"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
05-27-2021, 06:56 PM (This post was last modified: 05-27-2021, 06:56 PM by Risa.)
It has been nearly a year since she’s returned, but Risa has still not fully adjusted. She keeps shying away from making attempts, slinking into the forest and going deep enough until the colours are muted and rich and she can breathe a little easier.
She’s returned from the afterlife but she is still playing the part of a ghost. Still unsure of what it means to be alive and if she really wants any part of it. Or how to become a part of it. She had liked winter, when everything around her had been shades of white and brown, except for the occasional blue sky. It had been easier to stand in the open when there was snow hiding everything that was too much. But now that spring is inching towards summer, the world is bright and green once again and she retreats as though the vibrancy burns her.
Part of her knows this is silly, that she had lived perfectly fine in the world once. Everyone else seems to manage it perfectly fine. The living world is filled with incredible magic and magnificent things that she would have never even been able to imagine. She wants to find a place amongst it, as plain as she is in comparison.
Each morning she encourages herself to drift towards the spot where the meadow and forest blend, each morning she makes it a little further before she begins to doubt her ability to hold a conversation, to hold the attention of anyone that might come across her way.
Some days she does emerge from the woods, some days she moves among the light where the dapples on her coat shimmer and she shares quiet laughter with strangers.
But on days like today, she retreats quickly - plagued by doubts she cannot really put a name to. Days like today, when the sun begins to set and the shadows begin to deepen, she just tells herself that tomorrow will be one of the better days and she’ll try again.
06-01-2021, 10:21 PM (This post was last modified: 06-01-2021, 10:22 PM by Illum.)
ILLUM
He knows what it is to be a ghost. He even knows what it is to be so vastly different from your own past that you know, without the shadow of a doubt, who you were would never recognize who it is you’ve become. As a boy he had been bright and bold, naive enough to dream of a future where his kingdom was the keeper of his soul, the duty of servitude his closest companion. He had meant to learn how to fight, how to serve in an army alongside his brothers and sisters. He had wanted to believe that there was something great enough to dedicate his life to.
He had not expected to be so wholly changed by a stranger who dove into his mind and found the darkest parts, dragging them to the surface until it was all he was made of. A stranger who took more than he was ever willing to give, and returned none of what he would have chosen to keep. She chose violence, like her name, and taught him a savagery that to this day he still did not know whether it came from her heart or his. She had slipped into his mind and taken it like it had never belonged to him, and he had yielded in a way that he would never forgive himself for.
Still, in some ways that boy's dream had been realized.
It had come later and when he had not deserved it, and had not been a kingdom, but a heart he would surrender every part of himself to protect.
An angel, just not his.
The thought of her is a turbulence inside his soul that he is still not ready to face, a roiling in the dark of his chest that leaves him broken open like a yawning chasm. He has sunk so deep inside his own shadows that they creep along his skin and leave him as indistinct as any midnight sky. He has seen his reflection and he knows that it looks like he is disappearing, like vital pieces of him are eroding faster than he can hold them together, drifting into a dark that follows him more faithfully than any shadow.
He is shadow bleeding into night, but for some reason he cannot possibly fathom, the night bleeds back into him.
It is never far from him these days, and he can often find it caught like shadows beneath the boughs of the lower trees, splashes of midnight black all strewn through with stars even when the sun is a golden glow on a distant horizon. On days where his mood is particularly dour, he finds that it swells around him until he is buried in the gauzy, starry dark, a lonely planet drifting through space with no gravity to guide it. He is not so stupid as to be unaware that something in him has changed, that the darkness inside him is more and vast and threatens to consume every part of who he is. He might even worry if there were anyone in his life to worry about. But there is only him and he does not fear the loss of himself.
He slips through the shadows, teleporting yards of distance at a time as he appears beneath one tree and then the next, then again fifty feet further. It is not unlike pacing for the mindless way it exhausts his power, exhausts this aching inside his chest that feels like being carved in two. He teleports again and nearly collides with a small bay mare who earns his reflexive ire, as though it is her fault that he is unraveling. “Careful, little mouse.” He warns, and the dark around them deepens until it is filled with swirls of black and a navy so dark it could only be the color of midnight. Stars blink into existence around them, and he ignores the ones that trail and drift like a sparkling comet tail at his heels.
Maybe it is because she is a doelike little thing, because she is delicate and gentle and reminds him not at all of his own creeping dark. But he frowns and studies her, ignoring the shimmer of her dapples beneath a splash of sunlight through the leaves of this breezy tree for the way the sudden glow reminds him of someone else. His head turns from her to study the sky and the creeping indigo like a bruise along the horizon. His strange eyes flare, that thin ring of silver around the pupil burning bright like molten ore for one single second. “It’s getting late, little mouse. You should go home.” There is something quiet in his voice now - not soft or gentle, but a warning when he fixes his focus back on her, studies the angles of a delicate face and the round shape of those deep blue eyes. “Surely you don’t find yourself missing the dark.” It is the way he says those last two words, slow and deliberate, the way he shifts to allow her gaze to fall on more of him. The vast black expanse of his body, the stardust and dark wisps of his mane and his tail. Even his wings seem hazy with the dark, though they glow softly beneath the feathers, illuminated oddly from within.
It’s as if she’s summoned a piece of the night by her unwillingness to step out into the day. As she retreats to the shadows, a piece of them materializes in front of her in the shape of another horse but so unlike her she’s sure they must be another species. Sure he must be some deity. The sheer power that many individuals have in this new version of the world is startling, and to have it so brazenly on display might have prompted a comment - had it not been for how he greets her.
Little mouse.
The nickname irritates her, but who is Risa to argue? As she scampers back and forth between light and day, hiding from those who might crush her. He does not seem like a fellow mouse, this stranger woven from the night itself, but he does not frighten her as much as the wide world does. As much as those first few steps it would take to try to assimilate herself into a life she is no longer sure she even wants.
She knew that those that exist now have more power than when she had first lived, but it is fascinating to see up close. Fascinating and intimidating for a mare who’s only unique attribute is the way her dapples shimmer beneath the sunlight.
“I do miss the dark.” Risa answers honestly while she takes advantage of the way he shifts his stance so she can see more of him, unashamedly taking the opportunity presented to her. If he hadn’t wanted her to look, he wouldn’t have made it so easy for her - right? She continues, a little distractedly, as her dark eyes try to figure out where the glow on his wings is coming from. “It was easier then. Everything is too bright now.” And then finally some sense of politeness returns to her and she brings her eyes back to his.
And then she’s talking again, though she’s not too sure why. It’s drawn out of her, these quiet words. “The afterlife had been grey, and in comparison -” And there her words falter because the world around them is explanation enough. She just needs to gesture to the brilliant shades of green, the glimmer of sky above them through those leaves as day shifts to night.
He would have laughed if he knew she thought him to be some kind of deity, something more than mortal and wrong and entirely broken down to his barest parts. He has seen his reflection, has seen the way he’s changed into something that is both more than he was and entirely less, and he does not think God. He thinks he is the erosion that has always been inside his chest, the dark that lived inside him long before he recognized whose eyes were staring back at him. It was only a matter of time until it consumed him, until he became the deep and the dark and the absence of anything at all.
He just hadn’t expected the stars.
They made him feel lighter in a way that was unexpected, made that knot in his chest loosen just a little, just enough to breathe.
He finds it curious the way she searches him so openly, and he cannot help but wonder what it is she thinks of as her eyes trace the dark impermanence of his body, his stars, the silhouette of large feather wings. He thinks she should be frightened of him, but there is no new tension coiling beneath the shimmering dapples of her dark skin. Perhaps not a mouse after all.
“Not everything.” He says, and when her eyes finish their quiet exploration and return to his face, his own steady gaze is carefully flat and waiting. “Though you seem to have noticed that for yourself.” He doesn’t move a single step, but night billows around him as though it follows the laws of liquid, spilling silently over everything in his general vicinity. His eyes move from her face to study her, and though she gave him no invitation to do so he studies her plainness openly. She is a shade of brown that would be entirely unremarkable in such a colorful world if not for the way its deepness reminds him of the deep forests of home.
Her voice is something quiet, but it reclaims his attention anyway as he returns to studying her face, studying a pain he imagines he can see flitting around in the backs of her eyes. “You were dead?” The question is flat because he forces it to be, forces his golden eyes to be still and blank despite the curiosity that burns inside them with the ferocity of stars gone supernova. The dark around him deepens, his mane a web of silk stardust drifting above his neck.
In the next instant he is nearly nose to nose with her, having teleported through his own shadows to stand close enough to look down into eyes a shade of blue so dark they could belong to his night. At a distance he had thought them as brown as her coat.
He is glad to be wrong.
“Would you like to see the forests of my home?” His eyes flash now, a brilliantly dark gold better suited to a molten sun than any silver star. “I don’t know of any place darker.” Besides himself, of course, he thinks behind the slow crawl of a dark, humorless smile.
She had looked upon him without shame but when he refers to her staring, she feels admonished, her dark head ducking a little in embarrassment. Nevermind that he had clearly placed himself on display for her, or that the shadows seem to billow around him in further invitation for her to watch.
He doesn’t sound particularly interested in the fact that she was dead, not that she can blame him. Still, she answers anyway - because it’s a question and she was raised (a long time ago) to be polite. “I was dead for so long I don’t remember what it is to be alive.” She tells him as though it is very simple and not a source of constant strife every single day that the sun rises.
Maybe she would have tried to explain more, or maybe she would have run off then like the mouse she is, except for what happens next. Risa jumps in her skin when she blinks and he is right in front of her, close enough to touch - close enough that she can feel his breath. This does nothing to persuade her that she was wrong to consider him a deity - on the contrary, it confirms this idea. No mortal could do such things.
Her dark blue eyes are wide in amazement and fear, these same emotions causing her heart to race rapidly in her chest.
But she’s held still - caught by the flash in his dark golden eyes and the mention of his home so she does not move away. Her interest in what he has said is at war with some remnant of self-preservation that tells her this is a predator she should avoid. Not someone she should willingly step into the den of, driven by a curiosity to see what sort of place a creature like this would call home. He says forests but she is picturing trees so close they form a cave, branches so dense they block out the sun.
And that is a place this mouse would like to see. So she nods, and when she is not sure that is enough a very quiet “Yes” escapes her on her next breath - still feeling caught, still unable to look away from his molten eyes.
