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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


    dark side of the morning - Enfys
    #1
    i'll use you as a makeshift gauge
    of how much to give and how much to take
    It is easier to tell where the borders are on dry land.
     
    Ivar is drifting a few dozen meters off the coast, and he can see the redwood trees through the mist that tell him that this beach must be part of Taiga. Still, is stepping on the beach considered crossing the border? Should he wait out here in the sea until someone notices him? This is something that he probably should have thought of before deciding to try and swim home from Tephra.
     
    His legs are not yet tired, but the sun is starting to sink below the coniferous trees, and Ivar needs to make it home by nightfall. Through the Taiga is the fastest way, but his ingrained lessons to not trespass and his desire to follow his parents’ instructions keep him from simply swimming to shore.
     
    He remains afloat, a pale head on a dark neck, as the light slowly fades from the western horizon.
     
    It will be easier to go unnoticed during the night, he reasons. Mother will assume he is staying longer with Father, and Father will assume he has already left to sleep besdie Mother. They will not check with the other, and Ivar has at least a few more hours before his absence will be noticed.
     
    Not until the sky is black overhead does he venture into the shallows. The sand feels odd against his hooves, and the ground is almost uncomfortably solid. This is the longest that he has ever been in the water, and he finds that he is almost unwillingly to heave himself back into dry land. He must, he tells himself, though he pauses fetlock deep in the waves for a last glance out at the ocean.
     
    (something moving in the shadows. be still.)
     
    The tobiano colt turns, and is able to make out a paler shape among the redwood trees.
     
    “Hello?” He calls out curiously, “Is someone there?”
    IVAR
    Reply
    #2
    enfys
    just stop your crying, it's a sign of the times
    The dark is not her favorite time of day. The way the forest sways in the wind, the eerie shadows fading into each other. Enfys had lived among the forest her entire life, and yet the nights never got any better. She didn’t sleep at night. She was quiet, fading herself into clear ice as the moonlight concaved and convexed off her body, passing through her like water. She walked through the trees, every night. Silent. Remembering her mother. Thinking about her father. Learning the trees. Wanting something. Wanting more.

    Finding nothing.

    And so, when she hears him, she startles, a small squeak like the sound of a baby bird. Her body goes out from under her, and she lands on her bum with a thud, discovering that what she told her sister Jinju all those months ago might be a touch inaccurate. Perhaps, just maybe, she was infact, clumsy. Hello, is someone there?

    The moonlight washes over her features, her bright blue eyes standing out against the dark, blink outwardly at a multi-colored boy…who appeared to be about her age. She stands, shaking out her hair. “Nobody important. Just me.”

    She has not seen much outside her family. Just faces in and out of the trees. This boy is the first. And if she was not more certain, she would have said that there appeared to be something different about the boy’s… teeth. But tricks played on her mind in the dark, the lack of sleep, the quiet. Her thoughts plaguing her. The unwanted Taigan princess.

    “I have never seen you here before. Did my father find another child to pluck off the meadow?”
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    #3
    i'll use you as a makeshift gauge
    of how much to give and how much to take

    There is definitely someone there.

    It seems they had not noticed him until he’d spoken aloud. The trees block out what little light there is from the slender moon, and the stars are hard to make out through the misty fog. In summer, he supposes the fog would be gone, but the cool temperatures of fall have allowed it to linger. It feels almost solid around him as he moves forward, peering through the darkness until he can make out a pair of bright blue eyes.

    They belong to a girl that seems about his age – if a creature made of ice can really have an estimated age. She’s too large to have been born this past spring, and while the cold scent of ice makes it difficult to interpret natural cues, something in the way she speaks hints at her age. Her breathing also sounds rather quick, and while he’d usually keep his distance to be polite,

    (startled prey. closer, slowly, you are not a threat)

    he draws near.

    Ivar gives her a smile, one that does reveal sharp teeth, but they are shaded by the night. Perhaps she will not see.

    “I’m on my way home,” he tells her, gesturing through the woods in a direction that could mean any land in Beqanna that lies beyond the forest. His dark eyes turn back to her, and he traces the glittering lines of her transparent figure with open curiosity.

    “You look like you might be important,” he tells her, “Unless all you Taigans are like…that?” He bobs his head, gesticulating to her entire transparent self. They aren’t, he knows, he had met Heda and she was as solid as any other horse he’d seen. The buckskin mare had been winged though – perhaps residents of this forest are all something special? Ivar smiles, and for a brief moment his plain face is something more. He’s not mature, not yet, but as he ages more and more of his nature slips through.

    (gentle. slowly. do not startle it again.)

    He glances up at the moon, which has moved only slightly since he emerged from the water. He has hours still to make it home he decides, and looks back at the blue eyed horse.

    “Does your father often find children in the Meadow?” He asks
    IVAR
    Reply
    #4
    enfys
    just stop your crying, it's a sign of the times
    She jolts, seeing the shadow of his smile and yet knowing that there was something very different about this boy. He was beautiful, with the way the black n dthe white splotched together like the moon casting a shadow between the trees, and yet there was something inherently different about him. Dangerous.

    Predatory

    Enfys takes a step back, instinctively, flipping her tail over her back as she transforms her body in the moonlight. From nearly transparent, and cold, to her usual grullo appaloosa. Her spots mark her parentage, not that there were many who cared much about who her parents were. She smiles back at him, her eyes glancing warily over the shadow of his mouth once more, but her eyes dart away from him, and instead catch a look in his eye, as he seems to tell her to come hither. And, just as she stepped back, she finds herself stepping forward again. I'm on my way home the boy says, and Enfys tips her head to the side, wondering instantly where the boy has been, and where he is going. The Taiga was not usually a thoroughfare for weary travelers--those with a Deathwish could get stuck in the labrynth of redwoods here. The deep magic that still resided in these trees because of her mother protected them in a way that made them safe. Maybe... that was wearing off? Enfys doesn't know.

    Nor does she care.

    "No, we aren't all like this, just me." There was another. Her sister, she supposed, who was glass naturally. A delicate little thing. Father seemed to like her best. Not that it mattered much anyway. At the boy's mention of her father, she snorted softly, a wry, twisted smile that plastered ivory teeth in the middle of the night. "It seems like it. Most of my siblings seem to be adopted. I have one brother. One who I have never met."

    She raises a hoof slightly in the air, gesturing towards the boy, before gently placing it down in the ground again. "I'm Enfys. Who are you?"
    Reply
    #5
    i'll use you as a makeshift gauge
    of how much to give and how much to take
    The girl seems wary, but Ivar misses it as he watches her transformation. From glistening nothing to soft grey and purple. Purple like Kylin, but also purple like herself; something new. He’s not seen spots quite like hers before, and for a moment he traces them with his brown eyes, taking in the matching violet of her long legs and moonlit mane.

    She admits it, admits that they are not all like her, and Ivar smiles.

    It is not a boy’s smile, but nor is it that of a predator. Nature has given him more than sharp teeth and an affinity for the water; when he smiles like this he is more beautiful than any living creature has a right to be. His nature might be predatory, but he is both bait and hunter.

    “You’re special,” he tells her as though it is something that he has always known, as though he is glad she is realizing it.

    “I don’t have any siblings,” Admits Ivar, and with that he seems just a boy again, friendly despite his presence in a foreign kingdom in the night. He’s never thought about wanting siblings, and something in the way that the spotted girl speaks of them almost seems to justify that. To have a sibling, his parents would need to spend time with each other, and that is something they have never done. He supposes he could have half-siblings, but he sees his mother each day and knows it is impossible on her side. Father does have secrets, Ivar knows, but he does not think that other children are one of them.

    “I’m Ivar.” He tells her. “It’s nice to meet you.”

    And then, because she is pretty and Mother is not around to tell him no, he asks: “Would you like to swim?”

    IVAR
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