"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
09-16-2020, 05:34 AM (This post was last modified: 09-24-2020, 02:14 AM by Leilan.)
Leilan
There is little thought about him taking the portal back home - much like there was little thought of him going to Pangea in the first place. He'd seen what his dragonice had done with Castile's dragonfire, splitting rock from the extremes colliding, and he wasn't planning on doing that in Nerine. The snow layer that winter and he had built up previously would have to be enough to prevent burning all of Nerine in one go; and the fact that new grass would sprout next spring and summer as well. It had been Taiga he had been truly worried about - up until the moment he'd spied his brother's shadow wall. That and the conclusion that they had come for Nerine and not for Taiga, had spurred him to a road of destruction. Like for like. Or just a distraction, if that mattered.
He has yet to find out if any of it worked, though. When he arrives, much of the chaos seems to be subsiding, the flames died out in the eastern part of the redwood forest. Most of it seems still whole, but he lands near the border where the destruction is worst. Brennen had reduced his wall from all of the north to the southern border of Nerine, and one or several of the mages had decided fire was the best way to destroy it. Here, even the sequoias hadn't withstood all of that, but further into Taiga, the healthy older trees had withstood many of the onslaught, and even further, beyond the shadow wall, the only ash on the ground had come to fall down with the latest winter storm.
Here in the clearing, he shifts back, too tired to keep all of it up - especially the wings. An easy mode of transport, it is also the largest and most alien part of the dragon for a man who has had scales, teeth and dragon eyes for the largest part of his life.
It's the latter who keep changing color when he regards the barren landscape, a trait he has never in his life had control over. Black, ice blue, grey, even purple swirls may be visible if one were to look closely, and then he settles on determination. This is not and ending, and he refuses to see it as such. Yellow hunter eyes scour the landscape, fixating on the shapes of horses in the distance, coming from the western shore.
He'd expected more than just Lilliana and Yanhua, even though he knows that Izora Lethia will follow through the portal not far behind. Narrowing his eyes, he wonders where Beryl and Brennen are off to, but he supposes he'll find out soon enough.
with a little funk and soul, light it up like dynamite
Image commissioned by Vanilla, made by AshesDrawn on DA
So basically this is a thread for Lilli and Yan to explode at him, but if anyone else wants to be angry with him for 'leaving', come at him, it's fiiiiine
(but let's leave him whole yes? thanks in advance. I'm pretty sure he can put up a bit of a shield of dragon scales against close-range physical attacks but that's about it right now. if you're unsure, please DM! ^^)
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
09-19-2020, 06:03 PM (This post was last modified: 09-19-2020, 06:18 PM by Yanhua.)
Yanhua
Yanhua had prepared himself for Taiga… or so he thought. All the way down from Nerine he’d talked himself out of any concerns, mostly for the benefit of sanity and a peaceful walk home with his mother, telling himself every step of the way that no damage was permanent, and even if it was, there was nothing they couldn’t do to make Taiga whole and better again. But the second he turned at that familiar fork in the road - the one leading home - and saw what waited for him there, his heart broke.
Depression crept in on catspaws, feeding lead into his veins and making the journey hard. He wanted nothing more than to turn away from it all and keep walking west again, toward the sea. When he got there maybe he could just walk right into the ocean and let it swallow him up too, since nothing he did mattered anyway.
The charred forest and barren earth basically mocked him, wasted and ugly as if to say, you took your time and cared about this place, for what? For someone stronger, faster, to come in and tear it all away in seconds.
Yanhua’s ears lowered into his neck bit by bit the further he walked and the clearer Leilan’s outline became at the edge of the forest. ”How fitting,” he thought bitterly, picking up a trot to out-pace Lilliana - who was now obviously pregnant in a way Yanhua couldn’t pretend to ignore, “another stronger, faster idiot to remind me why trusting anyone at all is a mistake.”
“You have some fucking nerve.” The playful stallion from Icicle Isle was gone, replaced with a tall and lean horse whose curved horns cast long, dangerous shadows over his back when he stopped to face down the dragon.
09-19-2020, 08:43 PM (This post was last modified: 09-19-2020, 11:19 PM by lilliana.)
you were a shot in the dark and aimed right at my throat
She doesn’t understand.
There isn’t a fiber in her being that understands at all what could have compelled Leilan to go to Pangea when he was clearly needed here. Walking this well-traveled path - the same one she has taken from Nerine to Taiga, Taiga to Nerine for years - does nothing to find reason in the decision that the Freyr had made. (But then, nothing about this trail is familiar anymore. It charred and scorched, smoldering with the steam from Straia’s rain and melding into the Redwood’s signature fog.)
Lilliana just thinks of the events that had unfurled in Nerine, again and again, and again. It’s like that past she always trying to put behind her and she becomes trapped in a maze of her own making. She keeps looking for another choice, another option, something she may have missed. She replays the events - the Magicians, the flagrant abuse of Magic, the fortitude and tenacity of the Northerners who had stood against the Pangeans - over and over again in her mind and it is only the presence of Yanhua that prevents her tears.
(The chestnut mare will be grateful later for Straia’s rain; it will muffle the sound of her sobs when she finally is alone.)
So many words come to life in her mind. So many words of comfort she wants to offer to Yanhua and yet it is all ash on her tongue.
When the horned stallion picks up a trot, Lilliana sees what (who) he was headed towards. For a moment, she thought about calling out to him. She thought about asking him to wait but she lets her star-marked son go. He has every right to the anger permeating off him and she will not tell him that he isn’t justified in it. So she lets him go.
His words roll low with the doldrums of distant thunder and Lilliana stops a few paces behind him, watching the interaction between the Dragon stallion and the Taigan warrior. Leilan had asked her once to trust him and she remembers the icy-coldness in his blue eyes as he had retorted: 'The North can’t what? Trust a dragon?'
And she had wanted too; Leilan has been one of her oldest friends.
Lilli can't fathom how a king (though she has always hated that word; it makes her think of Ichiro and how he had once said that a King is entitled, a Guardian owes) leaves behind those who had needed him. That there had been a battle roaring below him and he had flown over them like...
Yanhua’s anger is blazing through her and she finds it easier to hold than the sorrow.
It cuts through her and so she lets all her emotions go. The memories come flowing out - wave after wave of what happened in Nerine, of the way that Beryl had blown the beach apart and Brennen had almost died, Amarine charging the Pangeans, Yanhua leaping headlong without a thought for himself (so like her that it is terrifying to watch again), of Eurwen sapping the last of her own abilities and the others who had stood in Nerine.
The exhaustion from those events and her pregnancy seep into her bones, prevents her from barricading the rest. It ebbs out with her despondency. Loess burns through the last images that Neverwhere had sent down their shared bond. The vision Warden revealed of Nashua falling from the sky. (And where are they, some desolate part of her worries. Where is Neverwhere and Nash? Aela? What of the others in Taiga?)
Their world had fallen into chaos. Had it really been worth it to create more?
His eyes adjust to the light and he sternly but somehow calmly watches the two red horses approach - naive perhaps, or blind to their emotions, to the chaos that they might have experienced differently than he.
But when his eyes land on Yanhua’s stiff approaching, he knows already that something is very wrong. (Perhaps he still doesn’t get the depth of that wrongness - it doesn’t come up in his mind that Yanhua isn’t just angry with the Pangeans, but with him, too.)
You have some fucking nerve. Odd phrasing, and only then does the dragon-stallion know something is off on a personal level. But it doesn’t make Leilan remorseful - in fact, he channels all the wrong emotions into a kind of anger. His eyes darken at the same speed that his face does, the yellow quickly fading to a dark brown - but unlike his molten chocolate coloring, no warmth can be found there right now. ”I’d think so.” he answers, steely and guarded. (And still he doesn’t truly get it - the feelings and assumptions behind the accusation.) Muscles tighten, brazing for something he doesn’t know yet and subconsciously feels coming. @[Yanhua] is just a hair from snapping. Scales harden beneath the ice of his skin.
And then Lilli - @[lilliana], he should say, like he doesn’t know her. He doesn’t know the look on her face and she doesn’t know the color in his eyes. Cold deep brown deepens to pitch black, and his frown becomes deeper. There is pure hatred for what the dragon-children have brought to Nerine, the ease with which the magicians had decided that this was all well and good with them. The assault on his mind - emotional echoes, he recognises; the kind that Breckin had always wielded, too. Under any other circumstance this would have frightened him, but now there is only seething rage - does nothing to change his feelings, only makes them stronger. If she thinks this would change his mind, she is very wrong.
”I’d do it again in a heartbeat.” he grumbles through his teeth. Perhaps they’re not really mirrors after all. Their feelings and actions opposite reactions to the same thing.
He just doesn’t get it. Would she rather he’d added to the destruction of Nerine?
then you found me, and pushed me into the light
Image commissioned by Vanilla, made by AshesDrawn on DA
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
Yanhua knew his mother was balancing her thoughts on how to deal with seeing Leilan so suddenly and so… unexpectedly at home, so he cut her off by taking control of their conversation. He’d trotted ahead and left her behind, a little worried she might be upset with him and not Leilan for the harsh words that suddenly came out of his mouth. He hadn’t expected himself to be so overwhelmed at seeing the dragon-shifter again, their self-proclaimed “King”, and Yanhua really hadn’t considered the kind of rage he was capable of when the moment was just right. Leilan’s existence in and of itself was enough to piss Yan off, presently. But to add insult to injury he felt like coming here, and he had the gall to make a joke out of Yanhua’s obvious rage.
“I’m not surprised.” He thought quietly to himself, sizing up the other stallion with a nasty frown. Leilan was right; Yanhua was literally a hair away from snapping the color back out of Leilan’s eyes. “What else could I expect from a plump lizard?”
Hadn’t it been just a short while ago that they’d all been friends, joking about the Alliance tourney? (A tourney that was still coming, something he’d been unable to prepare for under current circumstances.) Jaded, Yanhua scoffed at what he assumed was Leilan’s response to his mother’s silence behind him and said, “Of course you would, My Liege!” as sarcastically as he could manage between the thinly veiled rage.
“Your subjects are suffering beyond words but no, let’s not think of them. Let’s stick to our stupid sensibilities and play the ‘I’m King so whatever I did was the Right Thing to do!’ card!” Yan was practically shouting by the end. What he wanted was to crack open Leilan’s thick skull. What he did was toss his horns aside and shout, “UGH!” Before closing his eyes. He’d rather just shut out the image of Leilan altogether. The darkness was a welcome relief.
Lilli wasn’t angry with Yan, like he’d assumed. She was probably sending the ‘Dragon King’ an echo he hadn’t picked up himself, but it was easy enough to fill in the blanks. Still - ‘I’d do it again in a heartbeat’? That’s the best answer he could give to one of his most loyal followers? To a mare who’d actually given him a throne and dominion over the North? “THAT is why I would’ve chosen differently.” Yanhua told himself, recalling the last pleasant conversation he and his mother had had before Nerine’s burning. No one horse should have Leilan’s power.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m starting to see sense in the Pangea power-move.” Yan sighed deeply before opening his eyes again. “If anything, it’s made me painfully aware of our weakest link.” He muttered angrily, just like a hot-blooded youth was prone to doing. In the moment nothing mattered but how Yanhua felt, and what he was felt was betrayed.
09-22-2020, 08:54 PM (This post was last modified: 09-22-2020, 09:26 PM by lilliana.)
you were a shot in the dark and aimed right at my throat
Forgive Lilliana; she had a youth full of shining stories where the heroes always came at the eleventh hour and they shone as justly as their coats were golden. It is, perhaps, one reason that she had been such a blindly-optimistic youth. But the legends of her girlhood aren't all happy tales. She knows that the endings - when they did come - weren't as some should have been (but then, when are they?)
An uncle, alone on patrol, led devils away from the grotto that housed his pregnant mate and young son; he paid for their safety with his life. Another (yes, another) uncle bartered with a Magician for the safety of his only child - a certain palomino filly with a heart-shaped marking on her brow - and never lived long enough to see that bargain fulfilled. Her bloodline is littered with these stories. For a lineage that had always boasted its affinity with air - the wild winds, the angry squalls, the gusty gales - perhaps their naivete should be legendary as well.
Some of the stories were happier. Valerio came home with a fractured heart but his chest healed, leaving only a scar to tell them everything they needed to know about the war in Windskeep. Marcelo grew up to be as tall and strong and noble as his fallen sire. He had been given a gift (perhaps by their Gods?) to peer into the years to come and he used it to lead his family towards happier times. And though Benjamin never saw Elena bloom into adulthood, his daughter became a healer familiar with battlefields and their injuries (because soldiers are mothers and fathers, too; because there might be a child, like her, waiting on them to return).
So forgive Lilliana for her stories, for the way that she sometimes views this world. Hers has always been stitched together with threads of redemption.
This one, though, feels as if it is unraveling at the seams.
She says nothing, at first. The rain has soaked her through and the smell of woodsmoke clings to her, most likely all of them by now. Her blue eyes glance towards the taut form of Yanhua who stands before @[Leilan]. And then she looks above his well-sloped shoulder to the bay roan who seems to have received her message. An exchange between the pair where words weren't necessary.
Until, "Why?" she finally interjects, stepping forward. "Why would you do it again in a heartbeat?"
The injustice of it all - it’s the one mood they share, be it for different reasons. The dragon inside him would have lashed out already, at either, at both - it’s the stallion who isn’t capable of a full shift who is restraining himself, be it nearing a point of no return as well. His gritted teeth are slammed together showing his sharp jawline, his black-eyed stare grinding into Yanhua, the boy who never had a need to look past his own borders. That’s what he is - a homebody and a boy - and it’s the only reason he doesn’t want to fight him.
King, king, king. He hadn’t adopted the title on his own and certainly didn’t call himself one, but apparently it didn’t matter what he said or did, didn’t matter how large the portion of power was that he gave away, he is now the one being scorned for the bad or praised for the good - the title thrown at him like an insult. ”Stop.” he warns, but it is futile as @[Yanhua] continues, calling him their weakest link then. It takes everything not to lunge at him, feeling the sharp teeth pricking towards his tongue - one leg already clawing at the earth instead of dragging a hoof, for the briefest moment - but Lilli interjects. Her question is soft and prying and everything he doesn’t need.
”Why?” he repeats, momentarily pulled out of his anger with surprise, a mixed color showing as he turns his head from Yan to @[lilliana] - but the surprise quickly gets more fuel as the rest of his memories and feelings catch up, and he’s back to a kind of anger he never had before. ”Why? They take you captive, they burn your home and want to know why? You think I’m not looking out for our people?” The word our emphasized with a nasty glare to the both of them - what happened to shared responsibility? - ”You can’t just fight fire with ice! You don’t fight dragons with dragons in the place you don’t want destroyed!” (It’s basic warrior tactics: pick the right battles, choose your battle ground. The Isle would never be the same again, but Nerine and Taiga had withstood fires before.) ”And they fucking deserved it! They deserve to come home to this! So yea, I’d fucking do it again, every single time!” Damn, does he have to explain everything? He knows Lilliana was never a fighter, and perhaps letting Yanhua grow up with only a mother-figure had him unprepared for war. But really? Common sense? ”You know what, fuck you. Be angry. See if I care.” (Something he doesn’t mean - nor ever will act upon - but in the heat of the moment, he truly thinks of everything as a big shit.) With that, he turns away from their stupid faces, prepares to move to the northwestern Taigan shore.
then you found me, and pushed me into the light
Image commissioned by Vanilla, made by AshesDrawn on DA
Uhm so yes, that.
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
So, conversation would dissolve into threats, would it?
Yanhua felt the anger rising in Leilan, transferred to him and him alone by way of mental images. Thunderclouds built up behind Yanhua’s eyes; he visualized the angry sea lashing at Nerine’s rocky shore and could see the threatening, hollow crack of ice sheets breaking apart over dark, frigid waters. Leilan’s emotions were obviously there, written on his face, but the real feelings underneath stonewalled Yan. He refused to reply now. Leilan was close to breaking.
And his mother - the glue he personally felt held the North together - she took the brunt of it. For that, Yanhua could kill Leilan.
If he didn’t love his mother, he would’ve attacked the Freyr then and there. Magic be damned; Leilan had no right at all to speak to his dam that way. If words could fix the issue (if sensibility could) Yanhua might use those, but clearly their weight and truth had no meaning here. He would’ve argued back. Pangea brought not one, not two, but three magician’s just to send a message. Just to humiliate us! No amount of ice or water damage to their home would suffice to amend the damage they wrecked on Nerine in an evening’s time. Not when they had the ability to undo what Leilan had done with the blink of their cold, calculated eyes. Their one beacon of hope, Brennen, had been totally overwhelmed and forced to change his loyalties… What other proof did Leilan need?
“I will remember that.” He warned Lilli, waiting to turn and address his mother until Leilan had sauntered off with a "fuck you" in their direction. “I hope you will too, when Pangea returns to take us all.” He warned her, filling his head with hypothetical concerns. Yanhua wouldn’t sleep for nights after this.
Passing by his dam, the goat-horned stallion stepped sideways and reached out to stroke her cheek with his nose. She needed rest, not worry, but Yanhua wouldn’t stop her from chasing after their King if that’s what she wanted. Personally, he was done. He doubted that anything constructive would work out between himself and Leilan right now, so for sanity’s sake he picked up a lengthy trot and disappeared into the forest. Taiga would be his priority now, and that would be the end of it until the Alliance tournament came knocking.
10-09-2020, 09:12 PM (This post was last modified: 10-09-2020, 09:13 PM by lilliana.)
And I ran back to that hollow again
The moon was just a sliver back then
And I ached for my heart like some tin man
When it came oh it beat and it boiled and it rang
Oh it's ringing
Lilliana takes a few hasty steps forward, not because she thinks Leilan will actually harm Yanhua, but her maternal instincts still drive her to move towards her youngest son. He’s taller than her now and if there was any real danger, Yan probably would be able to do more than his mother could.
(And everybody in the North seems to know that Lilliana lacks all the rage necessary for battle.)
Still, the smaller chestnut mare comes sweeping forward and holds Leilan very firmly in that intense blue-eyed gaze. "Our people were in Nerine,” she angrily tells him, finally feeling all the fury from the day fill her. "I warned you,” she seethes, "I told you that Brennen needed help. That we needed to be prepared for Ghaul and the Pangeans.”
The only surprise of the day had been that the Pangean king hadn’tcome to the North. And the images that Neverwhere had sent earlier in the day had shown Lilliana where the horn-eyed leader had ended. "Our people needed you in Nerine.” She exhales long and slow through clenched teeth, attempting to prevent herself from saying more. She was one of the ones that had helped crown Leilan and so she accepts that part of the responsibility.
What was done was done. Taiga had been partly burnt and half-way submerged with ocean water. Nerine had been blasted and the barricade that had protected the North from Wolfbane for the better part of two years had fallen. Loess had burned this day as well and so Lilliana feels as if the whole world had ended. She doesn’t let the weight of that revelation sag her slender shoulders yet but it will. Once she is alone, the weight of this day will keep her company as much as her memories will.
She almost has enough of her self-restraint back that Lilliana thinks she will be able to keep biting her tongue. (It’ll be like that day with Lepis. She’ll bite it so hard that it will bleed but Lilliana will be able to keep silent.) But before the roan turns away, the words he spits out flares something in the chestnut mare. If a hurricane could take a shape, it would be wrapped in red and gold. If a storm could be summoned into a physical form, it would be Lilliana at that moment.
And those eyes, those always telling (damning) eyes of her become the literal eye of the storm. There is no hiding that she battles inwardly before flashing her lightning-strike temper at the Freyr. "I don’t expect you to care,” but she fully expects him to understand who she refers to. Lilliana has already learned that her heart is a dispensable thing and she has no intention to reiterate that lesson again. They are friends but she has always expected that Leilan knew, "but they always come first, @[Leilan].”
She means the Northerners.
Her expression turns to iron as she gives a long look at the Dragon shifter. "I expect you to care about them and if danger comes, I expect you to be the first one to greet it.” The steely glint in her unwavering eyes - gleaming like a drawn sword - says that she not only expects this of Leilan but thinks he is entirely capable of it. That is why this stings, why she feels her disappointment so keenly. Leilan is beyond and more than some petty attack on Pangea.
Lilli keeps that stormy stare on him until he turns to go and only when he turns does she feel like her knees will buckle beneath the events of the day. Tired, mentally exhausted, and aching, she simply stares at the empty place he had been after he leaves. It’s Yanhua who calls her back and blinking, she forces herself to remain in the present.
Yanhua warns her that he will remember this (and she aches at that too. Lilliana wants to warn him about remembering too much). But she is simply too fatigued to heed the warning with anything more than leaning into his touch and closing her eyes. "I love you,” she quietly tells her son while still worrying about his brother and agonizing over Neverwhere.
After the events of today, it feels like an important thing to say. Days like today remind Lilliana that even if there is no dying for her, that wasn’t true for others.
Opening her eyes, she focuses on where Leilan had been standing. She stood there for some time after Yanhua had gone, debating on whether or not to follow after the bay stallion. Her anger left her with each passing breath but she decided against going after him. She barely had a grasp on her own emotions and the North would fall apart if her leaders couldn’t find some semblance of cordiality.
The Taigan went in search of a particular tree - a grandfather in the forest of titans - and when Lilliana finds the Redwood that had kept her company during her first night in the Northern wood, she folds her legs and lets her bulk curl beneath the mammoth tree. Turning her slender head away from the trail (and so any approaching horses wouldn’t see her face), Lilli reveals her reason for searching for this spot.
Orani, she thinks and remembers her first night when she had been homesick and still heartsore. There had been a dream that kept her company that night of Orani and Jacob, wherever they had ended up. "Please,” she whispers as she shut her eyes. If Orani had sent her a dream then maybe the starwalker could do the opposite. "Please,” she says again and her voice finally broke, pleading with the only star she still trusted. Please don’t let me dream.
doodle by the lovely bru<3 | html by castlegraphics | mood: the stable song - gregory alan isakov
There is little else to say to Yanhua in that moment, because he leaves without resolving the issue. The shifter stares after him with narrowed eyes, but doesn't comment further. He'd rather have the boy had given in to his feelings, but can he really blame him for pushing them away in front of Lilli? Leilan knows he does quite the same thing - usually, that is. That Pangea will not return to take them, that Straia has no wish to and every reason now to talk this out with him, because his actions made him interesting enough, is something he cannot explain right now.
The chestnut mare makes that rather hard, though. Her words cut like knives - sharp silver blades that claim he doesn't care. That when he retaliates he cannot protect their precious people. "You expect me to face children and rip them open? You don't expect me to fight the source of the problem? No, don't answer that." He shakes his head, dismissive, disappointed. "If I'm nothing more than a pawn to you, a shield to use as you wish, then this is your wake up call. You don't use a weapon as a shield." His steel-icy eyes glare, no warmth to be found there. While Yanhua is able to set him on fire, Lilliana cools him down right now - in a way that he already can predict isn't good for either of them, but already feels like he doesn't care.
He shakes off feelings like he's used to, her pregnancy a stinging reminder of what was, when he leaves her behind. Nothing good comes off their meeting right now.
They're burning all the witches even if you ain't one So light me up, light me up
Image commissioned by Vanilla, made by AshesDrawn on DA
@[lilliana] a closer I guess
Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
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