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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


    [open]  for all the ghosts that are never gonna catch me, any
    #1
    i will be brutal
    It’s been years since he last had his fangs and yet he still stalks the meadows like a predator. His eyes catch on the curve of every throat and he can remember what it was like to hunt. There is no desire in him to crush the life from anything – not right now, at least – but old habits die hard. Larva can’t help the way he sizes everyone up and determines which ones would crumble easily and which ones might put up a fight. The old serpent has learned that it is less about their build and more about the way they carry themselves.
     
    As for him, he walks with his broad shoulders back and his chin lifted with a defiant sort of pride. The pale gray coat is marred with countless scars from war, from curses, and from deaths. It isn’t hard to tell that he has fought for much of his life and arose victorious more often than not.
     
    He breathes deeply and takes in the scents of the meadow, searching it for anything familiar that might show him the way to Tephra and to his family. Dillan has not arrived yet. She is most likely mourning their daughters still on the other side and he knows she will find him when she is ready to be comforted. Larva steels himself against such sorrows and tries to remember he will earn his final death someday when the world no longer has a need for the dogs of war. But until then, it is his duty to guard his brood from whatever forces may rise against them.
     
    His pale green eyes search the face of each passerby for something serpentine to them but most are entirely foreign. If they are related, it is too distant for him to tell. A slow sigh eases from his lips as he continues to wander further and further from the place Nikkai deposited him.
    he knows tephra is a place but he's hella lost.
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    #2

    I guess I've got a taste for poison; I've given up on ever being well
    I keep mining the horizon, digging for lies I've yet to tell

    Long has she wandered.
    But her journey has not been a lonely one.

    Because the trees and the flowers dance alongside her. Sometimes she can even roll great boulders along, but they drain her energy, leave her chest heaving. Alas, it is impossible to be lonely when one is surrounded by love in its purest form.

    She does not know where to call home, so she calls it all home. How deeply she loves them. How her love for all of it blooms in the long column of her throat, hitches up her breath. She kisses the trunk of a tree and she closes her eyes, grins quietly to herself. Because how wonderful it is simply to be alive.

    She knows that the dead have returned. She does not know enough to hope that her mother is among them. She is naive, Lovewell, and thinks that her mother’s absence means that she has found some grand adventure. She will come back eventually, Lovewell thinks, she will come back to her in one way or another. She knows even less, still, about fearing the dead things that have risen up around them. Fear is a bitter pill for the girl, too bitter, and she does her best to avoid it. It is easy to pretend that it does not exist when she can make the flowers dance. When she can focus on all the good.

    She is testing her gift, trying in vain to use the magic associated with it to bring a fallen bird back to life, when she catches sight of him. She watches him a moment, watches him search the faces, and wonders if he’s someone returned from the dead. She does not know that he is something that should be feared. She does not know that his blood runs thick in her veins.

    She abandons her foolish endeavor, murmuring a quiet apology to the bird, kisses its downy head and then moves toward him. She intercepts him with a smile. A smile that lights up her whole face. “Hello!” she chirps, perhaps a bit too brightly. “You look like you’re looking for someone and I’d like to help.” 

    Lovewell

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    #3
    i will be brutal
    He knows his children’s faces. He sees himself and their mother looking back at him and he could pick them from a crowd with ease. When she approaches, he can see their blood in the curve of Lovewell’s jaw and the shape of her eyes. For a moment, his breath catches in his throat and he wonders just which of his brood gave life to the girl. But he fears the answer, and so he says nothing about it for now. Instead he only smiles as gently as he can.

    That’s very kind of you. I’m searching for Tephra, where my son Vulgaris lives. Do you know him or the kingdom?” he asks, watching her face closely to see if she knows the name. Larva is ashamed that the number of his young managed to climb so high that he cannot be certain which of his children she descended from but he would confidently place his bets on any of his sons or daughters with Dillan. Her blood always softened the features of his and made their children beautiful.

    He is impatient and eager to gather his descendants, however, and so he edges closer to see her better. “I hope you’ll forgive my prying, but who are your parents? You look like someone I know very well,” he explains with a soft kind of laugh following his words. Maybe he’s entirely wrong and they share nothing and no one in common, but he’s always been protective of his family. Time has cost him so very many of them these days that he is perhaps over eager to collect them all once more. “My name is Larva, by the way. What’s yours?

    His old green eyes search hers for a while longer before searching the surroundings once more for something to strike his memory. Of course, he died long before the new kingdom rose from the ruins of Beqanna, but he is hopeful all the same. It keeps him distracted from the tumultuous thoughts that come sweeping through his mind like a storm every time he sits still for too long. After all, hadn’t the greatest moments of his life occurred in this timeless meadow? If he thought long and hard, he could probably remember which tree he first met Anemone under, or where he first kissed Dillan.

    But he doesn’t try to remember. He focuses only on Lovewell and finding his way to his children.
    @[lovewell] he's trying not to be an absolute weirdo and failing miserably
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    #4

    I guess I've got a taste for poison; I've given up on ever being well
    I keep mining the horizon, digging for lies I've yet to tell

    He is so much larger than she.
    And she is young still but she can tell that he has to concentrate on softening the edges of his smile.
    She wonders if he is a thing that people fear, if she should fear him, too.
    But she does not know how to fear things when she knows that the rocks and the trees and the flowers will come to her aid, they will fight for her.

    So, when he smiles at her, she smiles back. It is a bright and beaming thing and the act alone makes her heart swell, makes the flowers at her feet stir. She knows the name Vulgaris, but only in passing. Her mother had mentioned him once, she thinks, but she does not remember in what capacity. She has done enough wandering to know how to find Tephra and she delights at the knowledge that she will be able to help him after all.

    I can help you find your son!” she yelps, proud and eager. “I know where Tephra is!” Perhaps someday she will learn how to talk in anything other than exclamations, she will soften, but it is her hope that the world will not wear her down.

    He inches closer to her then and the muscles pull taut just beneath the surface of her skin. It is a primal reaction she is unfamiliar with, this sudden, bone-deep impulse to flee. But she buries it, swallows it down, goes on grinning at him. She blinks up at him when he speaks next, asks her to forgive him, asks after the names of her parents. She brightens even further when she thinks of her mother.

    Before she can answer, rolling her mother’s name across the surface of her tongue, he offers up his name. Larva. The name chases a shudder down the length of her spine but she does not let it unsettle her. “My name is Lovewell!” she nods then, “my mother’s name is Darling! I don’t know who my father was, my mother has never talked about him much.

    There is no sadness in her tone when she says this. She trusts her mother, she always has, and has never questioned her mother’s reasons for keeping it just the two of them. It occurs to her that he might know her mother and she takes a step toward him, her eyes bright and wide. “Do you know my mother?

    Lovewell




    @[Larva]
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    #5
    i will be brutal
    Her smile is soft and warm – everything he has always wanted his to be. Brightness comes easily to her and he’s glad whatever curse still lingers in his blood has not found its way to her. His focus shifts briefly to the flowers around her hooves as they seem to stir from a slumber in the glow of her happiness. When she smiles, it seems, the world rejoices with her. He laughs softly before meeting her gaze once more.

    But the name doesn’t seem to stir any deeper connections than simply recognition, he notes. Or perhaps she only knows of Tephra, and nothing of his youngest child at all. He rather enjoys the way her voice knows no boundary in terms of volume and instead makes itself loud and clear. It makes it that much more upsetting when she tenses at his approach. He shrinks back in immediate remorse as a brief frown finds its way across his lips. This expression comes naturally but he tries unsuccessfully to hide it.

    Lovewell. Darling. It summons a fresh ache to the surface of his heart and he finds his breath leaving him in a sharp exhale. Larva has always loved each of his children with Dillan, but Darling had been the apple of his eye from the moment she took her first breaths. She had been every ounce of kindness that he could never find within himself. Of course that was this girl’s mother, he thinks, a weak smile forming on his face. It is tinged with a deeply rooted sadness but he says nothing of his daughter’s fate. In due time, he thinks.

    I do know her. I was there the day she was born,” he explains, unsure of how to explain himself. He had never met any of his grandchildren before. None except Samael, he supposes. “I was.. am her father. Your grandfather.

    The words tumble out, awkward and unsure of themselves. He does not know how to be soft and warm like them and so it does not come naturally. He swallows nervously and stares off at the horizon for a moment to regather his thoughts, to avoid her gaze for a while.

    Vulgaris is my youngest child, Darling’s baby brother. Well, not a baby to anyone but me, I guess. Should we go to Tephra and see him?
    @[lovewell] he's so bad at this i'm so sorry
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