"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 know what it is but I'm hoping that all is well no harvest of green but it's still my heart to sell
Ghosts follow her here.
She can feel them, their fingers tangled in her hair and the feathers that curl protectively around her barrel. She can feel the ash and the salt, the remnants of them bitter in her mouth with the stale taste of tears long dried up and sorrow long gone to dust. She is hesitant to open her eyes. Hesitant to take in the shapes of this land that has wrought such pain—rooted with so much anguish. Still, for all of the pain and aches, she is not fearful. She does not turn her dappled cheek. Instead she lifts her chin slightly higher, the almond of her eyes widening almost imperceptibly in protest. She would not bend. She would not fold.
Not to this.
Not today.
Instead, each step, gentle and searching, is deliberate, the sound of hooves pressing through dried leaves and brittle grass the sound of victory as it rings through her crimson-tipped ears. It has been years. It has been years since the moments that gutted her and left such deep scars whittled into her bones. It has been years since she was a young girl, crying into the wind, reaching for that which just slipped through her fingers. It had been years and yet—and yet—the memories do not fade. The ghosts do not relent. Instead, the wings that press into her sides flicker in painful reminder, turning from the soft white down to the jarring skeleton of the ghosts that bruise her eyes and dry her throat. For a moment, the wings turn leather and bone—and the feel of them is enough to make her waiver, one leg lifted in a moment of pause.
She takes a steading breath, the sweet scent of summer honeysuckle grounding her, the tears threatening to spill drying before they lap over. With a determination that surprises even her, her leg falls to meet the earth, and her wings shift to match the ivory and honey of the flower that lifts sweetly around her. The turn to petals and dripping leaves, a collision of nature that laces across her back in gentle reminder, before they fall back to her typical sunset red—and she is home. The effort of it almost winds her, and the weakness brings a shame against the back of her throat, the feeling hot and unrelenting.
She was meant to be stronger than this.
It had been years.
Years.
Still, the memories do not feel old. They do not feel brittle or aged. Instead, the edges still slice and cut and she has to deliberately turn from them to face the rising sun, begging the hope of the coming rays to warm her from the inside out. The gentle light of it washes across her face and she closes her eyes for but a moment, wishing away the ache that gnaws at her bones and lights in her belly—the memories painful and vivid. (There, beneath, the tree, was where they had first met. Over there, stolen moments. There, painful goodbyes.) His scent no longer permeates this place, but she smells it still—and she swallows.
She would not bend.
She would not fold.
Not to this.
Not today.
I put everything I had into something that didn't grow like going on a wild hunt, shooting arrows without a bow
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
The sun is just beginning to rise as he steps from the ether of the dream he was just having into the here and now of the rollicking grassland. First light paints him in champagne and foam as for once the simper on his face is something other than sour. Probably because he has just spent an incredible night on the dream-plains with a certain someone... he laughs out loud as he suddenly realizes that for all their time together, he cannot recall her name or the color of her skin.
Minute details stick with him—
The dark gloss of her eyes. How those eyes always look at him as if he’s the only one she’s ever truly seen. Which makes him feel important and good and not like wisp of nothing sundered from an abyss and cast into the fetus of a foal to give it that little extra something such as a soul.
There are other things of course. Like the way her lips feel on his jawline. How her fur is always soft and sleek... so clean! Never a speck of dirt to be brushed off her. How their noses touch often and her breath is grassy and warm.
He’s still not entirely certain he didn’t dream her up. Craft her from all the things that are good like sunshine and smiles, and the love he so desperately wanted once from his mother but only received in the smallest unsure doses. Secretly he’s terrified that he’s the dream but for now, he’s bodily and present here on this plane of existence. Even though he knows once - not too long ago - he wasn’t.
(he was a small boy of shadow and smoke sitting in the edge of the abyss in a place that made monsters and nightmares)
Abysm takes long-reaching strides through the grassland in no particular direction as he thinks of the dark-shine of her eyes. He’s become so deep in remembering the contours of a face that don’t really stand out to him that he almost - almost - doesn’t notice that he’s about to run into someone. The simple fact that the early morning light is momentarily blockaded from his view is what rivets him in place - initially.
Next it is the fact that she seems like something that should be in a dream. Might even be dream-made or should be but she’s standing right there in front him in a very real way. His eyes rove over every visible inch of her before he realizes that he’s openly staring at this confection of chocolate and cherry.
Only thing is, those almond eyes aren’t in his dreams. Nor is he certain that’s the same shape of his dream-lover’s face.
She’s still beautiful - in a way that he has nothing to compare to, just a vague notion that she’s ephemeral and beautiful like the dawn that spreads above them in an array of colors that he cannot always name. So naturally now he has to say something since he almost ran into her and has been staring at her long enough to make this moment a little uncomfortable. Maybe more awkward than uncomfortable.
I know what it is but I'm hoping that all is well no harvest of green but it's still my heart to sell
The suddenness of him surprises her, although perhaps it should not.
Perhaps it is but the quickening of her blood at the nearness of someone else, the feel of heat rising up and reaching for her, the healing in her bones picking up on the unique fingerprint of his pulse as it loops lazily through his veins and throughout his body. Something within her startles and retreats, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her. You wouldn’t see the fear of the small shattered thing within her. You wouldn’t see the cracks that spiderweb out around her, threatening to buckle her knees with memory.
Instead, you would just see the soft smile that curves the edges of red-tinged lips, the way her hazel eyes lift and find his—everything slow and deliberate. She is not particularly beautiful, at least she has never thought of herself in such a way. She did not have the fiery beauty of Exist, unmistakable and tangible beauty that catches breath in throats, but such details never cross her mind, let alone bother her.
She is still for a moment, trapped between the pauses between his words and caught in the spiderweb of his gaze, floating languidly. There is something beneath the deep waters of his eyes that gives her pause, something that pulls at her belly, a reminder of something she has never known. “Hello,” her voice is honey and summer, lyrical and lifting on the edges—the only truly beautiful thing about her. She tilts her head to the side, considering him, the frayed edges that she had somehow missed the first time.
“My name is Leliana,” she offers and wonders why it feels so foreign on her tongue.
Until she remembers that it has been years until she has had to provide it.
It has been years since she truly introduced herself.
For a moment, the ghosts break through the veil, and she can feel their sickly fingers pressing into the base of her throat, the pain rising like a wave inside of her—threatening to pull her down. She rolls her shoulders, doing her best to shake them and focus on the man in front of her instead. The edges of her wings flicker, the red down shifting imperceptibly until they take on the spotted cream and ivory of his coat. They linger on the color palette for a moment before they shift back to the sunset red.
Other words nearly form, but they die quickly—escaping her mouth in a soft exhale.
This wasn’t meant to be this difficult.
I put everything I had into something that didn't grow like going on a wild hunt, shooting arrows without a bow
08-25-2018, 08:02 PM (This post was last modified: 08-25-2018, 08:03 PM by abysm.)
Abysm is staring and knows that he should look away but doesn’t. There is something about the eyes and the facial expression that he focuses intently upon. Is it her? Probably not but he is still minutely hopeful that it could be. That one day he’ll just be able to walk right up to her in this world instead of the next and there she’ll be, looking him with eyes dark and doelike that shine full of love for him and only him. But it seems like it is too much to hope for. Too much to long for that the longing is just as bad as the knowledge that it could all just be a dream.
He’s good at manipulating those so that’s very likely. Abysm might just have manipulated himself a lover that never existed but is made up of the bits and pieces of the mares he meets in moments like these. The ones that are sweet and sad all at the same time. Like he’s drawn to the sorrow threaded into and around their hearts in thorny grasps. Perhaps it is because he’s looking for all the things he ought to have found in his mother but doesn’t see, cannot find, and will never know because he refuses to let her close. Getting close is what causes the hurt as childish as that seems, so he pushes her away even though he finds himself looking for more and more of her little queenly lover with the soft azure wings.
But her gaze pulls him back in. Not dark. Not doelike. But he finds something indescribable in it just as he does in the smile that comes softly and slowly to her face. He had found her beautiful from the first moment his eyes befell her but now, as she blossoms into all manner of welcome and niceness, she becomes even more beautiful. Still nothing like the one in his dreams that haunts him, whose eyes follow every curve of muscle along his bones. Not like the way she looks at him and finds all the places that are put together crooked and still growing. Until her voice tugs at him, and the small boy from the abyss lifts a hand inside his dark empty soul to the piece of sunlight that dares to shine there.
“Leliana…” he repeats back to her. Even her name sounds as lyrical as the voice that delivered it. How can she not believe she isn’t beautiful? Of course he doesn’t know this but something in her mannerism hints at it; hints at a slow and careful shyness not so unlike the one he used to use to keep others at bay. Not that he thinks that is the case here, she is approachable enough whereas he had not always been so. He’s more lost nowadays than anything else. Lost or just absent. Gone off into his dreams and not even the dreams of others are enough to keep him away from the things he dreams up for them to do and see.
Next his eyes focus on her wings and how they’re shifting to mimic the champagne and foam of his fur. Then they bleed back to sunset red which is a very color on her, he thinks. But then his thoughts are always getting in the way. She sighs and that is his cue to help along the stumbling conversation, and probably tell her his name. So he does;
“Abysm.” he says flatly.
It’s as if the name says it all for him - Abysm, abyss, nothingness.
His eyes never leave her; they might stray from face to wing to hip but they never look at anything else around them.
I know what it is but I'm hoping that all is well no harvest of green but it's still my heart to sell
Oh, how Leliana wishes that she could lose herself in dreams. How she wishes she could slip into the sea foam of them, letting the waters rush over her head, pulling her down deep into the riptides of her innermost desires. Perhaps it would be quiet there. Perhaps, there, she could find rest—find peace. Perhaps she would not be haunted by the bone-armor of the dark stallion who ghosts around her still. Perhaps she would not see the demons that rise with her each morning, following her every step.
But she does not have that escape, not like him. She cannot manipulate the fabric of her reality, cannot find solace in dreams that all too often curl unto themselves and become pointed—become painful.
She would envy him, were she able to know of such gifts.
Alas, she does not. Instead, she simply knows the surface that she can see: the dual-colored stallion with still, calm eyes. She studies him quietly from beneath the tangled red of her forelock, her long face quiet with intent. “Abysm,” she repeats his name in the same manner that he had repeated hers, turning it over in her hands and studying it as she has studied all the angles of his features. “Abysm,” this time, drawing out the syllables, enjoying the way they play out over her tongue. “I like your name very much.”
She does not think of the the abyss of nothing.
She thinks of the possibility—the quiet. The peace.
“I’m glad to have met you, Abysm.” Her lips curve gently, the warmth of it like sunshine as it spreads across her face, radiating to light up her hazel eyes with genuine pleasure. “I do not like spending so much time alone,” the secret pain slips into the statement, and she hopes that he does not pick up on the truth of it—the loneliness that cuts at her aching heart. “But I’m glad to have your company now.”
I put everything I had into something that didn't grow like going on a wild hunt, shooting arrows without a bow
09-02-2018, 09:52 PM (This post was last modified: 09-02-2018, 09:53 PM by abysm.)
She says his name twice, the latter drawn out as she tests the syllables and he is mesmerized by it. Amazing how he could listen to her say it over and over. It would be so easy to do, to fill the quiet that slips in between them, welcomed or not, but not overlooked or frowned upon. He floats in that quiet until she mentions that she likes his name and he’s never really given it much thought. It was but a moniker to call him by but deep down, he knew it was so much more than that - more than just a name to answer to, it was the key to himself, that fit neatly into the keyhole of darkness that swam around inside him and sometimes, snaked through his bloodstream and painted all his moods dark and intense.
The way she says though is like a bit of lightning to brighten up the storm’s dark.
He tilts his head in the aftermath of her speaking; considers the how and the why of it. How can she like a name that implies darkness and nothingness? It is hard for him to imagine the quiet and the peace she thinks is caught up inside those syllables that roll so flawlessly off her tongue. He doesn’t see what she does in his name. To him, it is but a name and a reminder of the place that he came from - that his mother pulled him from. More like ripped, because it was a little painful to take a shadow-boy from the edge of the abyss and plant him in her belly where sperm and egg had merged. That’s probably not something that Abysm should be allowed to remember but nature and time both have their reasons for it.
Maybe because they don’t want him to forget that he did not come from such humble nice origins as most do. But he cannot maintain such thoughts for long, not when she is looking at him from beneath the tangled red of her forelock and he’s looking into the beautiful hazel of her eyes. Just as he’s looking at her and she’s looking at him, some decorous form of courtesy that one of his parents must have instilled in him comes creeping over him and in a rather shy manner, he thanks her. “Thank you, I like your name also.” and he does, there is no lie in that - no attempt to charm her further because Abysm is unaware that he can even be charming at times. Brutal, brash, brooding - all that, yes but never really charming.
However, she makes it easy for him to think he could be.
Her voice disrupts the quiet that he has come to appreciate because it allows him to look her over. Not in a lewd manner that is typical of his sex - he knows, he’s seen them stare and covet all at once. He cannot say if it sickened or excited him, those looks, perhaps a bit of both and they might have just tipped him over the edge of manhood just that much further. But back to her and how she is talking about being glad to have met him and he immediately wants to question her about that. Is she? Is she really glad to have met him? Could he have really been that much of a pleasant distraction? The smile that breaks on her and reaches up into her eyes to make them bright and blossoming with genuine emotion is enough to convince him that her words are no farce or polite necessity.
“Have you always felt so alone?” he cannot help it. The question just slips out of his mouth. Abysm had caught the undercurrent of pain that she’d tried to hide. Pain was something he took note of, whether he wanted to or not. Children of the abyss tend to pick up on those things. Pain. Destruction. Sorrow. They are the siren-songs that call to his heart as much as the dreamlands do. He is struck suddenly by the beginnings of an idea - “What is the one thing you dream about the most?” He might just be able to give her a taste of it, albeit cruel or kind, he’s unsure because dreams are dreams. Like desires, they are secret and hidden and not always what one wishes them to be.
@[leliana] so he's offering to take her into one of her dreams <33
I see a ghost out on the water; I swear it has my face I bend and drink the lonely down, the lonely down
She has always been drawn to the dark ones—something within her dove heart endlessly fascinated with the shadows and the poison. She was made for the sunshine, for the summer and the spring, and yet she always finds herself in the shadows, pulled into the toxic winter that both traps and entices her. She cannot speak to what inside of her is so drawn to it, what part of her reaches for the knife that she knows will only draw blood, only that she does and thus it is not surprising to her that she is here now.
At his question, she inhales quickly, holding the breath in her lungs for a moment before she releases it, letting it blow out into the autumn air and between them. “Not always,” she admits, thinking so that she can give him a serious answer to what she deems a serious question. “I like to think that I was once a very happy young girl.” An orphan, yes, but one left with her twin so not alone. One left with a distant relative who had given them space to explore and grow but enough protection to keep them safe.
“But I suppose ghosts have a way of finding everyone eventually.”
For her, they had found her young—torn at her heart until it was unrecognizable. They had warped her reality, ripped away her defenses and shaped her into something different, something new. It is difficult to not think about what she would have become had they had not found her. It is difficult to think of the life that she might have led had she not run across the stallion of bone and blood that day in the meadow, had she not followed Hades down, swallowing the pomegranate seeds and anchoring herself forever.
Her ghosts simmer on the surface, bruising her hazel eyes, and she is unable to keep herself from looking at him with her defenses stripped away, vulnerable before his question. “It is silly,” she says quietly, her melodic voice hushed to a whisper. “Is it?” The question chases the declaration, and she searches his face for the answers, hoping to find them there. “Is it silly to dream of normal? To dream of a simple live with a simple family? A home to call my own?” Her deepest wishes, laid bare before him.
“Because I do. I dream of a simple love, of children, of quiet and calm.”
Another laugh, sadness staining the edges of it as she shakes her lovely head.
“But I am a silly girl with silly wishes and silly dreams.”
I’m gonna stand here in the ache until the levee on my heart breaks
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