"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 stretch of his wings feels glorious. For ages, he had felt naked, empty. The lack of the weight of wings against his sides, the brush of feathers against his flanks, had felt like an ache. The pain of loss and the pang of memory. But then Beqanna had forgiven them. She has always forgiven them in the past, but this had taken far longer. And the toll had been enormous, irreplaceable. The accompanying damage irreversible.
There is no going back now. The Tundra is gone, wiped from existence as though it had never been, and in its place stands something new. Something different and foreign in a way he has never experienced before. He is old, ancient even, and change is particularly difficult for him. Perhaps it is a sign of his age, or a sign of his weakness, but whatever the case, he is only just now coming to terms with this new Beqanna.
But still it hurts.
And maybe that is why he has come to Tephra. To the land most of his brethren had chosen to settle in when the lands had buckled and caved, giving way to the new and fresh. There is something familiar here at least. Or rather, he hopes there is.
The heat of the volcano is oppressive, the air thick and sticky inside his lungs. The scent of ash lingers eternally upon the stagnant breezes, the metallic scent of magma rising into the steamy air. There is nothing familiar about it, nothing that feels like home. Even after all this time, he still considers the Tundra home. It burns to know that he will never be able to truly go home again. Burns more than the heavy air and the nearly overwhelming heat of the encroaching lava.
For a moment, he considers taking to the sky once more, that he might feel the breeze on his skin, might clear the scent of ash from his lungs, but he does not. Instead he strides to the nearby beach, wary dark eyes glancing briefly around before he wades into the surf. A sigh escapes his lips as the cool water laps against his fetlocks, his cannon bones, his knees, his shoulders. There he stops, his gaze shifting back to shoreline. Seeking, searching. Looking for the familiar dark figure of the stallion who had made this his kingdom.
He could not be far behind. Hurricane would never make the mistake of believing him unaware of his arrival. He knows the man too well for that.
you can have my isolation, you can have the hate that it brings.
The heat is stifling against his skin, with humidity hot and slick against the puckered pink scarring that lay strewn across the blank canvas of his form – but he does not flinch; not as he once might have. No longer does he pine for the frigidity of winter, nor its spindly fingers touching the surface of his skin, soothing the embers flickering deep inside of him. The everlasting burn of the growing fire trapped within his chest, enveloping his lungs with every rise and fall of his steady breathing, plucking at his heartstrings with every perpetual beat of his heart – it is as much a part of him as the thick lining of sinewy muscle in his body.
Yet, the memories would always stir a yearning that could never be realized – he longed for more than the ice and the snow; he longed for the brotherhood (and, eventually, sisterhood) – a time when life seemed simpler, even with the roiling tension between age-old kingdoms, fighting the bitter battles of their ancestors with little cause or reason aside from the understanding that it should simply be. The loss of his power had been devastating to him – the ice had been his own, to wield and to covet, and it had been stripped away from him, and spitefully so – and then, his kingdom had been taken, twisted and broken and fallen away into the sea.
Everything he had ever known had been torn apart, buried somewhere he could never reach – he, too, a man of two centuries, had difficulty swallowing change. It had been a painful and bitter, acrid bile to swallow, one that in times, beneath the darkest shadow of night, is still difficult to understand and comprehend. And yet, he had been blessed – gifted a volcanic isle that had become a symbol of so much more.
Rebirth.
The sulfur and the ash cling tightly to his skin, marred and mottled with faded, pink scarring, as the heavy muscles beneath his taut skin ripples with each sweeping movement. He had seen him the moment he had emerged through the distant haze, with the salty brine of the sea enveloping him in its ravenous current – he had always been acutely aware of his surroundings, but his newfound refined vision had become something of an asset to him. He had seen him from many miles away, and with a gentle breeze weaving its way through his thick, tangled tresses, he is jaunting towards him.
The ground is soft, and supple, but it does not give beneath his hefty weight as each long stride carries him closer to the shoreline. His heart is pounding wildly against his rib cage, as he soon reduces his pace into a jaunt, with a thin sheen of sweat gleaming on the surface of his skin beneath the bright, unyielding sun.
He is a sight for sore eyes, and some part of him he had thought forgotten, or perhaps gone, is stirred to the forefront – and as his dark, searing eyes seek the abyss of Hurricane’s, he realizes then that a piece of home had come back to him.
”Brother,” he utters, his voice gruff from disuse, while his lungs expand to catch his breath. ”you’ve come – welcome to Tephra.”
you can have my absence of faith, you can have my everything.
Tephra is something different to him than it must be to his brother, something vastly less comforting. He had not been here for the founding, had not seen the mists lift their veil to display the home that would be theirs. Had not been among the first to set foot upon its soil. Had not even come here in its earliest days, in the days when the new world order was still being shaped. It would never belong to him the way it belongs to Offspring. Could never mean to him what it must mean to his Brother.
It is not the Tundra. It is not home.
But he respects what it is to the black stallion, respects what the rich, loamy soil must mean to him. For that reason, he waits. He waits for his approach, his invitation. They might still be among the Brotherhood at heart, but change had come and thrown the world into chaos. It is left to them to make what order they may of that upheaval. Hurricane, of all the things he is and has been, is a creature of order.
But the eagerness of Offsprings approach, the easy, open, welcoming way he is greeted does his heart good. Setting a faint worry, a niggling, intrusive thought, to rest. No matter what history the two men might share, he has long since learned to take nothing for granted. Despite his reticence on the subject, change happens every day, whether one wishes it or not.
Stretching snowy wings wide, Hurricane wades towards the shore, towards the man who stands upon its edge. Water cascades from him, sluicing down slick, pale skin unnoticed. His gaze, dark and unreadable, rests upon Offspring with intense focus. He notes the changes in his Brother, the weight that had not been present when last they had met. It is not physical, not when one has immortality on his side, but rather in the lines of his dark features, in the feverish hollows of his red eyes.
“I’ve come,” he finally says by way of greeting, the gravel of disuse in his tone. “I am… glad to see you, Brother.” The words come roughly, as though he has trouble speaking them. But then, emotion has never been his strong suit. But it is there nonetheless, barely discernable, but still roiling in the darkest depths of his soul. “I was not made to be a wanderer.”
you can have my isolation, you can have the hate that it brings.
It was his own plea and his own declaration of a bared heart and open mind that had stirred the birth of the volcanic island, that had revealed itself to him. Perhaps, it is for that reason that he is so bound to it – perhaps it is the reason for why it is as much his own as the icy tundra had ever been. In the aftermath of the reckoning wrought by forces unseen, he had seen the error of his own way, and he longed for a place where he and those he had come to know and care so deeply could rest their weary bones. It had grown, since then, but time had no effect on the gravity of that deep, unshakable feeling of displacement, of loss, of desperation.
He would do anything, everything, to keep the volcanic island afloat – to keep it from falling away into the sea. He would give his strength, his power, his life, if it meant never having to feel such loss again.
Ah, but he is meant for loss – and with a lifetime of wandering, death, and despair, he had never known anything but. The frigid tundra had given him purpose, brotherhood – it had given him companionship, which he had forced himself to abstain from for many decades. Time had been unkind to him, and it had taken the love and life from his meaningless existence, again and again. Yet, in the brotherhood, his resolve had hardened, and his drive and determination had returned to him.
He felt confident and whole for the first time in so many years, and Hurricane is a reminder of all that he had been, all that he had become – and to see him before him, to see him wading through the salty brine of the sea towards the shoreline of the volcanic isle is enough to stir his heart into a ragged frenzy, pounding vigorously against the ridges of his ribcage.
He is far from emotive - perhaps that is something they have in common; a difficulty with expressing oneself; it had caused himself so much heartache, and continued to do so - but he can see the coiled tension of his muscular shoulders become undone, and he can feel the friction in the air dissipate.
Brother.
Oh, how he had missed hearing that singular, immensely powerful word.
”Then wander no more. The borders of Tephra will always be open for you. I know that it is not the same,” he can sense the longing and yearning for something lost to them forever. He felt the same way for so long. At times, he still does, when the heat is unbearable and the sulfur is thick. ”but it is home nonetheless.”
All the while, the fire within him burns with a ferocity he has never known and he flinches – a delicate tendril of unseen magic extending itself from the chest of the man before him, stoking the flickering flames inside his own, crafting a wonder much bigger than either of them. But he ignores it. Stifles it.
Swallows it whole.
The fire had never been kind to him before. What reason did he have to be alarmed?
you can have my absence of faith, you can have my everything.
Isolation and loneliness are nothing new to the pale stallion. It is a protection perhaps, protection against the cruel vagaries of this world. If one never grows close to anyone, one must never need feel the pain of their loss. When immortality reigns, one must do what they can to protect the heart, or they shall rapidly turn into something unrecognizable. Something despised.
He had thought, once, it was safe to love his kingdom. There was safety in attachment to a place, because places are eternal. Oh how Beqanna must have laughed in showing him the error of his ways. The heartbreak of that loss rivals (indeed, perhaps even surpasses) any heartbreak of the romantic variety. And though Hurricane has carefully guarded his heart these long decades, even he has not always been so hard and immovable. It is merely the years of eternal life that had crafted the man now wading amongst the shallows upon a foreign, unfamiliar beach.
The two men standing there in brotherly reticence could not display more perfectly just what eternal life can forge. Just how differently two can live it and still inevitably end the same. Life has a funny way of showing just how little choice one truly has in the destination of it.
But it seems life still has a sense of humor, that even as ancient and calloused as the black and white stallions are, they can still be surprised. Though whether Hurricane would ascribe that to the vagaries of life or the vagaries of a certain magician is an entirely different story. Certainly he has never been terribly inclined to give most magicians much in the way of benefit of the doubt.
At the moment however, the exchange of power goes entirely unnoticed by him. He is old, but he has no supernatural senses with which to become aware of such things.
“Home,” he rumbles, his voice a low, husky murmur. It is home to Offspring, but it is far from home to Hurricane. He would stay a while, perhaps. Would see if he could grow to care for the land even a fraction as much as Offspring seems to. But he is certain that nothing will ever be home again in quite the same way the Tundra was.
“Thank you, brother.” No further words are necessary. Those simple sentences say all he needs to. If anyone could understand, it would be the man before him.
Of course, little did he know he would soon have several reasons to stay. At least for a little while longer.
you can have my isolation, you can have the hate that it brings.
He knew he would never see what he could of the volcanic island –
He knew that the fallen King would never know of the brimstone and fire that had burned beneath his skin for so long, scalding him from within, burning him with its ferocity as his weary heart longed for ice. Only one knew of the heartache and anguish that had been dealt to him so long ago, carved into his flesh, leaving him with an anxiety that made his skin crawl and feverish nightmares that left him drenched in perspiration and enveloped in the stench of blood. There was a metallic taste he would never be able to forget, still so sharp and pungent upon his tongue, even years after he had been swept into another time, to another place. He had been used as a heavily manipulated, broken pawn by an insidious creature, lacking empathy; absent of integrity – of morality.
A dream, he had thought it then, but over time he had come to know it was so much more.
He would never know of the pain he had endured, torn apart limb to limb, pieced back together – he would never know the length that he had gone to, to preserve his family – to ensure the safety of those his heart longed for and cared for most, only to have his weary heart scorned and isolated in the end. He would never know how the ice that had once been a part of his very existence (the ice, oh how he longed for it so, even now –a different time, a different place -- he does yearn for it as Hurricane does) had become fire, burning the very tissue that built him into what he was with each gasping breath.
It had taken him so long to accept the fire as a part of himself; it was difficult for him to remember a time before it. The volcano itself felt as much a part of him as the frigid wind and icy landscape ever had – in part because the island knew how he burned, and it burned alongside him. Quietly, his gaze is steadied upon him, with the thickness of his own words heavy on his tongue – there is a quiet longing to share his despair with another, with another who could understand the inevitable weight and burden of too much time; with another who knew loss as he did.
Thank you, brother, he says quietly, and he is suddenly all too aware that there is nothing left to be said between the two – already, he understood him far more than many ever would.
The comfort of his utterance is short-lived, however, as the blistering fire that had been idly stirring within the hearth of his breast suddenly emerges – startling even him, as the flame surfaces across his marred flesh, enveloping him in a thick, flickering exoskeleton of fire. Even he is wary, glancing to the stoic figure that lay before him, his own heart thundering within the tight confinement of his chest –
There is no time for him to express his astonishment; to exclaim his own disbelief – the fire is rising, burning hotter, bright – crawling down the length of his heavily muscled, feathers legs and crawling along the moist and fertile soil upon which he is standing, before rising and carving out two bleary but clearly defined shapes. The fire is flickering and sparking, its hefty energy spent in etching each careful detail, filling in the outline it had so effortlessly created – before it is withdrawn, drawing back into the burning hearth of his body, leaving behind a filly and colt in its wake – one as black as himself, and the other with finely preened wings draped over its dark but graying skin.
Quietly, stunned, his gaze meets with the ice to match his brimstone –
What just happened?
you can have my absence of faith, you can have my everything.
OFFSPRING
@[Hurricane] - BABIES!
Hahah, so overdue. Also, a lot of Offy womping about his quest days.
