"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
She stands amongst beauty that isn’t new, perhaps, but renewed. Winter is a blanket that tucks the Gates in for the season, covering it in perpetual, fluffy white. Because of this cover, it’s easy to forget that a fire had almost brought the kingdom to ruin. It’s easy to overlook the once-scorched trees that aren’t as tall as they should be; it’s understandable to think that they were unaffected by the catastrophes that befell everyone else. Beauty finds a way. Even if it has taken years, the light kingdom is nearly fully restored.
It’s hard to believe she almost left.
Emmerly pushes thoughts of abandonment forcefully from her mind. She tries to forget that her feet had been forced to the Amazons at first (after an ill-timed challenge), but after a year, she had no obligation to stay. She had done exactly that, however, slinking around the humid place trying to find the courage to plant her own roots. In the end, though, she realized how unsuited she was for the Sisterhood. There were too many shadows, both tangible and intangible. She missed the sunshine. She missed her Gates.
The buckskin paint girl is drawn towards the Mother Tree today. The sun is weak but welcome as it pools in the hollows of her back. Despite her late wanderings and constant adventures, she has remained in prime form. She thinks that is wise of her. There are hardly any horses to speak of here, and of the few that are, even less are in their army. The thought makes her anxious, and as she approaches the towering, magical tree, the bright smile she was wearing slides from her face. Em strains her eyes to the forest and meadows beyond. Even now, there is no one else around. She grazes and bides her time until company comes (and surely someone will pass by the heart of their home eventually). It’s been far too long since she’s conversed with one of her people.
05-05-2015, 02:52 PM (This post was last modified: 05-05-2015, 02:54 PM by Jason.)
There was no telling what brought Jason back. Perhaps it was the hoof steps of his daughter or maybe for nostalgia, but either way as soon as Jason passed through the threshold of the Gates he was broken. Heaven’s Gates was the one home he had fallen in love with. It was the only place he had watched lovers turn queens and sons turn kings. This was where he was meant to be.
The stallion stepped forward, lightly pressing his hooves into the soft soil. His ears tweaked from one side to the next, following his eyes as they scanned the land for some sort of life. The Gates had never been a flourishing kingdom, but at this time in particular Jason barely breathed in any scents of life. Jason strolled deeper into the land and fell to a stop as he came upon a withered tree. A brief smile pressed against his lips at the memory of Parvarti. He could still imagine her beauty, his queen. Jason felt his knees weaken as his memories were becoming all too apparent. Now was not the time to fall to his own dreams rather it was time for him to waken from his slumber.
Jason knew that his name had been washed from the history of Beqanna. He thanked time that generations had come and gone. At this point he was just a stallion, a simpleton. He had come to breathe a bit of life into himself and possibly his old home.
Further Jason walked, deeper and deeper into the kingdom. He was beginning to think that the area had been deserted when he came upon a buckskin girl, standing as pretty as can be beneath a towering tree. ”Hello" Jason loudly spoke as he trotted closer to the mare. His broad head dipped in greeting as his lips turned upward. ”How are you today?"
The thought is first in her mind as she heads away from her usual hiding place, out towards the centre of the kingdom. She knows so little about the outside world, so little about even the Gates itself. It’s rather sad, she has to admit.
She needs to change. She has to change. But its hard when she lives in constant fear of rejection because of her own face.
She wishes she could remember why her mother had done it. There had been a reason. Or at least she thinks there’d been one. She can remember the act itself, the hoof crashing down on her face, caving in the right side of her head, a heartbeat at her side, her mother calling her an abomination …
Whatever her mother’s reason, Fiasko has no choice but to live with the consequences of that choice.
She’s musing over it as she nears the kingdom centre, and is so lost in thought that she doesn’t notice to the two strangers until she’s nearly upon them. She cringes instinctively (remember reactions of the past) but then forces herself to stand straight. She has to remember that most horses are not like that stallion in the field. Many are good and kind (though none will ever be as good and kind as Kaelie and Finnley in her mind). She needs to give them a chance first. And if they turn out to be hateful anyway, then they are not worth her time, as Finnley would say.
Smiling her crooked smile, she steps up to the pair, nodding in turn to both the stallion and the mare. “Hello there, I’m Fiasko.”
As she grazes, she thinks of her own upbringing. She thinks how her father left her here as a yearling, how the urgency in his eyes had kept her from questioning his motives. She remembers how strong she had seemed (to herself at least) as she strode up to Skaelleron and Corvi, how terrified she actually was, as if her tremors could split apart her carefully constructed façade.
But she has grown so self-reliant since then, that it is almost hard to remember those days. It’s equally hard for the paint girl to reach out to the others, to accept their help and familial embrace when she’s been cast out of the fold before. It would be so easy to run away from the reminder of her stolen childhood, so simple to turn her back on the Gates. Emmerly has toyed with the idea of leaving before. She’s considered filling the hole in her heart with regret and anger; she’s thought about the consequences of letting the darkness consume her. Fortunately, she knows she is no sheep. She’s faced wolves before and won, not with her bitterness, but her kindness.
The sun will always drive away shadows, but the reverse is never true.
The mare is still thinking about shadows both real and imagined when the stallion approaches. He’s uniquely colored in a kingdom of mostly wild-type horses, a blue that mimics the hazy summer sky, and her responding smile is like the sun peeking through. “I’m Emmerly, and I am quite well.” He is a stranger and doesn’t smell of the Gates, but the buckskin paint finds herself unworried. His confident trot and the way he had approached her spoke volumes of familiarity with the place.
She’s about to ask more when they are joined by a young mare. Emmerly has seen this girl around the kingdom before but she has never had a chance to formally meet her. Her deformity is unfortunate, but Em is all too familiar with scars to ever judge another for them. Her lips curl into a warm smile as she makes space for Fiasko. “Hello, I’m Emmerly.” The little gathering makes her more happy than she’s been in months. It means that life didn’t completely flee with the fire that had ravaged their home. The smell of ash grew weaker every day, replaced by the fragrance of flowers and earth. She looks from mare to stallion with her pale eyes hopeful and soft. “This place was becoming much too quiet.” It’s a general statement that she hopes they will elaborate on with either ideas or reasons why. If not, she turns to the yet-unnamed stallion. “You haven’t given your name. You aren’t spying on us, are you?” Her smile turns more into a sharper grin. There is a playfulness as well as serious concern lacing her tone. The blue-grey stallion is the kind of friendly that could be considered sincere or a serious spy. One has to be sure, these days.
It was lovely, the Gates. Jason couldn’t wipe the formed smile from his lips even when he tried. The peace that he had found constantly found its way back on his expression especially in moments like these. The buckskin girl spoke and, my, her loveliness rivaled that of the Gates. Emmerly was her name. It had been spoken with confidence and followed with an update on her mood. The description of well didn’t hold too much weight, but Jason appreciated the simplicity of the answer. He would, though, try and prod more information out of the mare at a later date. Jason always wanted to know more for the more he knew the better he could serve.
Jason could feel his jaw drop as he was beginning to speak when another mare came upon them. This one looked different. The right half of her face look scarred, mutilated, lost. Jason looked to her, examining the depraved features. His smile stayed, but his eyes softened. His eyes fell from her face to her neck, to her body, and then back to her single eye. She too was lovely in her own right, and the way she spoke with equal friendliness as her approach made her even more noteworthy. Jason nodded to this mare as well.
Emmerly was the first to greet the other mare and begin a conversation. She spoke of the Gates like she had been there for many years, and Jason simply nodded along with her observation. He had noticed the silent nature of the kingdom in just the few short days he had returned. It was after this comment that the direction of the conversation became pointed at him. Jason huffed lightly and this time shook his head as a light laugh escaped before he spoke. ”Oh no no…not quite a spy. I’m simply an old visitor…or rather old member returning after many years. My name is Jason.” He spoke. ”It is nice to meet you both, Emmerly” He nodded to her. ”Fiasko” He said as he turned his head and lowered it to the other mare. ”I have noticed how quiet the gates is…did something happen?”
Much to her surprise, the mare doesn’t even react at the sight of her face. Not even a partially hidden cringe - not a single sign of shock appears on the pretty face. It’s perhaps the first time that the sight of her face has engendered so little reaction and she has to say, it’s kind of nice. “Nice to meet you Emmerly.” She smiles shyly, then turns to look at the stallion at Emmerly’s joke about spying.
He, on the other hand, is clearly shocked by her appearance, but she finds to her surprise that she doesn’t really mind. He, at the very least, is trying to hide his surprise (he doesn’t appear all that horrified either). And she can’t blame him for being surprised anyway - her appearance is rather out of the ordinary. “Nice to meet you too Jason.”
He asks if something had happened here, and her smile fades. Really, what hasn’t happened? The poor kingdom has been struggling for some time. “Unfortunately the Gates has been fairly quiet for some time now. We’ve always been one of the less popular kingdoms, to be honest.” It’s hard when competing with the promise of mythical traits, and the militant styles of other kingdoms. “To make things worse, we were hit by a series of wildfires recently. It destroyed a lot of the kingdom, but the Mother Tree is slowly helping to bring things back to normal.” Her curiosity is peaked as well by his admission that he has lived here before. Fiasko has lived here for a number of years, and has never seen him before - it must have been a long time ago that he lived in the Gates. “What were the Gates like when you last lived here?” Has the kingdom always been a quiet one?
