"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
04-30-2021, 10:24 PM (This post was last modified: 04-30-2021, 10:32 PM by Tarian.)
Most of his days begin like this.
Tarian spends his nights patrolling because in the life he lead before Beqanna, there had been little time for sleep; a soldier rests little while waiting for the dawn of battle to come. It had been easier to do something instead of waiting for the sun to rise. As a young stallion, he had volunteered for sentry duty and as the years had passed, more roles had been offered to the former Heir. Battle tactics, scouting, raiding parties.
He patrols nightly but the lull of peace is something new for Tarian. Loess has no real enemies (there is little love for Pangea but the Dark God's country has grown quiet and the pegasus can think of no better fate for a foe than to be forgotten). Their numbers are few but they are steadily growing.
Still, this life is not like one that Tarian has known before and so perhaps it makes him cling to his rituals and habits all the more.
After the patrols are done and there is nothing needed of him from Lady Oceane, the gray stallion comes to this beach. He doesn't stay long but each morning, it is the same. Tarian moves towards the surf and wades into the water. He drifts further and further out to where the waves finally crest over him and so he dives underneath them, flaring out his wide wings and soaking himself in ocean water. The pegasus always vanishes for a while but then resurfaces and finally departs from the sea to another part of the beach where the sun can warm him as he dries off.
There is a sound - something separate from the gull's cry or the sound of the waves dragging pebbles back to its murky depths - that makes the older stallion lift his Spanish head. It would seem his secret beach has been found and Tarian isn't pleased; his last encounters had been Altissima discovering his new ... talent, Tiercel rising from one of Loess' lakes like a swamp creature, or Ashhal having a chunk of himself being torn off by a shadow monster.
None of these sound appealing this early in the morning, especially when he has just been up all night patrolling.
"By the breezes, girl." Tarian says to the dark filly that he sees. "Has no one taught you - ," and then he stops because her ebony coat catches the light just right and the pegasus is reminded of his younger sisters that he hasn't seen in years. Mina had been graying out the last time he saw her - a pale coat that she shared with their grandmother and father - but Maren's had shined as this girl's had. There are plenty of differences; her wings hadn't been glowing nor had there been any splashes of white. His sister had a pair of mismatched eyes, Brynn's green and Valerio's blue, where this one has only a shade of green to rival Spring.
But it's enough to catch him off guard.
It's enough that it makes his anger fade, enough that it appears he's only mildly annoyed at this disturbance of his morning routine. While he hasn't seen her before, there is no overwhelming stench of another territory mingling in the air and Tarian can only assume that she has been long enough to shed her old life. The Champion - despite his dripping wings and soaked mane - somehow manages a stoic expression and considers her with a blue-eyed stare. He decides to state the obvious (and disclude himself from the statement): "You're up early."
@[Cheri] please let me know if i need to change anything
“Sorry.” Cheri quickly murmured, just as shocked to see the gray stallion as he seemed to see her. She hadn’t exactly meant to stumble on this particular spot, but the winding canyons here were still so new and unfamiliar. She’d forgotten how many turns she’d taken during the trip out here. “I was up all night is more like it.” Her slender head drooped, heavy with exhaustion.
At least he wasn’t keen on chasing her off.
She wished that she knew him. Cheri had been given a crash-course introduction on Loess and her keepers, retaining very little useful information from that brief initiation period aside from the knowledge that there were other horses in-residence here. Mostly males - she did remember that much - “and this could very well be one of them.” She reasoned. The young mare tried her best to stifle a yawn, blinking away the sand in her eyes from a poor night’s sleep, and she decided honesty as the best policy going forward from here.
“I’m Cheri, a new arrival here.” She explained briefly. “I haven’t exactly found a comfortable place for myself yet. It’s so … open here. Not what I’m used to.” Her smile was a brief one.
Loess was as different from Taiga as it could be. The rolling scrublands left her feeling exposed when night came, shivering cold in the dark. She’d tried to make her home among the rock spires, in one of the many caves riddled out along the sides of the red-rock monuments, but had found the majority of them either occupied by wildlife or too small to suit her needs. Oceane had a policy about disturbing natural habitats that Cheri wasn’t keen on breaking, so last evening she’d tried to make her way into the canyons. Their height was impressive; nearly too high to ascend from a flight on the ground at her current level of aviation skill, and this morning she’d gotten herself turned around in them pretty good. She guessed they were a void option now, too.
“It’s nice to meet you … ?” Cheri left the greeting open-ended so that the stranger could fill in the blank. Meanwhile, her expression wilted. “Howling infernos.” She thought crossly, deadbeat tired.
05-05-2021, 06:05 PM (This post was last modified: 05-05-2021, 06:07 PM by Tarian.)
She looks even younger when she apologizes and there is the memory of his mother, reminding him to temper his manners. There are others out there worthy of Tarian's anger but no lack of sleep makes the girl before him deserving of it. The dark filly drops her head and Tarian exhales, his dark nostrils flaring deeply.
It would seem he was not the only one keeping company with the stars the night before.
He flares his wings out wide and with a respectful distance still between them, Tarian gives them a silent shake as she speaks. The water trapped between his damp feathers beads and flicks away, some back to the surf where they belonged. As he draws them back to his sides, she continues to speak (though he notices the stifled yawn and has to battle back one of his own). She is a new arrival to Loess, which is why he didn't know her face. There were quite a few new arrivals these days; Tarian had noticed a palomino one with another one of his compatriots, Ashhal.
The pegasus continues to listen and as the sun continues to rise, the shadows stretch longer from the rocky outcrops along the beach. It makes Tarian - a stallion born in a tropical, humid climate - want to move away from them. The filly leaves the end of her statement open-ended for an introduction and so he says a little gruffly from his lack of sleep, "Tarian." Once that name had meant a few things: former Prince, a promising Commander, an-almost Disciple, and here in Loess, it means Champion. He doubts that most horses know this though. Tarian certainly doesn't mention it (apart from Altissima, but that had been to purposefully goad her into consciousness).
"There are some caves towards the west," Tarian motions his head towards the rolling hills surrounding them and the red-rock formations that guard them. It inclines towards a pass where one set rises other than its neighbor across. It's not where he rests but he thinks that the girl might like some privacy. He'd seen a vacant nook or two during his patrols. "These hills can get a horse turned all ways around," he adds. Giving his neck a final twisting shake (though still a distance away from her that it shouldn't get her wet), he moves away from the crashing surf. After a few steps, he stops to look behind him. They won't find @[Cheri] a place to rest if she just stands there. "Coming?"
By the rugged looks of him, Tarian was not a stallion who enjoyed entertaining mares like Cheri. He was ashen gray around the muzzle and lightly the same color around his intrepid, crystalline blue eyes, while the rest of his skin (that being the parts left unmarked by old scars) was pale white, like the color of Beqanna’s largest moon. He was a pegasus as well, and Cheri wondered if he enjoyed a good long flight with such an impressive wingspan. She was winged like a songbird: meant to hover and flit, coasting on good breezes when they carried her along.
Most of all, he was curt.
She watched him from the corner of her eye as he passed by, appreciative that he hadn’t sprayed her with his hefty shaking, and had expected him to be on his way. He’d given her instruction and seemed like the busy type - not really a kind of horse who’d go out of their way to help a young fledgling like herself - and so it surprised her when he proved her theory wrong.
“Oh, yea. Sure.” Cheri accepted his offer, twisting around stiffly to follow in his tracks. She was still a bit fuzzy-headed this morning. “Thanks.” She remembered at the last second.
After a few dozen paces or so of the quiet, Cheri spoke up again. “So how long have you been in Loess for, Tarian?” The demure appy asked of him curiously.
05-15-2021, 11:46 AM (This post was last modified: 05-15-2021, 11:52 AM by Tarian.)
Tarian can't recall the last time he entertained anyone, especially one so young.
What has made him so melancholy lately? Perhaps it had been because of the new Pampas leader, the young stallion who had been so eager to throw his weight and title around the Loessian Champion. It had irritated him but what had been worse was after Tarian had returned to Loess.
The silver stallion could easily recall being that young. After losing his home, after his family left their mountainous corner of Beyond, he remembers being young and ready for whatever the future would bring him.
He certainly remembers not having the patience to wait for it.
That was how he came by a jagged scar on his shoulder, when Tarian had been full of anger and ire about the circumstances beyond his control so the adolescent stallion had picked a fight with a much-larger Guardsman from Liridon. It was how he quickly learned that the princely fighting style of his youth - that the ebb and flow of true battle was as natural as a tide, as precise and lovely as any art form - was not the preferred style of mercenaries and soldiers-for-hire.
It had given him something to do, though. A way to pass the years, to fight back, even if the fights and causes were a far cry from the chivalrous stories of his childhood. Tarian had proven himself to be tenacious enough that the Guard could sharpen him into something else, until the Guard had been no more.
"Four," Tarian starts to answer @[Cheri], managing to look over his winged shoulder at her. "No - five years." Five years since the death of Lepis. How had time gone so quickly? Beqanna still felt as foreign and strange to him as the tales told him as a colt. He turned his attention back towards the trail that he had started them on, with his blue eyes seeking a particular spire. Not quite as tall as some of the others but it wider. There had been a small cave on one side of it with a view of the east that could rival any spot in the Land of the Sunrise.
"So why Loess?" he asks after some time, if only just to keep them both from dozing while they walked.
all of those are fabulous threads so all parties are forgiven
Scars fade for Cheri. Maybe if they held onto her skin she’d be reminded more often of her shortcomings and how to overcome them. They’d sit like ragged badges of honor, always a glance away in case she needed them or someone else needed reminding of them. For her, it could be a good thing. But her healing is really all she has (or all she knows about in the present), and so she wears that like a badge of honor instead, holding it close to herself with pride while doling it out as often as possible. It would feel wrong of her to keep a gift like that bottled up, and she says as much to Tarian when he asks her.
“I have a gift I'd like to share with the world. Loess seemed like the perfect place to start. Honestly,” She pauses, struggling a bit to navigate the dry path that began to curve and wind uphill, “I’ve also got some family history here. Or my dad does, but he never talks about it.” She managed to grunt.
The secrets of the past haunted Yanhua, like so many other memories Cheri knows he’ll never speak about. They’re private ghosts to him, but she’s a curious horse by nature and her journey in life seems to draw her back to these hills and their history every single time. Everything she knew about her grandfather could be composed into a handful of words squeezed out of her relatives; the ones willing enough to share tidbits of information. She knew only that she had one, that he had lived in Loess once before coming to Taiga. That was it.
“He’d kill me if he knew, so I’m hoping he’ll never find out.” Cheri admitted sheepishly as one of her wings brushed up against a wall of striated rock. “What about you?” The young pegasus asked of her elder, “What keeps a warrior in a quiet Kingdom for five years?”
05-18-2021, 07:27 PM (This post was last modified: 05-18-2021, 07:32 PM by Tarian.)
Tarian slows his usually commanding pace to regard the girl with a speculative gaze. She has a gift that she wanted to share with the world and his mind flashes back to an ancient valley with a waterfall; it had several uses that his Grandfather had sought to share with the world. Stare at your reflection and ask a question, the lake might reveal a glimpse of your future. Wade into the waters and there were rumors that it could heal what had once been broken. Drink from the waterfall itself and it was said that the liquid could bolster your courage.
It seems such a foreign idea to Tarian now - this sharing gifts with others - and he wonders if it means that he has been in Beqanna (and other places) for far too long.
He continues to walk but casts another glance at the slim filly, who is crystal and quartz and gleaming spots. That black coat and those green eyes, though, keep making him think of his mother. It makes him far softer (or so he tells himself) than he normally would be with an adolescent. His recent trip to the Pampas makes him sure of it; the thought of the young Prince certain. "It's good to know your heritage," he mutters to the girl. "You could walk into your past if you don't know where you started from," Tarian tells her. Something that his grandmother - Aletta - had once told him. Loess is her past, it would seem, and so he hopes that it might help bring her present to light.
"Do you know where to start?" the Champion asks because he's been here for five years. Perhaps that is long enough for him to recognize something of what she is seeking. At the very least, he might know a name. These last years somehow feel like another lifetime to him, and yet, it has gone by so quickly.
Continuing to walk ahead, he veers right when their path splits. He's still looking for the stouter spire, one he thinks might provide enough shade and solitude (at least as much as she'd want) for the young mare. Tarian angles his head towards the few spiraling rock formations that approach on their horizon, "East or west?" He asks her, deciding to let her choose.
Flicking his pale tail when they briefly come to a stop, Tarian answers @[Cheri]: "The quiet." Glancing down at her, there is the hint of a begrudging smile. One that she seems to have drawn out of him, despite his best attempt at keeping up pretenses and protocols.
The whole of Loess will come to know of Obscene in the weeks to come, Cheri included, but now the younger fledgling pegasus is content to be on this journey with Tarian. They’re talking about things she never had the freedom to discuss back at home, and as taboo as the subject becomes it feels more freeing than anything. A typical mare her age might be more concerned with trivial things: the up-and-coming bachelors of the season, socializing, finding mates. Cheri was … an odd duck. A curious, odd duck who had yet to fully blossom.
Tarian’s confirmation that she was headed down the right path was exactly the kind of water she’d been hoping to swim in, and she liked him better because of it. Despite her first impression of the pale gray stallion, he had a knack for growing on a horse.
“Not much, sadly.” She followed carefully in his hoofsteps, the two of them treading along a narrow path between the growing canyons. “Only that his father lived here before settling in Taiga. Oh,” She remembered the most important string, “his mother is, was Lilliana - Guardian of the Redwoods - if that helps.” She offered. By association, Cheri thought for sure that name-dropping her gramma Lilli would be the key to solving the obscure mystery surrounding Yanhua’s parentage.
Everyone else around her seemed to know, so why not Cheri?
She listened aptly to anything Tarian might offer, hoping that his five years spent among the red hills and steaming hot springs would uncover another destination for her to explore on this journey back into her family’s past. All the while, the two horses navigated a serene and impossibly beautiful wilderness, one ripe with all sorts of creatures and manner of growth. Cheri took in the sights of native birds soaring high above them and often reached to inhale the musty, sand-soaked smell of a bristling bush or clump of hardy grass. The terrain underneath them never gave way to softer ground, allowing for their hollow steps to clop in a haunting echo against the spires and rocks.
“West.” She nodded certainly, having flown above this section once and seen the misty glade of fog that covered a hot spring nearby. It would be nice to have a little covey by the water. She smiled brightly back at him. “I hope you can handle a little more noise now that I’m around.”
05-22-2021, 04:52 PM (This post was last modified: 05-22-2021, 04:58 PM by Tarian.)
Blood - where Tarian was from - was everything to the Legacy clan.
Their lineage as much as their familial history was studied as closely as any other topic (if not more). There had been lessons for herbs and plants that could aid in healing (which had helped him later on in life, as a soldier). There had been etiquette lessons and Tarian considered it an accomplishment that he had learned how to stifle a yawn. Battle tactics and strategy had interested him from the very beginning; but the history of the Guardians of the past?
If Tarian ever held an expression that could be described as rapt, it would be during those lectures that his grandfather Valerio gave to him and Liam and Maximus. They were to be future Guardians and to navigate all the ways the wind might guide them towards destiny, they needed to know where those past winds had blown from. So there were stories: tales of Rahown and how his fierce pride had blinded him from reconciling with his wandering son, who ventured so far that he ended up shirking the responsibilities placed on his shoulders from birth. The fables about Legado and how it was the Wind spoke to him, murmuring of a sacred place that could keep his family safe when danger had left them nowhere else to turn. They learned of Ichiro and how he earned the moniker the Fierce, going after whatever means necessary to keep his family safe from a demon crafted from the darkest and deepest parts of winter: Maverick.
And though Valerio never spoke of himself, it didn't take long for his grandsons to learn about his role in the War of Windskeep. That it had been his chest that he offered to Frostbane, his heart that had been spliced through by an ice spear to spare his sisters and nieces, an offering to save Windskeep. That it had been Valerio who died that day and Valerio who rose soon afterward to defeat ice demon and his armies. (And it had been the whisper of that story that taught them all that Magic always had a price - the price paid at Windskeep meant there was very little of it to spare for Paraiso.)
So as Tarian listens with a casually flicked ear towards @[Cheri], that she has such a gap in her family history is as strange to him as Beqanna herself can sometimes be. He's hoping for a familiar name, but the one she gives him is like a swift kick to the gut. The silver pegasus stops and turns his silver head to glance down at the crystal-and-gem mare, searching for any kind of knowing in her gaze as he looks at her again. The name she gives - Lilliana - is common. And Tarian even reminds himself that he met another Ruth out in the Field, who had ironically palomino like the aunt that he recalled from his foalhood days in Paraiso.
Guardian of the Redwoods, the younger pegasi tells him.
A title that he has heard nowhere else than Paradise.
Memories flood his mind and the most recent one he has is of a man - Lepis' husband - spitting out her name like a vice before the flames had razed everything. There are too many gaps and too many assumptions for naturally-circumspect Tarian to make. His mind is spinning and his dark nostrils flare as he scrutinizes the dark girl, looking for a familiar trace of the mare that she may (or may not) be speaking of. "Have they always called themselves that?" He asks when they finally move off again, Tarian deciding that it was best if he look ahead.
He's glad of her next words, because they are far easier to be sure of.
"Good," he swiftly tells her and then starts to veer in that direction with a purpose-filled stride. Tarian put his mind in finding a little clearing nearby, one not far from the hot springs. "Where I come from," he starts to explain to the mare following behind him, "the West Wind was the bringer of Spring, of new beginnings." Fitting, he thought, for his young companion who pleasantly teased him about making too much noise. "If you had chosen East, I might have worried."
It is strange - a lineage that had been carefully cultivated for so many years before Cheri arrived, suddenly broken in the span of one lifecycle. Her father had liked to compare their history to the trees he loved so much, twisting the relatives together under one large canopy called “a family” . Their branches supported the weight of grandma Lilli’s family outside of Beqanna and hundreds of other names Cheri had tried to remember as she grew. There were, however, dark spots. Smudges of the “unknown” that left holes peeking through. Her own mother’s origins are a mystery, Cheri only knew that Amarine had been adopted by the late Queen of Nerine when the cliffside kingdom had been the seat of power in the north.
She thinks that's why her parents love one another in the unique and unquestionable way that they do: they each have secrets and they strive to avoid passing them onto their children. She hopes that someday her own marriage might have similarly strong foundations - just without the empty gaps.
“No, no they haven’t.” Cheri obliged Tarian’s question with a winded sigh. “There was the protector Aten and the Comtesse Lepis - who was briefly succeeded by her son, Comte Pteron, before the title was given back to Aten who then disappeared. Afterwards, his mate split the title with my grandmother and they instated the Guardianship… which my father now carries on.” Cheri recalled her history lessons aptly. She knew the lineage of Taiga leaders stretched even farther back than that as well, once calling itself home to animal shifters and the scene of coup that magically closed the land off from habitation for years, but there seemed little reason to relay all if it to Tarian.
It was doubly surprising that she’d come so close to the truth of her own lineage and not known it - but Yanhua had been carefully select about his teachings and her grandmother had always indulged Cheri with stories of Windskeep instead.
It was to those stories her mind had wandered before Tarian asked her which way they were headed, and when she replied in a way that seemed to please her guide Cheri laughed gently. She hadn’t known it was a test, but she was grateful to have passed anyways. “I’m happy to know I’ve officially put you at ease now.” Cheri smiled. “And where is it that you came from? I love an origin story, if you couldn’t tell.”
Blame Jeje & Kuna