"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
so give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light 'cause oh that gave me such a fright
Once again, he has let time pass him by. For whole lifetimes he is painfully present, drawing each breath alongside the movers and shakers and doers. For other whole lifetimes, he is as good as gone. He has yet to see a whole centennial (though he's drawing alarmingly close), but even with the unnaturally long lifespans of Beqannians he is practically ancient. He has descendants so far removed from himself that they are practically unrelated, nowadays. Even tracking them down via magic as he is wont to do is now a purposeful activity, rather than a subconscious task. It's a strange world they live in, where the residents mature in a mere three or four years, but even those not gifted with immortality sometimes live for five or six decades. They were not meant to meet their own great-great-great-grandchildren, Brennen muses, and it's not the first time he's had such a thought.
Today's rise from the quiet hold of deep magic is sudden. On other occasions, it has been a slow ascent, like bubbles rising to the surface of the water, but not today. Today he is submerged in the calm depths of the ocean one minute, watching the magic flow along the currents, and the next he is standing beside the river, it's burble and laugh over the flat rocks not quite loud enough to mask the sounds of conversations carrying behind him. Brennen shivers and blinks; physically, he probably never left the surface of Beqanna but mentally it's still more than a little disconcerting. The sheer power of magic carried on ocean currents makes the glint of magic on the river seem like mere faerie dust.
He stretches; first his limbs, rocking back onto his haunches and sinking down in the front in a move more reminiscent of feline than equine. When he straightens again, Brennen extends both wings and gives them a good shake. It's not a proper preening, that, but grooming will have to wait for later. His mind provides a tantalizing memory of his partner doing the careful preening for him, and a part of him is holding out for that. If it comes down to it, he can do it himself with a little reaching or a little magic, but a live friend would be better. With that desire firmly in mind, he turns away from the river and faces the land behind, amber eyes scanning the scattered residents.
Will he see a familiar face today, or will he have to go seeking them in once-familiar lands? Or worse still, start over again?
but I will hold, as long as you like just promise me we'll be alright
Icy winds blow down from the north, and for one season only, pass beyond the borders of what people call 'the North', these days. The cold air hardly loses strength when it passes over the northern sea and through the water-cold Taiga, into the forest, and joins up with the equally-cold air the is dropped from the mountainous regions in Hyaline and its crystalline lake - air that's as cold as the glaciers it falls off of.
Past Hyaline, further south, the cold air penetrates most of Beqanna's common lands, keen on following the river, where frost clings easily to trees and the damp air of its shores. It is there that the icy winds encounter the strong magic of the water magician, and mentally, for the dreamer who had been riding the icy cold, it is like riding headfirst into a wall.
Leilan considers opening a portal immediately because of the familiarity of this magic, but his first impulse is drowned with the shock of even encountering such magic - much stronger, definitely older than his. If he had to take a wild guess he might guess right about who he found out there, but by then he has already mostly retreated. Mostly, because the winter season is the only season that allows him to extend once more for mental contact.
Good thing you didn't drown.
A water mage never could, obviously, but after their last meeting - was it even a meeting? - it's good to find that he's still, or again, alive. Other than the raven mage could claim, he thinks. He still doesn't even want to think about what happened to her. Is that cowardly? Maybe. Does it bother him? Hmm, no. It keeps one alive, after all.
told you I'd change even when I knew I never could
@Brennen
Hi, I am also slow and yes he's still technically on Icicle Isle for this post, I think
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
so give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light 'cause oh that gave me such a fright
While his eyes are scanning the physical bodies standing before him, most if not all of them unfamiliar, there is a moment when he considers retreating back into himself. It's work, starting over, and Brennen has little to tie him to the mortal existence. He's always been a creature of intense loyalties, to lands and to people. The lands are not a draw to him right now - he had broken his last ties to Kingdoms and Monarchies shortly before his last disappearance. Yes, the landscapes might remain unchanged by aught but the seasons, but the people inside of them who commanded his loyalty have changed. So it is only for the possibility of people to whom he is loyal that Brennen stays mentally present, and he is afraid of what he might find if he reaches for them.
Who remains alive? Who has died (for real, not the magic-sleep of the water mage)?
He has gone as far as to close his eyes when something changes. There's magic in the wind that skips across his hide and feathers, and it's not the magic of a stranger. Even if he wasn't attuned to 'look' for the magics and minds of those he has cared about, the wind carries special significance for Brennen, and he is always listening to it. Once, before he was a mage, he had a handful of other hard-won powers, and the winds had been among them. He rarely gives serious thought to the limitations of his powers Before, but the ability to harness the wind had gone hand-in-hand with his preference for flight over the tedium of walking, and so it had been precious. Not as handy in his profession as the bone-bending, but closer to his heart.
The mage half-expects to see the other mage when he opens his eyes, but the space immediately around himself is still empty. He waits a moment, a pregnant pause, and is rewarded with the brush of a mind against his own, rich with the Cold that the younger man has embraced. Brennen tolerated the cold of the Tundra because it was the first home he'd ever known, and his loyalty to it and his Kings had run deeper than any river. The dragon-boy had embraced the Cold over time until it seemed he simply Was. Leilan, the mage tastes the name across his mind less as an affirmation of his identity - neither one of them is any particular doubt as to who the other is - but rather as an affirmation that this is Real, and not a dream or a memory, you know if would take more than that to kill me.
Brennen is hard to kill: he's both a formidable warrior in the physical way, and a practiced magician. Oh, and he's fucking stubborn. It's like a shining threefold illustration of 'hard to kill'.
His memories of the altercations directly before he phased himself out into the ocean for a time are hazy, but time awake is sharpening them. The last things Brennen remembers is working magic beyond even his own level of comfort, Taiga burning, and those that had asked him to stand in protection of their Lands and Kingdoms failing to appear to stand beside him. Brennen remembers being incandescently irate, and he is sure that even a memory of that anger will remain in his mind-voice when he speaks again; but any fury he may have felt at the time is tempered by both time and his long history with the younger stallion that had preceded that incident, and the result is a tone that might have an edge, but isn't particularly hostile. He doesn't bother to shield any of those complicated feelings from Leilan, if the boy cares to look. Too lazy to come say a real hello? he teases instead.
but I will hold, as long as you like just promise me we'll be alright
He would have understood, some time ago, that Brennen had felt betrayed when he rage-quit defending Nerine. He could have if he had put his mind to it, understand that the mage had given everything to protect, and then it’s capricious so-called king had left the premises to wreck something else. In fact, Leilan had even taken Lethy with him as well, though she had had little say in the matter. In retrospect maybe he should have stayed, but he had also recognized that blasting ice all over the fire would only have resulted in more death and destruction. It was that argument he had held up when Lilliana had confronted him, even if it had only really come to him later on.
It had had so little effect, he sometimes wondered if he should have taken the children. But then he realizes that it would only have angered the magician-queen more at the time. A sort of fatalism had taken over his mind when he thought about the incident and the only thing he could do was decide that he at least made good on his promises.
Right now though, he recognizes the bay magician’s smothered irritation-of-what-once-was for what it is. It’s a perk of his newly frozen heart, that the thing that beats in his chest remains cold and logical and, most of all, unbroken. It takes more warmth to thaw a frozen heart than Leilan thinks he’ll ever meet in his life, plus, he knows where the original lies - and no-one else. His walls are up and so much more effective these days than they used to be, what with the cracks frozen over once more, and he feels safer with it than ever. Safe enough even, to prod the other with his signature annoyance. I was gonna ask you if it would kill you to do the same, and it brings an smile of feigned innocence to his face and mental voice, But then I guess it’s always the young that need to move before their elders. He may not have a warm heart, he certainly kept his odd sense of humour, and why would he.
The winds return to swirl in a single place, temperature dropping significantly before opening up a space that looks like the northern sky; deep black, with green-like light and a bunch of white dots - snowflakes, not stars, like a blizzard. He steps through and the little waft of ice closes behind him easily, until the young magician eyes the other, quicksilver in his eyes slowly being replaces by the icy blue and sometimes green, the other knows of him better. The ice mage hasn’t bothered to change that giveaway feature of his; it’s been part of his body for so long, and still betrays his heritage. Even if it shows a wholly different colour than his mother’s. ”I’ll bite.” He says, giving a wry smile. ”How’s life?” he offers casually - as if he doesn’t know that Brennen hadn’t exactly lived life to the fullest, the last couple years.
told you I'd change even when I knew I never could
so give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light 'cause oh that gave me such a fright
There's something...different about the familiar voice. Something off, even, though Brennen can't pin down what it is. He's probably picking up on something to do with Leilan's heart, though he doesn't pry far enough to find out. He doesn't even change his attitude or responses, not really, though perhaps his gaze is a little sharper and his attention that sliver more focused. He says nothing when Leilan snarks back at him, that by-play comforting in its familiarity, and the boy's acquiescence is clear enough anyhow.
Magic coalesces in the air around him, and then the physical signs of the place from where Leilan is traveling. Here, spring has begun to dance its way across the meadows and plains, but the younger stallion is coming from a cold place. Brennen inhales the crisp scent of snow and ice, allowing himself a reminiscent little smile, before focusing once more on his...friend? It seems at this point he would probably consider Leilan a friend, though their ties and history are so much deeper than that. Leilan is one of the ones he will always remember as remarkably young, though standing before Brennen now he doesn't seem particularly youthful, despite the spunky attitude he has never quite shed. The flicker of his eyes reminds Brennen of Scorch, and for a moment he mourns.
But that is all he can allow himself - a moment - because allowing himself to dwell in the past is the start of the downward spiral back into magical hibernation. He can risk only the fond memories of former friends and lovers, unless he's willing to finally give up the chase and join them. He's not ready to do that yet, and thus, he remains.
"The ocean is teaming with life," he reponds placidly, "but the sharks and seamonsters aren't particularly good conversationalists, and the fish are quite dull." There had been a few with whom Brennen had shared dream-time during his Sleep, but it certainly hadn't been the sealife. With the exception of a few of his more aquatically-inclined children, Brennen really has very little fondness for water dwellers. The water itself he loves: the tides, the changes, the cool depths and constant ebb and flow, the magic it holds for him; but he holds no allegiance to its denizens. "Perhaps more interesting - what has been happening above sea level?"
but I will hold, as long as you like just promise me we'll be alright
Water is, in essence, a life-giving element. So that the ocean is teaming with life is no surprise (even if one wouldn't have had the experience that it is indeed so), but Brennen manages to give his speech like it is something new (and, when reading between the lines mentally, he seems a little discontent with that fact). This causes the beginning of a smile on Leilan's face. His own habitat, on land or, 'land' if you counting ice floats as such, is much calmer and has fewer chances of intrusion. "No more than gulls and robs, I reckon," he counters, teeth flashing a little as he can't really hold back a grin. His disconnected feelings are still inclined towards sarcasm, irony and entertainment after all, and the truth is he has too many deep ties and connections with Brennen to not know how to react, or even feel - it's easier now though that his heart is an icy one, because he doesn't get drowned in those feelings any more. More like looking into a mirror, he knows and recognizes them, and that's about it. Blissfully unaware of the things he might have felt upon meeting the older magician.
"You missed quite an exciting time. Someone thought it a good idea to put out the lights. Delve into something even beyond the underworld... bring back a few fancy monsters and all that." He shakes his head as if he were to say, 'those crazy little children at it again, what can you do about it though', as if it happens every day. He doesn't make a big deal out of the magic running rampant, the monsters that were killed but not quite, the horses that were most definitely slaughtered. "It took a whole lot of fighting our way into the underworld to find the heart of Beqanna and put it right." Part of the group who finally made it to meet the Fairy, he remembers it quite well. It was there that he was gifted a transformation, into magic, of the kind that allowed him to further change into what one might call Cold itself. Ice, opposite his mother's fire dragon reminders, had always appealed to him more. He smirks a little when he remembers using the first aura he ever had to prank the likes of his nephew Trekori and his patron, but lets go of the thought to keep to the present quickly.
As much as the winged bay is examining what might be off with the roan, somewhere beneath the surface, the gold-maned stallion does the same. Brennen seems a little distant, too, he notices. Not quite willing to even be here, having this conversation - it shows even to the one with the frozen heart. Living requires an investment to be made - not quite as large as Leilan's latest sacrifice to bring back the sun, or to give up chasing a woman who, like himself, couldn't quite open up. He doesn't look much farther than the surface - even if the water mage might allow it, which the roan suspects he will not, he doesn't want to indulge in any sort of mind-reading at all. He'd always hated that certain mages would do it all the time, so why start now? Besides, the world becomes incredibly boring when you don't have to talk anymore and just pick up everything.
The scaled roan just doesn't quite know if Brennen would even want to be hooked. Still, some bait could be laid. As much as he doesn't care what choice the other will make, in the end, it's better than sitting around waiting for him to make a move. Besides, he's just curious. "By the way, have you seen Straia down there? She got swallowed by a giant hole, so it always left me wondering." He knows the mare might have triggered something with the magician, seeing as he was last seen using his last resources keeping her from invading... but hey. To shake the man awake is, after all, kind of the point.
told you I'd change even when I knew I never could
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