly near him, brought the ghost of a smile to his dark muzzle. His grandfather did not show, but he wasn’t so disappointed with who did.
“You certainly can,” he grins, trying his best to seem kind and warm. He feels dreadful, but it is easy to push that aside while he sneaks a look over her whole body. “It is too quiet here – only us, and the ghosts, with the wilderness and waves.” he blows a snort through his nostrils, adjusting his feet, lowering his head a little. His thick hair tumbles over his face and down his craning neck when he does, sea-spray beading some of the onyx strands. “Delighted, Cheri.” he brings his teal eyes to meet hers, “I’m Chem.” he sighs, a half-smile, “And welcome to Silver Cove, my home.”
He's so grateful for her company that he doesn’t bother to question why she might be here now, standing next to him in the moonlight while he stares at the lapping waves and their lace-white caps dancing in the silver light.
@[Cheri]
------ IT AINT THE SIZE OF THE BOAT BABY!
iiiits the motion in the ocean ahahaha
no but really size never matters with posts, i'm tickled to see cheri and chembum meet - she is absolutely lovely ♥ ♥
Could she but hear the thoughts of stallions, perhaps then Cheri would understand her worth. She’s still unfamiliar with the hungry gleam in another’s eye as it beholds her for the first time; the innocence inside her mislabels it as something else. Humor maybe, or well-intended sweetness. Being beautiful - that was something reserved for the likes of Oceane, both Queen in name and stature. She thought her own mother beautiful, but Cheri had never suspected that it had passed down to her through several generations before. The silver of her great-grandmother melted into the golden fire of her grandmother Lilli, carried on by her father who loved a mare with skin as black and rare as onyx.
All the colors of the rainbow, pouring themselves into her vessel of wanton flesh that swung limber, lovely legs across one another’s path as they brought Cheri to stand beside Chemdog.
The eyes of a young mare still in the budding springtime of her life, staring back at him with genuine kindness. She was glad to be welcomed into his kinship for the remaining few hours, even if their thoughts and feelings were not so much aligned. “Chem. I won’t forget it.” The visitor smiled, though her heart fractured a bit at the news. So; things had changed here. Starlore was most likely gone. “The journey continues.” She thought of it, peeling her gaze away from the intensity of the blue in Chem’s eyes. “You know my father would argue that the ghosts of our past have plenty to say. He’d claim you weren’t alone at all.” She laughed kindly, taking in the lazy roll of the crashing surf at night. “But I’m not my father.” Cheri tilted her head aside toward the spotted stallion, almost as if she were inviting him into a private little joke.
“So I would have to agree with you.” Here she turned her cheek again, catching the handsome profile of his once-stern face turned dashing from the corner of her eye. “Why is it so quiet here, you think?”
08-08-2021, 02:06 PM (This post was last modified: 08-08-2021, 02:08 PM by Chemdog.)
He’s not shy about letting his eyes search her gaze as they level with one another. He lets her speak, not wanting to interrupt her and at the same time, thoroughly enjoying the sound of her voice. He chuckles at her slight joke, the ghosts, he says to himself – they’re my family. And she doesn’t know the loudness they can be, or even worse, the deafening quietude they can also serve. He finds the silence much more torturous, hence his depressive mood at the moment.
He laughs almost sarcastically, “I am not sure, but I bet it is my failing somehow...” he looks to his feet, the surf starting to touch them now and soon the waves with foam gently around their ankles as the tide rises. “There was a time I starved for power, and my ambition unmatched; my thirst for a fight unquenchable.” He shakes like a wet dog, but he is not wet – it’s heaviness he tries to free himself of, like shackles weighing him down. “It’s left me, and I do not know why.” he sighs, looking up to the sea ahead, a storm threatening to approach land. “I do not age, or get sick, but still I feel tired. Exhausted of all of it.” he growls, blowing a snort through his tensed nostrils.
He looks back up to her, his eyes half open as if he’s intoxicated. “I apologize. ” he sucks in a deep and dreadful sounding sigh, “I am not myself lately Cheri.” he lays his ears flat, sweeping his eyes back to the toiling sea. “I am sorry to meet you like this, in such a way – how lucky am I to have you come strolling to stand by me? Too lovely for me to sulk; so where is it you’re from? What has you wandering tonight?” He tries to add a little light to his gritted voice, to harsh the bellow of his baritone notes, but he’s sure he still sounds bothered.
And the tide rolled in around the two horses' ankles. Cheri, the more slender of the two black animals, felt the lukewarm surf tug on her body and thought how strange that sensation was, unlike anything she’d ever felt. A strange thought for a horse to have. Then again, she and Chemdog were currently talking about ghosts and the quietness of his herdland - and Cheri was eating it up with serious interest.
Both her ears bent forward toward the bigger stallion, hanging onto his every word as he detailed the worries of his life. Immortality, a fire dimmed only by the passing of time; just one of the reasons as to why he stood here alone on the shoreline of Silver Cove.
It was sad. Cheri had always wondered about the possibility of her extended or eternal life, but she’d never really been confronted by it quite like this. Something about what Chemdog had said: “It’s left me, and I do not know why.” That phrase clung to her like a living thing. Even after he’d backtracked and tried to lighten the mood it stayed, repeating itself and making her worry.
He was a gentleman for trying to dispel her concerns anyways. Cheri put on a pretty little smile and politely disagreed with a light snort, a sort of laugh at his roguishness. “I come from Loess.” She obliged one of his questions, following it closely with a bit about herself as well.
“You shouldn’t apologize. I tend to draw out the pain of others naturally, so I’ve learned to be an apt listener as much as I am a healer.” The little pegasus smiled in the dark. In the reflective surface of the rising waves, her glowing markings cast a dim, haunting sort of light. She complimented him. “I liked listening to you.”
It didn't explain why she was here, but Cheri could resolve her business on his time - not her own. She considered telling him about Starlore but decided against it; Chemdog had given inspiration to opportunity instead, and Cheri was curious to see if the Silver Cove leader might be the kind of horse who walked through open portals. (Metaphorically speaking, since doors didn’t necessarily exist in their world.)
“I’ll be honest with you Chemdog.” Cheri said after a while. “I’m a sworn diplomat of Loess, but an adventurer at heart. Sometimes the two don’t mix.” She sighed. Most of the time the two didn’t mix. “So I’m searching for ways to blend the two together. I think that as long as I claim Loess as my home, I could technically be a diplomat anywhere, anytime. You know: give my services and powers to as many horses as possible.” Her green wings bobbed, dipping into the sea water that was beginning to pool higher and higher.
Finally she turned and pulled her sunken hooves free from the ocean floor, trudging knee-deep back towards higher ground. She assumed that Chemdog was following, thinking of something to say, but in case he thought she was simply leaving, the black appaloosa turned her head back over the long curve of her body and asked him a question.
“So do you think Silver Cove could use a diplomat?”
