"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
something has been taken from deep inside of me; the secret I've kept locked away no one can ever see.
The sun is bleak and waning; its rays shrouded within the evening fog that has begun to settle in. Shedding its last remnants of light between dense, brittle branches, the sun begins its destined descent behind the mountain that looms off in the distance, leaving darkness in its wake. The fog does not stay at bay, soon weaving its way through the dense foliage and settling mere feet above the frigid forest floor.
Gently, it laps along the hardened lines of his muscled, scarred form, which scarcely moves within the shadows aside from the occasionally drawn out shifting of his chest as he breathes. Hardened with resolve, his piercing red eyes are the only source of color as the starless night falls, and soon there is nothing left to see but dried, fallen leaves and small, residual piles of snow.
It is within the embrace of frigid evenfall that he allows himself to falter to his own thoughts; the memories too sweet to savor but too sour to swallow. He is not without remorse, or regret, as the last remnants of winter slides across his darkened skin, caressing him with its polarizing touch. It reminds him of sparse pine, of naturally carved caves and the brutality of ice. The Tundra. Mere memories that were no longer tangible or touchable, except only within the desolation (and desperation) of his own mind.
He could still remember the way frost so gently encased his heavily muscled body, or the way it seemed to branch out from the very depths of his cracking, fragmented soul, filling every void and crevice within him with ice and snow. It was a sensation he longed to feel again, but fate had dealt him a cruel hand - where ice had once lingered, he only burned - his flesh tingling from the simmering heat that threatened to burst from within.
Grumblesnakes had been unkind.
Though he had never tasted the sweet emblazoning fire that still burned within, and though he had never wielded its power, the flames continued to flicker inside, warming what had once been so frigid. The contrast of hot versus cold agitates his nerves, which dance wildly within the descending darkness, evoking a grunt of frustration from the pit of his chest. Finally, he stirs - aching to feel the still but icy air against his skin, despite how the fire is still stoked within by his haunting memories.
He is wary of using the fire – there is something insidious about the way it burns inside of him; threatening to consume him in its blistering heat, and the temptation of its power. The memories of blood spilled, and of his own skin blistered and melting beneath the heat of a fiery exoskeleton surfaces from the darkest recesses of his mind as he wanders aimlessly through the thicket. Quietly, he contemplates how easily the dry branches raking against his skin would incinerate, if only he chose to set the flame.
He contemplates how it would burn him, too.
Alas, he is not lost to his thoughts for long. He is quiet, and still, his dark red eyes searching the dark shadows for a long moment. There is something - someone - tucked away within the shadows of nightfall. Softly, with his once rich, warm voice dry and rough from disuse, he murmurs into the thickness of dusk.
”Show yourself.”
wounds so deep they never show; they never go away. like moving pictures in my head, for years and years they've played.
She has not left the woods of Sylva in a very long time.
The land beneath the fiery trees lacks nothing; with the fall of Pangea she even has the sea. What appeal could the rest of Beqanna hold for her? Somewhere, a small voice cries out for adventure, but she has spent years smothering the call. It’s little more than a whine now, a soft pleading when she has nothing else to distract her, easy to ignore. Easier still, when she satisfies her urge to wander with simple jaunts to the common lands.
This journey to the forest is no adventure, but it is a place that is not Sylva, filled with horses that she does not pass every day. It is enough for now.
She stands quietly in the shadows, content to watch the unfamiliar faces trickle past. They are all headed somewhere, many of them distracted by their own thoughts. The forest at dusk does not seem to be a place for the cheerful , but Djinni is not bothered. She is not here to make herself happy, only to be somewhere that she had not been. She has memories in this forest, many of them hazy – few worth remembering.
She is reaching for one when she hears approaching footsteps. He is easy to spot even in the dark woods – motion that is not the swaying of branches in the wind – but she does not step away from her thicket. She doesn’t intend to at all, but the black stallion spots her when the others hadn’t, pausing beside her hiding place and demanding that she reveal herself. The mare does briefly consider disappearing, but she has not come to the forest only to go home, and she does as he requests.
Though the light is (barely) brighter beside the stallion than it had been in the thicket, Djinni is still easy to miss. Most of her body is a deep rich brown that mimics the woods behind her, with forelegs and haunches that are striped black and white much like sunlight filtered through thin trees. Her sea-green eyes stand out in her pale face, and bemused smile she offers the taller stranger is a pretty one.
Djinni is always lovely, even when colored like an okapi. She tilts her head upward to meet the larger stallion’s gaze and the last of the sunlight catches the golden rings in her ears. They match the bands around her ankles, which clink gently as she resettles her weight now that she is still.
“Did you need something?” She asks, her voice soft and low, “Or did you just want to wake me?” There’s no malice in her voice, but nor is there any sign of weariness in her green eyes. She’d not been sleeping, that much is clear.
something has been taken from deep inside of me; the secret I've kept locked away no one can ever see.
”One can never be too careful in the darkness of the wood,” he says quietly, his voice a rumbling mumble from the tight confinement of his throat – but there is such an eerie stillness within the thicket, and so it would not be difficult to hear him. He is silent, then, tracing the soft curve of her cheek, the richness of her skin, the faint striping that lay across her legs – and the unusual metal trinkets wrapped around her ankles; the bleak sunlight barely stirs a glimmer from it but nonetheless, it catches his eye. She is unfamiliar to him, and yet somehow, there is an uneasiness settling within the hearth of his chest – perhaps he should know of her – but alas, with the past put aside, he will undoubtedly know her now.
”Forgive me. It wasn’t my intention to disturb you.”
The burning red of his gaze is settled on the seafoam green of her own, searching the flecks of gold tucked within for any flinching or stirring of fatigue. Finding none, he is cautious – she is lucid, and wide-awake – he is no fool, but nor is she. Her dark, but supple mouth is upturned with a wide, and lovely smile, but his own does not even so much as twitch. He shifts his weight from one leg to another, as the fading sunlight touches the marred, heavily blemished surface of his skin, dipping into the worn, pale scarring, but his eyes never leave hers.
”I heard movement, and there are worse things to find in a forest.”
His tone is softened – some semblance of humor interlaced between each word, but he is still guarded. The telltale crackling of magic is not rife within the air, but he cannot be certain as to the extent of her power – or if she is in possession of any power at all.
He does not think that she will care (she might scoff, turn away, or vanish into the thin air of evenfall), but as a symbol of no ill will, his gruff voice rises again, echoing gently off the nearest oak, scratching roughly into the dark inkiness of his flank.
”Offspring, of Tephra.”
She could take it, turn away from it, or offer her own in return.
Either way, he would not be discontent.
wounds so deep they never show; they never go away. like moving pictures in my head, for years and years they've played.
There are worse things to find in a forest, he says.
“Are there?” she replies with a smile.
It’s a soft smile, nothing malevolent or untoward. She does not look frightening, she knows, not even with her puzzlingly patterned coat. She is small and pretty and laboring beneath an impressively pregnant belly; she’s no more terrifying than an emerald deer would be. Beqanna is full of oddities; Djinni is just another in an endless line.
For a creature as self-absorbed as she is, the thought is infuriating.
It doesn’t show on her face. Nothing shows on her face anymore, not since her pledge of loyalty.
She only flicks her brown ears forward from the tangle of black mane. Offspring of Tephra. King of Tephra, if Warrick is to be believed. Djinni had rather liked the star-hearted young stallion, and she is inclined to believe him, even if she’d not heard the words directly from the horse’s mouth.
In an instant, the brown mare reflects back on their conversation prior to this admission. He’d been polite, but not overly apologetic. Fitting for a king, she thinks, though perhaps standards have changed. She’s never quite sure of herself in this new Beqanna with its new lands. She still dreams of the tall pines of the Chamber and the windswept canyons of the Desert. There is nothing like that here anymore. Perhaps there is no one like the kings she’d known anymore.
Here there is only Nayl and the Tephran Wolf King; now that Magnus no longer rules the volcanic Tephra, Djinni knows very few of the monarchs of this realm. Her parents would be ashamed, she thinks as she watches the moonlight play across the thick scars of her companion’s side. She should be better informed.
“Djinni,” she tells him. “From Sylva.”
And then, because she is equal parts curiosity and a genuine attempt at politeness: “What keeps you out so late?”
