05-09-2018, 07:41 PM (This post was last modified: 05-09-2018, 07:47 PM by Aurelia.)
she smiled softly but this time it was different her face smiled, but her eyes didn't
She has feelings that are not visible. Sadness; the silent killer, they say. Something she never could comprehend in its totality. "Sad" sounds so juvenile, like something flimsy that nay full grown adult would ever use to express their emotional disposition, something one should be able to cast off with a bright reflection or a bout of hilarity- but "sad" is nothing of the sort. It convenes inside the mind like the seed of depression, awaiting the appropriate conditions to grow, to send out roots that suffocate the hope out of your heart and moisten the tendrils of fire within your soul. It is the trough in which we struggle to return to the peak, always fearful that this time there will be no additional peaks; that life will cease to exist for the one soul touched by a simple sadness.
A single tear slid down from her aurelian eyes, followed by another one, and another one, until a steadfast current of brackish tears surged it's way down her pallid cheek, releasing the melancholy and sorrow that has been held inside of her for all this time, but still, she did not make a sound.
It began to rain.
The rain fell softly as if it knew of the hardships both behind and ahead. Each droplet alighted on her skin with just enough coolness to command her mind to the present, to lure her away from the misery of the past. The beads of icy liquid over her face, more copious than even the dapples embroidering her flanks, joined to wash over her in a refined cascade of trickles; the alkaline tracks carved by tremendous tears blending into the fresh sky-fallen drops. She raised her eyes to the grey layer that involved all parts of the sky, there was more to come before the skies opened. Only the pinkness of her lids gives any clue to the sadness she endures, but no one would realize; in the Rift, who would look closely enough to tell?
And then it poured.
The throb of her pained heart thumped in accordance with quick, shallow breaths as the rain began to fall more rapidly. She sunk to the ground, the soil and branches beneath her descending form soggy and soft. The canopy of leaves above her back, clinging onto gently dancing tree limbs, did nothing to protect her from the onslaught of rain.
Aurelia watched the world gradually drown with her legs tucked beneath her stocky figure and her wings gathered neatly at her sides. She began attempting to recompose herself. There was no time to do.. this now.
talk talk talk
Aurelia
anyone can hop in hehe, i have an abundance of sad-post muse so i figured id go ahead and do this bc why not
It was a dreary day - the very kind you picture when someone would describe the day with such a word. The skies were a dark, sullen gray. Like ashes left over from some strange sky-fire. The soil beneath my hooves was damp, serving as a reminder of the rain that had come and gone, and would be sure to show its face again. The air was cold, cold enough to make my skin tingle more and more with each passing moment. A biting zephyr wove between the trees, stretching tall above me, so tall that the tips of their branches were not visible from where I stood on the ground below. The arms were reaching for the sun, but there was no sun today.
Everything was quiet. Even the gusts of air made little sound as they passed by. Melancholy as they were, in a way, my surroundings were almost… peaceful. I breathed in the earthy, wet forest scent, and it was almost like a drug. The smell had a pacifying effect on me, and somehow, as it entered my nostrils each muscle throughout my body relaxed slightly. For once in what seemed like a very long time, my mind was empty. It felt like a vast, empty space. The kind of space where something should belong. Thoughts should fit there, precisely as puzzle pieces, and yet there were none. As always, there were many things to think about, but sometimes it was nice to think of nothing at all. And because the opportunity had presented itself, that was what I did. Thinking was just too exhausting. Instead, I simply took in the Rainforest Cliffs, enjoying the beauty of nature as it was.
As if the world around me was not dull enough, rain began to fall. It fell slowly at first. I felt the fat, wet drops landing on my face, my shoulders, my back, and my rump. Upon making contact with my blue-gray pelt, they left little dark spots as they sunk into the fur. Joining together, the beads of water washed over me in a delicate cascade of trickles. As the rain began to fall faster, the canvas that was my body became covered in these spots, until there were so many that my dampened sides were a darker color altogether. The droplets settled into a rhythm, falling in heavy waves, as if gravity was a soft music from the earth, a sweet beckoning serenade.
The sky wept, although I knew not what for.
Then, I spotted a figure among the trees and the gloom. Though sitting on the ground with her wings tucked into her sides, the mare was not difficult to miss, given her pale complexion, which stood out against the forest’s muted colors. Her golden accents glimmered in the rain, even as the dirt was loosened by the water and mud splashed up against them, threatening to mask their vibrant color. Instinctively, I turned toward the pegasus, my hooves sloshing through what had become thick, slushy mud. When I was within earshot, I called out, raising my voice above the downpour. "Aurelia?" Her name came out as a gentle question, despite there being little doubt in my mind regarding the mare’s identity. Her head was down, with each limb pulled close, almost like a cat curled up in a deep sleep. Aurelia was very much awake, though she moved little. Sadness seemed to hang in the air around her, though I was not yet close enough to make out her ever feature and affirm my assumption of the woman's mood. I continued to approach slowly, unsure of whether or not she wanted me there, or whether I was intruding on a private moment.
05-11-2018, 12:06 AM (This post was last modified: 05-19-2018, 01:05 AM by Seiji.)
He ascends on lighter feet than he came down with. Something has lifted from him. He cannot name it. Maybe the burden was obligation. Maybe affection. But as he journeys back up to greet the trees, he sees with clarity the painful green of the forest. He hears without feeling all the noises of the little animals, the sigh of wind through the branches and the leaves. He is moving again. He should not have been still. He will not be, again.
Seiji: a shadow wending between the dull colors of the trunks. From a certain angle, he is more a deer than he is a horse: a long, slim creature. Delicate limbs picking their way over soft soil and leaf litter. Every now and then, his ears prick toward something and he pauses, listening. But he always begins again. From the outside, he looks hollow: everything brilliant within him sinking deep, coalescing inward. From the outside, he is a sharp blackness, an intruder on the branches and the vines.
Inside…. Inside, he thinks. Where next? He hasn’t explored the forest yet, but he soon will. And then he will move on again, forward and forward, relentlessly. Until he finds what he needs.
This place will not trap him.
So there is a strange, grim emptiness about his eyes when the rain begins. He doesn’t quite feel it. It’s there, in the back of his mind: tiny hands drumming the taut skin of his haunches. Plastering his mane into a thin film. From the right side of his withers, the strange, glowing slash casts a faint light into the weather. On the other side, the scarified wing shifts with the muscle beneath. Forward, he thinks. Only: forward.
Then there is something white ahead.
White: like freshly fallen snow. Like the hottest flame. Seiji pauses mid-stride and his ears come up in the same moment. Curiosity flickers into his eyes and he breathes in like a man breaking the surface of a lake. The smell is just: wet.
He doesn’t know her.
She is like an injured dove, prone on the ground. She is like fire, golden accents limning her body. His eyes are bright. His long neck stretches out; his head tilts. Curious. A little concerned. Is she wounded? To be lying there that way?
Then: movement in periphery. Seiji flinches; his body goes tense as if to jump away, but he doesn’t quite jump. Once he turns toward the noise, he recognizes who it is. His mouth opens as if to shape around the word, but no sound comes out. Just the thought passing across his mind: Rixen!
Rixen, who belongs to Halyven.
Now Seiji’s weight shifts back as if he might at any moment wheel around and leave. He doesn’t, but the possibility is there. There in his mind. Roscorro followed him; Rixen did not. He isn’t sure what the antlered creature thinks of him. He doesn’t know (ever) if he’s safe here. But he is concerned about the girl.
He gestures toward her again, waiting for her to move, or for Rixen to speak.
she smiled softly but this time it was different her face smiled, but her eyes didn't
The rain droned on, loud and crescendoing. Aurelia hadn't heard his delicate steps nearing, each stride a beautiful dance enacted with limbs reminiscent of does and their beloved fawns. She didn't hear his voice for he did not have one, nor did the heated breath pouring from his fleshy snout pull the mare from her thought. The sky wept too loudly for her hearing to be of use. It was perhaps by chance or some mysterious otherworldly force that made her lift her head from the soil, to move from her cadaver state and resemble something living rather than dead. It was only then that her inverted pupils swept the area, falling on the shadowy man that curiously scrutinized her. Her entire body, despite being solidly settled on the ground, lurches away from him in panic. To one minute be alone in profound, somber thought then to see a stranger coalesce from what appeared to be thin air was shocking. For perhaps an instant her grief was suspended- the shock paralyzing her thoughts and mind and heart rendering her inable to compute, the surprise protecting her from her anguish until it shattered like glass on the drenched pine and earth beneath her. Her eyes focus on him, though they do not seem normal- they are pinkish and swollen from the tears that had been falling so freely moments before. The stranger has a finely modeled head on a long, lean neck that delves into a slender body with a deep, but narrow chest and gently sloping shoulders. He contrasted greatly with the mare who was stockier due to her mustang blood, with a wide chest and short, dense legs.
Before she can move to stand up or greet the stranger, a second face joins them, far more familiar than the first.
It is Rixen, who's blue-grulla body is a recognizable sight. Her name is on his lips in the form of a question. The only reply the antlered stag receives from the femme is a slow nod of her porcelain cranium. Her eyes flick to the ground once more before she readjusts her positioning, her legs bracing to lift her thick body from the ground. With one fluid heave, she is standing squarely on her mud-clad legs.
It still lingers like an abyss- her sadness; a dark void that consumes everything, leaving the feeling of mediocrity in its wake. It leaves an aching emptiness. There is nothing to subside the hollowness in her mind as it consumes her; she nearly cannot bear to pretend that everything is okay. Nearly. She smiles kindly at the men, dipping her head respectfully to each of them.
Yet still, she still feels the pain in the form of a coldness in her heart, a constant reminder so she does not forget about its all-encompassing iron grip on every aspect of her pitiful life. She'd heard that one could find purpose in the simplicity of their heartbeat; the steady pulse of blood flowing through every part of one's body, but she could never do so. She could no longer feel everything as strongly as she once could, leaving her with one mortifying thought as burdening as the weight of the world on Atlas's shoulders. Was she soon going to be a static mare only ever capable of sadness? Or worse, entirely numb? The aurelian mare was afraid of going completely numb, but also afraid of feeling everything again as vividly as she had before because quite frankly; feeling hurts. Feelings are what made her go numb numerous occasions before.
The numbness of her heart blurs her vision, rimming everything in red. It angers her. She felt as though could burn the whole forest down, or worse, set the entire sky on fire. But she couldn't for the numbness she felt would not allow it, so she simply stood there, the epitome of confusion and melancholy. "Aurelia," she offers breathily, her attention turned to the long-limbed, dark-bodied Teke beside her. "I'm sorry if I scared you into thinking I was unwell, 'tis just been a rough day," she quietly says now addressing the both of them, yet murmuring the second part of the sentence to make it seem less important than the first half. She didn't necessarily want them to know the depth these emotions affected her.
All this world seems to desire is to become noise, a distraction from her task to find a spark within the darkness- the one spark that will revive her aching soul, making everything how it was before... normal. Should she only find a sole tendril, a tiny fragment of fire, barely a cinder, it matters not, because she has always been a river of gasoline, waiting for even the smallest spark to unleash all of her potential.
Then I saw him. The inky figure appeared from thin air, and now he was here, standing before me again in the pouring rain. He was the stallion who left the meeting; the stallion who, for reasons unbeknownst to me, did not want to share in our home. He ran, and I had not followed him. I’d wanted to, but something within me held me back. It was like there were heavy stones tied to my hooves, weighing them down because they knew that to follow the stallion would be fruitless. Some beings were not meant to be tied down to any one place. My sister had been that way - free as a bird who could not go against the call within her, the call that she was born with. Maybe she could not deny the powerful feeling of galloping into the wind or the free feeling of kicking her legs high at the swirling sky. Maybe that was the reason why, following one fateful day, I never saw her again. Perhaps the man who stared back at me through two dark, doe-like lenses was one such horse, and at the end of the day I knew that there was nothing I could do or say to convince him to stay.
I still didn’t know his name. Did anyone? Come to think of it, I did not know the sound of his voice, for I had never heard him utter a word. Despite having encountered the ebony stallion on several previous occasions, his voice had never graced my ears. He had never spoken before in my presence, not even when he fled the meeting. This led me to wonder whether I would now find answers. But how could he communicate any of this without a voice? Or did he have one, and simply decide not to make it known? I’d noticed him open his mouth upon seeing me, as if to say something, but the act of speaking both started and stopped there. Overall, I was left feeling very confused by the stranger, and there was little indication as to how he felt toward me. One thing was for sure, and that was that he seemed kind. His eyes were filled with a kindness that seemed so gentle and genuine, so endless: as vast as the sea. He seemed not to be a creature of mal-intent, even if the reasons behind the man’s actions were not obvious to the naked eye, but enshrouded in layer upon layer of time and mystery that one day might be unravelled. Such things could not be forced.
We stood for what felt like a long time, looking at each other, both drenched in rain. My ebony and alabaster mane was plastered to my neck, so that every muscle and curvature was visible, my waterlogged forelock hung over my face, just above my right eye. The cold of the wind and the water on my body seemed to be forgotten. My green gaze was focused ahead, and I did not miss the man opposite me shift back on his haunches, as if he were doubting the situation before him. We were even. I did not know what to think of him anymore. He did not know what to think of me.
The stallion’s gesture toward Aurelia broke my train of thought, reminding me that she was still there, lying on the same muddied ground as our hooves. Her coat was dark now, from all of the rain and the debris that had clung onto it and muted what should have been a pristine snow-colored white. All that remained were flecks of gold that were able to shine through the soiled fur, and the blazing golden suns that were her eyes. Though it could be said that on this particular day, there were clouds that blotted out their light. I was standing close by now, but not so close that my figure was looming over the mare. Instead, I had assumed a position that left some distance between the three of us, just in case.
Upon first seeing me, Aurelia offered seldom more than a simple dip of acknowledgement. Then the pegasus rose to her legs, and with what appeared to be a somewhat forced smile, introduced herself to the midnight-hued stallion. She then proceeded to explain herself, but went no further in depth than citing a “rough day” for her circumstances. Her voice trailed off as the sentence ended, so that by the final word the sound was no more than a whisper in the pouring rain. Fortunately, I could use my imagination to finish the sentence. That, and she certainly looked the part. She looked as gloomy as the day, and it instilled within me a pity for the mare. "I am glad to discover that you are alright. I was worried that, you know... something had happened." I paused, then resumed with what I perceived to be the more important question. "Are you okay? Given what you've said, you must not really be, but- I had to ask." The concern is audible in my voice and internally I scrambled to think of the right thing to say. How could she be consoled, if at all? "This is not the sort of weather to be out and about, and far less ideal for lying down in." Once more I began gently, my gaze shifting from the stallion to Aurelia and then back again. I was not sure what to say to him, but likewise it would be rude not to greet him. "Hello. I did not imagine we'd be meeting again so soon." I addressed him with a tip of my antlers, not knowing what to expect in response.
There is a moment where it might be bad. Where Rixen might hate him; where the girl might flee. But the moment passes, leaving them all unscathed. Rixen says nothing to Seiji, but the expression beneath those graceful antlers is gentle. Seiji allows himself to relax — no — to worry only about the girl.
He approaches to a polite distance, where he stills. Watches her brace her stocky body up on short legs, but it seems to take minimal effort. No blood; no obvious injuries. Seiji studies her closely, but he can see nothing obviously wrong. His ears prick when at last she speaks: "Aurelia". A lovely name, a note of song hanging in the air. Seiji smiles. His lean head bobs in a cheerful nod, but she doesn't mirror his enthusiasm. She is, for all the color dancing across her hide, dull. Dull as the dirt staining her lower extremities.
So maybe it's a malady of the heart?
Rixen speaks next, and Seiji is glad to have someone capable of speech along with him. Even if he doesn't know what Rixen thinks of him, it seems they are united in concern. And so: allies, for now. Rixen's words are sensible; Seiji has nothing to add, anyway, so he just nods. Shifts his weight a little, tickled by the drumming rain. In the back of his mind, some vague hope blossoms and begins to grow: Maybe Rixen can take her back to Halyven. Maybe she can shelter in the spires there, protected by the herd. But then Rixen's next words are directed at him, and Seiji flinches — minutely.
He blinks, surprised. Meets Rixen's green eyes evenly, though he doesn't know how he can answer. It isn't dislike that drove him from Halyven; it isn't malcontent. It is.... merely necessity. And what can he do to explain it? When the reason for all of this is the loss of his voice?
He can't, so he merely nods, feeling yet again foolish. All he ever does is nod. But he hopes somehow Rixen realizes he means them no harm. Means only to complete himself, once more. Seiji shifts his attention away from the antlered man and rather pointedly back at Aurelia, hoping she might explain what has happened to make her day so long. Hoping maybe he can do something about it, when he can't seem to fix anything else.
Rainforest Cliffs
