"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
02-19-2022, 08:30 PM (This post was last modified: 02-19-2022, 08:32 PM by bolder.)
He had wanted to come sooner.
But there had been the trip with Malik, where he and his cousin became something with fins and gills and tails, and the two had slipped beneath the waves. They had dived towards what had once been Loess, swimming between the red canyons and over the drowned hills. Then there had been the dark mare that he had stumbled across by the River, and then upon his return to Hyaline, there had been Sickle with the news that she was Malik’s and Myrna's lost sister (which in turn made her his cousin as well).
And then only after visiting with Mazikeen did Bolder turn his attention towards the East.
On a warming summer evening when the sun had only begun to set, the pegasus spread his wings and took to a blazing sky. It was filled with oranges and reds; it was a sky filled with fire and it reflected Bolder’s burning desire to seek out Pangea. Fortunately for him, the journey is short and there is still a little heat left to the dying day despite the fact that autumn would be upon Beqanna soon. He could begin to feel it in the wind that stirred up the dust as he landed, a slight chill in his feathers that made him quickly clamp his auburn wings.
Snorting softly, Bolder lifted his moon-marked head to survey his surroundings. His halo emerged, emanating a soft glow against the coming night.
A river trickled nearby, and he knew that. The scent of moving water nearly permeated everything else in the arid climate, and while a drink after his short journey sounded appealing, it wasn't refreshment that he was after. Having caught a gleam of iridescent white-and-gold from above (thanks to the convenience for trading his equine eyes for that of an eagle), Bolder was sure that he had spotted Lillibet.
Was she somewhere ahead in the maze of crevasses and chasms ahead of him? He had never been one for tedious games as a youth, but the idea of what he might find at the end of this one urged Bolder forward, one self-assured step after the other. "Hello?” he called out, making no effort at all to conceal his arrival to Carnage's country. "Anybody home?”
Lillibet shares a small canyon clearing with a peculiar looking ring-tailed cat this evening. She’d happened upon the strange Pangean creature earlier in the night, their eyes locking for a moment to assess each other, before the ethereal woman had settled herself onto the dusted earth to simply watch. The feline hadn’t seemed too perturbed by the glowing equine who’d invaded its space, and had carried on rummaging around in dry shrub brush and the small holes in the canyon wall, presumably for whatever food called those pockmarks home. Lillibet lost track of time in the course of her viewing, but when finally the sandstone beneath her ivory belly is too cold to remain comfortable, the young sovereign rises from the earth to find somewhere warmer.
Pangea, she had learned, has no in between. The summer day’s heat will soon give way to a biting chill, and there is no scent of Fyr on the wind tonight and therefore, no hope for her furnace.
A voice calls through the canyon once, and then twice. Lillibet’s familiarity with its keeper draws an immediate smile to her gold-striped face. “Depends on who’s at the door!” she calls back playfully from somewhere nearby, close but not too close. Noise travels easily in the vastness of Pangea - they could be meandering on the opposite sides of the same canyon wall, or hundreds of yards away. She waits in silence for his rebuttal, not daring to move a muscle lest she give away her location before she’s done playing her game. A memory of her last rendezvous with Bolder flits across her mind. The scent of his closeness still lingers in her memory, and the thought of the way the lightning between them had kept them close but never touching as they lingered together at the edge of the meadow sends a shiver down her spine.
“To what do I owe this pleasure?” she calls again, her words edged with coy humor as she finally begins to move forward again - methodically, quietly, but with a sense of urgency.
Not for the first time, Lillibet curses her eternal glow.
I do not want to move mountains;
I want the mountains to see me coming
and to crumble.
02-27-2022, 08:14 PM (This post was last modified: 02-27-2022, 08:39 PM by bolder.)
Bolder doesn’t have to wait long for a reply and that suits his impatience. The winged horse grins, and begins to move towards the maze of canyon before him. She was somewhere close by, somewhere near enough that his echoing voice reached her quickly. The young stallion decides to move through one pathway, eyeing the red-walls surrounding him, thinking of a shape that might be more suited to this place.
Something that might allow him to crawl easily up its sides. Something with a sharper sense of smell that might tell him precisely where she was. Something with wings that would simply carry him to her. But all those options are so easy, and as he continues to roam, Bolder finds he’s rather enjoying the suspense. He thinks for a moment that he hears a clatter of hooves in one direction, and stops, pricking his ears in one direction and then another.
Lillibet’s voice carries again, and Bolder changes his course, moving towards the sound.
"I thought you needed company,” he calls out, mentioning their previous conversation. Bolder bides his time while continuing to walk, trying to listen for any sound or sign of movement of the pearlescent woman, hoping the silence will tell him something until he speaks again. "My brilliantly vain self paired with your dazzling one while we explore this place sounds rather illuminating, doesn’t it?”
He thinks he catches it, the soft ethereal light that he has thought so often about, around one of the corners ahead. Bolder replies with his own, a glow coming from the crescent moon on his handsome face, that perfectly illuminates his expression: joy mingled with that heady emotion, desire; a purpose that drives his quickening pace.
Bolder’s playful voice reaches her amidst the red rock again and Lillibet’s grin widens involuntarily at his readiness. Part of her wants to run to the moon-faced stallion, to laugh with him as they explore the darkening tunnels of her new home, to bump against his winged mahogany frame gently and feel the exciting closeness of him as they roam. But their game is much too fun, the rising action of their story only just beginning, and playing cat and mouse with Bolder stimulates her just as much as breathing in the musky scent of him.
She moves a few quiet steps, honeyed eyes searching for a more obscure pathway that might better hide her glow as the man’s lilting question lingers in the air. She refrains from answering for a brief moment, knowing that it may give away her position when she does. She slips between two large boulders and finds herself nearing the central river, where lies anything but cover. “Damn,” she whispers under her breath before turning her gold striped head over her shoulder, debating on returning down the path she had come. “You’re not wrong!” Lillibet finally calls out to him with laughter mixed into her words, “But wouldn’t it be awkward if I already had company?”
She smirks at the joke, curious at how he will take the jab despite the blatant playfulness in her voice. Light glimmers off the redstone nearby and Lillibet freezes, her eyes watching its movement across the canyon walls. She doesn’t remember his moon being that bright the last time they’d seen each other, and so she must force herself to fight the urge to peek out at the okapi-striped man and his source of light.
I do not want to move mountains;
I want the mountains to see me coming
and to crumble.
He can’t see her grin widen, but Bolder imagines it (among other things). The striped pegasus grins at the thought of her, and it makes his stride that much more eager to find the Pangean leader. They continue to wander through this maze of their own creation, and while the winged stallion wasn’t renowned for his patience, he didn’t mind the time it took to seek the iridescent female out.
Bolder knew he would find her.
They keep playing this game, a version of which he had played before in several skins, but the stakes of this one is far more thrilling than any hunt he has ever partaken in.
"Have I neglected your company for so long?” he calls out, feigning a slight that he doesn’t feel. If Lillibet had found other… ways to entertain herself in his absence, who was he to gainsay her? He only knew that he was here now and wasn’t that what mattered? If there was somebody else to warm her this night, her lilting tone wouldn’t be echoing off these sandstone walls (or so he assumes) at his pursuit.
The river in Pangea beckons him. The nearby creek trickles and as Bolder comes to approach it, the dim glow from behind a pair of boulders serves as a beacon for the moon-marked stallion. His silver eyes linger on the stone formation, while he fights off the urge to immediately come near the rubble.
Spreading his mahogany wings, Bolder comes up with a devilish idea. He smirks and then calls out, "Perhaps I should go?”
Bolder’s tone draws a wide grin across her ivory face, and though she knows there is playfulness behind the faux hurt he has presented to her, there’s something about the way he says it that coils warmth in the center of her chest. ”It feels like I waited forever for you,” she responds in kind, with a pouting of her lips to match her tone. Lillibet dare not move, her muscles taut and still as she stands just at the cusp of the wide river valley. She knows he is near, not only because of the clarity of his voice but in the tension she feels. It grows and grows, begging her to bridge whatever gap remains between them.
But the game. She does, in fact, love the game.
It’s Bolder who wins on this night, and the Pangean crown is not afraid to admit it as an aghast gasp falls from parted lips at his suggestion and the sound of unfurling wings. ”Don’t you dare,” her words are harsh with mock affront as finally she pulls her ethereal frame from behind her rocky coverage and out into the open, where her glow spills across dust, rock, and calm river alike. Her molten gold eyes scan across the river until they are met with Bolder’s own warm glow - from his moon-marked face, and from the golden accessory she’d yet to see him don.
”Did you become an angel in your absence?” Her happiness at his presence is apparent as she begins to close the distance between them, the fact that he had bested her in their game forgotten for now. "Tell me, what exciting things have happened to you since we last spoke?" The quiet of Pangea envelops them and Lillibet tosses her head with exaggeration as she motions to the dark around them. "It's been dreadfully boring here."
I do not want to move mountains;
I want the mountains to see me coming
and to crumble.
Bolder pauses, glancing behind him through the dark for a sign of the ethereal girl that he was searching for. His auburn wings don’t spread any wider, and though he is (wildly) tempted to close them to go stomping through the shadows to find Lillibet, he waits with bated breath. She is close enough that he can imagine that lovely pout and the young stallion replies with, "My apologies for keeping you waiting so long.”
He almost wants to tempt out from her hiding place by adding that they no longer had to wait so long. The inevitable - their eventual meeting again - was only a few hoofsteps away. If only you would come out, Bolder thought wryly.
And then she emerges like a dawn from behind a wall of sandstone, beaming and beckoning with all her lovely light, and it does nothing to hide the unabashed look that he gives her. A glance as bold as the name he was given. His wings close and the striped stallion turns his muscled body around so that he might approach her directly, eager to match the already moving steps of the Pangean Diadem. "Only in the dark,” he reveals to the striped female in a low, husky voice; meaning that his halo only emerged when the moon rose (though Bolder wasn’t oblivious to how wicked he sounded).
It made him grin, but he turned his moon-marked face towards the slender mare, wondering what she might make of it.
"A few patrols along the Hyalinean border,” he tells her, stepping wide so that he could circle around and then come beside her, so that they might stand shoulder to shoulder. "And a reconnaissance mission to learn more about the Baltians, but they seem to be a rather reclusive species.” Bolder continues to say, while the wing closest to her reaches out to brush against her pearlescent skin. His voice lowers again, hoping to draw out their game a little longer, hoping that the quiet of his voice might draw her closer to him.
"Is that political speak for saying you've missed me?"
Lillibet gifts the haloed stallion a coy grin and an arch of her brow as the space between them dwindles. “An Angel of Darkness?” she inquires with that same amused and coquettish lilt, her golden eyes lingering appreciatively on Bolder’s floating accessory as butterflies take flight in her stomach at the husky tone of his voice. She lowers her own as he makes a wide circle near her, ”Maybe you could show me sometime what other blessings you’ve hidden from me.”
They continue back and forth, always playful even when their topic changes to something with more substance than their easy banter. She groans about her recent boredom and is pleased that Bolder decides to fill her in about the Baltians, an ear flicking towards him in acknowledgment of his insight. “I haven’t seen any of them since I met you and that one - Rezza? - in the Ruins. But I haven’t been back to um… create the opportunity.” Lillibet smiles casually and leans into the feathers that dance against her barrel as Bolder settles nearer. Her ethereal glow is striking against his well-kept flight appendages and it’s on that glow her gaze lingers for a moment, at least until the moon-faced man lowers his voice conspiratorially and leans into her once more. The Pangean lead mirrors him, leaning in close so that her lithe shoulder presses to his, and an ear flicks in his direction without question.
Lillibet can’t help the small giggle that falls from her lips at Bolder’s prying and she grants him a playful roll of her eyes before bumping her hip against his. “It might be, but don’t let it go to your head.” Instead of trekking forward to casually meander through Pangea with her haloed counterpart, Lillibet simply remains at the riverside with her shoulder pressed to his. A moment of silence passes between them before she’s struck with a funny thought, her words laced with amusement as she turns her golden gaze back to the man at her side.
“I’m lucky you’re fond of me, otherwise you’d be back in Hyaline telling your aunt that I’m the worst person to be leading one of her subkingdoms.”
I do not want to move mountains;
I want the mountains to see me coming
and to crumble.
"I’m not entirely sure you could call me an angel,” Bolder says in a dusky voice. He nearly hums the words into the delicate curl of Lillibet’s ear. "It happens when the moon rises.” He explains, refusing to move away from her.
Not when they finally are so close that her warmth radiates against him, when the tips of his feathers can faintly brush against her slender, pale side.
He takes the opportunity to say more, and though his silver eyes remain on her entrancing gaze, the alluring weave of gold on her forehead, it becomes harder to keep them there. Bolder focuses on speaking of the invitation to travel below the sea (not a wild thought for a shifter but he is curious to see her expression. She settles against him, and the young pegasus loosely lifts a wing so that it might drape over the elegant curve of her back.
Bolder thinks he might have her, finally.
"Oh, it’s already gone there.” He teases softly, turning his moon-marked face so its only inches away from her cheek. Bolder grins again when he feels the bump of her hip against his. He returns the favor by bumping her back and glances down at her with a gleam of something mischievous smoldering there. "Because I am quite fond of you," he goes on to say, never considering the admission to be a prying or private one.
There had been the giggling girl in Tephra or the purple-finned nereid in Ischia that he could have sought out. But Bolder assumes that his presence here is the obvious proof of where his affections lay. The moment that Malik had returned to Hyaline, he had come here.
"You can admit it," Bolder tells her in a hushed tone, murmured into the curve of her neck where the scent of a bare, arid desert has never smelled more intoxicating. "I'm very good with secrets."
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