i've got some damn bad intentions - marlyn

[Djinni]

It flits beneath her skin, never quite within reach. Djinni has never had a name for it, but it is as familiar as the end of her own long nose. The desire to move, to go, to change.

It had been easy enough to do, watching her reflection shimmer in the shallow Sylvan creek. She had shaken her neck to rid herself of the water, and with it went the dusky grey of her coat, deepening to midnight black.

It has been months since she'd last seen the wildcat, having left him to rove the autumn woods, but it does not take her long to find him again. He is still hissing frightfully, but it only takes a few quiet words before he's quiet,. and then a few more until he's snarling again. Djinni shakes her head in exasperation, and the wildcat disappears.

Fine. She'll do it another way.

She finds a deeper steam than the one before and wades in, letting the warm water wash away the salt from her hide. The sun dries her as she emerges, and the solid black of her coat now broken with a blanket of white across her rump. The slim lines of her body have thickened, turning the desert horse to a destrier. She coughs, clearing her throat and adjusting to the the physical changes.

She vanishes, only to reappear far away at the boarder of the kingdom, her head low. She looks weary, tired now, her brown eyes as downcast as the stoop of her shoulders. It doesn't take her long to find Marlyn - the appaloosa mare is clearly the wildcat's daughter.

"Marlyn", she says, reaching out her black muzzle to press against the queen's shoulder, "I looked and looked, but I can't find him anywhere." She looks at the queen through the eyes of the monarch's elder sister, from beneath the fringe of Raene's mane. "I think Papa might be really gone."

[Marlyn]

She seems to be balanced somewhere between being present and lost in the past. The spotted mare does not hear the approach of her sister until she feels the warm muzzle pressed to her side. Amber eyes quickly focus as she moves to greet the other with a warm but vacant smile. Lobes catch her words and it furthers to draw the young woman deeper into the weight upon her shoulders.

A heavy sigh wscapes her lips before she musters a weaksmile and embraces the her sibiling. "Raene, it's good to see you." Marlyn does not offer a response to Raene's words but instead looks back over Sylva longingly. "I miss him so much. I have heard nothing from mama either..." Responsibility was weight her down. Marlyn could lead these people, care for them, maybe even love them but her heart tore her in other directions. She wanted to be the best she could be but the rumors of the residents whispers sometimes dug a little deeper than she had expected.

"How are you, Raene?" Mar attempts to move the conversation elsewhere to clear her eyes and mind, bring her focus to something else rather than over analyzing herself.

MARLYN

[Djinni]

She has sisters of her own, and the warmth in Marlyn's eyes is not a novel sight to the genie. The bulky applaoosa is a far cry from Djinni's ethereally light siblings, but the familial affection is the same regardless. She returns the embrace, breathing in the smell of the ever-atumnal woods that has crept into Marlyn's soft skin.

The girl is younger than she had expected; some part of her had assumed that the salmon queen would not have left her realm in the hands of a child. Perhaps five is not so young (she is certainly an adult) but to Djinni the appaloosa mare is barely old enough to be own her own. It is a good thing she's come back then, Djinni thinks. She is the reason that Marlyn is ruling the Sylvan Woods; it only makes sense that she should return to help.

"It's good to see you too," she replies, and the words are not entirely a falsehood. She has wondered about the progeny of the wildcat. They are cousins, the tobiano and the spotted mare, their mothers two of their grandfather's many offspring. Djinni had known this the moment she had met Ygritte those months past, but there was no need to tell of shared blood when it ran through so many veins in Beqanna.

"I've been well," she replies, "I think I've been almost everywhere in this new Beqanna." She pauses, the silence lacking pressure, the way it is between two siblings. "I think my favorite place was Nerine."

[Marlyn]

A lingering fatigue creeps just beyond the irises of her eyes. It hurt a bit to heard that Raene found Nerine more fond that the home their parents had established for them. But Marlyn still attempts a smile and a nod. "I have heard of Nerine from Nayl. I hope I will be able to visit some day." Marlyn falls quiet as the loneliness of ruling consumed her.

The Sylvians are happy people, scare but happy. Marlyn feels as though has done enough to maintain but she did not know what else to do to please them. Marlyn wants a different Beqanna, one of peace and quiet. There is no need for constant squabble and disruption. "Is that where you make your home, Raene?" The spotted mare asks her 'sibling' with gentle, tired tones.

MARLYN

[Djinni]

For all the bay mare's attempts at smiles, Djinni is no stranger to the art of reading faces. The genie sees the tiredness in the eyes of her 'sister', and the sadness in the silence between them. It's not difficult to summon and display equally weariness behind her own eyes; Djinni has gone decades without seeing her parents. Her mother and father are in the world beyond Beqanna; she knows exactly where they are. Marlyn doesn't though - her her, she might never see them again.

This too, is Djinni's fault, and therefore her responsibility.

Oh how she loathes responsibility.

Marlyn asks Raene if she makes her home in Nerine, and the black appaloosa looks away quickly. There is something like embarrassment in the speed of the motion, and the way that even when she answers she doesn't take her attention from the tree-covered horizon. There's a smile though too, small and a little shy.

"I want to come back," she admits, and her tone belies the fact that there is something stopping her from doing so. She does not force Marlyn to inquire though, and she adds: "I'm trying to convince someone to come back with me." The words are rushed, and when she does at least meet Marlyn's brown eyes, it's with the eager giddiness of infatuation that meshes perfectly with the rush of her next words: "You'd really like him, Marlyn. He's wonderful."