"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
I should have loved a thunderbird instead at least when spring comes they roar back again
His wanderings are relentless these days.
Something drives him forward that he doesn’t understand. Something constant churning in his gut that keeps him from sleep and leaves him restless and aching—his feet always moving, his illusions becoming more and more elaborate until he feels like he could lose himself in them entirely. He withdraws even more from the outside world because it is easier to become trapped in his own head. It is easier to find himself in the stars that he brings down to the earth, to the oceans he paints around him, to the fantastical worlds that he continues to craft with more and more fervor—until reality completely drops away.
This evening is no different.
He is exhausted, but he doesn’t recognize it as such. The fatigue sinks into his bones but he continues to walk, his body growing more and more mature, his amethyst hooves heavy with each step. Around him, he paints worlds that don’t exist. The trees grow wild with moss crawling up their inky bark and draping from their low hanging branches. Vines rope around the base and hang amongst them so real that he dips his antlered head as he walks, certain that he would brush up against them—that they would feel true.
Beneath his feet, water runs as though the entire forest had been flooded although it is not high enough to reach his pastern and the wind smells sweet. He smiles, picking out the fruit and the blossoms that sprinkle this forest of his own creation and it’s only when he catches the sound of something distinctly not of his own creation that he twists his head. He sees her and pauses, a frown crossing his features for a moment—a twinge of knowing that does not rise to his consciousness—before it fades.
He falls still, glowing lightly as he watches her with an infinite well of curiosity.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead (I think I made you up inside my head.)
02-07-2020, 01:17 PM (This post was last modified: 02-07-2020, 01:17 PM by Reia.)
no one really knows what the ocean hides but you and I, bird, we’re gonna find out
Reia watches him, stalks him. He is such a stark contrast against the forest’s shadows that, for a fleeting moment, she thought herself pursuing an apparition.
The musk of his scent, however, is indicative of his realism and presence. Its familiarity is faint; it has been a couple years since she first tasted it on Pteron’s skin, so closely mingled that she questioned which belonged to whom. Yet the curl of it, like tendrils of smoke, edges cautiously into her nostrils where it triggers the painful memories to arise from the depths of her mind. The shouting, the rejection, the threatening. Everything swallows her at once, but outwardly, Reia only flinches.
Out here in the world, no longer a figment of her imagination, he looks peaceful. He dreamily meanders among the pines, inclining his antlered head toward a tree trunk and grazing it tenderly. Of course, Reia does not see all that he does. Fragments of his craft reach her, but she doesn’t carefully take note, as most of her attention funnels on him. Beneath her scales, she flexes her muscles in preparation. Another step closer, but still she doesn’t act. His back is turned, basking in his own beautified ambiance. Mother taught her to hunt, and to attack the unsuspecting victim from behind, but everything in Reia halts.
She hesitates.
But why?
She wants him to see her face, to lay eyes on the wife he indirectly hurts – the life he is destroying.
To pull him from his trance, a low, feral growl crawls from the depths of her throat and materializes as a blackened tower of smoke rising from her nostrils. Only then does he turn, acknowledging her with a sense of knowing. She meets his eyes, mirroring his recognition although her face crackles with the same threatening anger as her mane. Contradiction branches through her, reaching into her thoughts as she wavers between attacking him – burn him, hurt him – and simply observing him and the serene peacefulness that radiates from him like the ocean tides. ”You,” is all she manages to say, hissing as she inches closer, pausing only to search his eyes and seek the hate she assumes to be there.
I should have loved a thunderbird instead at least when spring comes they roar back again
The growl is what catches his attention first but his heart does not pound in fear. He does not often give into fear—doesn’t let his body slip into the undercurrents of it—and he doesn’t react that way now. Instead, he just lifts his head slowly, blinking his dark purple eyes as they focus in the dark not her, the fierce beauty that radiates from her. The sharpness of her, the otherworldly cruelness in her beauty.
It like looking into the face of a predator and he marvels at that, but does not fear.
“Me,” he echoes slightly, unsure why her face is twisted in such hate as she steps closer. His body betrays him now, not giving him the instinctual fear that should be driving him away, that should be using his own gifts to protect himself. The wind picks up for a second and he lifts his nose slightly, nostrils flaring as he drinks it in like an addict. Pteron. It was so familiar that his lips curve in response to it.
Something clicks in the back of his mind, a memory, and he angles his head in thought—his face still remaining serene, eyes studying her. “Are you his wife?” His voice is even, the stallion completely unaware that she may see him as the threat—that she would blame him for whatever pain strikes at her breast. “You are not what I imagined,” he muses as his illusions react, the fantasy forest remaining but the stars beginning to fall down to them and then spinning in circles around them both in lazy loops.
He partially hands control over them over to her, wondering how the illusions would react.
Would she make them more violent? Would flames erupt around them?
He is curious as he continues to study her. “You are beautiful,” he confesses, because it’s only right to tell her that, “but in the way of a viper. Pteron is so kind. How strange that the two of you ended together.”
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead (I think I made you up inside my head.)
