"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
A storm had passed over in the late afternoon, and the trees around the pregnant grullo mare still drip down a steady trickle of water, even though the storm clouds themselves have moved east. Late dusk is a pretty time in Sylva, but Djinni does not have eyes for the soft blues and purples of the land. She doesn’t have eyes for anything, really. She’s wandering.
She wanders for hours.
Not until she has stared unseeingly at the moon for nearly ten minutes does she realize where she is. The moon ripples softly, sending the soft white light dancing across the face of the tobiano mare. The movement breaks her concentration (or lack of) and she blinks. The real moon is high overhead; she has been watching its reflection from her position chest-deep in the lake.
Djinni startles, a quick intake of breath and a surge of motion that leads…nowhere.
She’s only sent another wave of ripples across the lake’s still surface, but she remains where she was, have completely forgotten exactly what she’d been doing a moment before. She’s quite forgotten everything. The entirety of her world has narrowed to a single painful sensation. It is all she feels for hours. The still water roils as she spins through it – one moment finned, the next hooved – and the froth of bubbles she creates are a soft pink above the dark red water.
The foal she carries should have been born more than two weeks ago, but sometimes these things go wrong. Sometimes, in times like these, they go very wrong.
It is fortunate then, that Djinni is just the sort to take a wrong thing and make it right.
In the end, she lays on her side, her body on the shore and her legs in the water. It’s unlikely that she would be able to stand even if she had tried. She is too tired. But she doesn’t try, because the foal half in and half out of the water is able to nurse where he lies. She’s not had time to really look at him until now, and she raises her weary head and blinks her tired brown eyes. He’s much smaller than she had expected. (She’d seen her siblings as newborns, of course, but memories fade over the decades.) He also looks like her, dark haired and pied; she doesn’t quiet that sigh of satisfaction. Of course, he looks like his father as well. His father, whose cave overlooks this lake; his father, who Djinni simultaneously hopes is far away and coming any moment.
They will have to move eventually. The flicker of her magic is all but extinguished; she can’t risk it being gutted completely. Soon, they’ll both stand. They move deeper into the woods, find shelter behind a large boulder from the cool spring night winds. Djinni will keep her son safe with nothing but the strength of her exhausted body and the warmth from her shivering chest.
Of course it was possible, he knew that. It had just never happened before. It was... new. And unnerving. And when she was there in the little meadow that day, and just vanished as soon as he looked up.. It surprised him how much it had stung. She must hate him for this, to keep so vigilantly away from him. She had never seemed the type to want children or a happy little family. Not that he could give her the latter. Perhaps she saw him as the one to have ruined her life.
All she did lately was avoid him. Or maybe they avoided each other. Things were tense ever since Luster told him, and from afar -when she was near enough, anyway- he watched her slowly grow bigger. With child. He never doubted that it was his. It was almost like he could sense it. No, like he could sense her; an intuition when she was near, a coincidental glance that just happened to land directly on her. Just like now.
There was that weird prickling sensation again, almost as if he were only imagining it as it prodded at his mind, and his eyes lifted. And there she was. Sprawled on her side, she looked so tired in this fading light, so exhausted. This was the closest they'd been in so long, and like a gravitational pull he was drawn helplessly closer. With slow and careful steps, a sharp stare locked on her, he most resembled a large feline stalking prey. But he'd already tried to kill her, hadn't he? He couldn't even remember anymore what had stopped him. Or why he'd wanted to so badly. He'd tried to kill her, and possibly ruined the life she'd wanted for herself.
It was no wonder at all as to why if she did hate him.
Her head lifted to look at the little creation she'd made. He stood near and watched, silently observing. And when she sighed in satisfaction, a knot in his chest he hadn't even been aware of eased and untangled, an odd warmth slowly, stealthily replacing it. A tension in his shoulders was freed, and he looked down at this little thing. Artfully painted like her, the natural her, the real her. The her she'd given to him once. Given an inch and stolen a mile.
But a little of himself, too. Maybe in the shape of him, in the lines of his teeny face, in the strange calm as he nursed. Not too much like him though, not too much. Not enough to call the other forward. But just enough. Just right.
His gaze slid back to her face, darkened briefly on her neck where he'd tried to tear her apart piece by piece, then to her eyes. Their natural color. He liked when she was herself with him, though her alterations usually looked good too. Maybe he just preferred when the mask, though just as attractive, was gone. Beautiful, he said softly. She looked so cold though, so tired. But he wasn't much of a source of heat, was he? And maybe she didn't even want him there. Still. He stepped around and lowered, settled against her spine before speaking quietly again.
The distance has been.. Weird? Irritating? Puzzling, different, annoying. Admittedly slightly painful in some way, which only made it more confusing, more grating. Nothing seemed to fit the feeling quite right, though. ...strange, he finally settled with and fell silent.
come down to the black sea swimming with me go down with me, fall with me, lets make it worth it
It is difficult to make out against the shadows, but the movement when he speaks is helpful, and Ivar wills his blurry eyes to focus. They do, and then his attention moves to the other face, a bit paler and easier to make out in the moonlight. Ivar doesn't smile, as some children might, he just watches with a rather somber expression on his small face. His belly is full, but the chill of the water is spreading, and discomfort eventually forces his to act.
He stands quickly, which is rather remarkable. Of course, when he falls forward on his first step and lands face first in the shallow water, his gracefulness is revealed as the fluke it was. He comes up sputtering, but he was born in the water and is not entirely shocked. He struggles more to stand this time, but eventually he trips his way over his mother's hind legs and around her rump.
With a small sigh, he steps into the small sliver of space between the bodies of his parents (which is really just a gap between their bodies and his hooves are on Djinni's back and Stillwater's side). He then drops down, wedging his body between them with a more satisfied-sounding sigh. He works his way father between them with a wiggle, and then rests his dark head against his father's chest with a contented little whuffling noise. Ivar closes his eyes and falls asleep.
Tonight Djinni is not the soft young thing she most often appears. The bright moonlight highlights a face that has passed the first bloom of youth and settled into maturity. She is not dewy, but she is somehow even more striking without it. She’s a woman grown; a mother. This is her true face, the face that – along with her earth-brown eyes – she hasn’t shown to anyone in decades. Some part of her is glad that it is the face that Ivar saw the first time; she likes that she was able to be herself with her son.
She is not so sure she likes being herself with Stillwater.
Letting her guard down near the child is different than letting it down with a monster nearby. Yet as she made his shape out in the darkness, she hadn’t tensed. She had not drained the last of her magic to whisk their son to safety. Instead she had smiled without conscious thought, reached out to him even as he settles in beside her. Stillwater is not exceptionally warm, but to a mare drained of her blood and knitted back together with magic, any heat is acceptable. She had told the blue girl that she loved him, but she is not quite sure that that particular verb fully captures the extent of emotions she feels when she thinks of Stillwater.
“He looks like my father,” she tells Stillwater, her eyes never leaving the boy between them. It’s not something that the black stallion needs to know; it’s not anything important. Djinni does not share things like this.
This is too uncertain, too much like grasping at sand. She feels unbalanced even as she presses her dark mouth to his jaw, stirring at the sensation while simultaneously fearing it will disappear in an instant. Of all the emotions she has found in the last two years, she hates fear most of all. She had not felt it before the night of Ivar’s conception. It hadn’t ripped into her with his teeth, but rather swelled swiftly and silently in the moments just before that, when her entire world had narrowed to him – only him.
“I thought you were angry with me.” Djinni says as she turns to look out at the lake and the moon’s reflection, “I wasn’t sure you’d want to know.”
04-15-2017, 08:27 PM (This post was last modified: 04-15-2017, 08:28 PM by Stillwater.)
Stillwater
His attention was drawn away at the boy's movement. At his son's movement. So odd. So new. Dark, blue-gray eyes watched as he stood quickly, then landed face-first in the water he was born in. Would maybe be raised in. Small, little splutters coughed out of him, and a strange instinct made the father urge to lift his nose from the water. But his boy was moving again, righting himself on his own without aid and scrambling in between them.
Stillwater reached toward him with a curious sniff, memorizing the scent of this one that was a part of him. A part of her. The colt wiggled further in between them, laid his head on his sire's large chest with soft little noises. Would he come to like the monster that created him, he wondered as he bent to clean his nose free of any lingering water. Or would he learn to fear him and never seek him out. And which one was best for him.
"He looks like my father," she said, and he studied the colors a little more, trying to picture a full-grown version that might have raised Djinni. He was about to look up at her when her lips met his jaw, and instead closed them, releasing a slow breath and leaning into the contact.
"I thought you were angry with me," she admitted, her eyes turning to look out across the water of their home. The water he belonged in deep, deep below the surface if only he could free himself from this body. "I wasn't sure you'd want to know". He thought on it a moment, idly touching his nose to her shoulder and reminding himself of her scent. Of theirs together, the three of them.
Would he have chosen this for them? No, certainly not. But neither could he be angry with her. She hadn't known what would happen -he hadn't either. Maybe at first he'd blamed her. Wrongly, of course. But maybe the monster was to blame, it's primal nature. Or himself. Unless that was one and the same. Sometimes he wasn't even sure. Nonetheless, it hadn't been her fault. He knew that now, and he should have done better to let her know it too.
He sighed quietly and touched her neck, silently asking for her eyes to meet his. I'm sorry, Djinni. Truth, always the damn truth. He shook his head, slow and a bit sadly. I want you to be able to tell me anything. Any time. Even things like this, that maybe had been hard for her. She hadn't had to do this alone, but saying so now wouldn't change anything, wouldn't make anything better. She didn't have to continue to do it alone either. Could he really say such a thing, though? Bind himself with his own words even more solidly than her chain at his wrist. Hers.
He glanced down at it, just a flicker, then stared out across the water. He wanted to be under there, even if this attractive anklet never left him. Even if it cut into his flesh as he changed, returned to himself. Maybe that would even force the creature to remember the kindness of people. Humanity. Morality rather than mortality. It didn't matter though. He was trapped in an in-between state, a battle between man and beast. Maybe it was best this way.
What more could he do for her though? Did she even want anything at all from him? Let me help you in this, he said quietly, firmly, yet almost a question. Almost a request. His eyes slid back to hers again, studying the earthy brown of them. Secretly admiring them, the real and natural her. Or would you prefer I stay away from him. Away from you. They were safer that way, after all, weren't they? That was probably the wisest choice. But with his gaze slipping down to him, nestled between their bodies, he wasn't sure it was the solution he wanted.
But it was safer.
come down to the black sea swimming with me go down with me, fall with me, lets make it worth it
He doesn’t move away, but she doesn’t allow herself to feel relief. It’s just for the moment, like it always is. Just for now, not for ever. She is not quite ready to believe him, and she does meet his gaze, but it is with quiet eyes that have no reply.
“I think he’s like you,” Djinni says. There is nothing in her voice, no expression on her face that suggests how she feels about what she has just said. Of course, she could mean that he was quiet like his father, or dark haired, or even that he was male. But that is not what she means, and they know it.
Her throat is too thick when she tries to speak, her mouth too uncooperative. She still cannot bring herself to ask what she has never inquired of Stillwater. Everything else but, but never quite that. She is made almost entirely of curiosity but she has never been able to bring herself to ask directly. This is different though. This is not about Stillwater. This is about Ivar, about her Ivar.
What is he?
What is her son?
“So he will need you.”
This is what parents do, isn’t it? She tells herself it is, that they make sacrifices. This is what she should do. Fathers are important, especially fathers who give their sons sharp teeth and a love of the water. Her own teeth are dull in comparison and her affection for the water a paltry imitation of love. She is not accustomed to being less of anything, and yet she knows that this is not her place.
“If you want to continue to stay away from me,” she hesitates, just for a moment, but it was never her intention to admit guilt (she is innocent of anything, after all; he’d been the one doing the avoiding), “I won’t stop you.”
She met his eyes, but gave no response. Gave no comment, no indication if being around him, seeing him, letting the boy around him, was acceptable to her or not. Not that he’d required permission; neither of them ever asked permission. But he would still rather know how she felt about it. A sharp and bladed emotion slipped into him, slid behind the cool exterior of his face as he dropped his gaze to that little piece of her with a separate heartbeat. When she finally spoke, it only sharpened that sensation, pierced it deeper into a foreign place inside him.
"I think he's like you." Dull, emotionless, indifferent.
I think he's like you. He could feel the weight of it, hear the hollow toll of it, taste the uncertainty and danger underlying the deeper meaning that had nothing to do with the physical or temperamental similarities between sire and son. He swallowed and let the dire implications sink into him without comment, without reaction. Let the dark blade of it cut through and bleed his secret distress into his tainted bloodstream. God, she must hate him. She must. She hated what he was, and he'd created her another.
"So he will need you."
He nodded silently. How much like him would this boy be? Would he house a dark spirit that takes over, become a true monster and feed without remorse? Would he even have that craving? Would he learn that damned tricky concept of love, would he be able to feel it? Would be able to lie, to break promises. Would he have another form meant to terrify the strongest hearts into submission.
Maybe he would be saved by his mother's blood in him. Maybe he would be something else, something better. But she was right. He would still need his sire. His creator.
“If you want to continue to stay away from me,” she began, hesitating. His dark eyes hardened, already disagreeing. "I won't stop you." He shook his head as he stared at her. I don't know where you go, what you do when you're away. But you know I am here. Always here. Nowhere else. She was his keeper, after all, wasn't she. Where else would he be. He couldn't really avoid her even if he'd wanted to. Maybe they'd both just kept their distance in some way. But, after Luster left, all he'd ever been was here. The water.
He softened, but looked away. I don't want to stay away from you.
come down to the black sea swimming with me go down with me, fall with me, lets make it worth it
Somewhere in the distance the sun is beginning to rise. The navy blue of the canopy over head will soon be tinted with soft shades of lavender, the purple dawn between night and day. Djinni has always liked the dawn, but tonight she finds she does not care for the reminder of passing time.
She, who has always lived for chaos, does not want things to change.
The black stallion has said – signed – that he will help their son. Djinni cannot fathom what that sort of raising will be; she’s not even entirely sure what her hand in parenting will be. Will Ivar even need her? Or will those sharp teeth she’d felt as he nursed pull him too quickly from her side? The uncertainty is grating, and acknowledging that truth is even more abrasive.
Ivar shifts between them, dreaming. Djinni looks down and presses her muzzle to his pied shoulder to quiet him, and he’s soon lost in deeper sleep.
When she looks up, it’s to find Stilwater looking back and for a moment she cannot meet his gaze. When she does, it is only because he says what she has been waiting to here, when he reminds her that this is all her fault. ’you know I am here. Always here. Nowhere else.’ Of course he is here. This is where she brought him, where she bound him, where he has no choice. She is ready to send him back, to use what little bit of power she’s regained while resting to shove him back into that dark Nerenian cave. The anger will be enough to quell the guilt, and the satisfaction of boarding him in with stone will smother the pain.
She is ready – she’s even drawn the breath to say it aloud because she has never pretended to be a truly good person – when he looks away and speaks again.
Were she not well-raised she’d be gaping, the way he throws his captivity at her only moments before telling her that he doesn’t want to stay away. This is why she has never tried, never given in tHere are too many emotions, too many thoughts, too many everything.
Without realizing it, she’s standing, leaving Ivar tucked beside his father as she leans over them. She’d not meant to get away, only to give herself space, but the scowl on her grullo face doesn’t quite clarify that. “What do you want?” She asks, since he has told her what he doesn’t want. Djinni knows the answer that she wants, but she has never been especially good at restraint, and especially not when it comes to Stillwater. “You don’t want to stay away, but do you really want to stay? Or do you want to go back, back to Nerine, to Nayl? Or do you want Luster, or the water, or something to eat?”
There is no judgment in her eyes, only frustration and jealousy. Djinni does not like this realization that her happiness is tied to something not herself; she does not like the lack of control.
04-30-2017, 04:31 PM (This post was last modified: 04-30-2017, 04:33 PM by Stillwater.)
Stillwater
He knew the moment he'd said something wrong. The line of her body stiffened in anger and she stood to hover over them, he and his boy. Maybe she might not have frowned so hard if she knew how attractive it was, that violent light in her eyes daring him to screw things up further, say something more and give her a reason. There was threat in every instance of her fury, and somehow he always managed to ignite it despite knowing just how dangerous she and her magic were to him. She could do anything at all to him, and he'd be nearly helpless. Nearly.
"What do you want?"
Oh no, not that question again. Hadn't she learned not to ask that question? What do you want. A cave. And a cave she delivered. And her body he took. And a boy she delivered. He held his silence, a tendril of fear snaking through his blood, afraid of answering that question that never seemed to turn out how she meant for it to. How either of them meant for it to. "You don't want to stay away, but do you really want to stay?" He frowned and stared up at her, his eyes flickering briefly with a naturally matching anger in defense of her sharp tone.
"Or do you want to go back, back to Nerine, to Nayl?" His brows pulled tighter and his blue-gray eyes shaded just a little grayer, just a little lighter. What the hell did that mean? He hadn't seen Nayl in... How long had it been now? Two years? Had Djinni visited her? Had Nayl spoke of him? Curious, if so, but no fault of his own.
"Or do you want Luster, or the water, or something to eat?" His eyes lightened further at the mention of Luster. His body tensed and he felt as though he were being threatened somehow. All these questions, why all these questions? He glared at her, though it only lasted an instant, and at the mention of feeding his face blanked and his gaze slid to her throat in reflex. He jerked his eyes back to hers the moment he realized it though, and forced himself to remain there in the heated brown.
Her voice lacked accusation. She didn't sound full of hate and disgust just then as she mentioned what she knew he craved. Surely, that was what she'd meant. Not eating grass, she'd never seen him eat grass like some dumb horse, had she? She knew his preference was darker, crueler, smoother, warmer. Why was the thought of it already consuming him so quickly, making his mouth feel so dry and parched. No, he wasn't hungry, or thirsty. He didn't need it, not yet.
He slowly refocused, still staring into those eyes, his face expressionless. Uncertain. Nayl? Luster? These bothered her somehow. Jealousy? Surely not. Not Djinni. Djinni who could have anyone she wanted at the blink of those thick lashes of hers. What could she possibly find enjoyable about him? He was impossibly attractive, as was the nature of what he was, but such a shallow feature would have won her over far sooner than seemed the case. Instead, he'd had to constantly prod and dig at her, trying to shred her walls to see who she was on the other side. And each time she'd brushed him off, turned him away.
Until she hadn't.
His face softened again. He could hear the quiet breathing of the boy resting against him, feel his warmth pressed into his father's body. But he never looked away from Djinni, and even found that he was slowly tracing the details of her face as he thought. Her natural face. Over brows and fiery eyes, smooth cheeks, velvet nose, supple lips. His eyes lingered there, those lips, before finally rising to meet her eyes again.
He'd meant to ask what she would name their son, hadn't he? Meant to turn the conversation to something else, something safer that probably wouldn't piss her off further as he tended to do. And yet. Instead. He commanded her in a voice gone startlingly soft and smooth, blue-gray eyes heavily intent on hers.
Kiss me.
come down to the black sea swimming with me go down with me, fall with me, lets make it worth it
Nayl had told her not to trust him.
She would not have seen his eyes slip down to her throat at the mention of eating were she not already watching them, watching as they mimicked the pre-dawn sky overhead.
Paler. Just minutely so, but enough for Djinni to see.
She’d known he was something different, but she’s never seen this before. Djinni had managed to convince herself that she wasn’t curious for an achingly long time. She’d left him to stew beneath the water, turned her eyes away from the hoofprints that ended at the water. She hadn’t asked questions, she hadn’t sated her own thirst when it comes to the black stallion. She’d let him turn the pond red with her blood but he won’t answer her question.
Kiss me. He commands her.
“No.” She replies.
The space between them is her protection. Her silver chest is steaming slightly in the cold air, warmth and water leaving her dun hide. With Ivar between them, she is safe.
Touching him will draw her in again, and it might trap her forever.
She’s not thinking of his adhesive skin, of the way he’d supernaturally kept her against him in the cave those long months before. She’s not thinking that he’ll be the one to trap her; this is a snare that she’s set and baited herself.
”I don’t share.” She’d told him those years ago, when they had first come to Sylva. “I don’t share.” She says now. He might not understand, but that’s not important. She understands, she knows. She will keep her heart – her love - to herself, she will take the admission that she had made to Luster those months ago to her grave. It never occurs to her that Luster might already have told him.
“Leave me alone, Stillwater.”
She disappears, though she leaves their sleeping son behind for now. It is not Stillwater that she distrusts, after all. It is herself.
