"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
01-05-2021, 08:48 PM (This post was last modified: 01-05-2021, 08:48 PM by Holler.)
She had a year of light, and then darkness. Holler does not thrive in the darkness – she certainly looks like a being made for light, the way her pale coat turns rainbow in the sunlight. Now, she looks more like a specter, a pale form moving in the unnatural darkness. She moves cautiously, fighting the urge to run back to her mother’s side. She doesn’t fancy herself a fighter, though she supposes she could turn herself into something more fearsome if needed – but what would these monsters she’s heard rumor of find fearsome? Holler does not know what they look like, what might defeat them – if indeed, anything could defeat them at all. Her steps are short. She grows herself a pair of horns, dual things jutting sharp from her, though the strange weight of them makes her heard dip slightly. Still, it feels a little like protection, and she’ll take what she can, for now. She considers shifting into something else altogether – something predatory, something with fangs and claws – but she is still unused to those bodies, and caution keeps her in her own equine form. Holler moves into the meadow and pretends she is brave. She lifts her head as if she is not weighted down and she looks out into the darkness, scrabbling for defiance, for looking like she belongs there. As if anyone can see het in all this gloom, anyway.
Avelina would have approached anyone, just to avoid being alone. She’s used to silence, used to the quiet, but the added factor of constant darkness makes her normally solitary existence oppressive. She’s been searching for Cru - wanting to wait this out with the comfort of family. Because Avelina believes with all her heart this is going to pass. It has to.
In the meadow, she drifts towards the first horse she sees. The first shape she is sure isn’t one of the monsters she has seen crawling out of shadows that send her heart skittering. She’s swapped out her equine eyes for those of a panther to help her see better, the pupils wide to catch whatever light they can. It’s not until Avelina is close that the gentle light of her fireflies catches the faintest of a rainbow sheen and she knows for sure that this is her sister - and her smile brightens incredibly. The happiness and relief that flood through her stirs the fireflies into an excitable frenzy and some of them dance around the younger girl in a greeting. “Hey Holler!”
There’s a special kinship that she feels with this sister, more than Mazikeen. More than the siblings she knows are out there but who she has not met. She recognized the sadness in her mother, however hard Agetta had tried to hide it. Avelina will never speak the words out loud, but she knows Holler wasn’t wanted. Any more than she and Cru were.
But she also knows they are loved too, that they became wanted, and that’s all that really matters.
She just hopes that Holler hasn't picked up on it. Hopes Agetta's done a better job at holding herself together for the sake of this bright filly.
“Pretty freaky, isn’t it?” She gestures to the sky, though she’s sure she doesn’t even need to - surely this is the thing everyone everywhere is talking about. How can they not?
01-07-2021, 07:54 PM (This post was last modified: 01-07-2021, 07:59 PM by Holler.)
She sees the lights first, the yellow pinpricks dancing in the darkness, and she smiles. They are familiar, those lights, though last time she saw them they weren’t so evident – of course, last time things had been normal, the sky normal, and there had been sunshine. She moves forward, touching her sister’s dark crest in greeting, fighting to urge to stay there. She doesn’t know Avelina well, but she certainly isn’t a stranger, and Holler’s gratitude suddenly feels overwhelming, that she has been found in this dark place. “Avelina,” she says, “it’s so good to see you – and your fireflies.”
She supposes she could shift into one herself – she hasn’t tried, hadn’t thought to – but she prefers it this way, in their company rather than one herself. She almost laughs at her sister’s comments - freaky seems like an understatement – and she nods, the move almost imperceptible in the dark.
“It’s so strange,” she says, then, “has this ever happened before?” Holler has known only a year, four seasons. No one taught her the rhythms of the world, nor did she think she needed teaching. She doesn’t know if this is a regular occurrence, some fifth season of darkness, and she hopes her older sister can shine some light (pun not intended) on the whole ordeal.
“They’re the perfect friends to have right now.” She agrees with a light laugh that sends the blinking golden lights into a flurry before they content themselves to make lazy patterns in the air between the sisters, except for the few that always seem to tangle themselves in Avelina’s hair so that they glow from the safety of her forelock.
She shakes her head, disturbing some of these friends in the process, when Holler asks about the darkness. “Not that I know of. And I’d think mom would’ve mentioned something like this.” Avelina notes with a small smile in her green eyes that dance in the moving glow of her fireflies. That certainly would have made for a story she would have willingly listened to.
But, worried that the fact that this hasn’t happened before and is unprecedented, Avelina is quick to continue with warmth in her voice. “I don’t think it’ll last long, though.” Even though she cannot possibly know this, there’s a certainty to the words. She believes it with absolute certainty. “Then we’ll be back to playing in the sun before we know it.”
She regards her younger sister, and the horns that adorn her head, before asking in a perhaps not-so-subtle way to distract them both from the darkness “Have you tried to fly yet?”
Holler nods in the darkness, a ghostly movement of her white head, dimly lit by fireflies. She had guessed as much – it seems like someone would have warned them – but there is a lot she doesn’t know, and as she’s learned pieces of Beqanna’s long and often grisly history, a reoccurring eclipse didn’t seem too implausible.
“I didn’t think so,” she says, “which might be even more troubling.”
She does not want to live in some novel disaster, she misses sunshine and daylight, though they seem increasingly distant in her memory. She hopes she will not forget it altogether, the feeling of light on her skin, how she once glinted rainbow in the sunshine.
Avelina moves on to other topics, which Holler supposes she is grateful for – they have already been thrust into the darkness, forced to live it, it’s best not to let it dominate every conversation, as well. Avelina asks of flying, and Holler thinks back.
“Not since I was little,” she says, as if she isn’t little now – half-grown, taller than she used to be but still not fitting together right, legs a little too long and mane still holding tufts of baby frizz.
“I haven’t tried in the dark,” she admits, “though I suppose being something like a bat would help me now. What about you?”
Agetta had taught her something of shifting, and she knows her mother had hoped she would learn more from her siblings, but the darkness and terror had fallen before Holler could really embrace the art, leaving her in this in-between, host to a power she still knew so little of.
Avelina offers what she hopes is an encouraging smile to her younger sister, full of warmth, when Holler mentions that the lack of any precedent for this eclipse makes it more troublying. Troubling thoughts tend not to stick into this young mare’s mind and this eclipse, the darkness, and even the shadows that she sometimes sees moving in the corner of her eye - none of it truly bothers her. She believes with absolute certainty that it is temporary, that in a year or a season from now they’ll all marvel at the time they had spent in the dark.
But she is, absolutely, looking forward to seeing the stars again.
And she’s glad Holler does not seem to mind the change in subject to something a little more fun.
“A little - more when the sun was out, I’ve become very fond of becoming a small bird and seeing the world from a different point of view. Though I had never thought of a bat that’s such a good idea.” With a delighted smile, Avelina does so now - trading her charcoal grey horse body for that of a fruit bat. Her fireflies dance around this new body nervously and the bat laughs as she beats her wings to hover in the air - those pale green eyes remaining ever the same and shine brightly as she looks to her sister.
