"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
some memories never leave your bones.
like the salt in the sea; they become a part of you
- you carry them.
Elliana was gone, even the scent of her was fading now from his skin. Along with it all the scents of their home and its ancient, unpredictable magic. The ebbing scents left him alone. Oh, it was easy to be alone here, here where no one knew him, where the dark of the woods hugged his body and stole the brilliance of his golden antlers and golden feathers. But even a wildwood boy grows weary of the quiet trees.
Curiosity has seized him by his too-wild heart and bourne him up upon his wings, high, high into the wind-streaked clouds. The wind toys beneath his wings, beckoning him this way, that way. It tugs leaves and flowers from his golden tangled hair and sends them spiraling down and down and down to earth.
Aquiline Leoniidas studies all the winds show him and lets the drafts bear him down amidst the grasses of the field. Horses are dotted hither and thither, he makes no move to them. Always an orphan boy, always more content in his solitude. The foliage wrapped about his gilded crown of antlers sway as the boy tips his chin, regal as a stag, to survey this open place. Always he has been wary of the open, it is where monstrous eyes could sight a lonely, golden boy and make a meal of his bones.
But now he is different, yes, still he is an orphan boy, wild and flighty, as free as the winds that bore him here. Now, his magic is manifest. Now time plays out across his skin, within his bones. It waits for him, it gathers about his muscled torso and whispers, slower and also, faster into his lungs, his soul. Ah, time waits as it never has, waiting, waiting, waiting upon his conjuring boy. The whole Field trembles to know how he might stop its beating heart for a second, for an hour.
In truth, all that stops that day is a wasp, it’s stinger poised, it’s abdomen arched as it reaches, reaches for his arched neck. “No,” The boy murmurs, chiding the insect as it freezes in midair. Immortal. Is that what he could make it? Frozen there for an eternity - untouched by time?
He leaves the sanctum of his obsidian shores, the rolling hills and quiet groves of his home. Beautiful, he thinks to himself as he flies over; big black feathered wings spread wide from his shoulders. He watches the carpets of heather and lavender shrubbery move under him as he flies low, his shadow flowing fast, smoke trail included. His shape is a darting umbrage over the landscape, smaller and smaller as he rises. Irisaen is wrapped securely into his long mane, his dreads make like vines to hold onto for a little three-foot snake. She hides as they glide through the warm daylight.
So convenient, these new shifting powers, even if he can only do a few things so far. He has mastered the wings of a pegasus, of anything equid already. He’s been lazy about practicing, playing with the wings a lot. Being earth bound for all his long years, he isn’t the most graceful of flyers yet, and a born pegasus would be able to recognize such a thing right away.
He touches down somewhere in the Field – seas of jade wafting in the winds. His wings ruffle and puff away in a spire of curling black smoke; a gust of wind sweeps it away, disturbing the smoke spilling from where his hooves touch the ground. He shakes, not sure what for, perhaps to take away the lingering shifting magic – sometimes his body tingles for a while after, and it’s not very comfortable.
He spots the young stallion right away, his ochre edges catching the sun just right. The golden twinkle of his antlers reminding Chem of someone he met once, and his lips threaten to smile on one side. He cannot help himself, and rolls forward on a confident trot, approaching the stranger from his left. He doesn’t close in fast, but moves in enough to talk, lowering his head a bit, he tips his head to one side and reveals a bright teal eye. “G’evenin’ stranger.” he grins, not deviously, but not quite earnestly either. He sees the stinging insect suspended, frozen. His grin deepens, the edges of wolfish teeth glinting as they show just a little. His head rises now, one ear upright and the other listening around. “Neat trick.” his voice is light, not accusatory or brash, chuckling a little as he says so. He wonders if the boy knows where he is, and what standing in the Field implies – was he a newcomer? He seemed it, natives have a different aura; but then again, Chem’s been wrong before.
@[Leoniidas]
