"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
02-21-2017, 11:10 PM (This post was last modified: 02-21-2017, 11:18 PM by Aranea.)
It was a triumphant return.
Aranea felt a swell of pride as she followed the familiar path home, Magnus surely by her side. Were he interested she would have chatted the entire way back - unusual for her, but for so long her voice had been trapped. There were a thousand things she wanted to tell him but for this journey it was largely idle chatter. All she really wanted was to listen to the sound of her own words again. It was not ego, but she greeted her voice like an old friend, eager to spill her thoughts back in to the world.
Silence had served her well - but her eyes sparked with a whole NEW life now!
Her return to Tephra was met with a face marked by excitement. Sloene was in her mind for already she felt a kinship with the mare, despite obvious difficulties. To Magnus she would turn and to his shoulder she would seek to press her nose. "Thank you, Magnus, for believing in me." Still her voice seemed strange and it cracked from time to time, her words scarcely more than a whisper. In time it would strengthen and grow and her voice would be shared the world around.
The ashen mare lifted her head and called to her friend, invited Sloene to join them if she was not busy, and then her fire eyes would rest back on Magnus. "I want to speak to you privately, later, but I'd like to see Sloene. I want to thank her, too. Stay if you can?" It meant a great deal to Aranea that they had not turned from her when she had no words to share, no voice to give. They had trusted her on blind faith and she would be loyal to them, always.
ARANEA (immortal, mute, infrared vision)
from dust, she returned
the dream, an enigma... silent
She is enjoying the warmth, the new sights, the sunshine on her back as she grazes on lush grasses and sips from the flowing water that she has grown accustomed to the taste of. Perhaps there is a hint of sulfur, a tang, but she has grown used to it already. When the unfamiliar voice calls her name, it gives the little grulla mare pause and she hesitates, raising her head but giving a head tilt as she tries to place the voice. After all, she doesn’t know anyone here, hasn’t met anyone except Aranea and Magnus; and one of them is a stallion and the other is mute.
Still, curiosity killed the cat. And maybe someday the Sloene, because she heads towards the voice anyway, silver eyes scanning the ground around her as she moves, quietly, with a grace that one might not expect of a wild-looking girl, one still a natural color and with tangles in her mane and tail. It turns out she is not far from the voice, as she crests a small rise and finds the King and her friend Areanea standing there, and she catches the tail end of her dark friend saying something to Magnus, and her own heart leaps with some joy.
“Aranea!” she calls the mare’s name in an excited voice, and turns to Magnus with what she hopes is a more calm, respectful tone for a King and greets him as well. “Magnus,” she smiles, but quickly turns back to her friend, making a mental promise that she will make up any slight the King may take from her disinterest at a later date. She likes him, as well as one can like someone she just met, but it is Aranea she had unexpectedly bonded with, and Aranea she had followed to Tephra. Other relationships would develop at a slower pace. “Can you…speak freely, now?” she asks, hopefully.
The sound of her voice was a joyful thing indeed, and he brightened at the babble—the noise a happy one as it ran over and through him. He listened attentively as they made their way down the Mountain and back to Tephra, making noises of confirmation or interjections as necessary to keep the conversation alive but mostly letting her carry it. He had heard plenty of his own voice over the years; it was nice to know that after years upon years of silence that she was finally able to have control over her own.
When they finally reached home, he grinned at her, reaching over to nudge her neck gently. “There is no need for you to thank me. I did what any friend would have been honored to do.” A small, kind smile as he looked her in the eye. “I am so happy for you, Aranea. You deserve to have your voice back. You deserve everything good that is coming for you. I am so grateful for your support over the years.”
At her request, he simply nodded, knowing that the grullo mare had come to mean a great deal to Aranea ever since she had followed her home to Tephra. So, despite the exhaustion that burrowed into the center of his bones, despite the fatigue that weighed his eyelids, he remained rooted to the spot.
He would stay, of course he would.
It was the least that he could do for her.
And then, when Sloene answered the call, when she arrived, he just gave her a smile. “It’s good to see you,” he said, stepping back and letting Aranea explain the situation—she had the voice to do it now.
out of the blue out into the loneliest place that you'll ever know I carried the world just as far as I could but the damage had taken its toll
03-02-2017, 11:05 PM (This post was last modified: 03-02-2017, 11:07 PM by Aranea.)
Give me reason to fill this hole, connect the space between
Let it be enough to reach the truth that lies, across this new divide
the aranea that had returned to beqanna bore a stark contrast to the one that had left. the years had softened her edges and lent a brighter gleam to her eyes. she had matured, to put it simply, and in her maturity recognized that violence was not always the answer and that wars were best avoided.
aranea had returned a diplomat and it was to tephra that she was now chained.
it was for tephra that she would use her voice, and it was for tephra (and magnus) that she had sought its return. aranea would not waste the gift granted to her and she turned, now, to her friend to share that news. "sloene," she greeted, and found the name pleasant on her lips. "i can, yes. the faeries were gracious." her gaze shifted to magnus and she took a step closer to him, comforted by his presence and ever grateful for the news he had given her.
"magnus and i have just returned from the mountain. i wanted to be able to thank you before anything else. trusting me when i could not speak... that meant a lot." more than she could really put in to words, but she was certain the emotion would be expressed in her fiery eyes, which riveted once more on those of her friend.
after a pause her focus would dance between the two of them and she would speak freely of her intentions. "tephra is my home, always. i will do everything i can to see it thrive."
It is nice, to hear a voice where there was none, and Sloene memorizes the way that the dark mare’s voice sounds, the cadence and the timbre of the words. She speaks first of the fae, and the little grulla mare tilts her head and gazes at Aranea with open curiosity, though she says nothing. Unlike the gifted who were called to the Mountain to have their powers stripped, and then returned to reclaim them, Sloene believes herself completely normal, and she has never had reason to set even a single hoof on the mountain. Still, she is curious about the whole process in an academic way, and adds it to the list of things she will ask someone, someday.
But more immediately of concern, is that Aranea went on, and the next statement is one she feels like she should answer. “You seemed trustworthy, and you haven’t let me down yet,” she replies, and if her smile is slightly bewildered, who can blame her? There have been few people in her life, before now, that were worthy of her trust. Her foster-mothers, she has painfully come to realize, might have loved the orphans they gathered to their little herd in their own way, but mostly they had wanted to gain something through having the children they raised scatter to all of the Kingdoms and become powerful. “It is I who should thank you, for bringing me here. I didn’t realize it was possible, to love a place, before.”
Aranea speaks of serving Tephra, of doing what she can for it, and this is where Sloene is still lost. Nera and Branka had equipped her with many skills, some of which had served her well in communicating with Aranea and choosing Tephra, but she does not actually think that the rest of her skill set will be particularly useful to Magnus and Aranea. After all, it had been a different world when she was a child, and Sloene had been raised essentially to be a spy. To listen, and learn, and blend into any environment. That doesn’t seem right, here in this peaceful place Aranea has brought her. “I would like to serve Tephra as well,” she says quietly, “but I don’t really know how.”
It did his heart good to see Aranea so free—so light. He warmed at the sight of her and smiled as he watched her with her friend. When she spoke of her intentions, he could only dip his head, one corner of his scarred mouth lifting into a crooked grin. “Tephra is incredibly lucky to have you call her home.” His gaze shifted over to Sloene and he corrected himself. “To have both of you call her home.”
And then, he fell silent, watching as the two mares conversed. It felt intrusive to watch them, to stand there as they caught up, and in the back of his mind, he felt a rare tiredness beginning to pull at him. It was just as he was about to excuse himself that he focused in on what Sloene was saying.
His ears perked as his gold-flecked eyes sharpened on her.
“We would be lucky to have you serve her, however you wish.” He considered her for a second before he added. “Checking on members, recruiting, monitoring the borders—they are all small but meaningful ways that the residents of Tephra can keep her alive, keep her active.” Another pause. “We also have a very loose structure for diplomats and the army, if you would be interested in officially joining a caste.”
They did not require it of anyone, but it was there should someone crave it. He himself knew that he had always found purpose in the castes, in the work, and he had never wanted to keep that away.
“You just tell me what you want, and I would be happy to oblige you.”
out of the blue out into the loneliest place that you'll ever know I carried the world just as far as I could but the damage had taken its toll
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