"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
This knowledge eases the memory of being swallowed by beasts, of the blackness of the abyss and the certainty that his life had been forfeit. But he had done as he promised. He had served as a distraction and when he had been stitched back together on the beach an eternity later, the sun had burst from the sky.
There had been a strange sort of empty deep in his chest those first few minutes as he had tried to recover his senses. Then, as the sun had returned and light coalesced slowly into an indistinct shape beside him, he realized he had been missing something. Something that had taken shape into a large and predatory bird beside him on the sand.
He still couldn’t quite put it into words, but he had understood it deep inside his very being. Even as he’d stared into the sharp gaze of the juvenile raptor, he’d known it was a piece of himself given form.
Even now, weeks later, there is an uncomfortable sort of knowledge in seeing the bird as it keeps pace with him in the sky above. He had found in his new companion a unique and thrilling vantage point, their minds (and eyesight) linked as he had never imagined possible. It is both strange and comforting to know that he would never be truly alone in this world.
No matter how alone he might feel.
But Reave, in his usual fashion, had not stopped long enough to delve too deeply into the turmoil that are his own thoughts. Instead he had thrown himself wholly into this new and bright world, as though he could escape the consequences of his poorly thought out choices if only he moved quickly enough. If only he never took a single moment to pause and allow the thoughts to converge in the silence.
And so he moves without direction through the meadow, determination splashed across his red and white features even as it writ across every line of his body and through the bloodstains where glowing bone had begun to force its way through flesh. There is a ferocity he cannot quite escape, but it is one that has nowhere to go, instead revealing itself in his overly confident step and the blazing blue of his eyes.
04-26-2021, 08:13 PM (This post was last modified: 04-26-2021, 08:18 PM by Aela.)
YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
She can't say that she minds the sun returning.
But then, she couldn't say that she minded the dark either.
Aela has always been determined to make her own way and that never changes, regardless if there is light in the world or not. The image that she has held in her mind - of who she will become, of what she will achieve - has always been such a bright and burning thing that even the Eclipse that robbed the world of color couldn't dim Aela's dreams.
Her mind is often there, wondering if she should seek the Mountain again for the questions that were still lingering in her mind. It had given her a voice - more than that - it had given her the ability to feel and be felt and it is that gift that intercepts Reave. There is discomfort in the air and the emotion is almost as foreign to Aela as the concept of languishing or wallowing. She picks that up almost immediately because it is so out of place with her feelings.
The palomino is no stranger to the Meadow. The grasses have started to grow again and there was a sense of normalcy returning across Beqanna. Aela was out here again (though she would never admit to anyone that she was still searching for Skandar) and the soul that had left behind the unease is easy to discern among the few nomads that have cloistered themselves in the clearing. He's barely out of colthood - still lanky limbs and there is a slenderness in him that can only be found in the young - but he holds her attention easily enough. As she watches him, he reminds her of a battlefield.
There are odes to collisions and casualties written across his blood-and-bone skin and Aela finds him rather fascinating, for all that he is an oddity.
When the colt finally locks eyes with her, the golden girl steps away from the tree that she had kept company with to offer him a small smile. It pulls to one side, revealing a dimple. "What has you so tense?" she asks the stranger, playing with the strings of his emotions and wondering if he might feel the pricking of humor that she shares with him (lucky boy). "Surely the sun hasn't spoiled all your fun," she prods towards the chestnut.
At first the darkness had meant little to him. It had been new and foreign and thrilling. But that had faded as the understanding of its consequence had begun to take root inside his mind. Though he cared little for those outside his ever-growing circle, those within it had earned what care he had to give. He had not had much to offer, but he had freely offered what little he had.
He could not dislike the darkness for its nature, but that does not mean he had not been glad to see it go. For a moment, he had thought it might take him with it. But when it hadn’t, he had suddenly had a much better understanding - an appreciation previously absent - for the life he had lived.
And it had made him suddenly quite selfish. He is not certain he would ever wish to sacrifice it so easily again.
But these are the thoughts he avoids. The turmoil she senses in him, drawing her like ants to a feast. When his eyes find her beside a lone tree, the blue of them is bright and crackling with leashed energy. A frown tugs on his lips just as the small smile softens hers, eyes roving the air around her, struck by how muted the flashes of memory around her are.
It is only when she plucks at threads of remembered humor that he understands.
Just as she toys with the edges of buried emotions, so too does he delve into the sights she had buried. The memories that could not lie. But he is surprised to find he is not the first. Surprised to find that he does, in fact, know her. Or at least, know of her.
“Aela!” The surprise of it turns her name into something akin to an accusation. Suddenly struck with curiosity (fueled by his most elusive sibling), he steps closer, studying her with an unnerving (and unwittingly familiar) intensity. Then, a small half-smile quirking his boyish lips, he quips back, “Who says my fun has been spoiled?”
04-28-2021, 06:05 PM (This post was last modified: 04-28-2021, 06:06 PM by Aela.)
YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
There is a spark of something she recognizes behind the boy's brilliantly blue gaze.
It's a shade that she has seen before - (and Aela isn't unaware that it is one similar to her own) and for a moment, she remembers the flaxen-haired girl that came ambling to Pangea. The one that had resembled the horned stallion and so when this fire-and-bone colt with similar coloring calls her name, those golden ears flick back.
This is somebody else who had known who she was before she recognized them; the knowledge only comes when he skims her memories that she realizes they share a gift. Is this another child of the star-marked Taigan? A sibling to the filly that had come to Pangea? Had the family in the Northern forest grown so broad that they could not keep track of all their offspring?
She still smiles at the boy but it is no longer as bland as it once was. Aela has no issue revealing all her brilliance in one radiant look. She takes advantage of the moment - the lapse in his magic as he scours her memories - to glimpse through his. (She isn't all-Seeing like her grandmother, Heartfire, but the blue roan had taught Aela to never miss an opportunity when one was presented.) The images are mostly of the dark, confirming how young he still is. But the few that contain also reveal the fog of Taiga, the trees that spear the sky. Her pale nearly curls in disapproval.
"My reputation precedes me?" she asks him (and if it were the truth, she wouldn't be upset). The smile she wears tips to one side, as if Fate was finally in his favor.
The humor she planted seems to work in her favor because he smiles back at her. "Well, clearly now it isn't." She tells him, tilting her head in a tell-tale sign of the ability they both share. "Reave." Aela calls him when she finally gets what she wants, plucking the name from his memories. The palomino takes another step towards the colt, turning her head another way while still focusing on the familiarity of his face. "Should we celebrate?"
And then Aela uses it lightly, still unfamiliar with this new gift (though she is grateful to Beyza for making her aware of it). It's just a flash of confidence - there and gone - before she gives the colt a wildfire smile, wondering what he might do with it.
He might have been amused had he known the truth of just how many ways they are connected to one another. But for all his illustrious family history, Reave had yet to come close to living up such a well of potential. He could not yet begin to trace the lines of their many tethers beyond the obvious.
But for him, for now, the obvious is enough.
Her brilliance is wasted on him however. Despite his youth, he had always known the world is so much more than a lovely face. Hers is undoubtedly lovely, but even if they were not already related, he would be far more interested in what lay beneath it. Beauty grew boring very quickly while wit, curiosity, and humor did not. Perhaps as he grew older he might find himself more drawn to pretty faces, but today is not that day.
His grin widens when she asks after her reputation, and Reave can’t seem to help himself when he quickly replies, “Oh yes, Mother has told me so much.”
Maybe not as much as he implied, but unless she could read minds, who was to say otherwise?
Just as she takes a step forward, so too does he. He shifts to the side slightly, keeping her in his sights as he studies her with an open curiosity. His name on her lips stirs only a slight flick of his ears in response, though his eyes gleam a shade brighter. Before he can reply however, the eagle that had been circling overhead drops from the sky, claws extended and wings flared wide as he alights near the lee of a large, bare branch. The sharp golden eyes fix on Aela in an eerily similar way to his youthful companions, bold and focused.
He doesn’t quite recognize the confidence she had threaded with nearly imperceptible fingers, but then, if there is anything Reave had never been lacking in, it is that. It’s possible he holds his head a little higher, his ears slightly more attentive, but then, he frequently holds himself this way. It would be difficult to discern a difference.
“And just what are we celebrating?” he asks once the bird has settled, sly gaze curiously unreadable despite the growing humor in his tone. But truthfully, he just has to know if they are on the same page. Despite his many talents, mind-reading is not one of them.
05-02-2021, 11:44 AM (This post was last modified: 05-02-2021, 11:48 AM by Aela.)
YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
"Has she?" Aela asks while considering prodding his memories more; it could be fun to learn who he considered Mother. It might be a pleasant way to spend the morning, convincing him that she knew his family members and more about his life than she actually did. She has used the Echoes as a means of communication when Aela had been small and then as she got older, she had used them to plant images in the minds of others. The palomino was certainly to blame for placing memories where they didn't belong and now this idea - a new way to glean information - is a delightful revelation.
How thrilling.
But there is a barrier; a bird flaps down and watches Aela with molten-gold eyes. She regards the regal creature back, appraising the talons and the hook of its sharp beak. Her blue eyes flick from the hawk back to the tobiano colt and she tilts her head curiously, wondering if there was a link between the pair (it wouldn't be the first time that Aela has met a man who kept company with a bird of prey instead of their own kind). His head lifts and those red ears prick forward and Aela smiles, pleased with the reaction.
She prefers bold - (and can understand reservation but she has no time for the timid or the meek) - and the wildfire smile she had given him seems to be the kindling that was needed. He is sparking to attention and so the striped girl flicks her flaxen tail, looking around the Meadow as if the celebration might be found here. "Well, you're not in two pieces or five." She tells the colt, something that they should all be glad for after the Eclipse. "That's always a good start to the day, wouldn't you agree?"
Aela is feeling the humor wafting off the boy and it feeds her own (this gift is still new and while she always expects perfection, the reality is that sometimes she doesn't get it). It makes her in a better mood than she has been of late and so it makes her next words sound almost nonchalant, "you should make a reason to celebrate."
Making it sound as if it was the easiest thing in their world, whatever @[Reave] might consider a victory worth celebrating.
It’s a curious thing, watching her. Her memories roil around her on the waves of emotion she hides so well. But like her, he can see them even when others cannot. Perhaps he cannot feel them as she can (though he does not yet realize just how much more encompassing her ability is than his), but he can watch them play like fractured filmstrips around her.
He recognizes some of the visages flashing through her from his mothers - the both of them. It’s curious, that. As far as he had known, she is his sister through Lilliana. But the blue and white mare that features so prominently is a familiar face only because of Brazen. Her mother. His grandmother. And, when he delves deeper, Aela’s too, it seems.
He laughs abruptly at that. Poorly timed laugh, as it turns out, coinciding with her declaration that they could celebrate his being in one piece. But he is rapidly discovering just how delightful it can be watching unknown puzzles weave themselves together before his very eyes. Finding unknown facts that deepen stories he hadn’t known existed.
“We could,” he agrees, brushing aside his own laughter as he eyes her with a new intensity, wondering what else she could help him unearth. An impish grin curves his lips then, and he steps closer, as though they might embrace at any moment. “Or we could celebrate the reunion of a long lost brother and sister.”
He laughs again before shaking his head and shifting back, tossing her a jaunty glance. “Mom would be overjoyed, don’t you think?”
He’s lying of course. He’s not at all sure Lilliana wouldn’t be more concerned than overjoyed. But how else was one to tease a sibling who left home because she found it stifling?
05-03-2021, 06:54 PM (This post was last modified: 05-03-2021, 06:56 PM by Aela.)
YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
Aela's tried this before, what her younger brother Reave is doing. She's tried to put memories together - to connect them to reveal a bigger picture - but that is an advantage she does not have. That is her grandmother's gift and now she realizes, to this newly-found sibling. The palomino might have been angrier if it weren't for the flashes of Heartfire dancing between them.
It makes her stop and wonder as she remembers that the other brother she has - Gale - shares this gift. She knows that her granddam has left Beqanna but Aela can't help but wonder at the coincidence of it all. First Gale and now Reave and the striped girl wonders if Heartfire can See all this as well. Was she somewhere out in the wilds of Beyond curving that small smile, tugging on invisible strings?
Life weaves together in such an odd way.
In the back of her mind, there are memories that she's tried to explore. The crash of angry surf. A black wraith of a stallion galloping behind her. And then it all goes dark.
The boy wears an impish grin and speaks of celebrating family; of reunions and Aela feels her ears flick instinctively back. You can't reunite something that hasn't yet been joined. She has certainly never thought of herself as a Northerner and Aela doesn't mean to start now.
But @[Reave] insinuates the word Mom again and the palomino lifts her head, inquisitively studying the colt as the image of the blue-eyed mare from Taiga fills her vision.
"You're very sure of your mother," she tells Reave (and feels a warm flare of pleasure at the words - Aela imagines that she sounds very much like the blue woman who raised her). Her head tilts slightly to the side again before she rights it and the golden girl considers while taking another step towards him, "what of you?" She eyes the growing armor on his copper shoulders before glancing up again. Those bone-covered plates would help him later on in life, should he take the fighter's route. In the meantime, she is more curious about the ability they both share.
She flashes a few images of the Taiga - mighty Redwoods bathed in fog, sunlight barely breaking through the trees - and nearly shudders from the imaginary damp. Aela knows that Reave can sense and see them but if he shares Heartfire's gift with this one, well, its a curiosity (and it had the potential to be useful to her). Her blue eyes watching, gauging for a perceptible reaction. "You didn't find Taiga suffocating?"
It’s an oddly evocative way of communication, the memories that dance between them. They are littered with their shared emotion. He can nearly taste her dislike in the images of the damp and foggy woods he calls home, her love in the memories of the blue and white woman who had raised her, the deep desire for freedom and power imbued through the visions of her life now. The darkness of fearsome surf and imposing black figure.
His smile widens, crinkling the corners of his blue eyes as he watches her. Between them they tell stories, many he’d never known before. It’s intoxicating, fueling a drive for more he hadn’t known existed until this moment.
She might deny herself a Northerner, but the ties that still bound her to the kingdom were broad and irrefutable, no matter how she chose to deny it.
Her question at his little white lie is probing, though it hardly phases the red and white youth. He has very little to hide, and what secrets he does have were not ones she could dredge up so easily. Mostly because he still stubbornly keeps them from even himself. Instead she inspires a wry gleam in his eye and an odd quirk to his grin. “I’m still deciding.”
Her next question piques his interest however. It is a telling question, though he’s not certain she realizes it. Even Reave, in his often less than observant way, picks up on it. And he wonders if perhaps it is more than just the fog and damp. “No, not particularly,” he replies easily, his own tone now probing. “It’s hardly a prison.” He pauses, grin unconsciously fading as he considers her closely, bright blue gaze surprisingly perceptive. “Unless you imagine it a prison.”
05-05-2021, 03:50 PM (This post was last modified: 05-05-2021, 03:53 PM by Aela.)
YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
This is how Aela learned language. This is how she first learned to find a voice. And this - all these dancing images, all these fractured memories of lives come and gone - was how Aela first viewed the world.
The Echoes had been overwhelming at first because where didn't a memory hide? Under a bough of spring blossoms, Aela might sense a forgotten romance. Treading through the woods, while the leaves and bramble might hide what was long decomposing, the horrific last moments of a murder might resurface if she took a wrong turn. And it had been in misty Taiga where Aela had first felt it, coming from the rocky shore from that mother that Reave was so sure of. A lonely beach where a memory that taught her that grief was like the ocean, deep and drowning.
And that had been the moment - though she was still young - that Aela had decided her emotions (and these memories) would not drag her down.
Aela contemplates playing her usual games with @[Reave]. A flash of an image here - perhaps Nerine and her rolling moorlands, Pangea and the dark ravines that cut through like veins - or maybe she stretches her ability to try a place that she's never been: Gale's tropical Islandres. She's considering as she studies her brother from beneath the silk of her flaxen mane. She does something that she normally wouldn't: she hesitates. While Aela scrutinizes him and tries to decide the best course of action, the adolescent answers her questions about the murky place he had been born.
Her blue eyes lock with his and Reave is given another rarity. "Alright," says the palomino. She doubts that he has experienced much life outside of his Northern home but she'll (generously) give him this chance. "Show me otherwise."
