• 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


    Thread Rating:
    • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5
    [open quest]  Día de Muertos - Round 1
    #1

    and when i breathed

    my breath was lightning

    Rhy does not miss living. She has never dreamed of returning, though she knows it’s a thing that’s done with some ease. Horses come and go from the afterlife through cracks and tears, the veil between the worlds torn by magic and misuse. Yet, she longs for a chance to speak with the living, to simply see her daughter again, to spend more time with her brother. Just once in a while, to check in with those that still walk the earth. Death is a peaceful thing, a comforting place, and yet even here she misses those she left behind. Love does not cease in death, and neither does the pain that is love’s constant companion. 

    Her mind has not stopped whirling since Leander left her, wondering if it is possible to cross the divide between life and death for those other than those who have always walked that line. Once, long ago, Vanquish had thrown her back to life through a tear between the realms. If she could be thrown across worlds, if horses could leave the afterlife and return, then surely there was a way to speak across the realms. 

    It has taken her a long time to gather the information she needs, and still, the information is not quite enough. However, the time is now and she cannot wait years more. Her impatience will not allow it, and so she can only hope that what she has learned is enough. Soon, the veil between life and death will be at its weakest. Soon, the time will be upon them to start the ritual. If they can get it all right this first time, it will be easier in the years to come.

    Rhy calls to Beqanna, seeking the blessing of the land and finds it. She cannot do this alone, and so she calls to those who have loved and lost before. It is a quiet call, something that will tug on the heartstrings of any who ought to come. Those that cannot understand a mother’s pain of never knowing their children, a child’s pain of never meeting their parents, or a lover’s pain of losing their other half, will not hear the call. It is not for them.

    Those that do hear though will know what they need to do. They will remember their loved one, a sharp thought that comes unbidden. They will simply know to bring a token, something near and dear to whomever they have lost, and bring it to the beach. It is so simple, or so it seems, but it is never simple in the beginning. If they get it right this time, it will be this simple in the future. Anyone will be able to come to the beach on Halloween, a token in hand, and speak with someone they have lost beyond the veil.

    To make that possible though, she would have to ask more of those that come to her today. Rhy cannot join them in the land of the living, but she can make herself visible, something shimmering and ghostly, hovering in the air near the cut where she’d once returned to life. It is no small thing she asks of them. Once, she’d been sent to retrieve Carnage’s lost love, and for her own selfish desires, she would now ask them to do something similar. To cross into the world of the dead is to live with one hoof in each. It is to be driven slightly mad, to never quite know where you belong.

    If nothing else, she would do what she could to give them something worth their effort. They would not be seeking her lost love, but instead, their own. At least she could give them that.

    rhy

    the electric lioness of riagan and rayelle



    Happy Halloween! Or perhaps really, happy Day of the Dead. If you succeed in this quest, Beqanna will be able to celebrate “Day of the Dead” every Halloween. First, you have to succeed though.

    This is a writing quest. Grammar will matter, but I am not a grammar Nazi. Don’t make a ton of mistakes, make sure your posts are readable, and you will be fine. Mostly this quest will be based on your creativity, so come have fun!

    Temporary defects may be awarded, who knows (it is a Halloween-ish quest after all). There may or may not be eliminations depending on how many people enter.

    The Rules:
    1. One entry per player.
    2. Your character must have lost a loved one (this can be a character in BQ, a character you made up in their history, or a squirrel….just make it a convincing love)
    3. Describe your character’s reaction to the call, have them collect the appropriate token, and come to the "beach" (please post here, pretend you are on the beach) to find Rhy.
    4. Posts are due by Thursday, October 24th by 9am EST.
    Reply
    #2

    ( i swore the days were over of courting empty dreams
    -----------------------------------------------i worshipped at the altar of losing everything )


    He has fit her in the hollow space beside his useless heart.
    He carries her there in the cavern of his chest.
    It hitches his breath when her memory rails against its ribbed cage, sinks its teeth into the meat of his heart. Sometimes it takes him to his knees. More often than not, he wishes he could stay there.

    He can still taste her blood when he rakes his tongue across his teeth. Her blood, which has always been his blood. Her blood, which, when swallowed (quite by accident), added a peculiar kind of effervescence to his veins.

    More important than that, he can still remember the way she’d turned to him and smiled. It is this he chooses to hold on to. Because he is a coward. Because he cannot bear to think about how the unfettered joy in her expression collapsed around the sharp edges of her terror. He chooses to remember her happy and thinks that maybe someday he’ll be happy again, too.

    But for now, he can barely breathe around it. He can feel it devouring him, carving out the marrow of his bones. He has found no solace and he supposes that he is grateful for this. Because he does not deserve it. It is his fault she is gone. He had unwittingly brought the darkness to her and had not fought hard enough to save her. He can feel the rage digging roots around his ribcage. He can feel it licking greedy at the base of his throat. It is a memory, of course, and little more than that. He is not an angry man and he never has been but the injustice of it and the enormity of his failure had combined and combusted in his gut, ripped a primal scream out of his throat, and the tiger that had taken his sister’s life splintered and then shattered.

    He has not thought about the magic of it. He has felt absolutely no urge to explore it, preoccupied as he’s been with the grief. The enormous weight of it, the unbearable gravity of it. He has wondered, has spent a great deal of time wondering, if the bones will give out beneath it. He will carry it for the rest of his life, he knows this. He will not afford himself the mercy of collapsing under it, shaking it off. She will live in his chest and he will remember.

    He feels the stirring in his heart. His useless heart. It tightens a vise around his throat, turns his useless breath thin. It douses him in a cold flame as he looks up from his meal – tasteless, worthless – of meadow grass and instinctively glances in the direction of the beach. She is never far from his mind, Keiran, but she takes up stubborn residence at the forefront now. As if it is she who is calling to him.  It troubles him deeply, unsettles whatever semblance of shaky peace he’d found for himself in the meadow. But he goes. He goes because he cannot let her down again.

    He takes with him what he has carried with him since he left the desert, tucked up beneath the tangles of his mane. Strands of both their mother and father’s tails and a few of her own, braided together presumably by birds. He’d found it in the sand beside her body, carried it between his teeth until he found someone to tuck it away where it would be safe.

    It arrests his heart, to set foot on the beach, to feel his weight sink into the sand. He grits his teeth and chooses not to acknowledge the bodies scattered around him. Keiran is not here and he is, quite frankly, afraid of who else he might find here. Instead, he focuses on the ghostly figure up ahead.

    He does not question how he knows that this is who he’s looking for. There had been a moment when his stomach had lurched and he’d thought that it might be Keiran. But the closer he gets, the more evident it is that it is not.

    He stops just short of the ghost, exhales a shaky sigh. “Is it you I’m looking for?” he asks, quiet.

    ( but you had a halo made of diamonds resting on your head----------------------------
    i should be dealing with my demons but i'm dodging them instead )

    Reply
    #3

    There are so many faces that swim through her mind at the call that Agetta feels seasick with the loss that rocks through her. Although she thinks about all of these faces every day, it’s another thing to have them flash through her mind unbidden, bringing fresh waves of grief striking through her heart.

    Her mother, father, three of her beloved children, the only stallion she has ever loved, countless friends, mentors.

    Her legs move before any single face can settle in her mind. How can she choose?

    She’s not sure if his is the first death in her life, but it was the first to break her heart clean in two.

    Plume.

    Even after all of these years, even though she’s just a ghost of the mare that she had been back then (quite literally, too) – there are echoes of her love for him still within her to this day. He had been the love of her life, a true and dear friend, a loyal king. She isn’t sure whether her memory has eroded away and put a shine on what their relationship was – so, so much has happened since he left the world – but the memories feel real.

    Along the way, by chance or design, she discovers a feather. Large enough to belong to an eagle, she picks it up, holding it carefully in her mouth.

    She’s not sure where she finds the strength to walk into the beach and follow the call to its source – she can feel her legs wobble as the weight of all she has lost in this place comes crashing down on her. In her mouth she still carries the feather. Not one of his – too much time has passed for any such tokens to exist – but she thinks it’s the same shade as his coat, as his beautiful wings.

    She almost loses her balance when she remembers the gentle touch of a wing draping over her back, pulling her close while they gazed up at the stars.

    Agetta is lost in her thoughts but she still manages to keep her legs moving long enough to bring her over to the ghost, to stand quietly as she finally, finally, begins to wonder what the call had been for.

    Agetta
    Reply
    #4

    winter wonderland

    For a moment the call comes as a bitter memory, a sharp sting to the ivory man's heart, his throat sore and his eyes red as she shakes his head. His gut telling him that the memory was wrong, that the time was not right, though deep inside, Ruinam knew he still had a love for his father, no matter how much he tried to refuse to believe it, he still clung onto the feeling, keeping it locked away in his heart.

    The memory of his father is sweet, a dragon-like figure among roses, gently picking them with young Ruinam, spending time with the outcast boy, the child with no magic, the reject.
    The scent of a million roses floods the resort as he closes his eyes, a smile spreading across his face as he imagines his young self with his father, dancing among the roses, a million colours and scents greeting him, providing him with a lavished lifestyle with his father, it had not been long-lived, though he loved every second of it and the love he had felt for his father was immense, an unstoppable force.

    Though when the stallion opens his eyes it all disappears, his head low to the ground as he walks toward the jungle. The ivory male feels conflicted, part of him wants to reunite with his father, to ask him why he had rejected him, why he had allowed the others to bully him and why he had rejected his love for him when he needed it the most, the other part wants to fade away into the jungle, leaving the memory in the back of his head.

    As he walks he notices a pair of roses that had been slowly wilting in the coming month, his heart flutters as he runs toward it, picking it softly and turning toward the beach, determined to meet his father once again.

    The male travels far and fast, not allowing the spark in his heart to fade until he finally meets his father, a mission now, cast upon himself to reach the beach, a single rose in hand.

    Once the male arrives he places the rose on the golden sand, watching the ghost curiously as he stands there among other horses, they too must have heard the call and have been given the chance to meet their loved ones. He smiles at the thought, his eyes closed as he listens to the hum of crashing waves.

    Ruinam
    Hi
    ruinam-500px
    Reply
    #5
    a t r o x --
    Atrox does not have a heart.

    Not in the metaphorical sense, although he supposes that the argument could be made there too, but in the sense that his heart is now an empty cavern of a thing. He doesn’t know the science behind what keeps him alive after the Chamber has been buried or why he has not died yet, but he knows that each day he wakes up somewhere buried in the depths of the almost-jungle kingdom his son has taken as his own and blinks his yellow eyes open. He ends up somewhere between relief and frustration and indifference.

    Usually the latter.

    But today of all days is different.

    Because when he wakes up, he feels something strike at his chest and it rings in response. He yawns, revealing massive feline incisors, stretches, and then leaps from the branches of the tree. Curious, he shifts into his equine form—realizing with a start that it has been several days since he has done that.

    His mane hangs in heavy ropes on both sides of his thick neck and his yellow eyes blink as he tries to gain his bearings. Then, he feels it again. He snorts—irritated with what he assumes are the games of the meddling magicians—when the memory comes, flooding through him. It is not entirely strange for him to think of Twinge but the sharpness of it causes him to inhale quickly in a breath of dizziness and anger.

    It’s not her beauty that captures him (it never was, she was not much to look at) but that keen intelligence in her eyes. That strange way that she would set her mouth when she was determined. The look of feline eyes peering behind her or the scars that riddled her roughened coat. The way that she looked when she stood up amongst her sisters, nearly always the shortest of them, and commanded them with such ease.

    It was the thought of her leaping into battle without a thought.

    But these thoughts blur, ripple, fade in the presence of the thought of the flood.

    He remembers the way the water took her so quickly; remembers the way it took them both. It is not fear that rattles in the back of his throat but it is loss and it is such an alien feeling that he nearly chokes on it.

    Angry, confused, rattled—Atrox responds to a call that he would normally happily ignore.

    He moves forward through Tephra until he finds the vibrant flowers that bloom so easily (persuaded by the gentle gardening magician who wanders these paths), but they do not catch his eye. It is, instead, the one that is nearly trampled that he sees. The one with bruised petals that has not yet succombed.

    He angles his wide-jawed head and then reaches down to pluck it between his teeth.

    He would feel foolish if he had any sense of self-consciousness, but instead he carries it, this battered red flower, and begins to move forward. He cuts through Sylva and then Loess. Makes his way through the forest and the river before skirting the plains and feeling the ground begin to give way to sand.

    Cutting a path through a place he knows well, he walks toward the gathering.

    For a moment, he casts a roguish grin to Agetta (who would have thought they’d end up here together of all places) before casting his yellow gaze back to the specter—waiting for whatever is to come next.

    panther-stallion | ex-king | forever chamber guardian
    [Image: atrox.png]

    now be defiant, the lion, give them the fight that will open their eyes

    Reply
    #6

    She doesn’t think about him the way that she used to.

    He had been her sun, the thing her entire universe revolved around even before they had ever come here. She has never been taken with anyone the way that she was with him, and maybe that is why she doesn’t think about him. Because to think about him was to remember what she lost; to think about him was to remember what she was never getting back.

    How strange, that he was what she measures love against, because he certainly had never showed her any. Their love was solitude in a jungle an entire world away from here, where she survived off any miniscule amount of acknowledgment he showed her. Their love was coming to a new place together, and her remaining quiet and out of his way while he succeeded and took the Valley for his own. Their love was her slowly fading away because she was not as smart and pretty and ambitious as the other women, and it felt like someone was edging a serrated blade further into the cavity of her ribs every time someone else caught his eye.

    Their love was her trying to let go, because who was she to expect him to stay interested in someone like her, when he could have someone like them – like Sage, like Kennedy, like Charlemagne. They were fighters, they were queens – everything she wasn’t.

    But their love – their love is what she wants back. Their love is what twisted her into the mess that she was today, into this awful, desperate, wretched creature that selfishly took what she could even if it meant being hurt. 

    Even if it meant burning, drowning, and being left and forgotten, even if it meant knowing in the back of her mind she was just a game to them, just a tool to amuse them when they felt bored.

    Even if it meant spending almost every night alone, which was an open invitation for a dream she’d rather not have. 

    Most nights it was Skellig that came to her, and she would awake with a hollow ache behind her breastbone. He would be here if she wasn’t the way that she was, she would remind herself. She deserved to be alone, because she didn’t deserve him.

    But tonight it is a different face that startles her awake, that makes her wake up gasping and trembling. No matter how she tries to steady her pulse her heart refuses to stop racing, and this driving, unforgiving presence of him just won’t go away. “Leave me alone, Dhumin,” she whispers to herself, her heart curling inside her chest as though it was trying to hide. It’s unrelenting, though, the way he tries to pull her towards the beach. The last place she would ever want to go. She has rotted on that beach, she was recently drowned in a magicked version of it, but the feeling is demanding, and obediently, she caves.

    Still bending to his whims, even though he was a dream.

    She shakes the leaves and bramble from her mane, blinking her nearly black eyes into the darkness. The pale light of the moon strains through the tops of Tephra’s trees, and it glints off something nestled in the mossy undergrowth. Even though the magnetic pull of the beach was dragging at her she steps closer to examine the object, and she is surprised to find a small, oddly pale red piece of seaglass. Red, like the color of his eyes. Though Tephra sported a coastline she was nowhere near it, and it was too much of a coincidence for her to have found it with all that was happening; she couldn’t ignore it. She was used to nothing making sense anymore, and so she collects the red stone and follows the too familiar path to the beach, wondering if she was going to even return.

    When she arrives she is surprised to see two incredibly familiar faces; Atrox and Agetta, and that sight is so ironic she almost laughs. Situating herself purposefully  between them, she glances to each of them in turn, a look that clearly says please don’t try to kill each other right now.

    There are others, too, a dapple gray that she does not even realize is a descendant of hers, and then a pale stallion that she does not recognize. Her attention is not on any of them, though; it is forward, on the spectral force that had brought them here.

    Ryatah
    even angels have their wicked schemes
    Reply
    #7
    Most days, she strangles any shred of softness from her heart and crushes it until she’s certain it won’t come back this time. Her kindness has only ever brought her pain and she despises the way she always tears herself open for others. She stopped being gentle the day her most prized child died and she found her there on the beach, alone and cold. Life should have made an exception for her, she thought. Nymphetamine was everything Mordgeld had ever dreamed of being and yet she died – forgotten. She tells herself she should have been there. She should have traded her immortality for her child and given her everything she deserved.

    But it was too late for any of that. The ocean tide just kept on with its tireless waves lapping at their hooves on the cold sand in the dying light of the day. The night still rose as she wept over her child, furious that the world could carry on like nothing had changed.

    She wakes, amber eyes wide as the call reaches her, and her heart will not be drowned this time. It rises in her throat and demands to be heard. Mordgeld’s old, tired kindness consumes her until her coarse edges are kissed clean of their scars. Her breath shudders as she exhales and rises from her bed of autumn leaves to follow the sound of waves once more. She swallows hard and she fears that she may find her sweet Girl standing there, beautiful as the day she was born.

    Without a second thought, she steps onto the sand and pauses only at the sight of a cracked sand dollar nestled in the grains. A weak smile finds her lips and she gently lifts it from the beach. Nymphetamine Girl always loved the broken things best. They told a story, she used to say when she brought some new treasure to her mother. The old woman feels the tears begin to flow from her eyes and she nearly laughs as she remembers how her daughter used to imagine such wild tales for every fractured “gem” she found. What would she say of this little half of a sand dollar, she wonders?

    But she doesn’t dawdle for long. Carrying her precious token, she joins the others with only a glance in their direction. She recognizes some only vaguely, perhaps in passing, but others she can recall more clearly. Mordgeld wonders who they have lost but she says nothing. Her attention turns instead to the ghost woman before them all.
    MordgelD
    i am the dragon breathing fire.
    beautiful man, i'm the lion.
    Reply
    #8
    It was nights like this, when she pulled her children a little closer, that the tears spilled down her cheeks quietly as she tried to hide the quiver in her chest. She kisses the tops of their heads softly so that she would not disturb them. Her youngest, Kalil, soft and golden like his father. Her newest, Orion, silver against the night's dark blanket. Her firstborn son, Owin, whose blue tipped ears never let her forget her first love, and then was her oldest, Popinjay, the bravest of them all. No, not her oldest how could she forget that there was one other lost before birth.

    Lethy pushed her eyes together as she inhaled slowly, she was the reason for nights like this. Nights where sorrow kept her awake and unable to find comfort in those who were still here beside her. She blamed herself, though only Raed knew that. Raed, who was not here. Raed, who had not returned since the birth of their son, after losing their daughter, her first true loss.
    She had been beautiful, their daughter, cloaked much like Owin in browns and blues. Lethy shifted gently against her children, maneuvering herself up and away from their den.

    She made her way to a small clearing tucked effortlessly in the giant redwoods, not far from where she and the children bedded at night. It had been a deciding factor for Lethy. She had always needed somewhere to clear her head. Tonight she stood quietly with her body softly outlined by the white glow of her little galaxy. She tipped her face to the stars in the sky and watched patiently with tear-stained cheeks. As she stared, the edges of the stars began to blur and a soft call came to her in sweet melodies, a child’s voice. Her eldest daughter’s soft, baby face floated to the front of her face. She watched as her blue and gold daughter danced and laughed among a field of blue flowers. The vision stayed just long enough to pull at the corners of Lethy’s mouth, tears running freely down her face now. She knew what she had to do.

    Leaving the young children in the capable hands of her eldest two she crept away in the middle of the night. She knew Aten was nearby and she had no need to worry, she didn’t have time to worry. She needed to get to the edge of the river where it met the forest’s thick trees. Once she arrived there she wandered softly, following the river’s current, until she found the place she refused to ever visit again. The place where her daughter had left her forever. The place she would forever be broken. As she moved closer, her eyes widened and she found herself at a loss for words. Where her daughter’s body once laid, years ago, next to the river was now a small garden of forget me knots. Lethy’s body moved of its own accord as her mind was lost in all her emotions. She plucked a single purple and blue flower from its place. Her lips softly kissed the garden as if it was the soft blue forelock of her daughter before turning and moving towards the next place she knew she needed to be.

    By the time she made it to the beach the tears that stained her face had dried and left her feeling tired and empty. By the time she stopped, hooves sinking delicately into the black, iridescent sands, she was physically exhausted. It felt as if she was a stringed puppet being pulled forward by her grief and lost love. A single string tightened, pulling her face up towards the near distant. Her amethyst eyes darkened by the beaches shadows glistened beneath the pale, ghostly white of the being that called her here. An angle? A spirit? Her daughter? She moved forward. Laying the brilliant blue and purple token below the shimmering rip. The air buzzed with energy as she dipped her head close to it. Her surroundings seemed to collide together, shimmering in and out of each other. It was peaceful and chaotic all at once the closer she got.
    IMG-20190524-092123-677
    Reply
    #9
    No one had ever mentioned how difficult life might be when you are only half of what you were meant to be.

    His introduction to the world had been a hard one. One made even more difficult when he would wake every morning to his parent’s eyes upon him, seeing not him, but the mirror that should have been. At first he hadn’t truly understood. He had known only that something, someone, was missing.

    His once whispered confession to his mother had brought tears to her eyes and an unbearable grief to her lovely features. He hadn’t had the heart then to say anything more. But when he had asked his father, through his own grief he had confirmed Ion’s suspicions.

    He had not imagined him, the elder brother that had shared his mother’s womb and heralded him into the world. The elder brother that had not taken even a single breath.

    And, in the fallacy of youth, the only conclusion he had been able to come to is that he had,  somehow, taken that from his brother. He should never have existed. Should never have been given a life not truly meant for him.

    He had never shared those heart-rending realizations with his parents. Could not bear the thought of watching their love turn to ashes and their grief to anger as they realized just what he had taken from them. When they realized it should be Atom, and not Ion, standing before them.

    It wasn’t long after that he had left, unable to bear the terrible weight of his own guilt each day he saw his parent’s gentle, loving faces. He had not known how to tell them the truth. Or how to apologize for living when his own twin had not. And so, like a coward, he had slunk into the night, choosing to flee rather than face the invisible accusation in their eyes.

    He’d spent many long months deep in the woods, lost in his feline shape, trying so hard to pretend he could be something other than what he was. Pretending he could exist without being haunted by the face of his dead twin. It is only on that fateful morning that he finally comes to realize he cannot hide from his own mind. And it is that call which provides the impetus to send him stumbling from feline to equine, lips twisting into a long-held shriek of rage and grief and self-loathing.

    It’s impossible to say how long he stands there, eyes squeezed shut, blue frame trembling and dampening beneath the force of his own denial. But he cannot deny the face in his mind’s eye forever. Not when it is a mirror image of his very own. Finally, resignation gives way to simple truth and untold possibilities dangling the prospect of peace and forgiveness before him.

    He’s not certain it’s possible, but perhaps, if he allows himself to remember the twin he’d never truly known (his other half), he might finally free himself from these self-imposed shackles.

    For months it had only been the two of them, imperfect halves of the same whole. But Ion had never known him in this world, and the only thing he has to give is himself. And so, with a trembling breath, he twists until he can pluck a lock of stiff hair from his tail before setting himself on an uncertain path towards the beach.

    His hooves digging hesitantly into the damp sands, he continues until he is nearly falling into the waves before stumbling to a halt. The strands of hair plucked from his own tail dangle from his lips, caught in a faint breeze as he stares unseeingly out across the water. He clings foolishly to that paltry gift. It’s nothing, really. He’s not certain it would be enough. But it is all he has to offer.

    Reply
    #10
    "Mother? Motheeeeer!"

    A voice as thin as spider silk climbed into the air, seeking what it would not find. Through the trees, the only home he'd ever known, a leggy teal colt stepped uncertainly. There was no path he could see. No indication which way his mother might have gone. 

    They'd been playing a game. Chase, or hide and seek. She'd never said which, only been gone when he shutb his eyes. And then he'd found her, muttering under her breath (nothing new, she did that often), and looking at her little son with surprise when he appeared. "Found you!" He'd cried with glee, little wings fluttering with satisfaction. She'd nodded, eyes distant and then laughed her high pitched laugh. "Then catch me, little bird. Fly away home." 

    And she was gone again. Swift, too swift for his little legs to keep up. A flash of blue and pink through the trees until a root reached up to snag him, and the little blue boy came tumbling down. A scraped knee, and no mother in sight to kiss it better. 

    So he wanders, lost where the trees all seem like monsters, skeletal fingers scratching and pulling at tender young skin. "Mother!" He cried out again, moving through unforgiving terrain until the ragged breath moving through his lungs was no longer the only sound. Rushing, tearing water, it thundered along before him. A little further, and the broad river opened its maw through the brush. 

    More water than he'd ever seen, a hungry black snake that ran too fast to keep up with. The noise echoed in the boy's narrow ribcage, louder than his heart could ever be. But he was thirsty. So thirsty, after his long walk, and no mother in sight. The river it must be. Tiny little footsteps carried him to the edge. Not too close. Just enough to reach the edge, to drop his head and sip at the cold liquid where it flowed slower. 

    Where was his mother? 

    His eyes lingered on the rippling reflection at his feet. Little nose, little mouth, too big eyes with too much fear in them. A puff of mane that flashed and flickered with nervous energy made seen. A lost little boy. And a feather. Not his feather; too blue, too big. Snatched from the water as it passed through his reflection, long pinion held tightly between his new teeth. Mother's feather. It carried a touch of familiar scent, it's color like the sky she loved so well. Was she near? 

    Poor little thing, he walked the wrong way, couldn't find the path that would take him to her. He followed the river as far as it would go, hoping every knew bend would reveal her. He found nothing but disappointment, and a growing fear. He couldn't walk forever. Didn't know his quest was pointless, that he had siblings who might find him if he'd only hold still! 

    And then there is no river. There is nothing but sand and whispering wind, and little stones dotting the beach that he has not yet learned to recognize as bones. He cannot walk any further, not the way his legs are shaking, and not any further south. There is no further south, unless he decided to swim. He should have found her by now. 

    One blue feather, clutched doggedly in his sweet mouth the whole journey. That's all he has. Eyes the color of clear summer skies fill with unbidden tears, but he can't force them back. Not when he is so alone, and so afraid, and doesn't even know where he is. And there's a light. A glare of sun off the moisture in his eyes. 

    He blinked, hard, fighting down the panic rising in his throat. Not a glare, he sees, but a mare. She has kind eyes and he doesn't mind that she seems so thin, almost transparent. It's alright. Mother wasn't always wholly there either, even if he couldn't quite see through her. But she looks soft enough. Kind enough. There are others, all quiet, not so bright. Not so safe. So he walked to her, and dropped the feather at her feet. It spun and floated to a stop, landing silently in the sand between them. His thread-thin voice, pleading;

    "Where's my mother?"
    Reply




    Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)