"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
She shimmers at the edges, softens like water.
She has not learned to control it yet, the invisibility.
So she winks in and out of focus.
She walks through the forest with her head tilted at a funny angle. And she is so, so careful not to snag any of her twigs or her branches because she had learned the hard way how painful it is when they snap. The care she takes gives her the illusion of being dainty, which she surely would have hated were she capable of watching herself (but she is not so she just moves carefully with her head tilted at a funny angle, winking in and out of focus as she goes).
There are times she glances down and finds that whole parts of her are missing -- one leg gone and then two legs gone and then both legs back the next time she looks -- and she lets out great peals of laughter. How funny it is to be alive, she thinks, even if sometimes it is painful and she has to be more careful than other children her age lest she snap a branch and reduce herself to tears again.
For now, though, in those eyes there is a dreamy sort of quality. As if she is watching the world pass by from someplace far away. The leaves rustle as she moves and she delights in the music they make, sometimes taking a series of quick, shuffling steps just to hear them sing.
And when she happens upon someone in the relative darkness, there is a hind leg and half her tail missing but she pulls on a dreamy smile all the same.
“Hello,” she says, “it’s about time you showed up.” As if she had been expecting them, as if they had kept her waiting. Still, there is no accusation in her tone as she grins up at them.
12-18-2020, 04:50 PM (This post was last modified: 12-18-2020, 04:57 PM by Elegance.)
The girl at the corner of her vision is like a flame; she flickers in and out of sight and Elegance is enchanted.
She's familiar with the trait. It's one her sire possesses and he uses it to entertain Ellie and her twin, Luminesce, much as the other girl is using it now. He might take away a leg, vanish his wings or disappear from their vision altogether. (That is Ellie's favorite when it happens. It allows her to use her gift, her sight that paints the world in all different colors. It allows her to see the things that aren't otherwise there.)
Elegance watches her from where she stands, this multi-colored filly, who walks a little oddly and yet floats as she walks. She had been named Elegance; she goes by Ellie because she trips and falls and her scraped knees seem like a contradiction to the birth name she had been given. The pale filly tucks her wings neatly against her slim sides and approaches the other girl, who looks like she is watching for something that Ellie can't percieve.
The little pegasus pricks her ears and tilts her slender head at an odd angle, peering down at the ground for an answer. The other filly finally comes close enough and when she speaks to Ellie, the striped girl thinks it will be with an answer. "Oh," she says breathily, suddenly made aware that this wanderer had been waiting for her. "I didn't mean to keep you waiting so long." The missing tail and hindleg are blocked from her view as she glances to the flowers in her mane instead, at the glowing eyes.
This stranger is a wonder. A few fireflies pierce the dark, beckoned by Ellie's curiosity.
"What were you looking for?" Elegance asks and then stares down to the ground, where flower-maned girl had been looking, as if there was something to find.
The white filly apologizes and Holocene merely rolls her slim shoulders in a kind of shrug. This makes the leaves shudder and sing and she makes no effort to contain the grin the music coaxes out of her.
“Do you hear that?” the girl asks and rolls her shoulders again just in case the winged filly missed it the first time. How easily the woodland creature becomes distracted, delighted by all of the sounds she creates simply by being alive. She has already forgotten about the girl’s apology, though it had not been necessary in the first place. Holocene did not mind waiting.
But the winged filly’s question drags her back to the present, reminds her that she’d been looking for something. She blinks those glowing eyes, peering down at the forest floor again. She has already forgotten what she’d been looking for, too. The corners of her pale blue mouth turn down in a brief contemplative frown before she shakes her head and lets out a single peal of laughter.
“I don’t remember,” she admits, “I guess it wasn’t important.”
She thinks she must have been looking out for anything that might pose any threat of danger. She must have been looking out for anything that she might snag her tail on.
It is then that she catches sight of the fireflies and her thoughtful expression collapses around the soft edges of unfettered joy. “Look at those!” she cries, unaware that the little lights are drawn to the winged filly. “Have you ever seen anything like them?”
A daintily-tipped ear flicks to the side, listening for whatever beckoned to the autumn-marked girl. Elegance even turns her head slightly to the side - away from her new companion - as if the sound might have a shape to follow. There is only the rustle of the leaves, the gentle sway of the wind as it passed through the forest, and the winged child peers curiously back at this girl who had been wandering the forest.
"I think I hear the wind sometimes," she muses softly. Elegance had been brought up to listen for it. The striped girl had been told stories of her ancestors and Ellie even fancies that she can hear the murmurs of the Old Ones when it comes breezing by. Stories about a time when their ancestors could use it to predict futures and ease suffering and point them towards destiny.
"But all it sounds like is whispers."
Turning her attention back to the girl, Ellie gave a slight shake of her head and caught herself admiring the flowers in the dark mane of the other. A half-smile quirked like a crescent moon lingered against her pale mouth, "I like to call them my stars." She says this like it is some great secret; she says this like they are something far more interesting than the little insects they are. But Elegance, who had been part of a set of twins, finds she enjoys this small thing that makes her a little different.
Just a little unique.
"But they are just little bugs," says the little pegasus. Her blue eyes brighten and the shy smile turns into the beginning of a grin. "I've never seen anybody like you."
She wonders momentarily if this will be rude to ask but her fascination wins out and so she asks: "what are you?"
“No, silly, not the wind!” she exclaims, unaware of (or perhaps simply untroubled by) any social contract that might have declared such an answer improper. She does not say it harshly, but loudly enough that there is a hint of disappointment in her tone, the faintest trace of exasperation.
“Listen!” She rolls her shoulders again and the leaves on her body rustle a third time.
If the girl had heard it the first or second time, Holocene is unaware of it. She will do whatever it takes to ensure that the white filly is hearing exactly what the leaf-covered girl wants her to hear. Or she’ll get thoroughly distracted by something else and forget that she herself had ever marveled at the sound, only to repeat the process again within the hour.
Just as she is distracted by the little winking lights that the winged filly calls stars but are really just little bugs. Holocene stars at them, wide-eyed, her mouth partially open. She wants to take one in her mouth to see if it will make her glow from the inside out, but she doesn’t want to hurt the little bugs so she refrains. She contents herself with marveling at them from afar instead.
“They’re amazing!” she cries. She had not known little bugs could generate that much light. “Do they just follow you around?”
She shifts her focus back to the girl and feels her chest swell with pride. She sucks in a sharp breath and the sudden swell of her ribcage makes the leaves rustle again.
“My dad made me,” she announces, quite proudly, which is not entirely true but she likes to believe it is. “He loves plants, so he made me like a plant!”
Her ears swivel, searching in every direction for the sound.
Elegance is determined to hear whatever is that this other girl is listening to. The white filly lifts her petite head, as if the additional leverage might give her a better advantage to catch whatever noise that the other filly is hearing. It isn't the wind, she says (and Ellie's brow furrows again at that - there is always something on the wind).
The rustling sound comes again, and as Elegance is hyper-sensitive in her attempt to discover it, turns her head in confusion. It isn't coming from the trees at all. Her blue-green eyes glance over the girl again, as if she was the new discovery. "That was you?" Ellie asks in a slightly hushed voice. Partly from awe, partly from fear that she will speak too loudly and miss the sound all over again. "How are you doing that?" She asks from the endless well that is her curiosity.
She almost forgets the fireflies that flicker on and off around her face, that land delicately on the gentle curve of her neck.
Blinking, she remembers to answer the other girl. "Yea...," she says. "They came one night and they've just stayed." Elegance tries to explain. She had worried that they would keep Luminesce up but that is perhaps the fortune in having a twin who glows. Her fireflies and Lumi's stripes light up the night while the twin's rest.
The other girl rustles again and Elegance peers curiously at her. She is trying to make sense of what kind of wonder she is. There had been the dreamweaver - a friend of her grandmother - that she had met at the Taigan border but this playmate is her own kind of delight. Her gaze follows to the flowers in her mane and the ones that trail behind in her short tail. Not everybody is as they appear, she knows.
Her name is a perfect example of that.
"I'm Elegance," she says, realizing that she didn't know what to call the other girl. "But call me Ellie because I'm not very graceful." It makes her broach the next question. "What does your Da call you?"
It is such a simple thing to her that it seems a silly thing to ask.
How is she doing that?
She rolls her shoulders and the leaves rustle again.
She turns her head to touch her own shoulder which is not flesh or hair but leaves. Autumn leaves. They are dry and crack if she is not careful. So, her touch is ginger, cautious. She has to be careful not to crush them, has to be careful not to snap the branches that make up her mane and tail. She has to be so careful, which is a challenge for a girl who is not the careful sort.
“Feel,” she says and moves a little closer, turning to expose the leaves on her shoulder. “My dad made me out of leaves.” She has no reason to trust that her new friend will not try to take a bite out of her, but it is a risk she’s willing to take.
She wonders what it would be like to have a thousand glowing friends turn up one night and never leave. She wonders how she can get her own cloud of fireflies but she doesn’t ask what special thing the white filly did to encourage them. She just grins that same beaming grin and nods her understanding.
Finally the winged filly offers her name, something Holocene had forgotten to do. Although, even if she had remembered, her name likely would not have seemed all that important. But she grins, happy to have her friend’s name just the same. “Okay, Ellie!” she says, though she doesn’t know what Elegance means or why it does not suit her friend all that well. “My dad calls me Holocene! But you can call me whatever you want! Holly? Ceney? I’ll answer to anything, I don’t mind.”
02-06-2021, 12:28 PM (This post was last modified: 02-06-2021, 12:29 PM by Elegance.)
She watches this other girl and tries to understand what she is. The other filly doesn't have pale skin as Elegance or her sister, Luminesce, do. She goes to touch her shoulder and when she does, Ellie hears the sounds of autumn: dry leaves brushing against each other after the first frost, the clatter of lonely branches reaching for another. The longer she stares at the other girl's shoulder, Ellie even imagines that she spies blue on her skin; a peculiar shade of sky that only comes after the summer's warmth has fled from it.
She is autumn, the winged girl decides, enchanted and entranced.
There is a moment where shock widens her blue-green eyes when the autumn entity invites Elegance to touch her. She isn't sure that she can be so gentle, that she can be so careful (Ellie is always racing and running and leaping into things). She is boisterous and loud and she can't imagine that she is even quiet enough to graze the other's skin. But she comes closer and closer (and she even smells like early frost and still mornings, of deep thoughts and quiet hours). Close enough that Elegance very lightly reaches to touch her gingerly on the shoulder that Holocene offers.
Her father made her from leaves (it's such a wonderful beginning that when she returns home to Taiga, Ellie will ask her parents why she and her twin weren't made from pieces of the sky). There is awe softening her young face before it brightens underneath the radiant smile of the other and Elegance eagerly lifts her slender head. "Which do you like best?" she asks the other girl, because it suddenly seems like too large a task for simply just Elegance to decide.
Perhaps it had been foolish of Holocene to so completely trust her new friend, but Ellie does not end up taking a bite out of her after all. She does not tear the leaves free from Holocene’s flesh. She does not snap the twigs of her mane. She does not harm her, which makes Holocene giddy with pleasure.
She will not always be so naive, the autumn thing. She will learn the hard way that not everyone can be trusted so implicitly. There will be plenty of creatures in the world who will want to make her hurt. But she is awash in the folly of youth for now, the soft glow of this shared kindness.
She reaches out to bump the winged filly’s shoulder in turn. It is solid, like her father’s. She is a real, tangible thing. (And Holocene is, too, but her realness is something altogether different. She is not solid in the same way that they are solid. She is solid in the same way the canopy of trees overhead is solid, swaths of blue sky filtering through the gaps.)
The bottom half of her legs still flicker in and out of focus but she is concentrating too fiercely on other things to notice. She tilts her head, thinking hard. Does she have a preference? She thinks Ellie could call her ‘crazy’ and she’d answer to it just the same. But she rolls her shoulders in that same leaf-rustling shrug and says, “Holly works. It sounds kind of like Ellie. Ellie and Holly. I think we could be best friends.”
She says it without a trace of self-consciousness, unaware that this is not the sort of thing that is meant to be declared so casually.
03-04-2021, 11:11 AM (This post was last modified: 03-04-2021, 11:14 AM by Elegance.)
Ellie's mind is blooming with questions.
The pale filly regards her new friend and finds that she is wondering so many things about Holocene. If she is Fall, what happens when Winter comes? Does he strip her of her leaves? Does she fold her legs and rest in some kind of tropical paradise, like Tephra and Ischia? (Elegance has never been to those places but she wants to go, so badly. Exploration flows through her veins like the rivers wind through Beqanna.) When Spring comes, do her leaves remain blazing variations of red and yellow and orange? When Summer lulls them all into tranquility, does Holocene remain vibrant and electric with color?
What happens to an Autumn girl when the other seasons come to call?
Elegance decides nothing, if she has any say. She would keep Holocene warm against Winter's chill and cool against Summer's heat.
(How doesn't creep into her mind. Ellie just thinks that she will and therefore thinks she can. Doubt is not something that she has encountered yet.)
"Holly," she says back, trying out the word and agreeing with her friend. It suits her. The smile that tugs wildly on one side of her mouth matches the thought. "Holly and Ellie," the winged child states and flutters her white wings. Her feathers brush playfully against her pale sides and the young pegasus nods. "I've never had a best friend before," she tells @[holocene]. "I have a twin sister, Lumi." She explains but that doesn't feel like quite the same thing.
The bond she shares with Luminesce feels different than the one forming with Hollie.
It makes her suddenly think of something. "Where are you from?" she asks the other filly. If they are going to be best friends, they should know where to find each other. "I live in Taiga," and her slender head lifts to point in the direction of the misty forest. Returning her gaze to peer curiously back at Holly, she asks: "do you live near there?"
