"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
06-04-2019, 09:07 PM (This post was last modified: 06-04-2019, 09:11 PM by Najya.)
"EVERYTHING YOU WANT IS A DREAM AWAY."
The little mare was so tired of remembering, but she knew she’d never forget. Her memories haunted her - swirling in her own shadow. Every moment of every day, she could feel them. And nights? Nights were torture as Najya was forced to relive each painful detail in the form of vivid nightmares. Amal sat upon her back, quiet. Najya knew her own grief weighed heavily on the little dragon. Such was the risk with a bond such as theirs. But the usually sprightly little dragon was worried that they were both doomed to live in this darkness.
Najya was a survivor. That was her curse - living on after being torn from her loved ones. First her family. Then her mate. Now her children. But her magic was spent - the last ounce leaving her in an attempt to save her children. Darkness had taken her before she knew if she’d been successful or not. All she had now was hope, and that hope was fleeing at best.
Beqanna didn’t feel like home - it was simply a placeholder. A place for her to exist, but Najya had found it impossible to try to assimilate into this land. The idea of picking up and moving on seemed...impossible. Time failed to register and the days turned to weeks with little reaction from the desert mare. Even Amal wasn’t enough too keep Najya from fading.
Najya stood beneath a wide tree in the meadow, watching with glazed eyes as life bloomed around her. Above, Amal busied herself with hunting in the branches above - a distraction more than anything - from the cloud of despair that followed them both.
yet it was not that nature had shed o'er the scene her purest of crystal and brightest of green
Little by little, Isilya is remembering how to interact with others and she’s learning to call Beqanna home again. She still feels strange, feels like an outsider, but things have been starting to shift. She’s made her first friend, after all - her first real, flesh and blood equine friend, and she could never imagine that her heart could have felt more light or full than it had all her life.
But it can. There’s so much more room in her to love so many more things that it’s astounded her.
So she’s on the look-out for more things to fill her heart with, more conversations, more friends, more of everything she has been missing in the years she lost herself to the forests and the trees. She wades slowly through the long grass of the meadow, the woody vines that make up her mind and braid down her back are adorned with her favourite plump wisteria blooms and they tickle her sides as she moves.
It’s chance that she drifts towards the mare standing on her own beneath the tree at first - until she sees a strange, white reptile moving among the leaves above. And then, suddenly, she’s got more to ask about than the usual ‘hey will you be my friend’ conversation she’s been rehearsing.
“Excuse me,” She’s come over here to ask about the dragon - because she’s never seen one before and she is absolutely fascinated - but she gets a better look at the chestnut mare and all thoughts of the dragon disappear. Well, okay, not all thoughts but they are pushed aside with ease.
The next words are spoken softly, as Isilya moves closer - her gold-and-green eyes sad as she takes in the image of a mare who looks as though she has lost all hope. “Are you alright?”
’twas not her soft magic of streamlet or rill oh! no, it was something more exquisite still
Amal had noticed the presence of the stranger far before it registered for the desert mare. From above, the little white dragon let out a happy trill as she pushed aside branches to get a better look at who approached them. Amal struggled to get her bonded’s attention, not stirring the mare until the dragon dropped to her usual perch upon the mare’s withers.
Finally, the desert mare stirred - curled ears flicking in the direction from which the stranger approached. Najya used to flourish in the company of others - reveling in the tales of her people. However, her passion for the spoken word had faded with her magic. Najya had faced challenges before, many times over, but she simply could not shake this despair that sank into her bones and poisoned her mind. Amal chirped a greeting to the stranger - a strange mare blanketed with flowers and vines. The voice that came from the stranger was kind, and in some ways that made Najya feel worse that she was utterly useless company. She bobbed her head, softly, in greeting - suppressing the sigh that wanted to escape from her dark lips.
“I -” her voice trails away as she considers how to answer the little mare’s question, simple as it may be. “I’m not certain I know how to answer the question,” she says, with a self depreciating little sigh at the end. She wasn’t okay, she knew this, but the bigger difficulty is she was not sure how to ever be okay. The culmination of all of her losses dragged her beneath a dark sea from which she could not escape. Amal was the only remaining bright spot in her world, and she knew she was dragging her beneath the waves day by day.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t burden you with -” Again, there’s a pause as she searches for answers. And again they do not come. “With this,” she says, sadly, with an abashed glance to the floral mare. But she was so desperate for help, she couldn’t turn the little mare away.
yet it was not that nature had shed o'er the scene her purest of crystal and brightest of green
Isilya can’t really help herself – when the little dragon chirps at her she chirps back. Not in a horse-voice but in a dragon-voice, a near-perfect imitation of the same chirp that beautiful creature used to greet her. She hopes it wasn’t rude of her to do so, of course, but she does so love making friends. Speaking to animals of another nature came naturally to her when she was living as a tree.
Her attention slides back to the mare – and the answer to the question Isilya posed just breaks her heart. What happened to this beautiful mare?
Isilya waits with all the patience in the world – something she never had when she was a foal but learned to keep in abundance during her travels. Eventually the mare speaks more, and Isilya cannot help a little smile – an encouraging, sweet smile.
“And why not?” Isilya asks in a gentle voice, her gold-and-green eyes soft as she takes a step forward and reaches out, intending to nudge the mare softly. The gesture would leave them close, almost intimately close, but this feels like a moment for intimacy, even between a pair of strangers. She’s been shy about touching others in her usual, bubbly way since she returned but now it happens naturally because she feels like that contact is needed.
“I’m the perfect stranger to lay your burdens on.” The golden skin beneath Isilya’s porcelain coat twinkles in the dappled sunlight beneath the tree and she attempts to make eye contact as the vines along her back shift and change so that the wisteria that drape there are no longer purple, but a soft and gentle blue. The colour of a new sky, a new start. It’s a subtle message, a subtle hint, to the magic that is coursing through Isilya’s veins.
She knows as much as she knows anything that there must be a way that she can use her powers to help this mare with whatever is troubling her.
Why else would she have them?
’twas not her soft magic of streamlet or rill oh! no, it was something more exquisite still
