"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 forest is a lovely place. Dark and alluring, familiar and welcoming, it invites those wayward souls to tread deeper towards its thick-walled heart. In the darkness and confusion, consumption is embraced by those less inclined to expose a strong will or sheer stubbornness. It’s easier to just let things be, to embrace the constant black for what it is and settle for its false sense of comfort that the familiarity of it is sure to draw out. In the densest part of the forest they’ll sit in limbo— neither content nor disappointed that their path has ended— and they will accept that unsatisfactory end for everything it is and everything it is not.
But the woods are equally light as they are dark and for those capable of looking beyond the reinforced walls of what is known to them, they’ll notice something different. That each step beyond the heart of the tight knit forest will reveal the inevitability that density fades to sparsity, that each step past the dark edge of familiarity will bring them closer to the breakthrough of light. The darkness is lovely in its own right, but it is not a home.
And with the first drawn blood of the unknown still fresh on their lips they’ll crave the now strange sense of hope once more and they’ll find that the path had never really ended, but was only obstructed by shade and the restraint of their own mind. It may be a path less taken, but it’s an available path all the same.
Another moment will pass and die before the shallow curve of her lips meet daylight, and she steps away from the last stragglers of Nerine’s tree line. A reflection of gold draws the softening gaze towards where it came from, prodding the smile to bloom in an easy procession. ”Eurwen.”. It’s a greeting and a summoning as she turns in the direction of where her daughter approaches. The warmth of daylight spreads across her chest while the cool shade of matte darkness spills over her back. It’s a union of opposites on a shared plane, only really able to exist and be known in the presence of each other.
The golden tint of her hair is somewhat warmer these days, and reflected in the spots that changed in colour as well. She had underwent some other changes too. This girl had left the forest long ago, and the mature mind that had come back from a fairy’s quest, had belonged to the strong, well-trained women she had been shown she could be.
But growing up had nothing to do with having a young or adult body, which is why she had declined the fairy’s proposal she stayed that way. And, of course, she couldn’t go from youngest sister to oldest. That didn’t make sense at all.
Her mother’s voice is calling, and the spotted girl stiffens a bit. Now she’ll have it. She shouldn’t have left. She could have been eaten like the rest of them! Perhaps, it’s even worse that it is mother calling her first, not Papa or even, Oisín. She’s such a disappointment.
With a guilty heart and slow steps she approaches the black and white mare who had called, and dips her head in respect as well as hoping to let the reprimand she is probably going to get, get over with as quickly as possible. ”I’m sorry.”
lies the seed that with the sun's love in the spring becomes the rose
She’d been smiling in anticipation; anticipation of seeing that darling smile of her daughter’s reflected back at her. It had been some time since they’d seen each other last, for one reason or another, but that time apart had spanned a greater length of time than the leopard mare would have liked. The girls were growing quickly she knew, and she was loathe to admit to herself that they would actually need some looser reins in order to make headway in learning the sad truths of the world in which they lived. Within reason of course—should they stray too far or become subject to massive troubles they still had parents ready to move Heaven or Hell to keep them as safe as was possible.
It’s hard to ignore the grip and tightening of her stomach at the furtive expression of Eurwen as she draws nearer; clearly something was not quite copacetic as it normally, presumably would be. A guilty conscious, especially in one so similar to herself, is easy enough for the woman to notice and her dark eyes drink in the site of her spotted child as the girl halts in front of her, concern evident in the twist of her features as she scrutinizes her for any obvious damage. Aside from a subtle shift in the color spectrum, it rather appears as if she’d come off from whatever she’s apologizing for unscathed, or at the very least on the surface.
Not stopping the natural fall of her smile into the press of a firm line, she gazes neutrally at the yearling girl. ”Would you like to show me.” she says, opening the edges of her mind to receive her daughter’s memories if she chose to share them. Much more than a question or the demand it may come across as, it is an opportunity.
01-21-2019, 12:06 PM (This post was last modified: 01-21-2019, 12:07 PM by Eurwen.)
Eurwen
in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows
Oh, oh, Mama is surely mad. If possible, she would like to shrink now please. Or fade into a puff of smoke! But the firm line on the spotted mare’s face is still there when she peeks, and when a question is asked, she seriously thinks about it...
She shakes her head. No, she doesn’t want to scare her mother with the image of monsters eating grownups and babies alike - of ripping those monsters apart with her cousins by Heartfire, to set these horses free. No, she doesn’t want to show her mother that she had been a prime-looking adult, and then wasn’t, moments later. But she can show her something else?
Tentitatively, she looks at the too-neutral face before her. Something else then. Her ears and gaze flick around until she settles on some pebbles, and she pulls them over. ”I can do this now.” she says softly, almost not bearing to look into her mother’s eyes - so she focuses back on the small rocks she had brought up between them.
lies the seed that with the sun's love in the spring becomes the rose
”You’re apologizing for being able to move stones?” Obvious in her incredulity, she does nothing to try to dampen the minor rise in her voice as she questions her daughter’s display. She might be the more timid half of the twins, but even for Eurwen’s usual reserved nature, this was marginally outside of the normal behavior. Whether it was a mother’s intuition, or just the telltale signs of guilt in the way the leopard girls gaze couldn’t seem to hold onto hers, it hardly mattered because the answer was the same. There was more to this story.
Ridding herself of an exhausted breath held for far too long, she sighs. ”Eurwen, my darling girl,” she begins, waiting for the filly to meet her softening brown gaze before continuing. ”I am asking you to be respectful of me by being honest with me. If you’d rather not show me, then tell me what has you feeling as though you need to apologize.”
As intrigued as she is by her daughter’s manifested ability, her curiosity will have to be sacrificed for another time. Right now, she is far more concerned with not only her girl’s principles and what path she might choose to trod, but her wellbeing as well. A weary queen’s decision was hanging in the balance, and her own course would be decided with her daughter’s last opportunity.
diamonds are found only in the darkness of earth as truth lies in the darkness of mind
There’s something… changing. Something being the air surrounding them, and her mother’s demeanour as well. Peeking past the stones, the filly finds that Breckin’s face now matches the softer tone of her voice, which is… safer.
The words are still a reprimand, one way or the other. It’s very clear that this is her second and last chance to make it up to her and hopefully without repercussions. Still, she is uncomfortable with telling. What can she possibly say that won’t scare her mother or make her subsequently angry with her? At least… well at least with the spotted mare there is a slight chance that she won’t be angry. She couldn’t possibly tell her dad.
Still, she’d rather sink into the ground. Still, she nervously presses her lips and shuffles her hoofs… only to find that she did actually sink into the rocks a bit.
Her chuckle is still a bit nervous as she softens the rock again, conscious this time, and pulls her feet out. Heh. So she can do that now. The ridiculousness of the situation frees her voice at last, and after finding secure footing she takes a deep breath. ”I shouldn’t have run away. And I should have come back sooner.”
”I met… some fairies. They called. They wanted help with the sickness, so…” Another small shuffle, movements of hoof, tail, ear - telltale signs of discomfort. ”I went to the Cove. There was a… a monster out there and I… we killed them. To free the others. He made us grown-ups for a while! And then we brought back the stones and now I can move them!” Ending with what hopefully was the good part of the story, she mentally picks up one of the pebbles she had previously dropped, somewhere along the lines (probably around the time she had found out she had sunk). Nevermind that she forgot half the story, she toys with it. If she could sink into the rocks, maybe she could change the appearance of this one?
But looking at her mother for just a fracture of a heartbeat, she pushes that thought aside.
Well, admittedly, that was not the type of answer she had been anticipating. To run away from her home and into unknown dangers - it was difficult for Breckin to fathom as she was still practically a baby in her eyes and not yet ready to take on the harder edges of Beqanna. And yet the most difficult aspect to swallow that she’d run away from her family and her. Had she done something wrong?
Disappointment settles like a heavy mantel across her shoulders as Eurwen continues on with her quick tale; of fairies and monsters and a taste of the future. Plain as the daylight on the northern shores, the cherry stained filly’s meekness shines through as silence ensues on the coattails of her girlish voice. It’s in the way that she shuffles and softens the ground beneath her, still begrudgingly incapable of meeting the now wide gaze of her mother.
There’s much that could be said or done, but for the sake of simplification and the promise of the changing tides, she focuses upon the endgame. “I rather wish you hadn’t run off, or at least had told your father or I what was happening,” the tone of her voice is unreadable until a small smile taints her inflections, “But I am proud of you, for your honesty and bravery.”
Drawing the stones her daughter had played with moments before , she raises one of them up, hanging precariously between them, hoping to regain the girls focus. “You have so much potential, Wenny. I’d like for you to become Nerine’s heir when I hand the queendom over to Heartfire.”
the secret to walking on water is knowing where the rocks lie
Perhaps they're more similar than they know - it's exactly the fact that she's run away from her family that made her feel so guilty; the same thing that made it so hard on her mother. Perhaps she should have told them - she knows she should haven. "I didn't think you'd let me." she then states - an insight on a clear moment when she left: she couldn't have asked, surely they wouldn't have let her go to the fairies, perhaps one of her parents might have insisted on going instead, and that hadn't been what she wanted either.
Still, there is the strange aspect of her mother also being proud of her. For Eurwen, well - she mostly just felt like she'd done only wrong.
Her mother then uses her own power - different - to raise the pebbles. The movement catches her eye, and she meets the spotted mare's eyes with hesitation, followed by shock. "Heir?" she repeats, still processing the idea. Wait, hand over the queendom to Heartfire? Had she said so earlier?
That - that was quite a shock. Not only to come home so late, but also to find home completely changed. Heartfire, she knew instantly, would be a wholly different kind of queen than Breckin - and also different than Eurwen herself would ever hope to be. No, wait - actually she'd never hoped to be a queen. She didn't like that kind of attention...
But looking to her mother now, she finds that same hesitation in her. Breckin wasn't the type for attention either, she thinks. A queen out of necessity, out of servitude, not out of hope for power. That's something she could do, too, maybe... "Who's... who will train me?" Hopefully not Heartfire alone, or was that the plan all along? To not bother with ruling and training?
