"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
08-13-2018, 08:52 PM (This post was last modified: 08-13-2018, 08:54 PM by Brennen.)
hold me in this wild, wild world 'cause in your warmth I forget how cold it can be
He had taken some time.
The stallion knows not all of them will understand; some of them will hold his short absence against him. Others will understand. They had seen the pain and the fury in him when he found out about the murder of his children, and the injury done to others at the hands of Sylva. Some of them, the sensitive, may have felt the tremors of only partially controlled magic that had leaked from the warrior-King when the strong emotions swept through him.
They will understand why he had gone. Though he hadn’t really been gone…just, withdrawn from them. He’d still been around Ischia, always lurking, always protecting.
It had been safer, for all of them, for him to not be amongst them. Until he was under control again. It had been the same, when he got the other magics. The bone bending, and the wind manipulation for a time, and the ice manipulation – those, too, had taken time to control. This, though; this was the ocean to what before had been a pond. But he had the discipline and the focus of a warrior and a partial-mage, and time had let him control the ocean too.
Brennen leaves his refuge, the grove where his lover and his children had always been able to find him, and walks the beach again under the light of the moon, when the glowing sea life have painted the shore in strange green-blue patterns. It’s his favorite time to watch the ocean, and it seems as good a way as any to ease back into the life of his Kingdom. To keep an eye on them as he prepares for what they all have begun to prepare for – Sylva still has to answer for what they have done. He can feel them now, he just has to reach out and there they are – little specks of life. Life that is precious too him.
The allies are ready to go to war, or nearly so, and Brennen is their best weapon. He has always been a weapon – but not like this. Never like this. This is different – the power beneath his skin is more dangerous than it has ever been. They, too, will be wondering where the bay King of the Krakens has been, but before he can face the allies he must face his own people. He must make sure they are ready to go to war, still, even though some time has passed. If they are still ready, even when the initial fury has faded, then it will be the right thing to do.
It can’t be just his decision.
hold me in this wild, wild world and in your heat I feel how cold it can get
Her father had put her to bed hours ago, but the pale filly is still wide awake as the moon begins to creep across the mouth of the cave. The sand, barely a dozen yards away, beckons to her. Kypria sighs, the sound loud and long, but there are no answering hoofsteps. Mother usually sleeps beside the cave, but it seems that she is not the one on guard tonight. Father is much less likely to be watchful (if he is even there at all) and the filly seizes the opportunity.
Kypria tiptoes out of the cave, but furtive glances reveal no one in sight and a clear path to the ocean. She follows it, moving past the overgrowth and onto the sand. It is as pale as the moon overhead, as pale as her white coat.
One hoof lands in the water, and she reminds herself of her lessons. The next hood lands on the water, and then the next and the next, until she is racing across the surface of the ocean. She leaps up the sides of waves and rides them to the shore, and it is not long before she loses track of her location. It is easy to do, but it doesn't concern her, at least not until she sees a stranger on the shore.
"Hey!" she calls out, unafraid despite the late hour and his unfamiliarity. For a girl who has been raised by a wary mother Kypria is surprisingly bold. Perhaps it is the result of being raised in an island paradise, where the biggest danger was the possibility that she might run out of coconuts to kick into the sea.
"Whatcha doin' over there?"
@[Brennen]
i basically picture her coloring like this but less even and sapphire blue instead of grullo
08-25-2018, 07:34 AM (This post was last modified: 08-25-2018, 07:35 AM by Leilan.)
He's a broken man, and they barely notice.
He's not sure if he's thinking about himself or Brennen here; sufficient to say the description befits them both. One is on the beach, walking in silence for a time, the other nears from the water, swimming, no, almost drifting to get back home. He had not bothered to wait for the tide to turn - in fact his whole trip from the mountain to the tropical islands was a blur. His head was still ringing - apparently brains take longer to heal than bones and muscles.
Not as long as the heart, but still. Pretty long.
Whatever's left of his anger has been left in the Afterlife. The fairy had made her point very clear. She was right, of course, but he had refused to see it that way, because if he'd let the emotions in, he'd thought he would crack, implode, and die. Well, he'd still done all of that, about two days ago (or was it? Had he taken longer to heal than he realized?) and it felt strangely good to just give in.
He arrives silently, shimmering where he had disrupted the phytoplankton, now sticking to his lower legs. The night is eerie for a moment. But before he actually recognizes the winged man on the beach (after all, he hasn't seen him for so long), the splashing of a young girl arriving demands the attention from the winged man on the beach as well as Leilan's.
He thinks about slipping past, but, he also remembers that Brennen had lost daughters, that he'd secluded himself, and that Viserion was just one example of a brother slacking about - and he hesitates, watching the interaction between man and girl in the night.
@[Brennen] @[Kypria]
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
The bay stallion is lost in his thoughts, but not so lost that the approach of something across the water doesn’t draw his attention. Too long he has been balanced on the edge of the cliff, fine-tuned to a warrior’s readiness for action at any time. But, nothing about the approaching whirlwind says threat to him, and so he is ignoring it…until it shouts at him, and then he blinks in surprise and shakes the lingering glow of phosphorescent algae from his vision. Turning his head towards her, Brennen is somehow totally unsurprised to find a filly not much older than his own youngest dashing towards him across the top of the waves. They have, after all, a large number of aquatically-inclined denizens in Ischia, and water-walking won’t be the weirdest thing he’s seen. The fins are more striking, and he hazards a wild guess that his nighttime visitor belongs to Kylin, who also has such appendages.
“I’m thinking,” he answers her honestly, though the presence of another catches his attention as the words leave his lips. Briefly, he lifts his amber gaze from the little water sprite with the white coat that glows in the light of the moon and the patch of blue on her head and glances at Leilan, emerging down the shore from the waves with glimmering sealife clinging to his coat like stars. The boy hesitates – hm, but perhaps less a boy. Brennen doesn’t pry, it’s not his way (and even if it was, he’d be afraid of misusing the magic and causing some sort of brain damage), but even on the surface his Brother feels older, and something is not quite right. Brennen doesn’t call him out right away, giving him a chance to approach on his own terms.
“I like the sea at night, especially in Ischia. Don’t you?” the King asks the girl, giving her a little smile. Her youth eases his soul; he likes to see the shores of his Kingdom filled with laughter and light of their children. “I’m Brennen.” A heartbeat, a glance back to where Leilan still lingers, uncommitted. “That’s Leilan, over there. He seems to have brought some of the ocean home with him, since he can’t walk on top of the water like you.” A huff of breath that isn’t quite a laugh, and he winks at her, hoping that calling the young stallion out will draw him over to them. It doesn’t seem like a time for him to alone. “What’s your name, little fish?”
"I'm not a fish." She says with a bright laugh, being not quite old enough to grasp figurative language. "I'm a filly!" Kypria raises one pale forehoof as she says this, as if the leg itself is proof that she is what she claims. When she puts her hoof back down, the water has receded without her knowing, and she stumbles forward. Her translucent fins half-flare to provide additional balance, and the pale filly catches herself before she falls.
When the bay stallion introduces himself, Kypria tries for a moment to identify the name. She's heard it before, but the reason why escapes her. He seems very nice, so she is naively sure that his name hadn't been said in warning.
"I'm Kyp!" She tells him, nodding her head politely the way she'd been taught. This is the first time she is meeting anyone outside her immediate family, so she can only hope she is doing the right greeting. Should she have bowed? Without her knowledge, a small frown creases her expression. As quickly as it comes though, it fades away as her gaze flicks to the roan stallion down the beach.
"Hello!" She shouts, much too loud for the stallion standing near her. The white filly is oblivious, and she flares her far wing out to catch the distant horse's attention. "Hey! I'm Kypria!" All this is shouted across the space between them, and the young filly prances in place with excitement as she waits for Leilan to come closer.
"I like the sea all the time," She replies to the question Brennen had asked earlier. It's only just occurred to her that she hadn't answered it. "Daddy says he and Momma will teach me to swim in it soon!" Until now, she's only been allowed to walk atop water. It seems that the familial gift is a default when one is born with it, and that unlearning how to do it is the trickiest part. "Do you know how to swim? Do you?" Kypria asks them both, Brennen and Leilan.
Said distant horse is caught up in his own distant world, but not enough to elude their notice (or them to elude his, for they are loud and he is not). The filly is not at all wet, damp maybe from ocean sprays but why should this even surprise him? There’s so much magic in this world; he recently saw it (although it literally pains to think about. He may be recovering from a small concussion of sorts if you forget about the skull-cracking that had been part of it). Brennen’s got magic too, he realizes one moment later - incredibly late for his standards, but it doesn’t matter right now. Brennen’s immortal. Brennen has more children than one can count. Maybe he should ask how he manages, because he clearly does a better job at it than Leilan.
But there’s a bright-white filly in the way... who happenes to be shouting. While his facial features cringe just a little at the loudness of her voice in his throbbing head, he moves closer in hopes this will help her talk on a normal decibel level. If not, he feels like his head will split, but he knows that it won’t. Sadly.
He can’t help but notice her age. Chryseis’ age. He hasn’t visited the blue roan girl for a time now, caught up in his own troubles. Perhaps she deserves a visit. Ice fairy said as much. For all he knows Chryseis could have inherited crazy traits after all; his own aura, or his Scorch’s freaky twilight magic. Looking at Kypria, he manages a smile. Weary, as Brennen would notice, but probably for the enthusiastic girl it’d be too subtle. ”Nice to meet you, Kypria. I’m Leilan. Who are your parents? Are you sneaking away from them every night?” he wonders. There’s a patch of blue that might be a giveaway, but, he doesn’t know all of Ischia’s inhabitants all that well, he realizes. Sure, there’s Jes, and Bel, and Vis, and Kori if he hadn’t gotten himself eaten by a shark yet. He pains his head to think of more - there’s more in the family category - but he gives up, awaiting the girl’s answer.
At her statement of learning how to swim and her rapidfire question, he nods at his legs - the bioluminescence fading, only one or two little blue stars remain, stubborn specks of glowing plankton. He shakes the water from his fur. ”I wasn’t riding seatortles if that’s what you were thinking.” he teases, the slightest sparkle returning to his eye, though perhaps not as bright as it once was. It’s a beginning. It’s something. He doesn’t know if it’s healing or scarring, but at least he’s not bleeding any more.
He looks at Brennen with one questioning glance. ”Do you only come out at night?” he wants to know. If so, that might be the reason nobody was around to notice where he was - why Vis had decided to just roll about the sands. Why of all horses present, it had to be Leilan to kick him up and challenge him for battle like a self-proclaimed substitute war leader. But a bad one. Just a minic that happened to care for his homeland not to be immediately destroyed by the first invader to come for it.
He’s pretty sure that without Brennen, the whole thing would surely still come tumbling down like the cardhouse it currently is.
And maybe it’s just that he’s miserable in his personal life, that he can’t help but think there’s doom looming. But can a joker take a break for once? He’s endured enough, and with the fairy’s latest curse or gift, there must be more to come. Right? Brennen must have come out for a reason. Even if it’s to call the whole thing off and let them scatter again in the world, that’s still a reason.
@[Brennen] @[Kypria] still no html, working on something to fit he mood (:
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
She denies being a fish, laughing at him, and he nods very seriously as if she has imparted great knowledge upon him. It’s funny, what the young take quite literally, especially when they are this little. Brennen draws her attention to Leilan and his lips quirk up into a half smile when she shouts across the distance, her youthful exuberance completely destroying any sense of reserve or decorum she might have been maintaining in the quiet of the night. Her shout lures Leilan closer, and Brennen flicks an ear in his direction and watches out of the corner of his eye as the two interact. The roan stallion asks her about her parents, and Brennen does idly wonder about her father, the probably source of the blue patch on the top of her head.
Kypria came across the water, so the bay King is guessing that she left her parents far behind, but if they’re anywhere close by they are sure to have been summoned by her rambunctious voice. Leilan’s voice starts to lighten as he responds to the girl’s next question, and that is a wonder of the young also. They can lift the spirits of all but the most hardened hearts – he’s still curious about what had brought the other stallion home in such a state, but he’s not sure it’s a conversation for such little ears. “I can swim,” he answers, but then half-lifts his inky black wings from where they lay across his shoulders. “But usually I fly.” Wings, after all, don’t make for great swimming. They’re in the way, and they’re heavy. “You do look almost big enough to swim, though. Close to the shore, at least.”
The ocean can be as dangerous as it is beautiful. She’s safer on top of the waves, but he is glad that her mother and mysterious father plan to teach her how to swim as well; you can never be too careful. Ischia’s children, after all, have been targeted. That thought makes him frown, shift uncomfortably; and that is when Leilan addresses a question directly to the bay stallion. Shaking his head, Brennen looks out to the ocean and then draws his gaze across the girl – his features softening automatically – before he lifts his amber eyes to meet the other stallion’s. “It was easier to gain control, when I stayed secluded,” he murmurs in response, and lets a trickle of the river under his skin escape – the water stretches out, tinged at the edges with phytoplankton, and winds around Leilan’s legs and Kypria’s fins. It dances around her legs as well, teasing, floating. “I’m in control now.”
The stallion with the pretty hair comes closer, and Kypria can't keep from wiggling about as he does. She wants to bolt toward him - this much is clear - but she has been taught to not rush and surprise others, so she is doing her best to follow her lessons. He smiles when he comes close, and he is right that Kypria cannot tell it from a genuine expression. She is too excited that he - a stranger, and a big one with nice hair! - is interested in her - a small girl that often gets in the way - to even notice.
"Hi Leilan!" She says brightly. "My momma is purple and my dad is Ivar."
This seems like a perfectly accurate answer. She suspects that momma has a name, but it's slipped her mind this moment. They are all K's after all and it is sometimes hard for her to keep track. She's distracted from this by his quip about sea turtles, and even though she laughs at his jest, she cannot help but crane her neck to see if, in fact, there are turtles behind him.
There are not, she finds.
Brennen then tells her that he flies rather than swim, and Kypria takes a step closer to look more curiously at his wings. They are like her fins, she thinks, but less pretty. Fluffy and soft, they'd get dragged down in the water in a way that her pseudo-brother's dragon wings do not. "You have very nice wings." She says with an exaggerated and repetitive nod - Mother always says to be polite.
Then the two adults talk to each other, and Kypria is beginning to wonder if it is time to run back to their island. Then, for no reason, the water reaches out to her.
"Woah!" She shouts, lifting up one hoof to paw at the floating water. Only when it tickles at her fetlock does she piece together Brennen's words and the movement of the water. "That is so cool!"
a dragon who couldn't be hurt on the outside could have so many ragged holes inside
The white-blue-lavender girl names her parents (or at least names her mother purple, enough to remind Leilan of Klaudius and suspecting she would be related to that highly annoying lavender man), and he recognizes the name of her father. Ivar. The two of them had met only briefly once, and though Leilan had initially attempted to playfully remind the scales figure that he couldn’t possibly have all the girls in the world, it seemed that he had not liked Leilan. Ah well, maybe in the sometime. Maybe not. It certainly did not keep him from grinning at the child. ”Tell him I said hi and congratulate him with your birth, hmm?” He smiled at her when she peeked around him looking for turtles, then focused on Brennen’s words.
Magic, the trickiest of traits. The winged bay said he was in control now, and Leilan looked curiously at the dancing water near his feet. Like Kypria, he tilted one foreleg to inspect the stuff before it flowed back. ”So it would seem.” he concluded; he just had to trust Brennen on this one, had no way to test the theory except provoke him. But that seemed like a bad idea with one with a magic trait.
More reserved perhaps than he would have been some time before, but he had seen enough magic for a lifetime (unbeknownst to him, his very next meeting with a certain kelpie would include even more Beqannan magic). Still, he appreciates the man secluding himself while he could have done harm. So, he lifts his head again and looks at his two conversation partners. ”I suppose if your hiding time is over, there must be some thoughts you have about the future.” he muses and looks at Kypria. Not likely that the two adult men will talk about going to war (just as unlikely as that he will start talking about dying or angering fairies), but he needs to know if something is going on besides the new magic. Or maybe... ”Perhaps you have some time during the day too sometime soon.” he concludes, and shrugs at Kypria, as if to say she shouldn’t be bothered because it’s not inportant. In a way, he knows that for her it won’t be, because Ivar won’t mingle with the brotherhood. ”So what did you do instead of swimming to get here? Wanna show me?” he asks the girl, looking to change the subject. Perhaps it will end this strange nighttime meeting, but his dully aching head reminds him that perhaps he should not even be here.
HTML by Vanilla Custard, picture by x-celebri-x on deviantart
@[Brennen]
@[Kypria]
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
| 
