"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
04-24-2021, 06:05 PM (This post was last modified: 04-24-2021, 09:08 PM by Islas.)
You think I'll be the Dark Sky so you can be the Star? I'll Swallow you Whole.
She did not fall to wanderlust often, anymore, not since she had learned that all the lands were largely the same. That when things went missing they were likely not anywhere that she would be able to find them; not in the emerald sea of the meadow or the desert of Pangea, not in the darkest depths of the forest or the rocky ledges of Loess.
Once she had scourged this entire land searching for a way back to the stars, but she never found it.
Once she had searched for the key to her emotions in all that she came across, only to be reminded again and again that she could never be like them.
The transition to being truly alive—not just being a star trapped in an equine body, but to becoming fully sentient and not some object kept alive by the beating heart she now relied on—had been slow, until it hit her all at once. Until all of the things that helped her feel, that made this land tolerable were stripped from her, and that void inside of her felt larger than ever.
The stars and Tiercel had taken up more space than she had realized, and it was only once the darkness took them both that she learned what true emptiness felt like. It was different than simply not feeling, or knowing how to feel. It was an emptiness that also felt heavy, like an ache that was going to keep growing until her chest split apart.
And just when she thought she could not possibly stand it any longer, they were both returned to her, and it surprised her to find that she had missed one far more than the other.
Tonight, though, she is away from Tiercel and Loess, standing at the edge of the meadow. The sky seems to always be clear here, she had noticed, and while she does not toy with the starlight the way she once might have, her dark purple eyes are fixed on them in the sky rather than her surroundings. The black that had once started to creep across her white skin when the world had been plunged into darkness has disappeared, leaving her stark and glowing just as she always has been, with the addition now of flowers made of starlight shimmering within the long tendrils of her mane and tail.
She does not seek anyone out, but remains alone and unnaturally still save for the way the night breeze stirs at the strands of her forelock, knowing that if anyone wanted her, they would find her.
Unlike Islas, Ciri hadn’t known she was star born for the majority of her childhood and early teenage years. It wasn’t until she had fallen into the Underneath, had used the power of Equus Astrea to save herself from the siren that had raked its claws across her body and tried to steal her very soul that the truth of her had been revealed. She had been a star turned mortal, a gift to the world below them, birthed to an ordinary mare (although her mysterious father wasn’t quite so normal and those in the Falls always commented on what an unusual child she seemed to be) and living an ordinary life until the Underneath had awoken her powers and memories. The purpose of her birth, her connection to the stars, the secret knowledge of worlds and previous lives she had lived. Having been ignorant so long to where she had come from had made her mortality take the upper hand over her older ties, being able to connect to other equines and understand her feelings better than one like Islas could. It had been overwhelming to say the least but not as overwhelming as when she had popped through the portal back in Hyaline to a dark world that stole her access to the ancestors and the powers they provided to her.
Although she had obtained the Astrea power in the Underneath (the only way she was able to realize what she was), she had left that otherworldly plane with a muted version of what she was. Perhaps it should have bothered her but it didn’t, figuring her years being kept in the dark and living as a normal mortal had something to do with it. Plus, once she had been exposed to those truths it had left her with an unshaken confidence in exactly what and who she was. She had accepted her fate and trusted in the power of the celestial beings that their was a reason for everything happening the way it did. If she didn’t…. Well… If she didn’t then she probably would fall apart.
It had been some time since the Eclipse had ended, had been a few months since she had regained her powers with the additional bonus of the stars that hovered and caressed her body, the companions to remind her that even in total darkness she wasn’t ever truly alone. She spends most of her nights in the Meadow, where the sky always seems the clearest and she can easily access her shield and practice. She’s doing so now, pulling from the starlight to bring the gaseous balls of stardust and fire to spiral around her in a protective covering and then dismissing it quickly before calling it back again. She drills herself over and over, trying to be faster than before. Living the life of a wandering nomad, a sell-sword for hire, meant that danger was always lurking and she never wanted to be caught off her guard again. The thousands of scars that cover her dark skin, the jagged claw mark that runs from eye to cheek, all are mementos for her failure of vigilance.
Taking a break, the swirling silver strands of her iris’s land on the glowing white mare that stands a little ways from her. The strangers eyes are turned up to the stars and she follows her gaze to the sky, a small smile on her lips as she finds her old friends twinkling in their stationary positions. The ones that shine brightly from her head to her backside seem to twinkle back as if saying hello, shaking stardust along the curve of her spine and glittering through her raven tresses. As she searches them, something tugs at the back of her mind and makes her look back to the illuminated mare. Ciri had never met another star-kissed like herself. There had been Basilica who had been gifted with stars (only to lose them during the Eclipse) but it had been merely an illusionary gift with no connection to the celestial beings themselves.
There’s a sudden desire to go talk to her and so she follows the thread of feeling, walking slowly over to her. As she gets closer, she can make out the shocking violet of her eyes and the starlight flowers that weave and entwine in her snowy locks and her breath catches as she suddenly realizes exactly what and who stands before her. Her voice is gentle and soft as she exhales the words slowly. “You’re a star, aren’t you?”
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
You think I'll be the Dark Sky so you can be the Star? I'll Swallow you Whole.
Someone comes, as she had expected they would. The residents here are predictable; none of them seem to like to be alone, even the vagabonds. Rarely did she ever have to seek out company, since it always seemed to come to her, no matter how still she stood or seemingly uninteresting she was in the moment. In the beginning, it had always been those with an affinity for the stars that were drawn to her—Astrophel, Ten, Shipka, and even Morrowind, though she does not think he cared much for stars, only that she was not mortal, like him.
But oddly enough, it was not the stars or anything cosmic that she found interesting in others. It was emotions that lured her from the dark—those slippery things that she never could quite grasp no matter how she tried. It was why thoughts of Tiercel stuck with her for so long, even when years stretched between their early meetings. It was why she approached Set as he trembled and seethed with an anger she could never fathom, with a curiosity that was so unlike her.
She still has never known a fury quite like that, but she is not entirely the hollow, vacant space she had once been. She had missed Tiercel when he was gone, and she loved Kamaria without the emotion having to be planted by anyone else. When she had first felt the fluttering of new life once again growing inside of her, her pulse had raced with an anxious excitement that blossomed on its own accord. Her emotions, muted though they are, were finally beginning to take root on their own, though it did little to brighten the endless dark of her eyes, or the sharp angles of her face.
When she turns those purple-black eyes to find the source of the voice there is little to be read in them, or her face. She sweeps her eyes across the scarred body of the mare, lets her gaze linger on the stars that orbit her, but her expression remains unreadable. “I used to be,” she answers her, the silver threads of her voice brightening it from what would have otherwise been a monotonous tone. “I’m just Islas, now,” she says with a ghost of a smile flickering at the edge of her white lips, looking again to the stars that float around her. Without turning her eyes from the stranger she calls down her own starlight, pulling several thin ribbons of it and spinning each into individual stars that flicker and shimmer around her, nearly matching hers. “Who are you?”
“I used to be.” Ciri nods slightly, whatever minuscule doubt extinguished by the endless dark purple of the mare’s eyes. “Me too.” She responds softly as she takes a few steps closer to her. Her voice was unlike any she had ever heard before, bringing her back to dreams and memories from lifetimes that were long forgotten. There’s a moment of epiphany when she gets the sense that the moon-white mare may have burned in the sky for a very long time, much longer than she ever had.
Islas gives a whisper of a smile as she offers her name and the dark mare smiles back, unable to keep the spark of excitement from the silver strands of her swirling eyes. Ciri had always wondered if she had been the only one, if there were others like her that had been hand plucked from the galaxy and tossed into mortal bodies. As if mirroring her thoughts, the glowing mare pulls down the starlight and starts spinning intricate webs of beautiful handwoven stars. “I’m Ciri.” She breathes softly and then pulls from the sky herself, displaying the brilliant shield of nebulas and galaxies that float protectively around her, tiny balls of celestial plasma streaking stardust amongst the orbiting threads of blue and purple.
With an almost sheepish grin she banishes her star shield, searching the angular planes of Islas’s face. “Why are you here?” It’s what she’s always longed to know and wonders if maybe this wiser version of herself might have uncovered the secret that’s long been hidden from her. “I’ve never met another one. Another star I mean.” Giving an explanation to her eagerness almost like an apology because she has so many questions but has no idea if Islas even has the kind of answers that she seeks. There’s a familiar pain as an unbidden memory of Amet comes to mind, when he had watched her call her astral aura around her for the first time. He would have been excited, she thinks, that the world was watched by fallen stars. The pang of sadness lingers, not necessarily because it’s the golden scaled stallion that she misses but the fact that she really doesn’t have anyone to share this exciting news with. Perhaps Gale would care, he who had inspected her shield and twinkling companions with the intensity of a scholar. Maybe he could share her delight.
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
You think I'll be the Dark Sky so you can be the Star? I'll Swallow you Whole.
Islas does not think she has ever met another fallen star, though she has met plenty with an affinity for them. Magicians with their magic linked to starlight, and Shipka with an ability to manipulate their light similar to the way she herself can. Ten was something wholly different, seemingly able to flex time and space in ways that she could not fully grasp. She had no doubt that others such as herself existed, if only because she has now seen that the magic in this land seemed to be limitless. Though, she assumed they were similar to her, too, in the sense that she had not cared so much about finding other stars, but more so she wanted to know how to get back. And if they were here, they likely did not know.
But her world has changed drastically since then, with Tiercel and Kamaria giving her a reason to want to stay, and knowing that come spring another will be born.
The idea of a future that did not revolve around getting back to the skies, but instead on shaping a life here was still entirely foreign to her, but she was finding she preferred it to the constant state of apathy she had been born in.
“Ciri,” she echoes her name in a way that is still oddly mechanical, but the glimmer of curiosity in the dark of her eyes is enough to signal that she does not mind the mare’s presence, even though she does not ask her own questions about her apparent starhood. “I don’t know why I’m here,” she answers simply, and truthfully it has been a while since she has thought about it. “I was born into this body several years ago, but if my mother knew why it was never divulged to me.” The relationship of her parents was something far beyond what she could ever hope to comprehend; her understanding of emotions and relationships had only recently risen above base level, and whatever existed between Carnage and Ryatah was too complex for her to fathom. If there was a reason for them to have a star-born daughter, she is sure it was not something that would actually matter or make sense to her.
In the short space of silence that she lets fall she sends the orbs of starlight back into the sky, before turning her gaze back to Ciri. “Do you know why you’re here?” she parrots the question back to her companion, wondering if she had asked because it was something she knew of herself.
The unavoidable question, the one they asked themselves every day. How to get back to where they had fallen from. That was the goal wasn’t it? She’s not sure anymore. There is always this insatiable hunger, to find her way back to her place in the heavens. It fights against the mortality in her, the need to feel things and survive in this body for as long as possible. She knows somewhere deep inside of her that she has to find her way back, that when this body fails she will rise back to where she belongs. Still, she resists. There’s something else that must keep her here, something else that brought her into this symphony of flesh and bone and blood. That’s what gnaws at her most of all. Not the how of becoming one with the sky again but the why. Why were they here to begin with?
It seems Islas is kept in the dark as much as she is. As disappointing as it is to still be left wondering to the purpose of their “why” it's also comforting to know that she’s not the only one without answers. Her swirling gaze watches the orbs of starlight spiral back up to their home, considering what the other had said while analyzing the details of her own life. “No.” She exhales softly, giving a slight shake of her scarred visage. “I don’t think my mother was even aware of what I was. She knew I was different but I didn’t even understand what I was till after the Underneath.” She thinks aloud, remembering the gentle white mare that she had been born to. Her sire was still a mystery to her, Soliel’s only words about the stallion was that he had been handsome and could prowl in the form of a dark cat. Even his name had been hidden until she had risen from the Underneath, learning the truth of what she was. She had dreamed about him once, Atrox, in the height of her fever. She’s still curious about the man, if perhaps he was the missing key to all this.
“Do you live here in the Meadow?” She finds herself asking, wondering how she could have missed her presence after roaming here for so long. This was the best spot for star gazing which was why she hadn’t minded being a nomad, her true home being the expansive stratosphere above them. She figures that’s why Islas may be here too. There’s much she wishes to learn about the mysterious moonlit mare and she can’t help but wonder if perhaps Islas had succeeded in her mortal life with far more grace than she had.
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
You think I'll be the Dark Sky so you can be the Star? I'll Swallow you Whole.
She has never been very good at conversations, and throughout her life she had gone through various stages of caring. Sometimes the obvious disconnect between herself and others was impossible for her to ignore, and she would find herself growing frustrated at her inability to just be like them—to be able to partake in meaningless conversation and small talk in the effortless way everyone else seemed to have mastered. But coming from her it was often cumbersome and jarring, with her either asking the wrong questions or simply not speaking enough.
Eventually, she had accepted that she was unlikely to ever return to the skies and even less likely to ever blend in, because she never seemed to be able to shake her seemingly unworldly essence that led everyone to ask her, what are you?
And so, she had stopped trying.
She was not like the rest of them, and she never would be, but after the life she has built for herself she no longer minds.
Even this girl, who says she is born from the stars too, does not feel similar to her. She has the stars that float idly, but one thing Islas had learned from her quiet observation is that such tricks were not all that uncommon here. She thinks of her own siblings, the twin boy and girl born colored like the galaxy they had been conceived in, yet neither of them were actually star-born (she had always been secretly pleased with that—she is sure they possess their own gifts, but their stars were useless). Galaxy-colors and star-tricks were often just a stamp of her father, and even though she does not assume that is where Ciri’s have come from, it does cross her mind.
It is her mention of an underneath that causes her gaze to sharpen, suddenly alert as her dark eyes fix to hers. “The Underneath?” She echoes, her pulse jumping once. She thinks of Tiercel, of how quickly he had been pulled under the surface of the lake, and how he had been gone until the sun returned. She thinks of the way he stirs with nightmares and how his chest glows, and how it would be beautiful if it was not a constant reminder of what he had gone through.She did not know much of the history of this land, but she had thought the eclipse to be an isolated event. The possibility that he could be taken again causes her chest to tighten with anxiety, and when she answers the mare’s last question it is rushed, distracted. “No, I live in Loess, with my family.” With Tiercel and their daughter, and soon to be twins—the only family she had ever really known.
“You were….you went to the underworld?” She wants to ask questions, but suddenly she stills her tongue. Tiercel did not like to talk about it—not even with her. It would be unfair to ask Ciri to relive her own nightmares to a stranger, and she follows up apologetically, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”
When the hurt and fear still lingered, when it had still been such a fresh wound, she would have balked at speaking about the Underneath. Of the terrors she had faced and the truths that had been forced into the open. It had been one of the key events of her life, the one that had shaped her the most into what she was today regardless if she liked it or not. These days she can speak of the trials and tribulations in that dark world with just a slight quiver of her skin, that instinctive reflex to shake off the oily threads of the past that still lingered just below her skin. Talking about it helped more than she had realized. When she had recounted her near death experience with Gale, it had eased a little more of that weight from her scarred chest.
Islas had seemed as dreamy as the twinkling threads in the sky until she had mentioned the Below. Now she seemed hyper focused, the dark purple eyes penetrating deep within the swirling silver of her own. Some might become subdued under such a gaze but she simply holds it with curiosity. Of course the natural hesitation makes her pause as it always does when it comes to bringing up the past and Islas is quick with an apology but Ciri merely shakes her head. “I don’t mind talking about it.” She responds honestly.
Had it been an Underworld? Were they the same thing? She didn’t know, such a question had many complex answers regarding time and space. Still she tries to explain to the Fallen Star in the best way she knows how. “There was a portal, it just… sucked me up.” She had only been three, a young slip of a shadow that kept to herself. She had fallen asleep only to wake in the Underneath. The first but not the last time a portal had stolen her away.
The swirls of silver seem to go sluggish in their movement, liquid mercury as she thinks back to a darkness that would put the Eclipse to shame. “ It looked exactly like here, like the Beqanna we know, but it wasn’t.” She goes on to explain the absence of color, the suffocating blackness but how her vision had adjusted to read heat signatures only. How the putrid fumes made it hard to breathe. How the silence was more suffocating than the thickness in the air. She pauses, unsure if Islas really wanted to know the horrible truth of what lurked in the Underneath. “It’s not a pleasant place by any means. I looked a lot better going in then coming out.” She gives a soft laugh but it lacks humor, shrugging a shoulder littered with some of the many scars she had carried once spit back out on the shores of Hyaline. Violent memories that she would wear for the rest of her life.
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
