"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
all these voices in my head get loud
i wish that i could shut them out
i'm sorry that i let you down
Once released by Mazikeen, Anath walks carefully away from the clover patch where she had been playing with her sunlight. She moves down toward the lake, blue and bright, and skirts its pebbled shore before trotting up into the cover of a small copse of trees. There she wedges herself in among sucker-saplings and prickly shrubs and lies down in the rotting leaves with a muted thud. Hidden amongst the bracken she sheds the hot angry tears that had tried to choke her when she learned she would be ousted from Hyaline. Motherless, naive, undesirable Anath does not know what waits for her beyond this high mountain valley… but she knows how it feels to be alone.
Instinct tells her to cry where she cannot be seen, not pride.
Though she could stay there to shiver and sob for hours, she does not have time. She wipes her tear-streaked cheeks on her legs, sniffs, coughs, and shakes her head hard just once. Standing, Anath squeezes her way back out of the bramble. A branch scratches her gold and black cheek, and foxtails stick into her fuzzy pelt. What were the names? Ryatah and Selaphiel. Says Mazikeen’s matter-of-fact voice inside her head. “Ryatah and Selaphiel.” Repeats the girl. ”Ry..a...tahhugh” Snagged on a vine, Anath trips and then kicks free before stumbling out into the open beside the lake. An audible sigh becomes the second name. ”...Selaphiel.”
What exactly is an angel? Mazikeen had included that like it was a part of their distinction. Without a description of angels or of the angels (she had not thought to ask), Anath must choose how she will go about finding one of them. It is not much of a choice, really, find Malik and ask him or ask someone else right away. The forested slopes, lakeshore, and greenspace lie around her in all directions. She will not go back to the meadow where she left Mazikeen. so she listens for sounds of movement in the trees and rakes her green eyes over the lake. Hyaline gets bigger each time she looks.
anath
let you down
@Ryatah - This is not what I *was* going to write but it's what came out in the end.
She is alone when the girl comes stumbling out of the brush and bramble that borders the lake, though she feels her before she sees her. Ryatah had been standing further up an embankment where she is able to take in not only the entirety of Hyaline’s lake but the meadows and trees that surrounded it, too. It gave her a good view without having to be too close to the heart of the territory, which was the lake, and everyone that seemed to gravitate towards it.
The girl’s swirl of worried emotions press against the calm of hers, a wrinkle in her tranquility, and it causes her to search for the source.
Her head turns from the lake, sweeping her gaze instead along the banks of it until she finds the young filly. She seems disheveled and confused, most likely due to her adventure through the trees, and it tugs at that innately maternal part of her.
It was not often that she inserted herself into things not concerning her, but something about the girl draws her forward.
She moves towards the girl, and even in the warmth of the sunlight her glow is not dulled, illuminated in the ethereal aura that always encompassed her. Brilliantly white, with the golden stardust wings that glitter at her sides and the amber halo above her head, she is still splendidly angelic even in the bright of day. It softens the already gentle lines of her face, when she lowers her head to greet the girl kindly, “Are you okay? You look like you’re looking for someone, or something.”
all these voices in my head get loud
i wish that i could shut them out
i'm sorry that i let you down
There on the bank of the vast clear lake Anath trains her eyes on the warm glow of the approaching mare. That glow is vastly different from her sunlight, some of which now rolls over itself in a small sphere upon the black half of her breast. A second ago the filly had been preparing to approach strangers and ask them about the names and about angels. Now faced with an approaching adult she finds her heart tripping anxiously in her chest, but she does not move, only squares herself a little, planting her small hooves in the mud. From her small nostrils the breaths tumble in rapid succession.
A ring of amber crowns the mare’ s brow and Anath is puzzled by it, but does not stare too long. Instead she is distracted by the woman’s expression. Until this moment she has no memories of an adult looking at her with anything but indifference or irritation. She does not remember her own mother, whose beauty would have drawn her just as Ryatah’s does now. With only Gale and Mazikeen as points of reference, the peaceful kindness of this winged creature breaks over her like a plunging wave. A little tremor passes over Anath’s tri-colored frame. “I am…”
She stutters out, her brow pinching as she tries to find more of the steadiness that strengthened her voice when speaking with the Queen. “I am okay.” She doesn’t know what lying is, only that there seem to be right answers and wrong ones.
In her small voice she says, “I am looking for the angels.”
Then because she is disarmed by the kindness she confesses herself. “My name is Anath. I’m not allowed to be here.” A muscle jumps in her small jaw and the sunlight flares upon her chest, crawls up her shoulder and across her skin like the creeping edge of a flame. In all her sorrow and anxiety there is something steadfast and bold learning it’s way.
She understood, more than most, the laws of Hyaline. Even though she had lived here longer than both the queen that had created the shifting rule and the current queen that enforced it, she had never tried to argue it. After all, she was safe, and not bound by it—Atrox had made sure of that. And now that she no longer had to worry over their children being shifters or not, she rarely thought of it at all. She was blissfully ignorant, and she knew it. She paid little attention to those that came and went, because she did not have to.
The Hyaline that belonged to her and Atrox is distant from the rest of them; they lived their lives mostly undisturbed, just as they in turn did not disturb the kingdom. Between the two of them they’ve experienced more than their fair share of political disputes and wars, and neither of them were willing to fight on behalf of anyone except their own family anymore.
So when she looks at Anath it is with a gentle kind of pity, but also with the understanding that she likely could not change anything for her. Perhaps with the old Mazikeen, the one that she had first healed after protecting her own sweet Selaphiel from the creatures that had lurked in the never-ending dark. But this new Mazikeen was not nearly so easy to appeal to; she is hollow and dark, and while Ryatah is no stranger to all things sinister, there was something about the Hyaline queen even she found unnerving.
“Looking for angels?” she repeats her question with a small smile and slight tilt of her head, watching the way the little girl trembles with a battle she seems to be fighting with herself. She doesn’t think anyone has ever specifically sought her out simply for being an angel, but if she feels any suspicion there is none found on her face. Anath did not seem to realize what she was, which makes her wonder why she felt she needed an angel if she did not know what they were. If they were not in Hyaline her guard likely would not have been raised at all, and she does her best to shield the little girl from seeing the way her own mind is churning.
She does not directly confirm anything at first, and instead only returns the introduction with one of her own. “My name is Ryatah,” she adjusts her gold-tipped wings, sending a small shower of stardust to the ground below. “I think I might be able to help you,” she finishes with another kind smile, before asking gently, “What did you need an angel for?”
