[private] I'd give you my sunshine

[Avelina]

As far as it came to trying new things, venturing from the forest and closer the river was not groundbreaking but it was something. The woods had become something of a home for her lately, the comforting closeness and the way she could get lost in their depths and discover something new every single day. Though she was still relatively young, beneath those branches she felt like a small filly still. Filled with wonder and excitement. But the first snowflakes of the season had begun to fall, and that was a special occasion. Worth being out in the open for. Her firefly friends did not feel the same excitement and some had remained in the shelter of the forest. A small handful ventured with her but they lay nestled among her mane, keeping close to her body and the occasional glimpse of their soft yellow light peeks out from the charcoal lengths. She was wandering but worried about colliding with someone else so she stands near the banks, her eyes are glued to the gentle grey of the sky and the occasional white flake that descends from it. They do not stick to the autumn-gold grass or the ground, it is still too warm for that, but they dance around the air in a cool breeze and skim the surface of the nearby river before settling into it and disappearing forever. And though Avelina is enjoying this moment, this peace and the quiet that comes with the snow, there's an ache in the silence too. On the days when her twin isn't around, when she has not run into either of her star-strewn friends, she feels a loneliness that she cannot shake. Some just aren't meant to live on their own, with only fireflies for company. avelina

@[Narya]

[Narya]

i've been sleeping so long in a twenty-year dark night
and now i see daylight

She isn’t sure when it started to happen.

In the beginning she had thought she was imagining it. The voices were like whispers, coming to her most often when she was asleep. So soft at first, just enough to stir her awake, but then they would be gone.

Then she started hearing them during the day, too. Still quiet, in such a way that she wasn't sure if she had actually heard something or if her anxiety was inventing things. Eventually it got louder, loud enough that she coud no longer ignore it. When she had asked her mother Anonya had only suggested that perhaps she had inherited her grandfather's mind reading, but the tone in which she had said it –  like she was reluctant to admit her daughter shared the same blood as Dhumin –  made her wish for another explanation.

Until she was entirely alone, and the voices still came, and she knew there were no other minds nearby to be read.
Until she was faced with the idea that there was something inexplicably wrong, and she finds herself stealing away to the river, searching for a place to be alone.

It's why when she sees a figure up ahead she almost turns back. She does not recognize her at first, and the last thing Narya felt like doing was trying to make small talk with a stranger. But something in the other girl's mannerisms strikes her as familiar, and she stares at her, long and hard from her place on the bank, before a wave of recognition washes over her. “Ava?” she calls out gently, stepping through the snow. Her eyes are drawn to the few fireflies that glow from within her mane, and having already forgotten her own changes –  the way her body had darkened to black until it bled down into a dark red, to the ruby of her hooves and the gems that adorned her body – and not realizing that the girl may not recognize her.

For a moment, she almost forgets about the strange voices that whispered in her mind.

narya

@[Avelina]

[Avelina]

As beautiful as the falling snow is, and as much as she admires it, there is no shortage of relief that floods young Avelina when she can hear someone moving through it. Company! And… company that knows her name? Even better. At first glance though, Avelina does not recognize the beautiful girl that moves towards her through the snow. She is both marvelling at the striking contrast of deep red, black, and gold against the snow and wondering how she could possibly not have a name to put to someone who clearly knows her. What a horrible thing, to have forgotten someone! The voice is familiar but she's so stuck on thinking about the rich colours of the coat that her mind can't quite seem to focus on that one detail. But she does her best not to let this confusion show and she responds with a warm “Hello!” It only takes her another couple of seconds to fully register who it is. It helps that she had only ever managed to make one friend with another filly, and the girl was too tall to be Holler playing a trick on her. Her polite smile blossoms as her gentle green eyes widen in a pleasant combination of surprise and delight that sends her firefly friends into a flurry around her as they risk the cold to feed off of the rejuvenated energy. "Oh! Gosh, Narya? Is that you? You’re gorgeous!” A small, light laugh punctuates that phrase before she continues, the fireflies settling back into the protective refuge of the charcoal strands of her mane. “Not that you weren’t before but, you know. That colour.” It’s admiration more than envy that is threaded through the words and before long her gaze returns to the face of her first friend as she asks earnestly. “How’ve you been?” avelina

@[Narya]

[Narya]

i've been sleeping so long in a twenty-year dark night
and now i see daylight

The genuine warmth and delight that Avelina greets her with is almost enough to banish her anxiety and insecurities entirely away. The whispers in her mind are further dulled and replaced by her friend’s sweet voice instead, and Narya finds herself clinging to the clarity of it like a lifeline. Her cheeks flush warm at the compliment, having nearly forgotten that she looked entirely different from the last time. Her dark eyes are cast downward as she grapples with how to deal with it—she was often alone, and therefore not accustomed to compliments in the least.

“Thank you,” she finally manages to say, but she is afraid the words are so quiet and her stare still so focused on the ground that it would sound insincere. With a tilt of her chin, she lifts her eyes to hers, the tentative smile still settling on her dark lips. “I don’t really know what happened. I just woke up one day and suddenly I was different.”

But there is a strange weight to her words, and try as she might she cannot fight the worry that rises up in her throat. Her jaw tightens with the effort to push the feeling away, even though the indistinct murmuring has returned to her mind. She shakes her head, trying to force them away, but when she answers Ava's question she cannot help but to sound distracted. “I’ve been fine, mostly.” There is a tense pause, then, as her tongue seems to tingle with the want to spill all of her troubles. Biting it back she instead forces a bright smile, letting her gaze focus on the young mare. “And how have you been? I see you’ve gathered some new friends,” her smile grows more relaxed as she gestures to the fireflies nestled in her mane, thinking she did not recall her having those before.

narya

@[Avelina]

[Avelina]

Avelina did not know it was even possible to wake up one day and be shiny - though she had woken up one day and had fireflies dancing around her… though she also had thought she had been living in a dream for quite a few days afterwards. Surely the strangeness of the whole event explained why there was an odd weight to Narya’s unsure explanation - and the distracted way she answers Avelina’s question. It would certainly be off-putting! When the question is returned, Avelina’s smile is bright though she hardly has any news aside from the obvious. “I’ve been good! My new friends are the most exciting thing to have happen for sure, but that’s how I like it.” Sure, the days sort of blend together after a certain point  - that wasn’t entirely a bad thing, though. Not when they were all peaceful, occasionally punctuated by the presence of her friends and giving her fond memories to float on until the next meeting. Despite being easily distracted by that question, however, Avelina gently circles back to the distracted way Narya had replied to her question - that mostly that hang on the end of how she had been. “Do you want to talk about it?” She keeps it vague and open to interpretation. Maybe it was nothing, and she certainly would not press the point if the answer was no, but she'll of course offer the opportunity to explain if Narya was looking for someone to listen. avelina

@[Narya]

[Narya]

i've been sleeping so long in a twenty-year dark night
and now i see daylight

Does she want to talk about it? There are times that she thinks that she does. In those rare moments of quiet, the ones that are now so few and far between, she thinks that perhaps simply giving a voice to all of her fears and anxieties might help put her mind at ease. She could tell Ava everything; how it wasn’t just her appearance that was different, but her mind too.

What is she going to do, though, when Ava tries to tell her it is all in her head? She can already imagine that look of sympathy—the kind that borders on pity—on her friend’s face, the kind that is laced with worry. She will tell her that perhaps she is just tired, that the mind can play cruel tricks when it is overworked and fatigued, and Narya will smile and nod in agreement even though the voices keep whispering in her head.

Maybe the secret is better off buried in her chest, hidden from the world.

“They’re lovely,” she tells her, her eyes again on the fireflies. She likes how delicate they are, and the way they glow so softly against the darkness of Ava’s mane.  Her own rubies and gold were pretty things, but her added beauty had brought with it a curse, too, and she finds herself wondering if Ava’s fireflies were not all that they seemed to be, either.

Maybe all things came at a price, and everyone just hid it from the world.

“Something else changed,” she finds herself saying finally in answer to her question, but again she does not allow herself to meet her eyes. “Not….not just the way that I look.” She doesn’t know how to phrase it — not without sounding like she has lost touch with reality. She hesitates, her tongue trying to find the right words. “I hear things. Voices. And I don’t know where they’re coming from.”

narya

@[Avelina]

[Avelina]

“That must be awful, Narya, I’m so sorry.” Sympathy and worry both work together to cause a delicate frown on Avelina’s features - she imagines that wherever the voices are coming from, it would be terrible not to know - to hear thoughts that are not your own and have them plague you. She wastes no time in thinking of possible explanations out loud - and it does not even occur to her that Narya could be making this up. “Could it be the thoughts of others, maybe? Can you hear what I’m thinking?” Avelina pauses a little, a small smile on her face as she thinks of her fireflies and other happy things - wishing such an innocent explanation could be the truth. And then those thoughts fade into other things that could explain what Narya is experiencing. None of her options really help with fixing the problem though… but maybe they can figure that out once they know what the problem is. Her voice is thoughtful and unafraid as she continues, almost like they’re discussing reasons why certain flowers are purple and others are pink. “Or… my brother can summon souls from the afterlife. I don’t think the boundary between our world and the next is particularly good at keeping things out.” For Avelina, death has always been there, practically part of the family thanks to Cru’s ability. It doesn’t distress her for her own sake - she just wishes her friend didn’t have to be plagued with anything even remotely bothersome. Narya deserved to live in peace. “Can you hear what they're saying or just the general noise? Like someone is whispering and you can't quite make out the words?” She hopes Narya will forgive her for this little bit of curiosity, though the question could easily be brushed off and Avelina would not mind. avelina

@[Narya]

[Narya]

i've been sleeping so long in a twenty-year dark night
and now i see daylight

She is surprised at first that Avelina doesn’t seem put off by what she tells her, but then she is grateful. And though relief floods her, she remains hesitant. She is afraid that oversharing will push acceptance and curiosity into something that feels uncomfortable. She is afraid if she reveals the full depth of the chaos in her mind that Ava will find it strange enough that she would lose interest in being her friend, and Narya was not in the position to be pushing friends away.

But she answers the questions nevertheless, shaking her head at the first one. “No, when I told my mother about it that is what she thought, too. She said my grandfather could read minds.” Anonya did not speak of Dhumin much, and it had surprised her that she had relinquished even that small piece of information. But it had not been lost on Narya how the words sounded taut coming from her mother’s usually soft mouth; as if the very act of having to form a thought about her father and speak it into being was torture. She did not press her for more details.

She finds herself shifting nervously at the mention of the afterlife. She isn’t sure if it’s just a coincidence or if she was that transparent—or if she was that stupid that everyone else could see what was happening and it was only her that took so long to figure it out. “If the voices are from someone that is dead, though,” she begins, choosing her words carefully, “what would they want with me?” She shakes her head, her dark forelock rippling across her the ruby stones that dot her face. “I...I can’t help them.”

narya

@[Avelina]