"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
tried to kiss the emptiness,
lost the line between sky and sea
He emerges, as if from some long slumber. Emerges into the wet heat of his home as a dragon. How he delights in the way the soft earth shifts beneath his heavy feet. He feels more connected to it this way, when he can feel it between his toes. He wears some strange smile as he moves, his scaled mouth pressed into the grass.
And then, finally, he lifts his head and shifts seamlessly back into his body. It has taken much practice but it comes second nature to him now. Almost like breathing. And, finally, he feels real and whole and complete. These things belong to him, just as they belong to the earth. Just as he belongs to the earth.
He shakes his head and a flower tumbles out of his forelock, landing at his feet. He nudges this with his nose, too. But there is no saving it and he moves on without it, careful not to crush it underfoot as he goes.
He wonders after his twin but makes no effort to track her down. Nor does he seek out his mother or his father. He just looks this way and that as he moves through his home, waiting for something to catch his attention and hold it. Waiting for something interesting enough to hook him with intrigue.
10-04-2020, 07:45 PM (This post was last modified: 10-04-2020, 07:45 PM by The Tin Man.)
Hearts will never be practical, until they can be unbreakable. (But I still want one.)
As one of the few non-powered horses roaming around Beqanna, the Tin Man had learned to keep a healthy distance from the ones with an unusual appearance, even if they didn't seem too hostile. It seemed like everyone managed to sprout some sort of weird color or new appendage after spending enough time here, and sometimes he found himself thinking that he himself looked out-of-place--a plain black coat, with plain white flecks sprinkled across it, and no extra appendages.
Although after this much time, he supposed he'd grown used to the magic by itself: There was a flower on the beach, surrounded by the telltale footprints of... someone that smelled at least partly horse.
"Can I eat this, or not?" The Tin Man mused with a sniff at its petals. "Probably not. I'm just missing grain."
He often got reminded of humans from before he'd washed up on the islands, after eating grass that went to seed or finding a nice patch of clover. People grow a lot of different seeds, he remembered, though their faces and names were starting to get fuzzy.
He wasn't particularly thin--being a nomad, he moved to greener places once the grass started dying off--but he did sometimes miss all the extra things.
Like salt, he thought as he nosed at the sand, heading over to the patches of grass along the shore. The beach grasses were well-used to drinking saltwater and often had spots of glittering white on them after hot days, but it wasn't the same.
