what is left when honor is lost?
The air that gusts upward against the cliff is hot and tastes of red sand and stone. Pteron’s position on the narrow bridge of stone is a precarious one, but despite the danger the young stallion appears unperturbed. His wings are spread wide for balance as he moves forward, one hoof in front of the other in something quite akin to balancing on a tightrope. It would have been easier for the dun to simply fly to his perch, but he wants to know how difficult it might be to reach it for someone without wings.
These rocky highlands in the south of Loess have been carved into fantastic shapes by the wind and sea, and Pteron has always known that this is where he would make his nest. It is far enough from his family that he feels independent and difficult enough to reach that he feels secure from anything (incapable of flight) that might try to surprise him while he rested. Overall, an excellent location for a place of his own.
Eventually, he reaches an impasse in his jounrey by foot. The red stone stretches up to straight to climb and too tall to leap. After craning his head and looking over the stone with his olive gaze, Pteron is satisfied that it is not passable. Tilting his weight to the side, he allows himself to simply fall from ledge on which he stands.
For one gut-wrenching moment he simply falls.
Then the wind catches the outstretched plane of his wings and the adrenaline spikes as intensely as the bright white sun overhead. Caught by the wind, he soars outward from the limestone, ever upward. A few tilts of his feathers and tightening of muscle has him gliding to a stop on a stone spire without ever flapping his wings. The updrafts of spring are some of his favorites, and a contented smile dances darts across the young man’s face. Pulling his wings more tightly to his body, Pteron settles himself comfortably on the high peak. He has a good view of Loess from here, but he has no intention of keeping watch – at least not right now.
He’s been trying routes up here all morning and surely deserves a rest. He might try to see how difficult it is to get down in the afternoon, but for now, he intends to sleep. The sun is warm on his piebald back and the sound of the wind on rock soon lulls him to sleep.
@[Catcher]
Catcher had only just fallen asleep herself, but she could already tell that someone else was nearby. Her focus expanded beyond the fringes if her own dreamscape, searching for the edges of a someone else’s parallel world. They must’ve just been crossing the threshold when she had first noticed them, because it takes a few moments for her to hone in on it again. But when she finally does, Catcher eagerly melds into their visions without so much with a second thought.
For a moment she stood motionless, only shifting her eyes to glance at the edges of the dreamer’s world as the fabric wove and settled together. The tapestry was one she recognized immediately; the backdrop of Loess’ artistic stonescapes and varied flora was one that had become a regular in her own dreams. Not by free will however, moreso a subconscious thought that nags at the deepest parts of your mind.
Catcher allows herself the span of a few breaths to admire the view and then with a small sigh, warped herself into the guise of an osprey. Departing the ground with the aid of a well placed shift in the wind, she glided in lazy circles, searching for a giveaway to the location of whomever’s paradise she had trespassed upon.
Reminding herself for what felt like the millionth time that patience was a well earned virtue, she banked right, finally revealing a lump of something resting atop a narrow pillar of stone. How she didn’t notice it sooner, she couldn’t say, but a pang of frustrated exasperation made her expression sour in response. When she was close enough to the resting horse, she hovered, studying the young man inquisitively, and ultimately making a disapproving sound at the back of her throat. Not who she was looking for, but maybe he’d know where to find her?
“Excuse me,” she prodded with her bird-like voice. She waited for him to stir, but nothing happened. Again she tried, a little louder this time, but still nothing happened. Resolving to believe that perhaps the problem laid with her squeaky raptor voice, she dissolved back into the chestnut painted and horned equine body that she usually resided in.
”HEY!” the unicorn shouted, still hovering in mid air across from the winged fellow. “Are you really dreaming about sleeping?” she asked him, not really expecting an answer, and inconspicuously looking for the perfect stone to lob at him.
——————-
@[Pteron] I am not happy with this post but I don’t think it’s going to get any better and I don’t want to make you wait any longer 
what is left when honor is lost?
Pteron wakes – but he really doesn’t.
His eyes are open, but the edges of the world are soft and foggy. There is no fog in Loess, not with their hot sun, and when he tries to turn and look at the fog it is never there. The stallion frowns, turning on the ledge where he’d been resting, but the movement of his body feels unfamiliar as well. This feels like dreaming, he thinks, but why would he be dreaming of a disembodied voice?
He turns back and there is someone in front of him, and he finds that the disembodied voice is not disembodied after all.
Pteron startles, his wings half flaring as he jolts back against the stone, the sound of his hooves just a little off. His blue and white face creases in a front as he tries to place the horned and floating creature in front of him, but she is a stranger.
“Wha...” he starts to say, and then realizes that she’s hovering without wings. “Who are you? How are you here? And what do you mean am I dreaming?”
The dun stallion has always been fascinated by the strange magics of Beqanna, but floating unicorn girls who disturb his nap to yell at him and criticize his dreams are something entirely new. He’s not sure he likes it, mostly because he still feels rather drowsy, and rather like his movements are abnormally slow and the world is just a little wrong.
“Did you do something to me?” He asks, his voice rather accusing, and the frown on his face growing deeper. He does not usually mind being used or subjected to the powers of others, but there is something unsettling going on, and he cannot quite name it.
@[Catcher]
He’s started to move, but she doesn’t notice, still too caught up in finding that perfect rock to jar him “awake”. Finding the perfect candidate, she pulls and aims at the broadest side of him - she really didn’t want to hurt him afterall, just make her presence known - and with a simple wish, tosses it true towards her mark. But it doesn’t land, instead she catches it midair, hovering just as she is, because during the span of her making a decision, he has finally awoken and pushed himself against the face of the stone behind him. The unicorn can’t keep up with the succession of questions he asks, so she contents herself with staring wide-eyed until he seemed to be done.
“Did you do something to me?”
“No!” she scoffs at his accusation. Well not really, anyway. All she did was walk into the fist dream she felt. It might have been unannounced, that’s true. And she might not have cared whose dream she was trespassing upon. And now that she thought about it, she supposed someone’s dreams could be pretty sacred and private. She gulped; mother would be so appalled.
Blinking away her thoughts, she looked back to the pegasus. As she did, she noticed the rock still rotating precariously in mid-flight between them. Giving the stone a side-eye and making a shifty glance back and forth between it and its target she says sheepishly, “Not yet.” With a pop, the stone disappears into thin air.
The painted girl then realizes the right thing to do would be to answer the rest of his questions now and maybe apologize. “My name is Catcher, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to startle you so much.” A pillar of rock appears beneath her, then spans out in a bridge to connect to his perch. Though to the eye, she finally has a solid place to rest her feet, she doesn’t approach him to give him some time to adjust to all of this. He'd ask her how she got here, but she resolves to think maybe it best to let this sink in first. “This is your dream,” she offers with a timid smile.
@[Pteron]
what is left when honor is lost?
The floating girl seems taken aback by his accusation, but then her eyes dart toward a rock hovering between them. Pteron hadn’t noticed it before (too distracted by the stranger), but between its position and her sheepish ’Not yet’ he realizes that he might have woken up just a few seconds before he’d been pelted with a rock.
This causes Pteron’s frown to deepen into a scowl, and he is only slightly mollified (and further perplexed) when the stone disappears and the girl – Catcher – apologizes. The stallion is grateful that he is still and that the stone beneath him remains solid, because he might have lost his balance if it were anything less when Catcher begins to build a bridge.
The stone appears from nothing, stretches toward him from where she stands, and melds seemlessly with the stone of his cliff. Tearing his gaze from Catcher, Pteron reaches forward to tap it with one curious hoof. It feels very solid, very real. Is she an illusionist, he wonders? Has she made the place she stands invisible, or does she have some hovering ability as well? The tobiano is attempting to piece together what is happening to him when Catcher announces that this is his dream.
“My dream?” He repeats blankly.
“But I’m awake.” He stops, considering what he’d just said. There is that odd fog, the strange way he feels, and the impossible things he has just witnessed. “Am I awake?”
@[Catcher]
She hasn’t bothered to move quite yet; those expressions of his spanning the spectrum of confusion, to a very obvious dirty look, then on to mitigation, then circling back to confusion keeps her at bay. Talk about emotional whiplash, she thinks, practically dizzy from the ups and downs and how quickly they seem to be passing through them all. But it only makes her feel worse, because Catcher knows she’s at the root of the tobiano’s problems right now. And that she would very likely be the only one who could remedy the situation and put him a bit more at ease.
He’s gone on to test the dependability of the bridge that she casually threw together. Inquisitively, her stormy grey eyes regard him as he tap taps the structure with a tentative hoof. Not like it would make him feel much better at the moment, but the overo girl takes a few steps across the bridge all the same. At least now she can hear him better when he mimics her latest game-changing statement.
“Yes,” she answered him slowly with an equally slow, sage nod of her horned crown. “Your dream. Which means you can do or make anything you want.” Another question, but in her young age she is not so well adept in dream weaving to fully answer that question and its possible implications. But she tries to answer as best as she can. “Hmm, not so much in a literal sense?” she muses while scrunching her face in contemplation. And leaves it at that.
“Here, I’ll prove it to ya that this is your dream,” she offers, taking a few more slow steps towards his perch. Each stride makes the corners of her lips rise a little more into an anticipatory smile. “Change me into something. Don’t tell me what though, so that you don’t think I did it myself! Just think it and then do it!”
@[Pteron]
what is left when honor is lost?
09-14-2019, 10:26 AM
(This post was last modified: 09-14-2019, 03:32 PM by Pteron.)
He has seen a great many magics and heard of even more, but what this girl proposes is hardly unbelievable.
His dreams have always been hazy things, images and emotions that fade as son as he opens his eyes. To be this...well, this awake and also be dreaming? Pteron shakes his head. Even the flutter of his blue mane against his neck feels off, and he stamps one front foot again, and is anything but reassured by the dreamlike quality to that sharp motion as well.
He believes her, Pteron decides, but he is not sure he likes the truth she is telling him.
The answer that the unicorn gives him is no help, and the pegasus scowls even as she tries to explain. Change her into something? But how? He has no skill at dreamweaving, and possesses no ability in the waking world to change her either. Has she asked him just to make a fool of him when he tries and fails? Pteron is good-natured, but no man enjoys being made a fool of, and he opens his mouth to refuse.
But then he snaps it shut, because his subconscious wish (that she'd just go away - disappear) has suddenly come true.
Pteron breathes in sharply, a habit borne of a childhood with invisible siblings, as likely to hide with their abilities as behind a tree. He finds that her scent still lingers - a strange smell, like scales - despite the fact that she is invisible. Pteron , still scowling, focuses again, and suddenly she is back - poised on the rocky bridge that she's made from nothing.
Only when she's wearing the body of a brightly pink rhinoceros does Pteron's scowl finally begin to soften, and he asks in a tone that is at last curious rather than cautious: ”Are you a magician?"
@[Catcher]
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