"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
this is sort of an activity check and also a 'let me know if planning activities is worth it or if your characters would likely abstain' type thing.
djinni
Grey haired and wrapped in the feathery mantle of mourning dove wings, Djinni makes her way through the woods of Sylva toward their central gathering area. Near the heart of the kingdom is one of the largest of the boulders in the land. A massive dark stone erupts from the earth, and judging by the lack of trees in the surrounding meadow, must continue for a long ways underground as well. She walks through the meadow, starling a flock of quail, and climbs up the stone, one level at a time until she stops. There is still one higher level of stone, from which one might feel like a monarch surveying their empire (or like they can fly, as the little ones who scale the heights often pretend). She stays lower, high enough to be heard without appearing too regal.
Her eyes are bright, looking pale from a distance. Only up close is the perfectly mimicked color of a while opal, snow and flecked with a pastel rainbow. They are happy eyes, a fitting expression above the more serious line of her mouth. They have business to attend to. She has resigned herself to responsibility for a few hours, and it is tolerable only because she knows it is temporary.
A small trade – an hour of freedom for days spent fret-free.
It’s not quite unbalanced enough for her, but Djinni has accepted regardless. She can’t go back now.
“I want to thank you all for continuing to trust me with Sylva.” She begins, looking a bit longer at those faces that had questioned her upon her arrival, not lingering but so excessively as to be noticed. “I’d like to introduce some of our newest residents -” Member sounds too exclusive Djinni thinks as she gestures to each face as they are named. “- Zai, and Luster, and her family. ” The two older horses she doesn’t know, but her voice doesn’t falter; the word family is just as casual as Luster’s name.
“Thank you to those of you who have been watching our borders,” Djinni says as she eyes the horses she knows to be patrolling, giving them each a grateful smile. “And thank you to those who have been traveling to the Field and greeting newcomers.” They are not numerous, but neither is the population of the Sylvan Forest. Still, they are appreciated.
“We’d like to organize a few activities,” she says, adding that “There’s no need to do them if you’d rather not, of course,” before there is time for complaints to be voiced. “Perhaps a few sparring matches with those interested in improving their battle skills and making a plan for some visits to the other lands.”
Please let that be all, she thinks. Let them ask their questions later, let her stay up here for as short a time as possible. Already she is ready to run, to fly, to be anywhere but still and smiling. None of that shows. She is only smiling and waiting, accepting of whatever they might have to say.
have you ever thought about what protects our hearts? just a cage of rib bones and other various parts
Even in his youth, he had not enjoyed kingdom meetings. Of course, back then, it had been because he had too many other things to do. He had adventures to uncover and people to talk to and wonderful things to see. Now, he dreaded them for altogether different reasons. He hated the prospect of having to actually face the rest of Sylva’s residents and see, for himself, how they were not his family. He hated having to be so near to others, feign the politeness that had been trained so throughly into him during his youth. He hated having to wear that smile, remind himself of his parents and yet have none of their warmth.
Still, he had told Djinni that he would stay and while he did not look forward to the meeting, he also knew that it was part of the package deal. He was many things, but he was not someone who broke his word. So, despite his desire to stay locked away and hidden within the perpetual autumn of the forest, he broke from it with a groan at the sound of her call. Rolling his massive shoulders, he rolled his eyes and then ventured toward the center of the land where she stood, perched up on the rock. How regal of her.
For a second, he reminded himself that he should smile, and instead he bargained with himself, ending up with a stern face but not entirely a frown. It was progress, he told himself. When she introduced him, he grimaced internally but looked around to make eye contact with the others, nodding briefly before returning his gaze to Djinni. She would get an earful later for putting him on the spot like that.
He cleared his throat at the mention of activities, surprising even himself. “I will participate,” his voice was husky, deep, rattling from his chest. “In the spars, that is.” It’d give himself something to do at least.
so it's fairly simple to cut right through the mess and to stop the muscle that makes us confess
The day Djinni came to speak to them all, Zhenga was relaxing in the herd's grazing meadow with her dam, the champagne mares Anahi and Eiria, and a couple of other horses. Upon the arrival of the dappled monarch, the four mares had all bowed their heads in a sign of respect before their leader began speaking.
She started by thanking the residents of Sylva for trusting her with leadership of the kingdom before bringing forth a couple of new horses Zhenga didn't recognize. It was a total of four, two young and two older horses. Zhenga's eyes followed Djinni as she introduced each horse, for a moment settling on the leopard appaloosa colt. He was a rather handsome fellow, with his unique coat and proud stature. Zhenga felt somehorse nudge her, giving Eiria a dirty look as the champagne mare and the two older ones laughed good naturally.
Djinni thanked some more horses for patrolling the borders and traveling to the Field for newcomers. Come to think of it, Eiria had mentioned she was planning on a trip out there. Perhaps Zhenga could tag along? Since she was busy with training, the filly hadn't had a lot of time to explore outside Sylva. The real test would be getting her dam to let her go, whether under the guise that she was going recruiting with her friend, or learning tricks of the land to have the advantage in a spar or fight.
Raxa wasn't an overprotective mare, but Zhenga knew that if her dam suspected something, she'd be lucky if she could sneak away successfully. She'd figure out a way to get her dam to let her tag along with Eiria later. Right now, Djinni still had some business to discuss.
Djinni said that she'd like to organize some sparring sessions among the warriors of the kingdom, a thought that had Zhenga rearing and whinnying excitedly. A nip to her withers from her dam briefly quieted the energetic youngster before the senior warrior brindled mare stepped forward.
Raxa directed her words to the queen, "I agree with your words Djinni; sparring sessions would be useful. Should you allow it, I would be willing to offer instruction to those wishing to improve on their skills, as well as provide an opponent for a sparring session should any be interested."
Anahi spoke next, stepping up next to the brindled mare, "I was discussing with my daughter perhaps a visit to Taiga and Tephra sometime in the future. Should Karaugh also wish to join, we could perhaps split into pairs or groups of three and head to meet with representatives of the other kingdoms to potentially discuss a treaty. With your permission, of course. I have little doubt some kingdoms would not want something in return though, so we should think of something as a backup just in case they want to know what an alliance could hold in their favor."
Eiria just nodded in agreement with her dam.
Zhenga bounced around some more, unable to contain her excitement, "I'm so up for some sparring sessions! I want to train with some real opponents!"
- x - x - x - x -
So I had a total of three horses speaking here; Raxa, Anahi, and Zhenga. I thought it would be somewhat repetitive to do individual posts for the three of them so, since I control all of them, I pooled it together.
She drifts as the leaves do, tethered for so long to their branches and in love with the wind, with the promise of flight and freedom, only to find it is not flying but falling as they drift down to settle with all the other broken promises. Once, she had thought she found a place, her place, some semblance of comfort in a world she was learning did not often allow for such things. It was a home beneath the perpetual autumn, a cave beneath that, a man who was a friend, who was more and nothing all at once. But she learned as all leaves do, what it is to fall, to come undone.
Maybe she was still falling.
She is with her parents when Djinni’s call comes, and at first she makes no move to answer it. But she can feel the shadows creeping closer, dark fingers climbing up her forelegs and reaching for that broken thing inside her chest and so she turns, moves, if only to outrun it. It is easy enough to slip through the forest, easy enough to remember the trails that cut through it as her feet have travelled them a hundred times in recent weeks. It takes only seconds for her to find the clearing with the irregular rock, only an instant to find the grullo and bangled mare perched near the top with bright eyes and an absent smile. It takes even less time to remind herself not to look for a different face, a dark face, one that even now starts to pull free of her memories and take shape.
She blinks, flinches softly, and his face is gone again.
But she knows, too, that it is possible, even likely, that the deepwater stallion will join his Queen atop the rocks, and suddenly his face is branded in the bottoms of her eyes. Stern, dark, distant.
As if to combat it, she settles beside a man who is his opposite, bright and white, gleaming, the only contrast of color the deep mahogany spots scattered irregularly like stars across his skin. She doesn’t recognize him, but in truth she recognizes few – she has been neglectful in meeting her fellow Sylvans. It is something she knows she must remedy, but it has been easier to hide away, to conceal herself in that false-safety of distance.
She is quiet when Djinni speaks, turning a quiet face up to the man beside her when the grullo mare introduces him as Zai, and then flinches when her own name is paired with a similar gesture. She doesn’t want to feel any eyes on her skin, not now, threadbare and ugly. This isn’t the Luster they should first know. But instead she is only quiet, softening with the hint of a smile and a dip of that delicate head toward Djinni. She says nothing, but nothing is asked of her, and so she sinks readily back into the silence, listening.
There are several who voice their thoughts or their interest, including the stallion at her side but this time she doesn’t steal another sidelong glance at him. Only when they have quieted does she speak, soft as always, silver and fragile like stars thrown across a night sky. “I wouldn’t mind visiting other lands.” The offer comes easily, perhaps too easily, and she is glad that Djinni will not know the heat that flushes her skin beneath the blue, quieted because she knows the grulllo will guess anyway. Of course Luster was eager to disappear again, at least this could be of some use to Sylva. She pauses though, considering, and then adds almost hesitantly, “I wouldn’t mind learning how to fight though, if someone would teach me.”
There isn’t violence in her heart, nor is there anger or hatred, but there is a desperate need to protect those she loves, defend those she has met, and she thinks maybe, maybe that is enough.
Arrya and Rora are here, I just don't have time to write them much. Sooo. They probably won't be able to do much by way of kingdom activities, but they live here. Will try to change that when life is less hectic.
