"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
be the one, be the one to take me home and show me the sun. i know, i know you can bring the fire, i can bring the bones. i know, i know you'll make the fire, my bones will make it grow.
She dreams of Tephra often. The unforgiving, familiar face of black rock will rise out of the gloom of her sleep on most nights. The volcano is a frequent backdrop for the fantasies her mind creates while her body rests. For all the years she had spent in Nerine, for all the months she had spent in the cobwebbed corners of Beqanna, for all the weeks she had spent in Ischia… Tephra is the place her subconscious calls home. Her best memories are of the land of greenery and lava. Tephra is the place she learned how her muscles worked, vowing to scale the volcano’s face with all the bravery of an independent child. Tephra is the place she nuzzled against her father’s warm side, encapsulated in the softest feathers smelling of wind and salt. Tephra is the place she raced Wolfbane, leaping across spitting streams of lava and daring him to tackle her if he could only reach her.
Wishbone’s mind is a patchwork of memories, both hazy and crystalline, as she rounds a shoulder-high boulder and steps into her homeland. She has taken the long way to Tephra, walking along the western coastline instead of cutting through the heart of the country. No matter where Wishbone has lived — Tephra, Nerine, Ischia — the ocean had always tugged at her heels, a constant friend despite the gnawing absence of familiar faces (including her own). She spent much of the journey with her hooves in the saltwater, letting the rhythmic pattern of the tides pull the weariness from her ankles and settle the sand to wash the evidence of her path.
When she finally makes it into Tephra, the dark mare pauses. Wound and Warrick had taught her the importance of manners as a child, yet something about dying and having the chance to live again dims the respect she has for such things as borders and polite greetings. Her amber eyes shift to the ground, staring at the imaginary line between Sylva and Tephra. There is no sudden clash of terrain, no dividing barrier where the autumnal leaves suddenly drop from their journey along the breeze’s path. The ground is relatively normal, a patchwork of wave-battered stones and tall tropical dune-grass.
Her dark legs step across the border, without much of a thought about politics. Wishbone makes it only about a hundred feet before she finds herself back in the water, knee-deep in the characteristic turbulent waves of a springtime ocean. Unchanged amber eyes find the ashen face of the volcano, watching as its colors change with the beginnings of a sunset.
He dreams of Tephra, too. When all it meant to him was lava flowing through inland grasses and dark ocean waves against an equally dark beach; when he only remembers galloping at break-neck speeds through the tropical forests, his hoof-falls accompanied by the bothered calls of paradise birds and the humidity was his only enemy. He dreams of those days - where Solace was his beacon and everything else was molded by it.
Those days are far behind him. So far, in fact, that recalling those memories are something that rarely even happens. He remembers only black - the time when the lion possessed him, and the time that the dark god took advantage of him and his willingness to please. There are, however, some things that come to his mind that are a light within that darkness - Ilma’s sweet face, Ryatah’s angelic glow, his beautiful daughters. Those things - simple they may be - keep the two-toned stallion from collapsing.
His thoughts are infiltrated by death often. The scar on his shoulder does not easily let him forget. He does not attempt to pretend it was any other way - he had died beneath claw and tooth, scraped into nothingness while the dark god watched. There is ever the darkness of that moment in the stallion’s otherwise bright gaze - darkness that only few would recognize. Only those who have been beyond death and somehow back again.
And when his cerulean gaze falls upon the dark mare, something stirs within him. Something familial, something distant and instinctual, yet foreboding. A likeness that he trembles to discover.
He can feel the sun dipping below the horizon, igniting the world around them in colors of orange and red, and pink. It paints the white of his body in the same molten color as he steps into the water beside her. The movement is casual and almost meaningful; as if he had been planning to step into the pull of the waters long before she arrived. He has never been one to hesitate and even traveling through the afterlife did not change this about him.
“The ocean doesn’t hold any answers for you,” he muses to the dark mare casually, his gaze wavering towards her with a soft glance. “If that is what you’re looking for.”
He does not recognize his half-sister - how could he, in a state such as this? - but he continues to play the part of companion and instant friend, offering her a gentle smile.
@[Wishbone]
HTML was acting funny, so you get a naked post <3
be the one, be the one to take me home and show me the sun. i know, i know you can bring the fire, i can bring the bones. i know, i know you'll make the fire, my bones will make it grow.
The Tephra of her childhood had been in a different part of Beqanna — nestled in the southeast ocean, an island found across a sandbank that rose from the channel during low tides. Despite these differences, the volcano’s face is familiar and the tug of the ocean’s currents are comforting. The sound of someone approaching draws Wishbone’s eyes toward the thick tropical forest. While she had initially traveled to Tephra for the simple comforts it gave her, she could have never expected to see Svedka striding confidently into the tides to stand beside her.
Wishbone cannot help the potent mixture of surprise and excitement that floods across her face. She is brutally aware of the changes that have happened since the last time she had seen her half-brother, just as she notices the ghosts that dance behind his pale eyes. There is a haunted look Wishbone has seen in her own characteristic amber eyes, and it reflects in Svedka’s gaze — a look that speaks of pain and relief, of darkness and light, of Death and Life.
It is difficult for her to rearrange her expression into something more appropriate for a stranger, and it takes her only a moment before she abandons the effort altogether. When she speaks, it is with a voice that has always been completely hers (roughened by the volcano’s ash, sweetened by the magic of estrogen). “Svedka.” Among Warrick’s children, Svedka has always been her kindred heart. Where Solace is peaceful, they are troublesome; where their half-sister is controlled, they are chaotic. This knowledge tugs at her, twisting a knot in her chest that might ease if he recognizes her.
She has a thousand questions for him… How did he end up in the Afterlife, as she did? Why did they not cross paths in that forsaken place? What is he doing in Tephra? Wishbone curbs her racing mind by clearing her throat and looking deeper into her brother’s multicolored face. “It’s Wishbone. I know I don’t look like myself, but it’s really me.” She has spent years discovering herself, isolated from the rest of Beqanna as she learned how to walk on legs longer than before, questioning whether she was still Wishbone or someone different. It would have been a lie to pretend she is anyone other than herself. She stands as still as a pillar among the frothing waves, hoping that the experience she knows they share will allow Svedka to believe her.
She speaks his name and he is sure that he must be seeing a ghost. How else would a stranger know his name? Had he not already died and been brought back to life, Svedka would assume that perhaps she had been a young lover many years ago, swept away with him in the moment and let the heat carry them for a few months before, as he always does, he disappears into nothingness. But no, it is not memories of his youth that comes flashing to the forefront; it is his death and rebirth, and his own wonderings of how this woman knew his name if she had not been there with him in the Beyond.
Thankfully, he does not have to linger on the thought long. Wishbone, he thinks to himself with a grin, so delighted that if he hadn’t stopped himself, he perhaps could have tackled her to the ground. But he restrains himself if but for a moment, tilting his head curiously to look at her with inquisitive blue eyes that idly inspect her up and down. “Hmm,” he muses pensively, stepping forward to take a half-circle of steps around her. “There are a lot of tricksters these days, so-called ‘Wishbone’.” He attempts to be serious and accusing, but he cannot help the sparkling of laughter that twinkles in his eyes.
He halts squarely before the dark mare, pursing his lips. “If you are really who you say you are, tell me one thing only the real Wishbone would know.” Svedka wrinkles his nose at the mare (who he is ninety-nine percent sure really is his half-sister), deciding that having a little innocent fun would be distracting from the quiet world he had become immersed in.
be the one, be the one to take me home and show me the sun. i know, i know you can bring the fire, i can bring the bones. i know, i know you'll make the fire, my bones will make it grow.
“You sleep with your mouth open.” Wishbone can remember those tender days before the world had changed when her mother had let her spend a couple of nights with Svedka and Solace. She had been young, curious, reckless — and Svedka has always gathered that fire with a smile and dragged her toward adventures. In the midnight hours, when they both had curled into a heap of exhausted limbs, she had often woken to the feeling of drool wetting her forehead.
A long, dark leg moves against the tide to spray ocean-water in Svedka’s direction. It’s a move he will recognize well, despite the differences in the leg that performs it. They have played this game many times — in her youth, in the week before her coronation, during the less-frequent visits while she ruled — and undying mischief glimmers in her familiar amber eyes. “Sometimes a spider will crawl into it and you won’t even notice.” This tease is more of a joke than truth; she had always simply moved out from under his unhinged jaw and fallen asleep again.
There is something darker brooding between them, an unspoken knowledge that the world is not as carefree as they pretend it is. The pair had danced with Death before it had finally claimed them, and the shadows in her brother’s eyes remind Wishbone of the brutality of that kidnapping.
The heavy weight of the kelpie upon her shoulders, pushing her deeper into the western sea. The saltwater rushing into her quivering nose, her lungs convulsing as it craves air and receives only ineffective waves. The throbbing ache throughout her entire body as she succumbed to the darkness, unaware of the way her blood would stain the beach and her skull would sit among his treasures.
The water surrounding them suddenly seems menacing, and it makes Wishbone sick to her stomach. The humor in her bright gaze fades into chagrin and she plucks herself from Tephra’s ocean before her mind can run deeper into the memories. The day has melted into twilight, long shadows falling across the beach from the tropics, and Wishbone’s eyes find where the stars are beginning to glimmer from their navy-colored home. She doesn’t conceal the way her disquiet reflects in her eyes, even as she feels her chest grow weary under the glow of the night sky.
“Dad helped bring me back.” The night sky has always reminded Wishbone of him, of the way he would tuck her beneath his wing and teach her the names of the constellations. She would name them now but in her mind, she is weakly rising to her feet after pinwheeling off a waterfall. They had been forced to choose — the father she hadn’t known was dead or the young red explorer with twins who could barely remember her face — and Warrick had sacrificed himself so she could return to Life. “I didn’t even know he was gone.”
The laugh that falls from his pearl-pink lips is perhaps the first one he had heard in quite some time. It felt genuine and bone-deep, resonating in his chest and bringing a warmth to his heart he forgot resides there. It only affirms his belief that he is standing before his younger half-sister, which causes a sparkle to begin to shimmer in the irises of his cerulean eyes. “You’re the only person to ever tell me that, you know.” Svedka sneers but it is obviously fake, it’s maliciousness lost in the laughter of his gentle voice and the gleam in his eyes. “I still think you’re just making that up.” The overo stallion snorts as Wishbone (but not quite Wishbone) uses her dark and slender foreleg to splash him, his brows rising accusingly. His forehead furrows, pawing at the water with the pale white of his foreleg, returning the sparkling but warm droplets of water towards her.
“And you’d just watch it happen, wouldn’t you?” Svedka jokes, ceasing to paw vigorously and letting the water settle once he deemed her damp enough. The duo quickly fall silent though and while his smile still remains on his lips, his face is softer and more serious as he glances up and down her face - she is familiar yet extremely different and he wonders if he appears the same to her, with the scarring on his shoulder that stretches to his neck. It is still healing, pink and gnarled, and obvious that it was from a predator of some kind. He allows others to believe this (because it is true) and rarely mentions where or how it took place. It was much easier to let them believe that a random mountain lion had attacked him than the strange, terrifying truth.
Dad helped bring me back.
It is not so much that he is aware of where ‘back’ is, but more so that Wishbone mentions their father being there. He does not hide his surprise and concern (which is out of place on his handsome face), shaking his head confusedly. “I...he,” Svedka stutters, at a loss for words at such an emotional statement. “I didn’t see him there.” But he also hadn’t seen Wishbone either, and the thought causes his golden ears to fall sadly into the tangles of his blue and white mane. The air is heavy, filled with unknowns and terrible possibilities, and Svedka sudden feels weak.
“Dad is alive,” he whispers, but there is a waver in his voice that would never have been there before - a tremble that, despite having returned, reveals that he cannot trust the truth. With a quick glance towards her, Svedka silently prays she doesn't ask him how he had returned - for father hadn't been there to rescue him.
be the one, be the one to take me home and show me the sun. i know, i know you can bring the fire, i can bring the bones. i know, i know you'll make the fire, my bones will make it grow.
Wishbone had been dead for six years, but it had felt like an eternity in the Afterlife. Each day had been longer than the last; perhaps her longing for Life and her daughters had made the days drag on. The fierce burning of the gray sun and the restless glow of the gray moon had given her enough light to explore her realm of the Dead, but she had only met a handful of souls. None of them were familiar to her and most of them were popular figures from a world decades beyond what she knew. It is why she is surprised to see the same haunted look in Svedka’s eyes that darkens her own reflections. It is why she was surprised to see Warrick’s face on the other side of the river, in a domain where he never should have been.
She wonders if they had simply missed each other, or if there were different versions of the Afterlife. When she wakes to a morning so full of color and life she loses her breath, Wishbone questions if her Afterlife would have had looked different if she had been ready to die. Recognizing the shadows in her brother’s eyes, she’s curious if his Afterlife had been as gray as hers (little does she know of the tortures he endured, of how the shadows have darkened more than his eyes but also his heart).
Svedka’s reaction brings her eyes away from the stars. Although she hadn’t noticed it before, the glow of the summer moon illuminates the scarring on his body. Wishbone is unblemished from her death, an entirely new body that remains elegant and golden despite the torture she endured on the Ischian beach. She wonders why magic has chosen her as a recipient, instead of her brother (and again she does not know of the tortures he has endured, of how the magic had given him an unwanted ability that made him feel as if his body was not his).
It isn’t the fact that Svedka acknowledges ‘there’ as a place they both know too well, but rather his reaction that surprises her. Wishbone assumed her older brother knew about their father’s death — perhaps told by his mother’s seeing eye, perhaps experiencing Warrick’s death firsthand, perhaps hearing from one of their siblings or Solace’s children — and her dark brows pull together at his confusion.
“I never saw him until a strange experience with a bunch of strangers,” she admits quietly. The siblings’ mixed reactions of confusion, distrust, and grief put further weight on her chest. Wishbone’s eyes drop to the inky sand below her feet, where the nighttime waves lap calmly at her heels as if there is not a brother and sister who are desperately perplexed by the intricately-unfathomable twists and turns of life (and death).
Staring into the ashen granules of the beach gives Wishbone an idea. She thinks of the bones that lie deep beneath the layers of dirt and ash and grass, each season bringing another blanket across the bodies of the dead. The onyx woman knows her magic does not extend into the Living or those who have recently passed away, but if Warrick truly was dead, it would have happened at least six years ago. The muscle and blood of his body will have disappeared into the mouths of maggots and time, leaving behind the polished structure of his bones. This, she knows, she can find.
Her amber eyes slide closed and for a moment it seems like only her gold marking is visible in the starlight. The tide surges up to kiss her knees as she fixates herself on the world of bone and decay. Saltwater laps against her dark skin with a spirit that had previously been mere whispering, but Wishbone doesn’t notice it among the voices of the Dead’s bones. She hears their throats calling out the names of the spine or cannon or rib they belong to and by the time her eyelids slide open again, there is a faint trickle of blood glistening out of her left ear.
There had been hundreds of names, but none of them were Warrick.
A weak, fatigued smile drifts across her gold mouth. “I think you’re right.” She takes a step toward Svedka but it turns into a stumble, weary as she is from searching the ruins of the Dead’s bodies. “He must be alive. I can’t find his bones.” Wishbone hopes he won’t question this magic; she is too exhausted to answer the question and the western breeze that rides on the waves feels strong enough to push over her suddenly-drained body.
Svedka hadn’t been in the afterlife long enough, he supposes. Part of him is thankful for that; his time there had been brief (however tormenting) and thus he has found that adjusting back into the life he once led is increasingly becoming easier with each day. The gnarled and twisting scar on his left shoulder is a terrible reminder, even as it heals (and even more so than it would have on its own, from his moonlit conversation with Ryatah) and every so often he can remember the feeling of his skin separating from itself, from its bone. He remembers no longer breathing, the life and blood stuttering out of him in an ugly mess before an uncaring stallion. Often he would awaken in the middle of the night in a gasp having forgotten he was quite in fact alive and that the dark eyes of Carnage were always watching. Was he watching their children? The twins had been a shock - brought back from the afterlife with him, born from his own flesh in a way only magic could create.
Svedka hadn’t meant to become careless of the two (especially the girl, with those lion eyes), but he wouldn’t admit that his heart did not weep for the absence as he would have with his own daughters he shares with Ilma.
Realizing suddenly that silence has taken over for too long, the sun-and-sky stallion blinks himself back into the present. They are not in the afterlife, he reminds himself with a gentle snort as his cerulean gaze falls back to the familiar irises of Wishbone, despite the fact that the color of her face doesn’t quite match. “A strange experience with a bunch of strangers,” Svedka echoes in a voice that is unlike himself, almost shadowy. The description is uncannily familiar and it sends a shiver running down the curve of his spine. His brow furrows and he finds a frown creasing the pink of his lips as Wishbone calls on her power to give them both the wave of relief that finally washes over their weary faces.
“Good,” the elder breathes with a tattered sigh. In a moment, however, he is at her side so that she may rest against the myriad of ivory and pale gold of his body, supporting her with a soft grunt as he adjusts his weight to carry most of her own. Silence befalls them both once again and the stallion looks out beyond, into the heart of Tephra. “I wasn’t there long,” he confesses to his sister with a tightness in his throat, “and maybe I’m lucky that I was dragged out so soon.” He cannot help but tremble beside her - not in weakness, but a mere physical reaction to the waves of trauma that still pummel through him.
be the one, be the one to take me home and show me the sun. i know, i know you can bring the fire, i can bring the bones. i know, i know you'll make the fire, my bones will make it grow.
Wishbone has never fully understood the lore of their home. The mysterious fairies, the unfathomable magic, and the way they have both somehow crawled out of the Afterlife (though not unscathed) are concepts that she struggles to comprehend. If Wishbone had been an analytic type, she might have made it her mission to discover these entities — to learn their origins and map their boundaries. But she is the carefree type, much like Svedka is, and they might spend their days together questioning the fickleness of fairies and magic and death without truly wanting to understand.
Yet she cannot deny the questions that flood her mind as she leans against her brother. Warrick’s bones would have called to her if the spirit she had seen on the river had truly been him. She still doesn’t know where her ability to shape the bones of the dead has come from, nor the midnight-clad body she woke with. Wishbone has learned that there are not many things she can place her trust in (men or magic or kingdoms or even her own body), yet this has never stopped her from moving forward.
Even now, she forces herself to focus on the present while the voices of the dead echo in her ears. The way Svedka quivers beside her draws her attention away from the fatigue that seeps deep in her bones. Wishbone’s head is swimming, but she pulls the fragments together to focus on her brother. She assumes a shorter stay would be only mildly agonizing, but the sound of his voice (distant, tight, nervous) and the way his sunshine sides tremble with anxiety gives her reason to think his time in the Afterlife had never been pleasant.
Reliving memories is never easy — and healing from trauma can be even harder. She remembers too well the skittering of her heart in those first years and the endless nights when she awoke from nightmares coated in sweat and smelling of fear. The feverish dreams still cling to her now, haunting her nights so her sleep is suffocated beneath the weight of a multicolored stallion and the rush of saltwater into her lungs. Wishbone leans her gold-dressed face against Svedka’s strong shoulder, offering him what her touch may bring to soothe him. “I was there for six years.” Her voice is frail but unwavering, even as she rolls her weight onto her own feet. Focusing on the past makes it easier to carry the weight of exhaustion, especially when she knows their father is alive. “The damned kelpie got me. I” — her throat feels thick at the thought of Delphi and Rivuline — “have twin daughters I never saw grow up.”
When her amber eyes turn to Svedka’s gaze, they are dark with emotion and brimming with understanding. “What happened?”
He lets her rest against him as long as she needs, not willing to admit that physical touch seems to be the only thing to soothe the gentle ache that resides in his chest. It comforts him, a salve against the emotional wounds that now scar his heart. Ever the optimist, however, Svedka believes that time and surrounding himself with those he loves will heal the hurt eventually. He has children now and partners whom he would die for - besides his ‘adventure’ into the Afterlife, much of his time is consumed with love and adoration. He cannot possibly allow himself to be weighed down by the heaviness of the past, despite the reminder that is seared into the left of his shoulder, pink and gnarled and unforgiving.
The stallion’s brow furrows, feeling an overwhelming amount of sadness as Wishbone admits the length of time she spent in the afterlife. His heart breaks for her, unable to imagine spending any more than the time he had, which is so brief compared to hers. He turns his head towards her, his pink muzzle brushing against the broadness of her nose gently, soothingly. Svedka admires the golden expressive markings that now adorn her face - unfamiliar but somehow fitting.
He says nothing (for what is there to say?) until she mentions the kelpie. His murder had been orchestrated by Carnage himself, who somehow pulled the lion from Svedka and created it a separate entity, allowing it to shred him into the Afterlife. Wishbone, however, was not from the mind of a dark god. Just another citizen of Tephra and somehow, this wounds him more. Now having children himself, he feels a shudder in his chest. “Have you found them yet?” He asks of the twins, wondering if perhaps they could find them together if she hasn’t.
She asks him the question he knew was coming, but his breath still hitches in his throat. He turns from her, briefly stopping the gentle touch of his muzzle against her nose, to look out across the lava flows before them. He sighs dejectedly, swallowing hard. “I had become a shifter, somehow. A mountain lion, actually.” There is a twinkle of humor at his mention of this, but it quickly subsides as he continues. “We never got along, though. When Carnage called and my lion answered - I would have never. He allowed the lion to kill me to bring me into the Afterlife and we - there were others, too - were instructed to investigate a deep darkness that it seemed Carnage himself didn’t understand.”
He shakes his head, finding his voice trembling. “I nearly died again, somehow. The darkness was so deep and so endless...” He remembers vividly the reflection of himself in the blackness, amidst other things that squirmed and crawled insidiously. His lion came forth from that darkness, brandishing him with the scar he carries now before Carnage pulled him from the Afterlife and leaving the lion - a part of Svedka - behind.
The stallion would never admit it aloud, but he believes that he left a part of himself in the Afterlife, and soon it would call him there again.
“For some reason Carnage brought us all back. I’ve never felt ‘right’ since then.”
He settles his gaze back to hers again, sorrowful yet sparkling with hope. “But we’re both here now - so that’s something, right?”
