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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


    pray for the thunder, briella
    #1
    V u l g a r i S
    He was surprised when Sabbath came home and delivered a daughter in Tephra. He had expected her to keep her distance until he sought her out, but his shock was quickly replaced with joy. Not only did he and his wife have their second eldest child home but now they had a granddaughter to fuss and fawn over. The memory warms his heart and strengthens his resolve to find Adna next and perhaps also her twin children. Vulgaris had seen them shortly after they were born but war and strife had torn them all apart again.

    As he begins his search this summer morning, he is thankful to have a fresh body that doesn’t protest every step and ache after long walks. Perhaps the mountain did not answer his request but it gave him something small to make his journey a little easier. His knees lift easy to step over fallen branches and little shrubs as he searches the forest for any sign of his precious daughter. His dark forelock doesn’t hang in his face the way it did before, which feels strange when he goes to toss his head. He almost laughs at how much his body has changed in the last year. He really is entirely new, he thinks.

    His new coat has only just begun to gray and reveal the dapples hidden in the black of his body. The sunlight bleeds between the tree canopy to add little splashes of gold across him as he moves along. Occasionally, he calls out Adna’s name in the hopes that she is nearby. Vulgaris wonders if she would even answer to the sound of his voice, though.

    As the sun reaches its highest point and he becomes certain the humidity can grow no more unbearable, he decides to pause for a break. He comes to a stop before a bubbling creek and lowers his head to drink from the cool waters for a while, when a snapping twig catches his attention. He lifts his head and his ears swivel forward to listen for any further movement. Vulgaris prays it is his daughter, but in his heart of hearts he knows it will not be this simple.
    In this shook-up, twisted world, I'm gradually growing transparent and vanishing
    Don’t look for me; don't look at me
    @[Briella]
    Reply
    #2
    Briella
    isn't it lovely all alone? heart made of glass, my mind of stone. tear me to pieces skin to bone.

    There is a glinting reminder of starlight that shines through and within the threads of ice that make up her curly, thick, and lengthy mane and tail: swaying like soft hair in the breeze and unmelting even against her neck. Those pale blue eyes glint and shimmer, they sparkle with reflections of stars or water and the brilliance of them emits a strange facet of light that almost softens her weary and sobered expression. Compact and muscular, she seems built like an equine; but one with a mixture of Spanish and Arabesque features- hot and warmblood twisted together and catering to a fluidity and gait that made the strange girl seem graceful in ways formerly impossible.

    Painted black as a base on her coat there were signs of blues in shades of navy to cornflower highlighted by grey and silver and spatters of white: a roaning pattern that made her look as if she had wrapped the stars above around her like a cloak and draped the milky way across her back. No matter, the pale white ‘hair’ floated and she danced here to and thereafter- free moving and roaming with mind only to the grass on her knees and the feeling of the wind passing across her neck and face, and along her sides. Nomadic and flighty the girl moved carelessly across the forest floor and stopped several times at the sounds of passing paws and hooves.

    Steadily she found herself drawn and paused, peering out and through the ferns with mind to the shadows and moving sun: the color washing through the trees. Vulgaris, as he was, seemed familiar but the Voidal echoes in her mind could not place the strange man nor his face.

    Once upon a time, a stolen King brought his children to a new land…

    The chasm would have echoed; but there is a disconnection between herself and the shadows and Briella cannot help but turn a leg over another and walk with poised gaits and steps. She turns and finds herself diverting to his path if only to study the dapples and grays, the patches of darker fur and all the strange deja-vu sensation she couldn’t help but feel. With the water bubbling away and babbling over rocks, she flicks an ear and stares at him with an airy kind of quiet: her head tilting as she found the soft voice cracking through her throat.

    “Have you lost someone in the forest?”  she speaks, her younger form cast in the shadow of wildrose and ferns… of great trees and briars ever stretching across the primordial world.  “That is… dangerous, the depths lead to endless wild and all manner of monster. Would you like help finding this Adna?”

    She knows the name, the girl- Adna, and she recalls the memory of Bane and of Vulgaris and of Dovev… of the theft and the journey. For a moment she sighs, Briella’s attention focused and her gaze levelled as she thinks to speak again, still soft and childlike in some way.  “Please, call me Briella.”




    @[vulgaris]
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    #3
    V u l g a r i S
    He turns his head when he hears the little twigs snap under elegant little hooves. Her body shimmers and shines like his advisor’s did, but with more stars and gems than her. In another life, Vulgaris might have found her pretty, but the memory of Leliana’s face eclipses all things he could find beautiful anymore. His heart is filled to the brim with his love for her and it cares little for other things. Still, finding another lost girl in the forest strums his heartstrings and remind shim of why he began this journey in the first place.

    He wonders why she is alone out here when he realizes he knows this girl. When he had plucked Dovev from his home and told Bane to let his brood stay as well, she had been there tucked to his side. Briella was smaller back then and the fire in her eyes seems replaced with a kind of confused fog that he pities. But he doesn’t say anything. There’s no need to worry her if she doesn’t know just how lost she really is.

    I’m not sure if she’s lost here or some other place. My daughter hasn’t come to visit her mother and I in some time, so I thought I should find her.. where ever she is,” he explains and attempts at a smile, but it comes out crooked and weighed down with concern. Vulgaris reminds himself that Adna is not some tiny, helpless child, but rather a predator with teeth and venom to defend herself. Never in his darkest dreams did he ever want her to need them, though. “Adna is scaled and red. She’s beautiful like a little summer sunset.

    She’s not little anymore, he again reminds himself. She’s grown. Perhaps he continues to trip over this fact because it had been so easy to protect her and care for her when she was still all scruffy mane and knobby knees. Adna hung on his every word back then and thought he hung the moon just for her. And he would have, he would have.

    My name is Vulgaris. Are you also lost, Briella?” he asks as he begins to walk forward again, giving her an occasional glance. Perhaps his heart is just starved for his children’s love but he wonders if Leliana would want him to bring home any other children he finds along his way. Her tender, aching heart always found a way to make space for more people to love. He keeps the invitation tucked away for now and waits for a more appropriate time, though.
    In this shook-up, twisted world, I'm gradually growing transparent and vanishing
    Don’t look for me; don't look at me
    @[Briella] this took eons and i'm so sorry but i haven't really written vul lately DDD:
    Reply
    #4

    you said you'd wait forever, but I blinked and the world was gone

     Was it such that she had forgiven, or simply become conflicted and confounded: none could know and in truth? She herself had little idea. Such it was that she looked over Vulgaris, unsure and listening, her pale jewel like eyes gleaning and glistening and the rue in them stirred as he discusses Adna. She mires in the thoughts and memories of the darkness, of the tangled wood and branches… of the broken and rotten wood and all the smell of decaying plant life within the endless reaches of the wilds. Turning to gaze and glances back into the shadows she hesitates before focusing and peering into the hanging vines and moss- into the trees beyond.

    “I have to imagine if she were lost here,”  she began to speak: somber and quiet.  “Then she must be terribly scared. The darkness gets you turned around in the trees and brush, and there’s less space to move the further in you go. It becomes stifling; but rarely does anyone go there.”  she blinked, studying the older of the pair between them- her nostrils flaring and gaze locking onto Vulgaris.  “She sounds very pretty. Quite the opposite to me.”  it was odd in a way, but the description of her being red prompted the movement enough for Briella to expose the pale blue and black mixtures of her coat.

    He asks, though, and stops just as she was to follow: her eyes widening and gaze turned sidelong as she nodded and tilted her head.  “I am always lost anymore.”  blinking again and turning her gaze away Briella followed behind… lifting herself up and feigning a quiet confidence as she moved.  “Dovev is gone and Expelliarmus has been gone for much longer, the Forsaken Valley crumbled and I recall that cataclysm… but I couldn’t find the others. So, I am always lost. Wandering. The closest thing to family I’ve had was the fairies.”

    It burns her to say it, to think about it, and she recalls the others with quiet contemplation. No matter, she carries on beside Vulgaris: walking and pacing herself beside him.  “But what do I know? Certainly you would know more, I have heard that yours is larger- family, that is. It must be nice to have them.”  she’s not sour or bitter, not even jealous- her tone is sweet and singsong. 

    BRIELLA



    @[vulgaris] casually drop this here... unless you wanna burn it.
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