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  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


    Deep into that darkness peering; Any
    #1

    Novel



    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,


    Years are so easy to lose track of when one pays as little attention to them as she does. The simple and mundane pull one in until one almost forgets that a day, a week, a year have passed. And when the sky is her home with the vagaries of the earth her only guide, everything else simply falls away, as though it has never before existed.

    She had become so much more familiar with the body of the raven than that of the equine. Some small, distant part of her brain still recognizes her true form. But birds are easy, and horses are… not. There is freedom in the sky and the wind, away from the stifling confines of the earthy loam and endless cycles of drama plaguing the race of equines inhabiting Beqanna. She likes simple. And raven's are, ultimately, very simple. More intelligent than most give them credit for, but with absolutely zero cares to give.

    So very simple.

    But if ever there was a curious creature, it would be a raven, and even she is not immune. And so it should come as no surprise that such an easy life cannot satisfy her forever. And so there comes a day when boredom becomes too great, and she finds herself fluttering to the ground. It takes her a moment to remember how this works. To remind muscles long since forgotten and disused how to become a horse rather than a bird.

    With an agonizingly slow ruffle of feathers, her body undulates and elongates, shifting and contorting until she has become a creature of far greater size and heft. Stretching out a neck the color of a sunset, she braces herself as she shakes awkwardly, settling into a skin she had not worn in far too long. Ambling over to a nearby pool (gate stiff and slightly unbalanced), she peers into her reflection, head tilting in a manner very reminiscent of a bird. An unfamiliar reflection stares back at her. A mare, tall and lean and delicate, the sunset upon her skin and a more familiar curiosity in her black eyes.

    “Well hello there,” she rasps in a soft voice hoarse from disuse. Perhaps it might look odd to any standers by, to see a horse talking to herself. To her though, she is simply greeting a very old friend.


    Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before.




    I'm sorry, this is probably terrible DX please excuse me while I shake the rust off
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    #2
     

      Simple as the raven may be, it is still a greedy, beady eyed creature. This one in particular has stolen the soul of a stallion. The bird took over slowly at first - feathers bursting through horse hide, then wings, then the beak, and then the cravings for carrion. For a few months Faulkor existed as both raven and horse in one - neither beast quite able to overpower the other. 

    Now the raven sits upon a throne of rotting branches, unable to reach the stallion it once was. Perhaps, Beqanna was punishing him for his greed - punishing him for fooling with magic he had no right to possess. But, the raven does not care. 

    A flutter of wings through the quiet of the forest catches his attention. The raven tilts his head as he watches her body morph and grow easily into the form of a dusk colored mare. The raven trills sharply - a cry of exasperation, perhaps. 

    “Well, hello there.” she says, looking at her reflection in a pool of murky glass. The raven replies with a caw that carries through the hollows of the forest. He leaps from his perch high in the treetops, gliding gently down (he has grown all to used to his wings now). He lands upon the mare’s withers, all sense of cordiality lost. 

    “Help.” he seems to say, but all that escapes his beak is the raven’s raucous caw.


    F A U L K O R

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    #3

    Novel



    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,


    Raven's, unlike other birds, are rarely compelled to flock together. So the raucous caw of another immediately draws her attention, movements sharp and stilted as she turns her head to find the intruder.

    Perhaps they have never met before, but there is something oddly familiar about this raven. So for that reason, and maybe others, she merely watches him with a curious glint in her dark eye as he alights upon her shoulder. Her skin shivers at the touch of his talon, the color shuddering so briefly to match his that one could almost believe it had been a trick of the eye.

    He appears no different than any other raven. Blackest of blacks in the dim light of the forest, a subtle rainbow sheen to the feathers where the light touches just right. She is so very familiar with that avian body. Perhaps hers had been slightly smaller, but still... too familiar.

    ‘Help,’ his second caw almost seems to say. It could be intuition, or it could simply be her deep understanding of the raven, but she could swear that is what he had said. Her dusky ears twitch at the discordant sound. Craning her dual toned head about, she peers intently at the black bird for a moment.

    “Why?” she warbles.


    Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before.


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    #4
     

    Simple. But, even in his true form he was a man of few words (now a man of even fewer). 

    The curious glint in her eye stirs a longing in him - a desire to steal that shine to add to the halls of his forest cave. Already he has acquired quite the collection of glistening stones (quartz mostly), but his favorite treasures perhaps are the stark white bones he has found - picked clean by the Forest’s creeping things and saved from the splintering heat of the sun. 

    Oh, how he longs to pluck the gleam from her eye to have as his own. But, her voice wakes him from his mischievous desires. 

    “Why?” she asks, her voice unsteady against neglected vocal chords. The raven blinks, unable to think of a reason - unable to dredge up the stallion’s desire to be set free of this avian form. 

    Without warning, the black bird attempts to snag a bit of mane from the mare’s nape and then flaps wildly towards the branches overhead. 

    “Why?” he mimics imperfectly. 

    Does it matter?

    F A U L K O R

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    #5

    Novel



    Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,


    She knows the foibles of the raven well, the trickster nature and nearly overwhelming desire for shiny baubles. She forgets so easily though. Forgets her secret stashes and hidden nooks and crannies. She has many glittering stones and odd pieces stashed here and there throughout the trees, but they are lost to her forever. Perhaps he had even found some of her treasures. Perhaps one day she might even find them again.

    Impossible to say.

    But she knows the avaricious gleam too well. So when he plucks at the long strands of her dusky hair, she is hardly surprised. Tossing her head, she snaps mildly at the stray lock, as though she might snatch it back from him. Under his inelegant touch, the hairs shimmer, shifting from midnight to glimmering silver before racing the length of her mane to trace spidery fingers across her velvet coat. The silver dances across her skin, tempting and ephemeral, before fading into the darkness of her normal hue once more. A taunting gesture hinting at the tricks she has up her own sleeve. She wears many cloaks, all still with the mischievous nature of the raven buried within her breast.

    “I asked you first!” she exclaims mildly in that slightly raspy tone. She shifts her weight, as though to follow him, bright eyes locked upon his avian form. A sudden burst of feathers ruffles across her dark skin, a precursor of transformation. But before the change can be completed, she shakes herself roughly, forcing the feathers to settle and melt back into her skin.

    Then, as though she has suddenly lost interest in him, she turns away with a soft huff, muttering something unintelligible about the fickle nature of ravens under her breath.


    Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before.


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