"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
01-22-2017, 09:16 PM (This post was last modified: 01-22-2017, 09:16 PM by Nairne.)
would you spend your whole life with me,
Alone.
She is something she has never been before – totally lost in Beqanna. What is a child of a ruling dynasty, a creature who has always known one place as her true home, when that place is gone? When her family is scattered to the four winds, and she can’t find any of them? What does that make her?
Nairne doesn’t know, except that the loss and loneliness have filled her with a desperate sadness, something she has never known. Before, she could always count on the Falls to be there; she could count on the song of the Kingdom to fill her heart and the other loyal subjects of her beloved home to give her someone to love, even if her own family was not there. Like many of her ancestors, simply standing in the blue waters of their waterfall had soothed her, above and beyond the healing powers.
But it’s gone, and she stands alone in the Meadow with nothing and no one.
The loss of magic doesn’t affect her – Nairne, despite the varied abilities of her parents, had never had any powers of her own. But the loss of the Falls? It is a crippling thing, and one she feels in the sharpness of every breath, the prickle of tears that come at the strangest times but she always blinks away. The buckskin mare is beyond grateful that her mother had stayed away, wandering the rest of the world somewhere with her father. What hurts in the very fabric of Nairne’s being would have shattered Natilyn beyond repair.
She could go look for them – they tend to frequent the same haunts, and though they are far away, Nairne knows the way – but even that she feels she cannot do. What does she have to show for it? Six generations of Falls residents before her yielded nine Queens, eight Kings, and at least one General, and Nairne achieved nothing higher in the Falls than living there. She doesn’t even have the excuse of love taking her away from her duties as her parents had – Nairne has loved no one except her siblings, parents, and grandparents.
No, she cannot go back to the mother and father and tell them their homelands are gone, extinguished as if they never were, and not even have a grandchild or lover to present. But neither can she function here, with everything she has known gone.
Something has to give, and she doesn’t know what it will be.
would you be there to always hold me down?
Nairne
mikhael x natilyn
html base by the lovely kyra | image and modifications by devin
@[Laura]/@[woolf] I don't know what this is but I will get back into her and we can see if they get along at all. <3
the wolves will chase you by the pale moonlight {drunk and driven by the devil's hunger}
In his mind’s eye, his family tree is very much an alive and active thing. He sometimes likes to close his eyes and trace it, following along the roots of it, reaching outward to the different offshoots and branches. Some branches were heavier than others, the relatives busy with their lives and with lust, their offspring multiplying faster than he could comprehend. Other branches were quiet, lonely, slowly withering and then turning to ash. He never quite understood that either. How one family could be so different?
He felt her enter into the meadow before he saw her, and although he dove into the depths of his relatives he couldn’t find her—and yet, yet, he felt that unmistakable tie. That same pull as if she was one of his own. It puzzled him, and he frowned, his emerald eyes opening beneath the wild tangles of his forelock to see her. She was golden and sure-footed as she walked and although something stirred in the back of his mind, almost like a memory, he still could not place her. He could not name her familiarity.
Disliking the uncertainty, he moved toward her, shedding the shadows, as he made his way confidently to her. He was intimidating in presence, towering at 17 hands, his body thickly built, feathers around his strong legs. But it was the glint in his eye that was the most dangerous, the hiss of magic in his movements, as he came to a stop, tilting his head to consider her. “Nairne,” he liked to pluck their names from their minds, from the tapestry of thoughts that hung so heavily around them.
Her sadness was thick in the air. While he did not understand it, he found he disliked it. Why did so many souls hand themselves over to sorrow that wrecked their lives? Why did they allow themselves to become consumed by thoughts that dragged them down? “No amount of sadness will bring the Falls back,” he mused, tilting his mulberry head, “although I suppose nothing is stopping you from continuing to try.”
At first, she is certain that he will pass her by. She has come to a stop where a creek narrows and then tumbles down a series of rocks into another shallower creek; it is inflated with the runoff from a springtime melt somewhere uphill, and the sound of the miniature waterfall is what has brought her near tears today. And he is a strange – she doesn’t recognize him even as a passing acquaintance – so the buckskin is sure he is simply on his way, with a purpose, to somewhere beyond her. But he isn’t. Green eyes are focused on her and she admits to being a little bit intimidated, if only to herself.
Nairne is of totally average height, 15.3 hands, but the unfamiliar stallion is much taller, and built much sturdier than she, who tends towards the slimmer side of things, thanks to her father’s bloodlines. And he has an intensity about him, the kind of intensity that she remembers of her family’s friend Brennen: the aura that something hidden lurks under skin and behind their eyes, and that they aren’t really someone who should be crossed. Even smiling, Brennen had always given Nairne that feeling, and she finds the purplish stranger much in the same vein.
But somehow, intimidating is not scary. Power, while respected, is not something she has been taught to fear, and there is something else about him that draws her, makes her smile at him even before he speaks. Open, friendly; the distraction from her own thoughts pushes much of the sadness to the back of her mind. He opens his mouth, and her name comes out. Nairne blinks in surprise, that much she cannot hide, but she doesn’t voice the obvious – and in her opinion, unnecessary – question: she doesn’t know him, she won’t pretend otherwise through acting as if she may have forgotten. However he learned her name, it wasn’t through a prior meeting.
He continues on to address her feelings, and she idly wonders if he’s a mind-reader. It doesn’t seem like the right fit, not for the power lurking under his skin, but it would explain a lot. The musing keeps the wave of sadness his words provoke from swamping her; instead the wave just laps at her hooves, tauntingly. Because like the tides, it often recedes, but it has not gone entirely. “Nothing I can do will bring the Falls back,” she answers him plainly, “I know that, in my head. But in my heart…feelings are often irrational. And I have nothing in my life to replace what I once had.” Without prompting, her family briefly flits across her mind but she does not hold the thoughts of them for long – she hasn’t been able to find the twins, and her parents are long gone from her life. Nairne has not yet reached the point of no return, of leaving Beqanna for good like they had. “Have you lost anything that once meant everything to you?” Her tone is not accusing, but walks the line between rhetorical and true curiosity.
He seems so balanced, so calm; the very things which tumultuous Nairne has never felt.
would you be there to always hold me down?
Nairne
mikhael x natilyn
html base by the lovely kyra | image and modifications by devin
the wolves will chase you by the pale moonlight {drunk and driven by the devil's hunger}
He laughed at her question, although the sound did not carry any true trace of humor. It was a dry sound, one born from familiarity and study but not feeling. Woolf had never found something truly a day in his life. Even as a colt, he had been eerily mature, the wisdom and age of his relatives having bled in his bones so that as he slipped from his mother’s womb, he breathed in their collective knowledge.
“I have lost nothing,” he said calmly with a serene roll of purple shoulders. “And I have certainly never let anything hold that much power over me.” Not entirely untrue, although not wholly true either. The closest thing he had come to loss was when Beqanna had bled his magic from his veins, leaving him a husk of who he truly was—leaving him to ghost the shadows without purpose until he had stumbled upon the strange child who had poured it back into him. Still, he had not considered that a crippling loss.
It had been temporary. Even then, he had known it.
Focusing his emerald eyes on her again, he tilted his head, puzzled. “Why do you let yourself be ruled by emotions that you yourself say are irrational?” It was one thing to be blinded by emotions, to lose yourself in the moment, but she seemed clear-headed enough to know that they were irrational—that they were without base. Why could she not overcome it? Why did she continue to let herself drown in it?
Curious more than anything, Woolf took a step backward from her and closed his eyes, drawing upon the unknown relation between them and his own blood. A small gash opened on his shoulder, a gash that he had reopened again and again, the blood pouring forth over the mulberry flesh. With a small hum, he brought forth a mirage, the old Falls shimmering around her. The water pooled around her ankles, the waterfall crashing down above them. It was a convincing enough mirage, but not entirely foolproof. If one was to look hard enough, you could see the transparent spots, the meadow visible through it.
For someone who hungered for it though, who ached for it, it would feel real enough.
When he laughs, Nairne finds something sad in the sound. A good laugh, she thinks, should be a joyful sound. Humor and fun and lightness – but his is not. It’s like laughing doesn’t mean the same thing to him as it does to her. The buckskin girl thinks of her mother, and the way she had laughed the most around Mikhael and her children, and the way her laugh reminded Nairne of the bubble of water over rocks. It makes her smile, briefly, a flash of light in her eyes, but it fades as she considers him again.
He says he has never let anything hold enough power over him to mourn its loss, and she tilts her head and continues to study him, serious and wondering if she should be sad for him. Wonders what it would be like to trade not experiencing the emotional lows for also not experiencing the emotional highs – would it be worth it? He continues, asking her what the worth of the emotions she remembers so clearly is, and Nairne has to consider her answer carefully. Why let herself be ruled by emotions? – she is not so sure she has a choice!
Before she decides on words to explain it, he steps away and then she is enveloped in the most beautiful fantasy. A thing she knows cannot be (the Falls are gone, so gone – she has looked herself, in every land). The water pools around her fetlocks, cool and as welcoming as she remembers, and the familiar roar of water fills her ears. Nairne takes a deep breath, touches her muzzle reverently to the surface of the water that isn’t real (though it feels real) – and then she smiles at him.
A true smile, filled with breathtaking joy. “Thank you,” she knows it will be temporary, that at some point he will let the illusion go, or Nairne will have to step out of it, but she wades deeper into the illusion for a moment, letting the water darken her gold coat as she goes almost belly-deep, and turns back to him. The words come easy now. “Because you cannot have the joy, the love, without the risk of loss.” Nairne says. “Because to lose everything means I must have had everything. Because eventually, when I find something else to love and I don’t miss it as much, the good memories will still bring me this same kind of joy.”
would you be there to always hold me down?
Nairne
mikhael x natilyn
html base by the lovely kyra | image and modifications by devin
the wolves will chase you by the pale moonlight {drunk and driven by the devil's hunger}
He watches her with mild fascination, finding her interaction with the faux Falls intriguing. She wades into the water he conjures for her, closes her eyes, and seems to find some level of comfort within it. Was it always so easy to assuage a hurt? Could something you knew was fake ease the pain of loss? It was more questions that he carefully tucked away, yearning for the answer, although he himself would never be able to truly understand the reasoning behind it. Logically, none of what she did made any sense.
Still, he kept up the mirage for her sake, ignoring the small pang along his shoulder, the mulberry stallion having grown long accustomed to the sacrifices he made to call upon his magic. While he was buoyed by his family lines, he knew there was a price for it all; it had never been something he was unwilling to pay.
(If only, if only, Bright was there and still had her powers.)
“Interesting,” is all he says at first, tilting his heavy head to the side. “And the joy? It is that worth it to you? Worth the risk of the pain?” His brow furrowed in concentration. “I cannot imagine anything being worth losing that much control over your own self, over your own destiny. You are willingly handing over the power of your own life.” It was utter foolishness to him, but he could see it was something that she took seriously and so he pried no more, letting her have her own choices. Perhaps one day she would see the error of her ways—the foolishness of her choices—but he wouldn’t convince her of that today.
“Is there anything else you would like to see?” The mirage was not difficult to uphold, but it was also not a wholly small magic either and he would not be able to hold onto it forever. Why he offered was beyond him, but he reasoned it was the least he could ask.
Nairne smiles at him, because her waterfall is there. Because it is easy enough to pretend it’s real, to immerse herself in the feeling and sounds of the waterfall. But while her own words are memories of long-held joys, his questions are so serious. Nairne can’t quite believe that he has never felt the highs and lows of life, but the very way he phrases the questions convinces her it’s the truth. She turns to look at him, letting the smile fade as she seriously considers his question. “If not for the joy, however temporary it might end up, what would I live for?” she asks a question in return for his question, voice just loud enough to be heard over the reassuring sound of the Falls. For a long moment, they simply look at each other, each convinced that the other is crazy.
His next words startle her out of her own head, and she smiles again, very reluctantly. “No, thank you. You’ve already done more than I could ever expect, or repay.” The buckskin mare, accepting with a very heavy heart that no dream can last forever, and knowing that all magics come with a cost, walks back out of her memory-mirage to stand before him once more. Despite everything, despite that she can see he thinks she is crazy for her deep love of the Falls, she is intrigued by him.
“The Falls was my family home. That is part of why it means so much to me. It was the one place where we could always find one another again. If I stayed there long enough, someone else would have come back. My parents, or my cousins, or my siblings. Now…” Nairne looks past him, something resigned deep in her gaze. “Now, I don’t know if I will ever find them again. It was my choice to leave, certainly, but I did so assuming that someone, someday, would return to the Falls. They always had before, and as long as the Kingdom stood, the children of Nikkai would have found their way back to it.”
Quiet, again, for a moment. Perhaps he can ‘see’ her family connected to her, or perhaps he can only see his own, but she is quite sure they are out of his reach anyway. Most of them are no longer in Beqanna, if they live at all. But her family is at the heart of these emotions he doesn’t understand in her. “Do you have a family…” she trails off, and is startled into a short laugh. “I don’t even know your name.”
would you be there to always hold me down?
Nairne
mikhael x natilyn
html base by the lovely kyra | image and modifications by devin
the wolves will chase you by the pale moonlight {drunk and driven by the devil's hunger}
“There are plenty of things to live for,” he rolled his shoulders, just a touch of irritation finding its way beneath his coat—he didn’t like the insinuation that his life was empty, somehow hollow just because he didn’t surrender control for fleeting, shallow emotions. “There is intellect, honor, preservation of that which is important for future generations.” His severe mouth twists and flattens, his emerald eyes glinting. “These things do not bring joy, but they bring purpose. One could argue that is more important.”
His life was filled with purpose, overflowing with it. From his inception to his birth to the years that have since stretched on, he has had nothing but purpose to cling to. The purpose of protecting his family, even when he feels no great love for them. The purpose of balancing the worlds that they have so selfishly kept in turmoil, their constant need to pass between the veil of life and death, upending the stability too often.
His life has, however, not been filled with joy.
(That does not make it worthless, he argues to himself.)
He listened politely as she talked about her family, about their legacy within the falls, and although they still feel like empty words, he could comprehend them more. He took it and internalized it, burying it within his broad chest amongst the rest of the knowledge that roots there. For a moment, he dipped into the stream of life that flowed from within her and out of her, feeding the connection to all living things. He followed it and imagined the branches of her, the glowing lights of each relative. “I could most likely help you find them,” he offered, his voice echoing in his throat, his heavy head looking outward.
It would not be difficult, to locate them, to trace them, to hunt them down.
(If they were still around, of course.)
But he didn’t linger on the offer, his attention instead turning to her question and realization, his laugh once again ringing in his mouth—the faintest hints of amusement touching the edges of it. “My name is Woolf,” he offered. “And yes, I have a family.” A small frown. “Who doesn’t have a family?” But no more on the subject is offered.
