"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
Instead, it calls to her, as it has done all of her life.
It calls to that feral, primal piece of her heart. It awakens every wild part of her soul and ignites a fire in the very marrow of her bones. The shadows beckon her, their inky fingers sliding over her delicate frame with the precision of a past lover. The invitation is clear, though not a word is spoken. It hangs heavy in the air, almost visible through the lightly falling snow. But she has no answer to the looming question.
At least, not the right answer. Not anymore.
She cannot offer the darkness the same things she once could. She only has herself; her true self, and not the savage creature a kingdom once created. Those tendencies are still there, though the actuality is much different. Despite that, she is still fond of the darkness. She is still a creature of the night, a friend of the shadows and the mysteries they hold.
She has no home to call her own, no home except the shadows. And so there she stands. There she will stay. With the hissing of the snow the only noise, and her clear blue eyes the only light, she stays. The shadows are all she has left.
Topsail
and that’s all I‘ll preach about rekindling old flames
ooc- this is crap, but please bare with me while i get back in the swing of things
staring at the ceiling in the dark same old empty feeling in your heart
Lepis has little love for the shadows, or for the things that lurk within them. Few things are better in darkness than in the light of day, and the dun mare doubts any of those are here in the wintery meadow.
The bare branches of the trees creak in the wind, and Lepis draws her tricolored wings more tightly to her golden frame. Her shaggy winter coat provides a barrier to the cold, but she’d far prefer the comfort of a steaming spring. She’d not meant to be out this late, but a dark-eyed stallion had heard her query of another stranger, and the tale he spun of a tentacled creature in the Field was too suspect to ignore. It was him, Lepis is sure, but the trail was as cold as the snow at her dun feet – the encounter had taken place in early autumn. Wolfbane is long gone from the common lands now, and the thud of her hooves as she moves through the Meadow are heavier than they need be as she takes out her frustration.
The curses she mutters under her breath have long since been silenced, and she is grateful for it as her flaring navy nostrils catch the scent of another horse. Most winter nights she is alone in the Commons, but not so tonight. There is someone ahead, hard to see in the shadows, and the pegasus raises her head, her blue-grey eyes searching the darkness.
There, not so far away: another mare. An overabundance of caution is not possible in these dark days, but Lepis has enough faith in her wings and her magics for a faint smile to appear on her blue mouth when she says over the sound of the wind: “If you’ve plans to eat me, fair warning that I’m rather sour.”
@[Topsail]
LEPIS staring at the bottom of your glass-- hoping one day you’ll make a dream last but dreams come slow and they go so fast
The yellow and blue girl doesn’t know her. The land doesn’t remember her. If she is being truthful, she doesn't even recognize herself. She is a ghost now, a name written in the history books and nothing more.
Anonymity is not something she is accustomed to.
It has never been her strong suit. From the very moment she opened her eyes, she has been always searching for more. More friction, more heat, more anything and everything the world has to offer. She has toed the line of right and wrong. She has staggered under the weight of kingdoms and crowns. She has spilled her own blood and the blood of others, so many times she has lost count. She has loved and lost, though the losing was much more common than the loving. She has done many, many things in her life, but being anonymous was never one of them.
The sound and smell of another horse breaks her from her reverie, though she does little more than cock an ear in the direction of the noise. Perhaps she should be more concerned, but she cannot bring herself to do so. Even before she became the nightmare of the Valley, she was a model of supreme nonchalance. Mumbled curses reach her ears, followed by heavy footfalls and the ruffle of feathers. Finally, a face is put to the noise. Topsail is not shocked by her vibrant coloring or large wings; she was too much of a monster to be shocked by something that minor. However, she knows too that a book is never to be judged by its cover, and so she reserves any further judgement. At least, until the other mare speaks, and when she does, Topsail cannot help a smirk. It is not meant with ill intent, however, just simply her way of doing things. With that smirk still lifting the corners of her black muzzle, she finds the other mares eyes before speaking ”If I was going to eat you, I would be well on my way to digesting you before you had even looked my way.” she says, her voice pouring not into the other mares ears but into every crack and crevice of her brain. ”Don’t worry though, I’ve been vegan now for several years. Topsail.”
Topsail
and that’s all I‘ll preach about rekindling old flames
What little she knows about the world before it faced the Reckoning is as much fairy tale as it is history. There was little use dwelling on a world that was no longer, her mother had told her, of a world that would never be again.
So rather than the political history of the Falls, Lepis knows that it was the cause of death a pair of starcrossed lovers. Rather than recount the battles won by the Chamber of Evil, Lepis instead knows that it was full of pines and rocky precipices. She has never heard the name Topsail, and were it not for this chance encounter in the Meadow she might have remained ignorant all her life.
The smirk from the other is not exactly comforting, but it is also not the baring of too-many teeth, and Lepis accepts it for what it is. Her blue grey-eyes do go wider at the sound of words within her mind, and the rest of her goes very still.
Yet the words themselves are not unpleasant, and the dun mare is certain she hears a joke toward the end. She frowns - how had the other mare done that? Lepis is never able to convey more than flatness in her projections: words without tone.
[Do you speak silently for a reason?] she asks, and indeed the words are dull and flat despite the frown that has turned into curioisty on Lepis' blazed face. "It is useful sometimes," she admits aloud, "But you're much better at sounding natural than I. I've not had much time to practice; the ability is still new to me." The admission that she is not the very best at something is not as difficult as it would have been in years past. She does not have to be the best at everything, Lepis has learned. Only the best at some things, and those things she is certain she is.
Try as she might, she remembers everything of the old world. It does her no good to dwell in the past but still, she remembers. The memories flow through her mind like water flows against rock. As time marches on the memories carve a path against her skull in the same way water will eventually force its way into stone. It is impossible to erase them; impossible to stop them. Just like the water is relentless in its mission to carve through the stone, so too are the memories that haunt her every breathing moment. There is no escaping them, no way to stop their flow. She is a slave to them.
As the other girl speaks through thought, Topsail finds her own mind wandering to a time so long ago. She is only vaguely aware that she has let her mental guard down, and the memories are flowing out of her own mind and into the empty space separating the two mares. Like smoke from a flame they spiral forward, invisible but palpable in the crisp night air. With glazed eyes Topsail finds herself following them, allowing them to carry her off to that time that has been lost to the wind...
Valley wolves, made of smoke and gnashing teeth.
A great golden dragons, spitting fire across the sky.
A gray, antlered stallion, his broken heart laid bare for all to see.
Topsail herself, though she is not the Topsail the girl has met, but the reptilian creature from days far, far gone.
Eight, the powerful magician, her king and lover, and father to her children...
With a shake, she breaks herself from the past. She is not sure what the other mare had seen, if anything, so she decides it best not to mention the momentary lapse. Instead, she offers the pinto a small, knowing smile. ”You see, the fairies thought it would be a nifty little joke on their part if I was mute, but telepathic.” she says with a smirk. Indeed, telepathy was useful, but she often wondered what words would feel like in her throat. ”So, this is the only way i’ve ever known how to speak. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to form words with my tongue. But, they key is allowing those same emotions you allow to flow over your tongue, to flow through your mind as well.”
Topsail
and that’s all I‘ll preach about rekindling old flames
An owl calls in the darkness, and Lepis’ blue ear flicks toward the sound. She is alert, and might have quickly dismissed the bird were it not for the silence of Topsail’s voice in her mind rather than her ears. She doesn’t need to hear the smoke gray woman in front her, so some part of her attention is able to remain on the shadows around them. There could be danger, her watchfulness might suggest, though there is no trace of fear in her voice when she speaks, only amused exasperation.
“The fairies.” she says with a nearly fond roll of her eyes. Lepis knows about the Fairies. Many of the horses she has met claim to know them, yet when Lepis had journeyed to the Mountain there had been nothing there but the echo of her own voice. She knows she is important enough for the Fairies to respond, and their absence was all the proof the dun mare needed. They were either not real at all, or she was simply not yet important enough. With each conversation she has about them though, Lepis becomes more and more convinced of the latter.
Topsail shares the key to adding emotion to her mental voice, and Lepis makes another attempt.
[Like this?] She knows it wasn’t quite right as soon as it leaves it her, but she also knows there had been an uptick at the second word, that there was just a little bit of hope and curiosity in it. Or had she just projected those with her empathic magic? The arcane skills are opposites, it feels, and controlling them both at once is more difficult than she’d imagined. The more she reaches for her thought projection the looser her hold on her empathic projection becomes
“I apologize if you get more than my words,” she says aloud. “A trick I inherited from my mother” More than a trick, of course, but the dun mare is not inclined to share much more with a stranger. Not even a stranger who’s helping her get a better hold of her abilities.
[Were you born with the ability, then?] Enquiring seems easiest, and each silent syllable sounds a little more natural than the one before it. If she projects a bit more curiosity, it is less than the first time. [I can’t imagine the trouble you could have gotten up to with this ability as a child.] There’s humor in her wordless voice, and a bit of wistfulness at the memories of her own youth.
