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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


    talk some sense to me - walter
    #1
    It has taken several weeks, but she has finally made this place her own.

    It is not a cave that she had set foot in before; few probably ever have. The mouth is on the short westward side of Nerine’s only island. Each morning the grullo mare can see the sun rise over the empty ocean.

    Somewhere out there, is the Beqanna she knows. Farther still, is a world entirely beyond Beqanna.

    The pull to leave is stronger here than it had been in the woods. (her views of the horizon had been obscured by countless trees). But she does not go, she instead turns back to the granite of her cave.

    Sleek and grey, the sides and roof of her cave are granite so smooth it seems polished. It was scooped out by a seemingly endless number of waves – the cliff’s attempt to satisfy her wish of a perfect resting place. The grey sand of the beach covers the floor here too, but it is littered here and there with odd baubles. She has collected them in her time spent in Beqanna, returning to this same cave now and again after the Reckoning to deposit an item or two. It is mostly shells gathered these last few days: a large conch, several broken sand dollars, and a pile of glistening mother-of-pearl shells. There are a few other oddities; towards the back there is something pale and round. A skull with eyeless sockets and a pair of impressive tusks are all that remains of the walrus.

    The sun has cleared the water in front of her, and it begins its ascent over the pale green waters. Djinni turns to head back into her gaze, brushing against the dunegrass that she had carefully carried down as seed from the cliff above. A bee buzzes up from the black-eyed susans beside the grass, and Djinni follows its flight path until it blends with the shadow of something else. She narrows her eyes to better see against the brightness of the sun, and she feels her heart catch in her throat at the familiar figure.

    “@[Walter]?”
    #2

    Time is at once fleeting and so, so slow.

    He has lived entire lifetimes now, some years seemingly longer than the others. All of the years bind together like uneven chapters in the greater story of his life. Some of them are fat and slow like a river thirsting for rain. Others are as quick and tumultuous as the surf on the shore. Sometimes, it is for the best that they pass so swiftly. Sometimes, he wishes he could hold onto time a bit longer, rather than have it slip away like sand in his grasp. Time is irrelevant and also all he has, all he owns.

    These years have passed almost unnoticed.

    As he stands facing the storm-grey ocean, Walter wonders why. But as one frothy wave evens out and cycles into the next, it is an answer he comes to immediately. He has built a home for himself here on the easternmost corner of the kingdom. It is rocky and wild and dips dangerously into the sea. Few venture this far away from the protected, populated heart of Nerine, so few have even noticed him here. The few that have don’t seem threatened enough to shoo off the gangly gold stallion (who has been mistaken for a mare enough times for it to not be coincidence, much to his chagrin). He walks the same stretch of beach every day, enough to leave gouging ruts in the sand. He flies up to the tops of the cliffs and looks out over the endless water, finds peace in the monotony of his hours.

    These are the years of isolation, but not without cause.

    He feels like an oathkeeper the way he waits for her. It is the most important task he’s ever assigned himself, the only promise he’s ever kept. It is impossible to be a seed planted in sand and expected to grow (to not fly on the next breeze to more suitable soil). But wait he does, grow he does. Here, he grows roots when he thought he might never.

    Bright gold is the beacon that draws him like a ship (to ruin?) Walter glides over the ocean carried on wings she re-gifted him. The salt breeze is no longer alien but welcome when it lifts his mane and stings his tongue. It tastes bitter, like all the words he might have said before he became an anchor. Now, there is only the sweetness of relief, of knowing he did the right thing for the first time in all those years. He waited and she returned. She came back to him, and he would not leave her again.

    The beach is giving under his feet when he lands. He pulls his swan wings in tight against his yellow sides and moves quickly towards the telling hint of gold he’d seen before. She is the same but different, with twin gold antlers instead of bands in her ears. He sees her first, but as she turns, her brow unknots. Walter leaves his name hanging in the air as he moves in close to her because it doesn’t need answering. His chest collides with hers and he presses his muzzle into the hair at her neck and inhales deeply. The long-missed but never forgotten smell of her drowns his old trepidations. He has grown. “Djinni,” he mumbles into her mane before pulling back, a smile flickering on his lips. “Welcome home.”

     

    Walter

    come down from the mountain
    you have been gone too long

    #3
    He makes the first move toward her, and she falls into his embrace with an unconcealed sigh.

    “I love you.”

    The words have been true the entirety of the time she’d been away from Nerine. They’ve been true for decades.

    “I think I always have.”

    A golden knight; that had been her first thought when she’d seen him. Djinni had been little more than a child (but she’d thought herself so wise, as most narcissists do), and he had stunned her. He still does, she thinks as she draws back to look at him. The salt spray has stiffened his flaxen mane, but she pushes it away from his eyes so she can better see him. That’s better, her satisfied smile seems to say. The tines of her golden antlers tilt back, catching the sun on their gilded surface. It shatters, some reflected onto the roof of her cave, some to the equally brilliant feathers of her wings.

    “I didn’t think you’d stay here,” she says, but the word are hesitant, as though by saying them aloud she might encourage him to leave after all. “Not when I left…like I did.” not when she’d returned like she had, she doesn’t add. He’d been here, she realizes, he’s stayed in Nerine and they’d never said a word to each other in the three years she was gone. Djinni had visited the grey shores countless times, at first alone, but later round with child, then with a colt at her side. She had been living a life without him right in front of him, and yet he was still here.

    “I’m sorry.”
    D J I N N I
    genie | rose gold tobiano dun | trickster
    #4

    She says it and his heart stops.

    She says it and he can’t breathe.

    It is all he’s ever wanted since he was born, all he’s ever chased over the many, many years of his lonely life. Hindsight teaches him why he’s been the way he has. Looking back, he sees that it has given him a sharp tongue and a bitter mind. It has run him out of would-be homes and away from those he considered friends. It has made him a hermit that desperately believed he wanted to be alone, that he chose to be cast aside rather than forge ahead with every relationship he’s ever formed. It has made him a stranger in his own skin, not the golden knight his appearance would otherwise suggest.

    Love has been his keeper, and now it sets him free.

    She does. But he can’t meet her eyes at first. Walter doesn’t want her to see the tears welling up in his own. The emotions of others have always been easy to him: he feels their sorrow, their happiness, their anger. But his own have never been understood or readily available. Now, buried in Djinni’s mane, so many repressed emotions course through him all at once that it’s almost too much for him to handle. Almost. He wants to be strong for her, though, in the wake of her truth. Strong, because he’s been an unwavering pillar for three years and he doesn’t want to crumble now. So he holds tight to the moment, to her, until she pulls back. She pushes his hair out of his eyes and he returns her smile with a watery one of his own - still not composed but he finds he doesn’t care.

    The Nerinian sun shines on both of their varying shades of gold, brightening the space they occupy. He remembers all the days he’s watched it arc across the horizon, its light dipping against the tops of the waves and gilding them. He thinks that they were all worth it, ruts in the sand and cold nights and all. It isn’t the forever home he’s pictured, but it is where she would return to. She is surprised he stayed long after she left for Sylva. To that end, he shakes his head gently, his straw-like locks falling back over his face. “I knew you would be back, someday. It didn’t matter how long it took.” A small chuckle falls from his mouth then. “Besides, we’ve both waited far longer to see each other again, even if not intentionally.”

    The salt breeze catches his tail, pushing it against his hocks, pushing him towards her. His smile drops as he moves in again, ready to answer her admission with one of his own. “I was a foolish, selfish boy who grew up to be a man who wasn’t much better. You broke me, @[Djinni]. You broke me and I needed to be broken.” Walter bows his head to place a soft kiss under her neck, his lips lingering on the tender spot where her shoulder began to slope. He meets her eyes then, holding her gaze in a way he hadn’t been able to before, not with anyone else. “I love you, too.”
       

     

    Walter

    come down from the mountain
    you have been gone too long





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