"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
05-31-2020, 05:54 AM (This post was last modified: 05-31-2020, 05:55 AM by Chasity.)
Sunlight dances across the river, gleaming and sparkling and casting rainbows across glistening rocks. The days have been getting warmer, spring ready to give way to the heat of summer. Nalani cools off in the shallows, a muddy whirlwind of laughter as she splashes about, and Chasity watches her daughter from the banks with a quiet smile.
Though she could never call this world home (she wanders aimlessly from river to meadow, meadow to forest, camping alongside travel-worn paths, never able to settle) she has begun to find some contentment with her daughter at her side. She lives through Nalani’s innocent laughter and wide-eyed wonder, and through her daughter she is learning to see these lands in a new light. They will never be home, but they are beautiful all the same.
Chasity and Nalani have been at the river for a few days now, enjoying the last whispers of spring. It has been quiet, just mother and daughter collecting wildflowers and playing tag around the shady trees.
It has also been lonely.
She finds herself growing restless. She has stumbled upon old friends in her travels, but for the most part Chasity and Nalani have been very much alone. Often, she doesn’t mind, but sometimes—
She shakes droplets from her mane as Nalani splashes her with childish glee.
Sometimes, it would be nice to find someone to share these moments with.
06-05-2020, 09:10 PM (This post was last modified: 06-05-2020, 09:12 PM by aletta.)
The morning proves to be pleasant enough. The rising heat of summer hasn’t taken a full hold on Beqanna yet and Aletta appreciates the coolness of the mornings. There is something to admire in the stillness of them, of the way that the rest of the world hasn’t fully awakened yet.
Aletta has always appreciated the dawn - the sun rising from the East promised a new day and the few lingering stars above could still whisper of dreams from the night before.
On one such morning, the gray mare is standing beside this River. The stars vanish and take their whispers with them. (Not that she can hear them - it had been Keav who had been the startalker. Aletta merely tried to listen.) Another day begins and the dreams fade with the blue sky that awakens above them. The hue of it becomes more vibrant as the early hours pass and sunlight trickles down through the lush treetops as happily as the River gurgles its laughter.
Except when the silver mare looks downstream, it isn’t the River that is giggling.
It is a girl. A girl and her pale mother.
It isn’t like her to approach others except there is something about the filly that makes her think of wildflowers (and how that makes her ache). It makes her think of lost days and the rivers that still run through her memories. That past - the days of raising children - is long behind her but it still leads her to the mother that stands on the riverbank.
(And she might even find this amusing later - that she finds herself standing beside water and reflecting on the antics of foals again.)
The child continues her carefree splashing while her mother shakes it good-naturedly from her mane and Aletta smiles.
"Let her stay in too long and she might turn into a fish,” the gray mare teases as she approaches.
A silver mare approaches as Chasity shakes water from her mane.
Nalani’s splashing quietens at once as she surveys the stranger with trepidation. She watches cautiously for a moment (for she is a timid young thing; Chasity has been perhaps a little too overprotective of her only child in these foreign lands). Then, seemingly content that the silver mare is no threat to them, she grins wildly.
“I’m not a fish! I’m a dolphin!” she calls to the mare.
She rears up, kicks her back legs, then continues gallivanting along the river.
“Oh yes, just like her mother,” Chasity laughs. “I grew up by the water.”
But of course, it was not upon the riverbanks that she spent her childhood days but the waterfalls, where the cascading water roared wild in her ears and the cool spray beaded in her mane. On the days that she did not spend splashing in the shallows she chased butterflies or picked wildflowers with the azure glow of water and lush greenery growing abundant around her.
Her heart twists sharply in her chest.
It is not just the land that she aches for but the memories of her loved ones; her sweet sons and their darling father, the silver-dappled stallion with the goofy grin and love-struck eyes. She can picture him now, the two of them laying together beneath the shelter of the weeping willows, the cascading water a gentle lullaby as entwined, they sleep.
She has never felt so far away from home.
But there is a time for mourning and it is not here, standing beneath the warm sunshine with her daughter and this kind stranger at her side. Nalani’s laughter fills her ears once more and she turns to the silver mare with a smile.
“I hope she wasn’t disturbing you,” she apologises. “What brings you to the river this morning?”
06-10-2020, 05:48 PM (This post was last modified: 06-10-2020, 05:49 PM by aletta.)
Oh, the things that Aletta could tell Chasity about daughters.
The silver mare has raised three. The first, Brielle, was all her fire and Valerio’s obstinance. (The winds had tested her patience with that child.) Her youngest two had been timid, sweet things. Lilliana had never wanted to venture far from her side and Aislynn had been a quiet filly, with a sweetness that often put her in mind of her serene dam, Starlet.
(She has always considered herself fortunate that her boys took after their sire; there was a constant in them that she could only assume came from the line of Ichiro.)
Her brow lifts with amusement at the girl’s proclamation. Not a fish but a dolphin. In her youth, Aletta hadn’t known such creatures existed. That had been a magical discovery that came with the visual realizations of things like oceans. (She had heard of those - even those who had dwelled so close to the heavens knew about the enormity of the sea. It was the only thing that could perhaps challenge the peaks of her youth.)
Aletta smiles kindly instead of answering. While she has been many things, socially graceful has never been one of them and she doesn’t want to upset the child. Time has taught her that her dry humor isn’t always appreciated.
Shimmering in the summer light, the grey mare watches the child and her memories become rekindled beneath the sunshine. She remembers those days with Brynn as they had watched Malachi and Kalina romp in the shallows of Paraiso’s lake much like this pale child does now. Her heart suddenly aches and she lets the pain go running with the filly.
"Did you?” Aletta queries honestly, turning her attention to the mother now, curious about those rivers that @[Chasity] had lived beside. Her distracted expression becomes present and she adds, "I grew up in the Mountains. There was no place higher we could go and yet I always longed for the valleys and rivers below,” says the former Regent.
Funny, she thinks, how life can flow that way.
Shaking away the memories, Aletta considers her current company. Not at all, her expression says. No need to apologize. She has had enough children to know that mothers can’t always be in control of their antics. "A distraction, I suppose,” the gray mare says plainly. She isn’t entirely sure what she is looking for out here, in Beqanna. (Beyond, the stars had murmured and so she is here; beyond.)
"And yourself?” she asks the other mare, looking downstream at the ‘dolphin’ who plays in the currents. "Is there a reason you stay by the River instead of heading out to the sea?”
