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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 think your love would be too much, any
    #1
    She has left behind the Cove and Litotes and all that she had learned as a child. 
    It would be cliché of her to say she’s spent the last few years finding herself, and yet here we are. Beqanna had claimed her and molded the girl into one of her own, gifting her with fangs and fire to hunt for her dinners and wings and scales to protect herself from harm, but why? For what? Several years of searching and the girl has yet to find her place in this cold world, but she has to keep trying. The flames that run along the ridge of her spine are the only thing that keep her warm anymore, and growing up lonely is no way to live. 

    The light of day is fading as she paces along the edge of the meadow, the fire running along her back casting shadows all around the black and red girl. Her red eyes seem focused, but on just what she wouldn’t be able to tell you – she is lost in thought, as she so often appears to be, and the minutes run together as her cloven hooves dig a furrow in the soft earth. She mutters occasionally under her breath, but the words run together so swiftly that passersby may believe she’s speaking another language. 

    After a time, and the moon has begun to rise, she stops her seemingly endless pacing, eyes now focused on some point far away. Briefly she wonders what to do – investigate this random thought further, or remain here for the rest of the night – but she decides against it, instead choosing to resume her relentless pacing.  

    By the time morning comes, she will probably have dug a ditch deep enough to swallow her, but she doesn’t stop, and she can’t exactly put a pin on exactly why she doesn’t just... stop.
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    #2










    Night time is the worst. Everything is so dark, even when the stars and the moon are out, and it’s so depressing. Do you know how many others have walked into me during the night? There’s not a speck of any other colour anywhere on my body - not my teeth, not my eyeballs, not even my nose - that isn’t the deepest colour of black. So yeah, I blend in a little bit.

    So when there’s something that stands out in the darkness, I’m automatically drawn towards it.

    And tonight, it’s not just the moon drawing my attention - it looks like there’s fire. Fire’s pretty dangerous, dear-ol’-mother taught me that, and I’m wary of it like anyone with a sliver of sense but there I go - walking towards it anyway.

    Okay look, it’s scary but it’s also pretty and I’m only mortal.

    Imagine my surprise when I move through the meadow and discover that the fire is moving and that it’s attached to the back of another horse. She’s pacing back and forth, and seems to be in distress, and I can only imagine it’s because she’s on fire.

    But there doesn’t seem to be any panic so I stand there for a few seconds just making the most ???? face ever.

    Finally, though, I edge a little closer and speak up. “Excuse me miss.” I start out strong, but this is where both my brain and my voice start to falter because the next words I have to say… they’re ridiculous. And they’re not even a joke even though they’re going to sound like it. I just, I just can’t talk about anything else until we clear this one thing up. Because damn is this one cool looking mare and I’ve got a lot of other questions that are going to come after this one probably.

    But first and foremost, I lower my voice - my black eyes focused intently on her and, if I wasn’t composed of nothing but shadow, it might even be easy to see the concern flickering in my eyes in the warm combination of firelight and moonlight.

    “Did… did you know that you’re on fire?”




    photo from unsplash


    @[Ember]
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    #3
    She doesn’t mind the nighttime as much as everyone else seems to. Maybe it’s because she has spent so much of her youth in the darkness, surrounded by her flames for company... but gross, she sounds like a whiny teenager and that’s just no good.

    Unlike the one she can’t see approaching her, she’s practically a beacon against the night sky – her black scales are dappled so heavily with metallic red ones that any bit of light reflects off of them and makes for quite the show, and for gods’ sake, she glows even when she isn’t even on fire. She must make for quite the sight, between her flames and her metallic scales and her ridiculous glowing, burning bright against the horizon for anyone to think she’s a freakin’ ball of light and fire or something like that.

    She smells the other before he comes within viewing distance, but her pacing barely breaks until he speaks up. Only then does she stop, turning to face the emaciated stallion with inky black antlers. The light of her flames barely seems to reflect off of him, he’s so dark, and curiosity sparks in her red eyes.

    He asks her if she knows she’s on fire and she starts, lifting her head in feigned surprise. “I’m on fire?” she exclaims, her deep twang making fire sound like ‘fiyah.’ She turns her head to examine herself and watches the flickering flames for a moment, breathing in their piney scent. “How ever could that have happened?”

    With a cheeky grin she turns back to the intensely black stallion, her eyes glowing with mischief as she relaxes her metallic wings, letting them thump to the ground beside her. “I’ve always been like this, truth be told,” she informs him, twitching her nose to indicate the flames and the scales and the... everything else. “I’m not quite sure I feel whole without being aflame somehow.” She stops talking then, suddenly shy. It’s probably more than he wants to know, anyways.

    @[Velkan]
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    #4










    There’s absolutely a split second where I think she’s being serious, that she actually didn’t know that she was on fire, and I panic. My black eyes widen, but there’s no white in them to show my fear. Just more blackness – there isn’t a single thing about me that shows anything other than that shadowy colour – but maybe that’s for the best. Because it’s not long before I realize she’s joking, that the flames aren’t hurting her.

    Which is great, because I wouldn’t have known how to help her. Would I knock her over and kick some dirt over her? Would I try to pat the flames out? Being on fire isn’t exactly one of my life experiences.

    She’s cheeky, which I guess is exactly appropriate for someone who is on fire all the time.

    “I take it… it doesn’t hurt?” I ask, hopeful and curious. Now that I know the fire is just a part of her I can appreciate how cool she looks without feeling afraid. I do wonder whether it would hurt me but I figure we’ve got at least a little bit longer of an exchange to pass between us before I go around trying to touch her fire.

    “I like it. I probably wouldn’t feel the same without my antlers, either.” Even if I can never get a good look at them! Their weight on my head is a comforting one.


    photo from unsplash


    @[Ember]
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    #5
    She can almost smell the touch of panic on the boy as his eyes widen almost imperceptibly, and her cheeky grin grows wider still as it sinks in that she’s joking. She can almost imagine someone trying to dampen the flames rolling down her spine – she thinks it would probably take a powerful hydrokinetic to extinguish them completely, and part of her wonders what it would be like to vanish into the water and completely ruin her fire. Would it hurt, such an integral part of her being stamped down and forced to live within her?

    A part of her wants to throw herself into the river that borders the meadow, just to see what it would be like.

    The inky black stallion asks her if it hurts, and as if in response she lets the flames grow larger, cloaking most of her body now. “I don’t think the flames would hurt me,” she answers after a pause, the flames reflecting in her red eyes. “Even if they could, I’m pretty heavily armored,” she adds with a chuckle. The scales cover every inch of her body that she has found so far, aside from maybe the areas she can’t see, but how is she to tell?

    He tells her that he likes the flames, and she smiles an authentic smile this time, bobbing her head up and down. “Your antlers are quite lovely as well,” she tells him honestly, taking in their curving, jagged length with appreciation. The only thing she would like to add to her own repertoire would be a pair of antlers as well – think of how much fun she could have with all of that! She doesn’t think of herself as a beast or a monster, but with antlers on top of everything else she would definitely be a sight, terrorizing the smaller territories at night.

    Pushing that thought aside, her turns her attention back to the unnamed man in front of her. “M’name’s Ember, by the way,” she says, tilting her head as she watches him. “What’s yours?”

    @[Velkan]
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    #6










    Although the scaled mare’s response that the flames probably wouldn’t hurt her doesn’t exactly sooth any of my fears, I figure she’d probably not be so calm and cocky if they were hurting her. I mean, could someone really joke around if they were on fire all the time and it actually hurt? Plus, she brings up a good point about being heavily armoured. Almost all the ladies I’ve met recently have been scaled and I have to wonder how I missed out on that super cool trend.

    I think I would totally rock the scaled look!

    When she shares the compliment back, commenting on my antlers, my black eyes look upwards even though I know I can’t really see them. But it causes a big smile all the same once I refocus on the mare. “Oh yeah? Thanks a lot! I’m not sure where I got them from – neither of my moms has antlers. But I kinda like that it makes me different from them, y’know?” I wasn’t too sure whether that was a sentiment commonly felt – did everyone have awful parents or was that reserved just for me? I surely hoped that everyone else had a better home life!! But it’s really hard to picture loving parents when you’ve got no experience in that area.

    We officially become friends, as far as I’m concerned, when fire-dragon-lady introduces herself as Ember which is – I’ll have you know – possibly the coolest and most appropriate name for someone I have ever heard. And, not being one to hold in a compliment when I can just blurt it out instead, I make sure to let her know.

    “Ember! Holy crap that’s a great name. It’s super cool to meet you - I’m Velkan!”


    photo from unsplash


    @[Ember]
    Reply
    #7
    He’s absolutely right – with the black coat that absorbs the light from her fires, he would look so cool with scales. Would they reflect any light or just take it all in, selfishly consuming everything that dares to shine upon them? Ember loves the rippling, reflective black and red of her own scales, but she’s noticed that having scales in Beqanna isn’t exactly unique – Velkan, on the other hand, has a look that is completely different and unique and pretty intense on its own. She can’t say she’s met many horses before, but none of the ones she has seen have looked like him; he should be proud of his own look.

    His big grin when she compliments his antlers only makes her own smile grow, a genuine thing. It falters for a moment when he mentions his mothers – he had two of them! – but she segues back into conversation effortlessly and hopefully he doesn’t notice her momentary lapse in happiness. “You have two moms? That’s really cool,” she tells him, not realizing that he thinks of his parents as terrible; if she knew who they were, maybe she’d feel the same way. “I uh... don’t have parents,” she continues, suddenly awkward, but wanting to keep the conversation flowing with her newfound friend. “I just woke up on a beach one day and well, here I am!”

    She giggles like a child when she stops speaking, hoping that he doesn’t decide to feel bad for her for not having any parents at all. It had been a lonely childhood, but it has shaped her into someone she never thought she could be – alive. When he compliments her name she can’t help but laugh this time, a genuine laugh that is nearly a snort. “It’s not a very unique name though, is it? The guy who found me thought it was just brilliant, naming the girl on fire Ember. Velkan, though, that’s a cool name. I think it suits you well.”

    @[Velkan] officially bffs
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