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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


    [Aegean] you had your maps drawn
    #1
    ASTANA // MAKE A WISH ON WHISPERED STARS

    The stories her mother told her always sounded as if they were from another life time. She spoke of how her father, their grandfather had been a pirate and his mate would wait with the children, including Keav, her young sister, and her two older brothers, while he went out to sea. She would stare out at the ocean for hours on end, willing and wishing he came over the horizon. Keav, as she grew, she would join her mother, sitting on the shore as the waves would lap against their hooves, the tiny baby digging her hooves in the sand, comforted by both her mother’s presence and the sound of waves breaking.

    For little Astana, the tales of the ocean always made it sound like some distant land that she would never be able to reach. Due to their father’s severe weakness to water, it meant they would probably never live beside the ocean ever again as her mother had done when she was little.  And it broke her little baby heart, the first time she had asked.

    Perhaps though, of all the stories her mother told, it was the stories of the star horse that spoke to her very heart, her very soul. While her mother’s pelt had reflected the night sky, much like Etoile’s. The horse she spoke of was made of stars. When he sweat, it was not water, but stardust that dropped from him, shining and sparkling. It was as if he were made from fairytales, all of them, woven together to create one, beautiful creature. Her mother had been in awe of this amazing stallion since the first day she met him, and every night he would jump into the night sky, becoming a star once more for the evening. The brightest star in the sky her mother said. And every morning he would return to them, sparking and shining and luminescent once just as he had always been. Until one day, he didn't return with the sun, and the day after that, and the day after that.

    He never came back.
    He never came back to her.

    And so when Astana finds herself peering up at the night sky, admiring the shining friends above, she cannot help but think of the story her mother had told, and how lucky she had been to meet a star horse, even if it had been only for a short while. This is not the first night that Astana is alone, but the previous night was the first time her mother had not visited her dreams. Astana thinks she may be busy, but the last time she had seen her, there had been an almost acceptance in her gaze, from one wayward wanderer to another. Her dream wandering mother perhaps had chosen to go else where.

    Those diamond eyes are  just about to close when something, call it fate, intuition, destiny, or just a plain coincidence, stops her from doing so. She stares out along the snow and she sees something strange. Where she should only see the starlight reflecting off its surface, she spots something different, something unusual. But this is a little girl with diamonds for eyes, a mother who walks in dreams and strolls through stars, and a father made of gold, just like her. Unusual, she knows, does not always mean dangerous. And when she sees a sort of ethereal glow off the snow, she knows she must go to it.

    “Hello,” she says only when she reaches where the glow is coming from, but the trees surround her and she is not sure which way to turn. “My name is Astana,” she says to the open, winter air. “Am I dreaming? Or are you real?” She asks, fearless, curious. “And if you are real—can you say hello to me too?”


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    #2
    Aegean

    I should have loved a thunderbird instead
    at least when spring comes they roar back again

    Aegean is a man split along the seams of reality and illusion.

    He is a man born of love and made to love others and yet so often he withdraws into himself. He has fallen in love more times than he can count but never loved for more than a day; he is open and yet has never made a lasting connection. Instead he floats through life, untouched and unaffected, unrooted even though he himself has planted himself within the kingdom that would have been his right by birth. 

    He has no connections, no lasting friendships, no love.

    Just himself and his illusions and the dreams of the family that has long ago splintered and left.

    So it is not a surprise that tonight he is by himself, standing amongst the snow with his head tipped up to watch the stars, the milky glow emitting from him so natural that he doesn’t even notice the way that it spills onto the ground around him. He does not even notice when the young girl makes her way toward him until her breathy voice catches his attention. A single ear swivels amongst the silken tangle of his forelock and mane and he takes a second before he breaks his gaze to look down at her.

    His dark purple eyes are kind and quiet, his face smooth and free of emotion. “Hello, Astana,” even his voice is delicate—that line he walks between masculine and feminine woven together that he has never truly known the difference. “Is not all life a dream?” His smile is slow to curve on his face and it barely tips the edges of his velvet lips when it finally does perch there. “I do not know the difference between being awake and asleep any longer.” A deep breath as he angles his antlered head up once more.

    Around him, his illusions weave, snow that drifts upward and splatters into stars that weave around her legs. Harmless illusions—just simple things of beauty. The things he craves most of all. 

    “I am real, I think,” he glances down again. “My name is Aegean.”

    I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
    (I think I made you up inside my head.)



    wow this took way too long i am so sorry
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    #3

    Her heart beats like the waves of the ocean and in her veins is sea water, hair is seaweed, her eyes like rolling tides but Astana has never traveled to the ocean. Yet, she has gained her mother’s fascination for the large expanse of water she desperately wishes to see. Her mother had taken her in her dreams, but the pale golden child has yet to truly taste that salt upon her tongue, or really hear the sea birds scream into the sky their jubilation. What Astana has seen is the image her mother perceives as the ocean, and Astana, though a dreamer at heart, she aches for the reality of cool waters and warm sand.

    Astana has a way of seeking out kindred spirits. Maybe it is the fact she is a twin and will always be a twin no matter how many miles she and her sister are apart. And she fills that void with friendly faces, offering her smiles freely. The girl wishes to find that kinship in anyone she sees, drawing out connections with delicate grace. She finds dreamers, wanderers, explorers alike, with connections fleeting or lasting, she has not gained the years to decide.

    He is awe inspiring, and this comes from a child that has been encouraged time and time again to dream as big and as wide as she can. She can feel her heart racing with the disparity that he is real, tangible, that she will be able to reach out and touch him. Astana can almost feel the way that milky glow reaches out to touch her skin, reflecting off the precious metal her skin is made of. And then his eyes meet hers.

    Astana offers him what she can, a soft reckless smile that tips the corners of her lips just so. He says her name and it is formed entirely of bliss and imagination. Is she really here? Would she wake up next to her twin, disappointed once more that she has not reached the end of the world and further still? “My mom has said things like that before,” she says then, noting the similarities between her own mother and the man (could she call him a man?) before her. Crystalline gaze is staring at him curiously as a child so often does. “Does it make you sad?” She asks him then, a curious tilt of her head. “To not know when you dream?” She has to know, she wants to know. Maybe that is the reason her mother’s smile had not always reached her eyes, because she can no longer see the difference. “Or is it bliss?” Please, she has not know.

    And then it begins. He has turned her into the stars. Diamond eyes look down to her legs and she is so enthralled with the beauty that for a moment she forgets what has happened and who is with her. With a single tear in her eye (she has always had a soft heart for beautiful, ethereal things) she looks to him. “Your magic,” she says and she is not sure what else to say. “Will you stay with me? Until morning?” Her voice is so little here, showing the child she truly is. That single tear falls down her face and finds its place amongst the snow upon the ground and she finds herself unable to tear her eyes away from him. He was magic of this, she was certain.



    a s t a n a

    @[aegean]
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    #4
    Aegean

    I should have loved a thunderbird instead
    at least when spring comes they roar back again

    Aegean has siblings, but he has never been particularly close to them. He knows that he carries pieces of them inside of himself, even if he could not tell you which belonged to whom. He just knows that he is a tapestry of his mothers’ love and a reflection of the world in which he was born. He was the Prince of the Silver Cove and then nothing and then a resident of Hyaline but these external things did not define him.

    He continues to weave stars and snow but he grows surprised when they begin to morph into something outside of his control. His gift has been something that he has needed to learn for himself. It was so close to what his mother could do—weaving reality into dreams—but his had been given to him later in life. He has needed to understand the threads that hold it together; he has needed to understand it for himself.

    So today is when he learns how his gift does not just react to him.

    How it is so easily influenced by those he is around.

    Because the stars begin to grow further apart and then fill with the ocean of his childhood. He tilts his glowing, antlered head in some thought, curious at how one of the stars becomes a fish that quickly zips through the air and then another grows and grows until it is a translucent jellyfish, slowly going upward.

    Before he knows it, they stand in the middle of the sea and he can smell the salt on the air and can hear the dull roar of waves, the way that the water moves around them. It holds onto its star-like quality, leaving it dreamy enough to not be mistaken with the reality of the water, but it is real—real enough.

    In awe of his own creation and how it has seemingly come out of its own will, he turns his head back to the little girl, thinking back on the questions she had asked and he had failed to answer immediately, too lost in his own thoughts again. “No, not sad,” he thinks, giving her as serious of an answer as he can. “I love both my dreams and the ones I make for myself in equal measure, even if they are different.”

    He catches the tear on her cheek but does not stop to think that perhaps it is sorrow.

    He, too, cries at beautiful things and thinks nothing of it.

    “I will stay,” he says because he has nowhere else that he needs to be. “However long you need.”

    I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
    (I think I made you up inside my head.)

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    #5

    The call of the evening goddess has never been something Astana could easily ignore. Her siren was sweet, resonating in her bones, in her soul. Those pale blue crystalline eyes look to the starry night sky with something akin to the way a child looks to its mother. As if it harbored all the answers in the world, for all of time. Astana had, from a young age, become a nocturnal being, too caught up in the starlight to truly leave it behind and trade for a peaceful slumber. Night is heartbreakingly fleeting, and Astana, for now, is utterly content to be with another creature of darkness and moonlight.

    She is caught between some where with her breath caught in her lungs in utter surprise, and it being expelled from her body as she looks to these illusions with an avid fervor. The stars and snow mix together amongst each other like lovers embracing for the first time, feverish touches with a tender exterior. Her diamond eyes are looking every where at once, she does not want to miss anything, trying to catch everything she can and imprint this moment into her mind for forever.

    And then it changes.
    Astana does not know what she has done so far in her short life to have been blessed to meet a stranger such as him.

    Diamond eyes carefully watch as the twirling galaxy of snow and stars she had just been watching suddenly changes and becomes something else entirely. Astana has only seen this in dreams, but she knows what it is before the image is even entirely created and she thinks her heart might burst. It lurches in her chest as if wanting to be as close to her greatest dream as it can be. She giggles, light and airy as a fish wanders right by her, so close, maybe she could tou—it dances away before she has a chance. Eyes are quickly caught by the jellyfish, a creature Astana has never seen nor dreamed of before. It moves in such a way as if she had never imagined, her own legs bob and rise as if trying to imitate its motions. “Is it real? Do these exist?” She asks in a hushed voice, as if she raised her voice anymore it may shatter the beauty she sees before her.

    The wonders continue before her, an open sea. It is heavenly, her senses are all so busy with the sights, sounds, and smells. There is too much for her to experience and she is delightfully overwhelmed, her heart racing with exuberance within her petite golden breast.

    She forgets then, that this is not real and that she is not alone and crystalline eyes look to the stranger that has given this to her with something like adoration. “You make such beautiful things,” she says and she wants to fall apart right there because the beauty of it all is so heart wrenchingly elegant. She knows nothing in real life will ever be this perfect.

    The tear is halted in its path as the glowing—she doesn't think she just simply call him a stallion—she knows his name, but Astana finds herself thinking fondly and wistfully of the glowing stranger she had met. She will call him as such. Astana closes her eyes then, letting them fall beneath those long, innocent lashes of hers, as she rests her head against his shoulder, letting him bare the weight of her cranium. “But what—” she mumbles through relaxed lips, stopping, she breathes. “What if I need you forever?” She says. It is an odd thought, she does not know this man, he does not know her, but Astana knows he is a dreamer, like her, and, like the stars in the sky, she would not so easily let him go.



    a s t a n a


    @[aegean]

    {she's super weird, okay?}
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    #6
    Aegean

    I should have loved a thunderbird instead
    at least when spring comes they roar back again

    Aegean delights in her own delight. He feels it reverberate in his bones and feels a shiver of pleasure run up his spine when he realizes that she appreciates the beautiful things as he does—that she too can feel the way that they blossom in your chest and take over. He watches her almost as much as he watches the ocean as it ebbs and flows around them, the sensations of it becoming increasingly permanent the longer that he is standing there. His hold over his gifts have become easier with time; at first, his illusions were flimsy things—easily dispelled and difficult to catch—but now? Now, he weaves like an artist.

    So her appreciation is not lost on him, and his beautiful face glows brighter for it.

    “It is easy when the world has such beautiful things,” he says quietly, his voice always just a touch too quiet but never a whisper. It wraps around his tongue and he gives it like a gift, pressing it into her palm before looking back up to see the waves cresting up near the tops of the trees, and the water rushing by.

    Curious, he looks down to her again. “You know, I believe you could help me with this.” He has never tried it before—never once handed over the keys to the castle—but he believes he can. And like all things with his gift, he finds that it is as nearly fun to explore as it is to master the parts he has visited before.

    “Just concentrate really hard and I think they will react to you—to what you’re thinking.”

    He nods, reaching over to brush his velvet nose against the tear on her cheek, feeling comfortable with the way that she rests against his shoulder. “Forever is a long time,” he murmurs, thinking about the way that it stretches on and on, and how even his illusions may not be enough to carry him that far.

    “But I have no place in particular that I need to be.”

    I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
    (I think I made you up inside my head.)

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    #7

    Happiness is nothing without someone to share it with. She had heard her mother speak this words. Without something to reflect the glow that radiates off you, what do you have? And so, Astana is so grateful to Aegean, not only for the beauty he has created, to make the edges of her lips rise with joy and her heart swell with exultation, but that he is here to share it with her. That she can see his own face brightening, his heart pressing against his rib cage with the sheer happiness of spending a night with dreams and stars.

    Those diamond eyes are enraptured with the world he has created around her. Ocean and stars. She wonders if this is what her mother has most frequently dreamed about. She wonders what it must be like to be surrounded by so many beautiful things whenever you wish it. How he does not simply succumb to forever living within this realm where the sun can shine, but the cloud can still rain down with gentle pitter patters. Where the ocean breeze cans till tangle sea salt in your hair, but the mountains and the forest will stand around you like a cathedral made of stone and wood. How does one ever leave? And that is perhaps what draws Astana to Aegean the most. To be a creature of dreams and reality, it is the reality of his life that astounds the little girl with eyes for diamonds the most.

    She feels his words press into her. Those small hands wrapping around them like it were a precious butterfly. Her lips press to her cupped hands and she whispers back. “How do you keep the darkness away?” She asks then, and she knows that he will know her words. That she hardly means the literal darkness, but instead, those pieces of the world tucked away in the corners, haunting and waiting. There would be no beauty without the ugly in the world. How does he keep it away? Nightmares and dreams, after all, are fickle things at the best of times.

    But she is distracted, again, lost to the white caps that surge and crash like her wild, wandering heart. Once more though, she is drawn away from this dazzling spectacle, something a little more than a day dream, but less than reality, by his enchanting voice. A voice that burrows under her skin with warmth and comfort, settling in the base of her heart like sand at the bottom of the ocean. “Me?” She questions with hope framing her lips like lipstick. “You think it will?” She asks with bright eyes that look a thousand times brighter against the reflection of starlight and snow. With trembling hands (whether from excitement or nerves she doesn't know) she takes those keys into her hands. There are so many doors, she isn't sure which to try before reaching to one all too familiar.

    The waves begin to change, from drops of water into grains of sand. But still they do not stop their moving. They roll and crash just like the water before them. It would seem, despite Astana’s love for her home, the place she was born, the heart in her petite golden breast is not quite ready to let go of places unexplored and unknown. “Have you been to the desert, Aegean?” She says and realizes this is the first time she has spoken his name aloud. It feels foreign on her tongue, like words of magic that could set some spell into motion. And perhaps, in a way, it has.

    His touch is comforting and ethereal. Tomorrow night, when she dreams of him, she will not recall if it was him who had brushed the tear away, or if it were her own eyelashes, of the magic of the moonlight. She breathes against him, small chest rising and falling on her slender body as she does so, a rhythm as steady as her heart. “I know,” she says, even though she hardly does, is hardly aware of how long forever truly is. “I am glad you don’t,” she says then, breathes. “Aegean,” she says his name again because she loves it so. “I think, I am getting tired.” She is, after all, just a little thing.



    a s t a n a

    @[aegean]
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    #8
    Aegean

    I should have loved a thunderbird instead
    at least when spring comes they roar back again

    He watches with awe as the world around them shifts and changes. He watches as the ocean begins to bleed away, as the illusions begin to mold around her and her dreams. He can still feel it in the palm of his hand; he can still feel the way that his gift ebbs and flows in his heart, but the control is different. He no longer directs but instead enjoys as it continues to get its direction from something else entirely.

    “You don’t fight the darkness,” is all he says as his eyes continue to travel upward, as he continues to watch the way the earth spins around them, the brilliant lights continuing to spiral. “You simply accept it and give it a space within you. You’ll find that the darkness does not resent the light.”

    Aegean smiles down and then lets the conversation continue.

    When the desert is complete and the sand is blowing, he breathes in the heat. “I have not,” he says and there is the same awe in his voice when he realizes that she helped shape his illusions into something completely foreign to himself. What a gift to be able to experience something like this with her.

    “It is magnificent.”

    But she grows tired, curling against him, and he is content to hold her there, to stand watch over the young girl as sleep begins to creep up her and sink into her bones. “Sleep, little one,” he whispers, carefully rearranging her mane and pressing a chaste kiss to her forehead.

    “I will be here when you wake up.”

    He has no need for sleep soon—he so often sleeps not at all—and with the desert still opening up wide and expansive before him, he is not certain that he would be able to sleep at all anyway.

    I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
    (I think I made you up inside my head.)

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    #9

    You don't fight the darkness. One day, years from now, Astana will find herself in a moment of toil and sadness. As a tear rolls down her cheek, dropping down from eyes made of diamonds, these words, his words, they will come to her. And she will smile because his words are wise, yes, but the fact that came from him, from his lips, with his voice, well, that will mean everything to Astana. She knows the words he speaks are true, his heart breaking, beautiful words, but true they are all the same.

    But, for now, Astana is content with being herself, carrying a light inside her, bright and radiant as so many children are. There is time for sorrow, anger, jealousy, all of it, time for it much later, but not here and now. For now, Astana is lost within the dream world they have created together. Something beautiful, magical, entirely their own. “It reminds me of the stars,” she says to his words, though she hardly feels she needs to explain it. Aegean would understand what she means, he had to. Already her expectations of the stallion were so high, he was beautiful, perfect. Everything a dream should be, ought to be.

    As a wind rolls through, the sand tags along, climbing aboard and is spread throughout the imaginary dunes. Astana is taken back to the windstorms that could sometimes last an entire day. She and her family would camp out in the Oasis, shielding themselves from the sand storm. The entire day would be spent telling stories, laughing, and playing games the twins would make up, their parents happy enough to go along with it. The sand does not sting, but she can feel the hot sun reaching to her skin and soaking into her bones. “You gave this to me,” she says, shaking her head in awe at what together they had created. “How can I thank you?” She asks him in a soprano voice as fragile as sea stars, as twinkling as starlight.

    “You could come with me—sometime,” she offers him, a wish, far fetched perhaps, but it is offered none the less. “I could show you—everything.” It is a childish idea, but then again, Astana was no more than a child, it was to be expected, no matter how foolish an idea it was.

    She feels safe beside him as diamond eyes begin to grow heavy, eager for the promise of sleep. Beside him though, it was more than safety, Astana could not quite place it. Her head jumps upwards each time it falls, eyes opening suddenly, so fearful was she that she would awaken to discover he did not exist, had not existed at all. What a tragedy it would be, something her heart did not wish. He kisses her forehead and it is only then that her eyelids fall shut. “Promise me,” she says because she is young and thinks promises can never be broken. Ever. Even if promises are some of the most fragile things to have ever lived, so utterly breakable. “I will find you again, Aegean,” she says when sleep is surrounding her like a blanket of warmth. She would look first to her dreams, and then to the world if she had to.



    a s t a n a

    @[aegean]
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