"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
Ruhr had noticed the change in his eyes immediately, as attentive to his appearance as he was to the Moon. His eyes were as brown as the earth below his hooves, and yet the sky in the wager’s reflection was a cloudless blue. Raising his gaze from his reflection, the feathered stallion had peered up into the sky.
Definitely blue.
And then looked back down at his reflection.
Definitely brown.
He’d blinked a few more times, shook his head, then pawed at the water. When it had resettled, his eyes had still the same inexplicable shade.
It took him much longer to notice the absence of the wind, of his Stratosian aura.
So long, in fact, that it is only tonight, as he lands at the base of a bluff, feathers streaked with sweat, that he realizes it is gone. He tilts his head, as if he might hear it, but neither in his ears nor against his feathers does he find the aura that his kind have always possessed.
The Moon has been changing him, Ruhr reminds himself.
If She takes back Her gifts, who is he to question Her wisdom?
Even if those gifts he had been born with.
Even if those gifts are part of his Stratosian identity.
Even if he does not understand, and She continues to refuse to show him any visions.
Already weary with the physical exhaustion of a day spent in the air, Ruhr can feel the tension rising in him. He shakes out his wings to diffuse it, then limps out of the windbreak that the bluff provides. When a breeze blows once more on his face, the stallion closes his brown eyes and takes several long, slow breaths.
yes i know that love is like ghosts, few have seen it but everybody talks —
Her mind has been quieter than usual.
As much as she was hesitant to admit it, being in the company of others hushed the voices in her head to a background hum. When her eyes were focused on another's face it was easier to ignore the constant glimpses of ghosts that always haunted the corners of her vision, but it also made their presence all the more obvious once she is alone again. But that brief moment of solace — it was addicting.
She isn’t sure if she liked that change in her; becoming the kind of girl that craved someone else. The kind that came into the meadow and immediately began to scan the strangers that mingled, trying to find anyone that might distract her.
And almost immediately she felt guilty for even thinking that; that everyone out here, to her, was only a distraction. That she isn’t sure if she even cares about them, about getting to know or befriend them. She wonders if there will ever be a moment that she is not in a constant battle with her mind — if it’s not the voices then it’s the nearly crippling shyness, and if it’s not the shyness then it’s this, this idea that she is somehow secretly malicious without meaning to be.
She is caught in the crossfire of these thoughts when she sees him, a brief flash of movement, and instinctively she turns to look at him. His limp is the first thing she notices, and she feels a twinge of worry in her chest — but also relief at the realization that he is not a ghost. Despite her earlier musings that it was cruel to use others for her own benefit she approaches him anyway, her steps still cautious as always, and her voice perhaps a bit too soft, as if she is giving him the option to not hear her. “Are you okay? You’re limping.”
Narya
— spirits follow everywhere i go, they sing all day and they haunt me in the night
Ruhr opens his eyes slowly, having heard the sound of hooves and caught the scent of an approaching stranger on the night wind.
He’d considered ignoring them, sure he could rely on their reluctance to disturb a sleeping, elderly stranger. The residents of this world are not so different from his last, and while these aged weeks are not his favorite, they are not entirely without advantage.
But he is in as much need of a distraction as the one who draws nearer so cautiously, and his white ears flick forward to catch the words she speaks so softly.
“It’s an old injury.” He replies, his own voice softened by age, as well as the recent exertion he’d subjected himself to. But tonight is the fullest moon, he reminds himself as he takes a near-rattling breath. Tomorrow he will last longer in the sky, and the day after that longer still. Youth will return to him, he is sure.
“You get used to such things, after a while.” Used to things like a limp and the pain of it, to the transfiguration of time, to hearing the Moon. Or to not hearing Her, as he has been of late.
“And you?” he asks, a faint wheeze accompanying his exhaled breath. “Are you okay?”
yes i know that love is like ghosts, few have seen it but everybody talks —
She nods in understanding at his answer, but the concern lingers. She wishes, not for the first time, that she had something other than ghost whispering. She wishes that she had something to aid the living, and thinks how much more useful she would be if she could heal his injury, or at the very least provide some kind of relief. For a long time she had felt that her curse had befallen her for a reason, thinking that at some point the pieces would fall into place and she would see, with full clarity, why she must live her life haunted.
But the fog is still there, and she remains just as confused and helpless as she ever was. He says that you get used to such things, and she wonders if it is a sign of her own weakness that she is still not used to her own, intangible type of injury; that she cannot just ignore the ghosts on her own but must instead drown them out with someone else. But she likes to think this is her first step towards getting used to it — that at least she is seeking out a way to cope rather than just hiding.
He asks he if she is okay, and she is almost surprised at how quickly her answer comes.“I think so,” she says, her words accompanied by a faint frown.
It feels strange, to be mostly okay.
There is still a leaden exhaustion in her bones that she is not sure will ever lighten; not when sleep is so hard to come by, with the ghosts always in her ears and her dreams. But there is a tension that has loosened, and even if it does not last forever, it is a relief to at least, for the time being, be ‘okay’. She wants to tell him that — that she feels more okay than usual, but she thinks of all the times others have appeared to feel burdened by her melancholy honesty, and so she decides to leave it. “I’m Narya. I hope I wasn’t intruding, I just…” she trails off on a pause, debating whether to stick to her earlier plan of not being quite so honest, but finally relenting anyway to admit, “I just didn’t want to be alone.”
Narya
— spirits follow everywhere i go, they sing all day and they haunt me in the night
