"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
01-02-2021, 07:01 PM (This post was last modified: 01-05-2021, 09:18 PM by Titanya.)
give my all to watch you fall
The first thing she notices when she wakes is that it is still dark out.
She thinks perhaps she has woken early, even if it feels like she’s had a full night’s sleep, so she closes her eyes and tries to drift off again. But sleep – a challenging task on most nights - eludes her. Titanya rises and shakes the sand off her back. The tell-tale squawk of the parrots in the morning is replaced by an eerie silence that is challenged only by the breaking surf in the distance. She follows the sound of it, traces a well-worn path through the jungle.
On the beach and out from under the clustered canopy of trees, she cranes her head to the sky. What had started as an eclipse has lingered and evolved into something more, something strange. There is a sliver of light high up past the hazy clouds that swirl through the inky black, but nothing else. There are no stars, no moon, no sun. No way to tell what time of day or night it is. But her body knows, at least, that it is day. Should be day. Her gut tells her something else; it isn’t right, whatever celestial event is transpiring around them, and she should be worried.
Titanya goes to the edge of the low tide, feels the water start to suck at her stationary feet. She can’t see anything beyond the water’s edge eddying around her ankles. But she knows what is out there without having to look. There is the sandbar that becomes their bridge to the mainland when the water is low enough, like now. Beyond that is Beqanna proper, meadows and fields and rivers and all. She wonders if they are dark, too, wonders if Ischia is all alone in the gloom.
So much of her wants to go find out. One hoof is lifted in consideration, even, as she teeters on her indecision. But there’s a swift kick in her belly that makes her decide to stay.
“No,” she whispers, to the dark, to herself, when she realizes. There’s a flash memory: (a woman at the end of the River, framed by the trees and the gentle, golden light of sunset. Titanya pulling herself out of the water, sated on the good company of Nashua, not eager for another interaction but soon helpless in the face of it. Spending time late into the evening both laughing and crying with the stranger. Her telling her they only had this night. How they hunted together. How she wore the tiger stripes even after the kill - )
What will she do? She hasn’t committed to Halcyon, of course, and the reverse is true, too. It’s not like they have promised each other anything besides caring for their children and each other along the way. He knows that she never wanted it, a family made of her own blood, a legacy. So how will she explain what grows inside of her now? Why does she care so much what he thinks, anyway?
But she does.
There will be no moving forward for her today.
There’s a sharp crack of driftwood breaking underfoot. She spins around but the dark is everywhere, all around. She marvels that it is inside her now, too, seeping in like a poison. “Hello?”
01-02-2021, 07:30 PM (This post was last modified: 01-02-2021, 07:30 PM by Aquaria.)
aquaria
- THE TIDE IS HIGH, IT'S SINK OR SWIM -
Something was terribly wrong, and she had no idea how to fix it. The sun should be up by now. Every bone in her body said so, but there was no sun. Only the midnight darkness of a new moon, and the wash of waves on the shore.
The shore. That thought triggered something in her mind, the memory of her home that had faded into absent knowledge. So she made her way, more by memory than sight, until the water sounded close by and the air opened up around her. Vaguely, she saw it. The blue fragmenting light that Ischia was so famous for on the mainland. Magical blue light that defined the shoreline as the waves broke on it, brilliant in the dark.
She breathed a sigh of conflicted relief. That was the same, at least. Her hoof came down on a piece of wood, terrifying in its sudden sound. She started, heart racing, wondering why things were so loud in the dark. There was no time to ponder the pointless question, however, as another sound took her attention. "Hello?" She called out, thinking she had caught a suggestion of movement, but it was impossible to tell.
The salt scent this close the the water made other smells unreliable to track, so she didn't bother with it. Simply hoped whoever, whatever, was out there still lingered.
Hello? The voice calls out back to her through the bleak dark.
Yes, ‘hello.’ Exactly. She wants to respond, wants to be irritated at her own words being parroted back to her. But she knows that voice. She knows, too, that her irritation is not with Aquaria, not really. The low burn sparking like kindling in her chest is self-made and could rage without control if left to grow. Titanya forces a slow inhale of the briny air that rises off the water that is splashing and slipping around her feet. Nerves that feel like live wires slow their frenetic transmissions of emotions like worry and fear. When she exhales, her muscles loosen and the tension between her shoulder blades almost disappears. She is ready to face the darkness and what emerges from its depths with a clearer head and softer tongue.
It is easier than ever, she finds, to quiet the anger that lives alongside the seal of War within her.
“Aquaria,” she names the sea-borne mare as she gets closer. Her voice is steady despite all the potential chaos that exists like a raincloud of unspoken words at the back of her throat. “It’s Titanya. Here, come closer to the shore. It’s marginally easier to see here.” Hopefully not too easy. Is the slight rounding of her belly noticeable yet? Can she angle herself just right to avoid prying eyes and questions? Perhaps this darkness is a blessing in disguise, she muses.
When the Dame moves in, the sabino tries to meet her gaze. Does she know what is happening? Likely not, based on her tentative ‘hello.’ The same need to solve the mystery rises within her. If they are in danger, she wants to make sure her family is safe. Ischia, the land itself, is the least of her concerns.
“It was just an eclipse during the Alliance,” Titanya says, sharing the extent of what she knows. “I can’t imagine why or how it is still lingering.” Her amber eyes shift to take in as much as she can see. The bioluminescent water only stretches out so far before the blackdark closes wholly in. There is an eeriness that permeates everything, too, but this she tries to shrug off only as base instinct rearing its ugly head. She’s no child, and she’s not afraid of the dark.
01-07-2021, 09:06 PM (This post was last modified: 01-07-2021, 09:06 PM by Aquaria.)
aquaria
- THE TIDE IS HIGH, IT'S SINK OR SWIM -
The dark was wearing on the nerves of every horse she met, herself included. Tail swishing anxiously against an unseen plant, the seamare made her way cautiously to where Titanya's voice carried from.
The shoreline was a blessing, she was quickly learning. With eyes so long exposed to the dark, it was almost easy to navigate by plankton-light. There she found the figure of the tigress mare faintly illuminated, a dark shadow on a darker backdrop. "You're safe? The children as well?" She asked quickly, hoping the dark hadn't brought with it any more obvious dangers.
She listened with a tightened jaw as Titanya shared what little she knew, glancing skyward as if some further clarity might be hidden there. There was only black, endless sky, interrupted only by the thinnest suggestion of the sun haloed far beyond them. A fat, watching eye that cast only enough light to be seen, not to see by.
She disliked the idea of being watched, but couldn't shake it now that it had occurred. What could be out there, able to see them while they stumbled around near-blind? "It's certainly not natural." She commented, stating the obvious perhaps. It was a place to start, though. If it wasn't natural, what had caused it, then? "The fairies, do you think? Perhaps they've been made angry by something.." It sounded plausible. Their history was peppered with the caprice of the fey, and the repercussions of challenging them. If that were the case, whoever or whatever had set them off needed to be sorted out, and quickly.
They huddle against the dark, the tigress and the nereid, both wildly unequipped for such an endless night. Titanya knows she could shift and see better, at least, but she remains a horse for reasons she doesn’t completely understand. There is something about the expansive black that draws her closer to the others who are, by and large, equine in form. She has heard things in the shadows, too (could it be her imagination?), and she doesn’t want to be yet another beast in the night. No, they need to band together until they know what is going on, until they have some semblance of a plan for how to combat it.
There is worry that colors the paler mare’s voice as she asks after Titanya and her family’s safety. “Yes, Volos and Nekane are with Hal.” She should be there with them too, but curiosity has gotten the better of her and she knows the children are as safe as they can be with their father. Or at least almost as safe as if she were there with them. The first inkling of something more going on had spread along her spine like goosebumps as she made her way to the shoreline. The barest whispers and chortles in the dark of things both freed and gleeful had made her hackles raise. But had she really heard it? Is she actually ok?
“The faeries can be right bastards, but this seems too dark, even for them.” She would normally have laughed at her own pun, but there is nothing funny about their situation. The very real threat of the vegetation dying off (and then shortly after, the animals dying off that she and her family could consume solely if needed) lingers in the back of her mind. “I don’t know,” she admits, biting the inside of her cheek. Titanya debates whether or not to share what else she knows – or think she knows. But there is simply too much potential for danger not to, she wagers in the end. And besides, Ischia’s dame is the grandmother of her children. She is family for all intents and purposes.
“Aquaria I heard –“
She’s cut off as a young tiger pounces between them, splashing water as he boldly lands in the surf. “Gotcha!” He grins up at his mother first, then sees her deepening frown. Abashed, Volos leans against his grandmother’s legs and looks up at her with his most winning smile. “Hey Grandame. Nekane and I have a bet. Are there monsters in the sea like there are on the land now?”
Titanya glances up sharply at this, her gaze locking with Aquaria’s. How did her son know? Or is it just a boy’s unruly imagination at work? She nods almost imperceptibly at the other mare to confirm Volos’s question as having merit.
01-25-2021, 05:05 PM (This post was last modified: 01-25-2021, 05:05 PM by Aquaria.)
aquaria
- THE TIDE IS HIGH, IT'S SINK OR SWIM -
It is with relief that the seamare hears of her grandchildren's safety. She nodded satisfied, hoping that they weren't too frightened of the darkness. Cormorant hadn't liked the night as a youngster. It was in fact for him that she had first learned to spin fanciful glowing sea creatures out of the waves to swim in lazy circles until he could sleep. That had been ordinary darkness, then. Night that you could count on turning back into day if you waited long enough.
Now... It was getting hard to believe they'd ever see the sun again. She looked to Titanya, a ghost of a smile on her lips. The tigress mare was a wild thing, there was no denying that. But the nereid had grown fond of her abrasive self, and placed her in a daughter-like position when she accounted for her family. "I think you're right," she said, and hated it. Not that Titanya had said so, but because if this wasn't caused by the fairies, then who or what did that leave? The fairies could be negotiated with, in most cases. There was no saying that whoever had cut off the sun would be willing to.
They were at a loss, and that didn't sit well with her. How many times had she fought for right, banking on sheer stubbornness to see her through? It was all she had most days, and it meant absolutely nothing when there was no clear opponent to rail against. Nothing but shadows to chase. Her ears pricked at her companion's words, eyes intense. Titanya had heard-?
Apparently she would have to wait to find out exactly what the tigress had heard, as a blur of striped fur came hurtling between them. A sharp "Oh!" of surprise burst from her half a moment before her eyes caught up with the half-grown cub now dripping by them. "Volos!" She chimed, a light admonishment in her tone. "Does your Da know you've come to find us?" She asked, meeting Titanya's eyes over the squirrelly bundle of wet fur.
Her concern melted quickly though, as it always did with the youngest of her family members. After pressing a quick kiss into the top of the child's head, she nodded solemnly. "Oh yes. There are sharks and barracuda and squid as long as two grown horses standing together! But," she smiled, and nodded to the cub's mother. "There is nothing in the sea your granddame can't handle, and nothing on land your ma and da can't keep you safe from, as long as you and Nekane listen and do what you're told. Which includes staying when you're told to stay."
She did not know if there were stranger things beneath the waves now. Truly, the oceans held strange enough creatures to begin with. Still, she had not been swimming much anymore, and had not been diving and exploring as she had before she'd lost the sun as her guide. It was hard to drown a nereid. Not impossible.
With a sigh, she shook her head and looked at the black water a little harder. She was a sea creature, and swimming was part of life living on an island. And yet... "Just to be safe. I don't want you and your sister, or any of the other children playing in the water for a while. Only drink from the pools inland, not the streams. Just until we know a bit more about what's going on." She advised, and looked at Titanya again.
"I'm making a trip to Tephra soon, to see if anymore information has come up that we just haven't gotten yet. If I ask you to mind Ischia in my absence, is that something you're willing to do?" It was a big ask of the free spirited mare. Aquaria knew it, and knew she wouldn't be surprised if Titanya told her to stick her suggestion some place unpleasant. She hoped, though, that her request would be accepted. The painted mare was a strength about the island, and the Dame trusted her when it came to matters of defence, even if in most cases that strength was only spent on herself and her children. In these dark days, Aquaria was hoping for any support she could get to see them all through this.
