"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
08-11-2018, 10:31 AM (This post was last modified: 08-13-2018, 07:06 AM by Ivar.)
He keeps only a few feet of water beneath his back and the open sky. The water at the surface is warmer, a result of the summer sun, and to the tropic-dwelling kelpie it is far more comfortable than the depths below. The open sea is far chiller than his island home, even this time of year, and he is grateful when he finally reaches the shore of the mainland. It is warm here. The kelpie climbs out of the water, the sleek tail that propelled him through the water shifting to legs far better suited for the land.
The jewel bright blue and opalescent white of his scales are all the clearer for the sunshine and the water, and he stands on the breezy shore to slowly dry. There is no hurry today, nowhere to rush off to. It is one of the advantages to the simple life; he doesn't have to do anything he does not want to.
Rustling leaves distract the kelpie from his contemplation of the horizon, and he turns to look over his tobiano shoulder to find the source. "Hello?" Calls Ivar when he catches the scent of another horse on the summer breeze. "Is someone there?"
For a @[Jenger] pony
i made it short for less pressure
08-12-2018, 02:42 PM (This post was last modified: 09-03-2018, 01:16 AM by luster.)
She might have shattered had she seen him emerge from the depths, shedding that dolphin-smooth skin as he went. All those fractured, broken pieces she holds together coming undone at the seams, falling away to leave something jagged and unfamiliar behind. But she doesn’t look for them as hard as she used to, no longer watches the ripples for a grey-eyed man like a shadow of waiting dark beneath the surface. Doesn’t search the deepest parts of the forest for her bone-faced man, her Dovev. So she misses it, misses the boy who is certainly no longer a boy but a man much like his father, until he turns and speaks and she lifts those quiet dark eyes to a face far more beautiful than is fair.
But even that is missed for now.
“It’s just me.” She tells him after of beat of somber quiet (like she knows him, like it means something), searching his face for a moment and recognizing none of his father in him. It's better that way, isn't it. Though, the curled tangles of his mane against his neck, dried coiling and uneven after his swim give her pause. She knows even without the stink of the ocean on him that he is a swimmer. She’s still quiet when she blinks those dark eyes, turns from him to look out across the water with a soft furrow appearing in her brow, mostly hidden beneath the blue-black of a thick forelock. “Where did you come from?” Soft again, still not looking at him, not noticing that the gem-bright blues and whites are etched together in smooth, sleek scales instead of fur.
He finds her face a moment before she answers, half-hidden by the long shadows. She might have been there since he climbed ashore, quiet and observant, but Ivar has no way of knowing that for certain. By taking a few steps he is able to shield his eyes from the bright sun overhead, and he is no longer forced to squint to get a better look at Just Me.
There isn't anything familiar about her despite the wording of her answer; the kelpie is certain he does not know this blue stranger. Where did you come from, she asks, and the piebald creature realizes that she must not have seen him swim ashore after all.
"From Ischia." he answers. He doesn't specify the location of his smaller island, nor name the inlet where he spends most of his time. For a moment, he considers repeating the question back to her, as is common when meeting a stranger in the common lands. Instead he asks: "Have you been there?"
08-12-2018, 05:02 PM (This post was last modified: 09-03-2018, 01:20 AM by luster.)
Her eyes return to him when he shifts to face her, when he moves forward so the sun is no longer a colorless streak of bright across his brow. She makes no effort to move herself, though, not further to avoid him, not closer to bury her nose in the crook of his shoulder. But it does cross her mind, like an old, forgotten impulse. Like remembering a shadow of herself, of who she used to be. It is so tempting to breathe him in - especially when he names his home, when he uses that word she knew he would.
“Ischia.” She repeats him with a little, single nod. Drops her chin and glances away from him for a second so she can hold close and hidden the emotion that swirls to life in those otherwise hollow brown eyes. She had known it of course, had been certain by his ocean and brine smell and the sun-dried tangles in that salt-rich mane. She had lived there once, after all, hidden away in a cave with someone who had fought to keep distance between them. He must have hated how her heart rebelled against that.
She doesn’t realize there’s a smile on her lips now, soft and gentle and reaching for her eyes. Doesn’t realize until it’s blossomed into something visible for just a heartbeat, until she pushes it away.
“I lived there once.” She tells him, turns to watch him again, soft and with hints of old starlight slipping back into her voice. “I’ve never been a strong swimmer though, so I don’t visit often.” Another smile, thinking of another man, another time. But this one is gone just as fast as the first. “There was a cave hidden by vines and greenery, with a small spring near it that washed back out into the ocean.” And a bone-man full of dark and depth who kept her safe when others hadn’t. “It,” he, “was the last home I had.”
Though she repeats the name he gives her, the kelpie cannot find a reaction in her brown gaze. For a while, he thinks he won't get one at all, and then suddenly a smile curls along the flat line of her mouth. It changes her face entirely, if only for the brief moment before she tucks it back into the somber expression she'd been wearing. Ivar's head tilts curiously, but he only has to wonder for a moment, because she is speaking.
Though she gives few details, the scaled creature has learned to read between the unspoken lines. He is certain there is - or perhaps was - something more in Ischia than a cave that the roan mare is remembering. He doesn't presume to know what it might be, though, or why she might have chosen to leave it behind. There is no value in the past anyway, Ivar has found, at least nothing more than sentimentality, that base waste of mental capacity.
"Did the Krakens kick you out?" He asks, more for his own enjoyment than to learn the answer. Ivar finds the image amusing; almost as much as the idea of the rebranded bachelor kingdom having the strength to do anything at all. While they'd started strong, there have been fewer and fewer visitors in the past few months, and Ivar rarely sees movement on the main island anymore.
"We don't have any caves on my island." Adds the kelpie, as though that might be of interest to the roan mare. "But we also don't have to deal with the Brotherhood, so I feel its a fair trade."
08-25-2018, 06:38 PM (This post was last modified: 09-03-2018, 01:21 AM by luster.)
Now it is her turn to tip her head at him in a curious way, soft and silvered and with just a hint of amusement tugging once more at the corners of her quiet mouth. “What in the world is a Kraken?” She asks, shakes her head and laughs - and it is such a soft sound, an old sound, and for just a moment it gives her pause. Cracks open a window to her past where, for just an instant, she can glimpse things she does not want to be reminded of.
It feels like a fist buried in her chest, fingers spread to capture the heart within, to crush it or maim it or, perhaps, just to watch and wonder how such a wretched, mangled thing still finds the will to beat.
His voice tugs her back out of her dark though, and for just the briefest moment there is something almost familiar to it. Her brow furrows and those wild brown eyes settle back against his face again, shipwrecks on the shores of impossible familiarity. She wants to ask him that time old question - do i know you, have we met? but there is so much that holds her back, an unmoving weight on her tongue that forces her silent. A sense that knowing would be worse? Or the apathy of knowing he is not who she would wish him to be.
She waits a beat to answer, turns from him in a gentle way and makes her way to the waves lapping sleepily against the sand just a few strides away. “Your island?” She repeats finally when the water has reached her knees and she has come to a stop, dropping her nose to the surface to unleash those firefly lights she had once made to swim through the dark of someone elses waters. “However did you manage to get one of your very own.” There is new light in the angles of that delicate blue and white face when she lifts her head to look back at him, a smile that says she’s not fighting so hard to forget right now, that it doesn’t hurt to remember these flickering lights as they swim through her legs like little starry fish. But then a shadow touches her cheek and spreads across her face, just soft, wary uncertainty when she asks, “what is the brotherhood?”
For a brief moment, Ivar thinks that perhaps he has succeeded, that her somber interior has been tucked away where he does not have to deal with it. But just as quickly as she laughs, the blue mare dips back into her own shadows and Ivar is once again the only smiling creature on this stretch of shoreline.
When she returns to their conversation, it is with a question in her eyes as she scrutinizes him. Ivar cannot fathom what she is looking for - who she is looking for - and so without an answer he remain quiet. When she moves toward the sea he follows instinctually; pulled by the water and his newest, saddest, companion. She'd be easy prey, he knows, so when she drifts back to conversation the kelpie is ready.
"It was there," he tells her. "So I took it."
He contemplates reaching toward her, taking her as well, but then she asks about the Brotherhood and he is distracted. The autumn is quickly slipping away, and with it Ivar's single minded focus on hunting.
"They're the Krakens," the scaled stallion says, "The Brotherhood. Brennen reformed the old Bachelors of the Tundra and gave them a new name." Here he pauses, looks at her slightly askance with a playful brightness in his eye. "I take it you are not a sworn Bachelor, then?"
She will not acknowledge that she is glad when he follows her to the water, will especially not acknowledge that she hoped he would. But maybe she doesn’t need to say so in words, maybe it is enough that she takes one single step towards him to brush her nose against the hollow by his shoulder. She is unsurprised by the stink of salt and brine, but she hadn’t noticed the scales yet and pushes his mane aside as she pulls back to see more. She can feel the soft furrow appear in her brow an instant before she recognizes the faint guardedness that seems to come hand in hand with confusion so often lately.
She doesn’t reach out again.
“If you don’t like the brotherhood, why didn’t you take all of it?” The question comes from quiet lips, soft and whispered and as curious as the lights swimming through their submerged legs. Then her brow furrows, crinkles the corners of her eyes, turns into the shadow of a smile across blue and white lips. “What a funny thing to call themselves,” she pauses, looks back over at the blue and gold stallion, “the Krakens.” It’s how she doesn’t miss the playfulness in his eyes when he asks his next question. There is a flash of amusement in her expression, and it softens all the hard angles of her delicate face, floods soft light into those quiet deep shadows. “Afraid not,” she offers with a sigh, those dark eyes more grounded against his face now, “i’m sure you must be so disappointed.”
