• Logout
  • 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


    love from the west; ivar {birthing}
    #1
    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.
    Winter had been hell.

    Wishbone is grateful for the warmth of spring. Her body is a Picasso-painting of adaptation: first the intense heat of Tephra, then the lonely chill of Nerine, the vibrant array of weather climates during her adventures, and finally the stinging blizzards of Nerine again. Her first winter in Nerine had been a rough transition between volcano-warmed hot springs and wind so fierce it might fling a body straight off the granite cliffs. The bite of the snow had been painful against her thin mahogany skin and Wishbone had spent much of the winter months nestled in the inner-workings of a cavern in attempts to stop the intense shivering.

    Nerine is ungracious to her this winter, even with the infection and the twins.

    She’s certain that there’s two of them. Her belly is swollen beyond the distance of the mothers carrying just one and Wishbone can feel their arguments in the dead of night, tiny hooves striking against ribs and against one another. She feels — and looks — like hell. The smooth, lithe curves of muscle that used to line her bones have been melted away by the heat of fever and sickness. Her hips are angular points just behind the large, rolling mess of her pregnant belly like two jagged mountain peaks at the edge of a heaving, swollen sea. The snarling of winter is too cold and the heat of the warmer countrysides are too intense.

    She is constantly hungry.

    Although Wishbone attempted to make it through winter in the northern kingdom, it was bleak and empty. She hadn’t seen Breckin since her arrival back in Beqanna, something that brought a frown to her face, but she’d been too exhausted to embark on an expedition to find her friend. The common-lands were crowded with the plagued — infected blood and various other bodily fluids ran through the snowdrifts and meager water supplies, draining from the bodies of scattered dead — and she knows better than to labor among the illness.

    She’d resolved to settle somewhere between Ischia and Tephra. The comfort of the volcanic kingdom eases her nightmarish, unrestful nights. Wishbone knows Ischia is populated (with Ivar and his harem, but at least there are signs of life) and warm compared to Nerine’s unsettling quiet and searing cold. Throughout the heavier months of her pregnancy, she lingers in the unmarked corners of the two kingdoms: sweating and struggling her way along the beach, spending full-moon nights enjoying the cool of the darkness, soaking her swollen and heavy legs in the salty waves.

    It’s on one such day — standing knee-deep in the warm waters that run between Tephra and Ischia — that a twinge of pain catches itself in Wishbone’s lower abdomen. It fades easily, a simple indication that something (no, somethings) will be coming later in the day. “Well, fuck.” Wishbone whispers the words to herself, barely heard above the gentle rush of the waves lapping the shore.

    Her stubbornness had kept her away from crossing into Ivar’s borders; the fall night of her rearrival had brought about the exact consequences Ivar had been looking for, she is certain. His determination to procreate would never cease to amaze her. Yet Wishbone knows her weakness will not allow her to cross the channel when the tide is high, as it is now. She contemplates bringing forth the bones of the ground to build a bridge to cross with, but she isn’t certain if she will be able to hold the formation until she is safe. So she waits.

    The sun is beginning to lower into the sky when the tide is low enough for Wishbone to manage. It’s another spectacular sunset, just as it had been when she’d first arrived in the fall, and the colorful rays still manage to coat her in hues that bring life to her otherwise nearly-dead body. The contractions have begun to increase in both frequency and intensity, yet Wishbone knows she still has a long way to go. Instinct is urging her to find security and warmth to deliver, but she pauses on Ischia’s shore for a moment to catch her breath.

    Although Wishbone is stubborn, anxiety is beginning to grasp her. She is incredibly ill (as evidenced by the thinness of her body and the weakness that hides in the amber of her eyes, among the other signs of the infection) and became so in a short amount of time. The weight of carrying twins has only further increased her misery; as another contraction ripples the muscle along her stomach, she laces her ears into the thickness of her tangled dark mane. As much as it might hurt Wishbone to do it, she calls for Ivar in a simple tone as the last of the contraction is fading.
    credit to eliza of adoxography.

    @[Ivar]
    #2
    Each day on the island is much like the one before, and not very different from the one that will follow. His metrics for passing time are things like the migratory fish and the growing bellies of the mares who carry his children. There's a good number of them this year - Kellyn, Carwyn, Synapse, even Jhene had finally successfully conceived.

    There might be others too, and it is them Ivar is thinking of as he watches  the sun set over the ocean. The residents of Ischia he can protect, but he cannot be in multiple places at once. The frustration he feels over this is an unfortunate side effect of his time spent on land; the worry is just as unwelcome. The kelpie far prefers the simplicity of the underwater world, and yet he has voluntarily beached himself for something as silly as a crown.

    He snorts in irritation at this reminder of his self-inflicted malcontent; it is difficult at times to remember why he'd done it. As usual, the universe chooses to remind him when he least expects it.

    Though the brown shape in the water might be a seal, Ivar knows that they rarely venture this far west. A horse then, swimming toward his island as the evening begins to rise. Rather than enter the water to greet them, the blue and gold kelpie walks down the beach to where he knows the current will carry them. Whomever it is will be weary from the swim, he knows, and a weaker creature is one more easily overpowered.

    So changed is she by illness and pregnancy that at first Ivar does not recognize her. The familiar lines of her face are drawn and hollow, and her one slim figure is marred by a belly that bulges impossibly wide despite her visible ribs. The Wishbone that had arrived in Ischia in the fall had not resembled this one much at all; the Plague is the only explanation.

    Well, the plague and the carrying of a child that Ivar is sure is his, but surely she is pleased by the latter despite her current state. It hadn't been enough to keep her here as the kelpie had intended, but it was enough to bring her back. That will have to do.

    When he draws near, he runs his muzzle down her lusterless mahogany neck, lips at the soft ridge of her shoulder.

    “You’ve looked better,” he says without preamble, pulling away to meet Wishbone’s amber eyes with his golden ones. “I suppose now I have to stop putting off stealing one of Island Resorts healers.”

    @[Wishbone]
    #3
    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.
    Wishbone had been so consumed with making it across the channel amid the pressures and jabs of contractions that she didn’t notice the Ischian king nestled against the sand and the drowning sun. Perhaps it is a good thing she didn’t notice or she might’ve thrown a sharp arrow his way about the protective way he prepares to defend his home from her. Or perhaps he might’ve encouraged her, the sight of his blue-gold-white face in her line of vision.

    Regardless, Wishbone feels a turbulent amount of angry and romantic at the sight of him when the most recent contraction finally fades. This uncomfortable (in all sense of the word) point of her life has left the mahogany searching for something akin to home. Nerine is bleak and cold. Tephra is unfamiliar and without her family. Wolfbane has disappeared with his other family. When Wishbone left Beqanna, she hadn’t expected her rearrival to be so full of change. She hadn’t realized it until this very point — soaked in sunset-dipped western water, whittled away by the hungry jaws of infection, swollen and aching with the weight of impatient children — but Ivar has become home.

    “Ivar.” His name is rough in her throat, from the misuse of months alone and from the ache of pain beginning to unfurl once more across her abdomen. Wishbone leans into his touch and the comfort it brings. Her own muzzle reaches to run against the scaled length of his withers, but the hand of Mother Nature grasps her womb in a vise-like grip and Wishbone presses the length of her forehead against his side instead, the softest sigh of a groan slipping from her mouth. She doesn’t catch the suggestion of a healer, nor his quip of her appearance, because there is a roar of a hundred windstorms in her ears, urging her to let out a bitter scream in the face of labor.

    Yet Wishbone is stubborn and the contraction fades with only that mere groan and her reliance on Ivar to speak of its presence. When she pulls her dark face away from his side, it takes her a moment before the pinpricks of dizziness fade from her vision. “They’re coming, Ivar.” She is purposeful now — a soon-to-be-mother dressed in the colorful garments of battle. The world is briskly clear in the moments that count the time until their arrival and the look in her amber eyes suggests she will take no arguments. Wishbone is primal in this form, enduring the pain her ancestors have endured, and determination lines every inch of her narrowed face.

    Her gaze finds his for another moment, strands of darkened forelock twisting against her mahogany cheeks, before she turns toward the treeline. Wishbone curses herself for being so stubborn; she has little time to find a place secluded enough to birth two children. For a brief moment, she wonders if it will also be her grave (the instincts of childbirth hold the brutal strength of infection at bay for now, but it is only a matter of time before it is unleashed with a worsened attitude than before). “Come with me.” She calls to Ivar over her shoulder, hellbent on making the most of the moments before another pain drags itself against her body.

    If things had been perfect, she would have found a cavern nestled against the rock structures in the heart of Ischia. But Wishbone acknowledges that things are not perfect and decides to birth beneath the numerous branches of a banyan fig tree not far away from the shoreline. Just as she turns to speak to Ivar, another contraction washes against her body, the fiercest of them all. Her body is burning and aching and throbbing and pushing and screaming to get the children out. Wishbone’s ears lace back against her skull and a low growl rolls in the back of her throat as she nearly stumbles to the ground, weak and at the mercy of labor. Thankfully, it fades without the result of a child and the mahogany is able to center her balance again in the twilight.

    Her amber eyes fasten to Ivar’s with quickness and severity so forceful it might be physically felt. “Ivar.” It’s a strong, yet slow word. It’s drawn out to indicate how serious she is about her following statement. “If I die, promise me you’ll protect them.” It’s the only time she’s ever relied on someone such much; this very moment is perhaps the pinnacle of both her strengths and her weaknesses. She might never be this brave again. She might never be this terrified again. “Swear to me that you will raise them. I refuse to let our children die because of me.” Wishbone can feel the next wave coming — an ocean-tide that will bring a new purpose to her life and a new face to the earth — but her eyes remain on Ivar’s, unwilling to press her body to the soil until he has promised her and promised their children.
    credit to eliza of adoxography.

    @[Ivar]
    #4
    The wide swell of her belly bulges and stretches around the child preparing for birth. Ivar’s seen this before, the flurry of movement as the child turns about, but this child seems more active than most. At first he is pleased with himself – what a strong child he’s made! – and that pride only grows stronger when the bay mare refers to it as a them. Two children then, both of them active and lively despite the gauntness of their mother. Wishbone has given them her strength then, the piebald stallion realizes.

    It’s a sacrifice that would never have occurred to Ivar, and one that he does not entirely understand.  It’s certainly not one he’d have ever made himself.

    Ivar follows Wishbone when she commands it without hesitation, but his pale brow is knitted with thought.

    He longs for the water most in times like these, when the complex storm of emotions rises in threatening waves. In the water, he’d have slit her belly with glittering teeth, freed the children within and fed them on mother’s meat. Without emotion, the skeletal pregnant mare is nothing more than a tool, useful only in satisfying the kelpie’s needs. She’s not even kelpie herself, and the children she carries are unlikely to even be waterborn. A kelpie has no use for offspring that are unable to move freely in the sea and even less use for their mothers.

    If I die, promise me you’ll protect them, she says, her stern face dappled by the shadows of the banyan.

    Like all of his kind, the kelpie is bound to his word. Does she know this, he wonders as he meets her amber eyes, can Wishbone know what she is asking? They have kept their natures secret from Beqanna for over a decade, and with it the meaning that a promise holds for them. No, Ivar decides. She doesn’t. She can’t.

    “I promise.”  He answers. Reaching forward, the stallion tucks a strand of her lusterless mane behind one dark ear. There was no quaking of the world at the commitment, but as Ivar’s blue ear flicks back toward the sea for a moment, he imagines that its siren call is just a little quieter than it was before.

    “Now relax.” The kelpie’s voice is calm even in the face of her severity. The jovial grin had faded at her declaration of the imminent arrival of their children, but there is something that is almost affectionate in the depths of his golden eyes. He’s not been out of the water quite long enough to feel it yet, but the hypnotic command that he presses into her cheek as he places a kiss there suggests that he nearly is. It’ll get easier, he tells her subconscious mind just before he pulls away, it isn’t so bad.

    The kelpie can’t heal the plague that afflicts her or soothe the pain from the contractions that wrack her her body. He is helpless to do most anything. Taking away panic isn’t unfamiliar to the sapphire and gold stallion, he has pressed relaxation and fearlessness into dozens of minds. His victims die painlessly and without panic, and while Ivar wouldn’t (directly) be responsible for Wishbone’s death, the least he can do is make sure that it would not be a dishonorable one.

    “You aren’t dying, anyway.” he adds with an attempt at a smile. “I won’t let you.”

    @[Wishbone] <3




    Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)