"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
She comes, as Ivar had known she would, and he watches her curiously as she stands beside him, staring into the water.
The words she says seem more for her own benefit than his, and the pied stallion’s attention drifts. He traces the odd scales of her skin (more visible now that she stands beside him rather than in front of him) and then the paper-thin span of her wings. They are like nothing he’s ever seen before, and he’s reaching out to touch them just as she tucks them tightly in preparation. The movement reminds him what he has been waiting for.
He’d thought she’d just duck her head into the water, take a breath, see how it felt.
Instead, it seems that she’s chosen all or nothing, and leaps into the river without much warning.
Intrigued at every level – adventurer, kelpie, stallion – he follows after her, his own descent into the water far more graceful than hers. There’s a long exhalation of bubbles –typical, he decides, for air to leave and water remain – and then she is oddly still for a little too long. He’s coming closer, concern in his dark eyes, and then she blinks her large eyes open again. They glitter in the low light below the water, rather like his own pale scales. Ivar smiles, and tilts his head in a nonverbal:
“What do you think?” Speaking under the water is something he’s never quite managed, and even if he had, the current is likely to sweep any sound away before it reaches her. Ischor does not look as though she’s flailing, which must mean that her gills are working as expected. As he watches her, Ivar realizes that he’s never been below the water like this with anyone but his father. He’s taken mares down, of course, but their eyes have always been closed (for any number of reasons). Golden Ichor is watching him though, her unique eyes focused on his. He feels strangely seen for the first time, and odd sensation when he is so accustomed to being alone below the water.
10-20-2017, 11:11 AM (This post was last modified: 10-20-2017, 11:12 AM by ichor.)
Ivar knows her better than she knows herself!
He knew she’d come to the lure of the river and subside beneath it to test her gills. It was a challenge that Ichor couldn’t refuse. Which also made her a bit more reckless in his company because she just plunged right in without regard to the depth of the river or the murkiness of it. She supposed none of those things mattered as long as she could breathe underwater and she seemed to be doing just fine at that now.
It isn’t long before he joins her, as she knew he would.
Ivar seemed to feel a stronger compulsion from the water than she did but she felt the way the water moved for him. No, that’s not quite right either. It embraced him and moved with him in a subtle dance that did not make Ichor the least bit envious of him but rather all the more appreciative. He seemed at home beneath the water as he smiles at her and she smiles back at him, not in the least bit worried about bubbles escaping between her teeth or sucking in a mouthful of water.
She is surprised to see him a bit better down here, as if the water amplifies her compound sight. Or she’s imagining that she’s seeing him better as he tilts his head in a question asking her opinion of it. Ichor’s smile broadens, a pale beaming smear beneath the haloed effect of her hair about her face as she bobs her head up and down in a concise assessment of her like for this underwater realm. This is only the river, she wonders if she can tolerate the saltier seawater. What must it be like under the sea?
For the longest time, he watches her and she watches him.
Her six legs move on occasion to keep her suspended at the proper depth, otherwise she figures she’d just float like a bloated whale on top of the river. She moves her head in an indication to him to show her more. This is a whole new world for her and one she wants to explore to the fullest!
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
Her golden coat has been darkened by saturation and shadow, but her expression remains the same. Wide eyed – very wide eyed – but not fearful. For a long while he watches her. It is probably an uncomfortable amount of time (or it could be only a heartbeat), but he has no concept of time passing at all. The kelpie is accustomed to being driven by instinct in all areas of his life; it is simply something he has accepted. He is always hunting, but he either directs or lets it roam wild; there is no intermediate level of control.
Or at least, there hadn’t been.
It reminds him of Isobel for a moment, of the way he had not wanted to turn the water red with her. That had been equally as startling, but that moment had lasted barely an instant. This is longer than that, a very long time without the need to either seduce her or drown her. The latter is what he truly craves, but the former whets his appetite to a controllable level. Now, with fall shivering into winter, there are less opportunities for the more socially acceptable option.
He’d half expected to find someone on his way to the river – perhaps a starry eyed girl with dreams of a fantastic adventure or an older mare in need of a distraction – and there is certainly still a hungry beast within his chest.
The pied stallion moves closer, watching the fan of her amber hair in the water, and then the shimmer of her too-soft wings. His gaze is more intense than before, but as he reaches out gingerly, he is immensely gentle. For just a moment they are touching – his muzzle to the joint of her wing and shoulder – and then he is pulling away again, looking no more satisfied than before.
She is real, and alive, and is not prey.
He simply does not understand.
There will be time later, he decides. He only needs to keep her nearby, to monitor his own reaction. Surely there will be a change or an explanation for this odd phenomenon.
The riverbed is smooth, soft and sandy clay. Ivar has always sunk – perhaps the result of his thick scales, for he does not remember his father struggling so – and he walks most comfortably at the lowest depths. Ichor, on the other hand, seems lighter and he wonders how effective her wings might be underwater – or if they’d fall apart completely at the first beat against the river current.
Either would be fascinating to watch, he knows. Raising his head, he gestures up stream. The river bends a few hundred meters ahead, the way unclear. Ivar has already been downstream in this river; upstream past that bend is a mystery. It is perhaps not the safest choice, but Ivar has never been the fearful type.
Beneath the river, he is brighter than on land. His scales take on a better shimmer here, the pale abalone-like ones almost glow. The darker blacker ones remind her of shiny black stones unearthed by a multitude of hooves that had no idea what kind of treasures their feet churned up in gallops and sliding stops across the dirt in some places. She had seen such stones before, as a foal with far more normal eyesight than she has now but she keeps her focus on him, compound eyes awash with his watery shape in between the shadows and the places where the light is able to pierce the river’s gloom.
Down here, time passes differently than on land. She has nothing to count the passage of hours (or heartbeats) by and Ichor doesn’t care to. Her fascination is paramount to all else, and him of course, since he is there too. Not just there, but encouraging and looking at her. If his constant stare is meant to cause discomfort, than she cannot feel it - she grins at him, somehow goofy even underwater for all that it almost makes her just a tad bit more graceful from the flutter of her gills to the way the river-light moves on the wings pressed tight to her sides. Bits of them still fan out and mimic fins unbeknownst to her.
She is looking at something under the river when she feels the current of him buffett her as he moves closer. Ichor cranes her head to look at him, curious. His muzzle finds the joint of wing and shoulder and rests there for the length of a heartbeat. She is surprised by how infinitely gentle his touch had been, though she cannot say she had expected anything other than that from him since he showed her no harm the entire time they’ve been together. He might have given her a few odd looks, no more odder than the ones she gave him, but she felt no threat from him. Not even down here, in a world that he was clearly more at home in than she could ever be.
Somehow, they are deeper than she first realized. Panic does not seize her and she thinks it should even as she turns to follow him with her compound eyes. Except he is sinking fast and his feet touch the bottom, stirring up small clouds of silt that do not seem to bother her. He starts to walk a few steps along the bottom and Ichor’s mouth almost drops open until she remembers that she’ll swallow water and nix the function of her gills in doing so. A few bubbles escape her mouth just to show her lapse in concentration for the moment as he raises his head and gestures upstream. She doesn’t know if he’s been there or not, is not aware he knows downstream like the back of his hoof, but she trusts him or else she’d not be down here like this, breathing underwater and seeing a whole new world.
Except now there comes the problem of movement. She has managed to keep herself submerged but buoyant and now she has to conquer that. Ichor reaches the only conclusion that she can - she might not be able to walk underwater but she’ll damned if she can’t swim! Besides, she has four legs in the front and two in the back to aid her in this strange quest to follow him. Somehow, Ichor manages to pull her six legs into some form of synchronized swimming and manages to draw even with his flank, well her nose is anyway. She is nothing if not determined!
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
There it is again.
That odd sensation that is neither murderous nor lustful.
Ivar’s range of emotion is rather minimal – rage, desire – and the odd pressure in his chest is neither of those. They remain, of course, the duo behind his existence, but they are softened somehow. Were they drowned in the water, he wonders? This is an entirely new situation for him, after all – perhaps the world below the surface is as different from dry land as it is a world beyond the stars.
When she swims past him, Ivar stops, allowing her to take the lead. Ichor’s back is within reach, and Ivar reaches out to let his muzzle brush over it as she passes him. His mouth is half open, his sharp teeth revealed but harmless. It would be easy to take her, he knows, to drain the life from her as she moans in ecstasy beneath him. He could, and there is no denying that part of him still wants to, but he does not. That little part is what makes him unsure, what makes him hesitate.
Not prey, he knows, but also not kelpie.
If she were the latter, he’d have known. There is no denying the recognition of his own kind, but Ichor is not it. She is something in between, something that defies the two categories that define the parameters of Ivar’s entire existence.
She is almost past him now, and he shakes the weight of thought from his mind with a physically shake of his head. The tangled dreads of his mane drift in the water around him as he moves forward, closer to the bend in the river and the unknown.
Safe.
That is the sensation she feels when she is with him. Dimly, part of her is aware that she barely knows him but Ichor rationalizes that she knows him well enough to trust herself with him. He has shown no proclivity to harm her and has caused her no undue stress or fear, therefore he is deemed safe. Granted, she has little to by as far as her assumptions go because she has only ever spent time in her odd family’s company. Ivar is the first she has bothered to talk with outside of their close-knit huddle and that is only because she hasn’t seen hide nor hair of any of them in quite some time and well, Ichor had grown lonely as she’d started to grow up.
Lonely and stunted as a bristlecone pine.
Since she wasn’t all there in the head… and was dafter than most.
She can feel him stop behind her, allowing her to just keep swimming. Ichor basks in how synchronized her six legs are down here. It’s not the same as galloping on land which is something she just looks ridiculous doing, with the six legs and her big atlas moth wings flaring out to catch the wind. Ichor probably resembles some odd DaVincian boat of slapdash mechanics when she runs on land. Not that she knows who DaVinci is or what a boat is… or that she’s just ridiculous. Well no, that’s not true - she is coming to realize that more and more, since hey, she’s a moth-horse swimming underwater. That’s downright ridiculous, even for Beqanna’s standards these days.
Ichor slows before the bend of the river and the unknown, slows and floats, waiting him out. He is curiously detached and quiet as he swims towards her. What has he been thinking about? Her head tilts to the side, as she studies him and notices for the first time that he lacks gills like her, so how is he managing to do this? She’ll have to ask him later, when they are on land and opening her mouth won’t result in gulping down water and potentially drowning because of her own stupidity. He must be part fish, she decides, since he has scales after all and can swim underwater like she can. Satisfied with this simple explanation, she flashes him a smile, a few bubbles trailing up to the surface from between her teeth.
Where to now? She seems to ask him with her tipsy ears and big buggy eyes.
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
Ivar is not sure when the decision to
(keep her)
had been made, but he is entirely certain that he will do so. She is unlike a kelpie in the same way that sex is unlike feeding: an palatable substitute for his instinct. He is uninterested in either now, that curious limbo that being underwater has always given him, but he is still infinitely curious.
Would she want him?
The thought comes unbidden. Why would it matter? is the more expected – and immediate – reaction. Even if she does not, she will eventually. Ivar has always lacked patience above the water; it is an odd sensation now. Pleasant, he decides, but odd. Best to return to what is more normal, he decides, and returns his muzzle to its curious exploration of her shoulder. The joint where her wings emerge is fascinating, and he is just a bit more thorough in his tactile examination than might be necessary.
It had worked with Isobell, but she had been strong. He is not sure the same is true of feathery Ichor, and he is unwilling to risk damaging her. Rather than sink his claim into her with a bite, he whispers it into her mind as he slowly slides ahead of her in the water, glancing back to her excited face with his hip still brushing against her shoulder.
“You want to come with me” he tells her, “To stay with me. You need to be mine. Mine. You’re mine.” He cannot be sure that it is effective; there had clearly been something else in the changes that Isobell had undergone. To repeat the experiment exactly could be disastrous, so he allows himself an alteration. Perhaps it will work anyway, he thinks as he steps onto a submerged log and looks back at his Ichor. The water here is warmer than he’d expected.
Ivar follows the heat, rising higher in the water until he finds the source. A narrow channel of water, coming from the south. From Loess, he realizes, the hot springs’ water eventually reaches the Riverlands. It is a mildly interesting discovery (that Loess is of higher elevation than the River), and one that Ivar files way with the minutiae that he has picked up on his travels across Beqanna. Glancing back at Ichor, he gestures for her to break the water’s surface with him, so that they can talk.
kelpie mimicry | dragon scales | tactile hypnosis minimal grullo tobiano king of loess
So as I was writing this I forgot that they were in the meadow and not the river so that is why the geography makes no sense.
Ichor knows little of sex.
She is aware that she is female though how she knows this, she could not say. It wasn’t like she had looked upside down between her two back legs to confirm this. More than likely it was just an inherent awareness of being female that just made sense to her. Ichor thought of herself as ‘her, she’ and a lot of times, ‘it’ because she was just plain strange. Being strange made the most sense to her ever since the Mountain gave back all the things it had taken from them.
Back to sex though, Ichor does not even know the ins or outs of it. The basics, yes. Mares and stallions make babies. It takes two and all that. But the actual sensation? The feelings of lust and longing? Nada. She’s as pure as the newly driven snow that falls down on the land around the river unbeknownst to her, and possibly him though he might have a better grip on the seasons than she does. Ichor doesn’t pay attention to much unless it is Ivar, fellow moths, her family, or the moonlight that she lives by (or should live by since she is mostly moth, more so than horse but is somehow some odd defiance of both).
However, the idea of want is not that foreign of a concept to her dumb brain. Ichor wants, more than is imaginable to belong to somewhere or someone. To establish herself as something more than part of that moth-eel brood of Elysium and Karris’. Perhaps that is why she has given in so blindly to trusting this stallion - he makes her think that her want is not that stupid and unattainable, not that he has shown all that much interest in her besides a touch here and there. His interest seemed almost more scientific than desirable, but Ichor took what she could get. Interest was interest, after all. Ichor is that dumb, no - not dumb, gullible.
His renewed effort to explore the bits of her that fascinate him does not go unnoticed as she swims and swims and floats and bobs like a bit of unmoored driftwood in the water. He is rather particular about her wings, that she keeps pressed and folded tight against her. It’s not like she can fly all that much with them. Hopping with the aid of flapping is more like it, enough to lever her off the ground a few feet but then she comes crashing back down to earth on all six feet. Mere decoration, that is all they are but what is she without her wings? More peculiar! Thus, the constant thought to keep them tucked close and safe from the current that would otherwise rip them to tatters.
There is an unfamiliar ripple in her thoughts, an interruption in her brain that is just as strange as she is but Ichor thinks these are her thoughts - not his. I like him. I want to stay with him. Follow him. Ivar seems to be the singular most thought in her head at that moment. She is not possessive, does not consider him to be hers or that she is his to keep like a moth pinned to a corkboard. That realization does not strike her. Just that she is content and safe, and those are the two primary thoughts that interrupt his transmission. Safe, with him.
He goes by her and steps on the back of a submerged log. Down here, dreaded mane floating around him and scales taking on a different shine underwater, he looks more regal than he does on land. That she does notice and that it leaves her with a curious new feeling that she has no name for but she cannot take her eyes off of him. She can feel the temperature of the water starting to warm here, but she thinks she feels an altogether different heat that might be coming from inside of her, like a stain of embarrassment that cannot color her cheeks or skin, but spreads through her blood and makes her heart beat just that tiny bit faster.
Safe, with him.
Up he goes, ascending and she can do little but watch until he beckons for her to follow. It is no surprise that she does until her head breaks the surface and she sucks in a big draught of air through her nostrils instead of her gills, shutting them against the lap of the river at her neck. For the moment, she has nothing to say because the adventure was that incredible and she is still reeling from the grandeur of it. Her compound eyes are out of focus and she shuts them against the light that sometimes has a tiring effect on her unless it is the moon that pulls them open. It is not the moon but Ivar himself that causes her eyes to open and regain their focus on him. Thousands of pearls and obsidian come together to form the shape of his head and Ichor beams at him, happily and at last says, “That was wonderful!”
@[Ivar] no worries! it works somehow? i'm cool with just going with it haha
I V A R i'll use you as a makeshift gauge of how much to give and how much to take
The brisk air above the water sends a shiver down the tall stallion’s spine, but he presses his half-submerged shoulder to Ichor’s, sharing her warmth without thought. The golden mare is an extension of himself now, and it feel natural. Less natural is heaving himself on to dry land, but it must be done. He has left Loess for too long. A few months ago, that would never have concerned him. It is a strange weight, one that he is not yet entirely comfortable with. Perhaps someday he will adjust, but until that day, he will work to make it easier. Easier is having someone – someones – with him, to distract and pacify him when the urge to hunt becomes too strong.
He’s always done it, though in the past Ivar had made an effort to hide his pastimes from Heda. His new position has granted him boldness, and the steady assembling of a harem in the hills will soon be impossible to miss.
Ichor may be pinned to a board in said harem, but it is the safest of boards, a treasured and important board.
“I knew you’d like it,” he replies, watching the water run in rivulets down her feathery neck. She is novel in most every way, he decides, deserving of the very center of the board.
Ivar stands on the bank now, having pulled himself out of the water’s embrace. The winter wind is cold against his scales, and he thinks longingly of the protected springs waiting for them back home.
“Come with me to Loess?” He asks her, meeting Ichor’s eyes with his brown gaze. “I want you to live with me there, if you’d like that.” The kelpie asks as if she has a choice, as if he hadn’t pressed the need to agree into her mind below the water a moment ago. She will be safe there, and she will like the novelty that the land provides. Lowering his head, he brushes against her fragile wing with the utmost care, knowing that the desire to keep her nearby is strong enough to allay any concerns he might have about the declaration that having her live with him in Loess will cause.
kelpie mimicry | dragon scales | tactile hypnosis minimal grullo tobiano king of loess
The press of his shoulder to hers is a distraction. It is a distraction that Ichor welcomes as they tread water for the time being. He seems to be far away in his thoughts, to a place that she cannot follow him to as the brisk wind whips over their faces and necks. She hadn’t realized how much warmer she’d been submerged in the river until facing the prospect of leaving it now. It is that very idea that causes a hitch in her breath as he leaves her side and scrambles up the riverbank, the confidence in his reply not lost on her as she gives him a wry smile and follows him out of the water.
Definitely colder here!
She barely repressed a shudder against the wind that whips cold and wild against her wet flesh. Her wings hang sodden at her sides but they’ll dry, like the rest of her. Everything will dry in time. But he is talking again, forever a distraction from the isolation of her own thoughts as her eyes meet his or his meet hers, it matters little - their gazes lock, his face looms into focus as his lips move and ask her what is perhaps the second most important question in her lifetime. It seems phrased as if it is an undeniable idea that has taken root somewhere inside her own mothy brain.
“Yes,” she breathes the utterance as her heart goes still at the caring brush of his head against her wing. That lone touch cemented Ichor’s lack of resolve to do anything but follow him. How could she deny him now? He’d been right about her gills and the river. No, it was more than that - she just couldn’t deny him and she never thought to question the how or the why of it. Not Ichor who knows moonlight as intimately as a lover, who can name her favorite nectar-giving flowers scientifically and commonly so that even those dumber than her can understand what she is talking about and now this, she is certain that he could not steer her wrong down this path unfolding before her unseen but felt.
“I’d like that.” it is as bold a statement as any that will ever come from Ichor as she smiles back at him, daring to brush her small nose against his scaled shoulder.
@[Ivar] ok, I go post now to Kindred & Ivar! Just wanted to wrap this up for timeline's sake I guess? lol
