"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
Gray. Everything is gray. A haze hangs over the ground; a fog, thick and distinct, settles itself around her. It shapes to her shoulders, her hips, around the delicate bones of her face. Her fur – born dark, lightened to smoke-silver – blends. The color ripples, seems to bulge slightly against the fog, then settles on dull and nondescript. Her eyes are the only thing that doesn't fade into the fog like camouflage; they remain a deep, chocolate brown as she peers, seemingly unaware of her body's changes, into the field. Her tail flashes, once then twice, against her hips, disturbing the fog and in that moment, she surges forward.
Years away from her homeland had dulled her memories of this place, but as she steps through the dry, winter grasses, the memories rush to the forefront. She follows the edge of the trees, hunting for something... then, there! She brushes the grass with her nose, whuffing gently. Here, she had pushed life into the world for the first time. Alone, she had pushed and pushed until finally, a cry of new breath and the young mare had looked for the first time at her daughter's wild face. She was shocked at the flames that flickered, dull, along the babe's neck and hips where a mane and tail should have rested. Fearfully, she had touched the flames and with relief, had found them cold – then after relief came another rush of fear. Bidelia had always been a shy mare. Her gift had kept her hidden, allowing her to blend into her surroundings, watching the world go by without it noticing her. Now, this child was a stand-out!
She gives a sharp shake of her mane, disturbing the memory, knocking away the rush of emotions that comes from remembering. Her coat wildly shifts from silver to green-brown in an attempt to match the winter trees, displaying her anxiety. With a snort, she takes off at a fast lope, frozen ground crunching beneath her. Unbidden, she recalls, years after she last heard her daughter's voice, hearing another baby's gentle voice – this time, her son, her blissfully average, innocent little son. Yet, he was gone too. She struggles to remember why, but can only remember chafing at the need to be someone's constant something.
When the fog begins to dissipate, she slows down and then finally, stops. Her coat wavers and returns to her natural silver-gray, her mane and tail settle dark and heavy against her skin. She closes her eyes against the memories still pressing against her skull and breathes in deeply, once, then twice.
***She could find each place she had laid for the heave of childbirth — the warm, damp undertaking; the moment of singularity, tucked away in a rift split apart from time and space, to meet someone so utterly new. Each of her efforts were their own epoch in her timeline; set aside from everything else in the intimate embrace where her deepest adoration lives. Impossible to explain, because words are fickle and they are monuments of the mind — so often magnificently perfect, but even more often are too pale.
***In a sheltered place under oak boughs; soft rain falling on her cheekbones and hips, adding to the slickness of her nest of long, flattened out grass. A girl, like her and him. ***A moon-bright clearing, snow still clinging to the ground stubbornly like islands. It had come on more suddenly than the first; a boy, like him almost entirely.
***The pinkish mare picks her way from her new home (in a way; in truth, it shames her a bit to say that she hadn't been there all this time), thankful for the thickness in her coat, perhaps her body's final adieu to the habits of winter preparation. For so long she had experienced each glorious season in its entirety. Habits are hard to break, and the mechanics of her body are not made to concede instantly to new surroundings. It is hot, but not unbearable. It makes her trips easier, and one day she will pine for her shag.
***She blinks against the thick fog, feeling it press against her, damp and uncomfortable. She is overburdened, happy to be, with the swell of pregnancy. Usually small in every way, the mousy mare has gained a passenger and lost the caper in her step. Rather, she waddles on, looking around with those big, thoughtful eyes. She is restless today, not regretting the trek, but questioning the wisdom of it nonetheless. Until she sees her, and it is not because she thinks she is the only mare here worth it, but because the strange way she slips in and out and then finally stills is like a beacon. And because of the way she closes her eyes and something the rosy mare cannot see, but can feel, is transpiring...
***And she wonders what it is, and she thinks the queer way she pulls the world around her like a cloak would serve her well in the impossible wild of the jungle. Vineine goes to her, nickering in into the grey air, joined by the white huff of her breath. “Hello. I'm Vineine, of the Amazons,” And it seems so unimportant, and yet it is what they are both here for, this place is always a business transaction in disguise (or, in no disguise at all).
*magic-borne daughter of Prague and Elladora ****‘...Herself in the Heavens, her beam on the waves.’
She is concentrating on breathing – inhaling, exhaling. With each exhale, their faces, their eyes begin to fade, pushed out into the cold world, or perhaps, locked back away, saved for another foggy morning.
It was the crunch of hoof against snow-sharpened grass that forced her eyes open; then, a soft greeting. Her heart fluttered deep in her chest as uncertainty flashes against her face. Eyes wide, her first reaction is to slip back into the trees; in fact, her fur ripples, tries to shift to the colors of winter forest, brown and dampened green. With an effort, the little mare forces herself to stay still, though her coat continues to shift (years later and still she cannot fully control the gift bestowed upon her at birth). The stranger then speaks. Simply, she says her name, her home. “Oh,” she begins to say, then stops, unsure.
She tilts her head first left, then right. A thick lock of black – then brown, then black – mane slips down over her eyes, tangled in her lashes. Her own innate shyness had kept the immortal mare from gaining much in the way of conversational skills, leaving her unprepared for a meeting of any sort. So, for a long moment, she simply looks at Vineine, unaware that 'awkward silences' aren't agreeable for most.
Then, shifting from one hoof to the next, she finally blurts out, “Bidelia. I'm Bidelia. I think my mother once lived in the Amazons.” She isn't sure why she said that. She rarely thought of her steel-gray dam, but the mention of the woman-run kingdom had stirred a certain memory. She was all legs and elbows and ears then. It was a hot Spring. Flies buzzed lazily around her head as she looked up, trustingly, at her dam. She struggles to remember what her mother had looked like, but she could remember the feel of old scars against her baby-soft lips and the roughness of an aged voice, like cloth over abradant stone. She had tucked herself up against that war-worn side, eager for another story. 'A new one?' She had squealed, bright eyed. Her dam always spoke of the hot and humid land with a kind of distant longing. She told her of jewel-bright birds, snakes as thick as trees with eyes like glittering stones, plants both dangerous and oh-so-sweet, and women with brilliant minds and battle-won scars. She had once thought they were simply bedtime tales.
She had not thought of those stories in so many years. “Tell me about the Amazons,” she says quietly, “Are there really birds painted like rainbows? Have you seen them?”
There always has been, and always will be some debate as to nature vs. nurture. Had Grim Reaper done her best to raise her daughter instead of turning her over to Abel, Lagertha might have turned out quite differently. What does a madwoman know of keeping a child alive? She was unpredictable at best, having a thoughtful moment every now and then. But the old hag knew herself too well; it was only a matter of time before the seer woke up and sounded the alarm, and Carnage wasn’t there to lend a helping hand anymore. Abel, however, was. She popped out of the woodwork when she was most needed. Good ‘ol dependable Abel - far more of a loyal Amazonian than Grimmy ever was.
Abel alone is responsible for cultivating Lagertha into who she is today: General, Khaleesi, stern but loving mother of three, and quite possibly the leader of what could be a very powerful army. It’s all rather up in the air. But she’s got something going for her. In this regard, Abel is Lagertha’s mother, which makes these two gray mares sisters in all but blood, as they cuddled up against the same scarred side at night. They even have similar coloring, parentage be damned.
The outlines of the tattoos are faint, but she saw them in her river-side reflection this morning. The silvery lines trace a looping nose-guard pattern down her face, falling under her cheeks and throat, and then intertwining in sharp angles until they spread out again as armor along her chest. Even her flower is starting to return, lacing up her right leg and intertwining with the pattern in a dizzying manner. Her right haunch has begun to show signs of a new tattoo, some sort of curvy thing with a feline-ish face, which she can only assume comes with her rank. The jungle spirit is fully grown now, prowling about the Jungle on silent paws. It no longer plays amongst their hooves, batting at bugs and butterflies; it is a dangerous and beautiful creature, made for protecting and killing.
She knows Vineine by sight and smell and name, if little else. Daughter of Prague. Personally, she loves when daughters of sisters return to them, following in the hoofprints of their mother. It makes her feel like they’re doing something right. Lagertha doesn’t make the connection between Abel and this new mare at all, she simply spots Vineine out on the Field and decides to join her. With a nod to the rose and another to the silver, the iron colored Queen joins their group, dropping in at just the right time. “There are. As well as a hundred thousand different plants, monkeys, frogs, and some creatures we have no name for. It is beautiful chaos.” She turns her head to look at Vineine, curious to see what she will say of the Jungle. Lagertha’s had plenty of time to form her own opinion, having lived there for god only knows how many years. What does a newcomer think>
Lagertha
warrior queen of the amazons
i am planning on posting to vineine, so can we just say they know each other?
***Her birth-mother had been so impossibly soft. Through the unbearable grief of a love and firstborn lost; having seen her jungle home choked (but not felled) by a mighty tide of water, killing Elladora's queen and displacing the sisters for a time. Through all this she had remained unjaded. She had been the lattice around which Vineine grew and formed herself — not self-same, but something approaching it. A growing glossary of biology and life, a well-spoken emissary, an observant and quiet nature... But she had been forged also by something more akin to iron. A warrior, and presumably, that was in there somewhere, yet untrained. ***War is brewing. Or, so she has heard, now out of her less wild state that lent her so easily to detachment. It is not her calling, though it may be her duty. And the Gates had been so good to her.
***But all that is yet to be played out. She will find out in time where she is needed and what kind of spirit lays under the soft covering of pinkish skin. After all, they are ever-evolving beings. Stilled in their mature forms for a while, waiting for age to proceed with de-evolution, they almost never die the same horse they were when they were bright-eyed and young. Nurture is not just a force a fillyhood, but an always driving mechanic of the character. Elladora is dead (returned to the roots a little heavier than before she ever felt the loosening of a friend's soul); perhaps by the writ of some perfect plan, Prague is in her life for the first time. And so were the sisters, still strange to her for the most part.
***The fog muffles sound in a eerie sort of way today, but she thinks through the sort of dampish scent of heavy air, she smells something familiar. Not just the fan-leaf and orchid of the jungle, but a more individual scent that was not to be missed. When the grey mare reveals herself through the press of fog, Vineine smiles and nods her head back. They have not met, but their fold is not so large as to miss each other entirely — certainly not for the mouse to miss the steely queen. “I still have much to observe,” If she is anything, it is greedily hungry for information of the world around her, spending much of her time so far nosing around taking notes. “But there are colours and sounds like you can not even imagine until you experience them for yourself.” Save for grey wintry days like this, this place is rife with soft lichen-greens and the sunny yellows of buttercups. The jungle is something entirely different, improbably verdant and lush — the animals contained within similarly bright to warn or to court, or to camouflage in the canopy.
***“I have seen only a small fraction of them, enough to take my breath away.” She wonders sometimes, if she closes her eyes tight enough, if she regresses somewhere too deep and early, could she ever recall the warm, humid understory in which she was birthed? But it was well before her threshold of memory. Lost.
*magic-borne daughter of Prague and Elladora ****‘...Herself in the Heavens, her beam on the waves.’
Her childhood seems so far away now. Days stretched into months, then years – soon, the passage of time seemed inconsequential, something that happens without real meaning and without her say-so. Once, this frustrated her. She would see her reflection in the flat surface of a summer pool; the lack of change – of growth! - would startle, then anger her. These days, however, her own immortality seems like no major conflict; instead, just a simple fact of life. Her dam had survived off of the kindness of a man she once loved. He had gifted her the ability to live on and on, as well as offered her the appearance of the body she had in youth. Perhaps, the ability to live beyond most of her offspring and friends had led her to appreciate the fullness of children, but disdain the contact of adults... and perhaps, that was why the old war horse had cherished her girls and boys, yet pushed them away as they matured.
Bidelia, if asked, would have said that she had had a wonderful upbringing, though it was lonely. Abel had been a good mother – always present with a strong shoulder to support the fleeting emotions of a young girl. Though her dam had kept her from most horses her age, her stories had been almost as good as companionship. They were vivid, striking and full of faces, emotions, and colors. Names of men and women, boys and girls long past (siblings disappeared into the wider world, friends whose bones were probably dust, queens whose legacies continued).
As young as she had been, she could never tell whether her mother was making things up or speaking the truth. Of course, it didn't matter then, but now, she stares curiously – wide-eyed, coat rippling anxiously from silver to brown-black and green- at Viveine, raptly attentive to what truths she might offer of the jungle her mother so often spoke of.
Yet, Viveine was not the first to speak. Instead, a sudden newcomer drops in with an answer to her curious query. Before she can respond, her original companion adds her own opinion. “I always thought they were stories. Wonderful, beautiful stories, but stories nonetheless,” her breath feels caught in her breast, “My mother used to tell me about this jungle, this place she once lived. She never would take me there,” bitterness, an odd longing that she cannot contain. Her coat ripples, turns her natural smoke-silver, so akin – though lighter – than her mother's worn hide. “Do you have to be a certain sort to visit there? To see these wonders?” She looks concerned; after all, Abel had spoken of warrior women with lion's hearts. What was Bidelia but a waif hiding in plain sight? She was no warrior – she was a watcher, a shy and patient observer. She heaves a hefty sigh and favors both women with an unhappy eye. Then, with vindication,
Nature is wholly unstoppable. It drives ever forward, as her mother would say. It does not stop, not even for those that defy the senescence in it. It lays to rest loved ones and friends around everyone’s feet – some more than others. She cannot say she envies the immortal their everlastingness. It would be more time to discover, and to learn. More time to love, but then, maybe once is enough… or twice, perhaps. And if it meant, for her, that she could feel like high of childbearing ad nauseam, it also meant she would find more of them felled by the passage of time than she cared to.
Her mother had lost a great deal. When she died, she was probably as satisfied with the carnage as she was the beauty. But that is life, or at least, it will be for the mousy mare.
She knows the pursuit of history. It had driven her to the jungle herself. It had come down to her from a previously unreachable place and smiled upon her. Her other mother, a harbinger. So when this woman reminisces on the oral histories of her mother, she recalls her own childhood. Ella had not talked about it much, only when asked. And it had taken some time for Vineine to ask. The jungle was behind Elladora – nothing is forever – and she had left in her wake not a mark. But she told tales of primates and jaguares; of great queens and floods. Of the exodus of her sisters. Of her other mother, and of course, Vineine knew she was entangled with that place, bound by the shackles of vines.
“They are the most beautiful truths, really. Beautiful and wild, and dangerous.” If the men of the Tundra warned new charges of the ruggedness of that iceland, she thinks it only fair that incoming sister know that the jungle is no cradle of kindness. It is, remarkably, Vineine would have to say, tamed. But not in whole. Not even in large part, it would seem. Its resistance and its resilience is admirable. Wonderful. “There is no certain mold to fit into. I am not a warrior, Lagertha, as you can see... well, much more so than myself. There is a place for all talents. Only the desire to persevere the early shock of such magnificence, and wildness, if one can get beyond that, there is a very special sisterhood.” She had been told all this, many times before as she snuggled up to her mother's steady side and requested the jungle again. She is still in the perseverance phase, a newcomer by most standards, advantaged by her ceaseless fascination with the world around her. She is no more driven from the hardness of the rain forest than the familiarity of the hinterlands in which she was raised.
She has too much to occupy her time to fret, and has settled into the hot and heavy land with relative ease. The specter of her mother's observational haunt. Maybe it is because the sentinel trees and howler monkeys recognize her – mistake her for a friend – that she feels so accustomed to it. A welcome.
“You are lucky. You have the ability to become just about unseen. That may serve you very well, Bidelia. A brilliant gift for an Amazonian.” She smiles, nature works in funny ways. “If you’d like, I can show you there. I’m sure Lagertha would not mind you acquainting yourself with the jungle. You need not jump right into the ranks, necessarily. You can take time as an unaffiliated sister to figure out if your mother’s calling is also your own.” It is not always. But sometimes, it is the most persevering thing of all.
If you want to reply here, that's cool. Or go straight to the Amazons. Up to you! Sorry this took so long!
