"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
BUT HOW COULD YOU KNOW THE SWEETEST SUFFERING OF MOVING ON
There’s a quake, first in his soul and then the land. The changes are humming underneath his skin and feet, whirring. Tiphon peers up from the pine needles that had fallen through the course of winter. By this point it should be spring and yet the earth growls and the sky remains shrouded in gray, warning of snow. It only takes the beat of a heart for Tiphon to realize how very wrong the world is becoming, how the looming change is finally upon them and consuming all they have ever known.
It’s when he stands up that the ground actively trembles and rolls. He can hear the loud crashing of rocks and the roar of broken rivers. Everything is alive – breaking apart and merging back together – and the horses are just ants in all of this. His heart hammers against his chest as his eyes drink in the changes happening in front of him. In an attempt to gain insight, Tiphon tries to melt his body into the world, but nothing wavers except the grassy hills that are suddenly flattening. Again he tries to disappear, but he remains whole, standing placidly in a world that is eating itself.
Then he looks over his shoulder and sees the wings, but they aren’t what he remembers. They are plain; he is dull in comparison to the bright illumination that had always surrounded his body.
For the first time in his life, fear truly begins to wrack his brain.
A bellow vibrates through his core as he tries to call for the Daleans, for anyone, but he is met with an eerie silence just as the earth suddenly settles. Everything is new, reborn, including himself.
His wings unfurl and immediately Tiphon takes to the skies. He ascends slowly and never gains a high altitude as his molten eyes hungrily search for others who have felt the impact and watched Beqanna toss and turn restlessly and angrily. His voice still rings out, searching, for what seems like hours until he has reached the most familiar place he has seen thus far.
The meadow unravels beneath him and he descends. The grass meets his legs, kissing his skin upon landing. His nostrils dilate and drink in the smell of rebirth and change. Fear grips him, but he tries to mask it behind a face of stone. He will find them or they will find him. Whichever the case may be, they need a home and security in this whole new world.
There is a frightening pace to the atmosphere. A sense of foreboding and a crack; almost as if the entire world were coming apart at the seams. Everything shifted and for once, the gravesite broke open and out walked the one whom they all thought was long dead and gone. Instead of dead, think of him more as frozen into his spot, the statue of his likeness forgotten and dragged away with the beaches that held him there, prisoner, for more than one hundred years. But with the drawing away of the magic, Ashley found that his body was also returning to life. His body, which had previously been calcified over as limestone, drew him away from the statue that Charlemagne had turned him into. He shook his head, aware of the fuzziness that lay between his ears, trying to make sense of all that could have possibly happened. He stretched---his back legs, his rump, his forehind… But when he went to stretch out his wings, he noticed that they were gone.
Dazed, confused, and frankly, upset, Ashley has drawn into the meadow seeking answers. The scent of Dalean blood is in the air, but with no apparent powers to guide him, the magician—or former—is unable to guide himself through this new façade of life. He draws near another, unsure of what the world will bring, and yet, there is a familiarity about this one that bades him to draw closer, looking for answers.
She almost steps into the dust that rises when the mountains fall. She almost breathes it in, lets the blackness fill her lungs instead of the crisp oxygen of the pines. It would be easier, she thinks, to choke on the soot than to flee. Easier to die than to leave.
Her eyes tell the story of death already.
The bodies all clamor for a way out of the hell that the Dale has become. Boulders and trees fall in equal number. She watches as one overlarge rock tumbles down the tallest mountain, playfully bouncing off each descending hill. When it finally crashes into the ground, it crushes the hind end of a retreating doe. Talulah watches it scramble for purchase against the dirt with its front hooves, watches the lights fading from its frantic eyes. She almost envies the quickness of its end.
Because she decides then and there that she will not leave. Not when the river has flooded and swept away the tall grasses she had run through as a child. Not when the hillsides become valleys and the dirt she had given birth on sinks below the surface. Not when the last wolf has fled nor when the mountains become piles of rubble. She will not abandon the place once Forbidden. The kingdom that has given her everything will not die alone, not so long as she is alive. She will not be alone in death, either.
Everything ends, but she doesn’t.
One final glimpse of the mountainland is all she gets. When the blackness rushes in, she closes her eyes – and opens them minutes, hours, days later in the meadow.
Her heart aches, because she knows it is futile to go back. There is nothing to go back to, anyway, and the knowledge settles like lead into her stomach, a weight she will never shed. All she has now is her family, or the remains of it scattered to the wind like the rest of their world. She will pick up the pieces as best she can. Even if it no longer fits together perfectly; even if they are missing some of the pieces entirely. She will yield to the yolk, even if the work seems fruitless.
She looks up and he is there. Nothing becomes everything with him. Their lives are forever entangled, intersecting at the most unexpected moments. Now, she needs him more than ever. Now, she is not sure she can go to him. Talulah wavers, stuck between her grief and the magnet her heart becomes when he is near. In the end, she cannot resist his pull. But she is not the only one.
“Tiphon,” she says, her voice like smoke, hazy and dark. It takes all of her strength not to collapse against him, to bury her face in the crook of his shoulder and cry until the tears won’t come. Dead, she would wail. All of it. Everything. The Dale. Our home. Our people. Our son. The darkness rushes up again when the magnitude of loss shakes her. She focuses on the perfect porcelain of his skin to keep it at bay, remembers how resplendent he looked framed in the sun between the mountains. There is a peculiar scratch in her throat that she doesn’t understand at first, and it pulls her from her thoughts more than anything. It is persistent, a need she can’t ignore.
“I’m thirsty.” Her tongue feels heavy in her mouth as she says it. “Why am I thirsty?” Talulah looks at the buckskin before turning to Tiphon. He will understand her, at least. For a woman who’s never had to drink (or eat, or sleep) this newfound need threatens to break her hold on reason. The simple questions keep her sanity from crumbling. If the mountains can in the end, perhaps she is not unshakeable, either.
Having approached the one who smelled like someone he knew, Ashley turned his head to notice a woman who was entirely unfamiliar to him. He saw her eyes. Awakening with a new realization that all was not as it was back in his day, he watched her quietly, looking confused and upset, mentioning her thirst as if it were a foreign concept to her. While he was not completely aware of her plight—not having known her story or significance here—she obviously knew this one, the one with the wings, and she addressed him as Tiphon. Tiphon. Someone he did not know, but someone who smelled familiar. Perhaps a descendant from someone of his day? This was interesting to the old Dalean King, and yet he found that living in the obscurity of his old age—though, feeling the wealth of immortality returning to his rich blood—would have its advantages in the days to come. Because for sure, there was no way his name still rang in the halls and anthems of what had once been his home… Their home. Because it was true, it was all gone. And likely was not coming back. Ashley faced the woman, the other male temporarily put aside, to address her concerns… he wanted to see her mind put at rest—as much as was possible. “The magic has been drained of this land. What that means for our souls, I know not. I have only just been woken up.” He gestured to her with his head, his nostrils inflating with the general annoyance at the situation of not being able to read the minds of those around him. “If you are unfamiliar with the concept of thirst, then my only supposition is that you too have been affected. I am Ashley. What is your name?
Adalyn loves it. The way the ground shudders under her feet and the trees sway because their roots are dying. The way the monkeys hoot in fear and the birds take flight to escape it. She loves the way the rivers are upended from their flow and the waterfalls cease their falling. She watches the world around her fall and shatter and erode and burn and her lips curl in excitement because something new will happen. Something new is happening.
When it is all done, she feels drained and yet rejuvenated. There is a strange sensation (an added feature, an excuse for something lacking, a new addition to replace) on her back and she twists her head. Feathered wings perch against her sides, soft and downy and gold like her hair. Adalyn laughs, her mouth wide and her blue eyes bright. She tries her water (she tries to curl her fingers around their silky depths, to raise the ocean just a little higher, to send a ripple across a lake) but there is nothing. Beqanna has taken her waterworks from her and replaced them with a pair of wings to give the wanderer flight.
She acknowledges the compensation, although she does not agree with it.
She woke in the field, nestled against the cattails alongside the lake, but she has been here before. Adalyn is clumsy with her wings at first. She runs to take off, and the strange movement of up and down with new muscles causes her to dive before she rises again. She had always been told she’s a quick learner. Her still ungraceful flying brings her to the meadow and she lands with a heavy step, tripping before quickly catching her weight.
Her eyes take a moment to adjust to the sheer mass of horses here; as though all of Beqanna is in the meadow at this moment. Then her eyes catch sight on a familiar face and she runs toward him. “Dad!” Her mouth stretches in a grin, wild and carefree despite the trouble that has happened. “Did you see what happened?” Her eyes are wide with excitement and they glance around at the small circle of other horses. “Did you all see?”
09-04-2016, 02:51 PM (This post was last modified: 09-07-2016, 02:31 PM by Leah.)
now you're staring at a queen.
She awakens, and she is different.
Was it a dream, then?
Did she dream the earthquakes, the screams?
Is the smell of death around her of the lands or of its people?
She does not want to find out.
She is disoriented - she doesn’t remember this part of her kingdom. She turns her head, sharply, a little panicked, and sees hundreds of horses around her. Some of them have come together, started to form into groups, but they all look worried. Uncertain.
It isn’t the Dale.
They are up high, the air cold and thin. She is panicked, frantic; she doesn’t see her children, or Ramiel, or anyone she recognizes. She picks up a canter, breathing hard, “Sela! Kha! Sabrael! Ram -- Ram --” This is perhaps the most emotion she has ever shown, but luckily there is no one around that she knows to witness it.
There is more land below, she realizes, coming down to a walk.
The path down the mountain is tricky -- steep and uncertain, ready for her to slip and fall the rest of the way down, but she manages to hold her composure. It is, truthfully, the one thing she is good at.
As she gets closer to the bottom of the mountain, she sees them -- her people -- Tiphon and Talulah she recognizes, the others less so.
Ea joins them as the youngest finishes speaking, breathless, and regains her composure.
“Oh, I’m so glad to see you all are well,” she says, still looking around for others. “Have you seen my children, or Ramiel? Phaedrus, even?” She takes a deep breath again, looking at those she doesn’t know.
“I’m sorry, I’m Ea. Queen -- well, I was queen, I suppose, of the Dale.”
It hits her, then.
She had been so wrapped up in adrenaline and emotion, she had not stopped to think -- she is no longer a queen. This title that she had trained all of her life to hold, she had molded the Dale as a quiet but strong kingdom, free from conflict and danger.
And all at once, her life’s work had been stripped from her.
“Well,” she says, pausing, “what do we do now?”
(so, if all of y'all want to join a land, I can go ahead and keep track of points -- if you want to join a land but use your personal points towards traits instead, just let me know. you can PM me if you'd like or if you have any questions)
09-04-2016, 03:05 PM (This post was last modified: 09-04-2016, 03:06 PM by Ashley.)
“We start over,” Ashley says, not waiting to be acknowledged by the others. He is aware that among them, he is an outsider. But he, like the new ex-queen before him—who introduced herself as Ea—would know that standing around supposing on questions would do nobody any good. They needed safety. They needed solidarity. Ashley looked around the group, waiting for someone else to speak. When nobody did, the buckskin turned his attention specifically to the Dale’s former ruler, addressing her with all the respect that he could muster—while never forgetting that he too, had been in her proverbial horse shoes.
“Hello Ea, my name is Ashley. I do not know if you intended to lead a band to find a new place, but it is obviously apparent that there is new land out there, and there are mares and foals that need safety away from the open lands. I am from an age much older than this one, and do not have any intentions of leading…but rather instead, wish to be of service wherever I can be of most use.” He bowed his head to her and shifted his weight back to face the group, flicking his ears to see if anyone else had any other ideas. That they had found themselves without their abilities was definitely telling—but to also wake up with no home; while he could understand their plight, his heart breaking that he would never view his beautiful Dale ever again—he was not in a position to be as mournful over it as they were.
Everything they knew, was gone. The least he could do was help them rebuild.
He has to make sure that Riva is safe, he isn’t going to leave her side until she is. Even then he is reluctant to part ways, what if… He shakes his mane out, there can be no thinking like that. His second thought is of his disbanded herd, the one that he no longer cares for, ha! As if he had in the first place. Okay so he had built a family with them? So he had built friendships, learned to trust a little, but when he broke promise after promise, and they still looking to him with pained hopeful eyes he knew better than to hurt them again. He couldn’t be what they wanted, what they needed, what he could do though, is leave them in peace, leave them to find a way to live without the hurt. Blue wings fold at his sides, they are strong and full, shiny with their newness. After coming down the mountain his old ones had shed, and shortly after these grew in.
Still he moves forward, searching for the people that he knows, anyone that could still be alive. Hoping that none had been taken with the world when it was turned inside out. He hedges the meadow looking and speaking to those he meets. Finally, he tires of the situation and takes to the skies immediately spotting a small group, one that is growing in numbers by the minute. Amongst them he spots the golden cream of Ea. Part of him relaxes finally seeing a familiar face, but instead of his face pulling into a smile it creases in a frown of worry, where was Ramiel, Weir, the foals, even Zaravich was missing. Where was his daughter? Anneliese?
He takes a moment to circle and find a spot to land, as he does so he catches the tail end of a speech by a horse that he doesn’t know. One thing is certain, the queen is present, and as it had taken her a long time to earn his trust, so it would be with the rest of these horses present. He doesn’t recognize a single one of them, what had happened to the Dale in his time of absence? Where had all the loyal members, and dear friends gone to? This is for another time though. Currently the most important thing to take care of is finding everyone, land will wait, friends and family can’t. After a moment of catching his balance he folds his wings and marches up to Ea lowering his head respectfully. The Dale’s land may no longer exist, but the souls of the kingdom live on. Our Dale can still stand and find strength in each other even if our home is no more. We will find a place, a sanctuary for those in need, that has been our role in the past, that will continue to be our role in the future. He looks around the group before finishing his walk up to Ea, seeing just how shaken she is he offers her a warm greeting of exchanged breath before turning to the group once more. They need encouragement, each face appeared to have some sort of discomfort, worry, or strain on their faces. He looks to the one other horse that he knows, even if it is a faint memory of someone in passing, nodding to Tiphon out of respect Phaedrus starts talking once more. We have suffered many loses in these last few years, yet here we stand as survivors, take heart and lets work together to find our bearing once more.
He lowers his head slightly, as best as a war horse can. He hoped that he could bring some strength to the others, he hoped that he gave Ea enough time to gather wits, to let Tiphon recover from his silence. He hoped that he had filled the gap, the push for a direction. Said just enough that Ea would feel encouraged, would feel firm in her position as a leader and could continue to direct the others as to where to go, and what to do. It wasn’t his time to be weak, he already had that moment, now that it has passed, its time for him to be strong once more. Emotions can not rule here, this would only lead to panic, and fights, it would weaken their ties to one another, and cause things that none of them would have wanted in the beginning.
Pain; that's all the grulla dun mare was feeling right now. And that was saying something, considering that she'd dealt with a lot of it in her life. But what had happened to the land... man, she didn't even remember most of it. She remembered that after the Tundra - that was the place, right? - rejected her, she headed out to try and find a new home. But then, everything had changed...
Another sting of pain shot through the mare's skull, causing her to squeal in ache. Why was it that when she tried to hard, she couldn't remember a thing? She was surprised she even recalled the name of that place, the Tundra, but she couldn't remember if she'd truly gone to search there for a home or not.
She felt that something was wrong with her... but she couldn't figure out what it was. All she knew was that these pains in her skull irked her, and the wound on her leg wasn't helping matters either. The mare had acquired the gash down her foreleg when she'd slipped on some loose rocks on her trip down the mountain where she'd first appeared after coming to this land. It wasn't fatal, but it sure as hell would hurt for a while.
The mare let out an aching sigh; she was tired from all the walking, but she still had yet to encounter any familiar faces. Perhaps this was because of the fact that she hadn't had a home before all this - whatever it was - happened? Whatever the case, Vida needed to at least find some temporary shelter to rest for the remainder of the day, and during the night, so her leg wound could heal and she could sleep after a tiring day of walking on three good legs.
The sound of voices cut into the silence surrounding the grulla dun. Vida's hopes lit up; was it possible that there were actually more horses around? Even if she didn't recognize them, was it possible that they might be willing to give her refuge among them if they chose to rest as a group that night until they found more permanent homes?
Normally, Vida wasn't usually this open, or welcoming, or friendly, especially around others she didn't trust. But for some reason, none of her gut instincts were kicking in; either she could trust these horses, or the aching pains in her head meant more than she thought.
Limping toward the voices, the mare came across a small group; a white stallion with golden points, a buckskin stallion, a gray mare, a black mare with gold mane and tail, a somewhat silvery-but-still-bay roan mare, and a black stallion with a blue-colored mane and tail. Vida arrived just enough to hear the last words from the black stallion's mouth; he'd belonged to some place, called the Dale?
Why did that sound familiar? Vida felt as if it should be registered in her mind, but once again, the pain in her skull returned. Deciding to put the matter of the Dale aside for now, the mare walked toward the group of horses, her head low and hurt leg a little off the ground as she got closer.
"Any chance... you'd take in... an unfamiliar face... to your cause?" she asked, a tired look in her brown eyes.
BUT HOW COULD YOU KNOW THE SWEETEST SUFFERING OF MOVING ON
They gather quickly and Tiphon can feel a reassuring warmth pool across him and flood his veins. In the stirring of Beqanna he had hoped that no one was lost, that everyone survived. Although their numbers are still scant he is hopeful and casts his molten eyes across the meadow curiously.
When Ashley, a complete stranger, had approached Tiphon nodded to him and muttered a hello, but he knew it wouldn’t be long until more congregated and then he would address them all as is his nature. Having been king once is moot in comparison to his natural inclination to be their guardian, to be their beacon when the world is dark. It’s in his nature – in his blood – to be the sentinel and protect them until his dying breath.
His heart is pounding against his ribcage as he anxiously waits for the others, but he finds himself relieved by a brief distraction as Talulah reaches to his side and melts into him as she always has. His muzzle finds her and brushes her forelock from her face, his eyes closing as he again memorizes her. ”We royally pissed off the fairies and Beqanna somehow,” he mutters in agreement with Ashley but he doesn’t interrupt when he elaborates how their bodies have been purged of almost all magic. Tiphon feels weak but he doesn’t admit this to them; his entire being was magic and to have had it stripped away is far harder than simply losing a pair of wings or a horn. It’s as though he is only a shell of what he once was.
To hear Adalyn’s voice above the chaos is a reprieve. She yells for him and his head cranes up immediately to see her land and run toward him. A broad smile cracks the concern that had plastered his face as he shares in her excitement. ”I did, Adalyn! Very impressive,” it’s her joy that is already his beacon of hope. Here the world has shattered and his daughter runs with a smile and without a care to see what mayhem has swallowed Beqanna. ”It is so wonderful to see you again,” he had raised her as a child, embraced her in his wingspan those years ago, but time had pulled their intertwined threads apart. It never destroyed the love he had of her; Tiphon loves all his children.
But the family he’s surrounded by is still incomplete. Ramiel, Elysteria, Elaria, Jinn, Estela. Where are they? He blinks and peers across the heads of those gathered but doesn’t yet see them and so his attention flickers to Ea, Phaedrus, Vida, then back again to their once-Queen to answer her question. ”We survive,” he says to her mildly, ”There is no other option except to find others and find a new home. We need security.” They need hope, but certainly this familial tie they find themselves is enough to light their hearts. He glances to Vida then and smiles. ”Welcome to the family,” because that is exactly what they are and what she apparently needs, ”What’s your name? I’m Tiphon.”
TIPHON
STARLACE AND INFECTION
Sorry guys! I was out of town all weekend!
But @[Leah] I'm down for points collecting toward a herd
Ea
