"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
Out with the golden we sew, and the lower past that crawls.
Now, to the doorway you run, to the girl that's not lost.
A sweet dream fades away as I awaken on Taigan soil. My lips smack with the taste of Solace yet upon them as the warmth of her hand gives a final squeeze in the dreamscape; come back soon, lovely, she murmurs. I always do.
Ah, Taiga. Its looming redwoods feel something like home now, what with my visiting this land more than the others during my time away from the hubbub of mainstream Beqanna. Even now my eyes close to again remember the sweetness of my dream there upon one of the private Tephran beaches that Solace and I claimed on behalf of our many wandersome family members. What can I say, retirement feels good on these ageless bones! It also feels good to have my first round of midlife crises behind me. Enough drama exists in my past for a lifetime -- and I suppose that that's exactly what I have.
When my sleepy hooves sink into the loam at the border of the territory, a snort of curiosity billows from my nostrils. Lilliana's scent smells stronger here than ever before! Emboldened by this discovery (and by the assurance of my friendship with the chestnut mare), I step into Taiga instead of waiting for an escort. A smile sweeps across my features. It shall be good to see my friend again.
At a brisk trot, with black tail streaming in an arch behind me, I pull at my current company the fog and twist it into apparitions of foxes and deer bounding by my side. The foxes grin their wide grins and the deers' wide eyes twinkle; with a laugh, I remark to myself that it feels good to be free.
12-17-2020, 03:42 PM (This post was last modified: 12-17-2020, 09:10 PM by Elegance.)
Had Lilliana known the Dreamweaver was coming, she would have been the first to greet Kagerus at the Taigan border. She would have drifted towards the west - to the warmth and the sleeping volcano, to the vibrant lush jungle - but she was have been drawn to Kagerus, wherever she was. Lilliana would always be drawn to the fantastical smile that the former Caretaker wore, one that could create (and destroy) entire worlds.
But the red mare of Taiga is elsewhere and it is her eldest son plodding through the hoof trails of the Northern forest.
Nashua isn't alone today, though. He has the company of one of his daughters. His spitfire, he has called her since almost birth. "Elegance!" The pegasus bellows with a laugh, "you'll never find me here." The striped filly is laughing in reply and weaves off the trail, trotting in between the trees as she glances around. (Ellie had wanted flying lessons but her father has deemed her still 'too young' so he tries to placate his wild daughter with games such as these.)
"This is no fair, Da!" she calls out but the warmth in her voice says she doesn't mind. There's a familiarity in it that says they have played this game a thousand times before, as centuries worth of foals beneath the Sequoia's probably had. A twig breaks - loudly and the filly spins around, turning away from where her invisible sire stood. Elegance hears it again - another purposeful sound - and her dainty ears prick curiously downwind of the path that she continues to trot down.
Elegance doesn't find her father, who isn't far behind her.
There is a spotted mare with antlers that she has never seen before. She isn't pale Borderline or jeweled Amarine. It's the antlers that her blue eyes linger on before they look to the smiling face of the older woman and Ellie decides instantly that she is a friend. That the friends at her sides are as well. "Are you a friend of my Uncle Yan?" Elegance asked finally, stopping at a distance that allowed her best view the entire picture that the newcomer had painted with the fog. "He has horns like yours." She says, still too young to fully understand the difference between a pair of antlers and horns. "But he has a beard." Her blue eyes linger questioningly on the chin of the other horse. No, her determined gaze says, no beard.
Some part of her still wonders - hopes! - that she might be a relation; Elegance had wings because her father and mother had wings and her parents had gotten them from... the clouds? There had been a story but she's already forgotten it. The white filly reaches out with her small head towards the fox and the deer. "And are those your friends?" She blinks, trying to understand how such wisp-like creatures could exist. She's grown up in this forest and Elegance has never seen their like before. "They look like cloud creatures," she muses to the painted mare.
ELEGANCE
image credit to insane<3
@[Kagerus] hi so you get my malleable anatomy baby, please bear with me <3
Out with the golden we sew, and the lower past that crawls.
Now, to the doorway you run, to the girl that's not lost.
Before long, the sound of a young girl crashing through the woods with her father finds my ears; I smile at the sound, recalling times when I myself played with my young children in just such a way. When I could, anyhow; leadership so often steals those precious years from parents. I can only hope that I did well and make amends for the areas in which I failed my beloved children.
Oriash comes to mind, she who now graces our family with her presence with a dependable regularity; I close my eyes and picture her buckskin-and-blue hide now, with her proud antlers and her demure ways. Such a beautiful and aching mixture of Solace and I. With her image behind my eyes, I send a prayer of thanks to the forces that be, thanks for a daughter's forgiveness, the sweet taste of which far outweighs the putridness of a mother's neglect.
Thank you.
Then, the crashing sound meets me full on.
Are you a friend of Uncle Yan? Comes the voice, belonging to one alabaster filly not ten feet in front of me. I smile, thinking that the name she mentions rings a bell, but I don't have time to ponder further as she offers me a childlike description of the character at hand.
"I am afraid I do not know this Yan personally," I say, stepping to the girl with a lowered head to offer first an exchange of breath and then a rumple of her sweet-smelling forelock. My maternal instincts must be acting up today! I step back. "But if he is a friend of yours, then he is a friend of mine. My name is Kagerus."
Then, with a blink of her wide blue eyes and a shuffle of her downy wings, my new friend asks my about my apparitions. I laugh at this, an easy and crystalline sound. "They are more a part of me than friends of mine, but I consider myself a friend, so, yes." I say this last word with dramatic emphasis and with a decided nod of my Arabic head. Then, I send the creatures toward the girl, their noses twitching and their bellies showing as they roll and grin and frollick about her.
01-02-2021, 07:18 PM (This post was last modified: 01-02-2021, 07:28 PM by Elegance.)
"Everybody meets him eventually," Elegance shares good-naturedly with the newcomer.
She's accompanied her father before on patrols and she knows that there are strangers out there to be wary of; but she feels no such thing with this one. Any horse that could craft creatures out of clouds surely could not be bad. To Ellie's young mind, such a creator of wonderful things would only be capable of that.
The little girl has not yet learned about the corruption of Magic and the way that it can shape a soul. Of how it can be turned inside out, upside down, twisted and mangled into something that the beating heart within it no longer recognizes.
"We call him a Guardian here," says the pegasus child. Her brow furrows slightly as she tries to recall the branches of her family tree. It is blurred between the presence of many uncles and an aunt, of cousins that all race and romp along the Taigan trails as she does. That they are family is what she truly knows; they are what Taiga represents (or so she has been told). She smiles when the overo woman says that she is a friend and so Ellie decides that she might be family too because are the two really so different?
"He's my uncle," she explains to the painted mare and smiles shyly. "But he's very kind." Her blue eyes brighten playfully and the winged filly looks like an extension of the Mountain; she looks fae and impish beneath the dappled sunlight as she looks to her new friend. "My name is Elegance." There is a deep scrape on her front knee that is still healing from a rather daring chase that she gave Reave - both children had ended up with cuts and nicks from the speed and sharp turns they had taken. (It makes her admire the scar on the face of the wanderer even more. How had she come by it, she wonders?)
"But call me Ellie, please."
The cloud creatures frolic then, dancing around her and the striped girl looks away from their maker. There are many horses within Taiga that are gifted - her father can vanish in a blink, her uncle can sense traces of the past as her grandmother can and many of her cousins have some kind of semblance of those familial gifts.
What Kagerus is showing her is entirely new and her eyes are still wide when she looks back to the fog whisperer.
"There are more parts of you?" she asks earnestly as her mind reels with all the (dreaming) possibilities. "Do you live in a forest with them? Or are you from the sky?"
Pieces of a puzzle start to form in her mind and suddenly, Elegance looks up to the blue sky and then @[Kagerus]. "You're not a God, are you?" she starts, growing more and more concerned.
Out with the golden we sew, and the lower past that crawls.
Now, to the doorway you run, to the girl that's not lost.
Everyone meets him eventually! We call him a guardian here. He's my uncle but he's very kind.
I smile at the sweet filly's thoughtful delivery of her speech, at the furrow of her brow and her shyest of smiles. I lend a fond eye to her downy white wings, remembering the wings which so many of my family members wear. My shoulders itch with the desire to sprout my own -- something about my mirror neurons firing -- but I resists the urge, instead deigning to smile back at the filly to encourage her confidence.
My name is Elegance.
"A pleasure to meet you, Elegance."
But call me Ellie, please.
I chuckle. "Ellie, then. My name is Kagerus. If you'd like, you may call me Koko." Koko, a name by which my grandchildren refer to me; for some reason, it feels fitting to ask this little girl to call me the same. Something about her wide eyes and shy smile but eager voice endear themselves to me. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for the little ones. Might as well be both!
Before long, the clouds entrance miss Ellie. She wonders aloud to me of their origin, of my making, and I give her a few more minutes to nuzzle the fog animals and giggle and experience the wonder of childhood before I answer. Childhood flies by far too fast far too often. So, for now, we just...
Slow down.
So, with the sun filtering through the great woods above with an oft-forgotten leisure, I stand with the child. I fabricate more wonders, other animals and shapes; in her hair I place colourful flowers and twinkling lights, bending the world in whatever way makes her smile and laugh all the more. A gift I could not give every one of my children. Something to, hopefully, brighten the future.
As I inhale to speak, I draw away the fog, leaving the flowers.
"Alas, no, child, I am not a god." I chuckle again, the sound low and soothing. "I am just a woman with some magic in my veins. And a mother, and a grandmother. Oh, and I'm friends with a woman named Lilliana whom I happen to know lives here." I cast a squinted eye upon the filly. "You wouldn't happen to know her, would you Ellie?"
01-14-2021, 03:43 PM (This post was last modified: 01-14-2021, 03:45 PM by Elegance.)
She beams a smile up at Kagerus and finds that she enjoys the formality of their conversation so far. It has flowed so prettily - fluid, like water she thinks - and it makes it hard for Elegance to stand still. This interaction has felt like dance and it makes her hooves itch to move. But she stays still apart from the sudden flare of her petite wings, proud to show them off to her new friend.
"Want to know a secret?" Ellie teases with a playful spark gleaming in her blue-green eyes. "I like Ellie better because I'm not very graceful." She explains. There are a few scrapes on her front legs, a deep cut where Elegance had tried re-enacting the Battle of Nerine with a fallen log and it had gotten the better of her.
Someday, she thinks she'll grow up to be a fierce warrior. As renowned as Amazonians had been in their Jungle.
Today, though, she is just a child enjoying her companion. "Is there a reason they call you Koko?" She asks with a tilt of her chin. Her secret is out; she goes by Ellie because she is far from elegant. "It sounds nice," the young filly thinks aloud while drawing her white-and-gold wings back to her slim side. It sounds how a friend's name should sound, she thinks. All her questions subside when the wonders take the shapes of flowers and blinking lights - not unlike her fireflies that come when nightfall does. The small pegasus turns her head to the side to better view the creations that adorn her tufted mane.
@[Kagerus] claims not to be a god but Ellie thinks she could be. Looking at the wonderful things she has crafted, what else could she be?
"You must have alot of Magic," Elegance firmly states when her gaze shifts back to the painted woman. "Nobody I know can do anything like this." Her parents have their wings and Lumi has her glow. She has cousins and more family members that have variations of her grandmother's gift but Elegance has nothing like that. Ellie blinks before realizing she recognizes the name that has crept into their conversation. "You mean Grandmama?" The child chirps, tilting her slender head curiously towards Kagerus. Ellie elaborates with what she has been told. "Da said she went to Tephra to find the Watcher."
01-20-2021, 08:51 PM (This post was last modified: 01-20-2021, 08:51 PM by Kagerus.)
Out with the golden we sew, and the lower past that crawls.
Now, to the doorway you run, to the girl that's not lost.
"They call me Koko because in my family, that means "grandmama" as you call your grandmama," I explain to the sweet girl with a smile. I had deigned not to comment on her expressed lack of elegance, knowing that I'd otherwise launch into a spiel about the true meaning of womanhood and the pursuits in life which far surpass those of impressing men... Something I figure that, at this time, might not be my place to tell miss Ellie. "You may, however, call me whatever you wish."
"I suppose that I don't know many people who can, either," I reply to her query about the quantity of my magic. "But that's not such a bad thing. Great power in cruel hands wreaks havoc... Better to find the magic in the quieter corners of the land." Here I bite my tongue again, not quite sure that the girl I just met an hour before maintains much of a socio-political outlook on life just yet. Hell, I barely do anymore; I couldn't tell you top from bottom in the Beqannan way of things these days.
After all, I take my own advice very seriously and spend most of my time tucked away in a corner of Tephra with Solace and whomever of our family so happens to meander by on any given day.
"Well, it would seem as though your grandmama and I must have missed each other in the crossing!" I allow with a gust of breath, grinning as I imagine us passing by in the Beqanna's no-man's-lands on our ways to each other's kingdoms. "A moment of serendipity indeed," I laugh, reaching to again nuzzle Ellie's foofy forelock.
And so, with the remainder of the day ahead of us and no great rush laying claim to either of our hours, my new friend Elegance and I play with the magic in my veins and cavort about Taiga. In that back of my mind, I save these moments for later viewing, cherishing this day as one of the sweet and simple ones.
![[Image: kag]](https://78.media.tumblr.com/2e8039018ce4dff6112c167ec23e886a/tumblr_p72zjit7wC1s5a0qvo1_100.png)
