"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
10-26-2020, 09:16 PM (This post was last modified: 10-26-2020, 09:16 PM by Ruthless.)
isn't she lovely?
It’s as if she had wandered across an entirely different border.
What was once flush colours of golds, auburns, and browns now a charcoaled graveyard. Every step she takes sinks into a basin of soot, making the journey even more painful.
Who would be alive to meet her?
Her brain spins in vivid flashes of her palomino crush with swirling water and flourishing woods to line their landscape, to her chestnut… What can she call her? What could she have called her?
The recent passings with Lilliana had been painful and tormenting, but yet Ruth cannot help but feel the firm pull of regret. If she had spent more time appreciating the help, the sacrifice, the love her chestnut savior had shown perhaps then things would be different.
At the very least she would’ve been buried amongst those who knew and loved her instead of here, alone.
Not alone like before, when she chose solidarity over the company of who she needed most. How pitiful that had been, locking herself away with her own thoughts and pissing away years that could have been spent with literally anyone else.
But alone for real. Perhaps for forever.
She had never been great at making friends.
The golden mare continued to deepen herself in Nerine, her white snip at the tip of her muzzle flexing as nostrils expanded in desperation to smell something, anything familiar. Her cream mane hung in wing-tied knots that caressed long below the crest of her chest, her tail with similar harassment from the wind swung pastern to pastern. Soft hues of pinks and yellows tossed from the rising sun ignited her coat in a pastel shimmer, her scars beginning to be hidden below the preparing winter shed. Nothing like she was before, yet undeniably her.
Who would be able to provide her answers, if the greeter would be welcoming or dreadfully guarded due to the current condition of their home?
After all, Ruthless could be nothing but a stranger to these lands now.
Ruthless
father x mother or rank
@[lilliana] and anyone else who wants to see/meet her!
10-27-2020, 08:29 PM (This post was last modified: 10-27-2020, 08:29 PM by Amarine.)
Tornados from a butterfly's wing
She moved lightly. Too lightly, as her wings would flutter periodically and her feet would leave the ground for heartbeats at a time before touching the sooty earth again. With chagrin she soldiered onward, body far more prepared for flight than her mind was. No thank you very much, she preferred to keep her four on solid ground.
It had been a learning curve, existing with these new wings. They were huge. Far larger and less yielding than the feathered and webbed appendages she'd seen on others. They didn't fold close to her body. Instead they caught on every low hanging branch and spur of stone she passed to close by. Knocked irridescent scales from their surfaces if she brushed them too hard.
It was frustrating. Deep down though, there was a kind of gratitude for the distraction. If she was occupied with learning this new way of living, then she couldn't dwell endlessly on the charred landscape. Couldn't flounder when the sea wind kicked up a swell of loose ash, because she had more pressing things to think about. That's what she told herself.
Added to this was the queer churning in her guts lately. Nerves, she told herself. A side effect of spending such an intense interval with Yanhua... Her face grew hot as she reflected on it. Intense. That was most definitely the right word. Her wings fluttered again, lifting her from the hard earth for a moment, making her gasp as she returned to the current moment.
"Oh!" She winced as her hooves clattered against the stones. Damned wings. A muted growl burbled from her throat before she realized that the roiled in her got was not only hers.
Ama blinked, and focused on the figure she'd been unwittingly staring at for a moment longer than was polite. She'd been so focused on the internal, she had utterly neglected that someone was actually there. A blonde and golden someone, unknown to the petite jewel. With an awkward swallow, she smiled tightly. "I uh, didn't see you there, sorry." Which was mostly true. Now that she did though, she could recognize the Uncertainty hanging from the girl. Some Apprehension. But nothing that would indicate ill will, she didn't think.
Nose wrinkled doubtfully, Ama tried to place the new face and failed. "You're not lost, are you?" She asked, concerned. Not least of all because she was not at all certain that she would be any kind of help if the answer was 'yes'.
11-04-2020, 10:36 PM (This post was last modified: 11-04-2020, 10:37 PM by lilliana.)
Lilliana told herself she wasn't avoiding Leilan.
And she wasn't. They were seen together often enough. But that was always with Oren and Rosey. The few times her youngest set of twins hadn't been with her, Nashua had landed to check on Noel and to see how things fared in Taiga. Sometimes she thought about asking the Freyr what had happened after the Alliance - something had happened - but decided against it. Politics and their children seemed safe enough topics of conversation.
The rest? (Lilliana still remembers the way that Taiga smoldered and the scorch marks left behind in Nerine. She has too many memories of the way things fall apart.)
He had wanted to show the twins something and so the trio had trekked off through the woods of Taiga. Lilliana had started a patrol that drifted north and then kept going. The chapel redwoods gave way to the imposing cliffs of Nerine and Lilli climbed, following the old hooftrail that would take her to Neverwhere and Brazen. Another extension of home. Though it's been years since her first journey to the land of the former Amazons, the ledges still draw her attention, followed by her blue eyes and then Lilliana herself. The chestnut mare walks a path that weaves close to the ledges and despite the autumn chill that blows in from the sea, she doesn't veer from it.
The sea is below her is gray. It is gray like the stones that she stands on. The day will warm as the sun will rise but the moment that Lilliana finds the shore, she sees the churning ocean below her and the woman has a moment of rapport with it. It surges forward - crashing waves that pound endlessly against the craggy shore - and Lilli thinks she understands the sea; they are both souls in turmoil. The vast ocean keeps her company and it helps put her own problems into perspective (even after all this time, she still keeps the things that trouble her tucked away from those she loves); they seem much smaller than the horizon she stares out at.
She had been alone on that cliff - windswept and wild (and she can hear Elena tell her: 'You look so dramatic, Lilli.') - when a voice echoed over the moors and morning gull cries. It had been Amarine, fluttering with those lovely wings of hers. The young mare was a gleaming jewel in the morning sun as she flitted towards a golden mare. Her heart stopped as the chestnut turned away from the ledges and towards the pair. Lilliana trotted towards them, finally slowing as the revelation of who the palomino mare was stopped Lilli in her tracks. (Not Aela. Not Aela. Not Aela.)
"Ruth," she breathes as Lilliana comes alongside Ama. The sight of the young mare almost makes the devastation that the Pangeans left behind easy to overlook. "You're back."
@[Ruthless] @[Amarine] i'm so sorry that this took so long
Ruthless—for a moment—is lost in memory of flight.
The soft multi-coloured feathers that wafted in the gentle breeze took Ruth back to when she too would explore the sky. And then they were gone.
Another innocent casualty.
She is ignorant to the mare’s delay in acknowledgment, still thinking of a time where the ground looked so small. The apologetic and seemingly scattered voice that breaks her daydream reminds the golden mare how little time it took for her world to truly shatter.
“I am in your home, aren’t I?” She offers kindly, “my old home, but nonetheless old to me.”
Is she lost?
The question the strange greeter follows with creates a lump in the back of Ruth’s throat. She truly is, isn’t she? No one familiar, nothing the same, everything disoriented and so very wrong. The little doe is most certainly lost.
“No,” is what chimes out next like an automated message, “I lived in Taiga a couple years back, and was guided by a mare named Lilia—” her voice falls short at the familiar scent lingering crisp at her now flared nostrils.
Is she lost?
The chestnut mare emerges with the same grace and dignity she had always carried with what looked like a mix of exhaustion. Or desperation. Ruthless could never tell with Lilliana, she had remained a bottle uncorked. Then again, the blonde filly had never been vulnerable or sharing with Lilliana either.
She had done well at creating barriers.
“I don’t know,” is what she responds to her chestnut friend breathlessly, worried because what if she says she is back and then cannot bear to stay again?
What if—like every other time—she runs to the shadows again.
Embarrassment flushes Ruth as she remembers the other mare is here, witnessing the awkward reunion and subject to old scars and stories. She attempts to regain herself, mouth dry and stomach churned to calm or at the very least coherent.
“My apologies, I am Ruthless. This is who brought me here as a child,” she dares to flicker her attention back to Lilliana in fear of being flooded again.
