"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
09-14-2020, 05:49 PM (This post was last modified: 09-14-2020, 05:51 PM by Amarine.)
Tornados from a butterfly's wing
She couldn't stop shaking. Despite the steam now radiating from the broken landscape, despite the still-burning patches of land. She couldn't stop shaking.
Ama moved like an elderly creature, every step a gamble as she moved away from the worst of the destruction. The wreckage of her home. As ubiquitous as the smoke and steam, Despair wafted through the air. It was everywhere, inescapable, and the mood-shifter found that she was too exhausted to even begin to lift it. It was too much, all too much, and she wished desperately that Neverwhere was here to patch things up again.
That was a different issue, though. Ama needed to go find her adoptive parent, and her mercurial brother. They weren't here when it happened, and she didn't know whether to be glad or angered about it. Neverwhere was never here when things went wrong. When she was really needed. It was hard not to feel bitter about it on a day like today.
She had done her best to defend her home. That was all any of them had done, was to try to protect their home. What the frightening magicians had spoken about seemed impossible, and more than that, cruel. All they wanted was power, and they had proven more than willing to step on and smother anyone against them. It was sickening. Even now as rain drizzled on her head, the very fact that it existed turned her stomach. The magic mare who'd caused it hadn't done it to be kind. She'd done it to prove a point, and it seemed less insulting if she would have just let it finish burning.
Soot-blackened mud clung to her legs and her belly, weighed down her tail as she searched. One rear leg wouldn't bear her weight properly, blood sluggishly trailing from a gash on her thigh. The skin of her face and chest felt tight where flames had licked, and it burned where water and sweat touched. Worse off than some, but she feared she might be luckier than most.
There had to be others here. Maybe they were scorched like her, or bruised or bleeding. Maybe they were scared, and alone. She was no healer, but maybe she could find one. If nothing else, Ama knew she could offer Comfort to the ones who were left. Get shoulder to cry on when she was done crying herself. A small gift compared to the sheer magnitude of the magic that had ravaged Nerine today. It was what she had, though, and she would offer it willingly.
...Amarine
OOC: Ama is looking for other Nerinian survivors so they can regroup and figure out what happens next <3
- it's in the eyes, i can tell you will always be danger - we had it tonight, why do we always seek absolution?
LILLIANA
She shouldn’t be surprised by devastation, should she? Not when she has come to know it as closely as she has. Warden had shown her the damage wreaked upon Nerine (another prophecy fulfilled, an unchanging future that paid none of them any mind). The rain falls in a cold, lonely drizzle that keeps the despair in the air company.
Lilliana, who is normally so perceptive to the winds and their chills, doesn’t feel it soaking her skin now. She doesn’t even feel the frigid, bitter bite of winter. Why would she, when there is so much to feel here? Whatever physical ailments the chestnut might have suffered during the raid feel like mere scratches (though there is a deep bleeding cut on her brow, a long gash on her hind-right stifle) compared to the depth of emotion still lingering around the scattered Nerinians.
The copper mare does what she can but what, really, can she do? Her gift of Healing is gone; given in exchange for the life of the Water Magician. She does what she can but it never feels enough and she keeps reaching for something that is no longer there, something that terrifies her (because what if it’s finally happened? What if she has finally reached bottom and there is simply nothing left to give?)
Finding Ama saves her.
Though many of the faces in Nerine are those she would consider friends, Amarine is a little more. The girl had been brought to maturity alongside her own sons and Eurwen’s daughters. Despite no blood relation to the dappled Khaleesi, she had made Neverwhere a mother. @[Amarine] is family.
An injury to the young mare’s hind leg causes her blue eyes to deepen with concern. She is caked in mud and blood, rank in sweat, and Magic. "Ama,” Lilliana calls to her, beckoning to her from the direction that the flame-marked woman approached from. "Oh, Ama.” She starts and then stops because what more can she say?
Amarine stood shaking. Lilliana stood bleeding. Clearly, neither mare was alright. A sense of comfort started to fill the air between them and the Taigan closed her eyes, seeking a brief moment of respite after all the chaos. She had stood until the last of the Pangeans had left. It’s just in the after that she realizes how terrified she had been; for Yanhua, Amarine, Eurwen, Brennen, Beryl, and the others.
When the sense of comfort finally calms her enough, Lilliana opens her eyes and says: "You were very brave today, Amarine.”
Long after the Pangeans had left, Yanhua found his dam comforting Amarine in the rain. He’d gotten up from the ground after that final attack, head ringing, and had to work backwards from the moment of impact. For starters: there hadn’t really been any impact. He remembered that the boulder had suddenly changed course and slammed into him, too powerful to stop with his horns alone. He’d gotten bitch-slapped by a rock, and the next moment he was picking himself up out of the mud, but by then most everything was over. Winter’s rain came to drown out the firestorm and the Pangeans were teleporting away again, snapping themselves home to leave the Nerine horses to their wounds. No help was offered at all, though Yanhua remembered Straia painting them a flowery dream.
He spat a mouthful of blood into the wet earth, and whickered out in greeting.
“You’re alright?” Yan asked them both, chugging to a stop. He’d come uphill and away from the desecrated shoreline like they had, but now he turned to look behind him at the gray, dismal scene. Nothing but barren turf from scuffling hooves and some land broken apart by magic. The air, however, lacked the eerie cry of a gull. Yan could only hear the steady pitter-patter of rain, soaking its cold fingers into his bones.
He turned back to the mares and did his best to make sense of the nothingness he felt, but one hard look at Amarine and the matter of himself was entirely forgotten. He fell silent in lieu of something better to say - something better than what Lilliana had already summed up - and felt a bitter, acrid emotion welling up at the sight of his mother and one of his oldest friends living in fear. Yanhua was a kind horse, who’d grown into a thoughtfully kind stallion, and even when his mother had been stripped from him by the Pangeans, tormented, and then returned without her daughter, he’d never felt anything close to what he was feeling in the pit of his stomach right now, right this minute.
She had run like a madwoman to find them; her mother, her father, her sister. She had run and run and barely been able to tell them about it, and then the waves of magic had washed over them.
She’d collapsed, watching her mother leave towards the south to save that what could be saved.
The green and pink girl hadn’t had it in her to fight them - but the time she’d found her breath, panic had taken hold of her, and then the realisation that her ice was only more destructive. Acid that melts through stone. Sobbing, she’s stayed to prevent anyone reaching her family, but then the ravens and the rain had come and everything was over at once.
Wandering Nerine like a lost ghost, Fechín doesn’t know where to look and who to look for. Lost in her own home, she follows wherever her hoofs lead her, deaf to voices that she doesn’t know, blind for the burn scars of the land.
Softly, she whimpers every now and then. ”Mom?” Her silver eyes scan the landscape wildly, and find nothing.
Not nothing, she blinks; standing not too far from a gathering of Nerinians. How long had they been standing there? How long had she been staring blindly? ”Mom?” No, she’s not here. ”Ama!” Of course, she knew Lilliana as well, but more as a friend of her mother’s - Ama more closely resembled a sister.
She closes the distance for lack of anything else to do, her nose stretched out to the gemstone mare. Wordless, her eyes dart to the Taigan stallion - she never met him personally, but now is not a good time for introductions - and to Lilliana. Her throat is too thick with anticipation to ask the question, so she remains silent; staring at everyone gathered as if they’re aliens.
anger’s like a battery that leaks acid right out of me and it starts from the heart, till it reaches my outer me
09-20-2020, 12:31 PM (This post was last modified: 09-20-2020, 12:40 PM by Popinjay.)
Lightning laughs, choosing her tree
Popinjay isn't one of them, but she comes anyway, drawn by the fire and the smoke and the whirl of panic and rage. The old burn scars on her flank itch at the sight of the charred earth, at the soot that dulls their coats and their spirits, and navigating between the exhaustion and the grief that winds through the air like wreaths of smoke, she is an odd, laughing creature. In her fickle heart, she is disappointed to have missed the fray, she feeds off the chaos of the storm and all that remains is this drizzle and this mournful howl of wind. Taiga drowns itself in salt and smoke and Nerine is thick with defeat, and she came too slow, too late, her muscles still weary and recovering from the post-partum sickness that trapped her away in the Pampas for so long.
She bears no feathers today, neither in her hair nor those tremendous black-and-red wings that let her soar the heavens. She is sick of the sight of them after months of watching the feathers grow dull with age and the abuse of mouthy, curious, sometimes beaked, children chewing at their once-stiff edges. She does not wear them today; instead is her old self, small and dark and a little wild. Instead, she has traded in her feathers for a sparkling cape of electricity and savors the tingle of it across her skin. Lightning crackles in the curls of her mane and the painted magician's rains fizz and hiss as they fall upon her. Dark lips quirk into a puckish grin. Popinjay comes upon the Nerinians in a flash of bright teeth and laughing eyes.
Two faces are immediately familiar to her, even though the seal-dark bay has never found time to speak with the glowing goatboy - Nashua's twin, she can taste the anger that ripples in waves across his face. Even though she has never bothered to remember the chestnut mare's name. Familiar because they are not Nerinians at all. It makes no difference, all four horses act defeated, as if they've lost, somehow, and Poppy snorts loudly when her springing steps bring her well into the group, diving in, demanding attention that no-one else has had the courage to claim. They are soft - so soft - so quiet and dismal and drab, all the things she has despised for so long.
(All the things she was for so long, in the southern flowered fields, and the memory makes her sneer for just the briefest moment. Popinjay will raze the Pampas to the ground if she ever steps foot in it again. Grasslands do not love lightning.)
"Sad, sad, sad. You all look lost," she aims a careless nip at the red mare's torn flame, "What have you lost? Your dullness? Nerine has been sleeping for too long. Time to wake up."
Ghaul had not been wrong, she thinks, but will their insipid souls be able to see it?
At first all she could do was stare blankly at the coppery mare who approached. To pause with dizzy unawareness while her brain caught up with her eyes. Her black velvet lips parted several times before words finally came out, slow and tired.
"Auntie... Auntie, are you all right? Are you... You're bleeding..." There was more she wanted to say. There had to be words that would make it all better, that would heal the rift that had so suddenly crashed across them today. It was the red clotting blood on her aunt's leg though that absorbed her. Lilliana was never openly injured. Small cuts and scrapes, stings and bruises, they were easily swayed by her aunt's skills. Why was she still bleeding?
Others emerged from the mist. Faces she knew and loved, and had grown up with. It took effort to drag her eyes from the patch of muddy, bloody fur on Lilliana's leg. Effort, to meet Yan and Fetch's eyes, to look them over and catalog every mark on the chestnut's hide, to feel relief that her green and pink friend looked more or less untouched. To feel anything more than the cold, numb aches that had been sinking into her bones since the adrenaline had evaporated.
It was a shock, then, when their quiet gathering was interrupted by a bird-like creature, a mare who moved with a sharp suddeness that seemed unnatural on four legs. Ama could only gape for a moment, awe and horror choking her. That it was a brittle laugh that emerged next surprised her as much as anyone.
"Oh yes, asleep! If I'm asleep, then maybe this is a nightmare, and maybe when I really wake up my home won't be a burning wreck!" She shrilled, gasping for breath that refused to fill her chest completely. "Haven't you got anything better to do than gloat? Some other land to burn? Other horses to attack for no good reason?" Her words wavered, broke when she couldn't catch her breath. This was salt in the wound and Ama wasn't having it.
09-25-2020, 09:51 AM (This post was last modified: 09-25-2020, 09:57 AM by lilliana.)
- it's in the eyes, i can tell you will always be danger - we had it tonight, why do we always seek absolution?
LILLIANA
"I’m fine,” Lilliana lies.
Her blue eyes sweep over the young Amarine again before they come to rest on the face of the jewel-touched girl. She let a deep breath - one that came cavern-deep from her aching chest - and reached out for Ama, moving to brush away a clump of muddy Nerinian soil that clung to girl’s teal mane.
It’s a small thing. But this small thing, this one small action, removing the debris from the earlier catastrophe, is something she can control. Lilliana can use this as a bedrock for the motions that come next.
Turning her shapely head, she regards @[Yanhua] from the proud ram-curl of his horns down to his cloven hooves. There’s a flash of anxiety behind her gaze as she carefully studies Yan, looking for any cut, scrape, or injury. She wants to ask him if he’s alright, wants to make sure he’s fine. But then Lilliana reminds herself that he is no longer a colt that needs his dam’s pressing or prompting.
He’s a stallion grown, willing to fight his own (and others) battles.
The trio that stands soaking in Straia’s rain becomes a quartet and the ensemble continues to grow. Fechin receives the same greeting that Ama and Yan had. Lilliana studies the girl (and remembers happier times, when the moorlands had been green and it had felt like spring could have lasted for eternity) and doesn’t need empathy or healing to know the expression on the face of Eurwen’s daughter. The Taigan mare angled her body closer to the painted girl, realizing that there was a very real chance of shock.
"Fechin, love,” she murmured, sidestepping closer, "come over here.” Wishing that she could do more than offer her own shivering girth.
Sad, sad, sad. You all look lost. What are they supposed to look like, she wonders. Most of the horses gathered here are so young and to witness the devastation that they have, what are they supposed to look like? "Popinjay,” Lilliana warns the bay mare (the one who had never learned her name, had called her ‘Lolly’ over the years in Taiga and Lilli never had the heart to correct her). A nip is placed towards the tattered flame on her shoulder and her ears flick back into the sodden mess of her mane as she tenses.
Amarine rises to answer Poppy and the conversation shifts. They had all been tested today and a rather maternal instinct in Lilliana wants to bare her teeth as the other mare. But she refrains because short of danger to her children and a failed mock with a Loessian, she has never been one to use them or her hooves. And she reminds herself that if the North is to rebuild, it will not happen if they tear themselves down, if they bicker amongst each other.
"Are you here to help or to goad? If it is the latter, you’ve unfortunately missed the Pangeans. If you are here to help us ‘wake up’, perhaps you could assist me with standing on the other side of Fechin,” she indicates the spotted filly next to her, "to help her keep warm while we talk about what comes next.”
