"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
10-15-2018, 04:25 PM (This post was last modified: 12-10-2018, 05:39 PM by Ether.)
Golden eyes watching our every move Losing time without the sun or moon
It’s easy to get lost in the darkness. Time moves differently there in the shadow realm, where midnight consumes all and light is lost. He had just been a boy once, lost and alone. Fearful of the world. He had only wanted to hide, and the shadows had been his only friends. For so long they had been his sole companions, those wolves he had called from darkness. They had become as real to him as his own flesh. More real than anyone else, than the others who lived in that world of light.
It had been easy, to fall prey to the lure of the shadow.
So long he had spent wrapped in them that he had soon lost track of where he began and they ended. They had been safe, comfortable. He doesn’t know exactly when the mottled blue and white had given way to yawning black. He can’t remember the last time he’d glanced at his own flank and seen that distinctive roan hue and not a blanket of shadow. Nor could he pinpoint when those colors had stopped bleeding through, swallowed forever more by the pitch of night. Just as his stomach had stopped paining him with hunger, so too had the wolf absorbed into him until he had become one and the same. Instead of running beside him, those creatures of darkness now run within him.
How much time has passed, he could not say. Perhaps it had only been a day, or perhaps an eternity. Time moves differently here where there is no light.
But still memory remains. The warmth of his mother, the sturdy protection of his father, the beacon of their love. The pain and despair that had driven him to his shadows for comfort. It’s dulled now, barely an ache. But still he remembers it,
Perhaps it is that which draws him back, a deep seated longing that will not leave him in peace. And so he steps from his shadows.
He blinks, yellow eyes (once a warm, rich brown) squinting in the bright light of the forest. To any other the light might be muted and hushed, but to the boy who had fled to shadow for comfort, it is the brightest light of day. Pressing himself against the broad trunk of a late summer tree, he peers about himself with uncertainty, suddenly wondering if he had made the right choice.
She knew the darkness all too well. It had always been her comfort, her safe place where she felt invisible — a black coat that blended endlessly with the shadows. The dark was where she felt like her nightmares couldn’t find her. There is that moment when you first drift off to sleep, like a blanket is slowly being pulled over your head, and all that exists is a great, vast, endless, nothing. That was when she felt the safest. Before the snarl of her demons began to creep their way in, and before she would awaken herself because she was trying to so hard to escape the nightmare that she had actually started running.
Her last nightmare had been the most peculiar of all. She remembers the disembodied voice as it echoed in her ears, telling her to don a disguise and find him — whoever had had been. She remembers the snowy white owl that had trailed her, but eventually she had woken up, somehow back in Hyaline. This was the first of her dreams that didn’t involve being chased into the ocean, which she found odd. She almost felt like it had maybe been real.
Her footfalls are light as she traverses the forest, slipping easily amongst the trees. She avoids every low hanging limb, ever mindful of making too much noise. Yer a wizard, Briseis. The tiny voice is just behind her ear, causing her to suddenly fling her head, sending a disgruntled ladybug flying. Wait, was it wearing a wizard hat? She blinks her long lashes, having come to a startled stop. She had never had anything delusional happen to her during the day, and so she shakes her head, certain that the lack of sleep — which really she should be used to — was finally getting to her. The warm sun seems to have awoken the bugs from some sort of slumber, for soon there are several clinging to the tangled strands of her mane. Yer a wizard, Briseis, they take turns saying, and this time she’s had enough. She launches forward, sending the wizard-hat-wearing nuisances flying.
She doesn’t realize as she careens around a corner that she almost glances against a dark colored stallion, and she startles sideways. ”Oh!” Her dark brown eyes are wide, and if it was at all possible her black cheeks would have been pink with embarrassment, because she knew exactly how ridiculous she looked. ”I-I’m sorry, I, um, I didn’t see you there. I was just, um...”running away from talking ladybugs? Immediately her lips close tightly, cautiously backing a step away from the stranger, her throat suddenly feeling dry and her tongue like sandpaper. She was already so awful at making conversation, and now she had done this.
briseis. you’re ripped at every edge but you’re a masterpiece
Golden eyes watching our every move Losing time without the sun or moon
Night has become his home, his only solace since that nightmare realm had spat him back out. Perhaps that had been the catalyst, his accidental stumble into a hellish underworld. It had given back a boy changed, predisposed to the darkness that has already dwelled within. And Ether had been easy prey, until the monster had taken hold and bled through his skin.
Since that long ago day, nightmares have held no power over his knowledge of reality. There is so much more to fear in this world than in the land of dreams. And, even without realizing it, he had become one of those feared things. Even now he remains ignorant, a predator who doesn’t realize he should seek prey.
He is silent and still in the crook of that tree, eyeing the world with apprehension as he flinches from the sunlight that filters through the canopy. His ears twitch as the sound of crashing hooves reaches him, bring his head sharply upward. In moments, a dark figure is skidding around the tree, nearly crashing into him until she brings herself up short. Ether jerks backwards in surprise, footfalls silent as he stumbles several steps. His eyes widen, nostrils flaring as he desperately calls his shadows. The open, welcoming him into their dark embrace, closing quickly around him until only darkness remains. Until he disappears from the forest.
After a few steadying breaths, he realizes he is no longer standing in the crook of the tree. The shadows do not react like they used to, swallowing him instead of clinging to him like feral armor. For a minute, he is uncertain weather he wishes to return, to throw himself at the mercy of the crashing, clumsy woman.
Curiosity gets the better of him.
Hesitantly, he parts those curtains once more. With a deep breath, he peeks out, golden eyes wary as they fix on the dark woman. He must look an odd sight, though he doesn’t seem to realize it. Just a shadowy head protruding from a gaping maw of endless black. After a moment, he opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it once more. “Um, hi?” His voice is barely audible in the hushed forest, the timber low and rough with disuse. “It’s… ok. I guess.”
He falls silent then, before remembering the simple niceties of conversation. “Um, I’m... Ether.”
The shadows do not simply blend with him as they do to her; they swallow him whole, like a wave of black sucking him under. It startles her, and she is once again left wondering if her life was but a never ending dream. The longer she lived in Beqanna, the less certain she was of her reality. Instead of the land beginning to make more sense, it lead her down a further path of confusion.
The black mare takes an uncertain step backward, not entirely sure if the stallion had disappeared on purpose, or if whatever had smothered him would be after her next. But then there is his golden eyes, glowing and amber against the endless night, and she blinks in effort to clear her vision — trying to discern his body from the darkness that engulfs him, but to no avail.
He doesn’t ask her what she had been running from, and that is a first. It’s only then she realizes how many of her chance encounters have been a result of her running away from her nightmares, and even though she doesn’t show it, the idea is humiliating to her. Briseis was a quiet woman, reserved and mild. When given the choice she rarely sought out company, but her nightmares seemed intent on constantly putting her in the path the strangers. This time was different; maybe even worse, since she is sure the wizard-hat wearing ladybugs were a result of a psychotic breakdown. She would never be able to explain that to anyone and come out looking reasonably sane.
He still doesn’t seem keen on the idea of her, and this causes her to feel self-conscious and uneasy, though she does her best to not show it. ”I’m Briseis,” Her voice is not as soft and lyrical as most girls; it is lower in pitch, and quiet against the hush of night. She tilts her head, regarding him carefully, before she lets her curiosity get the better of her and she asks, ”Are you a shadow?” It’s only here, in this land of magic and darkness, that that question was perfectly valid.
briseis. you’re ripped at every edge but you’re a masterpiece
Golden eyes watching our every move Losing time without the sun or moon
It had never occurred to him to ask what she runs from. Everyone here seems to be fleeing something. Memories or history, a love gone wrong, the fearsome beasts that seem to lurk in every corner. They are always running. Even Ether, running from his own shame and inadequacy. Running from his loneliness.
In the end though, it doesn’t matter what they are running from. They all end up in the same place anyway.
He has long since ceased to notice the way the shadows cling to him, a darkness impossible to differentiate from his own skin. In darkness, it doesn’t matter anyway. That it might be alarming or unsettling to others had never crossed his mind. He has always embraced the shadows, the disquieting, eternal twilight as close to a home as he’d ever known. He’d never known anything else, not truly. Even when he’d been a boy of flesh and blood with marbled skin and coffee brown eyes the shadows had been his closest companion.
He blinks those yellow eyes at her when she utters her name, her voice low and surprisingly pleasant. Briseis. He clicks his tongue over his sharp teeth as he tastes the vowels and consonants of that word. Unusual and hard, not like the soft hiss of his own name. For a moment he is so distracted he nearly misses the question, too caught up in the odd sound. In the way words tumble across a tongue that has not been used to speak in so long.
When the question registers, he stills. ’Are you a shadow?’ she asks. Is he?
His head tilts as he peers around, seeing only the darkness of the gaping hole he had settled in. It’s with surprise that he realizes he is not full in her world. That a part of him had lingered in the safety of his shadow realm. With only a brief hesitation, he steps out, the portal sealing silently behind him as his eerie gaze returns to the dark mare. Dark, like him, but not quite. Not in the same way.
“Am I?” he asks, his tone quizzical. He hadn’t thought about it. Didn’t truly know the answer.
She likes him. He is not as warm as Leilan, but he is not as cold and confusing as Tunnel, either. He is darkness, and maybe to some that would be intimidating and threatening, but it puts her at ease. To her there is something soothing about the swarthy abyss, being able to almost disappear — or at least feel like she had. She has seen many different kinds of magic in these lands of Beqanna, but his is the first that genuinely intrigues her. He intrigues her. He steps out of the shrouded portal, and it sparks more questions rather than answers any. She finds herself stepping forward, threads of moonlight reaching through the trees to spill across her black shoulders, entwining with tangled strands of mane as she closes the space between them.
Hesitantly, but unable to resist her curiosity, she reaches to whisper her muzzle across his neck, just enough to feel the solidness of flesh and warmth of skin underneath her touch, and maybe even the thrum of a pulse. She worries that he will be offended by her actions, and she withdraws quickly and quietly, but her brown eyes flicker to his golden ones with a perplexed sort of awe. ”You feel real.” Her gaze drifts to the air around him, seemingly inspecting it, trying to figure out how. She has all but forgotten about her previous delusions, focusing more on what was taking place in front of her.
”Beqanna is strange,” she muses quietly, at last giving up on trying to understand. She doesn’t offer much explanation. She wasn’t just referring to the stallion that turned into shadows, but instead a collection of all the things she has witnessed — even Leilan was different than from when she had first met him. She levels her eyes with Ether once more, a faint smile lifting at the corner of her lips as she offers in her low and mild tones, ”But it must be nice, to be able to disappear.”
briseis. you’re ripped at every edge but you’re a masterpiece
Golden eyes watching our every move Losing time without the sun or moon
He watches her with curiosity, as though attempting to puzzle out the things that made her tick. He is unused to the company of others, having spent so long lost in his shadows ignoring the world and it's worries. And now he has so much to learn, so much yet still to see.
He watches the way the moonlight plays on her skin, glimmering against the subtle blacks of her pelt. The light is lost on him, swallowed by endless pitch of his own skin. A reminder that he has changed. That he is no longer quite like them. Like her.
She reaches out to touch him, her movements hesitant, as though afraid of what she might find. He shivers under the touch, his skin heating beneath a wave of longing and embarrassment. It has been so long since he's felt the warm touch of another. The shadows are cool, almost impersonal. But this, this is not.
You feel real, she says, and a soft breath escapes his lips. He hadn't been entirely certain. It's odd, isn't it? To not know if one's own self is real?
She smiles at him then, faintly, and he cannot help the smile he offers in return. A barely there curve of his lips. It feels almost foreign, but genuine nonetheless. She seems curious, and Ether responds to that as any person who has been alone too long might.
“Would you like to see?” he asks, a faint hope stirring in his breast, golden eyes gleaming in the darkness.
11-11-2018, 03:17 PM (This post was last modified: 11-11-2018, 03:24 PM by Briseis.)
He doesn’t withdraw from her touch as she had expected; she never knew how anyone was going to react, and for that reason she rarely reached out first. But something about the shadow stallion drew her to him like a magnet, unlike anyone else ever had. It wasn’t romantically driven — Briseis wasn’t like most of them in that aspect, which made it difficult for her to make emotional connections. Most seemed confused or bored by the incredibly normal black mare, who was often stoic and closed off. But he was watching her much in the same way she was watching him, as though they were both trying to read something they didn’t understand, but wanted to. Her eyes had yet to stray from him, afraid that if she looked away, or if she closed her eyes too long, he was going to disappear.
Even in the darkness she catches a glimpse of his faint smile, but it is his golden eyes that she is watching. She was curious by nature, but her awkward social skills often drove her away from personal interaction, choosing to watch and try to piece together puzzles on her own. Beqanna was full of puzzles she didn’t understand, and unlike her bold daughter, she didn’t just walk up to strangers and ask about their gifts. This was one of the first times she was able touch something when she was feeling inquisitive, and even though she had withdrawn her touch, she was still close to him.
Would you like to see? he asks, and in the shadows her dark brown eyes alight, her ebony lips lifting in a smile. ”You would show me?” Her voice is hushed, as though speaking too loudly would frighten his shadows away. Wordlessly, she nods her head in agreement, her gaze finding his yellow own through the slivers of light that spills through the canopy of the tree tops.
briseis. you’re ripped at every edge but you’re a masterpiece
Golden eyes watching our every move Losing time without the sun or moon
He had never offered to bring anyone else with him before. And the thought both terrifies and thrills him, filling him with an uncertainty impossible to describe. He is so new to friendship, to the companionship that can be found with the fellow equine, that it still feels strange and cumbersome. But for so long he has desired closeness with another that the risk seems worth it, the longing for something real outweighing the fear of the unknown.
The kaleidoscope of this thoughts and fears and worries are lost in the endless pitch of his features, the shadows masking more than just the gentle blue and white his skin had once been. No, he has become far more akin to the darkest reaches than to the creatures from which he had sprung. Those shadows swallowing his skin hide so many sins, just as they do beneath the boughs of the trees. His parents had named him with frightening (albeit unconscious) accuracy, it seems.
They peer at each other with equal caution and curiosity, as though one wrong whisper might send the other back into the wilds. In truth, perhaps once it might have, for him at least. But she has captured his attention in a way he hadn’t known possible, and so he makes his offer, waiting with stilled breath for her response.
Her eyes rise to meet his, lighting with interest as her lips curl into a smile. He straightens, ears swiveling towards her as surprised delight slowly unfurls in his chest. Truth be told, he had not thought she would actually wish to come with him.
“Yes,” he whispers softly, his golden eyes bright in the shadow of his features. He stares at her silently for a long moment, as though waiting for her to change her mind. But when she does not, he turns his head slightly, golden eyes fixing on a point just beside her as he calls on the shadows to part. To reveal the endless void of his shadow realm.
From there, they could go anywhere in the world. Wherever she might wish to see.
He is not harsh the way most dark creatures are. Something about his golden eyes are soft, and she finds that she can’t stop looking at him. She does not often wonder what others are thinking, and she certainly has not wondered what they think of her, but when she levels her dark brown eyes with his, she is suddenly self-conscious. Like so many in this land, he is unique and remarkable, and then, there is her; pretty but plain, with no quick tongue or anything else that set her apart from the rest. She was used to blending in and fading to black.
She may as well have been one of his shadows that he controlled so easily.
For some reason, his whispered response makes her heart flutter — a feeling she wasn’t used to. Her range of emotion was fairly limited for one that was genuinely kind and amicable. She loved her daughter more than anything in this world, and she cared for some such as Leilan and even Breckin more than she did most. But love, like that, was not high on her list of priorities; it didn’t even make the list, truthfully. She didn’t interact with others in hopes to find love or romance; she simply grew tired of being alone, and only hoped to find someone that found her tolerable. It was why it had been so easy for her to raise Chryseis with Leilan and never feel a thread of jealousy over the idea that he was not, and never would be hers.
Ether stirs something else, ever so slight that it may be. It was enough for her to notice, even if she cannot pinpoint exactly what it is. She just knows she cannot stop watching the way his skin has become its own darkness, a cloak of abyss that spills over his muscles, and how she can’t stop thinking about how she wants to reach out and touch him again. He is watching her, like he is waiting for her to do or say something, and for a moment her breathing stills, and her muscles grow tense, because she isn’t sure what he expects of her.
But then he looks to the empty space next her, and soundlessly it is as though reality itself parts like a curtain, revealing the endless dark.
There are few things that excite her, that make her brown eyes glitter like stars, but when she looks to him her black lips hold a smile that simmers with a quiet enthusiasm. ”Where will this take us?” She is alongside him now, her voice a hushed tone near his shoulder, feeling the coolness that radiates from him. She can’t help but to let her soft muzzle once more brush against his skin, lingering where her voice had whispered moments before. ”I’ll follow you,” The words are murmured against him, and her gaze shifts momentarily to the aperture he had created, but not for long; she was always drawn back to his golden eyes glowing like lanterns in the dark.
briseis. you’re ripped at every edge but you’re a masterpiece
