It has been easier to live in Ischia before her sire had taken over. Brennen, perhaps, had been frustrated by Bristol’s lack of engagement but Krone and her kin had cared very little what Bristol did or didn’t do. She wasn’t entirely sure her kind-of Queen had even known that Bristol had existed – a glimpse of the girl in the sky, after all, was as like to be a glimpse of Brennen. Only someone with augemented vision would have been able to tell the difference when they were aloft, and even a first glance on the ground might give some people a feeling of déjà vu, if Bristol is (as she is now) letting her wings stay in the natural, huge black state.

Of course, on a second glance, Bristol is just slightly taller and bulkier than her sire, due to her mother’s lack of arabian heritage. Each of her feet is also dipped in white, and she lacks her father’s white star. But the deep shade of red-bay, and the honey-brown eyes, those are the same. And while she feels ready to move on, to leave home for good, she is just nervous enough about it to choose to keep her wings black and large, the familiar piece of comfort from her father that she wraps along her sides after landing in Nerine like a sort of feathery blanket.


The familiar smell of saltwater is also a comfort, though the chill autumn bite is something she hasn’t experienced since Brennen moved them to a tropical island. Ischia simply doesn’t get winter in any form, but it’s clear that Nerine will suffer from the fell season. The water, too, is different as she turns her gaze towards the ocean: it’s rougher, darker, and more dangerous than the mostly inland water of home. She has only ever seen water even a fraction this rough when the spring storms tore Ischia apart, and that wasn’t even quite like this. It’s like someone has dropped a gray filter over the world…and she likes it.


Manners dictate she wait to be greeted, but she is creeping towards the open water as if mesmerized, or enthralled. This is what is left of her mother’s heritage, even if Prague had never set foot in this incarnation of her Amazons, and she likes what she has found.

She isn’t expecting to go unnoticed for long, and that expectation is met when she hears hoofbeats across the rocks and sand and she turns away from the turbulent shores to watch the stranger approach, and for the first time feels the barest frissure of uncertainty; she had not been born in Ischia, that was true enough; and she had never seen the lands of Legend that her sire and the Amazons hail from despite that visions of them as they might have been haunt her dreams, but the islands have been home for years, and her family gracing its shores now in large quantities is a compelling reason to stay.

But.

The winged mare can barely remember living here, so briefly with Brennen when she was quite small, but she recognizes the turbulent sea from where it kicked at the edges of the fantasy jungle in her dreamscapes, where stories her sire told her about her mother and other Amazons played out behind closed eyelids. But of course in her dreams the Jungle abutts to a similarly dreamed up Tundra, with only a meadow containing a ridiculously large waterfall to separate the two. The old world of her dreams is ninety percent fantasy and stories, but it is the fuel that keeps her going, and she has always loved the sea of Nerine even when she didn’t realize that’s what it was.

“Hello,” she responds as politely as the other’s greeting was offered. “I’m Bristol. I’ve come to join the sisterhood.” no beating around the bush here - nothing but a creature who has finally decided to follow the orders of her dream-self and try something new.

Bristol steps away from the edge of the cliff and the broiling waters below with reluctance, but interest in her new acquaintance. The sound of the crashing waves still rings in her ears as she gives the surf below a last, regretful look and vows to explore the water more in depth later. She is a winged creature, who should not be particularly partial to swimming, but yet at Brennen’s insistence she had learned to be a strong swimmer and she wants to test herself against the fierce waters of Nerine.

Wishbone may be ignorant of death, but Bristol is irreverant to it. She taunts it with a laugh and a fierce look in her amber eyes.

The bay mare steps away from the edge and into sync with Wishbone, keeping her dark wings folded against her sides. There is little use for them while walking beside a land-bound friend, and she is glad now that her father had also insisted that she spend time exercising on the ground and learning basic etiquette as well, despite her disdain for the subjects. Brennen had sympathized with his daughter’s affinity for the sky, himself a sky-creature, but nonetheless was firm on the point that they could not dwell entirely in the clouds, for a time would come when she would wish to be a part of society on the ground.

Bristol had laughed at him, unknowingly her mother’s laugh, and Brennen had been quiet for a time; but in the end, he’d civilized his wild daughter at least a little.

“I’m a daughter of Brennen and Prague, a sister from some time ago,” she says to Wishbone when questioned, and watches out of the corner of her eye to see if those names mean anything to her companion. “I grew up on stories of the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of old, and I see them in my dreams. My father’s Kingdom is nice enough, but I have never felt a true calling to serve the islands, despite dreaming of the sea. My father has always said I must have my mother’s soul to serve the sisterhood instead, if I can find no affinity to his order, so here I am to see if that is true.”