"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
It had started as a faint rumbling. A twitch beneath his hooves. He had been standing among the burnt remains of his fire garden in the Pampas. He had been thinking of the jaguar mare erupting in flames, the glittering cold silence that lingered in the Prince’s eyes, the stories Aela had told him, the curiosity on where his friend Sickle had gone and the starry girl he often met in the midnight hours in the common lands. Most of all, he was trying to shake the old familiar feeling of rejection. When he had found Firion in the woods and had tried his best to make a connection with the stallion he now knew in his heart and soul was his sire, he had known he was grieving. He knew it had nothing to do with him but he was still young, still inexperienced with the wide range of emotions and how they yield action and reactions. The bite was sharp and stinging no matter how soft the inhaled breath or the strangled words “I’m not good company today” and the intensity of his gaze had made him pull back, had made him chew his lower lip as he brought his muzzle to his chest and simply nodded and let him go. Firion hadn’t been cold or cruel to him and yet… all the confidence that Aela had helped build in him had crumpled as the flames sputtered along his backside.
In the end he had felt fear instead of fire (the double sided sword of his name) and he had backed down away from it. It hadn’t mattered who it belonged to, the Father or the Son. He had caved to it all the same.
Aela could read him like a book and so he tried to not think of it, coming to his withered patch of flowers with the intent of acting like everything was fine. That she hadn’t been right.
And then the earth began to shake and split beneath him, the terrible sensation of falling forever, salt water in his lungs, and then nothing but blackness.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
It had been weeks since he had woken up on the smooth glistening glass beach. Having never been to Icicle Isle, he had no idea that was where he had washed up. His body was bruised and battered but otherwise whole. Exhaustion seeped through his bones and left him barely able to muster weak flames along his spine. He would have laid on that beach forever if it hadn’t been for the cold. It was only luck and pure survival instincts that dragged him to a cave nearby, decorated with all sorts of oddities but warm with the faded scent of two mares. There was no sign of its inhabitants but it was warmer here, with a soft place to lay and some stale food nearby. It was enough for now. As his limbs grew less stiff and he was able to finally spark a small fire with what little energy was left, the events of what had happened finally began to come back to him.
The Pampas had split and he had fallen…. Into the sea? His brain couldn’t really wrap around it. What did it mean? That fear began to wrap itself around his young heart and shortly after followed Terror, creeping slowly through the threads of his soul summoning bond and curling around his neck. Where was Aela? Where was the Prince? His friends, were they ok? Sickle….. Liesma.. His heart stuttered when he thought of her and her stars falling into an abyss.
He could have sat with Terror forever, could have broken beneath the wait of worry and what-ifs until he had wasted away. Hunger pains, sharp and impatient, carved at his belly and saved him in the end from the soul that found him so vulnerable. It stayed with him, the weak boy who could not muster the energy to banish it, but it did not consume him. There was a streak of resilience within the boy, one that had kept him from folding in the Den. Something that Terror still couldn't reach.
That had been the first few days after the fall of the South. Now he was starting to feel better, enough that Terror was forced to release some of its grip but Fyr was still unable to shake it entirely. He stuck close to the cave near the burnt beach (burnt by what, he imagines, something terrible like him?), wondering where he was and where everyone else could be. When he wasn't foraging for food, he created a forage of flames, creating more smooth colorful pebbles out of grains of sand to add to the jagged sea of glass simply because he knew when Aela found him she would be disappointed if he hadn’t been practicing. He had only just reentered the cave for the night, had only just fanned fire out of nothing to flicker soothingly before him and keep him warm, when a sound at the mouth of the cavern made him spin around. Fear and fire flickering in his feral eyes as flames sputtered to life along his back.
He’s flailing and he knows it - well, knows it now. Something akin to waking, the icy mage decides to take a stroll over the silent Isle. There is little activity to find; tracks of Nashua, barely. Others? They’re good at hiding.
He is taken back to a time when the Isle was being fought over - it had happened to surface accidentally when telling those Hyaline youngsters their desired tale. He suspects that it isn’t the sort of story they had been looking for, but it was all he knew about the lake kingdom. Yes, he might pinch his brain for the name of one of those early leaders of the place, or if maybe something else significant came to him. Or maybe he should invest more and dig for residues of memories in the place. But that would be an investment in something he wasn’t all that connected to at all.
The emptiness surrounds him and reminds him of the time after the Isle was fought over. When it no longer had to function as a safe haven from the Plague and the Nerinians that had come, left one by one. Some just wandered off, others took their shifted shape, some more would never come back because they were lost or gone for good. And sometimes he thinks he should have been one of them.
Logic and habit keep him. The Isle is still the kingdom seat and even if it isn’t any more (the boy is tired, and his brother is willing), someone should at least look after it. He remembers the faerie’s request. To become more should have a meaning, not just for himself. It was how he had found Beryl back then.
It was how he found Fyr right now.
Yet this time there is a part of him that’s missing. A connection he no longer will make to the young. Fyr will leave eventually, too, so he doesn’t even begin to want to care. But he can still be a force for good. Or bad. Pending what the young will make of his life later on.
”You’re no match for the sky, but kudos for trying.”
The scaled magician appears and speaks, as usual coming out from seemingly nothing. It’s that perk of being a mage.
told you I'd change even when I knew I never could
01-19-2022, 08:43 PM (This post was last modified: 01-19-2022, 08:51 PM by Nashua.)
If it had been Nashua’s sister who greeted the buckskin boy on these cold shores, their initial meeting might have gone differently. But his sister is rarely on his mind, not when there are troubles on the forefront of his mind. Not when there is an entire kingdom to place in front of that.
But not for much longer, the Freyr consoles himself. Soon, Reave would be the one at the helm of the North and Nash would…
Would what?
Try to make amends with Noel? Try to find his missing twin, mother, and now niece?
Try to make peace with his son, Bolder?
Hunt down Gale and finally end the Curse?
Nashua didn’t even know where to begin. There was still Illuminae to find. There were his children, those grown who had left Taiga, and his youngest, Wylder, who still dwelled within it to find. He had been King of the North so long that the thought that he would soon no longer be that seemed (felt) foreign to him. But he had told Reave that the kingdom would be better suited in Nerine, and he would still remain on the Isle. Despite his misgivings of how he felt about relinquishing his title, he was certain that the North would be better suited by the move.
They rarely got recruits, but the few that braved the great Northern sea and remained on Beqanna’s most Northern point could receive training in battling others and the brutal elements, if they wished.
He had known for some time that there was a new arrival on their shores. But the boy that had come to the Isle hadn’t been seriously harmed, and for all that Nash could sense, he only boasted a few bruises. They would heal easily enough. But the copper pegasus found himself coming back to this glass beach after his patrols - always near enough that he could sense the new arrival - though he hadn’t yet disturbed him. Nash hadn’t planned on coming near Fyr’s cave, but there had been a familiar rumbling that echoed from the cavern and the winged stallion knew Leilan’s voice.
It was the voice of the man who had raised him.
”Is that where you’ve been?” Nashua asked the Ice Mage, and despite the cold surrounding them, his voice warmed at the sight of his mentor. ”Easy, Flicker.” The Northern King called out to the young horse, allowing his own glow to illuminate the darkness in the cave. It revealed a striped stallion, winged with a pale, blazed face that looked towards the fiery colt. ”No need to burn down a glacier, yea?”
01-20-2022, 01:51 PM (This post was last modified: 01-20-2022, 02:34 PM by Fyr.)
through the fire and the flames
For a moment he is confused, thinking perhaps the faded scents of the mares he had picked up here had finally returned only to find him, a squatter in their space. But he is wrong, he quickly sees his mistake as his fire illuminates the silver bay stallion before him that seemed to appear from the very shadows themselves. Even Terror seems surprised by his appearance. “S..Sky?” He stammers, still confused and off balance from being caught unawares. It is the appearance of the second stallion that makes him swallow hard and try to appear more put together then he actually was. That’s what his mother would expect of him. Even if she wasn’t here with him (or gone although he refuses to believe that), her teachings still ring plain as day in her head.
“What can the weak do for us?”
He wasn’t one of the weak. Through fire and spirit, he was stronger than most. He understood this now, perhaps not on the level that Sickle had been, but stronger than most. He shouldn’t cower to anyone let alone two strangers that appeared in the middle of the night. He tried to embrace this teaching more than anything else because he saw this weakness in himself and if he was ever to make Aela truly proud he would need to eliminate it. It was hard though, something that wasn’t as easy to conquer like it had been to pull souls from the void and create fire out of nothing which was as easy as breathing. So for now he just tries to fake it till he makes it.
A slight lift of his muzzle, a little defiance in his yellow eyes that peer through tangled threads of unkempt reddish forelock and yet the flames still lick along his spine, that one give away that he wasn’t nearly as confident as he appeared. The two stallions seems to know each other, recognizing the warmth in the newest strangers voice to the other. There is a glow around the winged one, the one that calls him Flicker which produces a slight scowl on his own pale lips. “It’s Fyr, not Flicker.” He says sullenly in the way that most teenagers would when feeling undermined. “And I wasn’t burning down anything. I just…” He shifts a back hoof, uncomfortable. “Nobody else was here. I’d give it back if they showed up.”
Despite his discomfort, a small part of him is relieved to be discovered. There had been purpose in setting flames along the scorched beach, smoke signals in the air. There had been purpose in standing in the cold when the moon was bright as he gazed up at the colorful streaks in the sky as he glowed, a lantern in the darkness. (”Like the sun” Liesma had said to him but it is hard enough to look up at the stars without thinking of her, he can’t bare to think of her now.) Perhaps these strangers might be helpful. Perhaps they could help him back home…If there was a home to return to. “I’m lost.” The young spotted stallion finally admits. “Could you… Could you help me?”
It appears to Leilan that the boy had been more than physically lost. There is the way in which his eyes flick left to right, the way in which he startles not once but twice, when the King of the North joins them. Those things aren’t lost to the ice mage - just ignored, in favour of answering his confused reaction with logic. ”You haven’t looked up yet? It’s a shame.” He motions with his head to outside the cave; it is there that the night sky can be seen, not from inside the cave and especially not from the other side of the campfire.
He then turns to Nashua - the young male isn’t a threat despite his attempts to be… intimidating? Maybe not even that. Regardless, the scaled roan wouldn’t mind whatever face he made now. ”There and back again, Nash. The sky is just one place of many.” He tilts his head and gives something of a smile, and even a warm one at that. Not as warm as it might have been with a hotter heart, but it is all the warmth that he can manage.
”Not to worry. There’s no-one burning glaciers. Not melting them either even if he tried.” He shakes his head. ”I do believe Cas was a one-time event.” he shrugs to the copper stallion, then regarding the flaming youngster he chuckles. ”Give what back? This rock has been his for a long time now. Used to be mine, even, but you know how that goes.” Fyr probably doesn’t, but he continues anyway. ”I could probably help. The question is, will I?” he smiles then, but not with the warmth he had reserved for the pegasus earlier. Despite this, there is a flicker of green in his eye for the one who might notice.
It seems even with a dragon inside, a frozen heart, and all the magic in the world, he still reverts to this.
told you I'd change even when I knew I never could
He nearly smiles the moment the boy speaks. Nashua is familiar with the tone, even if the adolescent is unfamiliar. He had heard it Elegance and Luminesce’s voices as they grew older (especially Ellie as she grew more prone to go against her father’s wishes), amongst the triplets when they had disagreed on something. Wylder would be coming upon that age soon, he realized (still unaware of the children that had been brought out of the dark). His youngest child would soon be ready to fledge and leave the safe haven of Taiga, if he wished.
How had that time passed so quickly?
Blinking away years of memories, Nashua focused on the young male again. He said nothing – not yet, not when experience taught him that his adoptive father would most certainly have some reply in mind. Leilan doesn’t disappoint and that’s when Nash turns his blazed face towards the larger brute. A grin had been beginning to form, and the way that the Ice Mage answers both he and the newcomer tugs at one corner of his mouth. The sky is just one place of many, and Nash gave his head a slight shake.
Of course the old dragon would have been everywhere.
"I’d rather not invite a second,” he went on to mutter in reference of Castile’s burning of the Isle. It was an event long buried in the past, and yet they all stood on the lasting testament of it. The blackened beach was just one many places the former King of Loess had scorched. The beach remained, changing only slightly over the years, and now Loess was gone.
Nashua frowned at the thought.
"That is Leilan,” the striped pegasus gave a nod towards the larger horse and then added, "And I’m Nashua.” Glancing towards Leilan again, he listened as the boy – Fyr – explained that he had merely found cave. That he hadn’t planned on inhabiting it permanently, and oddly, Nash found himself disappointed by that. This place could use new blood; his and the former Dragon Lord have been the only almost-constant residents over the years. Roselin was here, and perhaps Camellia still enjoyed herself among the frost and the bitter tundra.
”Are you looking to return to the mainland?” Nashua asked with a Northerner’s brogue; a tone that could be as rough and choppy as the gray sea surrounding them and then looked plainly at the boy who could wield fire, but wouldn’t get very far over the ocean without wings. "You’ve washed up on the Isle.”
01-27-2022, 05:01 PM (This post was last modified: 01-28-2022, 04:35 PM by Fyr.)
I'll settle for the ghost of you.
He stares at the scaled stallion for a moment, genuinely confused on if the old man had lost a few marbles. It only takes a beat longer to realize that Leilan was messing with him and the righteous anger of the teenager returned in tenfolds as he flares his nostrils and glares, not missing the grin from the winged male beside him. “How can you see from the sky if you have no wings?” He finally lands on with a snap from his ember inflamed tail, unaware that now his entire backside had developed into a wildfire thanks to this exchange. Feeling confident with his retort, a flicker of smugness begins to settle along his heated back only to flare right back up again in indignation as the two carry on a conversation as if he wasn’t there.
“I can too.” He scowls again, sullen once more to be disregarded so quickly and not catching the muttered words from Nash to Leilan. “I could melt a glacier if I wanted.” He states despite not knowing what exactly a glacier was. “I can do a lot of things.” He finally says, raising his head slightly as his yellow eyes burn with intensity at the both of them.
There is no missing the warmth between the two, however subtle it might be coming from the older male. Was this their cave then? Had Leilan decorated this cave with all its oddities? The stallion was rather strange, still…. He could have sworn he had scented mares before. Not two males. Still, who was he to judge their relationship? It wasn’t important in the long run but getting back home was. Before he can explain he cares nothing for rocks and had meant the cave he had dragged himself into, the winged stallion makes introductions and its enough to still his tongue.
For a moment he looks at Nashua, trying to remember why the name sounded vaguely familiar. The suggestion of getting back to the Mainland brings him back to full attention, hope blazing bright in his strange eyes. “I’m on the Isle?” It wasn’t the best place to end up, a hobo’s paradise his mother had called it, but at least he was somewhere still in Beqanna. “Yes… There was an earthquake and… I need to get back home and make sure my Mom is ok.” A quiver of worry laces his words but there are no tears that streak across his cheeks. He would not shame Aela now in the presence of these two by appearing weak no matter what his true feelings were.
He smirks, then grimaces. He does mess with teenagers - a lot if he can. In general however, he does it with a hidden lesson behind it. Right now, it appears that the lesson must be that nothing is what it seems. To look past appearances.
He doesn't have to dive into Fyr's head to find the face to the meaning of mother, and if he is surprised to find Aela's (she doesn't seem the type to have a child, but the way Fyr is acting, maybe her kind of raising a child is indeed this) he doesn't show it. In fact, he is all the more certain that Fyr could use another kind of teaching - though to say Leilan's kind of teaching would be nicer would be a lie.
"Now now, Nashua," he outs in the low baritone voice he once inherited from his father, "I didn't raise you to be this inhospitable. Obviously, he should see more of Icicle Isle before he goes." His grin then alters, from more of a grumpy one to one with some kind of devilish delight.
He doesn't allow either of the younger males to react. Instead, the mage alters form, adding wings and claws to his body and a dragon's head spews ice towards the ceiling, of which the ice-prisms and snowflakes reflect the light in a way that creates the illusion of the Northern Light sky. Perhaps this act alone could have answered Fyr's questions about what exactly it is that the sky does better than him, or how Leilan has been there supposedly without wings, but he takes it further.
The portal appears suddenly and near-instantly below Fyr's feet and transports him to one of the peaks not that much farther to the north - Icicle Isle's highest, and probably coldest peak. The view is spectacular but he doubts that the boy would appreciate it: nevertheless, the mage changes back into equine form and steps through not long after, and leaves it open for the Freyr to follow if he wishes. When Fyr seems able to look past his own body, the scaled roan gestures with one hoof to the largest glacier they have, glistening down the mountain below. "That is a glacier. I think you'll need some practice if you were to try and melt a full ice river." He comments dryly. But he doesn't stop there. "The last who tried was a fire dragon shifter. There's more than one about, so be careful who you antagonize in the future. Most people are a tad more careful around kings and mages than you are. I suppose you have your mother's attitude." He cocks his head at the young male and smiles a little. "I'm rather sure she is capable of surviving an earthquake and a flood. It would take more than nature to bring Aela down. I could find her for you, if you ask nicely." He offers. It's not because he likes Fyr that much - or even Aela for that matter, though she is intriguing and definitely worth checking in on now or then to see what she was up to now. But to get rid of the ever-insulting teenager he could extend what some perceived as a kindness.
told you I'd change even when I knew I never could
02-09-2022, 10:03 AM (This post was last modified: 02-09-2022, 10:04 AM by Nashua.)
Nashua watched Fyr’s outburst - both the vocal and literal as flames began to ignite along his spotted spine - with a patience that came from rearing six children. His green eyes flick from the young horse back to the former Freyr, wondering if they were both seeing the same thing. The boy had a touch of arrogance - which in a land full of strange gods and elementals and mages - was not a bad thing. But it certainly should be a measured one.
Appearances only went so far.
If Nash wasn’t in such a melancholy mood, he might have disappeared before the adolescent just to remind him that there was almost always more than meets the eye.
But this lesson had been brought to head by his mentor, and so Nashua remained silent, reflecting that he hadn’t been much older than Fyr when he arrived on the Isle nearly a decade earlier. How quickly the time had passed; how different everything was now compared to then. Neither of the men standing here were Kings of the North any longer. The Isle was a territory again. The other leaders that once stood alongside Leilan - Neverwhere of Nerine and his own dam, Lilliana - had long since vanished.
A portal appears as Leilan rumbles to the youth in his familiar, deep baritone. They often appeared with the Ice Mage wherever he went, and so it doesn’t catch Nash unaware. His blazed head turns back to Fyr, though, waiting to catch his reaction. This was the Isle, in all its raw wonder. The sun glistened off the icy peaks, the wind whipped angrily past them, stirring up snow as it danced across the frozen landscape.
It wasn’t a lush paradise like Tephra or its islands. It wasn’t a haven like Taiga, where the forest kept its secrets. It wasn’t even like the open loneliness of the moors, where the gray granite met the gray of the sky and the gray of the sea. This was a place where a horse either thrived or did not. It was wild and rugged and unforgiving and there was a hardship here that suited Nashua. He had been the product of something unforgivable, and living amidst this severe realm allowed him to carve out his internal struggles rather than keep battling them within.
There is a surge of pride for this place flaring in his copper chest as he flares his wings open and follows after the pair, taking to the sky as if he was born to it. Nashua soars, still remaining quiet and content to let Leilan lead them, thinking that after this particular lesson was done they would return the boy to his mother, whoever she was. An ear swivels towards the larger stallion while Nash turns to look sharply at Fyr, surprised to hear the mention of his only remaining full sibling. ”Aela?” He asks, looking over the adolescent again. Aela had a son?
There is only a second of warning, that devilish smile on Leilan’s mouth that he had seen several times on a once Fae Prince, before the stallion’s face morphs into something ancient and reptilian. The fire arching along his shoulders spikes but there is only wild awe in the feral eyes of the jaguar teen. An aurora plays along the ice crystals the dragon had spewed towards the ceiling and his gaze is turned upward to them, enraptured by this strange magic. He takes a step towards the light wanting to get a better look…
And then he is no longer in the cave.
He is in a world of white and cold. Everything is snow touched and his hooves are precariously close to the edge of the mountain they had appeared on. For a moment, he forgets the other two stallions. His gaze is wide, looking out on a world he had never even come close to imagining before. There is a wild rugged beauty here that appeals to him, a kind of terrible he can appreciate and understand. Even Terror is unusually quiet where the soul clings to his neck, as if surprised to end up in such a place. The flames sputter along his spine and quickly smolder out as he becomes caught in the view. “Cool.” He murmurs under his breath as his fire dies out completely, unable to compete with snow and wind whipping at their faces.
Fyr had known cold before, had felt it before the blackness had taken over him in the ocean, had felt it pressing against his natural flame since he had washed up on the Isle. He had always been able to call the blazing heat as easily as he breathes, he had never been without it. Up here in this winter wonderland, the cold is a biting and unrelenting thing. It sinks beneath his skin and curls up against his bones, tightening his muscles and making him feel stiff and awkward. He frowns slightly, the difficulty of keeping his fire alive suddenly a challenge in this place and one he had never encountered before. Flames run down his body in waves to try and keep some heat but he was not one made for freezing temperatures, something he was quickly discovering.
When Leilan points out the glacier with a hoof, he is quick to follow the direction with his bright yellow eyes and his frown deepens as the older stallion speaks of a fire wielding dragon and of Kings and Mages. It sounds like a story straight out of a fairytale and he’s not sure what to make of it. The glacier did seem larger than he anticipated but maybe one day he could melt one. No, not could. He would. Just to prove that he can. The champagne dappled stallion might have lingered more on the subject, might have asked Leilan more about who the dragon had been, had it not been for the familiarity in his voice regarding his mother and then the dropping of the bomb that is Aela’s name.
There is no mistaking the brightness in his gaze as his head whips around to look at Leilan, fiery mane writhing in the icy wind. “You know her!” He breathes out with relief and a hint of excitement. And then the voice behind him asks a question and there is something in Nashua’s tone that makes him slow to turn around, that makes him take a step closer to Leilan without realizing it, as his yellow eyes find the sharp green of his. “She is.” He says, shivering against the unstoppable onslaught of freeze and frost that keep him from bringing those uncertain sparks back to his shoulders.
He had stopped explaining he was adopted awhile ago, had stopped telling the story that Aela wasn’t his birth mother. It didn’t seem to matter when she was the only mother he would ever have, the only one that really counted. Something in Nashua’s question puts him on edge and he keeps his muzzle turned up in defiance, his strange gaze suddenly hyper focused on the winged man before him. “We lived in the Pampas, that’s where I was when..” When the world broke apart. He trails off, a slight shrug of his spotted shoulder. “I thought I was dying but I woke up here.” With no idea how he had gotten here, a mystery how he had survived at all. “I don’t know if anyone else survived.” He tries to speak with confidence and hope but Terror deepens its claws into his back and the words come out strained as he eyes him warily, seeing only an uncertain new acquaintance and not the man that technically is his Uncle.
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