"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
09-27-2020, 01:19 PM (This post was last modified: 09-27-2020, 01:20 PM by Ilma.)
a certain type of wind has swept me up
She hasn’t seen him for in a while, but she never thinks to worry. Svedka is a free roamer, a butterfly, a bird which should never be caged. So long as he comes home occasionally, Ilma is content to meet with him then - she doesn’t keep their daughters from discovering all of Tephra either, though Kukka does tend to be a homebody just like herself. Kirsi though; well, she just smiles at her enthusiasm. That girl will never sit still, only when she sleeps and even then she seems to have livid dreams.
Today, the three of them (two really; her yellow cherry daughter, her short nickname being for the color of frost and snow in her mane, is roaming far up ahead) take a long walk on the beach. Ilma herself doesn’t remember a lot of stories, but she makes some up as they go, and has learned about lots of Tephra’s seashells, jungle flowers, and vines from her son. Strange that he is the one to teach her now, what he has learned from Isilya, but Ilma is rather happy that he and his children live the life they deserve (her grandchildren; the same age as her daughters. Still a strange concept considering she cannot remember birthing him).
She has come to accept that there are things she will never know. She cannot know what she knew before, and she finds that perhaps she shouldn’t really want to. Her memories however are weird - some of them have not yet come to pass. Take Kirsikka for example; the palomino with blue highlights. She’d seen her before, in daydreams, and it’s rather odd to her to have known what she’d look like - possibly the day after she made the decision to lay with Svedka. But strangeness is also a thing she has come to accept.
Kukka doesn’t mesmerise over the things Ilma does. She knows her mother is always worried, but about things that the overo girl cannot help her with. She reaches out now, touching her mother’s shoulder for a moment and receiving that content smile of hers. Kukka chuckles, but she does wonder when her dad will show up again. She too hasn’t seen him in a while and while her mother’s worries are about her own memories, she takes it upon her to check with her aunt Solace every now and then if he has visited her, then.
It is Kirsi who breaks both of their concentrations in the end. ”Mom! Sis!” She comes bouncing back over the beach, carrying a shining pearlescent shell. ”Ah found wfis bewow fwe wocks.” She puts it on the ground before her, narrowing her eyes as her mind takes in her mother and her loving twin; then, she decides it’s her dad’s responsibility to bring gifts to her mother, and picks up the pretty shell moving towards her twin sister. When she’s one weaving the mane through and around the shell (Ilma had needed to help of course, but the alabaster woman did so without being asked), she then grins af Kukka. ”Now you just need some more flowers, I think.” She decides, already turning to once again go look for something pretty.
will you let me follow you, wherever you go… bring me home?
Ilma
@[Svedka]
Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this: men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget.
Svedka watches them for a moment - out of sight for what he knew wouldn’t be very long.
He can feel his breath rise and fall steady in his chest (reminding him that yes, he is in fact alive) and that the three that frolic before him are as real as he is. The constant burning in his shoulder, where the deep tissue is still healing and attempts to repair the damage, serves as a reminder of what had happened to him. The wounds are jagged and unmistakable - a lion’s claws raked through the once beautiful skin made of ivory and gold - reworking itself together but still raw and red; ugly. He hesitates, suddenly feeling uncertain (a feeling that had been unknown to him before), but with a stiff-legged step in his right shoulder, moves towards the girls and their beautiful mother.
“Kirsi,” he calls to her gently, stepping slowly out from the shade and into the sunlight with them, a soft smirk on his pink lips. He stretches his neck forward (but only somewhat, as his shoulder keeps him from a full range of motion) to point out a bushel of white and yellow plumeria, reminiscent of the twins’ coat colors. “Take these ones,” Svedka advises her, lowering his gaze to gently huff his pale nostrils against her cheek. The painted stallion presses a sweet kiss on the poll of Kukka, messing her forelock playfully.
His blue eyes fall to Ilma, a soft shadow crossing his brow. He comes closer to her so that he may fall beside her, wanting to watch the girls but also craving the familiar touch that she brings. Svedka comes so close that he can lean against her slightly, still visibly worn from his plight with Beqanna's dark god. He is lucky to be alive, he thinks, though he cannot help but feel something had accompanied him from the afterlife.
Svedka sighs deeply, allowing his mouth to affectionately lip at the white strands of her mane nearer to her withers. “Ilma,” he says almost mindlessly, enjoying the moment of peace the three of them bring him.
Kirsikka is... well, not exactly always the most mindful about her surroundings. Her father's voice brings a short yelp, then a laugh as she dives for the flowers that will surely compliment her sister's mane very well. She picks them eagerly, busy with her new task for quite a minute or two or so, and hardly notices the change in his eyes or in his body as she does, so eager to please as she currently is.
It doesn't escape her sister and her mother though, but while Kukka's smile is almost wry as he ruffles her mane and she gives him an affectionate peck on the cheek, she doesn't linger long. Instead the blue-rimmed girl joins her sister, playfully pulling on her mane and fully intent on distracting her. She is quite sure that while their father loves to see them, even in her young age she understands that he will want time for himself, time to talk to mother.
Ilma gives a small chuckle as she watches the girls play and weave their flowers in one another's mane and tail, quite certain this is something of a keepsake they might continue doing for years to come. Svedka falls into step with her naturally, and she doesn't question his appearance or where he's been. A small part of her worries for the way he looks, but she knows she is no healer, and is quite certain he knows where to go should he need such magic. Right now all she can give him is her warmth and affection, so the leans in for the touch of his skin. There is little if not nothing that would truly be able to separate them, for she knows he will find her wherever he went, or goes in the future. It is that kind of certainty that sustains her now, that never worries where he is or what he is doing.
She doesn't ask when he doesn't speak up, though he might discern by now that she is in fact a little curious - not in the least about his swollen sides, though the strained movements he makes are the ones that do in fact worry her. Instead of asking, she bumps his nose, then rests her head against his neck, right under the jawline where she finds a patch of unscarred skin.
It's meant to be just that, a reassuring touch and a moment of peace, but she jerks back rather suddenly, a strange vision she cannot quite imagine overtaking her senses for the briefest of seconds. "You are... pregnant?" she says it softly, but clearly rather confused. She hadn't meant to ask, but... what had happened?
will you let me follow you, wherever you go… bring me home?
Ilma
@[Svedka]
Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this: men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget.
He copes the only way he knows how: through touch, pretending as though all the things that had happened to him were merely just a dream, a terror-fueled nightmare that somehow crossed into the plains of reality. It left behind that terrible scar on his shoulder that traces up to his neck and though he imagines that it is all over, part of him (somewhere deep inside) knows that it is only beginning. That churning in his abdomen is more than he could ever imagine; parasites living and breathing deep within his flesh, brought forth from another world by dark magic itself.
Svedka knows that his unease is palpable - the tension that settles across his spine is unlike him in so many ways, he is not surprised in the way that Ilma glances at him with a deep concern that turns her lovely eyes dark. He loves the way she doesn’t pry and instead, places the familiar warmth of her pale mouth against his jawline. The gesture causes him to sigh most contentedly, leaning into her as if she somehow could hold him and all his turmoil, trembling slightly. He doesn’t know how to tell her where he’d been or what he’d been through (just as he couldn’t bear to tell Solace all the excruciatingly painful details), afraid of reliving that nightmare once again. It is much easier, he decides with a flutter of his white lashes in a slow blink, to put it to the side to rot until it was nothing but a distant memory, long forgotten.
Ilma’s soft voice breaks the quiet and for a moment, he feels as though he hadn’t heard her or that he had even imagined her speaking at all. His eyes flicker open confusedly, turning to her with a sharp twist of his head that pulls taut the gnarled skin of his scarred shoulder and neck. “What did you say?” His voice is thin and cold, not because she had asked it, but the idea of it being so preposterous (so ghastly, in fact, that there is a deep-seated dread that coils in his stomach at the very real possibility of it being true). Svedka doesn’t even wait for her to clarify because his head then begins to swim. “I’m not -” he begins, his voice heightening with big inhales of air, “that’s impossible - I can’t, he can’t have -”
His voice stops as if he is pausing but he doesn’t begin again, because the idea of him makes his throat tighten and his chest feels so weighted, Svedka can’t catch his breath. He tries to calm himself for the sake of Ilma and his daughters that frolic before him but he cannot ignore the sound of his blood throbbing in his ears. His gasps are shallow as he breathily asks her with fear in his eyes: “Why did this happen?”
It’s a loaded question, one that Ilma would have no answer for.
She doesn't know - she has no answers about the past, but somehow, she has noticed, just a few times now, she seems to know things that are, things that may be. Kirsi's golden palomino coat and wind-swept blue-trimmed mane had been in her mind's eye once before, and that vision had come true. The twins she sees with Svedka, knowing they are his and his alone (there is a god involved, and neither she nor Svedka would expect true parenthood from him) are just as real.
She doesn't speak of the fact that there are two. Good grief, she shouldn't have asked her question at all. She has no answers, other than that she sees in him how much he is traumatized. They've both stopped walking, at some point in the past time, while the girls have ventured farther away and she's glad for that fact. Now, the only thing she can do, is hold him, and hush him, and tell him it'll be alright. It has to be alright. It must be. "You'll be okay. We'll make it so." We, she says and she means it. His children have the right to live despite whomever sired them and how, and they will be beautiful, and if he feels like he can't raise them alone, then she'll be right here.
She's always been home here, for him and for whomever else needs it, and she isn't going to stop now.
will you let me follow you, wherever you go… bring me home?
Ilma
@[Svedka] wow this was november? Sorry! I felt like wrapping it up so here's a closer ^^
Any fool knows men and women think differently at times, but the biggest difference is this: men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget.
