"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
All of the voices inside of my mind will never be silenced
It is a relief to feel the sand beneath her feet once more. But, curiously, a disappointment, as though the sea has become as much a part of her as the earth and sky. And perhaps it has, though she is still too young to fully comprehend such things.
The thoughts are back, a dull roar inside her mind that she struggles to quiet for a moment. It is easy, beneath the waves. So quiet, freeing. The water may be heavy against her skin but she had never felt so light as when she was being crushed beneath those waves. But she cannot hide in the water forever. She has a promise to fulfill, shells to seek.
She is only partially successful in blocking them out. She can still hear bits and pieces as she scans the yawning stretch of beach. Fear and determination, anger and curiosity. And cats? All of it mingles in a jumble inside her mind, but she does her best to shove it aside. To ignore the reverberations in her skull.
She must find the seashells, and as she peers around her, it seems her choices are limited. To the left, the open, empty beach stretches in pristine glory. To her right, shambling wooden structures jut haphazardly from the sand. The sea is a hungry mistress, she knows, and the waves take as much as they give. No doubt the beach had been washed clean, but perhaps a few precious shells have been caught in the uneven structures, left behind by the tide.
So she turns left, hoping she might find what she seeks within those tangled wooden oddities.
until I can find a way to let go of what we left behind
it's a guarantee that he won't forget me. my body little, my soul heavy.
As Naia favors her punctured back leg, the fairies offer a choice: to the empty beach or fascinating ruins? Her eyes darken with pain. It is hard for her to think straight with the rapid pulsing of her lower leg: she closes her eyes, centers her breathing - think, Naia, calm, remember the flatness that balances you when you battle.
And is this not just another battle?
With gritted teeth and a hissed sigh, the appaloosa swings her head back and forth. First, to the empty beach. What she notices most is the gentle washing of the waves, the back and forth of the sand as the ground’s top layer is shifted over again. Perhaps the seashells are floating ashore now - all in the grand plan the fairies have constructed? Perhaps they washed up long ago, buried just where the beach meets the foliage, pale and whittled by the cruel hands of perpetual sand.
Naia considers the barren beach, then turns to face the ruins while shifting her weight even further off her injured fetlock. I am lucky he did not snap my leg, she thinks bitterly, offering an exasperated huff into the universe before really focusing on her potential destination. The orca offers an interesting memory that will make the girl’s trip worth it even if she makes the wrong decision. Its towering height and curious carvings are almost irresistible: she finds herself leaning in the whale’s direction, attempting to make out little details even from the distance she is at. Alas, the draw is not enough. Her desire to win is far too overbearing, and she thinks the landmark is a suspiciously obvious place to hide special seashells.
The sand beneath her whispers as she turns toward the beach, finding relief in a decreasing of pain in her right leg.
breaking like the waves down on the coastline breaking like the wine-stained glass that held my drink
After what feels like years, she finds herself feeling more rested before she stumbled onto the shore of the island. Eva is reminded again, with every wave that pushes itself onto her youthful body, that she has been given a task to complete. The blue fairy had called out to her, among several others, to help her solve some problem. A problem she truly did not know about (she knows truly nothing about the plague that the dryland suffers in now), but somewhere she felt the need to be one of those that brought a piece back to the ocean-like fairy.
It was her responsibility to look after the waters. The waters had made her a daughter of the sea, giving her more than a life, she probably would not have found on the bone-bleached beach. It would have only been death that had found her there in the end.
With every ache in her body still, she moves with determination now. The pain is not as painful as it was before, but this time it is bearable. Eva lifts herself up from the seashore of the island. She finally takes a look to see where she has washed up on.
There is a bright blue sky. Underneath her is a warm and white sand. Almost as white as the pearls she has found within the waters. A cool breeze tosses her sunset ombre colored mane. Her golden-orange eyes search across the beach, looking for any sign of the seashells the fairy had mentioned that her and others needed to bring back to the mountain.
Unfortunately, there are none to be found.
Eva frowns with disappointment, but she does not give up. She looks to the right, noticing the strange structures that linger in the distance. Her gaze then turns to the left, where the beach continues down but is empty.
Which way was she to go?
Her gaze flickers back in further between the two directions. One way would likely lead her to the seashells she needed to find. But what was the right path?
The empty beach looked hopeless to her. So, it seemed the seashells would likely be near the strange structures in the direction towards the right. It looks like she would be going to the right then.
Eva makes her way down the right direction of the island, heading towards the strange structures. With every movement of her limbs, her body aches. She stumbles from time to time as she still finds walking on dryland uncomfortable and strange. But eventually she reaches the strange structure that dot the beach.
The feeling of a warm embrace is what eventually rouses Vadar from his blackout. Blinking into the overhead sun, he felt as if his life had become nothing more than a series of hazy, intermittent flashes of light and dark. He knew, without having to hear it from someone else, that his sickness was probably starting to get the better of him. The next time he fell into unconsciousness might be his last.
He sighs.
What he’d prefer to do would be just lying here in the numbness. His legs seemed refreshed by the seawater, (stiff but refreshed) and his body felt stable in the moment. Only his nose tickled from a slight pressure; he sneezed and sand flew away.
It tickled him again.
Lifting his head, Vadar felt the punch of awareness knocking around inside of his skull. Like a raging alcoholic coming around from an all-nighter, his ears rang and his vision blurred. He felt nauseous. It was all he could do to close his eyes and stop the world from spinning, focusing by sheer force on the pressure that had moved from his nose to his knee.
He opened his eyes.
A creature made entirely of sand was poised near his hairless, bent foreleg. It’s two upright hind legs were tiny pillars of beach sand supporting a square, stout torso with two sandy, stumpy arms that rested on Vadar’s skin. It looked up at him with the same blank, hollow expression as the rock monster had; just waiting for something. For what, Vadar couldn’t be sure, but he assumed the small creature would let him know when it was ready.
Shifting a bit to unravel himself, the black stallion grunted and rose up from the shoreline. The poor sand thing wasn’t fast enough and dissolved from the gentle nudge of his legs as they swung out to balance, causing Vadar to mutter, “Oh shit, sorry.”
It didn’t matter though; to his right the sands began to shift and bubble. He turned his face to look, felt the aching throb from his shredded foreleg where it began to bleed fresh, and watched silently as a small bump grew a head, then stumpy forearms, and then finally two more sandy legs. His little creature had woken again and stood patiently waiting. Without sound or gesture it turned away from the red-eyed male and began moving towards the distant structures closer inland.
“Want me to follow, little guy?” Vadar asked pointlessly, because it didn’t turn back to answer. Be it figment of his fever imagination or real, the clown-faced vagabond couldn’t help but chuckle at its steady determination, so he conceded with a sigh and limped ahead as well.
