"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
She could have taken herself and her schemes to the familiar foothills of Loess had she sparked this idea before the South had disappeared beneath the waves. It's what her mother would have wanted. She should have done just that for her family once she'd caught wind of Cheri's departure, for whatever expectations had remained in regards to the Southern kingdom and its former Queen, but Lillibet had had enough of the South before the earth had quaked and made the decision for all of them.
She wishes now that she'd never felt that way.
Perhaps fueled by the need to feel part of something once more, the opaline daughter of Oceane and Ledger follows the scent of a different rumor:
the quiet throne of Pangea.
She'd once swore up and down that leadership was not for her. Monarchy is a concept she has always scoffed at despite her pedigree, and diplomacy affords itself a roll of her golden eyes. But she is still young, and rash, and seeks fulfillment in whatever ways she can find it. The idea to fashion themselves a home of their own had been presented to Herrin with the light airiness of a joke, and admittedly it had been half that, but his quick agreement had solidified the idea for the ivory and gold woman.
And now here she stands.
It's dust that greets her first, floating in the golden rays of the noontime sun. The redrock canyons are plentiful with it, and while most of it floats in the warm breeze, some of it sticks, an angry red, to the edge of Pangea's swollen river. The springmelt threatens to overflow, and yet it still clings to the familiar, gently eroded path it has spent centuries creating.
Other than the murky river, the canyons are quiet until Lillibet raises her ivory and gold head to the clear blue sky and calls out to Herrin (with the silent hope that he is nearby and not already exploring any caves he's happened upon), and to any who may remain within the territory following their former leader's divergence.
I do not want to move mountains;
I want the mountains to see me coming
and to crumble.
------H E R R I N in short:-------------------------------------------------- all good things are wild and free
Herrin has never before been so far east. It feels less strange than he had anticipated, though as he leaves behind the waving grasses of the Meadow for the arid scape of Pangea, he finds himself hoping that Lillibet had been right about the canyons here.
There aren’t enough trees to keep him happy, but the prospect of a cool dark cave keeps him moving forward. His ambitions are less lofty than those of the pale mare whose voice echoes through the canyons as he approaches; he only wants a home, a place to replace the drowned forest and Syvan creekside that he had called home for most of his life.
He comes as a cheetah, as long-limbed and rangy as his equine form, though when he finally sees Lillibet ahead he returns to the body of a young stallion, keeping only a handful of spots and the long dark streaks beneath either eye.
Though he recalls the playful way she’d reached out to him before, Herrin cannot quite bring himself to greet her with anything more than a friendly nod. Thinking of doing so comes with the same discomfort as the thought of admitting his ignorance of diplomacy to her, so he keeps his distance and his silence.
Well, mostly. Caves are always a safe topic, so he gestures to one two-thirds of the way up the wall of the largest canyon.
Lillibet spots the cheetah not long after her call echoes through the desolate canyon. He slicks around the redrock bend and into her line of sight just as he begins to morph. As expected, the act is practiced and seamless, the work of someone who finds comfort in their abilities. By the time he comes to a halt at her side, Herrin’s familiar buckskin frame - albeit with a few more feline speckles than usual - gleams in the noontime sun. She greets him with only a nod before her gold-flecked eyes return to the surrounding canyon.
A few minutes of silence pass between them, neither speaking to each other nor interrupted by the arrival of anyone else, before Herrin motions to a cave that rests halfway up a nearby cliff face. Lillibet snorts in laughter before her honeyed gaze returns to him. “I can’t wait for the day I need to ask you a question and I have to yell up the cliff to do so,” if only, she thinks, she was able to fly. But like most other traits her parents carry, such an ability had not been passed onto the youngest daughter of Oceane and Ledger.
“Did you see anyone on your way in?” She had scented a handful - maybe less - of different smells on her way through the canyon to the spot she stands now, but nothing very telling. The rumors of Pangea’s quietude were true. She thinks back to Oceane and Ledger in their roles as leaders of Loess and Sylva, knowing that the first item on their agenda would be to recruit, but Lillibet quite enjoys the quiet.
And anyway, if her parents are eventually found alive, she could leave the recruiting up to them.
“Shall we go check the cave situation out?”
I do not want to move mountains;
I want the mountains to see me coming
and to crumble.
------H E R R I N in short:-------------------------------------------------- all good things are wild and free
“I have good ears,” Herrin says, his dark eyes still fixed on the shadowed entrance to the cave. “So you won’t have to yell too loud.” As he turns back to her, his black-backed ears grow more triangular, becoming those of a pippistrelle bat, scaled to his larger equine shape
What questions would she need to ask him, he wonders? He has always lived a life at the edges of society, preferring his seclusion from others. Lillibet seems a good enough sort, he thinks. Perhaps he will wait and see how often she’ll ask things of him. If it is too many, he knows now that the canyons are full of caves, and the thought of exploring them all brings a faint smile to his face.
Her first question is if he’d seen anyone, and that is easy enough. Herrin shakes his head, and his dark mane shifts along his neck. He’d not really been looking, but the scents he had found were as old as they were strange. He’d been focused mostly on the lack of trees and abundance of caves.
When Lillibet turns the conversation back to them, Herrin’s still-large ears perk curiously. He had not taken her for the cave exploring sort. “I’ve never had light in a cave before,”
Lillibet snorts her amusement as Herrin’s ears change and present a solution to her aforementioned problem. Were she to think about it more deeply, even Lillibet wouldn’t know exactly what she may need to inquire of the shifter-stallion in the future. But she is spoiled, no doubt by her former self-proclaimed title of Princess and now, by donning the Crown. The unintentional expectation that she will call upon Herrin, or whoever else may live inside the red rock canyons, and that they will be present to answer is alive and well in her young mind. It’s a misconception she’s sure to work on, though perhaps begrudgingly.
“Great,” she responds with a simple smile and a flick of her ear before her gaze turns away to survey the unfamiliar land. She knows that soon enough she will know it as well as she had known Loess and Sylva, but for now its secrets are not hers. When Herrin confirms that he’d walked through the canyon without incident or sign of anyone else, the silence begins to feel eerie and the wind that begins to whip through its contours even moreso.
She wonders where Alcinder and Oceane had spent their time when they’d been held captive by those who’d used to call this place home.
“Lucky for you,” she says over her opaline shoulder as she sets off down the canyon at a leisurely trot, “My magic is good for something.” Her nostrils flare as they move and her gold-flecked eyes analyze their surroundings for anything that could be of particular interest. She spies an area where the canyon walls squeeze together, providing only the smallest pathway between them.
Amending her course, Lillibet squeezes through the opening with ease (making sure to lower her head just a bit, avoiding the area where the walls overhead are too narrow for safety) and comes out the other side into a small opening ringed by tall canyon walls. Nothing dots the canyon floor save for dust and meek-looking shrubbery, though there is a wide mouthed cave whose opening sits upon the opposite wall from where they’d entered.
Though she slows to a meandering walk with concerns for their safety, the newly crowned Pangean sovereign enters into the inky cave, her perpetual ivory glow throwing rays against the rocky enclosure.
“Hopefully we don’t get eaten.”
But if they do, they won’t have anything else to worry about.
I do not want to move mountains;
I want the mountains to see me coming
and to crumble.
