the hidden won't hide

[OPEN] the hidden won't hide

Rikyn the Puppeteer Posts: 549

Aurora Basin Lord atk: 7.5 | def: 11.5 | dam: 4.5

Stallion :: Unicorn :: 16.3 :: 4 HP: 70 | Buff: SWIFT

Duir :: Royal Cerndyr :: Earth Spirit Bunnie

03-25-2016, 02:38 PM (This post was last modified: 04-05-2016, 11:58 AM by Rikyn.)

Rikyn

He was dreaming.

The mountains were tall in the distance, but blurred, unreal, the sounds and smells of Birdsong easing into the temperate mountain summers that Rikyn had come to love the moment they dawned on him. Even in the dream, there is weightlessness to his soul that long since ascended, and while, at first, he’s not sure what the wavering figure in the distance is, the stones sink into place, slowly, one after the other.

It’s Uncle Torleik, out there, and those are the caverns, he thinks, looking over his shoulder to the overly dark, mighty mouths of the caves that seemed so much bigger in this frame of memory than they actually were. His stomach sinks, even in the dream, before he feels Aithniel’s tiny, half starved little body plow into him, the descent to the ground oddly spiraling and slow.

Thistle sister…

Like dreams do, he is suddenly on his hooves again, and Torleik is giving him that sad, sad smile that adults made sometimes when they’d met Aithniel and the young Prince together. When they heard that she was Illynx’s – and would also know that her heart, her poor, frail heart, was doomed.

Her lips are so soft against his neck where they accidently brush his skin as she tenderly pulls the grass from his mane, while his little voice calls her Thistlebabe, because mother hadn’t even bothered to name her anything…

Why? Why am I dreaming of this…

She named herself Aithniel, a fractured golden bell that chimed sadly in his heart from time to time. That bell peels through the dream, a steep, beautiful note that makes the little dream boy’s eyes well with tears, the closeness of their souls painful to recall – but warm, so lovely and soft, like sunlight, like spring wind.

The sound of their laughter as they descend on Irelyn, small and new, fades into the cold barking mockery of that delightful sound; the song of friendships unbroken by time, by truth, by ritual, is swallowed in the brittle and cold metal chatter of his mother’s malice. The image of the hidden valley of the unicorns pulls away, fast, like water down a drain.

He is running, toying with Jorogumo in the winter snow, less visible than breath; he is falling into snow drifts, too deep to see out of.

Rikyn! she’s calling, fear knitted into her voice, and its like she’s calling through the dark to him, a hot flame flickering, begging for him to look.

The dream ends suddenly, the emptiness he’d fallen into becoming the cold, cool earth against his sides, which shudder with heavy breath. Shaking his head to try and better rouse himself, stumbling in his emotional befuddlement towards the opening of the cave he’s holed himself up in to sleep out a storm, he is surprised to find his cheeks are dampened when the trickle of rain scented wind coming from outside the cavern brushes against his face.

Feeling quite foolish and equally morose, the sorrow turns into agitation (as is common with the young unicorn) and a rough rubbing of his face against his knees to remove the evidence of his weak heartedness. When he looks up again, out into the world and the horizon, he is glad to see that the gray clouds are distant in the horizon, and though they still downpour on those poor souls, he is no longer one of them; instead, he looks out across the meadows stretching eastward from the sea, his cavern one of the many located along the strand of beaches, over looking the sea, that many called the Endless Blue.

Grumbling to himself for letting a stupid girl and his stupid dreams get to him so much, the young man makes his way to the beach itself, letting his hooves sink into the pearly sand slowly at first, before he finds that he’s running headlong, as fast as he can. His ribs, recently mended, complain loudly as he forces them to stretch with the breadth of his steps, dashing with such abandon that those he blazes by may believe him a madman, but even their annoying protests are preferable to the sound of her calling his name out through the void.

Despite his speed, his recklessness, the feeling that had besieged him while he slept has chased him with each wild step. The only thing he has accomplished, as running like a moron will often do, is to tear his ankles to hell with the partially frozen sand bank, and to reach what seems to be where the Edge meets the Endless Blue (the herd land itself towering overhead) – facts he notices only now, standing stock still in the throes of guilt, teenage rage, and the slow turn of the sand about his hooves from pale to red.

[ OOC: Open to any! Random inspiration post is random. ]