"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
05-24-2020, 10:36 AM (This post was last modified: 05-24-2020, 10:37 AM by may.)
Wolves haunt her dreams; packs of shifting indefinite size that commune beneath the moon and lift their slender snouts back in song. She longs to join them but no howls rise from her smooth equine throat. But then the dreamscape shifts, traps her further in an elaborate sleekness of canid fur beneath her lips. Fur that is cream blending to a tan topping that ran from nose-tip to tail-end. Behemoth in size and eyes like the navy of a night just before all the stars are out.
Unforgettable!
She dreamt of that wolf each and every night, though less so as her own pack began to gravitate to her. First as pups, then grown and nipping at her heels as if she was the moon to them, splashed with the blood of the deer they’d taken down to fill their bellies full of meat. Sometimes, they offered her the first taste and she had to decline because she was not like them. Not a wolf at all, but horse, and almost certainly something else that allowed her to command them as if her scent alone was all the magic they needed in their world.
Like the blood-rich scent of wounded prey.
Then his words echoing out of memory and dream, spun in a beautiful web of both that she could not struggle out of: “Something about you is… special.” But she had not believed him, not then and not even now as she breaks from the dregs of her dreams to peer at the small pack slumbering around her. There was always one wolf sentinel to them that was not sprawled out at her feet, and she knew it to be the alpha male tonight.
He reminded her of her father’s companion, Red. Similar mannerisms, and that same desire to follow and defend as if she was mother or mate to him. Of which she was neither, just a friend and the carrier of that strange allure. Still, she had named him as her father had named his wolf. Named him Flint for the color of his fur and the hardness in his eyes.
That hardness only ever softened towards her, or his mate, the gray female that often ran beside him. May hoped they would be blessed with pups some day, and that some day they would leave her for lives of their own. But the pack grew and lingered, until there was a beta and an omega and May stopped naming them at all. It wasn’t that she didn’t care or didn’t feel some attachment towards them. She just knew that they needed to find their own wild selves as much as she did.
So their numbers jumped and plummeted and only Flint and his mate stayed consistent. As fixed and constant as the starry points on a constellation. The chestnut sabino’s return saw only the two wolves flanking her; the rest of the pack had balked and slunk off to vaster reaches she dared not go and did not care to go to. Home beckoned, and if not home, then the heart-place that she knew had seen her from a knob-kneed girl to a curvy wild woman with sprigs of lavender in her hair.
May threw herself in a reckless gallop the moment the trio hit the black-sanded shore. The sulfur-stink of the massive volcano bathed her in its embrace and she plunged in heedless among the hot springs and smoking rivers, some of water and others of lava. Flint and his mate paced her, their hackles raised at the eeriness of the landscape and all the unfamiliar smells but May didn’t care. Her heart sang a joyful tune at all the familiar sights that the children of Daemron and Pyxis knew.
Places that had been played in in the usual cavorting that all children do. Games of hide and seek, chase the tail, epic battles of colt against filly and so many more. Until flashes of cream steal into her vision and May slams to a halt, breathing heavily as sweat lathers her painted skin to a fine foam. She begged her mind to stop and it relented, temporarily, as Flint and his mate encroached on her sides, licking at her armpits and knees. The pair sensed an offense in May that she had trouble explaining - girlhood crush, a magical mistake?
She couldn’t explain it either but it haunted her, as the ghosts of such things can do. Giving a shake of her head, lavender sprigs flying and the scent battling the sulfur in the air, she stared with a bit of a wild look at the land so familiar to her until her heart began to calm it's terrible pace. Home did wonders for her like that.
05-24-2020, 11:17 AM (This post was last modified: 05-24-2020, 11:17 AM by Tamlin.)
He was flying overhead when he spotted the running trio and nearly dropped out of the sky in his surprise. His first instinct was not that the wolves were chasing the mare, but that she was running with them - and that they were wolves he did not recognize. He thought he had met all those that moved through Tephra by now! After circling around, he landed a little way off (sometimes landings did not go his way so it was better to be safe).
Tamlin had met those that could shift their shape and even someone who could eat fish the way a wolf would, but he had never seen anyone else flanked by wolves. Once all four opaline hooves were on the ground, he immediately trotted over - his warm brown eyes bright and wings folding against his sides. There was something familiar about this mare - the combination of antlers, wolves, and flowers held the possibility that this was a family member he did not know. It did not occur to the young stallion that these things may simply be a coincidence - after all, why would someone not be a part of his family when his family was pretty damn great?
His own pack was not with him, which made him a little upset because he couldn’t show off his own friends, but he won’t call them while they are resting on the outskirts of Tephra’s jungle. He stopped a respectful distance away with a bright and almost wild grin. He had a hard time deciding whether he wanted to focus on the pair of wolves or the mare so his eyes flickered back and forth almost constantly as his enthusiasm bubbled over. “Cool! You have wolf friends too?”
05-24-2020, 12:06 PM (This post was last modified: 05-24-2020, 12:06 PM by Cyneric.)
Cyneric
the Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept
Beqanna’s wolves didn’t take long to lure him in.
They talked about the Hot Land often - how strange it was that they were drawn to it, the creatures there not often the sort of prey they usually killed, but surviving all the same. A Playground, almost, for pups to grow in, a Vantage Point to leave the pack in even as the able-bodied hunted beneath the Red Trees and the Fall Trees. A place with a weird calling, but nevertheless Home.
The names that horses gave it meant nothing to the packs, and Lone-Star the wolf did not get exactly all the information he needed or wanted; but nevertheless he is drawn to the west whenever he’s not Cyneric the horse, and even then he’s curious.
He follows the pack of Moon-Eye and Rabbit-Fur today until he’s in the jungle that they mentioned, and says his goodbyes to them that night; he rests alone as he always does, for then he takes the shape of a horse. When he wakes, the colt explores the volcano-jungle’s landscape with his eyes, but as they day passes, he finds his food more easily as a wolf. Besides, he’s always been more comfortable in his predator fur.
However, as he tracks a fowl or some other kind of bird, he finds the scents of others he does not know; hackles rise on the loner wolf as much as they probably do on the others, and he stalks low towards the ground, his unusual bright blue eyes searching for the source. It takes a while - then his nose picks on something else, something familiar, and he stalks closer without realizing it.
Only when he crouches out of the bushes and towards the other wolves and the horses, he realizes his mistake and his confusion, a soft whine escaping the adolescent as he looks from one to another. Attack? Submit? Run? He doesn’t know.
05-27-2020, 03:10 PM (This post was last modified: 05-27-2020, 03:11 PM by may.)
May’s head begins to droop like a wilted flower, though not from sadness but from sheer elation that she is home and can relax. No more running. No more leading a pack that she has no business leading and that the numbers surge and shrink like the moon’s sides. Relief crosses her brow and rolls off her shoulders like it had a smell all it’s own, mingling with the lavender and equine scents that rise off her.
Her head is low enough for her lips to feel the sleek pelt of Flint as he plants himself between her front legs. His own tongue lolls out in relaxation as his eyes roll up at her in adoration. Part of May flinches at that because it is not natural, not wholly so anyway and she can’t undo the compulsion she has over him or his mate. She’s tried, but the pair just kept dogging her heels. In that moment though, as much as it pains her to have bound them to her somehow, she is grateful too.
Her mouth rests on the top of his dark head, lips grasping at the fur as she almost grooms him like she would a herdmate. He is that, in a sense to her - pack and herd all jumbled up together, the threads inseparable and tangled. She plants a sigh and a kiss, one after the other, on the top of his head as his mate nestles in from the side and gives a small panting whine. “What is it Girl?” she asks quietly before her eyes follow and find what the female wolf was looking at —
It’s male and equine and reminiscent of her sister. She assumes it must be a relative because how could it not be? May should not make such assumptions given that she has been far from home for such a long time, chasing ghosts of her own or running from them, that seems more appropriate as her mouth pinches into a frown at the thought. Truth is hard to face in one’s self and it curdles on her tongue like bad grass as she smoothes her features back into careful and cautious neutrality.
Both the wolves’ hackles begin to raise and growls come from their mouths until she bids them to hush with a touch of her nose to their heads. They have no choice but to listen even though she denies them their pack right to defend and warn off the intruder that she stares at openly, knowing he must somehow be related to her. His grin was infectious and May found herself smiling too, which took years and hardship off a face still lovely and young enough as her amber eyes found his eyes enthusiastic and unable to decide if she should be the focus or the wolves should.
May trilled a bright and bubbling laugh from her throat; “Yes, and I like that you assume they are friends and not just pets or possessions.” Her encounters with the many who did left her equally soured on their species and her instinctive need for herd, so she settled for the pack that she could not escape despite her qualms with their eerie acceptance of her, a horse, as their alpha. She is distracted though from asking him about how they look similar and must have blood in common by the low growl rising from Girl’s throat.
The she-wolf has slunk from her side to face a direction with the posture of an alpha, commanding and imperious and lips drawn back from her teeth in a snarl. Flint is about to follow when she taps him with her nose to still him. May doesn’t want the wolves causing a ruckus and getting her thrown out of the only home she’s ever known. “Be still,” she hisses at them and the growls cease as if by some silent command. It is the magic that May still doesn’t understand as her eyes scan the landscape and come to rest on an adolescent wolf crouched in the grass.
“Is he one of your friends?” she asks, assuming that the male understood her implication. His wording had made it obvious he was familiar with this kind of magic. “Come closer, we won’t hurt you.” May directs her gaze and words to the growing pup, unable to disguise the compulsion in them but hoping he can resist it. Even though she still would like to see him better and see if he’s just another wild wolf caught in the trap or something more. Because in Beqanna, it is always more.
@[Tamlin] @[Cyneric] @[Nolin] Nicole is going to jump on this thread too, so she’ll post next! ❤️❤️❤️
He dares to travel through Tephra, uninvited....he claims Pangea as his home, though the girl who invited him seemed to fade away. He hadn't met any others, even though it's been over a year. He lived in silence, he watched the changes around him. The leaders shifted...now two equines he had never met share the crown.
Regardless, he had no care for politics, or the whole being invited into a land...he travels silently through Tephra even though his pelt stinks of Pangea. He is able to live in his own home undetected, he figures he could slink around Tephra undetected.
Though he much prefers to live in solitude...his eye catches something rather interesting. He can spot a red mare...accompanied by two wolves..shifters? Perhaps companions? He wasn't exactly sure and to be honest it peaked his interest!
He moves towards her, but another drops from the sky. He looks on with irritation, he wanted to turn away but it was too late. He was already out in the open, he would just look silly if he turned away now.
He catches the tail end of there conversation...his eyes glancing at the third wolf who appeared from the foliage as well...the girl talks to the couple of wolves..essentially asking them to be polite to the third one.. Are they shifters? Or can you talk wolf? His isolated life leaves him with a dry humor...but truly he wonders how the trio communicates with one another..he quickly glances glances at the grey and red boy. I'm Nolin by the way, he introduces to the group...isn't that what youre supposed to do?
