"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
It all happens so quickly; he had been beneath a full winter’s moon, huge and bright as it’s cratered face spilled silver light over the Tephran sea. Then the familiar pain began - a deep thrum in his head, bold and persistent. His great, white wings send him hurdling to the north, away from the steady glow of the volcano, and into the endless night. He is shocked, however, at how quickly his eyesight is taken over by his vision. He feels the heat even before his eyes turn their milky white, no longer feeling the cold sea wind against his skin. It is replaced with the crackling of embers and the fierce lick of uncontrollable flames, acrid smoke infiltrating his lungs. Fire burns in his eyelids, in each shuddering pulse of his heart as it races, and within his very veins. It burns and burns, unforgiving and without mercy, relentless in the way it spreads.
He’s not alone within the firestorm - there is another. A stranger (they always were at first, weren’t they?) coughs behind him, peering through orange and red flames that only grow higher and higher with everything they consume. Warden’s heavy gaze sees the speckled wings against the stallion’s chestnut sides and the bangles of gold that wrap around his forelegs and across his haunches. Warden finds their color glowing spectacularly within the midst of the fire, though he quickly becomes more concerned as he realizes that the stranger is now burning alive.
The Watcher reaches towards him as they both beat their wings in an attempt to fly upwards and out. But those white and brown speckled wings are doused in flames, the air they move only fanning the fire into a more chaotic tempest. The other calls for help but smoke only enters his open mouth, sending him to his knees. Warden is beside him, urging him forwards but nothing is heard or seen or felt in the future. How is that each time he knows that their future is inevitable, that he still attempts to save them? The horned stallion watches mournfully as the lungs on the chestnut and gold stallion give out far before the flames begin to burn away his skin.
Warden sheds a tear for him as he does for everyone.
With a gasp, he returns to the present, where he is met with air so frigid that it takes the breath from his lungs. He is tumbling through the night sky in a whirlwind of feathers and auburn skin, and though his wings fling outwards to catch himself, Warden crashes through the canopy of the redwoods. The branches crack and scrape at his skin, pulling his flesh apart as if trying to catch him and slow him down. They are unsuccessful as he lands with a solid and sickening thud, all of the air in his lungs escaping in a painful groan.
Dazed, bleeding, and already bruising, the dirt-covered stallion rolls to his side, staring up at the kaleidoscope of giant redwoods that tower over him. He groans, a shuddering breath leaving him. Not often do his visions take place during a flight, so he remains in this prone position, his memory of the future still searing in his mind while his body physically pulses with pain from the fall.
09-11-2020, 03:02 PM (This post was last modified: 09-11-2020, 03:09 PM by lilliana.)
you were a shot in the dark and aimed right at my throat
There is only the moon to keep her company tonight.
The Taigan woods are still and silent. Lilliana thinks her heartbeats might be louder than the waves that crash along the nearby shore and her steady breath emits a small cloud of smoke with each exhale. It's hard for her to sleep when there is an ache in her back and her joints grow too stiff. (She has always struggled with her pregnancies. This one is not as bad as the last but it seems that she gives so much to her children, even in this state, that they claim the shine from her coat to the curl in her mane.) The chestnut mare shifts her weight from one hip to the other and tries to hide the grimace that crosses her face.
Shadows cast by the full moon help and the red mare turns her head, peering past the trunk she has found herself beneath. Placed between Sequoias, the treewell that Lilliana rests in keeps her out of the snowdrifts and offers some shelter against the unusually brutal winter. (She has seen almost six in Taiga and can't recall the last time that she has shivered through the freezing season as she had this one.)
Lilliana wouldn't call her nights lonely. Not when her days are starting to fill with a sense of purpose again. The red woman of Taiga has resumed recruiting, is seen often making a patrol route towards Nerine and then towards the River (with the hope of catching a glimpse of Aela). She is seen often among the inhabitants of Taiga and though she doesn't smile as she once did, the routine that these days bring are teaching her to look to the next one. To look towards the months and (dare she think it?) years to come.
Because as the Watcher told her one starless night in Tephra, it would. The future always comes. She just knows to try and be ready for it, now.
Fate comes crashing down this night. It comes tumbling down from the sky, breaking mighty branches, and bringing them down with him. Lilliana doesn't see the fall but she senses the way it ripples through the Redwoods. There had been the loud thud not far from her cove and though she counts her heartbeats (some part of her hesitant to leave the safety of her wooded grove), the chestnut leaves the safety of her winter hollow. It's not hard to see the crumpled body at first; the white wings aren't immediately noticed because she sees the proud outlines of his horns against the pristine white of newly fallen snow. @[Warden] groans and churns in pain and Lilliana's heart writhes and twists with him, their pain tangling into one.
She moves as quickly as she is able, encompassing the distance between them as hastily as a mare carrying two foals can. "Warden?" she asks, trying to gain his attention so she might better assess the battering his body taken. The pain radiates off him in waves and yet each step closer she takes, it is not the sensation of drowning she feels.
He groans beneath the night sky and those giant trees, their canopies sheltering his sight from the stars that wink gently at him. The stallion moves beneath shadow and moonlight, the frozen debris of the forest floor clinging to his skin in little fractiles of ice, crunching as he shifts his weight. The white of his wings are tattered with muddied snow and bits of redwood branches that had tried to ease his fall from the sky, still outspread from his withers. He doesn’t try to assess the damage done by the fall, not yet; not when the burning sensation from his vision still presses fervently in his mind. He swears he can still smell the tendrils of smoke that had poisoned his nostrils. He is not given much time to reflect as his dark eyes flicker upwards to a familiar face, concern etched in the chestnut’s blue eyes. The pale bone of his face is littered with tiny scrapes, the blood standing out starkly even within the shadows. They were not deep enough for the wounds to drip openly, but the cuts were obvious and apparent.
Upon seeing her, he attempts to gather the deep obsidian of his legs beneath him to stand. The length of his wings are still outstretched, finding himself too tired and in too much pain to bring them to his sides. Feathers are missing from their gossamer length, parts of their ivory color stained red from where they had been ripped unwillingly from their root. “Lilliana,” he wheezes, still trying to regain his breath that his lungs had lost on impact. Though he does not feel like anything is broken, his right shoulder keeps him from standing - the pain is deep and throbbing, already bruising on the surface - and he wonders if it is out of place as it is what hit the ground first. He winces as he finds himself upright, his belly against the cold-bitten floor of the forest.
Warden’s chin rests gently on a foreleg, the curved horns protruding from his forehead tilting forward and catching the moonlight with the movement. His white eyelids flutter from a mixture of weakness and sorrow. He is not sure how her magic worked the first time and he is afraid to ask if she has seen what had caused him to fall from the sky.
Suddenly, he seemingly straightens with a jolt that has been sent through his body. The ocean blue of his eyes turn milky and he is gone from Taiga and finds himself on the dark and foreboding cliff shores of Nerine. The Watcher is met with fire once again, amongst a scene that involves so many characters that he finds it hard to keep his eyes in one place. Fire pours from open mouths, dragons, and flame-laced ravens painting the skies. Boulders fall and crash into bodies; the screams are deafening as the powerful cannot help to drown the weak. Destruction rages at every turn and with no end in sight.
He finds it strange that such a vision would replay for him - it had not been the first time that this scene had unraveled before him. This time, it is much more fervent and warlike, whereas previously he would only see fire and individual deaths. But now, the visions string together a bit more clearly, and when the open jaws of the fire-breathing stallion turn to him, he is jolted back into the present with such force, he rocks forward in place.
When Warden returns to her, the alarm is apparent in his now navy gaze. “Lilliana,” he repeats with barely a breath, his heart racing. The forest is quiet; still. “Something terrible is going to happen,” he tells her through gritted teeth. He nearly laughs at the statement - when is that ever not the case with him? Of course, something terrible is going to happen. It’s silly to say it out loud. The white of his ears falls gently back into the darkness of his mane, pensive as he sifts through his thoughts as well as the deep pain throughout his body.
09-13-2020, 06:48 PM (This post was last modified: 09-13-2020, 06:50 PM by lilliana.)
remember when our songs were just like prayers? like gospel hymns you caught in the air
She tries to prepare - Lilliana tries to get better at anticipating - but when the Watcher comes crashing to the ground, this is not the Future she expected. The last time the two of them had met had been another clash. He had flared those lovely white wings and Lilliana had hurled every terror that she could think of at Warden, had projected every fear that she had ever known (and there have been plenty).
Their confrontation had left Lilliana renouncing her old gods but the horned stallion had given her the knowledge, the realization that she did have something to believe in: herself.
"Warden," she says coming closer to the fallen stallion. Her breathing had become labored with the sudden exertion of the fast pace she had taken and so comes out in shadowed plumes between them. The moonlight catches on the frozen ground and an almost deceiving quiet surrounds them. "Don't get up," the Healer speaks. He might not be able to, she realizes as she comes closer. After he tries to gather his legs and is unable to find them. When she finally comes to where he lays prostrated on the ground, with his chin resting on a forelimb, she lowers her slender head below his horns and reaches to brush against the curve of his cheek.
Lilliana knows better than to try and heal another horse in her condition. It had taken all of her ability with her last pregnancy to keep Aela healthy. (She is not a mare meant for this; lovely Lilliana was never meant to be a mother. Too slight, too slim, her herd healer had warned.)
And yet, "I can heal it." The chestnut starts to glow - a soft light-emitting from her pale socks, shining from her golden flame on her shoulder - as she reaches for the limited ability she has to share with @[Warden]. "It won't be quick," she apologizes and she starts to the tell the painted Tephran the same that she had told Warlight, "It might take-" But the moment that their magics interlace, she gasps.
Like the air he had lost from his lungs when he fell, Lilliana loses it now for the way that her heart thunders in her chest. It starts to hammer so profoundly that there is no room for anything else. The air she tries to breathe is chased out and everything in her feels... tight.
The Tephran says her name like it will bring her back from where she has gone. Like it will bring her back from the memory he projected. There had been the proud cliffs of Nerine (she has strolled alongside them many times with Eurwen, Brazen, and Neverwhere; with no company at all but the turbulent wind and wild sea), blazing with fire and the furies of Magic that she doesn't yet know. Lilliana has stayed in the North because they were protected under Brennen's barrier. They were told they were safe in the North.
Her children are supposed to be safe in the North.
"Can you see more?" she begs, suddenly conjuring images of stripped Nashua, glowing Yanhua and golden Aela. "Can you see them?" she pleads, her worry already making the memories run away from her. (Nashua and Yanhua barely a month old, racing over the moorlands. Aela who lives near the border with her adopted mother, the spotted Kota.) The night around them lies. It is so still, so silent. Even the softly falling snow makes no sound at all.
She orders him to not get up and he, ever obedient despite the bitterness that swells in his chest, listens. He’s certain he couldn’t stand if he even truly wanted to and so he settles into the ice even further, his large wings still spilled out on each side of his auburn and ivory body. Lilliana comes to stand beside him, hovering over him cautiously. It’s nearly poetic, them finding each other again - though this time it seems that Warden is the one out of sorts, needing understanding and healing. The stallion does not refuse her when she states that she could heal him; he believes her, without hesitation, and though his eyes (through the thick black of his tangled and bloodied forelock) carefully come to rest on the unmistakable swell of her stomach, he does not find it in him to fight her on it - not today, at least. He does not have the energy to go head to head with her again.
Before he could even raise his horned head, he is basking in the golden glow that emulates from her legs and her gold-patterned marking, soft and nearly like sunlight as it pulses. Warden’s eyes flutter closed, feeling the healing warmth as it begins, finding each part of him that needs its light.
An audible gasp from Lilliana sends him startling forward, his own breath catching in his throat as the pain thrashes with the movement. He’s immediately worried for her, attempting to bring his wings to his sides like a young bird; scrambling and nearly frantic. And then, he realizes, it is not her healing that has caused this.
It was him.
Great sadness and uncertainty swirls in the depths of his ocean eyes, staring up at her as she returns to him in a staggering daze. He, of course, knows nothing of the victims he has seen - none are familiar, besides Lilliana of course, and the young stallions he has seen in days prior. But they are all nameless beings, people of Beqanna who live far beyond Tephra and its borders.
Warden is sure he can feel his heart stop when her gaze turns to him and her pleading cries stumble from her mouth.
Can you see more? Can you see them?
And he is flushed with memories - gentle this time (there is no wave crashing over him, desperate to keep him from coming to the surface for air), but panicked and quick - urgent.
He’s seen her children.
Please.
For once, his visions leave him asking for more.
Warden is normally thankful for the uncertainty in his premonitions - they’re nearly always strangers, faces he never sees once they pass his sight, and the scene can be interpreted in so many ways that it is sometimes quite impossible to narrow down any sort of solidity. But now, as his deep ocean eyes clash with the brilliance of hers, he feels helpless.
Silence engulfs them and he meets her with the same face that she had seen the first night they had met - stoic, expressionless, unwavering. And yet, in the dark planes of his face, there is sympathy. Understanding. Sorrow. But he cannot answer her pleas because he is not as powerful as she makes him out to be. He is only a Watcher; not the author. He cannot turn pages on his own - he sees only what he is given to see.
“You must go to them.” His voice cuts deep through the silence of the tall redwoods and the darkness of nightfall around them. “Now, Lilliana.” Warden doesn’t try to stand, knowing that his failure to find his feet could possibly make her hesitate. Though, in reality, her decision has already been made - he has seen her in Nerine, amidst the fire and destruction and the magicians.
09-18-2020, 05:22 PM (This post was last modified: 09-18-2020, 05:25 PM by lilliana.)
you were a shot in the dark and aimed right at my throat
Maybe it was the ocean sadness in Warden's eyes that threatened to swallow her. She has always been terrified of sorrow. Anger as an emotion has always made her think of fire; it burns and razes. But so many of her stories and legends have been built around that. Even if the world is reduced to ash, there is always something to rise from it.
How she pictures sadness is the dark churn of ocean water, the obscurity of shadows that moves (trapped) beneath the waves. She has no stories or legends about what happens after a soul has been swallowed by sadness. Sorrow is the emotion that had driven maidens from cliffs and grief-laden souls to walk into the ocean.
For some reason, there is hope after the anger. But sorrow? In all her stories, she has only heard that sorrow swallows and drowns. There is no coming back from sorrow.
Her pleading is answered by silence. The memories of her children stop, slow to a still, and then finally an emptiness. The fevered, frantic pace of @[Warden]’s prophecy leaves the Redwoods as well and the pair looks to the other for answers that can’t be found. At least not in Taiga. There is a cold sense of dread that runs down her spine, making her want to shiver. (Is this how Warden feels, knowing that something is coming and feeling powerless to stop it?)
It doesn’t matter. He has already seen her there and so she knows her future; she knows that she leaves Warden sprawled on the snow-laden ground and turns North to face a fury that she can’t fathom beyond the few images he has shown her.
Healing pulses beneath her skin and what she can craft right now, here at this moment (the present), she reaches out to touch the warmth of his cheek. If she had more time, Lilliana might have been able to do more. It’s enough to dull the pain, she hopes. It’s enough to ease his shoulder even if she has run out of time to heal his wing. A journey on hoof to Tephra is longer than by wing but it is better than not making the journey at all.
In the dark, she whispers: "Thank you.”
And then she is gone, running towards a future that they both knew must always come.
