"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
Svedka is unsure as to what draws him into the snow-laden woods. In another time, he would blame his wanderlust spirit; an ancient instinct to move from place to place, never settling down. Now, however, he is not so sure.
Too often have things been taken from him, swept away without warning. It has become a recurring thought in his head - why him? Why steal his life with the curse of a shapeshifter, why bring him to the afterlife and back again, only to succumb to the underworld that now craves his own flesh? He wonders often if he should have stayed there, amidst the blackness and the silence. Would that be better than to wander earth-side with the creeping dread looming over him?
Fresh snow crunches gingerly beneath his hooves, crystalline and nearly untouched. The trees are tall and silent, sentient yet forever mute, their dark limbs stretching to a gray, cloudy sky. Dusk was approaching, Svedka could tell, signaled by the shiver that runs hastily down his spine. The thinness of his coat gives him away - a Tephran born stallion out of place(a once prince, and even a ruler) amidst the snowdrifts of winter.
Another chill vibrates through his bones and this time he stops, for it was not the cold that instigated it.
He snorts, lifting his head slightly as a plume of vapor condenses around the stark white and deep gold of his face.
Not surprisingly, he feels as though he is being watched.
She was already awake by the time the sun rose, those burning plasma-ringed eyes lifted intently to a light that climbed shyly to the edge of the horizon, hovering there quietly for long moments until it finally tipped over into the bottom crease of a slowly waking sky. She stayed long enough to watch the stars fully disappear, to watch pink and gold spill into a sky that would later be cloudless and cornflower blue. She stayed until her heart stopped racing, until that quiet fear she spoke of to absolutely no one faded like the midnight sky inside her chest.
It felt like she would never be able to sleep again, not for long and not without nightmares. Dreams of a world filled once more with monsters, with screams instead of birdsong, and the wet tang of blood clinging to everything like a dark promise. She dreamed of a sun that never came back, of her father dying without it and her mother mourning him. She dreamed she died too, that she never got to meet her sibling growing inside the swell of mothers belly. She dreamed until those things woke her, and then the nightmare of being beneath a black sky was real again.
She never fell asleep after dreams like that. It was easier to stay awake and wait for that promised light to fill the crease in the skyline.
Easier still to avoid sleep entirely.
It’s why she is still in the forest when dusk claims the sky in streaks of red and muddied blue instead of finding her way back home to be with her family. Likely Magnus and Isle would enjoy the time alone together anyway now that the oppressive dark had ended.
She follows a trail of hoofprints in the snow, having been drawn to it by the way they were different from the other churned up tracks that seemed more like paths hollowed out of the white. These prints were solitary and untouched, and for whatever she chose to walk beside them to keep from ruining them with her own. Perhaps someone would stumble across these later and think it had been a pair of friends who left this mark behind. The thought made a faint smile curl at the corners of her dark, delicate mouth.
But then a familiar scent hits her - the sulphurous aroma of home that clings just as stubbornly to her own hair and feathers. She pauses, her wings lifting at her shoulders to let the long dark feathers resettle into place. It takes only a moment to find him - he is a spot of cold gold in a swirl of winter white, the tell of a shiver racing down the length of his spine. She watches him in the time it takes for her heart to beat eight times, and then she is slipping forward as graceful as her panther even in this equid form.
“You smell like home, yet I do not recognize you.” She says by way of greeting, drawing up alongside the man who is like her and yet somehow different. Where her buckskin is a shade of gold that seems warm like sunshine, his is a shade so bright it reminds her of cold ore. Her sister is that color too. She studies him for a moment, and her glowing sun-eyes alight with the swirls of red and gold plasma burning within the rings of her irises. Despite the strange intensity though, her expression is warm and kind and there is a kind of easiness that pools like sunshine in the hollows of her delicate face.
Her eyes drift from his face to notice the sleekness of his coat, so thin it shines like molten ore far more suited for the humidity and sunshine of Tephra. “Are you cold?” She asks him, and her glowing eyes dance as she eases closer to let him have a taste of the unnatural heat radiating from the glow of her radiant body. “You can tell me no but I most certainly won’t believe you.” She tips her head at him, so slight but it spills the dark tangles of her forelock across the white sun marking on her brow. “I’m Aureline. Care for some company?” It happens so fast, the flicker of some quiet pain that ripples through her eyes, a grimace that threatens the curve of her beautiful grin. But then it’s gone and with it any indication of why she is looking for company in the growing dark instead of finding her way home.
aureline
dear wilderness, be at your best
her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress
There is a lazy smile on his pink lips as he still gazes upwards, even as she draws up alongside him. He stays like this for a few moments longer, lingering in the moment and realizing just how lonesome he had been only minutes before her arrival. “You smell like home too,” Svedka replies, his eyes still upwards and that same smile on his mouth. The stallion lowers his head, bringing his gaze to hers with a gentle turn of his handsome face, unashamed at the way he simply stares at her - immediately lost in her eyes and enraptured. “I am certain I have never seen you before, either.” With eyes like that, there is no way he would have ever forgotten her.
He doubts he ever will, now.
The rarity of her eyes had certainly captured his attention, Svedka begins to notice the other features that highlight her face - there is warmth in the ease of her smile and the way the deep gold of her face accentuates the unusual white marking that bursts from her forehead. The moonglow and the reflection of the white snow is gentle on the dark of her wingtips, tucked in perfectly to the deep gold and white of her sides. He is content to not say anything, he thinks, and to merely stand in her presence for hours while the snow piles up around them. She breaks the easy silence with the smoothness of her voice again and for the first time since her arrival, he draws his eyes from her to glance downwards at his own body. He thinks about telling her no, but then realizes that it is rather chilly and this stranger seems to not mind the closeness they’ve already established.
Warmth erupts across his skin in waves and Svedka’s head jerks upwards, surprised. This look melts into a lopsided smile, all the more fascinated by her. “Terribly,” he admits, sidling closer with a few sideways steps. “But I have been told I have a flair for dramatics.” His pink nose wrinkles slightly, tossing his head to move a few stray strands of white and blue forelock from his vision.
The radiant heat that comes from her is more soothing than he had anticipated, almost as if he didn’t realize how frozen his muscles were until she was beside him to make it known. “Aureline,” he repeats quietly, unable to hide the sparkle in his blue eyes. “I’m nearly already certain I could never say no to you.” Svedka smiles easily, knowing that he is always happier with someone beside him.
“I’m Svedka.” He takes this opportunity to come close enough to where his shoulder is nearly touching hers (she had offered, anyway), fascinated by her warmth and overall radiance. “I do think I would have frozen to death by the morning if you hadn’t run into me, Aureline.” A gentle chuckle reverberates in his chest. “Are you always on the lookout for simpletons like myself?”
She is entirely certain that no one has ever looked at her the way he is looking at her now. Like she is more than the flat gold of buckskin, more than this simple kind of beautiful in the same way wildflowers are. He looks at her like he has found something in the strange sun-glow of those burning eyes that just absolutely mesmerizes him. For the first time in a long time, she finds herself really wishing that she could still hear the whisper of thoughts inside his head. That she could know without a doubt what it meant for him to stare at her with such open, easy curiosity.
He makes her feel so beautiful, and for a moment she nearly has to look away from him because the gentle intensity of his gaze is more than she knows what to do with. Instead she blinks, and those wings lift and flare to catch the last of the dying evening light, and as the sun alights on the topmost feather tips, fire engulfs them. She would be lying if she claimed that she hadn’t allowed the shift just to throw him as off-balance as he had thrown her, but there is no cunning in her dancing eyes as she watches his handsome face for a reaction.
“Not me,” she says, and laughter shines in those beautiful molten eyes as she keeps those wings lifted carefully out of reach of his skin, “I am terribly dull. No dramatics whatsoever.” She lifts her wings higher to snap them in the air, and the fire extinguishes without more than a wind-whisper of sound. The shift from fire to feather is an easy one, and it takes almost no effort from her, but somehow it seems just a little darker now without that flickering orange light to illuminate his face.
Her name on his lips gentles some of the laughter out of her eyes, and watches him with a sort of quiet uncertainty that draws faint furrows over the sun marking on her brow. “You could try.” She says, and she isn’t entirely sure why her voice has softened to something like a murmur, but she thinks it must have something to do with the way his eyes sparkle with a blue that is the perfect sky contrast to her burning twin suns. “I promise not to laugh when you fail.” It’s almost like she is burning brighter in his presence. Her eyes are radiant, and the glow that pours from her skin peaks in points of sunbursts. Even her wings have shifted again, and she can only assume it is from some urgent need to make sure he keeps looking at her like this.
Like she is so beautiful.
Her wings are silent now, no rustle of feather whatsoever as they are just the silhouette of wings and made entirely of soft, golden sunshine. “Svedka.” She repeats, and the word is as light as snow falling from her mismatched lips. She is very aware of the way he drifts closer, the way she can feel her own heat reflected back at her from the nearness of his shoulder beside hers. The way she wants him even nearer coaxes a heat to her face that she is glad he cannot see, though faintly the skin beneath the white of her lower lip flushes brighter. “I didn’t take you for a liar, Svedka.” She says, and she is certainly whispering now at their nearness. “You are many things, I’m sure, but a simpleton is not one of them.” She shifts her head slightly, her mouth close enough to touch his cheek, though all that brushes against his skin is the heat of her tremulous breath. “Am I wrong?”
aureline
dear wilderness, be at your best
her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress
06-06-2021, 11:26 AM (This post was last modified: 06-06-2021, 11:30 AM by Svedka.)
let my shadows prove the sunshine
He has always seen the beauty in everything - in the deep sunsets that paint the sky in ways a magician never could, in the tumultuous summer storms that ravage the peninsula of his boyhood home, and especially in everyone that he meets. Perhaps it is a trait that he doesn’t know he has, this ability to find and appreciate the beauty around him. It’s always so apparent to him, too. How could he not look at her and admire the curve of her neck and the soft dips in her shoulders and hips or her molten eyes that somehow give off a warmth that seemingly scares away any residual darkness occupying his chest?
It is the flicker of red and orange that draws his bright eyes from her, glancing back over his shoulder in a wistful movement. The crackle of the flames accompanies her laughter and Svedka’s breathless grin seems to become permanent on the pink of his lips. “I can see that,” he agrees as his eyes remain on the dancing flames that stay ever so carefully out of his reach, alighting in his eyes. In the softest of whispers, the flames extinguish and the silence of the cold winter’s evening engulfs them. As his eyes begin to adjust to the darkness once again, he turns to find her burning gaze as if he is reaching for solace within him, a gentle sigh leaving him when he does.
His lips wrinkle in a boyish grin, tilting his head back and forth as if weighing his options. “I think that’s the one thing in the world I wouldn’t enjoy doing,” he admits as he steadies himself, quickly coming to the conclusion that he would do absolutely anything she asked of him. “You would really laugh at how weak-willed I truly am?” He feigns offense, but there is glittering in his eyes and the smile on his face never seems to fade.
They are both now bathed in a golden light as if the sun had reached the horizon early and now spreads through the forest to bathe the snow-laden ground with warmth. He blinks softly, unperturbed by the radiant light and only drawn to it, only taking a moment to come to the realization that it is once again Aureline that has bathed him in brilliance. Though he is luminous as he is coated in the golden light of the sun that comes from her very being, Svedka wonders if anyone has told her how spectacular she truly is.
He isn’t smiling now, but the slight curve of his mouth and the gentleness in his eyes show all the joy even without it. She is but a splice of the sun, out of reach and intangible, as the warmth of her breath pulses against the honey-gold of his cheek. “I doubt you could ever be wrong,” comes the soft reply, keeping his head close to hers.
“What shall you call me then? If I’m not a simpleton, will you then think me a liar instead?” He asks breathlessly, his bright eyes roving to each pinpoint of light that illuminates from her skin, unable to focus on a single part of her; but he always drifts back to those beams of molten sunlight in her eyes. “What else shall you call me when I tell you that, in all my wildest dreams, I don’t think I could have ever dreamed up someone like you?”
They are close enough together that she can see herself in the reflection of his beautiful molten eyes, and it draws from her such a shyness that she cannot help but to ease a step away from him. He is so handsome, and his smile is warmer than any sunshine she’s ever felt. It is impossible not to feel attracted to him, and yet the more rational part of her mind reminds her that she’s only just met him, that there is more to men than bright smiles and clever words. She blinks, and it does nothing to ease the quiet desire that warms just beneath her skin when her eyes settle on his face again and trace the laughter she is sure lives inside the gold and white of his smile.
“You are trouble.” She says, and it is something like affection that swells and breaks like a tide inside her gaze. She is the roiling ocean, deep and vast and uneasy. He is the storm that stokes her. “I’ve been here with you for all of one moment and I already find myself at a loss for words, where you are clearly a craftsman.” She smiles, something small and sly and entirely beautiful though she would never believe it to be so. “Should I assume that you’ve had a lot of practice?” Her eyes are glittering, molten things, plasma-bright and mischievous as she searches his face for any subtle tells.
But she can see nothing beyond his smile, nothing beyond the way he seems to come more alive in her company, like he is still trapped in a moment of dark and she is the first glimpse of sunlight he’s had. It is nice, even for this moment, to let his smile give her a sense of purpose.
Except his smile disappears into the lines of his quiet face, and for a moment she finds herself searching for it along the crook of his mouth and in the bright of eyes bluer than any sky. There is only some new kind of gentleness waiting there for her though, and it makes her eyes flare wider for just an instant before the whisper of his voice is a balm. “Then perhaps you shouldn’t stay and be disappointed.” She is not mesmerizing in the same way he is, and when she answers him there is a hint of something new and guarded in the way her eyes show fissures of pain where there had only been light a moment before. “I am not so sure I am what you describe, though that does sound lovely to be.”
His eyes are like sun alighting on a dark morning, setting everything they touch aglow beneath the warmth of his cerulean gaze. She thinks it would be so easy to melt. “You’re trouble.” She says again, and this time her voice is something so soft and so quiet, something that fills her eyes with a molten kind of ache, a need to know what it would be like for someone like this male to find her so alluring. “That’s strange,” she says, and there is a knot of despair in her chest as she reaches out to touch her lips to his neck, to trace the hard coil of muscle beneath his skin and follow it to the curve of his shoulder. “I think my wildest dreams are about someone just exactly like you.”
aureline
dear wilderness, be at your best
her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress
He does not follow her when she separates herself from him in the tiniest of steps, allowing her the control to position herself beside him where she wished. He does, however, stretch his neck outwards to follow her retreat with his muzzle, as if beckoning her to return. The movement ends with him pulling his chin to his chest, his smile seemingly erasable on the pink of his lips. You’re trouble, she admits to him and his smile splits into an even wider one, a grin that reaches the far corners of his sparkling blue eyes. “I don’t mean to be.” His response is gentle and full of laughter, despite the truth that her statement holds. He is trouble - he is unreserved and spontaneous, a flirtatious disaster with a heart of gold; he is also scars and nightmares, dark places hidden within the trenches of the earth. He hides those parts of himself well, though, for he refuses to let those instances define his true nature. Love and light will always prevail over the terrors that seem to follow him everywhere he goes, joy overcoming each and every hardship and plague - even eternal darkness. Svedka pauses, his smile quieting for a moment, before adding: “I don’t have to be trouble, if you’d rather me be something else.”
Her molten eyes search the depths of his face and, for one quick moment, he hopes she can read his mind. She is hesitant but willing in their interaction; she is not naive (though he truly is not trying to expound on any sort of innocence, as it isn’t in his nature) and knows that everyone has the ability to lie and to charm and to outwit. He, however, can only love and adore and keep the promises he makes. “Practice?” he replies, that same lopsided smile returning as the pink of his nose wrinkles. “You should assume nothing about me,” he says poignantly, raising his brows as if warning her. But then he laughs, breaking the facade and shaking his head lightly. “I’ve been speaking my mind since I was a child, I think it is a far step from practice and moreso a gift.”
A moment passes and with a quirk of his brow he absentmindedly states: “It’s so easy to get lost in your eyes. They’re a rarity.” There is no flirtatiousness in his voice this time, no laughter or wink to follow the statement. He tilts his head as another thought enters his mind and, in true Svedka fashion, it is spoken aloud. “I thought you should know that.” His smile returns, easy and fluid on his lips.
Shouldn’t stay? He snorts softly, his eyes kind as he surveys her, feeling the terseness that now lies across the delicate lines of her face. “Where else would I go?” His voice is but a whisper, clouding as the warmth of his breath touches the cold of the winter night. There is a seriousness in their coupling now, something that he didn’t want to disturb now that they sit at the precipice of it. She breaks their silence with a confession he had heard moments before and Svedka quietly hums his laughter, inhaling deeply as his gaze sets onto hers once again. “You don’t have to believe me, Aureline. But you should consider the fact that I’m right.” He raises his brows. “I take it back, then. You certainly can be wrong.” Svedka smiles mischievously, reaching for her again to feel the warmth that still radiates now so familiarly against him. But he needs not to do it, for her delicate lips find the cool of his skin, warming him in a way that sends a shiver down his spine. The tremor in her voice causes a single ear to flick towards her, the humor in his gaze falling away as he turns his face towards her, searching her expression eagerly.
He is not sure why the confession sounds so sad, and there is a slight frown that deepens on his pearlescent lips. “Tell me about your dreams?” Because all he has are nightmares now.
