"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
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
For a year, all she had known was the cold.
He had found her, as if he knew she had finally put together what exactly he had placed in her chest. As if he knew what she had been planning. It had only taken seconds to rip her apart again, holding her still (in that almost intimate way she was becoming so familiar with) as he seized her bones and played with her. A puppet and her puppeteer. He scooped out what he had placed so haphazardly inside her the last time. The lightning, the darkness, the heart that had been so cleverly hidden.
Then, just to add insult to injury, he had placed her in a glacier not far from the Isle. And with a gleeful grin, disappeared. Left her there. A dark scarred wing mare, frozen in a wall of ice. For a year she watched with frozen eyes as she became forgotten. As the wild frenzied anger within her became the only source of heat against the unbearable biting cold that stabbed into every inch of her like a million sharp needles. Every night she watched the colors play across the sky and tried her best to reach out to the stars above. Even they couldn't help her now.
For a year she remained frozen, barely alive but unable to die. Unable to do anything except wait.
And wait.
And wait.
It started as a light dripping first, little tears sliding down the front of her icy prison. One day she thought she could feel the wind on the tip of her wing and thought that perhaps her insanity was finally taking over for good. A few weeks later, there was no mistaking the chilly breeze against her feathers. She cried for hours the day she was able to breathe again, her head freed from the ice, that first intake of cold air into her frozen lungs that almost made her choke and gag. Then finally… FINALLY… The glacier had melted enough for her to break free.
She is a weak and fragile thing that lands in the Meadow. It had taken several attempts just to get here, her wings had been her only chance to escape as they had been the first limbs she had been able to stretch and move while the rest of her had remained locked tight within the ice. It would have been easier to go to the Isle but the bitterness, remembering that nobody had looked for her, keeps her from going back. She would return, of that she is certain, but the last thing she wants is more ice and snow. If that had also been part of the Curse's plan, it had worked.
Instead she lands clumsily into warm grass and collapses, wings spread at awkward angles as she feels the heat of the ground pressed against her stomach. The sunlight on her back, the sting of vegetation as it rubs against her frostbit skin. It is too much and she releases a shuddering gasp as she simply breathes in and out and remembers what it feels like to be free. And then chokes on bitter tears as she also remembers that this was where she had once died. Where she had first met Gale. Where it had all started to begin with.
Little Jokull was born out of the cold - just like her, he might have said with a gleam and a spark in his eyes, had he known. He was crafted from winter itself, the colt who loved the cold. He was born out of a glacier on midwinter’s day; crafted by the only ice mage in Beqanna on and in the coldest place he could find.
He wasn’t born out of love, but he was made to spread that sort of thing before he ever knew the worth of such warmth.
Jokull was named after that glacier, and made just so he might fill a certain type of void.
By summer, Jokull finds himself wandering. Icicle Isle is pretty, for sure, but there is much yet to be found in the rest of the world. At his age he might not have been left wandering, to be frank, but his relationship with his one parent seems rather oddly artificial. And perhaps the silver bay will found out later how that came to be, but for now it just means a freedom that not many a colt his age might have.
He wanders through and over the sea, towards Taiga and then on land again goed further south and east. He spreads cheer and follows rumours, not in the least concerned with Real World Problems - like lands disappearing and seas appearing - in fact he just smiles at those who seem in need of a hug, and coaxes the latter out of them more oft than not.
Jokull’s just good at that; at making others happy.
Today he is in the meadow, walking this way and that. As a foal still it is easy for him to sneak up to frowning mothers and bickering couples, or fighting siblings. He nears them, and generally smiles or cuddles them, and moves on. Those he leaves behind are usually confused, but more at ease and Jokull’s need to make the world a happier place gets satisfied.
It is thus no real surprise that the gold-marked, ice-scaled colt encounters a sad-looking mare and scuffles up close to her. ”Hello madam,” he beams at her, his warm chocolate brown eyes eager to please; as his happiness induction radiates off his little body.
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
If this had been fated to be her rebirth then she thinks whoever is puling the strings of destiny needs to be fired immediately. Inside, she is just as angry and hellbent on revenge as she had been before she had been encased in the ice. Her stars, dim in the sunlight, still glow their wrathful red hue. With only her bitterness to hold on to, with only her rage to keep her company, being locked in the glacier had done little to cool her wild temperament. If anything, it only had stirred it to new heights.
What is happiness? Had it been when she had been curled against gold scales beneath a wisteria tree? Had it been that brief moment when her son had pushed free from her womb? Had it been when she had recovered her memories in the Underneath through white blinding light? Had it been when the stars had glowed around her after being submerged in darkness and strange lands for years at a time or when a white mare with terra-cotta oversized wings had followed her to the Isle? She doesn’t know anymore. She can barely remember any of it, all those memories feel so distant now. As if someone else had lived them and they had never belonged to her at all.
Parts of her fur are discolored, looking gray against her sooty skin. Her entire body hurts to be touched by even the smallest blade of grass but she is so tired from pulling herself free from the ice, from forcing the last of her energy in getting here, that she simply pulls her knees beneath her and lays there anyway. All she can think about is the torture of feeling again and the rolling ebb and flow of her fury so she doesn’t see the colt coming towards her. There is pain when he presses against her, warmth against her tender frostbit side that makes her hiss with discomfort, but it barely escapes her mouth as she turns her wild spinning silver eyes to him and finds nothing but pure innocence looking back up at her. The heat of him seems to ease the sting of her frozen thin flesh he rests against and there is something else. Something that pushes through all her hatred, all her anger, all that bitterness. It wraps around her shattered heart and breathes something warm and familiar around it. Something she had started to forget.
Despite her sorry state, she looks at him and hesitates. Surprisingly, instead of biting his head off, she offers him an uncertain smile. “Hi.” She breathes, her throat raw from frost and disuse. A quick glance around her confirms that there is no mother looking for a lost child and she looks back down at him, confused. “Where did you come from?”
She is confused - but most of them are. Those who got lost on their way to happiness and life, to cheer and warmth and families, those who are alone: they share this kind of confusion when Jokull intrudes on their feelings and their lives, when he forces himself near like a wig driven in. For some it feels like a stake through the heart when he does, but this stake melts and radiates warmth afterwards.
Jokull himself isn’t entirely aware that he forces this innocent kind of happiness upon those he meets. He just loves warm hugs, really. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t get them from a mother; not even in a brief second after his birth, because the ice that the glacier had left on him never melted, but glistens like frosty scales under his mane and over his back and shoulders. He never got licked clean or nursed, his existence is entirely magical and that is what he gives off. A happy kind of magic.
Her question of where he might be from, come from, belong to - it doesn’t matter. Home is as far north as possible, of course, but he doesn’t register the cold - there or on her - as he is resistent to it. He is what he is without asking, and gives what he gives without question. So he looks at her and her red glow and thinks it is pretty; he doesn’t know the hue should be white instead. Red is a pretty colour, one of his favourites next to green. Green and red together would be the best, but her undertone is dark and that’s alright with him too.
”Over there?” he nods to the direction he came from, vaguely towards the nearest stream. There had been another child there and she had been lost, but after spending some time playing with her she had remembered where her mother was and bolted in that direction, so Jokull came here. He makes a bit of a shrugging motion and smiles. ”Where did you come from?” he returns as apparently, this is a normal question to ask when you meet someone - he’d heard little else, at least from adults and they should know.
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
Caught off guard, she doesn’t notice the sparkle of frost on him. Not at first. Tucked beneath her wing, hidden under feathers. Yet she now sees the glisten on his baby mane and she sucks in a breath, wary despite this warmth cradling her heart. The stars around her flicker uncertainly, red to yellow, unable to decide exactly what she is feeling. She’s not sure she knows herself.
Still… Whatever it is, it’s a welcome reprieve to what she had been processing before he had showed up. He nods towards a stream and she can’t help the corner of her mouth twitching slightly upward. Of course that wasn’t what she had meant but she doesn’t ask again, instead looking down at him still curled beneath her wing beside her. The glint of ice off him makes her wince but she suddenly catches the scales. Ice scales, she’s seen those before. She remembers who they belonged to. In fact, the more she looks at him… The more of Leilan she sees in him.
The colt asks her where she comes from and her attempt at a smile falters slightly. “A glacier.” She says quietly, her ire trying to crawl back into her chest but finding there is no room there. Not while this happiness cocoons around her fragile heart, a protective barrier that the chaotic anger can’t seem to fully break through. “But I live on the Isle. You live there too, don’t you?”
The silver bay notices a lot of changes happening within his new friend. The obvious one is the change in colour of her little glowing dots, red to something yellow, and if he squints at them he thinks they are golden fireflies dancing in a a summer night’s dusk. Thinking of fireflies makes him feel happy and warm inside, and he shares exactly that feeling of content summer lazy warmth through the magic that he was given at birth.
He doesn’t falter when her smile does. He doesn’t recognize the feelings that she has, not now, and probably not ever. It may seem artificial to some, but Jokull can’t not be happy in some way. Instead, he gives a cheerful look. ”I know glaciers. Fa says they’re my mother.” And he is happy with their likeness - totally unaware what a mother is or should be (or even a father for that matter) - and totally unaware that she may feel different about glaciers.
”I do!” Another likeness, how sweet! ”Did you walk on the water too?” He did, of course, using what icy magic he was given; she looks a little roughed up though, so maybe she walks differently?
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
Her anger fights hard against his happiness but even at such a young age, his powers are strong. There is such a warmth that exudes from his smile, the brightness in his eyes, and it seeps beneath her frozen skin and brushes lovingly against those frenzied parts of her. Her anger is shocked to stillness, still there but confused. The stars around her suddenly turn to lovely shades of brilliant gold and she exhales sharply, feeling a strange sense of calmness despite the weight of her ordeal that still balances precariously across her sharp shoulders.
He says he knows glaciers and her heart flutters anxiously as she looks down at him, concern on her face. He thinks he was born from a glacier, that it’s his mother, and her heart aches for him. It doesn’t occur to her that he’s not simply a child confused, that he’s telling the truth. She knew Leilan could work incredible magics but to make a colt out of the ice… It seemed a desperate act to have a child.
Despite her own longing for the son she had lost, one she painfully feels now that she can feel something other than unbridled rage, she doesn’t think she would ever do the same. Somewhere, a bored Dark God laughs. Shuddering at the passing thought of this small colt locked in ice like she had been, her muzzle ruffles his short mane in an absentminded protective action. One she takes to soothe herself more than him.
“I can’t walk on water.” She says with a small laugh, the sound still so foreign and strange coming from her. “I can fly though.” She reminds him, a flutter of her starlit wings against him as her feathers tickle against his side. Glancing around them, she knows this is not a safe place for a young child to be wandering on his own with no supervision. If this was Leilan’s child, she makes a note of reminding him of the fact. Remembering how she came to be in the ice and that somewhere out there, the Curse still lingered.
She wasn’t ready to face the Isle, to see Nash or Leilan for that matter. Yet the thought of this happy colt being ripped apart… “How about I take you back to your Dad?” She finally asks him quietly, her stars flickering back between red and gold as her anger begins to push back against the happiness he inflicts. “We can help each other.” She finally adds as she finds her hooves and stands on weak legs. There is not much she can do if the Curse or some other big bad shows it’s head with her in this state but she could at least give the boy a fighting chance at escape and keep an eye on him until he was back under his father’s protection.
It’s the little protection she can offer at this point, all she has to give.
