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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


    I had a dream that we were dead; Adria
    #1
    Jinn
    I had a dream that we were dead,
    and we pretended that we still lived
    The early autmun sun filters through the slowly changing leaves, warm and golden in the dying hours of afternoon. The stallion ambling around the thick, ancient trunks populating the wood barely pays mind to the changing of the season. Time has all but lost meaning for him. Summer turns to autumn before crumbling into the decay of winter, cold and biting until spring arrives the renew life. And all of this leaves him unchanged. Just another creature left to wander her endless halls, lost and alone.

    With a sigh, Jinn pauses to rub his neck against the rough bark of a tree, scratching a vague itch. A clump of his dark hair pulls away, clinging to the tree in macabre glory. He only sighs and sends a pulse of healing energy to stitch the peeled flesh back together. A thing that to any other might seem a horrible and disturbing moment is quite commonplace to the odd stallion. Though he may look unusual in passing, a dusky black with patchy fur and shimmering gold points, milky eyes only noticeable if one stares too long, he is even more unusual after acquaintance. For what few realize is just how much energy he must expend in order to maintain even a passingly presentable appearance and not one of a thing long dead.

    Still, he is bone thin, sickly looking. A horse that has often inspired concern in others. He has grown accustomed to it. In truth, nothing could match the horror his father had expressed at having sired such a thing as he. It is something he will always remember, no matter how long he should live. The first time he had been made to understand just how different he is.

    After a moment, he continues forward with his aimless wandering. Moving until the river is rushing before him, the dark water glinting in the sunlight. He stares at it for a long moment before stepping forward. He pushes deeper, until the water is swirling past his belly, crashing against his protruding ribs. He closes his eyes then, losing himself in the soothing hum of the water, the biting chill as it brushes past his skin.


    @[Calcifer]
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    #2

    Adria

    I felt nothing at all, freedom of the fall

    She sleeps. Tucked underneath the curve of a boulder whose lower half had long been sunk into the riverbed, Adria rests in a pocket of water built by her own making. Above and beside her the rushing sound of rapids crashing against the great stone goes as it normally should but here, like a pearl resting on the tongue of an oyster, she’s made it safe and calm. The nook shadows her from prying eyes that might see the glinting gold and white of her scales, a practice both learned and naturally instinctive. Her powers have dwindled now that she’s left the sanctity of Hyaline’s lake. It’s why she’s so alert even at rest, when the first dark leg bursts through the surface of the River and her eyes, lively and soft purple, open instantaneously.

    The nereid shifts a bit on the murky sandbed and wiggles her curious head out from underneath the long shadow. Three other dark legs soon join, stirring up clouds of sunken rot that drift away. Not so much of the horse is dark any longer, as it seems gold glitters up the fur and fades, accentuating a sharp, black belly. She is, admittedly, intrigued. Lonely creatures of all varieties intrigued her and such a feeling compels the sabino mare enough to snake out from hiding.

    Adria rises, her pleasant, youthful face gliding up past the surface ears-first. Dark strands of her forelock hang apart from her eyes, streaming across a refined set of cheeks the further she lifts, until at last a soft pink nose bubbles into the air, snorting a fine mist of water as it clears. Craning a shy look at the male, the seahorse gazes upon him like a swan.

    He’s … hideous. Undoubtedly the most sickly creature she’s ever come across, and Adria (having never seen a thing die or near death) considers him simultaneously repulsive and fascinating. Innocently her power surges and tendrils of soft water sprout, bobbing through the surface now and then, spreading out in search of him. Like a child she longs to feel, but if he shudders or moves the invisible fingers will rupture harmlessly against his body. Having been silent now for so long, the islander can only think to say one thing.

    “Have you come to drown yourself?



    @[Jinn] okay this gave me so much muse
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    #3
    Jinn
    I had a dream that we were dead,
    and we pretended that we still lived
    He doesn’t notice her at first, lost as he is in his own mind. So long it has been his only companion that it is often difficult to remember there are others. To remember that he is not truly alone in the world. The rush of water against is skin is soothing, lulling. He loses himself in it, allowing his mind to dull and numb. Allowing himself to forget, for even just a moment, his own misery.

    Given the way his emotions so easily paint the sharp lines of his gaunt features, her assumption is only a fair one.

    A sound calls him back to the present. One he cannot quite place, nor does he try particularly hard. Inhaling sharply, he opens eyes that should have been warm gold but instead have faded into the filmy blue of death. He blinks, focusing, gaze shifting as though waking from the confusion of slumber. Finally those deathly eyes fall to the surface of the river, swirling and alive, rushing as though it has somewhere vastly more entertaining to go.

    His gaze catches upon the tips of her ears as she rises from the water. The liquid sluices from her, parting easily in the wake of her ascent, revealing a creature of glimmering perfection. Far more beautiful than he could ever hope to be. As a dead thing, he looks far more monster than man. A thing reviled rather than beloved.

    She is so fortunate, he thinks. Achingly beautiful and uncursed.

    When the slender fingers of water move over him, he flinches. As unused to touch as he is, it is a foreign sensation, even so brief as it is. His skin shivers across sharp bones as the water collapses gently against him, darkening the dull black of his withers.

    He stares at her a long moment when she asks him that question, as though confused. Perhaps surprised is more accurate. Finally, he shakes his head faintly. “No.” Then he frowns, gaze shifting to watch the gurgling water. “Maybe,” he amends.

    Of course, it would never work. He has become too good at self-preservation. But she did not need to know how pathetically weak he truly is.
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    #4

    Adria

    I felt nothing at all, freedom of the fall

    “Oh,” She starts, clenching the tawny brown plane of her forehead into despair, “oh but you mustn’t!”

    How simple a thing for her to suggest. Adria is hardly to blame for her ignorance on the matter of life and death, and like an ignorant creature the despondent note of heartbreak in her response can hardly be mistaken. The nature of their conversation seems like a black and white matter. She categorizes all things good and right into the pale, and all things misshapen and wrong into the void. How could he seem so bent on snuffing out what she believes the greatest gift of all?

    Discomfort slowly fades away from the corners of her lips, hardening into something like determination, and though he’s shivered away those phantom water limbs, the Nereid mare floats closer down the river. She feels righteous enough to demand an explanation, and chooses now to finally cast aside residual fear in favor of diplomacy. The maybe confuses her - if she left without opposing or doing her best to remedy his sadness, why … that’d make her no true explorer at all, would it?

    “Unless you are in pain, yes?” The islander horse queries, incredibly sure of herself and her capability to solve puzzles. “A great pain with no healing. I’ve heard of such a thing before.” She says, her expression molting again to sadness. But then the possible injury or darkness inside of him is also fascinating and, with the flick of her lilac eyes, Adria glances again towards the stallion from across a few measured feet of water. A hundred questions well up in the bright sparkle of her gaze.

    Perhaps he’s old. He certainly seems that way, hardly fleshed out in preparation for the oncoming winter and glaring at her behind lenses of pale, milky blue film. Had she interrupted a right of passage, then? Come between the planes of existence unknowingly?

    Was she only prolonging the inevitable? “Damned if I am.” The seamare resolves quietly to herself, thinking, “more likely that we come together as fate would have it.” And that becomes her vocation instantaneously - to be the one lick of flame in someone else’s pitch black world. If he meant to kill himself, then she meant to stop it. There was nothing more he could do to convince her otherwise, now.



    @[Jinn]
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    #5
    Jinn
    I had a dream that we were dead,
    and we pretended that we still lived
    She is far too kind, to be so worried for a creature like him. Most peer at him and shrink away in disgust. They see only foul skin and a deathly stare, the trappings of a beast. They do not see the man beneath. For most, death is so black and white. It is difficult to conceive a state in which one is both and one is neither. That halfling state of opposed realms that Jinn so constantly balances within.

    He is a dichotomy, truly. He should be dead, but the blood of an angel flows through his veins, keeping his heart beating and his lungs drawing air. She worries that he would kill himself, but she does not know he is already halfway there. Doesn’t know life has yet to cede in this battle over his corpse, nor will life give up her grip so easily.

    But still lovely mare surprises him.

    That she hadn’t flinched from him had been enough. She is rare, and it is heartening to know he is not so grotesque that there are none left who could look at him without fear or disgust in their eyes. But then she asks if he is in pain. No one has ever asked him that before. Perhaps it had never even occurred to them. But the pain has become so commonplace in his life it is hardly worth noting. He has grown so accustomed to the way his skin will tear. It has become almost automatic to stitch it back together again so that he might appear at least slightly less gruesome.

    Would she care, if she knew? Would it frighten her to know how easily his skin can tear away from bone? He considers her silently for a long moment, unsure what to make of this ethereal water sprite. Unsure whether she truly wished to know, or if she was simply being amicable. Finally, he sighs, his gaze flicking briefly away as he murmurs a soft, “Always.”

    He does not consider it too much further. Instead, he reaches around, to show her just how grotesque (just how much of a monster) he truly is. His teeth grip a fold of his flesh as he pulls, pain slicing through him as his skin parts easily, sickeningly, from the loose grasp of his ribs. She would either understand, or she would flee in horror. He expects the latter, knowing too well the wretched sight he must make.

    Almost without thought, his healing curls through his body, across his skin, repairing the damage he had inflicted so easily on himself. It could mend torn flesh, that warm, soothing light, but it could not bring life to the dead.
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