"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
The sea spits him out rather ungraciously. He finds his feet after a few stumbles, turning to look back at the receding waves with a firm scowl. He’s not used to the swimming – maybe he never will be – but he has at least kept himself afloat, at least made it. Though where, exactly, he has made it remains a question.
The alien land stretches before him, rising into hills and dipping into valleys, none of which he has seen before. The Mountain stabs up into the clouds, he can see it even from his far distance from it (a visible reminder to all of their sins, he reckons). Sabrael shudders at the sight of it, but not from fear. A hot anger not even the sea could quench rises within him when he thinks of all that has been taken from him.
He is a child of the Reckoning; he does not relish the fact that it has ruled his life so far.
The fall air chills his still-drying coat as he moves further away from the shoreline. The young stallion is suddenly thrust back into the Dale. The kaleidoscope of colors on the trees and the carpet of leaves under his feet takes him back to his childhood. It’s so unlike Ischia, so like the mountain kingdom that he wonders why his mother even followed the faerie’s directions into the parting mist.
Eventually, the trees are replaced by tall grasses that sway in the early breeze. His amber-gold eyes sweep across the more familiar planes of the meadow. He isn’t sure what he’s looking for here but he is almost certain he will find it. The space between the bodies (between everything, truly) is already a comfort. His island is clustered and stuffy; here it is open and inviting, as if he could fill any space he wanted. The speckled bay grins as he moves into the crowd, his eyes searching.
Screaming like a siren, alive and burning brighter.
Pyre had been trapped in a shiftless state for months. Months of this one form, when his memory started with a body that flowed to match his will, his wishes, his every whim. It was the only thing he knew of his identity from before waking on the Mountain. He was a shifter. A dragon. Fire flowed in his veins, and there was a hollow ache in his chest where something else was missing, something he hadn’t quite found a way to name yet. And that little fragment of his identity had been stolen from him just like the rest of it.
Fury and frustration burned through him almost as brightly as the fire had so briefly. Months, and still no clue. All he had was the shape he was stuck in, garish yellow and white splashing across his drafty frame, a female form that felt...incomplete. Not wrong, he’d come to realize that somewhere along the line. Not wrong, but not entirely right. And that not right grated like claws screeching along slate, an itch beneath his skin, a restless dissatisfaction he couldn’t shake.
Once again, he prowled the Meadow, his feet desperate to move since they couldn’t shift. With a short, frustrated huff, he shook his head, setting his ridiculous riot of a mane into motion, spilling down his neck and resettling against his skin. And in the middle of the motion, someone caught his eye, a young stallion, barely more than a boy, really. There was something familiar about him, though Pyre couldn’t quite say what. He didn’t think it was the shape of him, the set of his neck, the angle of his shoulder, the weight of his limbs, the line of his back, nothing in his face or his form exactly. But there was something about him…
Pyre’s mismatched eyes narrowed in puzzled curiosity as he studied the boy, stepping slowly closer and walking around to get a look at the kid from a different angle. Still, he couldn’t pinpoint the source of the feeling. As usual. Just a vague feeling of familiarity he should damn well be used to by this point. It seemed like everything caused it, without a hint of explanation. A lilting brogue, a humming croon, a floral scent lingering in the air, so many random sensations made him feel like he should remember something. And sometimes, like now, there was no specific trigger. Just a feeling.
Still. Pyre shrugged, snorted softly again, and figured he might as well introduce himself. “Hey there. I’m...Pyre.” Or it was as close to a name as he had, anyhow. It wasn’t exactly like he’d woken up with his name printed on a convenient little tag on his chest or anything. “This is perhaps a stupid question, but you seem...familiar. Do you know me?”
((Pyre is what Quark named “him”self, he looks just like the description in his profile says, just like the ref that’s also there. Yellow and white tobiano splash mare. Lots of hair. Drafty Gypsy horse. Just doesn’t feel like his body fits, on account of it’s supposed to be shifty and let him be male if he damn well wants to be.))
His anger boils down to a low simmer as he looks about the meadow.
His grin is a farce, because he realizes that he shouldn’t be here, that the smallest greeting by another will set him off. He knows, in the dark marrow of his young bones, that he should still be with his people. He knows that coming here is like landing on a first stepping stone away from his childhood. And as impossible as it is to even think of leaving his mother and grandparents, he imagines it will be so much easier for them now if he does. Their family has fractured, irreparably. His aunts, his siblings, his father – he will be just another piece floating on the waves away from their island sanctuary.
Sabrael snarls like a feral beast when one errant horse bumps him.
He makes to retreat just after, moving towards the shelter of familiar deciduous trees that are long into the process of dying. Fall has painted the lands as it always has, but this time as if trying to cover up the mistake of its fissuring. Sabrael is not fooled by the camouflage. Though, he sees that there are opportunities to be had in the fresh sculpting of their homes. There are those too stubborn and stupid to see it, to see past tradition and ancestry to take advantage of all they have been given. Sometimes, he hates that he is just as stubborn. Sometimes, he wishes he could just forget the Dale, forget his dad.
But his memories seem to have a life of their own inside of him. They tether him to a past he can barely remember for his youth. It comes to him in flashes like shooting stars, brilliant but short-lived. The bleeding bloom of salmons struggling upriver. The sharp shine of frost on the peaks. The warm puff of his father’s muzzle exhaling atop his head. Kha’s watchful eyes. Sela’s laugh. Sabrael makes a full picture with the pieces he has to put together. He fills the cracks in his memories with an anger that welds the rest together.
Sometimes, he can almost feel a white-hot, roaring creature growing in his chest.
He doesn’t understand this part of himself, but he embraces it anyway. Because it makes him feel powerful, somehow, like it is a showing of the man he will become. Like a second skin that he will someday slip into. For now, he can keep the heat at bay. It is difficult, but he can talk himself off of the edge, let the cool autumn air cool him. By the time the other comes, Sabrael has come out of his head. His fire-gold eyes are brooding and pensive, but no longer lit from the inside. They narrow on the colorful equine that circles him and soften only slightly when she makes no further move.
I don’t even know myself, he wants to admit, but doesn’t. He doesn’t tell her that he’s a stranger in his own skin, that something dark and dangerous resides in his core. He only just realizes why he thinks about running so often - that he fears for his family’s safety if he stays with them. The speckled almost-man looks at the spotted woman and merely shakes his head. No. Briefly, he wonders if it is Ramiel she sees in him (maybe they’d crossed paths Before). The thought is pleasant if naïve; he straightens a little anyway. “Sabrael.” He looks towards the other horses scattered throughout the territory, so many nameless faces this lady could have stopped instead. Why him? His voice is low and rumbling, neither pleading nor polite. “Why me? What do you see that seems so familiar?”
