"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
There had been sisters in the beginning.
And then darkness.
This is what she remembers of the sisters: two identical faces that had stared back at her in abject horror as the father had separated each of them individually. (Why had he left her for last?) But Asterope had not wept as he’d led her deep into the forest, though he had not spoken and she did not dare open her mouth either. There, at the heart of all the darkness, a pond and she had turned to look up at him and it was only because she had finally opened her mouth to ask him whether he was going to leave her here that she learned she could breathe beneath the water’s murky surface. (Because the mouth was still open when he shoved her in.)
He’d retreated, the father made of shadow, and she had clambered out of the water after him. How abruptly he had turned, staring at her through the darkness. This was the only time in her life she was ever afraid, she thinks. Because he still did not speak (the father would never say a word to her), not even as the water reached for her with thick, wet hands and dragged her back in.
Now she knows better than to try to leave.
She understands that the water is her home, her father, her mother, her sisters.
She sings to the elk that venture to the pond’s edge to drink, pretending that they are family. The wolves and cougars, too. She swims and lazes in the small shafts of light that break through the thick canopy overhead. She suffers in such terrible isolation.
And today, when she hears a distant branch crack, she thinks it must be another elk come to drink. But when she turns her head she finds that it is not an elk at all but a horse! How her heart leaps with delight as she swims fast to the water’s edge, half-submerged, suddenly shy as she peers demurely up at them with those soft green eyes.
“Have you come to see me?” she asks, smiling sweetly.
these who are shaking
Drops of dew from their hair
The world is wide, and he is going to see all of it. That's what the young unicorn tells himself every day he strikes out, traveling just that much further from time each time. Just far enough to return and say he has seen things he's never seen before.
Here beneath the trees, the daylight is more tolerable. The sun is filtered, less intense, and his burning bright eyes don't ache with the effort of seeing. Not that he is allergic or unable to bear the sun. Only that he was born in the days Before. Before the light returned, before he knew what Day and Bright were. He had since come to find that he preferred the dark. It felt like home.
Crowned in fire, Cross stepped on the unfamiliar surface of the forest floor. No gritty sand here, no crashing waves. Instead it is thick mulch beneath his feet, wet with rain, not seawater. Here's a fallen log, there a badger burrow. Things he's explored and gotten to know as his travelling moves further and further from the Cove he'd been born in.
And here, a pool of creek-fed water, a place he's found to drink from when the sun is too much. The horn just beginning to twist from his brow angles a low swung bough away, just in time for the sound to catch him off guard.
A voice like water falling offer stones, one he's never heard before. Through the dappled rays of light fall on the water, and his eyes follow them to meet the moss green gaze of another. Half submerged in the pool, she was bright against the summer background. There was no one else there. He knew that perfectly well, and yet he looked from side to side uncertain.
"You...?" He asked faintly, the corners of his mouth downturned slightly. "No, I er- I was hoping to get a drink. Is that alright?" She seemed to be rather embedded in the water, and he wondered if she had some claim on it that he'd trespassed on before without knowing.
Sickle is not alone today, but this does not bother her. She’s shifted to match Malou, and is springing between logs as a black panther - testing out her balance as she watches her mom's companion do the same. She is in the process of landing from a jump when she catches a glimpse of strangers through the trees and promptly fumbles, landing in a nearby shrub. Malou gives her a look of concern, but Sickle is quick to flicker through a few shapes that makes it easy to bounce back and slip through the branches she’s landed in. It is not a conscious choice, this changing of shapes - something instinctual inside of her finding whatever is best for each situation. All of her scrapes are healed by the time she is peering through the shrubs that line the clearing with the pond.
But she is not a shy girl and she does not hesitate for long. She slinks into the clearing as a giant otter - iridescent and blue - but when she hears the haloed boy ask for permission to drink from the pond and this makes her pause before slipping into water. If drinking wasn't allowed, she wasn't sure swimming would be.
Well, she doesn’t want to be rude. So she becomes her filly-self - and approaches the side of the pond where the others are, taking care not to get her hooves in the water before she gets permission.
Her mismatched eyes are bright with excitement at the prospect of new friends - and though she’s curious about them both she cannot help but find that her first question is for the girl that is half-submerged in the water. “Hi! Is this your pond?” Her voice is bright and filled with marvel - thinking it must be pretty cool to have a whole pond to yourself. A pair of wings unconsciously grow onto Sickle’s back, deep black and osprey-shaped, as she takes in those that adorn both of the other youths.
(And she is just a child, Asterope. If she were to cast herself out of the water, it would wind its wet hands around her ankles and it would drag her back into its depths. You see, the water does not belong to her but her to it. The water does not sing to her but her to it.
This is such a dreadful loneliness.
And this, the first word spoken to her.
No.)
The heart is a tender thing.
She sinks beneath the surface of the water, lets it swallow her up whole. She gathers her breath. She will not weep, Asterope. She will not let her feelings be hurt. The elk and the mountain lions and the great, horned moose do not come to see her either. When she breaks the surface again, the boy is speaking. Asking permission to drink and she nods without speaking.
The water does not belong to her but her to it.
“Yes, that’s all right,” she says. (The voices are beautiful, the nymphs’. All of the daughters have them -- not that Asterope would know. Like sirens almost. Almost, but not quite.)
But she is just a child, Asterope, and her emotions are fickle things. Her disappointment is chased away rather quickly by the appearance of an otter. But it is no ordinary otter, this terrific blue thing that skitters across the clearing and then springs seamlessly into the form of a filly. The water thing’s eyes widen with delight and a smile spreads across her face as her attention flits between the two young figures at the pond’s edge.
“I don’t think so,” the nymph answers honestly, head tilted, “I think I am the pond’s. My name is Asterope, what are your names?”
these who are shaking
Drops of dew from their hair
06-11-2021, 09:49 PM (This post was last modified: 06-11-2021, 09:49 PM by Cross.)
And I looked and behold a pale horse His name that sat on him was Death and Hell followed with him
No had not been the first word he had said, but it had been the word that had stuck. No, no, no, it echoed back moments after it had left the air, and the ravenesque youth tilted his head to hear it reverberated in his mind like ripples in the pond.
He'd been on the verge of correcting the nymph when she'd dove beneath the leaf dappled surface. It was only the arrival of a third that trapped the words behind his teeth. The shock and surprise of another dark little creature springing into existence heralded by a thrill of noise.
Mouth quirking in an uncertain grin, Cross watched the dark little girl with amusement as she bounded to a vibrating halt. There was even in this opening moment a clear opposition between the two. One bold, one shrinking, both utterly unique, their inner thoughts as individual as snowflakes. The length of his tail swept reeds and pond moss with a certain contemplation.
"Thank you, little lass," he smiled at the girl in the pond, dipping his head to sip at the water's edge. Cold drops dripping back to earth, he raised his head with a softer look in his lurid eyes. "I'm Cross," he answered, the name an undefined thing yet in his mouth. "And I didn't mean to disappoint you Asterope, it's just I didn't know you were here. I don't think either of us did." He shrugged with a helpless grin.
"But now that we're here, what would you like to do?" He asked, wondering what a water lily girl and a shifter girl and a dark angelic boy could do for fun.
Sickle is delighted by these two other foals, even though the filly in the pond says that it’s not hers. She doesn’t really get what Asterope means by ‘I think I am the pond’s’ but as they’ve moved onto introductions it doesn’t seem to be too big of a deal that she does not understand it. Maybe it'll be something she'll get when she's older, that seems to be something she hears every now and then.
“I’m Sickle.” She fills the silence while the colt drinks because otherwise she might start wondering if the pond tasted any different because someone was living in it. Or just swimming in it? It was hard to tell.
She nods along with Cross’ admittance that neither of them knew there’d be someone in the pond, but it is a pretty pleasant surprise. She glances behind her and sees Malou sitting just in the shadows, and the presence of her mom’s companion means that she’s safe.
Which isn’t usually a concern of this bright eyed filly, and it is quickly forgotten as one when Cross asks what they’d like to do.
“We could swim!” Sickle blurts out with a burst of enthusiasm, dancing a little on her spot as she looks to Asterope, wondering if she’d like some company in (what Sickle will forever consider) her pond. “That’s what I was gonna ask but I didn’t wanna be rude until you answered his question first.”
Cross, he says, and then goes on to add that he had not meant to disappoint her. And she peers up at him with those soft green eyes, confused.
How had he known that she had been disappointed?
Had it been obvious in the way she had surrendered to the pond’s pull? The way she had sunk beneath the water’s surface? (She knows so little about magic, this child confined to this specific body of water, ostracized to this darkness. She is oblivious to the way some creatures can rifle through thoughts of others just as easily as they can rifle through their own.)
Sickle, the blue filly says, dividing the nymph’s attention again. And Asterope grins, she cannot help it. Because the filly’s happiness rolls off her in waves, her enthusiasm seeping up under the nymph’s skin, burrowing between her ribs.
“Cross, Sickle,” she repeats, smiling softly. Her gaze lingers briefly on the filly before she shifts her focus back to the colt. “It’s okay,” she murmurs, forgiving him, “no one ever does.” In fact, she thinks, her father must be the only one who knows that she is here. Does her mother know that she is here? She must not, otherwise she would have come for her, wouldn’t she have?
But Cross asks what they want to do and Sickle is quick with an answer.
(Swimming! Her favorite!)
“Of course,” she concedes, turning to swim away from the pond’s edge, allowing them room to join her in the water.
these who are shaking
Drops of dew from their hair
