"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
She is a thing near grown, now.
A bit of the gangliness of youth still haunts the edges of her, hollows not yet filled. The dead flesh she’d been born with is mostly gone now; there is only a hint of gray and decay at the seams of her, like she is almost healed.
Save for her leg – what remains across her foreleg is a gash where the skin never stiched together, where bone gleams bright. It doesn’t hurt, rather, it reminds her – reminds her that she was (was)
dead, that she is a reversal – a thing come from the afterlife to here.
That aside, she looks like her mother – a rich gold like sultan’s coins, a mane pale and cream-colored like cornsilk. Yet there is no one left to make this comparison – the ones who knew Craft and her meager legacy are long dead.
She is a thing near grown, but she is also old, a spirit weighed in history placed into this small gold vessel, to carry out something that nature had once denied her.
Dead girl walking, but she doesn’t look it on this winter’s day, instead she looks near vibrant against the dead starkness of the earth. Instead she looks alive, like she is meant to be here, like she has always meant to be here.
.
graveling
the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
(so since she's like grown now figured i should 'restart' her)
And inside you're burning with some secret yearning
Just as the once half made mare had grown, so had she. But where Graveling had been remade, a reversal of death and decay, Lirren had simply grown older. Her form, though it will never be large, had lengthened and filled out. A faint hint of youthful lankiness is still discernible in her willowy physique, but, as her once childish frame had promised, she had grown into a lovely young mare. Not quite yet an adult, but no longer a girl. No one who might to look at her today would make the mistake of thinking her a child still.
And she is altogether too aware of it. Where in the naivety of foal-hood she had failed to see it, she now recognizes it perfectly well. It is something, she thinks, that will serve her well. Inevitably, beauty always does.
She had always been a more somber girl, and that much has not changed at least. Though she grows more knowledgeable, more aware of herself and those around her, she is not hasty in her deed or word. And so, it has happened, that she has led a relatively quiet and staid life to this point. It is something she longs to change. And soon.
But today… today is for other things. Graveling, for one. She is the one horse she might truly call friend, and so she wishes to find her. Fortunately, it is not hard.
The other girl has changed much, her tattered and rotting flesh having been replaced by smooth, golden skin. As she approaches, her stride smooth and graceful even through the late winter snow drifts, she offers Graveling a smile.
”Graveling. Just who I’ve been looking for,” she says, her words slipping into the air on a soft, melodic tone. ”You look good. Less colorful, perhaps.” The small smile that had been dancing upon her lips deepens into a grin as she recalls her youthful comments to the mare upon their first meeting.
Lirren
starlit daughter of joythief and carnage
html c insane | pic c laura-ferreira.deviantart.com
Lirren had grown beautiful. Graveling had too, in a way – though nowhere near as lovely as her mother, she is more rough-hewn, an unfinished edge to her.
(Fitting, considering from whence she came.)
She hasn’t done much, she drifts in the dale and the meadow. The world is still overwhelming, sometimes, now that she is part of it rather than a watcher. Though she is (quite literally) an old soul, this is a new world, a new type of experience.
She knows more names, now. She knows the sound of thunder and rain on her skin.
She knows pain, even, having stumbled and scraped her good knee open – a new gash, rather than the permanent one on her, and the pain had been strange and singular and made her wonder what other experiences laid out there, what else this body was capable of.
(Bless her, she has not yet felt the many things that plagued her long dead mother – madness, heartbreak, grief, children lost and found, lovers killed in front of her; the love for a kingdom so strong she might kill for it.)
She is heartened to see Lirren, to see how the girl has grown. She remembers the girl well, and she smiles brightly upon seeing her.
“Lirren!” she is still too loud, sometimes – she loves the way her voice echoes, how the air is alive in her words.
“What have you been up to?”
And inside you're burning with some secret yearning
To her eyes, Graveling is quite lovely. There is beauty in everything, if one only looks closely enough. The young woman has a wild sort of beauty. A raw allure. It is there in the sturdy shape of her frame and the gleaming gold of her skin (nevermind the unfinished pieces that still linger). Where Lirren’s is a more refined, elegant beauty, Graveling’s is untamed. Two sides of the same coin, as it were.
In more respects than one.
It seems they have had similar experiences with their youth. Lingering in relative anonymity as they wait to grow, wait to be finished. Wait to become something more. Lirren has done her learning and growing in much the same fashion, flitting from Dale to meadow - and occasionally the field, simply to see what it was about (carefully hidden of course. She had had no desire to be claimed in the brutish fashion some stallion’s had displayed. Not yet at least). She had studied and experimented, perfecting the use of her gift. She had realized her ability to create wonderful and fantastic things early on, but only recently had she discovered her creations could be useful. Could touch the world in tangible ways.
The other girl’s greeting is enthusiastic, lightening her heart and bringing a sparkle to her eye. She does not mind the volume. It is one of those things that makes her friend so uniquely her. When Graveling asks her what she has been up to however, the smile lingering on her lips turns slightly mischievous.
”Oh, this and that,” she says, her tone light and filled with good humor. With only the barest hint of concentration (for she has been practicing this one), a pair of sleek, elegant wings sprout from her shoulders, glimmering faintly with the starlight used to create them. She had seen many an equine in her wanderings with wings and had thought it might be fun to try to create a pair of her own. As yet, she hasn’t been quite brave enough to see if they actually work. ”What do you think? I’ve been trying to perfect them.”
Lirren
starlit daughter of joythief and carnage
html c insane | pic c laura-ferreira.deviantart.com
She comes from magic (in more ways than one), but none of it existed now, within her.
(Other than the fact her very existence was impossible, of course.)
She knows of some’s abilities, had watched Ramiel shift from ghost to flesh and back again. It enchants her, as if they are performers.
And it seems Lirren has tuned magic, too, as starlit wings sprout from her sides, seemingly conjured of nothingness. Graveling gasps, audible, for they are lovely and magical.
“Amazing!” she says, and laughs a little, astonished. She likes seeing the stars like this, down at their level, forming wings across the girl’s bay back.
“Can you fly, with them?”
She has watched the birds, sometimes, and wondered what it’s like. It’s more curiosity than longing, though in time, as she gathered experiences, it may turn so.
“You’re magic, too,” she says, softly, more to herself than the girl. It seems Beqanna is awash in magic, manifested in different ways – in ghosts and starlight and dead girls made living.
It astounds and overwhelms her, but mostly, she just wants to see her friend fly.
And inside you're burning with some secret yearning
The wings spread wide over her slender form, beautiful things made of starlight and ether, transparent and gauzy in the dim light. It's true she could have made them with more substance, but she prefers them to be beautiful. If one has command of the stars, what else is one to do with them but make beautiful things? And perhaps that says everything about her, about who she will become. That she prefers beautiful things over substantial things is perhaps the most telling.
If she were a shyer woman, less sure of herself, less confident, she might have demurred. But she is not. Despite all her faults, she is an honest woman. Or perhaps shameless would be the better description. Regardless she freely admits to her inability.
”I don't even know,” she says on a soft laugh. ”To be honest, I've been a little afraid to try.” A small smile touches her blue lips then as her silver eyes sparkle brightly. ”Perhaps you might lend me a little encouragement?”
As she speaks her starry wings flare wide, glittering with the ethereal light used to make them. Suddenly a thought occurs to her, one that she had never considered before. But she is magic after all, isn't she? So why can't she share her magic? Her smile deepens then, turning slightly mischievious.
”Or maybe you would like to try with me?” She doesn't actually know if such a thing would work, but as far as she is concerned, there is naught to do but try. And so, before she is even finished speaking, her starlight is swirling around the other girl.
Lirren
starlit daughter of joythief and carnage
html c insane | pic c laura-ferreira.deviantart.com
Let me know if this isn't OK and I'll change it. I just thought it might be something fun to explore
Graveling spent years – decades? – as something in the ether, an existence that has begun to fade in her memory as she becomes more and more real. She remembers watching so many of them, watching her bloodline (a golden queen, an orange-eyed king, both dead now; a brother, dark and tumultuous and broken, dead as well), wondering what it might have been like if she had been born.
So she knows too well the insubstantiality of things, as she was once a ghost – and then the afterlife island had come into being through whatever queer magic was shared by the land and a dark god, and suddenly there had been a form. Then, a ghost king, and Graveling had become real, something tangible.
It’s strange to think about and sometimes makes her dizzy, she’s scared of the memories she’s losing but ever excited for the things she’s coming to gain.
Before she can answer Lirren’s request for encouragement she is surrounding by stars and for a moment, one terrible moment, she thinks she is being taken away, sucked back into the netherworld.
But then logic presides and she realizes it is Lirren’s doing, her magic bringing the starlight down to swirl around her, make her own set of wings. It feels like nothing on her back but she imagines it, the light linking into her bones.
“Yes,” she breathes, though she doesn’t know if it can work, but she’s flown through worlds on other’s magic before, so surely the sky wouldn’t be so difficult.
And inside you're burning with some secret yearning
She has never known anything beyond life in the Dale, beyond her small, starlit corner of the world. But it makes her ache, the thought of those magnificent far off worlds. The desire to drift through the heavens and become one with stars stirs like a butterfly within her breast. Trapped upon this dull, heavy earth, there is little she longs for more than the feel the stars upon her skin. The real thing, not the faint echo she is able to control.
Little does she realize the real thing would burn her up like a dust mote in a bonfire. But it would be a glorious death, one worthy of the name.
But all of these are far off, distant dreams. Dreams and desires that she would, in all likelihood, never even come close to realizing. And that, perhaps, is the most heartbreaking realization of all.
But for today, at least, she can reach for the stars. She can give Graveling wings as beautiful and ethereal as her own and bring her with as she reaches for those distant lights. A small, satisfied smile curves her lips as her pale silvery gaze dances over her golden friend, gaze caressing the transparent wings now gracing her withers.
Luminous feathers flutter as she stretches her own wings wide, sweeping them downwards in a graceful arc so that she might test their strength. The glittering appendages hold fast, cleaved together by will and starlight. Her smile turns radiant, blue tinged lips widening in absolute delight.
With only a thought her wings begin to beat a steady rhythm, drawing her hooves inches, then feet from the earth as loose leaves and grass and twigs swirl about them, spurred on by an artificial wind.
Lirren
starlit daughter of joythief and carnage
html c insane | pic c laura-ferreira.deviantart.com
I just thought it might be something fun to explore
