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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 don't have my head on straight [wishbone]
    #1

    Who needs the Isle when you can make the world of dead and dying your home?

    Oxytocin snorts as he kicks yet another body out of his way, not even reacting when the other whimpers in pain. Oops, it appears that one isn’t dead yet, he thinks to himself, privately wishing that he could use his blight on horses as well as plants. It’s so annoying, constantly tripping over emaciated or bloated bodies littering the ground wherever he walks. It's like he can’t escape the plague no matter where he goes, and it’s getting old quick. He's become immune and seeing reminders of the sickness that had briefly touched him just grinds his gears in a way that he can’t explain.

    He's finally managed to find a more secluded part of the Meadow, where the sick have not yet discovered to die all over it. Thank the gods for that, at least. It is the middle of winter and the snow is piled heavily on the ground, much more heavily than the last time he was here, and he trudges through it towards an old friend of his: a tree, much older than most of the horses around these days and the perfect spot for a nap. There is no snow under the thick, heavy branches, and though the grass underneath is nearly dead and the dirt is cold, the tree has become his go-to spot whenever he is in the Meadow, even in the dead of winter.

    He had braved Icicle Isle, after all; it doesn’t get much colder than that.

    When he finally arrives at his resting spot, there is already another one there. It is not so surprising to him, as surely others are as sick of the more cramped areas as he is. He approaches the woman with his dark eyes narrowed suspiciously, but he can sense no sign of the plague on her, though perhaps she is still in the early stages of the sickness. “You know,” he says as he approaches, mischief gleaming in his eyes now. “I don’t normally share my napping places with others.”

    OXYTOCIN

    I don't have my head on straight



    @Wishbone
    immune.
    Reply
    #2
    living for the past
    because the future's gone. praying in the dark that you won't go home. i should've said it better, i should've set fire to a letter. but i could run to your apartment, hope i get it started better than before; and i could write it in a poem, pretend i used to know you better than before.
    If it hadn’t been immediately obvious in the first few moments of Wishbone’s arrival, there is no way around it now: Beqanna is infected. Scents of sickness and death hang in the air, pungent and thick despite the bitter, thin taste of the winter season. The common-lands are swollen with creatures who are either too thin and weak to stand or too heavy and bloated with illness to move. Dangerous, infectious blood weeps into whatever clear water might be available and stains the snowy embankments in shades of maroon.

    The bodies — whether barely alive or finally dead — are beginning to pile up.

    The Nerinian mare watches a future mother (her sides starting to swell with the promise of a child) rub her neck against the roughened bark of a tree. Large tufts of creamy hair snag on the tree, leaving something that resembles a mutated squirrel against the trunk. The stranger doesn’t seem concerned, despite a sudden winter breeze sweeping through the Meadow, and instead coughs out a thick blood clot. Wishbone wonders if the mare will make it through the winter, let alone the labor and delivery of her child.

    Her thoughts become uncharacteristically worried for a tender moment: she had begun to notice the stirrings of pregnancy in her own body, yet she had also woken covered in sweat and stiff in her joints before traveling to the Meadow. Wishbone shrugs it off as symptoms of growing a child (little does she know, children) inside her body. She is just turning toward the outskirts of the Meadow, contemplating returning to the warmth of Ischia, when a dark stallion approaches her.

    Her tangled forelock slips across one bright amber eye as she inspects him curiously. “I figured it would be nice to keep it warm for you on a cold day like today.” Although the patch of dead grass is small, Wishbone moves aside so there is enough room for the stranger. He seems healthier than everyone else in the Meadow, with mischief shining in his eyes rather than sickness. “I’m Wishbone.” She remains quiet after that, refusing to acknowledge any fanciful titles she might’ve once held — Khaleesi of Nerine, Princess of Tephra — and simply stating her name. For the time being she is only that: Wishbone.
    credit to eliza of adoxography.

    @[Oxytocin]
    Reply
    #3

    Once upon a time, he was an arrogant teenager who had the world laying at his feet. With his companions at his side he had feared little and burned a lot, and though his pyrokinesis has been lost to him for more years than he can count, he still misses it some days. In the Valley he would set random trees alight in the winter, creating bonfires that blazed all across the kingdom to keep him – and, in turn, his subjects – warm from the whistling winds that swept through the kingdom at all hours. He has fallen so far since those days, but he doesn’t miss the Valley anymore. Beqanna was made anew and he has long since learned to roll with the punches.

    He sees the same creamy mare that she does, rubbing her neck along a tree and coughing up blood clots all over the ground, and he curls his lip at the heavily pregnant mare, disgust written into every feature of his face. With a thought the tree begins to die, and so does the grass around it as the mare stumbles off into the snow. He cannot stop the spread of the plague but he can destroy the trees and grounds that the sick infect, hoping to at least slow the spread. If any of his family were to get sick...

    He turns his attention back to the bay mare as she speaks, chuckling as she explains that she was just keeping it warm. “How very kind of you,” he says as he settles in next to her, moving close enough so that their shared body temperatures would keep the other warm. He thinks briefly to Xiah, whom he had taken not too far from this very spot, and a smirk curls at the corners of his lips. “I’m Oxytocin,” he adds. Former king, former claimant to Icicle Isle, former... a lot of things. Now, though, he is just Oxytocin, free of all that once bound him.

    OXYTOCIN

    I don't have my head on straight



    @[Wishbone] I'M SORRY I SUCK
    immune.
    Reply




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