"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
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
When he finally surfaces, he is lost.
Beneath the water, the only meaningful directions are with and against the current. North and south mean nothing in the half-lit world of the deep; there is no use in knowing on which horizon the sun sets, because there are no horizons at all.
The water that drips from his matte black and glittering white scales is salty, and he licks the brine from his lips even as he scents the air for fresh water. The pied stallion is not truly thirsty, but the way that his hide cracks when brined is uncomfortable. He’d prefer to soak in fresh water if he is to walk on land again for any considerable time.
Nothing he smells is too familiar, but the melding of scents tells him he is either in the Meadow or the Field. Neither is of particular interest to the dark-eyed stallion, but he has no aversion to them any more than he does to anything on land.
This apathy is new.
It had appeared about the time that he had decided to sink below the sea at the edge of Loess, but as far as Ivar remembers there had been no trigger. This was not like the slow growth of his scales or the gradual mastery of his hypnotism – this is something different. There are no words for it yet, but he finds that solitude is easier, and so he keeps to himself.
He’d planned to anyway, but on his quest for water he inevitably crosses paths with a stranger.
Ichor is learning that she doesn’t like daylight as much in this original shape of moth-mare. (Well, she’s almost a mare but a thin scaly six-legged absurd one at that!) Night is better for her, easier to see in and move in when there is only the soft light of a moon and some stars or no light at all, just shadows. Daylight makes her sleepy and sluggish, as she drags herself slowly through the meadow in search of something… Oh yes, the river! Just the mere thought of it makes the gills about her neck flutter in anticipation even though she has not decided if she’ll go beneath to shut out the light. She hasn’t quite tested the effect that going underwater would have on her delicate wings styled in the color and size of an atlas moth’s.
Hm, she muses to herself inside her odd head. Would they fare beneath the river or would she ruin their powdery delicateness by getting them wet? Wait - moths fly and flutter in the rain! Pah! Her nectar-seeking tongue curls around the peal of laughter that wants to fly from her mouth and she stuffs it back in her throat with a swallow. She’s some unique hybridization of moth, lamprey, and horse so she should survive a dip in the river, or a nap because that’s more along the lines of what Ichor was thinking. A cold wet nap in the river’s embrace, just drifting along wherever the current carried her until she woke up. The temptation was too great to ignore and so she puttered onward and nearly into another - -
Her black compound eyes worked to piece together the shape of him (she only knows this from the antennae atop her head that have tiny sense receptors all over them and pick up on the distinctive pheromones of horse and male at the same time her nostrils identify him as such) from amidst the harsh daylight. At first there are many of him until they coalesce into one, as she drew up short to avoid a collision. Instinctively, her atlas moth wings flare up defensively as if to confuse and dazzle him with their spots and color even though Ichor has sensed no immediate threat from him. If anything, he seemed apathetic and she was inclined to lay her wings flat after a moment or two and let him pass.
He seemed as intent upon a destination as she did.
But her gills fluttered at her neck, reacting to something some small part of her recognized as water though she knew the river was still a ways off yet. It made her tilt her absurdity of a head sideways as her compound eyes kept trying to keep him in focus.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, clearly not socialized at all.
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
For an awkwardly long moment, Ivar is quiet.
He doesn’t accept her apology and he certainly doesn’t stop staring.
Never in his life has he seen something like this creature. It feels like a horse because it sings
(prey)
But there is very little familiar about it. Those wings – where are the feathers? Those legs – why are there so many? Are those horns on her head – why do they seem so fragile?
Everything about the stranger seems fragile, really. It’s only then, when the empathy finally catches up with his shock, that he realizes that he has been staring (and probably doing so open-mouthed) for an embarrisngly long amount of time.
“I..oh. uh.” The scaled stallion is so rarely at a loss for words that this situation makes it all the worse.
“I’m sorry too. For staring I mean. I’ve never seen.... I haven’t…” He is making it worse. How terrible. Best to start over, a fresh beginning.
Ichor can feel him staring.
It makes her uncomfortable. She thought herself a fantastic beast but he’s been quiet for so long now that she’s beginning to question that. What if she isn’t that fantastic like she’s always thought? What if she is actually *gasp* grotesque?! It’s a damn good thing she is struggling to keep his face in focus and cannot really make out the open-mouth gape he’s got going on. She might have then quipped about bugs flying into it if he left it open for so long but as is, there are small tremors of agitation running through her combination of scales and skin. Enough to make her six legs dance underneath her.
He’s scaled too. She can make that much out as she stretches her neck out to see him better, blinking her big compound eyes at him. Ichor doesn’t know it but she looks like a bug-eyed monster. But back to his scales, which look stronger and thicker and not at all as fragile as hers. Hm, interesting. He’s not all horse either which puts her somewhat at ease even as he stumbles all over himself in small blurted out words that sound like nonsense to her. Okay, so he’s just as socially inept as her - that’s good, common ground, she thinks with a firm nod as she pulls her strange head back and he blathers on about staring.
Ichor hadn’t noticed. Okay, she had but she can’t for sure say if she’s used to it or not. No one looked at her much. Or rather, she kept to her fantastic little self and ignored all the rest. Rare instances like this just sort of happened and were of course, awkward as all hell and left Ichor nervous because she had no real sense of manners or decorum. That’s what happens when the Mountain taketh away then giveth back! She welcomed back her odd self and kissed the ordinariness goodbye but now, guessing at how he’s a stuttering staring mess, she must not be that common of a sight at all.
“No, no, you probably haven’t.” she assures him, still finding it strange to talk around the nectar-seeking tongue that occasionally sticks out of her mouth and does it nectar-seeking thing. Basically it uncurls and hangs out between her lips before rolling back up and tucking itself behind her teeth. Right now though, it unfurls to its full length and determines he carries no nectar on himself and there’s none nearby to be had. Then her gills decide to flutter and make themselves known once more as he introduces himself and she makes an apologetic face.
“I’m Ichor. Don’t be sorry for staring Ivar. I didn’t realize I was that… um, odd looking.”
It never bothered her before. She hadn’t noticed or cared. Ichor embraced her weird hybridized self and had only ever been around the strange but familiar company of her family. She had no idea she could have such a profound effect on others like this. It left her a little sad looking, one of the four front legs scuffing at the dirt. Ears and antennae both drooping just a bit.
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
The continued silence between them builds, an awkward pressure at his core that he finds both unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Ivar is so rarely lost for words, so rarely anything but polite and socially at-ease that he is utterly lost. How does he navigate back to safer conversational waters when each second that ticks back pulls him farther into black water?
He is floundering, and when she finally speaks it is like a lifeline. He does not grab it too quickly, wary of getting caught in an unexpected riptide. When he long tongue unfurls and reaches toward him, he is grateful. If Ivar had tried to reply to her first statement, he’d have probably turned into a blathering idiot at the sight.
Horses that are not quite horses. There are a few exceptions – like Castile with his draconic appearance and his sister with her canine fangs – but they are few and far between. Never has the piebald seen a horse that seemed part insect.
It’s perfectly fascinating and he can already tell from the droop of her head that he’s given her the idea that she is exactly the opposite. Odd? Most certainly.
“What are you, exactly?” He asks. Better that than ask: Can you see? Her eyes are large, but he’s not exactly sure how to meet her gaze directly. There are a thousand tiny shapes to look at; is there a middle? “Are your mom and dad like you?” Ivar speaks from the privilege of a childhood with both parents; he knows that not everyone knows their family but doesn’t always remember it. She might be the child of a magician and a honest-to-goodness moth after all, he reasons. Mother has told him that magicians will romance anything that moves (and even sometimes things that don’t – there’s a horse wandering about that’s half daisy, after all)
Ichor can feel the awkwardness of the situation building. It feels like a pressure inside her too, that stifles the air in the lungs and makes the blood sluggish in the veins. That could be her natural aversion to daylight too, that does that but she thinks it is the awkward hilarity (there is a certain amount of hilarity in the beautiful meeting the beast and the silence that ensues) mounting that doesn’t help much either. She blinks her compound bug eyes, losing him as he fractures into a hundred or more different pieces of black and white that she tries to reassemble before the next blink has him gone again. Truth be told, she’s surprised he’s still there at all.
Only mother and father had known or guessed at what she might look like. She had been born so normal after the Mountain moved everything all around. That’s how she’d come across a couple of sisters, normal as can be and not an ounce of weirdness to them. Ichor hadn’t realized then that she might have actually been beautiful as only a normal foal could be. She thought beauty was the way her father looked in full moth-horse dress or mother with her gills and lamprey mouth dripping water and river-weed from her strange skin. Ichor knew she was like them, somehow, despite how normal she’d been at birth.
She knew something was always missing until the Mountain simply gave it back while she was sleeping. What Ichor didn’t realize, is that now, as fantastic as she thought herself to be, others might not think the same as she did. They might find her very odd and because of it, shun her but he’s still here. He - him - Ivar, because he has told her his name and there is importance in that, however scant it might be but she believes there is. If he had no intentions of staying, of talking to her, he wouldn’t have even given her that much. Because of it, Ichor takes a deep spine-steeling breath and stands a little straighter given that he’s much taller than she is.
“I’m equus lepidoptera, or a moth horse is the easiest way to understand it.” Ichor is happy to educate him on what she is. There is even a quirk to her lips that could be considered a smile given that her odd tongue seems to be poking out again. (It gets in the way, a lot.) “Dad is just like me, equus lepidoptera. Mom is equus lampetra, meaning she’s a lamprey horse which is why I have the gills. I haven’t tried them out yet but for all intents and purposes, they should work as I’d expect them to.” Here, a tilt of her head because she is considering the river and her gills, if they’d really allow her to breathe underwater. She’s a bit scared, since a moderate dose of fear is good for the health of brain and body but at the same time… Ichor doesn’t want to accidentally drown herself.
The glint of light on his body catches her compound eyes and she refocuses on him, almost stretching her neck out a bit just so she can see him better. It kind of looked liked he had scales too, not small and flaky like hers as her eyesight grows more detailed and picks up on the smooth hardness of his. Hm, fish or dragon, she thinks to herself before blurting out - “You have scales!” because her eyes are becoming more detailed the more she concentrates on focusing on him, or his fur and scales to be more specific. “But you still pass for normal enough though.” There is almost a trace of wistfulness to her voice, because she was once normal and in meeting him, thinks maybe normal is easier than being fantastic and frightening.
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
She says the words so formally, long mouthfuls of descriptive sound that don’t mean anything to him at all. Equus, he catches both times. That is something like equine, right? She’s at least a little horse? The thoughts spiral inside his head in a curious whirl. He is finding it very difficult to concentrate to what she is saying, as his flicking ears hear the pulsing of Ichor’s heartbeat and he instinctively categorizes its fluttering as something
(good.)
Brown eyes blink slowly, catching the light that sparkles off the not-so distant water. When the golden creature tilts her head, those eyes follow the curve of her throat until they settle on something familiar. They stand out against the papery scales of her neck, something curiously familiar.
The interal whisper of:
(take her, take her now)
stutters into silence at the revelation, and there is a noticeable rise in intensity in the way Ivar meets her gaze. It is not threatening or even embarrassing, the way he physically reacts, but it is not quite an indication of relaxation and comfort. He straightens as she does, revealing his full height and the way his mask and mantle of opalescent scales catch the light.
“You have scales,” she shouts, and Ivar can’t keep in a smile. It is as bright as the sunlight off his scales, their nature of their marine dragon impossible to miss now. “But you still pass for normal enough though” She adds, and there is something not quite right in her voice. The piebald stallion has never been good at emotions, so he doesn’t pick up on the wistfulness in her tone. He answers as if it’s a question she’s directly asked him.
“It’s easy when most of them don’t stand out” He says, and indeed the majority of his body is a matte black, not so different from horsehide from a distance. Even his blindingly white legs, shoulders, and face are only glistening so brightly because of his recent extended swim. Dust and grime mutes them easily, and prior to this swim it has been months since his last true swim.
Equally direct as he interprets her statement as having been, Ivar asks: “Why haven’t you tried out your gills yet?” There is naked interest in his expression now, he truly wants to know.
“Breathing underwater is the best.”
(the best.)
The leggy tobiano horse has never met anyone this much like him – only Ivar and his father were below the water. It was them and it was prey, but lately it has only been Ivar and prey. It is a lonely existence, one that he does not enjoy as he should. He’s not fully kelpie after all. Some part of him still longs for the company of a band around him. This creature, as odd as she may be, she is also
(not prey. she is safe.)
He is not sure why, but he is more certain of this than he has ever been of anything in his life.
Ichor grows nervous. Her wings shift and shiver and settle themselves against along her back and sides. She almost paws a hoof at the dirt until he pins her fast and hard with an intense look. It makes her focus wholly upon him and his face swims into sight better than before. He looks… cunning? Sharp? Interested? She hasn’t figured out that for a moment, it was almost predatory because he never wavered. But her focus on his face shatters the moment he straightens himself up to his full height and the light begins to glint off his scales again.
The opalescence of them is a delightful distraction and she almost goes to him, can feel the itch to get closer and trace her lips across each scale until she is satisfied that it is only light that makes and chases pearly rainbows through them. Nothing is like his smile though, something that her odd cheer brings out of him and she smiles back, unable to help herself. “Oh, true…” she mumbles, making the connection that most probably don’t easily observe the scales on their skin like she has or he has. Her own scales are similar in that regard; they can pass easily for soft downy fur.
Connections like this make Ichor like him all the more, that and his tolerance of her since he still hasn’t taken off running for the hills like she expects him to do any moment now. Instead he redirects the conversation from scales to gills and she tilts her head to the side again, not quite sure how to answer him. This part of her was so very new and she had never given it much thought until now, even though she was as much her mother as she was her father. That and the river kept beckoning her… How could she rationalize that innate fear of her gills failing her underwater though? He says it’s the best and that captures her attention and lets an answer spill out of her odd mouth;
“I’m afraid.”
It is as simple as that.
Or Ichor is that simple.
He’ll understand her answer on a very basic level but Ichor is afraid for her delicate wings, how will they hold up against the river’s currents? Will her scaly fur survive the plunge in the depths? What if her gills fail her and she drowns, sodden as she is, she’ll just sink right to the bottom and expire there. Ichor wonders if he has ever felt like this, but how could he? She isn’t aware that he is kelpie and dragon, just that he is bejeweled in brilliant scales of black and white that shine like pearls hidden in shells.
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
“Don’t be.” He replies. Easier said than done, Ivar supposes, and he turns away.
He is heading toward the river, leaving the quivering champagne creature alone after all. It seems that way, at least until he looks back over his pale shoulder at where Ichor stands.
“You coming?” Calls the piebald stallion, pausing midstep to see if the rainbow-eyed mare will come to the water with him. Fear might hold her in place, but it has never done so to Ivar, so he does not think of it as a possibility. Of course she will come to the water. She will take a deep breath of the water and it will flow down her downy neck exactly like it is supposed to.
After all, Ivar has never accidentally breathed water into his lungs. If anything, he’s more likely to forget he is drinking and lose a mouthful to his gills. Surely the same will be true for a creature that is part eel?
He tells her not to be, like it is the easiest thing in the world to stop being afraid.
Easier said than done! If she could give up the irrational fear just like that, she would be glad to do so. But the more she thinks about it, which takes a matter of moments - the same kind that are often measured in heartbeats and breaths and the sound of footsteps walking off - wait! What?! Ichor blinks her big bug eyes at his receding figure. He did not just leave her standing there mid-thought like that! But he did. Except he calls back to her and just like that, Ichor forgets her fear.
“O-Okay,” she trips over the word as she spits it out towards him and gathers her awkward self on six legs and follows. She can tell he is moving closer to the river. Not only does the sound of it grow louder in her ears but there is a certainty to him that makes her trust him. Then again, Ichor was perhaps prone to trusting to just about anyone or anything that even deigned to give her a moment of their time. She was just that lonesome for a bit of company to keep. It amazes her feeble brain that he actually expects her to just let go of the fear but she’s doing just that - pushes it away like it is nothing but dirt beneath her plentiful hooves.
She pauses beside him and cocks her head as if to say, you sure this a good idea? Ichor might be blind in her trust of him but she thinks that he would not lead her astray. Her conviction finds faith in his - if he thinks she can do it, then she must be able to do it. After all, she is part eel since no moth on heaven or earth has ever had gills! She’s the first of her impossible kind and she’ll be damned if she doesn’t impress him somehow. Not that she cares much for impressions but well, he’s the first to pay her any sort of mind so there’s that.
“I can do this,” she mutters under her breath.
Her wings are tucked close to her sides.
Four front legs are braced on the riverbank and the back two tip her just a bit more forward.
Her tail lashes against her flanks.
Then without further ado, Ichor splashes into the river and starts to navigate to the deepest part. She finds the middle of it and where her feet no longer touch the bottom then with a big dramatic intake of breath, she sinks below the water and starts to… drown! Oh god! Her mind goes into panic mode then just goes black and blank. That’s when her gills start to take over and her brain clicks back into place and she makes a bubbly little “Oh.” with her mouth. She can breathe underwater after all! Wait, where is he? He should be here too, she thinks, not really knowing that Ivar is far more adept at this water business than she is.
