"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
04-14-2026, 08:23 AM (This post was last modified: 04-17-2026, 08:10 AM by Sol.)
What am I supposed to do when I want to talk about peace and understanding
But you only understand the language of war?
“Do we have family?” Sol asked on a warm evening an eon ago.
They stood on a hill side by side, mother and daughter, admiring the golden rays of the setting sun; the stars were already poking holes through the sky, she could make out the faint outline of the moon among the pinks, oranges, and purples and didn’t miss the wistful look her mother had given it. As if she missed someone.
“We do.”
Sol blinked her mismatched eyes, having half-expected her mother to admit to being an orphan. Instead, she began reciting history—their history—and the young foal had listened closely to every tale she told with wild and wide-eyed fascination. Once she finished as much as she was willing to discuss in one evening, Sol’s mind whirred with a million different questions but all she managed to blurt out was: “Do they know me?”
“No, they do not.”
The roan filly’s ears splayed out to the sides and her head lowered slightly despite her best efforts.
Nocturnal snorted, trying not to laugh at her daughter’s expense. “Blood calls to blood, little one,” she teased, reaching over to bump her shoulder. “You’ll run into one of us eventually, there’s lots of us.”
~
Blood had certainly been calling to blood since The Chamber’s revival.
Sol hummed, trying to ignore the raven that was squawking above her; a few hours before that, she had made the mistake of squinting her eyes and following him from branch to branch with her gaze. For whatever reason, the surly blackbird had decided he didn’t like her after that, and he had been harassing her for the better part of the day.
“Quiet, please,” she said, stopping to stare up at him. “I didn’t mean to disturb you and I just want to—”
Suddenly, one of his comrades decided to divebomb her and she snorted in frustration—but then came the second, and the third, and the fourth, and so on, each of them pecking at her head, neck, and ears. She swung her head around wildly and narrowly avoided one of the birds as it went for her eyes. “Stop!” She shouted, her bottom lip starting to quiver though she tried her hardest to not start to cry. “I. Said. STOP!”
Hundreds of thousands of thin, sharp, white bony spikes grew from her flesh and as the birds dove down, they impaled themselves one right after the other. The air fell silent after one last surprised caw and Sol stood still, breathing heavily, her eyes wide and her mouth open in disbelief. Slowly, the spikes retracted themselves back down into her skin and slid easily out of their little bodies. They fell to the ground, each a duller thud than the last, their beady black eyes shiny and lifeless.
“I-I didn’t mean to, I don’t know—I don’t know how, I don’t know what I did…” She stood frozen in shock, breathing heavily.
Blood calling to blood could be the only reasonable explanation the dragon had felt a pull towards the Chamber. She hadn't stepped a hoof in a kingdom since leaving hers to wither away. The crown she'd ripped from her father had proved too heavy for the girl. The past years had been spent as a black and gold dragon, skulky in the shadowy caves and mountains far away from anyone, especially anyone she could have considered family.
Today she found herself meandering through shadowed pines and misty air with no purpose. The occasional scrape and prick she felt against her gold shimmering black hide helped to quiet the thoughts that tried to invade her mind at times. She took a deep breath of the heavy, cool air and stopped. Her ears flickered between her silvery mane at a noise. A squawk. A shriek. Frejya attempted to ignore the noises and thought about simply turning away, but something insisted she push on and find the source of the commotion.
The trees broke to reveal a roan with spikes protruding and black birds impaled on them. Frejya stopped abruptly, her black eyes watching with intrigue as the spikes retracted back into the young girl and the dead birds flopped to the earth. She seemed upset by this, and again Frejya debated turning and leaving. Instead, her legs began moving, bringing her nearer to the girl surrounded by death.
"Don't be upset." The words came out with less emotion than they probably should have. "You were defending yourself, it seems." She lowered her gaze to the birds lifeless on the ground. "There's nothing wrong with protecting yourself. You did ask them to stop, after all"
She shifted her weight, swishing her silvery white tail against her hips as her head tilted just slightly to the side. "You were more polite than I'd have been." Frejya chuckled, shifting half into the black and gold dragon she loved so much, lowered her spiked head towards the bird. Fire burst from her throat scorching the birds to rid of evidence the best she could with a small stream of flame while trying her best to avoid the stranger - her half sister. Out of sight, out of mind, right? She shifted back quickly and admired the rising smoke. "There. All better."
if i lead us all to ruin, we will burn in hell together
What am I supposed to do when I want to talk about peace and understanding
But you only understand the language of war?
Sol trembled, locked in place by a guilt that never would have plagued her mother. She finally took a step back, cringing as she both felt the cracking and heard the crunching of one of their little bird skulls beneath her hoof.
“Don’t be upset.”
The filly’s ears swivel, her head jerking upward and turning towards the source of the voice. “Mama?” She whispered, squinting her gold-and-red eyes against the contrast of the dark shadows of the old pine forest and the bright midday sun.
Of course, it was not her mother who emerged.
Sunlight seemed to run across the mare’s blackened hide like liquid gold. It looked otherworldly against what Sol could only describe as her starlight-white mane and tail. She was too light to be Nocturnal, too pretty. But there was something about her that felt familiar enough that Sol never considered running away from her. If anything, she felt a pull—almost like she had found home.
“I don’t know what I did that made them so angry,” she frowned, suddenly hit with a pang of embarrassment and half-hoping the stranger hadn’t heard her when she mistook her for her mother. It was short-lived, however.
It wasn’t everyday she got to see someone turn into a dragon, after all. The scales rippled; she cocked her head to the side, taking in the horns and the spikes so effortlessly growing up through the mare’s hide.
Could she do that?
Sol watched, intrigued by the shift from mare to monster rather than frightened. The heat billowed across her skin while the dead blackbirds around her burned; a thin layer of sweat began to pebble up on her flesh, but still, she didn’t move as her little enemies were turned to ash.
“There, all better.”
“Th—” Sol coughed, half from the smoke, half because she recalled being told not to mumble when addressing her elders. “Thank you.
”
Pausing, she considered her next words carefully. Unsure how to ask. “Um,” her eyes darted around, as if trying to find something interesting to stare at, but her gaze returned back to the half-dragon, half-horse face. “Are you my family?”
Frejya had always been small, quite petite when compared to the majority of her family. Dainty and light balanced out by the dragon she had been somehow blessed with. She could remember feeling dainty and light as a young princess. Despite living amongst rot and death in the Valley, her youth had always felt so special. She had a - mostly - doting father and was surrounded by sisters she loved. In a tale as old as time, her father turned out to be a liar and a monster, ruining her trust and leaving a dark smudge on what was a seemingly perfect childhood.
That had pushed the mare to turn to her dragon as a space of comfort. Nobody could hurt her then.
The filly looked her over with two tone eyes, Frejya very intentionally pretending she hadn't heard the small call for her mother. Her mother had abandoned her and her heart ached momentarily for the girl. Had she also been abandoned by her mother? I don't know what I did to make them so angry. She sighed. "Some things seem to exist just to be a nuisance." She stated blandly. "You did nothing wrong. They should have minded their own." Perhaps she had done something to bother the birds. Frejya hadn't been here to witness whatever started the commotion, but that didn't matter.
She tilted her head as the girl coughed a bit, realizing it was probably from the smoke. She hadn't thought of that when she made the decision to get rid of the little bodies. "You're welcome." She shook her lithe body, scattering whatever bit of ash had decided to land across her black and golden hide. Frejya wanted to turn and leave now that the situation was dealt with, but something tugged at her. Something almost maternal? Protective? She wasn't sure. Maybe it was the memory of her own wrecked childhood being confronted with this filly, alone, upset, under attack, that was making her feel something other than the deep seeded anger that had embed itself in her long ago and never left.
So she did not turn and leave. Frejya wasn't entirely sure what she would do with a lost child. Maybe she wasn't even lost, this could quite easily be her home, and her mother could be looking for her at this very moment. Maybe she had a good mother who was concerned for her missing daughter. The filly turned and faced Frejya head on. Youthful two-tone eyes met Frejya's dead black stare. Are you my family? "No." She answered, firmly, quickly. The question and her own abrupt response startled her, and she shook her head softly. "I'm sorry." She apologized? "I don't have family. I am sure they're all dead. Fortunately for us, the place I once called home is long gone."
The Valley was gone, Beqanna had rid itself of that plague. That was the only place she had ever really known her family to reside and the only home she'd ever laid claim to. She did know that she once had family in the Chamber, but it wasn't family she ever knew. "Is this your home? Do you have family here?" Her stomach soured at the question, her own memories suddenly trying to claw their way to the front of her thoughts. She shoved them back, forcing a stoic expression to remain on her face despite the things that this encounter was dredging up.
if i lead us all to ruin, we will burn in hell together
What am I supposed to do when I want to talk about peace and understanding
But you only understand the language of war?
“Where is here?” Sol scanned the forest around them, then glanced down at the charred birds. As if the answer was going to write itself in their ashes. “My mama said I have a lot of family, but I don’t know where she is now.” The filly continued to stare at the crows, nudging the nearest one tentatively with her small hoof. “You look like her, kinda,” she squinted over at Frejya, one of her ears pressing back and her dark head still cocked to the side. “Except you don’t have the scar by your eye. And she was a lot bigger.”
Sol, though densely boned and slightly feathered at the hoof herself, was still built more delicately than her powerhouse of a dam. “She liked to fight a lot,” the girl mused aloud, taking in a deep breath and inhaling the stinging scent of pine before exhaling slowly. “You might know her, maybe.” She hoped so, at the very least.
She was really starting to miss her.
“Her name is Nocturnal,” she stated, searching the mare’s face for some sign of recognition. The filly didn’t let the revelation linger long in the air, however. “My name is Sol, by the way,” she tried to smile, though something clenched painfully around her heart. A feeling she had never felt before.
Sol
