"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
05-25-2021, 07:20 PM (This post was last modified: 05-25-2021, 07:21 PM by Maurtia.)
MAURTIA
Maurtia had discovered a new favourite pass-time, and it involve standing in the shallow water of Ischia while her fog spilled over the water. It was entertaining, even when she was just standing still. She liked to think she looked pretty spooky while she was doing it too, what with her glowing white eyes and all. She was hoping to scare someone this morning, with the early sun only just rising over the continent to the east. Maurtia liked these inbetween hours the best, neither too light or too dark out.
It felt like these hours, the in-between ones, should belong to her and her sisters since the darkness belonged to their father and the light to their mother.
She is standing perfectly still in the water this dawn, a habit that she has picked up from Beyza but one that she can only accomplish by singing songs in her head, or letting the voices of ghosts filter through her head to distract her from moving.
Occasionally a combination of the two - because she's discovered that the sound of her singing produces some interesting effects on the voices of the dead.
She doesn’t get to spook anyone this morning though - because it’s her sisters approaching and she both doesn’t like scaring them and doesn’t think it’s possible.
“Oh it’s just you.” There’s no disappointment in her voice though, because this is a satisfactory way to start the day instead. She remains where she is, just turns in a circle in the shallow water, watching the billowing fog follow her long tail as she remarks “Did you guys notice I’ve been without Deebee this whole time?” At first she had just thought that the shadow pup was just hiding amongst the fog but it’s been days and she hasn’t seen the little critter. Clearly, she was going to need to go on a hunt.
@[Decima] @[neuna]
also will be using this thread to autoquest for Maurtia to get her shadow wolf companion (313)
She had not questioned their mother’s motives, the third daughter.
(Though it had seemed strange that their father had not come along and it did not seem like the sort of thing their mother would have welcomed questions about.)
But, if she had, whatever doubts she might have had would have been vanquished early on by the stark contrast between the natural beauty of the islands and the otherworldly beauty of the sisters themselves. Pangea may have been their home for a time but it had been such a terribly drab place. There they had been strange fixtures, here their terrible beauty is complemented by the landscape.
It is never more evident than when the three of them are together in these dawn hours. And, as they approach the startlingly still figure in the water, the black threads drawn between her eyes begin to pulse with light (just as they had when her path had first crossed with Decima’s).
The third sister smiles softly as they draw nearer and Maurtia turns to address them. Her heart (what a fragile heart it is! Because a thing built for love has such a tremendous capacity for hurt!) spasms violently and she swallows, glancing between her two sisters before turning her gaze toward the fog. She thinks of the fog she has drawn around her own logs, trying to find some comfort in it. But here it has only brought with it some profound loneliness, a reminder of the things she’d had to leave in Pangea.
“You just noticed?” she asks. Though she is incapable of any sharpness with her sisters, so there is no razor’s edge to her tone. It is soft instead, soft as the furrow in her brow as she shifts her focus back to Maurtia’s face. How deeply it had pained her to watch her own shadow pup fade into the darkness as they’d left Pangea. How lonely her shadow had felt in its absence. She glances then at Decima, as if to see whether or not she has noticed.
05-27-2021, 09:17 PM (This post was last modified: 05-27-2021, 09:18 PM by Decima.)
DECIMA
Decima was somewhat perturbed that the only company they were immediately offered was that of children. Though still very much physically a child herself, Decima was so wholly unamused by the company of children. The only exception, of course, being the company of her sisters. Decima had toyed with the idea of simply...speeding things along and aging them into adult bodies. However she would never do such a thing without the explicit consent of her sisters, and it was very apparent that she was the only one in the trio that harbored such resentment of her own youth.
She wasn’t the most sentimental of creatures. She didn’t feel anything significant about coming to Ischia and leaving Pangea behind. She didn’t feel deep remorse about leaving her father behind. She already knew, even at this age, that everything got left behind in the end anyway. A morbid thought for a child to harbor, but Decima was not a normal child. None of the trio were, really.
She was pleased it was her sisters, and only her sisters, she’d found this morning. Decima knew, it being a new place, that she should be open minded about the others here - children included. She certainly liked this place - it was nicer to look at than Pangea had been, to be sure. Decima steps into the sea without hesitation, allowing the water and the mist from her sisters’ fog to tangle in her legs and the current to do what it will with her long tail. While she doesn’t wear the fog ornamentally as her sisters do, she has learned a new trick she must show them one day - where she can become the fog itself and drift along the wind. It’s not particularly the most efficient means of travel but Decima is never one to be much in a rush anyway.
But when Maurtia brings up her companion, it triggers something in Decima’s memory. And she feels even more foolish when Neuna had clearly realized this earlier, and Decima hopes that this hasn’t been distressing their more tender hearted sister since the moment she’d noticed. That very thought was enough to cause a twinge in her own chest.
”You know - I haven’t seen Pup either. I thought maybe it was just too bright for him or something at first, but it’s been...a while…” A poor excuse, she knows. She hadn’t thought herself that attached to the little shadow creature until her sister had pointed out his absence, and now Decima felt a tiny pang of what must be guilt for not having done something sooner. A small frown pulled at her lips as she took a moment to determine what it all meant. Had he stayed in Pangea? Had father taken him away in anger? Had he just failed to make the trip and was waiting for her on the other side of the water? Or was he lost somewhere here, probably with her sister’s DeeBee? Too many questions and she absolutely hated the fact that she didn’t have the answers.
She turned her attention from her sisters and took a few steps deeper into the clear, cool waters - narrowing her eyes at the corresponding shoreline on the continent across the sea. “You don’t think they’re over there, do you?” She asked, hoping that they weren’t going to have to make a return trip so soon. She pauses again, trying to think of a way to be helpful, “Would it help if I looked for the last moment we had them?” That was something within her capabilities, at least, even though she felt foolish for not remembering offhand.
@[Maurtia]
Deci will also be using this thread to get her shadow wolf companion! (609 words)
Maurtia knew that Neuna hadn’t meant to make her feel bad - but she can’t help but wilt a little under her kindest sister’s words. She should have noticed right away when her wolf was missing! Shouldn’t have just assumed that sweet Deebee (short for Deathbringer) had been mixed up in her new fog. But there had just been so many changes recently that it had gotten lost in her mind. But now that the absence had been discovered, she was determined to fix it.
And she is glad too that Decima seems to have misplaced Pup. At least she’s not the only irresponsible one.
She twists her head around to look at the shoreline across the sea when Decima mentions it. Maurtia frowns at that shore, as though scowling at it will reveal her wolf pup waiting there for her or make the shore a little closer so that they can easily investigate. She hadn’t minded that their mother had taken them here until this very moment, until it was mildly inconvenient with the half-baked plans that are beginning to form in her head. They could, very likely, just walk up to their magical mother and ask her for help.
But of all the plans that are forming, this is not one of them. She loves her mother, even that dark father, but her bond with her sisters goes deeper - and it is with them that her mind always will create schemes until she is reminded that others exist in the world.
It’s pretty handy to have sisters with such wonderful talents. Maurtia lights up at Decima’s suggestion that she look for where they last had them - her glowing eyes brighter for the smile that appears. “Yeah! Do that, Dec.”
She looks back to the distant shore before glancing at each of her sisters. “I don’t think mom will like it if we swim all that way.” Maurtia says this out of some sense of obligation - she is the eldest of the three, after all. She should pretend to be the responsible one. But it is still obvious in the way that she says it that she’s really saying ‘mom won’t like it but if we gotta do it, we gotta do it’. Forgetting, for the moment, that she has not yet had the chance to learn how to swim.
How the third sister’s heart pulses with grief when Decima admits that she had hardly noticed the absence of her companion either. (Perhaps if she were older, the third sister might have realized that her connection to her own wolf pup had as much to do with her connection to their father and their homeland as it did to the wolf pup itself. Alas, she is only a child and, for the moment, she fixates only on the pups they’d left behind.) Had she been a fool to so fully mourn the loss of her companion when her sisters had apparently had no problem leaving theirs behind?
She lapses into a heavy silence as Decima and Maurtia discuss Decima glancing into the past to see when they’d had them last. The third sister knows exactly the last moment she’d laid eyes on Eros. She doesn’t need Decima to tell her. She remembers, quite vividly, stepping up onto the raft their mother had built them and turning to watch Eros disappear from view.
She shifts uncomfortably. “You don’t need to look for Eros,” she says quietly, embarrassment pulsing in the narrow space at the base of her throat, ashamed of her inability to forget when her sisters seemed unable to remember.
Eager to distract herself from her shame, she follows Maurtia’s gaze to the distant shore. She takes a small series of steps into the surf, relatively tame at this early morning hour. She feels no overwhelming urge to disobey their mother, really, but the thought of being reunited with Eros puts a faint glow in those dual lines between her eyes. The thought of catching a glimpse of their father makes her heart twinge and spasm.
“I know Eros is there,” she murmurs, which is to say that she will swim if she has to. She is still gripped with sadness, the third daughter, but she will do what needs to be done.
