"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
01-03-2021, 11:39 AM (This post was last modified: 01-03-2021, 11:39 AM by Laurelin.)
It had been dark for a few days now and Laurelin did not mind one bit. Although he thinks the glow around him has diminished a little, it’s something born of fire and not tied to the dance of the moon and the sun. It’s just more obvious in the darkness. So, since the sun seems to be taking an extended vacation, that means it is literally his time to shine.
It helps too that he has discovered the ability to heat the air around him so he’s never actually cold. Which is extremely helpful in the winter - he grew a winter coat last year and it was not a good look for him. He rather preferred to remain sleek and shiny all year round and if that meant tiring himself out by tapping into this ability for an entire season then so be it.
Sometimes he considers just moving to one of the tropical areas, but it is a fleeting idea his mind cannot seem to settle on for long. As though there’s an instinct telling him to keep away from those waters.
Ridiculous.
Maybe when the sun comes back. Right now there’s not much point in being anywhere - it all looks the same anyway.
Except for right around him, where the snow is touched by Laurelin’s blue glow and the occasional spark floats up from his mane and tail as he wanders. Certain that if anything interesting was going to happen, it would find him.
and also @[The Monsters] - please see what happens to Laurelin's kelpie mimicry
TEGteg [-FIRE MIMICRY-][KELPIE MIMICRY][IMMORTALITY][equus pinnipedia][frost aura]
She hadn’t realized how much she disliked the dark until it was all that existed. No sun or moon or twinkling stars, nothing but that odd ring of strangled light pitched high in the sky overhead. But even that made her feel uneasy, it looked like a dark pupil ringed in white iris, always watching her, never blinking - and it was cold without the sun, colder still while winter held the world in its grips, and snow, it turns out, is much less beautiful when there is no light to illuminate it.
Still, the dark hadn’t kept her hidden away at home. It was nice to be near her family, but she could see the way the eclipse had changed pieces of them, too, and it scared her. Her parents were meant to be impervious in her mind, and seeing them as anything less made uneasiness bubble in her stomach.
So she disappeared often, losing track of time with no sun to mark the progress of the day. She felt tired often so that was no help, but she suspected it had more to do with stress and a constant thread of fear-adrenaline constantly flowing from her chest throughout the pathways of her veins. It took a lot out of her to be suspicious of every shadow and each odd sound.
It is of course no surprise then, when on her flight back home she is distracted by the faint blue glow of something wandering below her. She is so used to the dark now that the light actually breathes a suspicion into her belly that she had not felt before. Did the monsters that roamed the dark glow? She hadn’t met one yet, but the stories were inhibitive of doing so.
She sweeps lower, and the only sound is that of her wings as she falls through a sky too dark to see (she no longer wonders what it feels like to be a star). When she is close enough to land, she recognizes the shape as equine and that his face seems friendly, almost as though the dark has left him untouched. Her hooves touch the ground, and for a moment she is quiet, standing just outside the glow of his body where she imagines she can feel a strange warmth emanating. There are sparks in his hair, and the first ones to lift while she’s watching makes the breath catch on her lips in muffled surprise.
He looks ethereal in the dark like this. A shade of blue she’s never seen anywhere else, though she imagines there must be gems of the like buried deep in rock quarries, undiscovered. “Hello,” she whispers finally when she realizes she’s been staring, “I’m Aureline.” But then she’s studying him again, and her face is soft and open as she traces the metallic gold in the markings across his brow and over his ears. She can see that it extends down his back and over his withers, in thin bands around each knee. “You’re very beautiful.” She whispers again, and her eyes find their way back to his, settling in the pale blue. “I hope very much that you aren’t a monster. If you are then I’ve imagined you all wrong.”
aureline
dear wilderness, be at your best
her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress
@[The Monsters] let's see what happens with aureline's mind reading!
Laurelin does not often feel jealousy - he considers himself pretty peak - but every once in a while he wonders what he would look like with wings. He dreamed about it once - they were feathered and navy like him but the flight feathers were golden. It was quite the look - but then the dream had shifted into a nightmare and something had crawled from the river and plucked every feather out before he had woken up.
It had been very effective at deterring him from ever looking into making those wings a reality.
He does think about it when he watches the girl land nearby. There’s no surprise in him when she comes over, and Laurelin swishes his tail behind him, sending a smattering of more sparks up. A smile brightens at the compliment and if he did have wings, they’d ruffle in pleasure. A gentle laugh escapes him when she expresses her hope that he is not a monster. “A monster! With baby blues like these? No way.” It’s one of the only faults of Laurelin’s body that he cannot gesture to his eyes but he does wink, and that does the trick well enough.
Belatedly, he registers her introduction. “Wait, your name is Aureline.” He repeats it, and it is not lost on him that he likes the way it feels on his tongue because it is so close to his own name. A little of that self-importance falls away (but just a little). There’s a little mischief in his grin, a little of the youth that he really is, when he introduces himself in turn. “I’m Laurelin!”
She is distracted watching the sparks climb from his hair and lift into the night. They look like castaway stars all etched in blue and white, and she cannot help but wonder where they will go once they are gone from here. Or if it hurts when they leave him, if they feel like anything at all. She is about to ask as much when he smiles and laughs and her brown eyes are drawn immediately back to his face.
Instantly she is reminded of how handsome he is, even more so with that smile and the way the laughter changes his eyes into something momentarily softer. “I imagine it would be way more dangerous if monsters were beautiful.” She points out, but there is a smile on her own face now, and when she takes a little step closer the blue of his glow illuminates the white sun marking on her forehead. “I probably wouldn’t have stopped if you were a bald, slobbering, eyeless beast. But, if they looked like you, they’d never have to chase down their prey. It would just come to them.”
The thought is admittedly super unsettling the more she considers it, and a shudder of distaste ripples down her spine with an audible, “Ugh.”
But then he speaks again, and she is both delighted by his mischievous smile and wary of the name he shares with her. “Laurelin? Really?” She very much wants to be delighted by the similarities, but she cannot help but wonder at the coincidence of it. “Is it really or are you just teasing me?” She is uncharacteristically unsure in that moment, her hopeful eyes softening as she searches his face for any signs of hidden malice. But she can find nothing beyond the grin, and when she speaks again, she is beaming softly at him. “Wow, Laurelin is a really good name. It has all the best letters.”
aureline
dear wilderness, be at your best
her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress
Laurelin is, momentarily, distracted by Aurelin’s description of monsters by a single word she had said - beautiful. He loved that word. It was one of his favourites. He always felt like he could see it settled on his skin after it was spoken by someone in his presence, gleaming against the rich blue and gold of his coat. A word that shapes a crown that encourages the young stallion to hold his head a little prouder.
He returns from daydreams of swans laying garlands of blue roses around his neck soon enough to take part in the rest of the conversation, thankfully.
Laurelin shakes his head when Aureline asks if she's teasing him. “Tease? Me? Never.” But how he says this, the way his bright eyes dance in the darkness, certainly suggests otherwise.
“It is a very good name, our parents clearly share excellent taste.”
As much as Laurelin preferred the topic to focus on the important things (i.e. himself), he steadily becomes aware that there is only one thought that buzzes around his mind right now. He looks away from Aureline for a moment, to the shadows beyond, as though he could answer the question with a glance. But around them, the world outside the blue wash of his glow is silent and still. “Are the monsters really bald and slobbering?”
She very much loves the way those gemstones eyes of his dance at her, and she is helpless to stop the grin that spills across her dark, delicate mouth. She is certain his mood is contagious though, that there is no point in hiding anything when he can likely see the growing sparkle in her own plain brown eyes the longer they stand like this together, talking. “Yeah you certainly don’t seem like the type. Too boring, no sense of humor at all.” But of course the lightness in her smiling voice and the twinkle in her glowing eyes tell him an entirely different story.
Aureline watches his attention slip from her as his face turns outwards to the things made invisible by this deep darkness. She watches him for a moment, curious to study his searching eyes and the way his expression shifts. She could have done so while he watched her, but there is something quieting and comforting about watching someone without having to mask the expressions of your own face while you do so. It is a vulnerability she is not yet used to.
He speaks again and her gaze tears from where she had been counting the thin bands of gold that race around the tops of his ears. “I don’t know.” She admits, stepping closer until she can feel a warmth radiating from him that puts her subconsciously at ease for the way it reminds her of her father’s own sun mimicry. “I haven’t met one yet.” She falls quiet again, and now her face is made bare by the unraveling thoughts like threads come undone. Her brow furrows, her brown eyes as worried as the crease in the corner of her mouth implies. “I don’t understand why they’re here at all, or where they came from. Or why the sun is gone.”
It’s like he has loosened a band around her chest and now all these buried worries come spilling out. “What do you think will happen if the sun never comes back. Will we all be forced to leave and try to find somewhere safe? Is there even anywhere else to go?” She blinks, suddenly remembering herself, and a quiet falls over her as she glances sidelong at the dark cerulean boy beside her. “But um, yeah. They probably are bald and slobbering.”
aureline
dear wilderness, be at your best
her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress
03-07-2021, 05:19 PM (This post was last modified: 03-07-2021, 05:20 PM by Laurelin.)
Even though it’s a joke, even though her eyes are kind, even the suggestion of being boring bothers Laurelin. That’s one of the last things he ever wanted to be described as - right alongside being told he was ugly.
He’ll brood on that later when there are less distractions, wondering what he could have done differently to avoid even the suggestion of being boring, even as a joke.
The fact that she shifts a little closer and that eases some of these thoughts enough for him to focus on her words. Which are a little depressing so maybe he would’ve been better off not returning to the present and staying lost in his head. Laurelin had never thought such things - but he listens with some patience for them to be over, for her to get them all out. Maybe then they can talk of cheerier things.
“What’s so bad about the dark? You know, besides the monsters.” He can’t help but ask with a small smile - easy for him while they both stand in the soft blue glow of his light. Laurelin didn’t mind the idea of the sun never coming back, but that’s mostly because he just didn’t think past the aesthetics of it all.
“I don’t think we’ll have to leave, I’m sure there’s some kind of magic that’ll keep everything alive if the sun never comes back. Right? We've got every type of magic you could ever think of - surely someone will find a solution to one problem or another.”
