"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
01-09-2017, 09:07 PM (This post was last modified: 01-09-2017, 09:08 PM by Dagny and Olivier.)
I won't let you go; so don't leave go of me
They are still together. It seems as if they are inseparable, and if one said so to them, they would likely agree. And they are predictable – even these several years later, they move and act the same as they did as children. Their family and acquantances have different opinions about it – some have bandied about the words “weird” or “unnatural” while others prefer “cute” or “loyal”. None of it matters to them except each other, and their large extended family.
So it is as it has been many times before. They gallop side-by-side, his slightly longer stride matched by her enthusiasm, until they reach their destination. And then they slow, Dagny taking the lead while Olivier takes his customary place at her shoulder, eyes ever watchful. He is not quite complete, the golden horn missing from his head, but still they make a striking pair. She is bright chestnut, splashed with white, and then marked on top of that with blue on her body and yellow streaked through her mane, remnants of a quest that still occasionally gives her nightmares. He is solid gold champagne, with the trademark champagne shine to his coat, and just slightly taller.
They walk for a moment, catching their breath, and then a figure catches her eye. A color, like them, not necessarily found in nature but not garish in its looks like some of the others. Changing direction with her twin close behind, Dagny trots over with a bright smile on her face, calling ahead in cheerful greeting. Olivier does not protest the change, though he taps her side with his gold muzzle once, not needing words to remind her of something he has said many times (’We’re not kids anymore, Dagny. Chill out. Slow down.’) “Hello!” she tosses wild mane out of her face as they come to a halt and grins at the stallion, drawn to him and not particularly caring why. “I’m Dagny, and this is Ollie.”
Olivier feels the pull too, and flicks a hazel gaze once towards his sister, sighing as she introduces him with the nickname he doesn’t particularly love, before settling his eyes on the stranger, stepping up level with his exuberant twin. He doesn’t correct her use of his name, though, because it would only hurt her feelings, and isn’t worth that to him. “Pleasure to meet you…?”
the wolves will chase you by the pale moonlight {drunk and driven by the devil's hunger}
They are family.
His magic sparks in his chest as they near him, and he lifts his large head to peer out toward them, the green of his eyes glinting beneath the muddled mulberry of his mane. They are not direct offshoots, but they are connected, the familial branches within him rising in recognition of their connection. He snorts a little in response to it, tilting his head and chewing on the inside of his cheek in thought.
Perhaps they recognized him as easily as he recognized them, but he doubted it. As his magic reached out and wrapped its cold, calculating fingers around them, it did not recognize any spark of it within them. It did not see anything similar to what burned in him and Bright; they were simply drawn to him.
Odd.
So drawn up in his own interpersonal thoughts, he did not realize right away that they had started talking. He shook his head and then focused his flat gaze on them—not quite apathetic, but not overly warm either. “Yes, Dagny and Olivier.” His lips flatted in thought, picking through the many threads that sprout off from them. “Daughter and son of…Brennen and Cy.” They were just names, but he still held them close to him. Not because he was particularly affectionate of them, but because his abilities were tied to them. Cy was already gone—and at the hand of another relative, pity—but Bremen was around.
“That would make you my great aunt and uncle, I suppose.”
It felt strange to call them that; while he was acutely aware of his connections to the family around him, he also felt ancient, timeless. To think these young horses before him were his great anything was odd.
“You’re wrong through,” he leveled his gaze on the stallion, eyes narrowing in thought. For a moment, a singular horn grew from the stallion’s forehead, the weight of it tangible. It buzzed in and out of existence as Woolf studied them and then he shook his head, the horn dissolving from existence as easily as he had conjured it. “One of the many missing something from themselves, I suppose.”
His attention drew back to the mare and her lingering question.
01-19-2017, 09:18 PM (This post was last modified: 01-19-2017, 09:18 PM by Dagny and Olivier.)
I won't let you go; so don't leave go of me
It would have been easy to miss, the difference between “Ollie” and “Olivier”; perhaps, if he wasn’t so sensitive to it, he would have missed it. Certainly Dagny does. But even before the stranger continues on to name their parents, which even Dagny could not have missed, Olivier has stiffened beside her, alerting her to the unusual words coming from the purplish man she has brought them to. The gold boy draws himself to his full height, ears starting to turn slightly back towards his head, immediately thinking ‘threat’ and trying to get ready to defend them. She is different – she is excited by this new thing, by him knowing what shouldn’t be known. She goes to step forward again, eager, but he leans into her and flicks a glance her way, a glare that keeps her from moving forward.
They are adults, but it is strange to think of themselves as “great” aunts and uncles – they are certainly not that old. But of course words are only words, and relations can be a convoluted thing. Though Cy was one of the few mares to whom Brennen returned multiple times, she was not one of the few to whom he returned due to emotional attachment, and so there were many years between Oksana and the twins, and many again before the youngest full-sibling was born. Plenty of time for Oksana to have a family who had families and have him be not that much younger than them.
Ollie’s ears flatten the rest of the way to touch his skull when the words come back around to him, bristling at the label of ‘wrong’ – until his horn is suddenly there, weighty against his head and so right – and then it is gone. His eyes are wide, unsettled, still half-ready to leap to their defense. In contrast her eyes are wide with delight, green gaze flicking back and forth between her twin and the other boy, this relative of theirs. They are no strangers to the gifts Beqanna can bestow on its residents, how could they be with their extended family as varied as it is, but this is something they have never seen.
“How do you know about us? We’ve never met!” Dagny’s voice is bright and curious, friendly still. (It takes a lot more than a demonstration of so-far harmless magic to make her anything but friendly.) Nearly at the same time, so that their voices overlap, he speaks as well. “How did you do that?” Unlike her, there are threads of tension, aggression, and just the faintest hint of fear in his deep, quiet voice. Fear makes many aggressive, and the fear that this might be something dangerous he can’t defend them from is well enough to make Olivier border on aggression. Dagny returns his sharp glare from earlier, and then smiles gently back at Woolf. “Don’t mind him. He thinks you might want to hurt us – but I’m sure you don’t.”
Dagny & Olivier
no one can ever follow; no one can ever know
Sorry I took forever, I forgot to subscribe to this thread and then forgot to check for replies. :|
the wolves will chase you by the pale moonlight {drunk and driven by the devil's hunger}
He had never understood the emotions that flare so helplessly in other’s chests. The rage, the hope, the sorrow; it was all so exhausting, even for him as a bystander. Did they not recognize that this was beyond their control? They could no more bring him to heel with narrowed eyes or excited smiles than he could tame the cosmos. His magic was a dark and primal thing, curled dangerously in his chest, and they could not overcome it. He himself had long since submitted to it, the power and duties that came along with it.
At the hint of aggression, at the display of emotions, he merely shrugs in reaction, the mulberry of his shoulders rolling. He had no time, no interest in this, but yet he stayed, fixing them with his infinite gaze, the emerald absorbing and reflecting light in the strangest of ways. “Incorrect,” he chided, his voice deep in his throat. “You have never met me.” Their world was so small, he thought idly. So confined to the trappings of their own mind, to the boundaries that they saw and so often erected on their own.
“I, however, have met you. In my own way.”
Never face to face. Before today, he had never known them consciously. But they were there, as all of his family was there, simmering in his blood, their identities part of him, pressed into his chest and running through his blood. At the boy’s demanding question, he flicks his gaze toward him, pinning him there beneath it. Even without the magic, he was formidable, topping out at 17 hands high, his chest wide, his muscles thick. He was his father’s son, and while he didn’t rely on it, physical strength didn’t elude him.
“How do you think I did it?” he replied, answering the question with a question. There was no venom to his voice though, simply flat and thoughtful, before he turned back to the girl, the one who seemed to blossom beneath the possibilities. “You are right though. I have no desire to hurt you.” He snorted a little, shaking his massive head.
“Regardless, anything that I did to you would only hurt me.”
She looks at him like he is a puzzle, head slightly tilted as if it will help her concentrate, hazel eyes focused and bright. Dagny likes to know things, to figure them out, and he is the best sort of mystery. He knows things he shouldn’t and isn’t that exciting? Olivier continues to look at him with suspicion, but it is tempered by a long-suffering air of exasperation as his twin maneuvers slightly closer to Woolf, putting herself half between the two stallions.
Maybe it’s silly to think the smallest of the three of them could keep Olivier from doing anything stupid, but she has known him a long time. She burns bright, and brighter, and just keeps going stronger. Her temper, if ignited, is a thing of glory. But her gold twin burns so fast and hot it’s simply not maintainable – he’s like the flash flood that comes and goes in an instant. If he was going to act, it would have been when that first hint of magic touched him with no warning. No, Dagny knows he’s well past the flash point now, and should be on his way to restored calm.
Stepping in front of him allows her to touch him, though, to press skin to skin, and she knows that often helps soothe his worries. “You’ve got magic,” she answers the question to her brother’s question, because it’s more interesting to her anyway. “Of a sort.” Dagny laughs, then, at using his own words back into the equation, swishes her tail, leans into her brother for a moment. “Does it have something to do with us being your great-whatever-aunt and uncle, or can you not hurt anybody?”
Maybe it’s an invasive question, but her desire to know often overrules her common sense on what it is and isn’t appropriate to ask someone. And she hasn’t learned self-restraint all that well yet, either. “You’re too trusting by half,” is what he mutters in his sister’s general direction, looking away from both of them, but like she was so sure of, his outrage is gone, his body softening under the press of hers. He will let her take the lead here, where it is becoming clear she is in no danger.
They complement each other, but the balance would be easy to tip too far. Only time will show if they will grow to great partnership, or destroy each other.
the wolves will chase you by the pale moonlight {drunk and driven by the devil's hunger}
Her curiosity amuses him, far more than the surly stallion, and so he ignores him, focusing his emerald gaze on the female. “I have magic,” he repeats in his deep voice, the sound echoing in his throat, getting lost in the richness of his tongue. “Of a sort.” His smile curves, just barely, at the sentence, the humor not entirely genuine as it flickers across his handsome face. It was not often that he was on the other side of the questions; he was more likely to be the one asking questions than to be the one receiving them.
Shrugging, he supposes it is an interesting perspective to take.
“My magic is tied to my bloodline. Death diminishes it; life enhances. It’s affected by those who are not related to me, but relations are more potent.” He does not go into the details of why that was. The reason he had ever been sent to this earth alongside Bright. Instead he feeds them tidbits of truth, harmless pieces of information. “Regardless, it is in my best interest to protect those who are related to me.”
His eyes move over to the stallion, meeting his gaze for a moment.
“Sometimes, unfortunately.”
Not that he ever truly wanted to bring harm to the stallion. He is curt and aggressive but Woolf does not rile so easily. The poke is more an experiment of sorts to see how he reacts, to see how the female reacts. Does she calm him or rise to his defense? Does she lunge at the magician? His mind whirls at the possibility, but he remains outwardly unaffected.
“Do you have other questions for me? I imagine you might.”
She seems the type to never run out of them—a trait he would admire were he capable.
