"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
“ I will love you until we run out of mornings. Then I will love you in the dark. ”
She wakes to the sound of thunder, jolted from another restless dream. The rain is already pattering against her back and she wonders how she slept through all this. But then, she could only ever fall asleep when she felt the exhaustion down into her bones. Of course, it would take a storm like this to drag the lake of her nightmares and bring her here again.
The lightning flashes. A tree branch crashes to the forest floor nearby.
Echis rises onto her gemstone hooves and supposes she should get moving. She could go home, to Hyaline. To her family. But being near them and trying to remember everything felt like pressing her thumb to a bruise. She blinks, and warm droplets roll down her cheeks alongside the cold rain.
She moves light a phantom between the forest trees - her white hair blowing behind her as her feather-light steps carry her over fallen branches and wilted autumn shrubs. It took a few years, but she’s finally grown into her long legs. She’s not the clumsy child she had been only last summer, but she knew that girl was gone the moment she died on the beach. Is it a blessing that she can remember that much, now? Or is it only another layer to the curse she bears now?
Something stirs in her stomach and she winces before pressing on. There is no destination in this wandering beyond finding that desperate need for sleep once more.
The rain falls and taints her brightened coat with a sopping blanket of dark beige hairs. Why she has found herself meandering the forest amongst an autumn rainfall is beyond her, but where else is she to go?
She is still unsure.
Her few weeks in Icicle Isle had been lonely—though the temperature much more favourable than this alternative puttering shower—and she has been craving socialization.
As she deepens herself into the forest, a storm brews with heavy angst. It begins to rumble with an intimidating fury that has Ruth quickening her pace to anywhere else. Storms had never served her well, and a fear of storms had most certainly been a learned behavior from her equally skittish dam.
As lightning flashes Ruthless hears the eruption of a branch falling victim to the storm. Her ears flicker to the left, angling herself away from the source of the noise. Her brisk trot is lengthy, covering the uneven terrain with the poise of a true veteran, surviving and conquering homelessness. She had combed the forest with her mother for a year before life started for the golden wild child, and her memory of home would never fade.
In her attempt to escape the threatening wrath of the storm, she is blind to the other barrier to her safety.
As Ruthless glides forward, she only sees the flash of a shadow seconds before realizing the reality of what was about to happen. Another horse had been leaving the scene, and unfortunately their paths had merged.
Ruth slams to her breaks and angles to her right to avoid colliding with the mare on her left. She whisks to a turn before slowing to halt, wondering if the mare would also stop to see if she is alright.
“Sorry,” she manages breathlessly, searching the younger black mare despite the persistent fall of rain, “I didn’t think anyone else would be out here.”
“ I will love you until we run out of mornings. Then I will love you in the dark. ”
Her vision is still blurred with the haze of sleep clouding her mind. Had Ruthless not stopped in her tracks, Echis would have easily collided with her. But she still bears her teeth because she never learned to tame all that wild shambling around in her. She shows her curved fangs and scales erupt across her skin. She can’t muzzle the hunger she inherited from her father, but she has learned not to let it drag her away with it.
Slowly, she steps back and her jaws close. Her brows furrow in remorse.
“No, I should be apologizing. I startle so easily,” she mumbles as her little morganite hoof paws at the thickening mud. “I was just wandering, since I can’t sleep.”
She gradually lifts her gaze to the other girl’s chest and then finally to her eyes. Echis tries to offer a smile despite her sleep-deprived mind and the echoes of nightmares still rumbling across her thoughts. Instead of focusing on all these things, she tries to map out what she thinks her mother would do.
“Did you want to be alone out here?” she asks with a tilt of her dark head. “I don’t think that I do.”
11-04-2020, 12:50 AM (This post was last modified: 11-04-2020, 12:51 AM by Ruthless.)
isn't she lovely?
The instant reaction from the strange mare catches Ruthless off guard, watching as scales erupt across previously flattened surface. Images of Wolfbane and his treacherous antics that had created such havoc following ignites In her mind; is she like him?
But Ruthless had come to learn death is nothing to fear, at this point some days it feels like it would almost be a golden ticket.
So, she waits to see what the mare does next, watching as she retreats one step back and her jaw closes. The rain continues to fall around them, the soft rumble of thunder more distant than before. She almost finds peace in mother nature’s wrath; it isn’t natural wars she should be so concerned over.
It’s the minds of psychopathic magicians.
The mare speaks and Ruthless gives her attention again, assessing the genuine tone and transparency of the stranger. Her hazel eyes trace over the onyx female, understanding her more than she could find the words to express.
She too had not slept, not well at least for a very long time. Often she would wander the common lands at night like she had done with Brine ages before until her feet could no longer carry her. And then, she would bed down amongst the protection of overhung pine tree branches that fanned out like an emerald-laced curtain where she could sink into another nightmare altogether.
It isn’t until she hears the mare’s tone change that Ruth returns to the present moment, listening to the authenticity that clings to every word that leaves her mouth. She finds it refreshing, a horse that seems to protest no politics but instead is so raw Ruth can feel her energy.
“No,” she responds in a modulated harmony that is both subtle and dainty, just loud enough to be heard over the pouring rain but not boisterous enough to reach lingering ears, “lately I would rather be anything but alone. I have been alone for a long time.”
“Ruth,” she follows tautly, almost forgetting—in typical fashion—to introduce herself, “and you?”
“ I will love you until we run out of mornings. Then I will love you in the dark. ”
She has always been all bark and no bite. Even now, when she believes she is threatened, she can only hiss and bare her teeth. To actually bite someone or even spit venom in their direction is much too aggressive for her dove-soft heart. But luckily this stranger has no intention of bringing push to shove. She is quiet, observing in the theatrics that Echis gives until they both become still. A sigh of relief escapes the serpent girl.
She says she’s been alone for some time now, and she wants to reply and say she has as well. But that wouldn’t be honest, would it? Echis has been with her mother and her siblings, plus Atrox watching over them all as they slept. Perhaps she has only been lonely for a very long time. There is some unseen distance between them all and her, and that void is filled with ache and wanting - wanting to be held, to be safe. No matter how her mother tries, the feeling does not subside.
“I’m glad to meet you, Ruth,” she says with a smile that stretches easily across her small mouth. And it’s true, despite whatever darkness holds her. She is glad to meet anyone at all. “I’m Echis. Maybe we could be alone together.”
And then she steps a little closer to stand at her new friend’s side. Even if the night is full of rain and cold and emptiness, they can wait out this storm together. Maybe the dawn will hold some light for them both.
