This beach - it reminds her of Isilme. It reminds her of home.
Oh how she yearns to return, to frolic in the saline waters of the Moonlit Tides; the acrid brine kissing her pale physique, embracing her like a kindred lover. Instead, she is trapped here, in this imposter of a home: this land known as Helovia - the land of the sun - whereas Isilme lays so far away. The dappled mare's beloved land of moonlight, with her once magnificent valleys and russet mountain peaks, lays stagnate in ruinous decay, her borders overrun with the irate, restless spirits of the dead. She pines for the cool breath of the mountainous breeze to sweep past her mottled hide, the cerise rock of her Windswept Cliffs clapping against her dished hooves.
Never again. She thinks helplessly, desperately. What a cruel twist of fate to be denied the comfort of her one true home; the place of her birth; the land of peace and love and hate and war all simultaneously. "Isilme." She whispers, the word dancing idly along the churning whims of the oceanic breeze.
She stands stagnant upon the shore, a melancholy expression seizing her habitually heartsick plum eyes. She peers out across the ocean, the indigo surf reflecting against a pristine, azure sky. Her heart aches, her facade transmitting in earnest the plight that swarms within her cavernous breast. The wind hies past her, coaxing lavender-tipped feathers to whistle against the calming current, unfurling as the breeze whispers into pricked ears. Momentarily, she escapes the oppressing shackles of longing and is once again standing upon the gilded beach she had come to love so dearly.
Mauve eyes squeeze shut as she relishes in the fleeting moment of bliss. Her eyes open, reality encroaching like a ton of bricks.
Inwardly, the harlequined damsel weeps.
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The wind is always mournful.
It sings in black wings like a lover singing of a love now lost, perhaps across the hungry sea. Perhaps swallowed up... Even now cerulean waves lap far below, their little tongues much colder than their brilliant color might imply. She is familiar with such a hue; it dances in the depths of her bright eyes as the young pegasus banks and thrusts her narrow body toward land. One cannot ride the sorrow of an ocean wind forever; one cannot bask in such a feeling.
Like some empty star she falls, black on pale blue, and light streams through her long mane and tail. It plays off the feathers of her dark wings even as her toes brush lightly over sand and those wings fold with nimble grace against the girl's ribs. Her strange eyes lift to gaze across the sea and then to pierce whatever mysteries lay inland, waiting and brooding and perhaps ready to pounce. It is a strange land here. It is a warm place, full of breath and the crashing of waves. Azalea thinks of home and mountains white with rime and sighs. "Lost," she breathes - a lament for home or for herself, she isn't sure.
Just up the beach a stranger wades into cold waves. She saw the creature on descent and moves for it quietly, her gait limber and smooth. Gone are the awkwardness of youth and the imperious swagger of a growing princess. She is darkness now, a shadow slinking under sunlight, relishing the touch of cold wind in her feathers. She is something strange and foreign in this land, something ever resentful of the forces that might wish to shape her - forces lesser than the heart pounding within her breast. I am not afraid, she thinks, though the stranger is quite large. It is also pale and statuesque, and Azalea thinks she can see melancholy dripping from the slate-grey feathers and from silken hair. She is, at least, familiar with the form of wings. Her pulse beats a little slower, thick with confidence.
"Hail!" The girl's voice rings high, beaten silver honed to points. The ocean winds would steal it but she speaks too loud, and pauses well away from the creature of silence and sorrow now standing in front of her. Such an intimate emotion - she knows better than to interrupt. Azalea has ever been a beast of selfishness, though, and she breaks in now with only a passing observation on the stillness of this other. Slowly the small dark pegasus moves forward, wilted flowers spilling from her mane and rushing off toward whatever awaits them inland. "I have a question, if you'd be so kind." She pauses then, head cocked, expression innocent and empty and a little too young for one already four years old. She speaks no further, though. She is content to wait, and watch, and think.
Azalea |
[ so I will likely be quite slow :x if anyone else joins and I seem to disappear y'all can act like she flew off. but I am hoping to have time. ]
What's this - the feminine cadence of a voice cavorting along the steady streams of the wind? Valhalla arcs her head abruptly, pools of dulcet lavender searching avidly for the orchestrator of the noise.
Sure enough, her gaze falls upon the dark form of a fellow pegasus - a mare like her - and a cordial nicker pierces through the humidity in a colloquial greeting. She aches for the company of another, anyone, as if it would help her angsty psyche sink once again into its normal, charismatic inflection. She mutely observes as the stranger draws near, smiling lightly: a forced expression, however sincere it feigns to be. The silvery fronds of her mane dance in the breeze, the spindly strands easily twirled through such docile fingers. Awkwardly, she ruffles her gossamer feathers, the radiant illumine of the sun catching on their silken, downy contours and bestowing upon them a faint sheen. Slender ears prick forward at her inquiry.
"What would you like to know?" She answers, hardly missing a beat. There is an unmistakeable kindness in her demeanor that leaks forth, though a whisper of sadness remains to tarnish the liquid depths of her plum irises. Unheedingly, she diffuses warmth in reception to the newcomer's presence. There is no denying that the pale mare is a social creature.
There is something subliminal that settles in the air around them; something that causes the ashen damsel to double take. It is a faint scent; a feeble fragrance of a love once lost, perhaps perpetually. Could it be, she is from the land of moonlight? Her velvety nostrils flex with a swift intake of air, her chest rising humbly as her lungs inflate with oxygen. It is a piquant aroma, and one that is hard to dismiss. Hesitantly, out of fear of being corrected, she parts her lips to speak, the words somehow managing to usher fluently into the air. "Are you from Isilme?" Suddenly, she is the one asking questions?
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Like a spark catching flame, the sudden warmth exuding from the grey mare startles. Head up, Azalea watches in silence, but the change in demeanor likely means peace and not danger. This other mare is clearly half as starved for good attention as Azalea herself; rather than prance forward though the black mare stands withdrawn. The question linger on her tongue - more like a string of questions, some more secret than the rest. But Azalea senses something else forthcoming, something from the depths of the stranger's plum-colored eyes.
The stranger's muzzle stretches out, and now Azalea's head retracts in silent rebuke. She is not a thing for touching; she is not a thing of easy warmth or kind words. She is quick to bask in the other mare's warmth, however, and with a quiet rustle of wings and a brief sidestep she answers with a nod. Isilme, the word rings quiet in her mind. How many years have passed? She turns away - a gesture of trust or dismissal? - even the black mare isn't quite sure.
"Isilme," she repeats, her voice soft. "Yes." Blue eyes turn to study the grey flesh of the other mare, lingering on violet accents and wondering if such colors might breed anywhere outside Isilme. Azalea chances a smile, and her glossy wings rustle once more. "I was born in the Windswept Cliffs, raised there until... I was old enough to leave." Until the wars destroyed it, she thought, but bit her inner turmoil off. Isilme was done. Her history was done. It made no difference what she said now.
"I have traveled much since then," she says more truthfully. "I wondered... what they call this land."
Azalea |
She pricks an attentive ear forward as the sable maiden speaks; the other flops sideways with incertitude at the unspoken requital that elutes the mare at her side. The mild velvet of her voice speaks volumes of her melancholic nostalgia, as subtle it may be. The emotion is all too familiar to the ashen damsel.
"The Cliffs..." Her soft voice trails off, the woeful tune of her vocalism nearly lost in the fluctuate whims of the breeze. Quit being so pitiful. She thinks sternly. "I also called the Cliffs my home." She speaks with a newfound confidence. She had spent nearly two years among those marvelous russet peaks - a rankless filly under the rule of the Womanizer who had unknowingly been a predecessor of her bloodline. She doesn't recall seeing this ashen-freckled mare any time before now, though there are many things her restless mind has thrust aside since then and it is not doubtful that her memory fails her.
What do they call this land?
She hesitates, her gaze scanning the beach. It is not out of bashfulness, quite the contrary actually. Finally, her plum eyes return to the ebonized mare as her tongue searches for the answer to her question. "The land you stand within is Helovia." She turns her head to gaze across the amber sands encompassing them, the scorched grains hot beneath her dished hooves. She peers out across the sapphire tides, watching as a gull swoops with miraculous ease above the thrashing waves. "I am Valhalla." and I am alone in this world.
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Something eases in the dark mare when this other speaks. Warmth - love - encapsulates the every thrum of spoken word. Azalea thinks of places now long lost, of sunshine through pink flower petals. Memory of a spotted stallion lingers too within the sacred halls of the mind, locked up tightly and yet reexamined often. Strange, that Azalea should hear such raw, familiar longing in the tone of a foreign mare. Shaking out her dark mane, the young pegasus steps closer and allows her blunt wings to hang loose. "I am fortunate to find one so like myself," she observes quietly. The new information is digested in a moment of silence, as Azalea's ears twitch. "Especially in such a strange land."
Deeming Valhalla no threat, Azalea walks past the other mare and looked out across acres of sighing blue waves. They ought to recall the Moonlit Tides, she thinks, but Azalea knew only a little of the beach there. She had been a creature of sheer towers and blue skies, and later snow... Such cold memories for such a golden place. She tosses her head, dried petals scattering from thick tangles of mane. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Valhalla. I am Azalea, Zodiac's daughter." Maybe her father's name will strike some spark of recognition, as her sleek complexion clearly does not. Azalea recognizes nothing of Valhalla, either, and wonders if perhaps the slate grey mare is younger - a child of war. A child of shivering earth. Despite the warmth, Azalea cannot quite suppress a shiver. She thinks for another moment, and then speaks again to cover up her fear.
"Actually... I came here searching for him - my father. He's been lost a long time. A part of me fears that he died fighting, but he was the only family I knew. I... hoped to bury him, at least." A glance over one satin shoulder, and the mare cocks her head gently. She never planned on telling the tale but now it fits well with the story of a lost princess, a wandering maiden... This Valhalla may know something, and the possibility of dredging up even the meanest truth brings lightness to Azalea's voice.
Azalea |
I am fortunate to find one so like myself.
Valhalla says nothing, only watches curiously as the ebony mares moves past the dappled gray. She unfurls her wings in earnest, the cool ocean breeze whistling lightly against downy plumes and the silvery fronds of her mane. She listens intently to the narrative of her voice, moving forward as Valhalla answers with her own feminine dialogue. "Azalea, daughter of the Lionheart? A pleasure." There isn't much of a resemblance, really, regardless of the mutual achromatic coat. But then again, the fair maiden recalls little of the ebony stallion, and for all she knows this little black mare could be his spitting image.
Azalea proceeds in her speech, and the gray mare waits until she has finished. She flicks an ear toward the ocean's rolling crests, the lean muscles in her foreleg pulling taut as she conveyed the appendage to lurch forward. She nears the thrashing waves as the ocean's liquid lips kissed the golden sand and coerced the coarse grains below to whirl through her saline arms.
The pale damsel lowers her chiseled face to the ocean's crystal touch, the sapphire curls glittering in the noon sun as if threaded with a million scintillating diamonds. After a moment of contemplation, she leaps with blithe unconcern into the wondrous blue, the cool, briny surf whispering as it dampened her harlequined flesh. "I'm afraid I can't help you." The words egress like smooth honey, the empathetic melody laden in rich, pleasant tones; earnestness, yet also indifference. She speaks loud enough to champion the roaring waves, her plum eyes only just returning to the azure specs of Azalea.
"I only recently arrived after the shades attacked." She added to farther verify her statement, moving with ease against the swaying motion of the endless blue. She cranes her arced neck to peer through the pristine depths, watching as a group of fish weave between her forelegs.
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The sound of her name draws a pause from Azalea. How many years ago was it last spoken? Without malice? Perhaps a thousand. Perhaps Azalea has been sleeping, lost in the throes of some great dream, and only now awakened on a strange beach to the face of something almost like family. The girl's wings stretch out and flutter lightly. She stands on her toes, sleek muscles flexing, and relaxes with a yawn. Perhaps it is the other way around and this is all a dream, but by far the kindest dream in a life of constant struggle.
While she moves, bright eyes track Valhalla. The sound of this other mare's voice remains pleasant and Azalea takes it in with good will, though a quiet loss in the suspension of her elegant stance comes with the news that no, there is no answer here. It's all too good to be true, of course, and Azalea accepts the bitter note in all of this with a small nod. "I left long ago," she says in answer to Valhalla's words. A sort of sadness sings between her words, a lonely ache long uncontested by the warmth of friends. Of course, Azalea might have stayed. Her father might have come back... but the fury of the demigod Cielo had been too much and she'd been too young to look down any other but a coward's path. Azalea shakes her head.
"I don't know anything about shades. Just war. There was always... war." Her tone shivers, crystalline, on the verge of breaking, as long strands of dark mane flutter on her neck. "But it is past now," Azalea muses, mostly to herself. Head up, she turns to blink at Valhalla, suddenly scrutinizing the stranger's height and build. She is quite unfamiliar, really, once the wings are disregarded. Pretty, though. The touch of purple in her gaze lends it a sort of splendid warmth, despite the melancholy of her tone. "I suppose some must have fled," Azalea reasons, though the words come slow - testing - their speed diminished by thought. "Is there a herd of pegasi here?"
""
Azalea |
The words of the dark mare held a significant dose of truth. War had always remained to tarnish the sleek, beautiful face of Isilme, whether it be literal bloodshed decimating her valleys and mountain peaks, or analogical carnage threatening to tear asunder the very fibers of delicate peace. Racism had always been so prevalent there, she remembers, recalling the blind hatred for those not blessed with such graces as wings, and horns and vice versa.
Valhalla had never been entirely fond of equines, mostly because the memories of her parents. She had never known who they were, but she knew that neither of them had wielded such lovely appendages as wings or horns. She was a mutation. Had she not been endowed with such 'frivolous' things, her father would not have been obligated to kill the pitiful young Valhalla, and her mother would not have suffered such a fate. Not that she really cared what had become of her maternal caretaker. It was worth it, she thought, to be free from the shackles of the loorien; to be one with the sky, your hooves breaking the clouds as you soared across the heavens. Yes. It certainly is.
She nods in agreement to the mare's words, exhaling softly. Plum eyes met the heavens, watching as baby blue merged into the deep, radiant sapphire of the sea. That was her true home: out there, in the vast, azure sky, sailing and dancing among the clouds - unreachable.
Slender legs pushed against the brine, her dappled form nearing the shore. The dampened grains squelching beneath her weight as she moved just feet to the right from where Azalea stood, shaking her body to rid the rivulets that clung to her coat. "I'm not sure what herds exist here." She said as she outstretched her wings to their full extent, far enough from where the other mare stood as to avoid making contact. Lilac gaze did not meet cerulean pools of Azalea. Instead, they peered downward at the amber sand, ears slightly tilted her direction as the argent damsel then furled her wings atop her back.
With a brief snort, she began to speak. "I have heard of a place called the Windtossed Foothills." With the final, crescendo note she looked toward her. "I hear they accept all species." She had decided to go and visit there, soon.
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