"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
you drew stars around my scars but now i’m bleeding
She thinks she can feel the air beginning to warm, that the wind that tangles through her hair carries with it the promise of spring, and the very thought brings a lightness to her chest.
There is still snow blanketing the meadows and riverbanks, but as she makes her way through the forest there is the occasional muffled crashing sound of it tumbling to the ground as it melts from the winter-bare limbs. The sun does not feel quite so distant in the sky, and when she breaks free of the treeline she takes a moment to stand and savor it, to feel the warmth as it sinks past her golden dapples and into her very bones.
Winter was beautiful, but she longed for the warmer days ahead, when the meadowlands came alive with wildflowers and songbirds and misty mornings gave way into sunshine-filled afternoons.
Inspired by the thought, her wings — feathered pegasus wings the same silver-gray as her body, and outlined in gold — shift from their usual appearance into wings made of sunlight. She tilts her head back to admire them, noting the way the honeyed-light spills across her sides, just like the rays of the sun when it strains through the tops of the trees.
Satisfied, she turns her gaze to the wide open space before her, unsure what she is looking for but certain she will know once she finds it.
Even in the daylight, the new appearance of light snags his attention, like he is nothing but a moth - and as if he does not have tendrils of it softly accenting his own body. There are so many shadows in this place, he has not quite gotten used to it. Over the years it had become easier to walk among the trees and feel the absence of the sun or moonlight upon his skin, but there remains an irresistible draw to the light.
Today he is adorned in the same blue as the pale winter sky above them, a near-perfect mirror of it as he moves across the snow towards her. He is social by nature, though he does his very best to pretend otherwise, and it is not hard to believe that it is both the novelty of the light and the possibility of a conversation that encourages each stride.
He had not noticed her before her wings had changed, he had been wandering with something else on his mind. But now - Maeglin is single-minded in his attentions, even to a stranger, so his mind or gaze does not wander as he pauses an appropriate distance away - a small smile adding some practised softness to his features and voice. “It is nice to feel the sunlight again, isn’t it?” He means the one in the sky, of course - how even when it is present in the winter it can feel distant until days like today, when spring is making itself known - but his sky-eyes take the moment to appreciate her sunlight wings up close.
“Your wings are lovely. Do they give off any warmth?”
you drew stars around my scars but now i’m bleeding
Betty did not consider anyone to be a stranger.
When the stallion spoke to her she immediately turned to greet him with a smile, the sunlight above catching the amber of her eyes and warming them into honey. Though she spent much of her time alone she was always delighted to stumble across company, and she cannot help but to take an eager step towards him. “Maybe a little bit, but not much,” she answers him, glancing back at her wings as she lifts them and sends the rays spilling across the ground, rearranging the shadows around them. “They’re pretty though, aren’t they? Sunshine is one of my favorite things to use as wings.”
It had not gone unnoticed by her that he seemed to be the physical embodiment of the sky and air, his coat and eyes a perfect image of the blue expanse above them. “You look like you are a piece of the sky that has fallen to the ground,” she observes with both curiosity and admiration. She knows that Beqanna is full of magic, but much of her life has been spent in the quiet corners with her family, and magic is only a thing that she has observed but hardly experienced. “We make quite the duo then, don’t we?” She says with a short laugh, the sunlight rippling from her shoulders when she shifts her wings again. “My name is Betty.”
The smile that appears instantly on her expression, paired with that small step towards him as if she too felt the draw, do wonders for Maeglin’s ego in such a small moment. It endears her to him a little more, securing the idea that he may have very well picked the right stranger to approach. He would hate to entertain the idea that she could be equally excited to meet anyone else - and luckily he has no need of such thoughts.
So he can enjoy the novelty of being the one to cause such a smile.
And his own delight at being admired in turn is easy to revel in. Maeglin dips his head in acknowledgement, sky-blue eyes shining as he replies back smoothly - “I am exactly that.” A piece of the sky fallen to the ground. It was incredibly accurate - both in appearance and in his status as a Stratosian.
They did make quite the duo - gold and blue, sun and sky.
“I’m Maeglin, and I’m enchanted to meet you Betty.”
He wonders whether her laugh is as easy to coax out as her smile, but instead of attempting that just yet he asks with obvious curiosity. “Are you able to change what your wings are made of, then?” He’s fascinated by the idea since most of the things about him change unconsciously. There were bits of magic he could do but even they were tied to the time of day - fluctuating between the moon and the sun.
you drew stars around my scars but now i’m bleeding
She has only just met him, but she is certain that she likes him. It is irrelevant, to her at least, that she typically likes mostly everyone — she is sure that there is someone out there that she would not like, and that clearly Maeglin is just likable since she likes him.
“That’s amazing,” she says earnestly, her amber eyes still lit with delight. “What part of the sky are you from?” She looks up when she says this, as if she might be able to pick out where he seemed to have fallen from. But the sky is too large, and accepting that she cannot hold it all within her gaze at one time, she turns her eyes back to his as he introduces himself.
“Enchanted! That’s a good word, I should use it more often,” she exclaims with another sunshine-bright smile, committing the word to memory for when she might be able to use it again. “It’s nice to meet you as well, Maeglin from the skies.”
He asks her if she can change her wings into something else, and she nods eagerly. “I can, I can change them into mostly anything but I’ve always been a bit biased to things that seem intangible. Like sunshine, or stardust, or—” she pauses for a moment, and the sunshine wings flicker and fade, and in their place wisp-like clouds begin to form. “—clouds. Now we match,” she says proudly. Her shapeshifting wings were a common trait on her father’s side, and she had always loved that she had inherited them; something that made it so clear that she belonged somewhere.
He enjoys her smiles, the brightness that radiates her like a warm spring afternoon. He cannot help but look up too, to see if Stratos has drifted into view. To him, it stands out - even when the sky is filled with other clouds. For the first few years living in Beqanna he had been able to sense it, to turn his head and instantly see it - a magnet pulling at an unconscious part deep inside him.
Now, that pull has lessened. He sometimes loses it entirely.
But this doesn’t sour his mood, and when he cannot locate Stratos with a quick glance he looks back at Betty and gives a smooth explanation - “My home seems to have drifted out of sight today. It follows the winds - but it’s made of luminous clouds you can walk on, in a world of sunlight - or starlight.” Although Maeglin is not overly fond of Stratos, doesn’t feel that same cultish devotion to it that had once ran in his family, he appreciates how beautiful it was - and how easy it made it to weave delightful images for pretty mares.
He watches, rapt, as Betty explains about her wings and then demonstrates her abilities by transforming the sunlight into clouds. “I have never seen anything like that.” Maeglin isn’t strictly sure whether this is true or not - but he speaks it with a gentle reverence that adds a weight to it, which is practically as good as the truth anyway. He had come from a world absolutely filled to the brim with all kinds of wings, surely he had passed someone in his travels that could do something similar.
But Betty is here, and they are not - so they hold absolutely no space in his mind.
His sky-mirror eyes refocus on her face instead of the wispy wings as he says with that same awe-filled tone - “You are absolutely incredible. I hope you have someone in your life to tell you that every day.”
you drew stars around my scars but now i’m bleeding
She listens when he describes his home, and already her mind is crafting his words into beautiful images — clouds limned in sunlight, a garden of stars at her feet like flowers. Betty had always found Beqanna to be beautiful, too; she liked the various landscapes, the fact that she could go from meadow to mountain to beach to forest and never feel like she was seeing the same thing twice. But there was of course something captivating about the skies, even to someone like her that was capable of soaring through them. She had never lived there, and that sounded extraordinary. “That sounds beautiful! What made you decide to live here instead of up there?”
It makes her wonder if she would ever leave here. Truthfully she had never really considered it. She had been born here, as had her parents — generations that only knew this place. She has dreamed of many things, but not of the worlds that must exist outside of here, and suddenly she feels incredibly small beneath the expanse of unknown galaxies.
She is still trying to imagine what his home (or old home, she isn’t quite sure how he views it) when he offers her such a compliment that it nearly startles her. Her amber eyes refocus on his face, and for a moment she almost looks perplexed, though she hides her uncertainty well. Her experience with those outside of her family is relatively limited, and she is still naive to the ways of the world. The idea that there could be a way to interpret what he says in multiple ways does not occur to her, but her cheeks flush with heat all the same, although she easily laughs it off. “My mother tells me all the time, does that count?”
The truth of why Maeglin is here in Beqanna and not wandering the beautiful wasteland of Stratos is murky. He picks pieces of the truth to give to her so as to not sully the brightness of this moment or dim the shine of her with the whole story that matters so little to him. “It is beautiful but I always believed there was more to the world to see and experience.” And here his sky eyes warm so perfectly timed with a smile as he looks at her and speaks softly, as if in confession. “More beautiful things that might be found on the ground.”
His smile grows and everything about this feels so perfectly easy. The clouds and stars and meadows and flowers of Stratos and Beqanna are lovely but Maeglin's true sense of being home is in this element, weaving together a new life around a new pretty face.
Although he did not pick up on her uncertainty after calling her incredible, he approves of how she laughs it off and speaks only of her mother and not a significant other. Even if she had someone, if they were not telling her she was incredible, it would be so easy for him to work himself in there between them. He almost hopes that she does have such a someone - that there is a stallion failing to hold her heart as tightly as he should. Maeglin wouldn’t mind the challenge.
But then, things could also get so messy when jilted lovers got involved.
“Of course that counts.” He croons but he does not mean it. “It is a wonderful thing, to have such a loving mother isn't it?” Maeglin speaks as though with experience, though he has not thought of his own mother in a great deal of time. Even now he is so practiced in avoiding those thoughts that they do not rise and he can focus on the important thing in this particular moment - Betty.
you drew stars around my scars but now i’m bleeding
Betty is still so terribly naive that she does not notice the way he watches her. Her experience with the world, and especially men, is nearly nonexistent. She does not know how badly most men want — and that they all suffer from the same desires, whether they are kind men or cruel men, or falling in the gray between. They are drawn to pretty things like a moth to the flame, and she is here flashing her wings like a beacon to draw him in, without even meaning to. It is why she does not immediately pick up on his flattery, not until he looks at her while commenting on beautiful things to be found down here.
She can feel the heat rising to her silver cheeks and for a moment her gaze drops as she gathers herself, a small smile on her lips. When she looks up the shyness is still there, but she manages to keep it from her voice when she answers him, “Well, I would still love to see Stratos one day. Perhaps you could take me there.” The thought of being in the sky with someone so beautifully crafted of the sky itself felt like something out of a dream; one that she isn’t entirely sure she is fit to be a part of, but that does not stop her from dreaming it.
But she is getting ahead of herself, she realizes. Nothing even says that he would want to take her to Stratos, and besides, the notion itself felt strangely intimate, as if she were inviting herself into his life. In an attempt to lessen the idea that she is demanding he show her this other part of his life, she offers, “and come summer I can show you my favorite part of the meadow, when the wildflowers are in bloom.”
