Ulrik

the engineer

Lets be honest. The Thistle Meadow had the best grass. Ulrik's head was stuffed down into the green, eating hungrily. He didn't realize that swimming had involved so much effort, and after the drama of the Riptide Isles, he preferred drowning in grass over water. The flowers were his favorite. They were sweet. He chewed slowly, lifting his neck now and then to scan the horizon for strangers while Kirchoff rolled happily in the dirt, big black tongue lolling to the side as he scratched his back. Ulrik rolled his eyes.

"You look like an idiot," he commented mentally.

"Shut up."

The hot sun beat down as his back, and he languidly let his tail sway behind him. He was relatively clean after his swim in the beach, long, black hair tumbling over his neck and beard getting ever more pronounced. Fluff from his neck down to his chest was beginning to curl from the heat, and somehow, he didn't seem to fade. He was just as shiny black now as he was in the winter time only now, his hair was short and sleek, showing off the lean musculature beneath. Ulrik was tall and large, but his body was more refined than that of his thicker cousin. He was a lanky boxer in boots too big, taller than his brethren with a devil's smile.

Time away from the Basin had done him good, and he did not regret his decision at all. As much as he missed Rikyn, the boy was old enough to make his own decisions. That was where he had grown up, after all. There would be some level of nostalgia. He wondered absently if his machines had broken down yet? They should be getting there soon, at the very least. Ulrik smiled a bit and shook his head, wandering a little toward the clear stream, amusing himself with his own thoughts.

The sun dapples Kyst’s wings as she flies, their expanse stretched wide to ride the hot wind blowing in from the south in heady gusts. Occasionally, she tucks her legs and wings into her speckled frame and dives, a speeding fur bullet, the thrill of her sudden and chaotic descents highly distracting to her bonded, who was, ironically (though she did not know it yet) trying to graze.

Its in one such swoop that the mare looks up with her golden eyes hostile and finds a figure has come across the horizon – and though it is too far to tell, there is something so familiar to his stride, the angle of his triage of crowns that draws her figure to moving, even before the speckled feline drifts silently towards the same disturbance, some meters ahead of her bonded unicorn.

And so the griffon is the first to see Kirchoff, rolling about in the Tallsun dust, and while the emotions which rush through her heart are those of disdain (just look at him, rolling around like some animal, leaving his dog stench about to assault a more civil creature’s nostrils later on), Illynx knows that familiar mental scoff anywhere, her mind honing in on the bond, to see through Kyst’s eyes.

They have shared this less, the more Kyst has learned to speak, and the image of the far away ground swirling about (the griffon wheels overhead instead of landing) makes the mare’s stomach churn – but, the negative aspect of the vision is over ridden by the excitement which lights suddenly in her usually dark, careless heart.

Wherever Kirchoff is, Ulrik is not far.

The familiarity of the silhouette becomes the familiarity of a face, a man – the only man who knows her as he knows her. That she has missed him, that she wished well of him in the hours they spent distant, apart, often wondering jealously if he had taken another woman, if she had given him better sons; these are things she will never admit.

But they ride in the tilt of her smile, the vibrant light of her golden eyes as she runs her eyes across the succulent curvature of his flesh, the dark ringlets of his hair caught in the heat of the Tallsun breeze; she herself arrives at a trot, graceful, barely containing her anxiousness to be near him (perhaps contained by the notion she was eager at all), legs halting in the rustle of grass and thistle as she simply looks at him.

Her aureate eyes are deep, deep like oceans; they are dark and cold beneath and yet, in that darkness, something stirs, something moves beneath the bright ripple of love she won’t accept, love she pushes away with anger that, too, shines as she looks at him. The only significant thing to be noticed is that these emotions are revealed at all, that the chilly porcelain of the mask she has worn for her entire life has been left somewhere in this Meadow…

Wherever she had been when Kyst had first noticed him.

The spell is broken when she breathes; she takes a heady drink of the air, hoping to dwell in the smell of snow and copper, steel and stone.

She finds instead mists upon the metal, the tangy taste of pine altered by the cool acridity of oaks, of more temperate trees, a smell that takes her back to being small, innocent, more vulnerable than she feels now (as she had been without her armor, both figurative and literal); a life before her Empress and the black path that she walked, a life before this man, the mountain… before Illynx had ever known sorrow, or the branding ember of pain. As if the light within her gaze was not scattered and myriad enough, she now adds confusion, curiosity, bewilderment to their depths of gold…

"Ulrik," she manages.

Silence, but for the flutter of Kyst’s wings as she lands on her bonded’s platinum covered back.

"You do not live on the mountain, anymore," says the woman, at last, but there is so much to the sweet song of her voice that one cannot assume this is all she wants to know of – rather, its all she can decide is decent, that does not involve her dragging out her feelings.

That does not make her dwell in how very weak age and life have made her.


@Ulrik

Ulrik

the engineer

Shadows of wings did little to capture his attention. Birds flew every day, and even if this one was bigger, he didn't much give a damn. Tasty flowers were just waiting to be plucked, and he nuzzled his maw deeper in the dirt, rooting for the little, flavorful white ones. After a snort and a successful bite, he lifted his head, inhaling deeply and stiffening at the scent he caught. Was his mind playing tricks on him? Was this one of those psychological nonsense things everyone talked about with memories? He had let her go long ago though - no more lingering feelings. Only a twinge of anger.

Ulrik then knew he wasn't crazy (or completely batshit) when he saw her trotting so gracefully toward him as if nearly a year hadn't passed and she hadn't left. She looked much the same in his eyes - not that he paid too much attention to detail. The gold that adorned her coat was still shiny and beautiful and it drew him in just like it had done long ago. Everything down to the last hair was perfectly in place, but the cold mask she wore... Was that anxiety he saw? Emotion at all? Even when they were... doing things... in the cave... she had been so withdrawn. He hadn't cared at all - that was who she was.

But this seemed so far off.

And where the fuck had she been?

And why had she left?

Ulrik furrowed dark brows over his darkly bronzed eyes, not making a move and feeling Kirchoff's hackles rise as he came to stand at his left foreleg. She was smiling, looking at him, and he wondered for a moment what she was thinking about what she saw. In his humble opinion, he felt better than he had felt when he lived in the Basin. Healthier, in a way. Even though his frame had aged, he looked thicker and less gaunt. The sheen of his coat was brighter, and the expression in his eyes was not so empty.

She said his name, and he did not react, though inside, he felt something clench. He snorted absently at her second comment, wondering if her tone indicated that he should further speak on this phenomenon. Illynx," he replied, his voice masculine and guttural, though he spoke cordially in his tone.

"No, I live in the World's Edge with Mauja and Torleik who leads," he explained. "The World's Edge was my first home, and when Ophelia and Deimos battled the Falls and then chose leads, I was surprised Deimos didn't want to take it. We had been exiled from there years ago by Mirage, a Dragonbitch. I've always wanted to return," he said, his tone not indicating any true feelings. "That and the idea of working for that brat, Thranduil as well as the emotional Hotaru was less than ideal. My sentinels are broken by now, surely. I left them there along with everything else," he said firmly.

Rikyn and Illynx weren't there. His cousin wasn't there. Deimos didn't want to leave and had promoted two he could not serve. What was left? "I hate the snow." He added. That was true. He hated the snow, much preferring forest to the ice.

He paused then, staring pointedly. "You left. Then Rikyn left. My entire family - the only one I've ever had - was gone. You said nothing to me, Illynx. You knew where I was. I am a simple man, always near my machines." From his expression, he wasn't hurt so much as he was confused and angry, but it was set to a dull simmer. His body was relaxed, head turned to the side as he spoke and tail resting peacefully at his side.

The damn dog is snarling at her, saying all the man does not with the savage curl of his lip, and worse still is that all Ulrik does is stare.

The coldness that is remembered in the thoughts of the bronze etched stallion is returned to her features in this moment, seeing one partially shut door and promptly slamming all the rest of her own for good measure. It’s a strategy that has allowed her to live a long, prosperous life. It won her crowns and favors, friends and foes, and yet…

As she looks upon this man, bound in muscle, sleek and shining as she thought she remembered him (how time tarnishes the good and polishes the bad of our inner eye), she annoyingly feels, for the first time in a long time, a desperation for more. Even when he speaks, she hears the proverbial windows and shutters inside herself click and latch tight, the light from whatever sources it poured diminished and hidden, as it has been most of her life. And, yet, even as she allows herself to wall her soul away as she always has, the smallest part of herself (the little girl she had been, that forgotten innocence cast aside in lieu of revenge) cries quietly, reaching out for the closeness that has not and never will be among monsters such as she, and her Engineer.

She had been a foolish woman to think of him as much as she did. That she had let the stone encasing of her heart weaken to such a degree that he bothered her with his cold anger makes her hate him as much as she wants to bury her muzzle in the soft spill of his dark hair. What would Psyche think, the only other she loves, whom she has shown even a glimpse into the supple womanly heart that beats beneath the steel and ice?

Perhaps she would only laugh, thinks Illynx. ‘Now you know why I seemed such a fool our last years together, darling,’ simpers the Empress’ imagined retort.

Mauja and Torleik rule the Edge now, he tells her. She is both excited and immediately shut down by the notion of the Frostheart ruling over that wood once more – he had only failed them once, and he would likely do it again. Still, the dream that she could dwell in the memories of being much younger, much more capable than she was now, in years where she had almost been truly happy for the first time in so long…

She lets the notion slowly be crushed under the weight of the reality that Torleik, who was once her General, was now King – leaving a hole in the ranks she had left to defend her mountain, leaving her mind in a fretful whirl about just who the fuck could be trusted to wield their weapons in honor of the mountain (and the blood it stood for) if not that valiant knight of a man.

Her sentinels, finally finished, would die before she saw them, protecting an army led by a useless triage of Lords and Lady (for she holds some measure of respect within her heart for Hotaru, and worries only of Thranduil and Deimos’ involvement in anyone’s well being). They had battled the Falls, with some Ophelia – but the fools had not kept it. They had divided the herd, they had ruined everything she had worked so hard for - and all in the middle of it was that despicable name.

Deimos.

Her mask curls into a scowl of rage, her aureate eyes ablaze with a rage that almost lures her away from Ulrik, and out to demand blood from Deimos in a rage; one that deepens when she realizes that Ulrik is speaking as if she does not know the Edge, as if he has more ownership to its soil than she – a filly who had been born, wet and new, on that soil some years before Psyche and Mauja were names to be feared (or even really known, for that matter) within Helovia.

But she cannot blame him. He does not know her, after all.

She never gave him the privilege, the chance. She had walled it all away behind her smiles.

She tries to do so now, her pretty mouth curving upwards – “I hate the snow,” scowls her dark genius, and while she knows he perhaps hates, not the snow, but the memories that drift in their pale wake (does she not, herself, curse it from time to time, as she does their Lord of the River of Fate? Is it not the God and the snow which took their ambitions and smashed them beneath Mirage’s clawed feet?), she finds it funny, anyway. That, even now, when he is obviously mad at her and at life, he still shares more of himself, while she stands cold and staring, listening as she always does.

But then, his eyes level upon her, and the smile fades as quickly as it bloomed, a cold expression of impassivity swallowing up what little light had remained in her gaze before he had turned to questioning her. That her child had run away from him with her was even more of a blow – her head rises swiftly, her golden eyes widen in surprise, her heart clenches down into a knot at the sound of their son’s name from his lips, the first but herself to speak that blessing to the wind.

It holds tight.

My entire family – the only one I’ve eve had – was gone.

She knows that feeling, doesn’t she? Her eyes find themselves shut, for they feel like they’re burning in the corners, and she knows what that means. She refuses to let him bother her so much, to drudge up such weakness within her heart.

Kyst, having taken an interest in the situation (as she does any that cause this level of undulation within the usual steady, cold stream that is Illynx’s heart), takes a further interest in not allowing her mistress’ game to continue, having already gathered the mare’s prepared statement, and quickly shutting it down.

Don’t tell him you tried to find him, warns the griffon, her banded tail toying in an irritated twitch (why does the griffon have to say such obvious things) across the mare’s exposed shoulder, no lies.

And, for once, the golden bitch listens – though her ears fall back and she finds that she cannot continue looking at Ulrik’s bronze eyes any longer, glancing out and away into the sea of violet and emerald, amber laced.

The wind stirs her black hair about her face. She feels old, haggard. It’s too late for this, she answers the griffon, almost pleading for a chance to get out of being, well, honest.. But the griffon does not respond.

"I told no one, with no such excuse as our son, cursed into nothingness by the God of the Spark," she almost snaps, the admittance strangely waspish, her griffon preening smugly behind the curve of her arched neck that she has won, "it was not just you.”

Her voice softens, her eyes find purchase on the stallion’s handsome face, the play of his hair in the wind.

”Rikyn was meant to stay. Of that I swear. I never would have... he is your son, as he is mine. I did not seek to take him away from you, or to leave you alone."

She does not admit that she had been so sure her son was safe and sound back with his father that she did not bother looking back, or sending Kyst to ensure he had not followed. She does not admit, either, that she honestly hadn’t thought of any part of Helovia for nearly a week after she’d wandered off, having become almost obsessed with the notion of catching the figure she was sure was supposed to be dead…

…but that was another story, if he wanted it.

She could give him that much, she thinks.

"I would curse no one with being alone."

@Ulrik