IT'S NOT POWER THAT MAKES YOU THE STRONGEST
The magic that floods her veins now is too new – she can’t quite use it on purpose, she tries for a trickle and the river that flows out of her makes her nauseous and tired. But even when she isn’t trying, she’s simply more aware of what is going on; she can hear thoughts before she even knows someone is near, she can feel the power of Beqanna thrumming underneath her hooves, she thinks about wanting things and they simply come into being. A part of her hates it, despises the feeling of being out of control, even as the analytical warrior queen part thinks about how much easier her job would be (to protect her Kingdom) if she had always been this way.
She’s back in the Pampas, taking comfort from resting in her first home, when something brushes her mind. Or, rather, someone. Someone familiar – a voice she would know anywhere, even though she’s never heard it like this, silently in the back of her head. A friend, and heaven knows she hasn’t found any of those elsewhere in this spooky future yet. An unfamiliar hesitancy overwhelms her – Prague hadn’t ever come across to the land of death, and so they have no spoken in a very very long time. What if her once-friend was not pleased, with the one thing Nikkai had undertaken after she had left them? The warrior-mare has no disillusions that she would have won any awards for world’s best foster mother, though she loved Prague’s daughters as well as her own sons and had done her honest best to be whatever they needed. Certainly her efforts had been more appreciated by Piety than by Vain.
A deep, deep swell of longing and affection overpowers her uncertainty, and before she can even consider controlling herself (and maybe walking, damn it) Nikkai finds herself standing in the gloom of the winter Forest instead of her Brilliant Pampas home. She stumbles, the headache and the urge to kick her own stomach out momentarily blinding before they settle back into the now-familiar uncomfortable ache and she rights herself, casting around with dark eyes until they lock into a familiar form, and she moves that direction and desperately hopes for a friendly reception. “Hello,” she offers the single word in a voice that (to what will probably be her never-ending shame) shakes slightly. She wants to say something pithy, even goes as far as to think ‘Long time, no see’ quite loudly, but she can’t make her mouth form the words or emotions that her eyes and her heart are broadcasting like a five-alarm fire.
She’s back in the Pampas, taking comfort from resting in her first home, when something brushes her mind. Or, rather, someone. Someone familiar – a voice she would know anywhere, even though she’s never heard it like this, silently in the back of her head. A friend, and heaven knows she hasn’t found any of those elsewhere in this spooky future yet. An unfamiliar hesitancy overwhelms her – Prague hadn’t ever come across to the land of death, and so they have no spoken in a very very long time. What if her once-friend was not pleased, with the one thing Nikkai had undertaken after she had left them? The warrior-mare has no disillusions that she would have won any awards for world’s best foster mother, though she loved Prague’s daughters as well as her own sons and had done her honest best to be whatever they needed. Certainly her efforts had been more appreciated by Piety than by Vain.
A deep, deep swell of longing and affection overpowers her uncertainty, and before she can even consider controlling herself (and maybe walking, damn it) Nikkai finds herself standing in the gloom of the winter Forest instead of her Brilliant Pampas home. She stumbles, the headache and the urge to kick her own stomach out momentarily blinding before they settle back into the now-familiar uncomfortable ache and she rights herself, casting around with dark eyes until they lock into a familiar form, and she moves that direction and desperately hopes for a friendly reception. “Hello,” she offers the single word in a voice that (to what will probably be her never-ending shame) shakes slightly. She wants to say something pithy, even goes as far as to think ‘Long time, no see’ quite loudly, but she can’t make her mouth form the words or emotions that her eyes and her heart are broadcasting like a five-alarm fire.
Nikkai
@[prague] hi this is the fastest I've written in forever