"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
isn't it lovely all alone, heart made of glass, my mind of stone
She existed, but not much beyond that.
She had felt that disconnect between her mother and her sister as soon as she was born. That odd detachment that didn’t allow her to find feeling no matter how hard she searched for it. She didn’t dislike them, and if she had to love anyone, she supposes it would be them. But just Cavern. Not the other children that hovered near her mother, acting like she was their mother too. There was the jade-green girl, and the other twins, but Islas hardly paid them any attention. It was not with malice that she ignored any of them when they spoke to her; she just couldn’t find it in herself to care.
In the beginning, Ryatah had kept them – her and her twin sister – incredibly close. She coveted them like a dragon does its treasure, but Islas learned quickly how fickle her mother’s attention span was, especially when she became pregnant, again. She didn’t mind. The loosening of that overprotective grip was welcomed, and it allowed her to slip away one day and never look back.
From the top of a gently sloping knoll, she watches them, her eyes the color of a starless galaxy and nearly depthless when set against the alabaster of her white face. They mill about in the warmth of the spring sunshine, and while it is tempting to join them, she isn’t sure what she would even say to any of them even if she did. So she stands still, statuesque save for the way the breeze pulls at her growing mane, and the way her eyes so calmly blink.
Islas
@[Calcifer] pick a twin and suffer with me as I learn a new character
They think he’s been leaving when he hasn't. He’s just been invisible like always, except before it was an invisibility of being the odd-triplet out. Now it’s the real thing, a cloak that enables him to escape the truth hiding in his family's eyes. If they can’t see him then they can’t look at him, and if they can’t look at him then Tiercel won’t have to be confronted with the constant reminder that he survived and Gale didn’t. Precious little Gale.
Even in death he makes life a living hell for Tiercel.
He’s tired of it. So tired of it that today he finally engages the reality his parents already assume is happening and moves past the eastern border of Loess. He’s finally nothing, no one, a ghost that weaves past trees and makes its way up towards the mighty bend of the river. Only the natural creatures around him understand that something is there; something is making sound and leaving a scent behind. Their curious eyes can’t comprehend it, not with brains so small and singularly focused.
Tapping gently into himself like dipping a finger into water, he weaves a net of tranquility and casts it out into the wilderness as he goes. The small creatures blink, then return to their business at hand.
Fording past the breakers, wading out and struggling against the current, Tiercel the ghost makes it to the other side and marvels silently at his growing strength. Both his body and mind seem adept at the constant change: every day he discovers more about himself, unravels the mystery and the quiet exhilaration of shedding boyhood.
Stride by stride he leans up and scales the first hillock of the meadow, slipping underneath the dappled sunlight as quiet as a wild animal while fading from nothing to something again. He notices Islas for the first time with curious cerulean eyes, desiring not to scare her from such a picturesque spot, so that desire manifests itself as calm and slinks towards her on catspaw feet. Aside from his mother and the others in Loess during Leliana’s attack, he’s not been given the chance to test this strange gift on another horse.
“They seem so small when you’re far away.” The dunskin begins, stopping just a few feet shy of the pale girl. His legs and face, stripes and personality all glitter as one.
isn't it lovely all alone, heart made of glass, my mind of stone
Her interaction with others outside of her family has been non-existent, but she doesn’t mind when the stranger approaches. She watches him silently, impassive but not entirely withdrawn. If anything, there is just a small spark of curiosity that rises to the surface of her dark eyes, wondering what he could possibly want. He appeared to be close to her age, although that didn’t matter much to her either way. Adults and children alike often failed to catch her interest, but she would not turn away from something that chose to cross her path.
“They do,” she agrees, and her voice is high and light. With an angle of her small, shapely head, she looks at him with those plum-purple eyes; flat and shadowed, and the smile that adorns her lips doesn’t quite reach them. “I’m okay with that, I think. Being far away, that is.” She lets her gaze travel back to the rest of them, where they graze and converse, dappled by the sun. They look peaceful, maybe even happy, but she isn’t sure she can relate to them. She isn’t sure if this constant state of apathy is the same as being content, but something tells her that it’s not.
She looks back to the colt, noting the luminous sheen to his blue markings, and the striking cerulean of his eyes. There was something tranquil about him, and even though she could nearly feel it seep through her skin, it only warmed her veins a fraction. But it is enough for her to be curious, and for her to not want to leave – not yet. “I’m Islas.”
Eyes of two different types appraise each other and then dance like timid butterflies on the surface of each other’s skin. Tiercel is careful not to linger anywhere except the delicate musings of her face and what lies around it; her pale forelock and the even paler shadows beneath her nearly black gaze. Shaded, she still seems luminous. Lovely. When she smiles for him it seems like an action taught but not mastered. He doesn’t smile back.
Tiercel is, however, relaxed. There’s nothing in his manners to indicate disappointment or anything other than contentment at their mild conversation. He’s got an easy sort of confidence that doesn’t boast. Much as he’d like to claim a self-born swagger, the attitude (like Islas’ smile) was patched on. It was a product of his gift, a feeling he’d desired to wear as someone wears a coat or glove.
“You think?” He questions her indecision, waiting a moment and then smirking. “I’m Tiercel…”
“...could you deal with being close to me?” He asks softly, truly curious now. The question lingers with a tension.
isn't it lovely all alone, heart made of glass, my mind of stone
She finds herself wishing that she knew how to be something that he, or anyone, would like. But it was a surface want; not something that she often thought about, and certainly not anything that ever brought her any kind of sorrow. It’s only something that she thinks of now that she stands face to face with someone she knows she cannot, and likely will not ever, fully connect with. It seemed so easy for everyone else, but it has never come natural for her. Even with her twin – someone she had shared the very beginning of life with before they were ever born – there was something standing in her way.
“I don’t mind watching them, but it doesn’t mean I want to talk to them.” She says it in her easy, matter-of-fact way of speaking, and somehow that seems to take the curtness away from what could be seen as a blunt statement. “Tiercel,” she tests his name, and she finds that she likes the way it feels. She hasn’t had the chance to say many names, and the way she says his is slow and careful. “Nice to meet you,” she says, but only because she has heard her mother say it before.
But his question creates a bubble of hesitation, and a guarded caution shadows her face. “Do you want to be close?” She is unsure of why he would want such a thing, and she struggles internally to decipher if it’s something she is also expected to want. She lowers her delicate head a moment, trying to gather her thoughts, and then her dark eyes shift back to his face. He seems quiet and relaxed, and with a slow exhale from her lips she realizes that she should be, too. “I don’t want you to leave, yet, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Listening to her was like hearing an echoing chasm, like looking into an abyss and seeing the impossible distance between something and nothing at all. Islas looks back at Tiercel with hollow amethyst eyes, a gaze so purple it borders on black, and that expression is the same one she uses to view ‘them’. The others. Tiercel is fascinated by this emptiness and her strange desire to overcome it for reasons unknown. Could he… could he influence that nothingness? His curiosity peaks in a most satisfying way.
“That is exactly what I’m asking.” He muses thoughtfully. She won’t miss the unguarded way he responds, the way his expression clearly shows vim and charming delight at her ability to decipher what would come easily to the others. Confident now that his approach wouldn’t be met with a negative reaction he eases forward, walks close enough that the two of them could stand side-by-side without touching.
As a god views an ant he looks down from their shared observatory and contemplates the mechanism of horses interacting with each other down below. Without looking at Islas he swallows quietly, breathes in the scent of her from being so near and steadies his focus inward. The well of his power is still brimming. Good. Tiercel considers what might be best and then settles on an emotion he thinks might not raise suspicion in its host. Sweet and subtle, desire rises to the surface and he pushes it her way.
If she felt anything at all, Islas could interpret it however best suited her. Desire for him (unlikely, but possible) or desire for his company, maybe even a desire that bordered on curiosity. Maybe nothing at all. What he offered wasn’t strong. Just a sip, not a full-blown shot. “But you want to talk to me, yea?” He asks rhetorically with a smile. Now he feels safe enough to look her way.
“Did someone hurt you? Is that why you don’t want to talk to them?” Her guest theorizes.
isn't it lovely all alone, heart made of glass, my mind of stone
She doesn’t understand why standing so close to him makes her feel something.
Just a stirring, and something still so flimsy and intangible that she isn’t even sure if it has a name. It was a warm feeling, similar to how she would feel sometimes when she was younger and her mother would gently caress her skin, or pull her in close to her chest. Like a watered down version of contentment, and something that instinctually told her it was a pleasant feeling and she should want more of it. But she never did. She never sought affection, or closeness, and even though that still isn’t what she wants from him, it confuses her that she feels anything at all. It makes her watch him with curious eyes, trying to understand what he is doing to slowly fill the hollow pieces of her.
She doesn’t flinch away when he draws himself alongside of her, but the way her dark eyes still echo with a vacancy when they look at him makes it nearly impossible to read if she even notices the closeness of him. But, there is a moment when her lily-white lips lift into a smile when he confirms that she wants to talk to him. Something fleetingly genuine that stirs a glimmer in her eyes and momentarily softens the indifference on her face, before it fades away back into almost nothing.
“No,” she answers his question in her quiet voice, briefly looking back to the others. “I just don’t fit in with them. I don’t really fit in with anyone.” Sometimes she thinks her connection to the stars plays a role, but she has never been able to fully figure it out. And here, in the light of day, with no starlight to be seen and the sun so bright that her skin can’t even glow, she knows that it’s just something wrong with her.
This time when she looks at him, her gaze locks fully with his, and she forgets the others that she cannot understand, and she forgets the stars. She looks at only him, with curiosity slowly swimming up from the endless dark of her eyes when she says, “You have some kind of magic. Did you know?” And again that almost shy smile whispers across her lips, and she reaches to touch her soft muzzle against his neck, the way she has seen her mother do. “You can fill up empty things.”
07-04-2019, 05:14 PM (This post was last modified: 07-04-2019, 06:19 PM by Tiercel.)
TIERCEL
Just past the edges of his well-worn confidence Tiercel can feel the creeping rise of nervousness trying to find its way in. That emotion comes without order from himself. Islas had brought it on quite naturally, with her voided stare that somehow shows nothing at all but takes the shape of uncertainty because the corners of her brows are tilted together softly, and because everything else on her face belies that she’s ‘curious’ even if her gaze doesn’t.
The shimmering ghost-boy feels his heart thud once, twice, three times and then he inhales again and gathers himself together. “Steady now. Steady.” The young horse reminds himself, withdrawing the emotional connection between them. He doesn’t want the veil to be lifted; not just yet. So he works a few threads of calm and pleasure together in a rope that he binds around his throat. It tightens. He relaxes, visibly.
“Most can’t tell.” The impossibly still stranger murmurs. He tilts his cheek in her direction, hovers his dark blue mouth above the flyaway wisps of her nearly see-through forelock. “But you’re not like most. Neither am I.” And without emotions at all, Tiercel does his best to group them together. He can’t be sure of himself or why he says it but the truth of it rings around the tone of his voice, a pleasant sort of hum. No one he’s come across has kept him so… so fascinated like Islas has. “I hardly know myself sometimes. Who I am. Who I really am.”
Shifting altogether, his eyes and stoic face take in the grazers down below.
“Are you empty, Islas?” Tiercel smiles patiently. “Would you like me to fill you up?” Because he could. Any way she dreamed or desired
It's the same way you showed me // Nod my head, don't close my eyes
@Islas i've probably tagged you enough already lmao
isn't it lovely all alone, heart made of glass, my mind of stone
If she recognizes that he seems nervous, she does not give it away. Despite being unable to generate her own emotions, she has become fairly good at recognizing them in others. She analyzed them, almost studiously, as though if she could memorize what facial expressions and what body language went with which emotion, she could learn to mimic it. If she could, maybe she could fall into some sort of false sense of normal. And maybe someday, she would find that she doesn’t have to fake it anymore.
But for now, she is still a blank canvas for anything that he tries to color her with. His small, subtle signals feel vibrant and bright inside her dim, endless void, and she lets those tranquil, pleasant tendrils coil around her. “Most aren’t very observant,” she says, his mouth hovering close to her face and she imperceptibly shifts towards him. “But I imagine it’s different, when you’re drowning in your own thoughts and emotions.”
“I don’t know who I am, either.” Her dark colored eyes cast upwards, to wherever the stars lay hidden behind the sapphire-colored daytime sky. For just a moment, there is something else that clouds her eyes; a look of longing, or homesickness, she isn’t even sure. But his question pulls her away, and she looks instead to the young boy next to her. “I think I must be empty,” but she doesn’t elaborate; she assumes he already knows. Already knows that she is detached and strange and incapable of so many things. “But I wouldn’t even know what to ask to be filled up with.”
Yea, he feels like he’s drowning most of the time. Sucked under by the well of feelings he can falsify and project, sometimes sucked into the feelings of others and making them worse. His father had always thought he was a moody boy as a young child, even if he never directly told Tiercel that, and he wasn’t exactly wrong. Islas was probably just as right, too.
It can be so hard trying to swim against the current.
He’s surprised that the milk-white mare is so insightful, for being so young and so… forlorn. She looked skyward, long and hard, leaving Tiercel to puzzle over the disconnect in her gaze and her words. She’s looking for answers but knows exactly which direction to start. “You’re not a shape to be fit.” He contradicts Isla’s self-assessment, then, “I didn’t mean to insinuate that you were. I’m sorry.” And he is.
Tiercel began reasoning that there might only be a part (or parts) of her that weren’t horse at all. She looked like them, knew their history and how to act like them, but she was empty… emotionally. Yes? More than likely other things as well, but of that one thing he was pretty certain. “I think you and I are just the opposite kinds of strange, Islas.” The young stallion suggested, grinning lazily again. “And that maybe we could…” The blue-gold youth considered innocently, “comfort each other?”
Tiercel was burning to try.
He thought quickly about everything she might be searching for: purpose, belonging, what was the one for knowledge answered? Certainty? He took those three and mulled them over, trying to boil them down into something that might resemble an emotion he could magically fabricate. The world around them didn’t change or shift at all; Tiercel worked quietly and listened wide-eyed. “I think I know what you might like.” He offered moments later, if she was willing.
It's the same way you showed me // Nod my head, don't close my eyes
