"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
Fear was thick around him, and he struggled against the chains of it, looking helplessly on at the sight of those around him coming to grips with the shift in the land. Kingdoms gone. Powers bled from them. He had no such gifts; he had left the kingdom in what he had deemed not only unfit but dangerous hands. So, in essence, he had nothing to lose in this shift. So why did he feel as if he had lost it all?
The loss of the Gates was a heavy blow to his heart, and he found that he struggled around it. So many memories had been created there. Standing under the trees with Joelle, the shadows dappling their back. The sleepy mornings with their children frolicking around them. Even the darker memories, but his own nonetheless. The fights with Spyglass. The moment he had thrown his crown at Joelle’s feet and left. The more recent storms to strike the kingdom when his rage had come to a head and he had struck out at Zeik.
The loss of the jungle was somehow worse. Somewhere, beneath the soil, was the bones of his mother. Lost in a flood that had struck the kingdom years and years ago. She had rested there at one point with his father, their skeletons tied together—that is, until, the kingdom had called him back. (She always called him back.) The thought struck him that without the Chamber, and his heart beating steadily beneath the soil, that his father may have gone back to the depths of the ocean. He had no way of knowing either way.
Moving from beneath the shade, Magnus began to make his way around the meadow—one of the only places that felt familiar anymore. There had to be Gates residents around here somewhere, or anyone who was feeling lost. If he could help bring them comfort or help look after them when the reality around them was still shaking with change, then he felt obligated to do so. Perhaps he could even find a corner of the meadow to gather and keep them safe. It wasn’t much, but it would be a start for them.
Purpose struck his heart and he lifted his head, the wind picking up the inky tangles of his forelock and pushing them to the side. Perhaps there was something that he could do here.
Perhaps there was a way for him to right all of the wrongs he had done in the past.
The sky had caught fire and burned a brilliant orange. A prognostic kind of colour, she turned from it and the heat it seemed to burn against her face – in it she felt war and war’s price is what she aimed, always, to forget. And then it came. Like a wind. Like a plague, killing everything meaningful in its path.
Like a battle, beating drums and driving a warpath through the latitudes of Beqanna.
It had split, creased and folded up onto itself and in panic she had fought against the shrinking and tugging of her own body, threatening the slumber of her unborn babes – blissful in their knotted, peaceful place. (‘This is not right.’)
If someone had asked her later, after she awoke, she would have said that the last thing she remembered thinking, was that she had never heard the second soul speak to her so clearly.
----
She stayed there for a long, long time. Curled up in a nest of rocks and foxtail, fattened and teary-eyed. “W-What do we do?”
(‘We must leave.’)
And it had been so, she knew she could not stay forever.
She could feel it, in the ungiving and unwelcoming hold of rock beneath her body. It had a queer kind of distance about it, as if it were a weapon made of everything they once knew and loved – turned against them. She knew it, also, as she heaved to breathe thin and strange air, unaccustomed to her lungs (or her lungs to it); no, she could not stay, cooped up and together, not while she beared the weighty things of nativity and need – for the coyote. Her mother. Father. Brothers.
Home.
So she sniffed and shuddered and struggled to her feet, to pass through the unknown.
----
“H-Hello?”
Empty. Quiet.
So very, very quiet, and still.
Longear has never truly been alone, not since the odd circumstances of her birthing hours. Not until now. This is alone. This is single-mindedness. So quiet and still. And empty. She sniffs, blinking the watery blur from her eyes and passing trees and marks of land, testing their shape and texture with her lips and nose – she cannot tell if she has ever seen them before. If this is the forest, or the forest clearcut and reseeded. The meadow? Or something made to mimic it for their comfort.
Everything is there, untouched and perfect – bright yellow coltsfoot and white foamflower; rocks and springtime detritus – but replaced, sowed different into the earth. Different earth. Rearranged or entirely alien, she can’t tell by the scent because everywhere horses wander in dazes and bump into one another with ‘sorrys’ soft as lamb’s ear.
‘I’m lost,’ she thinks, and the whisper is meant for her, and it goes searching through her bones and meat to deliver the plea. No reply. So she wanders and bumps until no clarity comes but she thinks she sees someone familiar in the distance. Father. But, no – her heart sinks, because it is not him (with Fang in tow) but something too much like him to ignore. She is tugged to the stallion, looking for consolation in the wild, dark hair and yellow body – Trystane and Fiero are in their, somewhere.
“M-Magnus?” she has heard the name before, and now it is all her mouth can hold. She lets silent sobs wrack her body.
“My heart has joined the Thousand,
for my friend stopped running today.”
When Magnus had crawled from the ocean, spitting up saltwater and brine from his lungs, the idea of family had felt like a dream. It had been years (decades) since he had wandered the earth with Joelle by his side; he was grateful to be alive, but he had not harbored dreams that he would be welcomed back by familiar arms, let alone familial ones. Those first days had been an exercise in angst and loneliness, the dark gold stallion wandering lands that had once been as familiar as the curve of a lover. He had to relearn the way time had worn their edges, the new shapes—the new faces that now populated them.
But then—oh, then!—he had seen Fiero. His dark, beautiful, wonderful son with torment in his eyes. And he had learned that a small piece of Joelle had lived on in him, and that, even better, there was extended family. There was children and grand children and even great-grand children. It was an odd feeling to know that your bloodline had extended so far when you had not passed as many years; in many ways, his own son was older than him, having lived out the length of time fully while he slumbered beneath the sea.
So his heart thrums with hope as he wanders the meadow that he will find Fiero and his family of wild things. He does not recognize her when she walks up to him, has no way of knowing for sure, but he feels a pang in his chest when he turns to look toward her, his dark eyes thoughtful as he considers her and the emotion on her beautiful young face. “Yes?” he responds instinctively, his voice whiskey and smoke. He takes a step forward and presses the velvet of his muzzle to her cheek, making low sounds. “It’s okay,” he murmurs, his body curving protectively around her. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll make it okay.”
The cries could be heard echoing throughout the meadow. Lost souls were scattered like wreckage after a storm. Happy reunions, confused conversations, and endless questions also stained the meadow’s newly sprung grass. Normally spring brought about new life and joy, but this spring had been sorely overshadowed by betrayal. The faeries that Beqanna had entrusted itself to had betrayed the inhabitants. Sahm would not easily forgive them for what they had done especially for the damage Newton endured.
The lovers walked in formation. They huddled close to each other. Their bodies touched with each motion, nothing would separate them again. Sahm knew more faces than Newton so Sahm kept his eyes peeled for anyone else whom he trusted. In time a buckskin stallion stood out from the mob. He was beneath a tree, curled around another horse. Sahm’s ears pricked and he let out a hefty grunt before playfully nudging Newton and increasing his speed to a canter. Newton did not question Sahm’s immediate change in attitude. He simply became Sahm’s shadow behind him.
”Magnus! Sahm exclaimed. ”Oh it is great to see you.” Last Sahm had seen his friend was at the exile of Ellyse within the Gates. It seemed like a world ago.
now don’t you understand…that I’m never changing who I am?
Reagan was, in a word—lost.
She was trying to make her way around, to find a direction to go, a sense of being. She was not doing a very good job. For you see, without her abilities, and her pride in shambles, Reagan has no idea what will become of her. She is not herself, and has no way of defending herself against the evil potatoes that she is sure are out to get her. Her old, green-tinged hair and moss covered body is reminiscent to that of a witch or an old hag—an oracle whose abilities had been stripped of her.
She is not what she was, and she is looking for someone with more answers than she currently has. Ruan has not yet made his appearance, and though she misses him, she has to make forward progress. She will not leave these lands; he will know to find her.
Seeing a small group, she feels her body lurch towards them, almost as if she knew them… as if something was—familiar. The smell upon one of them was that of Jason—someone she had known an age ago. She looked at him, and looked at his companions. Upon seeing that he had a male lover who was expecting, she took the chance of her old age to make the assumptions that old hags are used to making.
Jason has turned gay.
“It is so good to re-aquaint myself with friends who I thought would be long dead by now… I guess that even in the apocalypse, we are blessed in our blood, thank the Mother. Jason; introduce me to your friends, for it seems that we have a lot to learn, in order to return to our former selves.”
I will run the streets and hostile lands, I will touch the rain with all I have
I will breathe the air, to scream it loud. My feet will never touch the ground.
She’d been awake. Camelia had heard the rumbles in the distance, a sound like ancient rock departing from even older rock. It had grated at her ears, making her grit her teeth at the godawful sound. But panic didn’t strike her chest just yet. Beqanna had seen many things in its many years, and she supposed this was just another demon rising from the depths of hell. She had continued her grazing, enjoying the coolness of the evening melt against her slender shoulders.
When the deer began running the other way, Camelia did look up. Having lived in Heaven’s Gates all through childhood and maturity, the dunskin knew the flora and fauna incredibly well. She was well-attuned to the behaviors of the deer, especially. In her youth she loved to observe the flighty creatures, watching as they ate or slept or ran with their white tails flicking into the bushes. When a mass of them (a wild combination of slender legs and graceful necks and wide, frightened eyes) flew right past her, Camelia’s instincts and knowledge caused her to raise her head and glance around for the disturbance.
When she saw what they were running from, her feet immediately began to follow in a panic. It was as though Beqanna were folding into itself. Rather than the evening sky rising above her head, Camelia saw the tall mountains that should have been in the east, only turned upside down. She could almost pick out the clearing of the Chamber’s gathering place, but it was still too high up to notice much else. Birds were flying high and far, and the trees shook with deeply-rooted fear. The upside-down world was crashing closer to the ground and Camelia felt her legs move faster. She didn’t know where she could go – if anywhere.
The sound rattled in her ears like a hundred hornets. It was a crashing, buzzing, destroying, thundering sound that ripped at her eardrums and shook through her entire body. The ground suddenly shuddered under Camelia’s feet and she tripped, landing hard on her right side. Her shoulder sliced against a rock, creating a gash on her pretty skin, but the adrenaline pumping through her body dulled the pain. She rose again, glancing up for a quick moment to see the mountains of the Chamber crashing closer until their trees were brushing against the tips of the Gates trees.
A terrified scream ripped out of her throat and then there was nothing.
She wakes slowly, groggily. The pain in her shoulder has flared into a dull ache in the bone and a biting pain on her skin. Her foreleg is sticky with a combination of dried and freely-bleeding blood. Camelia groans, eyes blinking open to take in her surroundings. She is in the meadow. Her brow furrows in confusion. How had she gotten from the Gates to the meadow without remembering her journey? The aging mare struggles to her feet, a quiet gasp leaving her mouth as she places weight on her right foreleg.
There are others swarming around her and it looks like they have been hit by a decimating war. Stunned expressions, wide eyes, dust grimly covering their faces. Her brown eyes glance around for anyone familiar, anyone at all who could explain what has happened. A piece of her knows it was Beqanna itself – finally too fed up with the sinful ways of the members of its lands to dramatically wash away all the old like an echo of Noah and the Flood.
Her eyes catch on a familiar hide (much similar to her own coloring) shielding a gray body beneath a tree. Camelia limps slowly toward Magnus, her warm brown eyes dim with pain. By the time she reaches the once-Gates-member, there are several more crowded around. She shoulders her way deeper into the bundle until she is beside Magnus, her eyes worried and confused. Her eyes find his face and she mutters only four words. “What about the Gates?”
She sinks into him. The hollows and bulges are like her father’s (and like Trystane’s – they are nearly triplicates, though each a different shade of melancholy), and she knows them like lines of longitude across familiar shores, because many of them are her own. Years ago, she wore their yellow and black, too. Then, very suddenly, it had begun to peel away – around her eyes (so that she looked like she was wearing bright spectacles – they made her mother smile), from the velvet of her nose, the guard hairs of her jolly little scut and the whorl on her forehead (where mother liked to plant most of her kisses – where she plans to nestle into her own daughters, once they are here).
She had been her father’s girl, then, tail to toe.
And then, she was most like mother. And grandmother (she took her mother’s word on that, drinking in the earthy stories of the old jungle woman, who had withstood tide and exodus; who had been left a lady in the wake of a great and beautiful tragedy… It is funny, how very small the world is, indeed). Not as rosy-tinged as they, but pale and bright-eyed; round and sturdy; wild-haired and flower-scented.
—mother and father had found each other in the Gates, where first they made Trys out of fleshy, intimate coition (not like mother).
—then she had been laboured for, hard and strange, on the jungle floor.
(—and many, many years ago, her maternal grandmother had loved a man who called that Heaven home, the same firmament where her paternal grandparents had loved and ruled in;
— and, because a spark survived a flood, a magician could make sisterhood and bromeliads into something tiny and awakening…)
Gone.
For now, he is all she has (that and the soft rabbit’s tail that remains, in place of long, coarse hair like theirs, as a reminder always of what she must find). “Longear,” she mutters eventually when she finds composure. “You have not seen my father? My brothers?” Has he ever even met her brothers? “H-He’d have Fang. They’d be together, I mean… or… I hope. I thought you might be him, but then I saw,” that he was alone, she knew it could not be.
And by now, her mother might as well be a lifetime away… impossible enough to find her before the shake-up.
When others join, she lets him lean off her, because she can tell they come to him in searching, like a beacon lit high on a hill that she surely must share. She watches each face (their worry, their longing for comfort that brings them to a huddle of warm breath), recognizing none of them until the last to come. (She had called herself Camelia, Longear remembers well enough.) “Hello,” she says, and it is distant and general – to all of them, trying to anchor herself there, because otherwise she feels a tug to set loose like a dandelion seed and bump and wander until she finds.
“My heart has joined the Thousand,
for my friend stopped running today.”
Although it had been but a day since Beqanna had cracked in half, it felt like a lifetime. Magnus could feel the very weight of it pressing down onto his shoulders—the loss and confusion and hurt surrounding them. It came in waves. In some seconds, it was all-encompassing, as suffocating as smoke. In others, it was a light that pierced through the heavens, scattering constellations to make his purpose crystal clear.
Now was one of those moments. As they arrived, one after the other, he felt his heart pound. He had to do something to help them. He had to help forge their way to a new home; fight for it if necessary.
The first to come, after his granddaughter, is Sahm, with another male wrapped intimately by his side. “Sahm!” Magnus proclaimed, although he didn’t leave Longear. “I am so glad to know that you are safe.” It had been months since they had fought for the Gates together, equal partners in their desire to see her rise again, willing to bear the yoke together. But then their world had imploded and Magnus had left in a blind rage. He regret not having more time to hunt down Sahm and ensure his well-being. “I am sorry that I left so quickly,” he added, his voice quiet, full of remorse. “I should have stayed to check on you.”
He didn’t, however, want the reunion to be one rooted in sadness, so he did his best to perk up, swinging his head toward the other stallion who had been quiet so far. “Hello, there!” his smile was crooked. “My name is Magnus,” a useless pleasantry he felt compelled to follow anyway. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
His attention was diverted when the mare approached the group, and he look quizzically at her before understanding struck him. He had never known Jason, but Sahm had spoken highly of him. Magnus had to wonder if Sahm bore the resemblance of his father. For a second, he contemplated correcting her before he thought better of it; he would leave that to Sahm’s judgement. Instead, he just gave a kind smile. “Hello to you,” he cocked a back leg. “My name is Magnus.” A greeting he seemed to say often the last few days.
As Camelia joined the group, coming up along his other side, concern etched firmly onto his features. “Camelia!” his voice was laced with worry as he noted her limp, the blood caking on her leg. “Are you okay?” He wished there were the Falls to take her for her to wash her wounds or healers who could work their magic on her, but there was no such magic at their disposal anymore. Just time and pain. He extended his neck to bump his nose against hers and offered his side to her for support. His face fell at her question, scarred mouth pulling into a frown. “I am so sorry.” He swallowed hard. “The Gates—it, it is gone, Camelia. Beqanna took it back.” It still felt like a knife in his chest to admit it. “I am so sorry.”
When Longear spoke again, Magnus twisted his head to his other side, flanked by the two women. “Fang?” he questioned, face puzzled before understanding dawned on it. “Fang. Wait—that means that you’re Fiero’s daughter?” His eyes light with hope, and then worry for his dark-eyed son. The one who carried the world on his shoulders; the one who had lived more years than he. “I haven’t seen them. I don’t know.” He glanced around, fear clawing at his chest. “But we’ll find them. Of course we will.”
He did not move from between Longear and Camelia, but he glanced up, gold-flecked eyes smoldering and fierce as he considered all of them, moving from face to face. “I think we need to find a home,” he started cautiously, and then firmly, the words taking root. “And I think I know how we can do it.”
It had been a long, exhausting day, but seeing Magnus simply brought great joy to Sahm. Newton could tell that Sahm was officially happy and relieved. In the nights of their quiet murmurings Sahm had spoken to Newton about Magnus and all that had happened in the Gates. Surprisingly Magnus looked very similar to what Newton had imagined in his head. Magnus also acted and presented himself with equal respect as Sahm had given him in his stories. ”No need to be sorry, Magnus.” Sahm replied. ”It is in the past. I am just happy you are okay.” Sahm loved Magnus like a father. Nothing Magnus could have done would have caused Sahm to feel differently. Sahm smiled. He stepped toward Magnus and brushed his nose against the stallions shoulder. It was a touch of brotherhood and love. The buckskin would always have a place in Sahm’s heart.
”Nice to meet you too. I am Newton” Newton said in response to the introduction. ”I have heard great things about you.” He finished. A smiled breached his lips as well. He leaned his head against Sahm’s, and peacefully awaited whatever would happen next.
Sahm knew that more horses would come to Magnus. He was a natural leader. Sahm would easily have joined his ranks if it wasn’t for Offspring (little did he know that they were partnering at this time ^_^ yay). A mare was next to joing the group and she bee lined toward Sahm. He initially gave her a pleasant smile, but as soon as she opened her mouth he clearly looked baffled. Jason? Sahm looked nothing like his late father. He wasn’t sure why the mare was mistaken, but he was flattered by the prospect. ”Oh goodness…you knew my father?” Sahm said before he could think of anything else. ”You knew my father?!?!” He grew more excited. ”Oh I am sorry let me clarify…I am not Jason, he was my dad, but I am thrilled to meet an old friend of his.” He couldn’t have been more honest in his elation. Sahm had always known that his father had lived a adventurous life before he had settled down with Fiakso.
Other horses came after the mare, but Sahm paid little attention to them. Newton did watch the others and he nodded to each as they came.
now don’t you understand…that I’m never changing who I am?
Reagan’s time here was fleeting. She had seen a group gathering and had gone in the direction of them because she was tired of being alone—and waiting for Ruan. Watching the two males together, she remembered why she enjoyed the purple-spotted stallions company—
It was because she could trust him. So she sighed, and shifted her weight, finally having gotten over the fact that she was indeed magic-less. And in this group, she knew she was not the only one, for it was obvious that Jason had changed his appearance and had gone through a mind-glimmer, for it seemed he had forgotten his old friend. One other—a male, turned to her and addressed her. Magnus he said he name was. Why did that name sound familiar? She dipped her head in a greeting, her moss-tinged hair drawing away from her face as she addressed him. “And I am Reagan, it is a pleasure to meet you, Magnus.”
But it is when Jason turns to her, and corrects her not as Jason, but as his son, she was able to understand… This was Jason’s scent… Jason’s Magic. Jason’s very essence. Her eyes gone wide, she realized that even Jason—a magician like herself—had succumbed to the waste of this land, and she had had to wonder what kind of love it would have taken to sacrifice his own powers to see the wellbeing of the one who stood before her. An almost instantaneous respect fell over her for this one, and his protective nature over his mate and their daughter. And when she talked to them, she attempted to keep a tear out of her eye and tried to ignore the lump in her throat—was there truly no one left here from her days? “I can see your blood, son of Jason. It is your fathers, which says to me that you are a good man. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. Yes, I knew your father quite well. I dare say, other than Carnage, there seems to be no one else left from that era.”
![[Image: gqYjsHr.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/KjqNDKxc/gqYjsHr.png)
