"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
07-23-2019, 02:11 PM (This post was last modified: 07-23-2019, 02:13 PM by Erio.)
It’s poor taste, mother would say, how Erio wanders off now. Since introducing him to father, it has solidified the boy’s place among the family. Sinner is aware of his existence, thus marking him prudent to the lineage. He cannot be so easily discarded like mother originally intended. Of course, Valdis never said that aloud. It would be cruel to admit something like that, but the fire crackling in her eyes and the snarls she often adorned in Erio’s company was enough indication.
He isn’t wanted, isn’t loved, and yet he still pushes himself to rise higher than her expectations. Still, Erio practices determination to prove everyone wrong.
And so he consistently ventures off so that the world may shape and mold him. Experiences will define him more than mother’s scolding and negativity. He left in the night and pressed his lips to her brow in an affection kiss before melting into the shadows cloaked in fur and claws.
The meadow is a familiar place, and yet his feet guide him down worn trails. Erio’s eyes enthusiastically drink in the sights as the scenery shifts from open fields to shadowed and closed forests. Leaf beds scatter across the ground and rustle beneath his small weight as he threads through the trees, embracing the solitude for the first time ever. His shaggy coat ripples with each short stride. He glances back at it once with a small grin, becoming more and more comfortable in this skin.
There’s a reason father is the same.
Erio only stops once underneath a gnarled oak tree, his breath quickly steadying as he lowers his haunches to sit, his long tail curling around him contently while he observes the world with fascination.
A gentle smile holds her face pale white gold face. She is thinking of silly things, girly things. Stories her mother and her father once told her. She thinks of the way the sun sued to glisten off the sand sending someone almost blindly stumbling around in the vicinity. Astana had loved to sit just beyond the Oasis, digging those small hooves in the sand, awaiting her twin sister to join her. Where they then would bother their father until he would appear, building his daughters the most magnificent sandcastle he could, encompassing anything their imaginations could harbor. Of course, Astana’s imagination could simply hold no bounds, she was a dreamer’s daughter after all.
Astana had been wanted.
Astana had been loved.
But just like Erio, she had wandered off all the same. Because Astana is Astana and she never changes.
She has enjoyed the forest, wandering around the common lands with her freedom and no other agenda aside from her own. To see the grass and the trees instead of endless mountains of dunes that shift with the desert winds that howl at night and cause Astana to huddle closer to her twin sister and her parents. She thinks in this moment perhaps she will travel the entire world! Traveling to the oceans and beyond. She dreams big.
She hadn't been able to sleep and the forest offered some comfort in her nighttime wanderings. Diamond eyes spot a strange tree up ahead and her focus steadies in on the way it has grown, almost broken and gnarled. Astana, the girl of gold, wonders briefly. what happened to it when it was growing. Had there not been enough love and care. Had the sun not brought its warmth to make it as beautiful as the trees that surround it? She thinks it is sad, for just a moment, but her mind quickly deviates because something of far more interest sits beneath the tree as eyes glistening in the moonlight, trace their way down the browned trunk of the large plant. “Well, hello there,” she says to the creature, her innocence astounding. “I am Astana, you couldn't sleep either?” It is an assumption, that this creature would be the same as herself. She knows little beyond her own realm. “I like your tail, mine is kinda boring,” she says with a playful roll of her eyes as those that long banner streaming out behind her twitches slightly.
The white gold girl with diamonds for eyes looks beautiful there, in the moonlight, with the stars. And had they both been an little older, this could have been a different meeting entirely. But, for now, they are both children who steal away in the night to met strangers with new tails and different tales.
He has been watching her, observing her just as she adoringly traces her eyes across the trees and grass. It’s beautiful how delicately she absorbs the world and dives headfirst into the wonders of the world. Somehow, Erio can read her fascination and concern and joy for this new land because it isn’t her home – or at least, wasn’t. This is all nearly as new to her as it is to him, but Erio’s skin reeks of Beqanna. He is one of the many generations borne to this wild place, but that doesn’t spare him from the enchantment. Thus far, he has only surrounded himself with the barren cliffs of Pangea, the open fields of the meadow, and the density of the forest.
There still remains so much to explore, to enjoy, and he has already promised himself to visit each of the lands in attempt to educate himself in ways outside of warfare.
If only he knew that she dreams the same.
Her voice is the soft chords of a harp, lulling him into serenity as the moon shines high above. The softness of her eyes elicits a warm grin in return. ”Hello,” he says back in between the sound of crickets chirping, ”it’s too pretty of a night.” And though it is, oftentimes his thoughts keep him afloat and prevent him from drowning beneath the weight of a dream world. Being nocturnal – at least today – serves him well by acquiring him company and a sense of wanting that he so often lacks. ”Not boring at all!” He cannot help to thump his tail excitedly against the forest floor, thankful for the compliment.
It still seems so rare to hear them (his thoughts only echo mother’s shame).
Inclining his head, he cannot help to ask, ”If you could turn into anything, or have any power, what would you be?” He pauses thoughtfully, his paw scraping against a leaf. ”What would you find exciting?” Because although his plumed tail isn’t boring, it also isn’t enthralling.
The filly with that odd crystalline gaze molded of diamonds and sapphires has always dreamed that the world was this great wonder. Hidden jewels waiting to be sought, blank pages of maps wanting to be found. There was an endless invitation where ever she dared to look. Astana views the world through rose tinted glasses, refusing to take them off even as she continues to grow older. Everything is beautiful, and her heart clings to this notion fiercely, as if afraid of where she will fall if she should ever let go. Her knuckles are white with effort. Lets see how long she can hold on for.
Astana does not know that she has found a kindred spirit in this great world, that on this night, they have found each other. A rare occurrence to find another wayward wanderer in a land where everyone would rather just stay put where they are. Call it fate, destiny, sheer luck, or maybe one o them wished on the first start they saw tonight. Regardless, they have found each other and Astana will desperately open her heart and offer it to him, just like she has done with others before him. She has never learned to be cautious, the desert had never prepared her for much of anything.
He grins back at her and that is all Astana needs to feel entirely at home in the warmth of his presence, as if she has lived there her entire life. His voice is as kind as his smile and Astana wants to nestle herself into his side and bask the serenity he has provided her with on this night ignited by moonlight and silhouetted by the bright shadows of stars. “I know what you mean,” she says in a voice with a dreamy, airy quality to it, as if she were lilting on the edges of awake and asleep, unsure of which to fall into. “I miss the stars far too much to slumber too soundly,” she says, and the words are not her own, but her mother’s repeated back from the daughter she barely knows. The daughter she had fretted over more often than the twin that lays nestled at her side.
A giggle, girlish and youthful, she returns from being the daughter of Keav, to just Astana with the diamond eyes and reckless smile. “Really?” She says, her heart fluttering with his compliment as she lets those strands of white gold touch against her body briefly. She hears the thump of his own tail and a memory strikes her. “There was a coyote where we lived, sometimes he would come around, I always thought he was cute, but we could never get close enough,” she says, that face forming into a pout for a moment. Oh, the great childhood regrets. In truth, it could have been a danger to her family, but, they had lived in peace with many of the desert creatures, all existing in harmony.
His question strikes her, skipping around her thoughts like a child trying to find just the right flower to pick for their mother. “I think I would like to be a great explorer,” she says then, her answer, hardly makes any sense, she is a silly girl after all. “Able to climb any mountain, swim to the depths of any sea, and travel endlessly without having to sleep, or rest, or stop at all,” she says, excitement thrumming in her chest like an electric current. “I would see nearly all of it, but not everything, I have found the mysteries of life to be a beautiful thing,” she ends almost longingly. She moves close to him now, peering at the boy curiously. “And you? What would you do? What would you be? What does your heart want?” Hearts, after all, are fickle, fickle things at the best of times.
How grand it is, he thinks, to so quickly find someone who also marvels at the star-studded sky. He beams at her as the moonlight dances across his eyes and ripples across his coat when a breeze whispers past. So much of the world seems consumed by their personal vendettas that their surroundings are often taken for granted or ignored. For weeks, Erio wondered if his miniature stature brought him closer to their world. From his vantage, blooming flowers, sprouting shrubs, and babbling creeks often swarm him. It’s impossible to ignore so much of what engulfs him; it’s not as though his eyes can easily meet those of a lost lover and distract him from all else.
Perhaps, until now.
A rare occasion this is, to have his eyes torn from the moonlit scene to admire something – someone – else of beauty and charisma. His heart patters both in excitement and confusion. He has only truly spoken with siblings, and while they are kind, they are not Astana.
His head inclines as he listens with fascination to her childhood memory. ”I’ve only seen them from afar, too. They elude me most times,” because I’m different, he wants to say but the words never come to fruition. It seems that Erio is meant to be different, to be a new breed or something. A hellhound, yes, but not at all fitting in the criteria of aggression or sinister plotting. One day, he will find his purpose, but in the meantime he is content filling his thoughts with Astana’s dreamlike voice as it wraps around him like tendrils of silk.
”That sounds breathtaking,” he turns his head away from her and stares admiringly up at the moon, picturing her reaching such extravagant goals. ”I want to explore, too. I want to see high above the trees, to see beyond the mountains and seas, because with it comes knowledge and adventure. I am not and will never be a soldier,” what once destroyed him emotionally has since become water under a bridge. He can accept that he will never fight. His heart does not crave power or dominance or glory. ”I just want to be the good in the world,” he remarks hesitantly, uncertain how to ever achieve this, before flickering his eyes back to Astana. ”There is so much darkness, so much danger, in Beqanna. I want to be a helping light, but I don’t even know how that would be possible – or where, even, to begin.” And what he doesn’t confess is that his own family flirts with the edges of that darkness, seeking sinful power and glory by destroying others.
It would be a great conflict, but in such a feral world, it’s to be expected eventually.
A sheepish grin just barely exposes the points of his jagged teeth. ”Such silly dreams children can have, I suppose,” he chuckles, indicating only his own impossible wishes.
