"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
09-26-2015, 09:56 PM (This post was last modified: 09-26-2015, 09:56 PM by Lyris.)
“Fuuuuuck you Gaza!”
The grullo appaloosa is raging as she storms into the meadow. And storms literally too - her foul mood is influencing the weather, turning the air frigid, and making hail rain down from above.
“Fuuuuuck!!” She yells her frustration at the elements before stopping beneath the tree that she’d first met Gaza. She wants to find the bastard and let him know what he’s putting her through.
Pregnancy is HELL. She’s fat as all anything, her ankles are swollen, and her constantly changing hormones are near to driving her insane. I mean, she’s always been temperamental, but this is just ridiculous!
She settles in against the oak’s bark, grumbling to herself and trying to keep warm. Normally she would try and shift the weather to something warmer, but she’s found that the more pregnant she gets, the more difficult it is to control her abilities. It’s probably something to do with the goddamn hormones and the charming roller coaster ride of emotions they’re putting her on. Fucking hell. She’s never doing this again.
Her dark, orange-flecked eyes peer out through the falling snow (when had the hail disappeared?), trying to see if any other horses are braving the meadow today. She it would be very unlikely for her to run into Gaza today - being a Desert boy and all, he’s probably going to avoid the colder weather - but she can’t help but hold out some small hope. She wants to give the asshat a piece of her mind.
The trickster has never understood a woman’s desire to have children. He supposes it would be something awful (carrying a parasite that feeds off your own body for months on end, only to suffer through hours of painful labor, and then lug around the little nipple-sucker until it grows balls) and he can’t quite see the victory in caring for a creature like a child. He enjoys the part that shoves life into the mother’s womb, but after that the payout is (in his just and righteous opinion) shorted.
It seems the mother that comes growling into the meadow has similar thoughts as him. Her barrel rolls and heaves with the tides of swollen waddling, and her eyes are crackling with the fire of frustration. There is a dark sense of life in her eyes and the trickster’s mind plays up with curiosity and excitement. He hasn’t been up to trickery since coming back to Beqanna and thoughts of starting again pulse through his brain like leaping fish.
The pregnant mare seeks shelter under a large tree and the wild weather that had started upon her arrival settles into something softer. Hail pricking at his back changes into white, fluffy snow. Although autumn has finished, the trickster stills huffs a sigh of dismay to himself. Winter is his least favorite season (the frigid temperatures stir an ache in his bowlegged forelegs – legs that were broken and then hastily reassembled – and cause his lungs to feel stripped and burned from the air) and he would be much better off without it.
Mischievous fingers of illusionism creep toward the stowaway in the mother’s womb. Although the trickster cannot control the baby fully, in a sense he can stimulate some sort of scene to encourage it to move a certain way. His magic stretches into the muscles of the child’s developing legs, sending faux twinges of restlessness through its body. Oh, how the child should need to stretch, to kick its legs into the hard lining of its mother, to wiggle its body around for prolonged moments until the swollen mare turns her frustration toward her growing baby.
The trickster, stepping across the white dusted ground, heads toward the mare and stops a polite distance away from her (sure, sometimes he can be a gentleman, when he wants to wear that mask). “Having some regrets?” he asks her, smooth tenor voice coming out in a generous slide.
It doesn’t take long for someone to appear, but unfortunately it’s not Gaza.
Lyris eyes the silvered stallion moodily as he approaches and debates on whether to be friendly, or to tell him to shove off. The latter is considerably tempting - she’s not really in the mood to ‘play nice’ - but she has to admit that getting into a fight in the meadow when she’s so ridiculously pregnant is probably not a good idea.
His comment isn’t exactly helping her temper though. She keeps a lid on it however, barely keeping the irritation from her voice (the cloud above darkens for good measure though). “Perhaps.” Her eyes narrow at him. Why has he approached her? There’s something about him that seems … off. Suspicious. What is he up to?
But he’s here now, and though she’ll stay on her guard, she’ll make nice - play the conversational game as it were. Who knows, she might even enjoy herself. Granted, the last time she’d enjoyed a conversation in the meadow she’d gotten a little carried away … and had ended up here … pregnant. Fuckin’ Gaza. Maybe she’ll just keep this one at arm’s length. At least she can’t get pregnant while she’s already pregnant?
“What brings you to the meadow? Can’t be the weather.” She wonders if he’ll even answer. Or at least if he’ll answer truthfully.
She can’t help but glance at the meadow around them, searching for a sign of Gaza. She wants to talk to that damn fool.
Everyone seems to suspect him of something dangerous (and they’re correct in their suspicions) and it makes him laugh. He might seem suspicious (bruised eyes, crooked smile, scarred body, lightning-white stripes, bowlegged knees), but his interior is far from it. He is not a deceiving type (unless it comes down to big shows with potential drama and manipulating the minds of mares to join his herd); much preferring to keep to the atmosphere of dramatic shows and mischievous glares and dangerous decision-making in the shadow of night.
He can sense her moodiness (whether from the shift in the wind, from the look on her face, or from the instincts of a natural horse deep inside) and it encourages him further. Her eyes seem to narrow as she voices her ‘perhaps’ aloud and he grins at her. However, he doesn’t say anything more, instead waiting for her move to continue the conversation. He ignores the odd moment of awkward silence (ears tipped casually, bruised eyes staring unblinkingly).
His nostrils give a heavy sigh in response to her question. “Definitely not the weather,” he says. He noticed the way the clouds darkened, or how the weather shifted depending on the way this mare’s feelings were (he isn’t a stranger to magic; in fact, he’s a friend of it). “A bit chilly, don’t you think? Might want to lessen the temps a little – I think my tail might freeze off if you keep up the cold much longer.” He winks, indicating he knows exactly what she’s up to.
“Oh, I’m just here looking to meet new folks. I’ve been gone for a couple years.”
As much as she doesn’t want to be rude, she can’t help but keep her eyes peeled for the handsome black stallion. She needs to find him, needs him to understand. But of course, he’s nowhere to be seen. Has the bastard finally managed to settle on a home for himself? He’d promised to tell her when he did, but of course, she’s heard nothing from him. Such a stereotype. He’d had his fun, and now he’s moved on. Granted she’d planned on doing the same … but now she’s left with the aftermath. The swollen, hormonal aftermath. Fuck.
She drags her attention back to the greying stallion. He does seem friendly enough. Perhaps she’s misjudged him, but she can’t bring herself to care all that much. She’s not one to trust someone on the first meeting anyhow. He does seem surprisingly perceptive though - most do not notice her subtle alterations to the weather. Of course, with the hormones wreaking havoc with her temper, they’ve been rather less subtle than usual. “Ach I don’t know if you want me to try changing anything now. I might end up causing a blizzard by accident. Bloody hormones.” She can’t freaking wait to pop this kid out.
He does finally manage to peak her interest however, when he mentions that he’s just returned to Beqanna from some time away. She herself has spent time outside of Beqanna, though she’d done it to give her space to develop her abilities. She’d seen some pretty interesting stuff out there. What about him? “Oh really? What did you get up to out there?”
