"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
02-05-2021, 12:58 PM (This post was last modified: 02-05-2021, 12:58 PM by Ten.)
He couldn’t quite be sure whether the darkness was a consequence of his attempts to pick at the wound in the sky or whether it had been coincidence. Whatever the case, they had returned to the eclipsed sun hanging stubbornly in the sky. Guilt and shame had spurred him to find answers, but he has none to return with. It is tempting to disappear into the otherworlds, to find something beautiful and strange and entirely unlike Beqanna to lose himself in. But just as guilt had sent him hurtling through time and the cosmos to seek answers, so too did it bring him home.
The crack in the world had not been of his own making, and it is far beyond his ability to fix. Even so, he still searches.
In the midst of the midnight meadow, Ten stares into the sky. All his leads had withered and decayed, so he had returned to see if perhaps there was something more he had missed. The scene that had started this all had been easy enough to find, but he is not a god. Not like the one who had ripped open the sky and allowed the others to wedge their claws into the cracks. It is they who had brought the eclipse, and their departure that would end it.
But as he had sought answers, it had become swiftly clear that this was not their universe. And Ten, whose power most certainly does not expand beyond this one, has no answers to such a conundrum.
It was foolish of him to believe that his success in healing this world must mean he could heal all the rest. Foolish and optimistic. But still, he believes. Like an optimistic fool, he believes.
With a soul-deep sigh, Ten closes his eyes, simply feeling the hum of the universe around him. The hush of it against his skin is familiar, calming even in its chaotic wildness. This he understands. And so he pulls it close, hoping it would be enough to bring clarity.
She finds him as a panther, staring up at a sky that, to her, looks entirely empty. There is no color, no stars or birds or even clouds, the only thing up there is that strangled halo of light like a broken promise. A sky and a moon frozen in a moment of time that no one seemed able to change. Not for the first time she finds herself wondering how there wasn’t someone here who could fix this, that out of all the gifts in the entire population, not one could pull apart the sky and make things bright again.
The night is cold - or maybe it is day now, she isn’t sure - and she nearly turns away from him to go home and find some warmth and shelter with her family. But then he closes his eyes and it stalls the movement in her paws for a moment longer as she wonders if that simple gesture comes from stupidity or exhaustion or a blind faith she cannot fathom. This is not a world where you can stand alone in the middle of a meadow and close your eyes anymore. This world has teeth and claws and a new kind of hunger that never seems sated.
Maybe he’s hurt though, she thinks, wonders, lets that thread of worry wind itself into a knot inside her chest. But her panther eyes roam his silhouette, and she scents the air between them for a hint of the metallic promise of an open wound. There is nothing, though.
She watches a moment longer, then she lets her own gaze wander back up to the sky as though she’s searching for an explanation. There is none, of course, and so her gaze falls back down upon him with a new kind of studied curiosity. She considers startling him, telling him that if she were a true panther, feral and hungry in this dying world, that she almost certainly would’ve had him by the throat before he realized he needed to open his eyes again.
But she hates that new bitterness that sometimes rises in her now, that jaded frustration at being trapped beneath a sky intent on smothering her. She is always exhausted, always drowning in the dark in a way that only her own father can understand. But it isn’t this man's fault, and so she frowns and bites her tongue to sheath the blade of her words.
Instead she shifts to her true form, her limbs elongating, the color fading in places to a pale gold until she is once again a buckskin and white pegasus. She joins him quietly, having decided this form would likely be received better than that of her glowing-eyed panther, and fixes her quiet, plasma-ringed eyes on him. “What were you looking at before you closed your eyes?”
aureline
dear wilderness, be at your best
her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress
This world is so full of life that it fairly bursts the seams, even to his still learning senses. But it grows muted with each passing day, unnaturally suppressed by the otherworldly creatures that now roam it’s once rich soil. He cannot feel them individually, but their energy fuels this place in a way he has yet to fully understand.
So it comes as no surprise to find himself not alone, though he cannot say he was expecting her words. His eyes blink open, pale amber gaze focusing slowly as he turns his head to peer curiously at his new companion. He probably should have noticed the panther, but he had not. For such a worldly man, he has the rather bad habit of putting too much faith in the nature of his fellow creatures, regardless of what they may be. But it is what makes him Ten. The very thing that had led him to sacrifice his own life for the very existence of Beqanna.
In the end, he does not fear death. He knows it is simply another world. One not so very dissimilar from this one.
A small, almost sad smile crosses his lips as his gaze shifts from her to the aforementioned object he was looking at. “A crack in the sky,” he replies softly, his voice thoughtful. “Or rather, what used to be a crack in the sky.”
He recognizes the rather cryptic nature of his response, even if it is entirely the truth. But he has no better explanation than that. She would either understand or she wouldn’t. And as his gaze returns to her, the silvery amber depths filled with a new kind of curiosity, he rather hopes that she would.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any insights by chance, would you?”
She has his gaze for far too briefly before that soft amber shade pulls away to return to a sky she feels suddenly mildly jealous of. There had been something new in that gaze, something ancient and beautiful like viewing a world from mountain peaks and realizing that everything you thought you knew could look so different from new heights. She had seen something vast inside those eyes, something she now searched for in the faded watery gold of his face.
She would like very much to tell him yes, of course she knew about this crack in the sky that he speaks of, to sound wise enough to reclaim that wandering gaze. But instead she shakes her head slowly, those delicate brows knitting together to pinch the white sun marking on her forehead. “I don’t know anything about a crack in the sky.” Her eyes slip back to the starless midnight, searching in the same way his do for some kind of irregularity in the endless black. There is nothing to find though, or at least nothing her eyes can discern, and there is apology in her gentled expression when she gives up and looks to him once more instead. “Perhaps that’s where all the light went. Spilled right through the crack like yolk from an egg.”
It takes Aureline a moment to realize his gaze is on her again, and she blinks back a strange heat that threatens to rise to the skin of her face as she resettles those dark feathered wings against her sides once more. She hates the way it feels like she’s disappointing him when she slowly shakes her head again, whispers a quiet, “no, sorry,” even as she wonders why she’s apologizing for something so silly. It’s the way he can hardly keep his eyes from the sky though, the way she can almost see wanderlust drifting from his skin like silver stardust. It makes her feel like he’s lost something and trying to find his way back to it again
It’s a feeling she knows all too well.
“Was it something important, this crack in the sky? Did it mean something?” Her voice is gentle, her eyes torn between watching him and watching the sky, though in the end her gaze settles uncertainly on his face. “I never saw it, but it sounds important.” Then her gaze abandons his face again, those molten eyes lifting to an empty sky to search for any kind of familiar horizon. For stars and a moon and the sliver of light that sometimes stretched across the horizon. For more than that haloed ring of light in the sky. But there is nothing, just as there has been nothing. "Where was it, can you show me?"
aureline
dear wilderness, be at your best
her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress
The dark bleeding across the sky has consumed so much of his attention that, upon first glance, he had only seen the girl. But her insight draws him back to her. On the surface, it is almost amusing to consider the sky a broken egg with a yolk of light. But the more he ponders it, the more he finds it an eerily apt description. Except perhaps the opposite, with the darkness oozing through to mute their world.
The silvery amber of his eyes remain on her for several long moments in quiet consideration, seeing what he had missed before. She, like their world, feels muted. As though the darkness were smothering her as surely as it had the sun. It worries him, this sudden sense of his. And he finds himself wanting nothing more than to draw her in and discover exactly why it is she felt this way to him.
Her question startles him, loosing him from the reverie he had lost himself in staring at her. A small, wry grin tugs briefly at his lips, but he is not one to dismiss opportunity so neatly handed to him. “Important, yes,” he agrees, gaze flitting back to the haloed sky. “Meaningful?” his wry smile widens “I’m still working on that.”
Her request to show her where it was is met with a scrutinizing gaze, smile slipping into something more serious. After a moment, he nods once before shifting closer. “This may be a bit disorienting,” he murmurs softly moments before touching her. They are lifted into the briefest of maelstroms before they are deposited on the beach. One could almost be forgiven for believing they imagined it, were it not for the unquestionable fact that they were not standing where they had been only moments earlier.
He gives her only long enough to regain her equilibrium before nodding at the distant horizon. “It split the sky just over there.” He would not take her through it - not after the last disastrous attempt - but he is rather curious if she could feel anything different so close to where it had first appeared. Whether she could sense that same wrongness he could feel permeating the ether here.
She likes the quiet intensity of the way he studies her, though she mutes the smile that rises to her lips lest he get any ideas of what that delight means. His gaze though is nothing like the smile that reshapes his face - wry and warm and entirely too brief. She wonders how to catch another glimpse of it even as he takes a breath and speaks and that smile grows again.
It is impossible not to smile back at him.
“How do you know it’s important?” There is no judgement in the question, only twin eyes that burn soft instead of bright, the smoldering fire inside the irises muted by the dark. But then he’s looking at her again with a quiet intensity that is becoming familiar, and she cannot help the way she gazes back at him with a level of expectation she cannot name the roots of. She can sense more so than anything else that this man is the embodiment of something much vaster than he appears. That the swirls of silver ore in those amber eyes mean something more than simple beauty.
His eyes harden but not in a way that feels cold or cruel, and when his smile changes to match it she swears she can almost hear him think. But that gift had faded with the growing dark, a silence that swallowed and consumed a mind that had once been filled with lovely sound. A lonely change. He nods and moves closer, and the urge to mirror him nearly overwhelms her as her body shifts restlessly in place, wondering.
She is not left wondering long, and when he reaches for her she is already reaching back to touch her mouth to the curve of his warm neck in quiet wonder.
In an instant, for an instant, the world is suddenly a maelstrom around her. It feels like wind and power and time coming undone, it feels like becoming untethered, untied, but before she can even reach to curl closer into the steadiness of his pale gold body it is already over. “What -” but her words halt breathlessly as she looks beyond a face that is warm and beautiful to a beach that had not been there a moment ago. She steps away from him silently, eyes wide as she turns in a circle to take in whatever it was that he just did. But it is too much to fathom - even with her curious suspicions, and so she returns to him with a touch on his shoulder and a quiet, wondrous smile on the curve of her delicate mouth.
“Where are we?” She says, soft and sunshine and settling in close beside him, close enough that she can feel the tips of those long dark wing feathers brush against his sides. The contact is steadying in the midst of this unexplainable change. But then she does look to the horizon at which he had pointed to, and her eyes search a sky that is only dark and empty, completely void of any crack. “I don’t see a scar.” She whispers, and she isn’t sure what made her pick that word. Scar. As though she is convincing herself it must not have been a wound if there was no mark left behind. “Are you trying to figure out where it came from, or where it went?” Her eyes return to his face again, softer now as she traces the swirls of molten silver in his gaze. Then, her brow furrowing softly beneath the long tangles of dark forelock, “Do you think it hurt when the crack appeared? Do you think the sky felt it?”
aureline
dear wilderness, be at your best
her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress
There is something in her eyes that hadn’t been there when she had first approached. A curious understanding and quiet hunger for something more that he can’t quite fathom. Ten, for all his power, had often been stymied by simple equine emotion.They were in many ways more difficult to read than the vast and endless expanse of the universe.
It is an almost embarrassing shortcoming to a stallion who so enjoys picking apart the inner workings of the cosmos.
The questions though, those he can understand. They bring a light to his pale gaze and a sense of animated appreciation to his entire mein. They are familiar territory, one that allows him to favor her with a fond regard and the faintest beginnings of a pleased smile. She couldn’t possibly know the warmth her curiosity stirred in his soul even in the shadows of the disaster consuming their home.
“We’re on the beach.” He begins with the easiest question, gaze bright as it rests on her, as though trying to pick apart her secrets. But her musings draw his gaze inexorably back to the sky. Back to the phantom crack that still pierced his heart despite its absence from the horizon. After a moment, he sighs, a long, low exhalation that clearly details his own momentarily suppressed worry. “I could feel it across the universe when it cracked. Before it broke open to let the darkness in.”
It had drawn him back as surely as a fly to a honey-trap. Briefly, a small, sad smile traces the corners of his lips. “Did you know Beqanna is alive?” His eyes drop to her then, wanting to see her reaction. “Her heart beats deep underneath our feet.” His eyes darken then, quickly masking a flash of grief and anger. “I felt her pain then just as I feel the way she still aches now.”
And it kills him that he had not been able to stop it. That even now, standing here with her, he knows without a doubt he will not be the one to fix it. It’s foolish of him to imagine that he might be able to save her time and time again, despite being only one man. But beneath it, he is still a man with a man’s foolish ego and reckless belief that he could find all the answers if only he tried hard enough.
The beach. His admission sends her reeling for a moment, though it isn’t fear that leads her. She’s never visited the beach, though she knows the stories of it, the whispered purpose. Just as she knows that if the world weren’t so dark she would likely be able to see the glint of sun-bleached bone poking up from sand made almost white by eroded skeletons. Certainly not everyone stayed carried out to see, carried out to the sun waiting along the horizon. Death wasn’t some kind of fairytale in that way.
Mindful of what might be beneath them, around them, of who might be watching them without eyes to see, she steps subtly closer to her companion. “We’re really here?” She wonders quietly, those eyes alight with some kind of soft trust as she searches his face. “It isn’t just some kind of an illusion?” It would have to be a very thorough one, though, because she can feel the sand beneath her hooves, smell the brine and the decay and something so foreign to her she has no name for it. If she had to guess, the scent is death. It is the impermanence of things. It is what lives inside everyone just waiting.
But there is a sorrow in his eyes that draws her focus back to what he’s saying, to the crack in the sky and the way he had felt it. “That sounds like quite a burden.” She whispers, and though she knows she cannot understand what it is inside his chest, she is not afraid to guess that the connection makes him feel responsible in some way. Like he had been chosen or trusted but none of the purpose had been explained to him. “Did it hurt you too?” She asks, and she is so gentle with her words, with the way her eyes search his face. “Do you have a scar I cannot see as well?” It doesn’t feel like prying when she asks. It feels like a hurt inside her own chest, a wound made by worry for a stranger she doesn’t know at all.
Then he is surprising her again, a thing he seems rather deft at, and those molten eyes go wide with pain and sorrow. “I didn’t know.” She says, and she finds she has to look away from him because it feels too vulnerable to let this stranger watch the hurt unravel across her delicate face. “How do you know that she has a heart?” It is not a question filled with doubt or accusation, perhaps she is too trusting but she has no reason not to believe him. He has sad eyes and a sad smile and if anything she is relieved to know why, to know the roots of his vast pain. She reaches out for him again, laying her cheek against his neck and letting a wing curve over him, the feathers a dozen shades of brown and tawny and cream. “Is she dying?” The question comes as a whisper, and she doesn’t pull away from where she leans eyes-closed against his warmth because she does not want to see his face when he answers.
aureline
dear wilderness, be at your best
her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress
Her awe and wonder is intoxicating, the disbelief steeped in such open trust he is left entirely humbled by it. He’s not so certain that she should trust him so freely. Not with the memories of the last one who had trusted him so fresh. But he smiles in the face of her light, inspired by the marvel he finds there. It’s easy to forget just how incredible the universe can be, and without even trying, she had reminded him.
“Yes,” he replies softly, confirming that this is as real as the breath in her lungs. “I have no skill with illusion anyway.”
But with the darkness of the sky above and the raw edges of their broken world ripped wide, it is impossible to remain lost in such gentleness. With the phantom echo of it still in his heart, he regards the skyline with poorly disguised worry. It’s strange, but in a way her words are soothing. No one had asked if it hurt him to feel these things before. His gaze shifts to her, peering at her open features for several long heartbeats as he considers how to answer that question. “I suppose so,” he finally replies, a faint, thoughtful frown creasing the corners of his mouth. “But not in the way a sharp stick might pierce you. More like… the pain of heartbreak.” He pauses, a wry expression flashing across his features. “Does that make sense?”
He finds himself delighted in a rather odd way by her questions, in spite of the darkness of the subject. There is a purity in her that he cannot seem to help but be drawn to, a hunger for knowledge that is as familiar to him as his own skin. He had thirsted for more when he had been young, and it was a thirst that had led him down the dangerous and winding path to Beqanna’s heart. In the end, however, it had not been that which made him give his life for hers.
But he imagines he sees that other part of him in this woman too.
“I have seen it,” he replies then, a smile erasing the frown as he glances at her, fond memories dancing across his eyes. “Her heart is a beautiful thing. I gave my life to save her once.” He looks away then, worry returning as he lifts his gaze to the sky. Those eyes jump back to her in surprise when she presses her cheek against him, the downy feathers of her wings settling warmly across his spine. It eases the misgivings in his heart, bringing with it a kind glow he hadn’t expected. “She will live,” he continues slowly, his voice gentled by her reassurance, “but I’m not entirely certain at what cost yet.”
He stares at her for a long moment then, nearly undone by her kindness. When he finally moves, it is simply to press his lips to her brow, soft and almost imperceptible against the silken strands of her forelock. “Thank you.” He smiles then, realizing belatedly that he does not even know her name. “I have a terrible habit of getting ahead of myself. I’m Ten.”
06-21-2021, 01:54 PM (This post was last modified: 06-21-2021, 01:54 PM by aureline.)
She studies him back, but her expression remains soft and open, her eyes so gentle despite the rings of molten fire dancing around dark irises. “I’ve never experienced heartbreak.” She tells him, and there is suddenly a new kind of warmth dancing in those sunfire eyes, a mischievousness that pulls at the corners of her dark, delicate mouth. “I’ve also yet to be stabbed.” She is seeking to coax something lighter from him, a smile or a gentling of those ancient eyes so full of what she can only assume is a pain he’s learned to bury deep and live with. “But I can imagine how different those would be from one another.” Her voice softens, and instead of pulling him out of the dark she finds herself sinking into those depths with him.
She is glad to discover it is not a terrible place to be, that he is not terrible company to keep.
“I can’t even imagine what it would be like to see the heart of Beqanna.” She tells him, though her mind is already drifting, already trying to imagine the weight of such a moment. He must feel some kind of bond to her, and if not a bond then certainly a responsibility. She blinks, and there is a new kind of sorrow in her face, but pain is so strange in the way it makes broken things beautiful. “Will you tell me that story? I would love to know it.” To know his story, his pain, his love. To know the history of the world around her, a secret one hidden away in a past she does not know well enough.
She is quiet for a moment when he speaks again, her cheek still against the warm pewter of his shoulder. She cannot even fathom the worries his mind is likely collecting, the scenarios that unfold in his thoughts when there is only the dark to keep him company. “Do you have guesses?” She asks, and her voice is something of a whisper because she cannot decide if it is cruel to ask him to voice the things that likely weigh heaviest on his heart. “Do you think she will ever be strong enough to hold the light in again?” This question more selfish, though she hopes he will not hold it against her.
She feels him shift and she thinks it must be to pull away, a thing she does not begrudge him, but then his lips are against her brow with a gentle kind of warmth that feels like a glimpse of home and she cannot help the way she leans into him for just a heartbeat in wordless gratitude. Her eyes open, soft and warm and entirely like molten fire, and she is surprised to find the smile waiting on his lips. There is something about the curve of it that chases away the shadows from his silver eyes.
Ten.
It is a strange kind of name, but she doesn’t not even question it when it belongs to someone like him.
Vast and quiet and full of secrets he does not mean to keep.
She reaches out gently to touch her nose to his, and her breath is a warm exhalation of summer grass and sunshine in this strange, lonely evernight. “It’s very nice to meet you, Ten.” A smile, small and quiet like she cannot help but to savor the way his name feels on her tongue. “My name is Aureline.”
aureline
dear wilderness, be at your best
her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress
