found me a lover who could play the bass, spend the days dreaming and the nights awake
she brought the sugar and the mint
Minah and Maren had been miracles in their own right. Twins, both the first born daughters, the only daughters, to Malachi and Kalina. Two creatures who found each other in an ancient valley and kept finding each other ever since. Minah and Maren, together, they were spectacular.
But on her own, who is Minah?
The creeping, quiet daughter of Kalina and Malachi, Maven’s diligent twin, who says little and spends less and less time in the company of others but who loves, without a shadow of a doubt, the challenge and all-consuming call for attention that comes with being a social butterfly. She likes looking at people and has a keen sort of intelligence that she seems to know right away what someone is feeling, as if she is a master of sociology, as if she knows all their is to be known. But Minah would never admit this, she is a humble girl, a tiny, still naive thing, with soft, dappled skin, coal-rimmed eyes, a black mane and tail that rests like storm clouds gathering fearlessly. She is beautiful, in a childish way still, as if she never truly grew up.
She walks in a way that suggest she wasn't put together quite right, as if there are secret anxieties burrowed deep into her chest, lurking constantly behind her eyes, a nervous thing with a desire to be as adventurous as her twin, as reckless. A walking contradiction, who isn't beautiful but is pretty enough.
Who is Minah on her own?
Minah is near him, in her own way, hovering in the darkness with big eyes looking out around the land. The whites of her eyes roll as she snuggles forward on slender legs, nostrils twitching in discomfort, shuddering in apprehension.
Finally, she sees him, at least, she thinks it is him. She has heard stories about this land, of skin walkers that hide behind the masks of those familiar to you. She approaches him, a mix between apprehension and blissful happiness that she often worse as a child. She doesn't say anything, doesn't want to.
Who is Minah on her own?
Suddenly, it doesn't matter, because she can feel it is him, in her heart of hearts, knows it is him. And she is leaping and fumbling, all the grace of her adult years gone, replaced by clumsy limbs and giggles like the pitter patter of rain. And she is against him, the dark silver of her coat melding with his that has grown near white in their time apart.
Who is Minah on her own?
The question remains unanswered because as she presses that earth gaze into his own of icy blue—she is Tarian’s sister once more.
@[Tarian]
Tarian doesn't dream much anymore, but when he does, it is always of his birthland. Sometimes he doesn't remember what the dream had been about as much as he can remember the clean, sweet smell of spring water. Of how he sometimes wakes with the thunder of the Falls still drumming in his gray ears. Of how he remembers his dark mother and her green eyes would light up (those have come more recently and Tarian tells himself it is because of Cheri, a girl who reminded him of Minah and Maren). Of his father and the last fight that occurred between them, the one where Tarian had goaded his father about his broken promise to Valerio: 'What happens to Aunt Elena if Frostbane finds her? What good is your word if Aunt Lilli finds the edge of the world and falls off?'
He had felt Malachi's anger like a coming storm but Tarian had stoked it anyway. Something that made him feel powerful when they had all been rendered so helpless by the loss of their home. 'Who next? Will you let Kildare wander away?' And he can still remember his father's sharp command, one that is still ringing in his ears when he wakes. 'Enough,' Malachi had proclaimed. Tarian remembers the rest of the argument as he starts to move away from the nook that he had rested in and tries to leave the past behind him there: the way that he had curled his dark lips at his sire and had said, 'No. You will just leave your mother to wallow beneath that tree, abandoned to the elements and her grief.'
As he rounds the one Redrock corner, he tries to forget the way his father had galloped after him. The way that he called out to Tarian after they had both ran for miles. 'We have raised you better than this. Come home when you can show us a better reflection of that.'
What would Malachi think of him now?
What would he have thought of his son as a mercenary? Not fighting because the cause had been the right or just one, but because there had been something to gain from it? What would he have thought about Tarian spending so much time in Jay's celestial grotto and yet still harboring so much doubt about fate and destiny? What would he have thought about Tarian staying in Loess - not primarily out of sheer duty or loyalty - but because this is where he had found the fallen body of his brother, Kildare, and something in Tarian couldn't bear the thought of leaving his younger siblings ashes alone in a strange place?
And that is what Tarian is thinking of when he rounds another corner. That is what is thinking of - such free thoughts that any Magician or mindreader might see - when he sees her. The gray pegasus stops for a moment, struck by the sight of Minah here in Loess. How? Some part of his mind wonders. How was she here?
She isn't.
That is what his intuition tells him. This is an illusionist, somebody with the Magic to see what he would keep hidden and Tarian - once Heir of Paraiso, former Commander of the Liridon Guard and now Champion of Loess - bares his teeth at this imposter. "I will give you until the count of three to shed that shape," he warns the strange thing. "Or I will rip it from your skin."
found me a lover who could play the bass, spend the days dreaming and the nights awake
she brought the sugar and the mint
She had given up everything for her family.
And she would do so again without question, without hesitation, without thoughts of if and then. If there was something Minah loved most, loved more than herself, it was her family. The legacies were her world and so she vowed herself to them, to her ancestors, to those who still lived and breathed. No matter how far they may be, how long gone, Minah was in their servitude. It was a weight upon her shoulders, but she bore no burden.
She remembers that day. Liam had already left them, there had been some sense of finality when he left that said he would not return. And then Aunt Elena left, and then Aunt Lilli, but it didn't matter because Minah still had Maren. She still had her parents. She still had Tarian.
Until she didn’t.
“You took him from me!” She screamed at her father, kicking at him, butting her head against his strong, silvered chest. “Bring him back!” She yelled between sobs. Malachi did nothing to quell her anger, Kalina sat mute in the corner with Kildare. Her father let her exhaust herself until she grew tired. More than she was upset, she was terrified, if gone too long, he would forget about her, as one forgets their shadow that follows them when they do not look upon it often.
Her eyes finally grew heavy and her body limp, and her father let her lean her small, fragile body against his own as he took her to bed and Minah drifted into a fitful sleep. She might have imagined she stayed asleep until Tarian returned to her. She might have awoken to have her brother standing watch over her as she had often caught him doing. But it was her silvered father who came to her bedside. “You…” she stuttered out before Malachi quieted her. And she did not sob, but perhaps silent tears are the ones that sting the most.
He turns to her, with blue eyes that remind her of glistening waterfalls and her entire body heaves in blissful anticipation.
Until it all shatters.
That heart of her weeps inside her chest with his words. She can feel her entire body breaking, fumbling. This pangs worse than so many other things. Minah has endured losing her home, losing her parents, watching family members drift away to find their own way, but somehow this may be worse. To have him before her, but be unable to hold him, to love him and he do the same in return.
“I’m Minah,” she says to him, clearly hurt. “You forgot about me.” There is a shadow of their Glam in those brown eyes. “You told me you wouldn’t. I asked you if you said you forgot about me and you said you never would,” she says, and she almost grows angry. Almost. But Minah chooses to break instead, as if she could not hold anger in her body, and it crumbles into anguish.
“I’m Minah.”
And she starts to cry.
“I’m Minah.”
@ Tarian
06-09-2021, 02:29 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-09-2021, 02:33 PM by Tarian.)
It is such a distant, hazy world to Tarian now.
More than a decade has passed since he last saw his family. The roar of Paraiso's waterfall still reverberates in his memories. But it is no longer as strong as it once was. What had once seemed so irrefutable, is now shrouded and veiled by years that have grown doubt between them. Tarian knows it is still out there, somewhere. That had always been Malachi's unfaltering belief - and the sole one that Tarian picked up after learning of his father's demise - but if it was powerful as their legends told, why had no other lands heard of it?
If it was such a place of great magic, why hadn't it resurfaced?
Why hadn't the bonds of family - one of the purest, strongest ties in this life (or so they had always been told) - been enough to resurrect it?
Why hadn't it been enough to save his father and mother?
Tarian had buried these thoughts long ago. He had buried them in the grave of the boy he had once been; the brother that Minah so lovingly remembers. His unanswered questions had been the only reply that the young pegasus had needed: everything he had ever been taught had not been enough. The prophecy about Windskeep had propelled them towards a fate that had been full of suffering and it seemed fitting to Tarian that he had learned most of it while in Liridon. A land filled with strange, foreign gods and beliefs; the land where his mother had been born (and she had been a daughter of one of those gods). The stories and lessons that the young Tarian had grown up with had been about the fierceness of Ichiro, the compassion of Legado - their gods had been the elements surrounding them: the Wind, the Stars, the River, the Seasons. Beings that followed the laws of nature; everything within balance.
Liridon - like Beqanna - had their own gods. Some had been mortal-born; some had seemed like they had been crafted along the blurred lines of Magic. But whatever it was called - Fate, the Winds, Gods - Tarian had learned that it was everywhere and endless. That regardless of what they had been taught in Paraiso, he learned that it loved to inspire suffering.
(What God loves? When something lives forever, what is a single mortal life but an amusement?)
His granite face is a statue carved from all that hatred.
Until she cries.
The way her face falls (he should have turned, should have left her there) summons the boy who had been buried long ago. It was the face Minah made when Maren had started to discover her wings and left their flightless sister on the ground. It was face that gave away how much she longed to go wherever Liam went when he was too busy to look behind him. And more importantly - the memory he can most vividly recall - it was the face she made when she had been very young, when she had traveled alongside their mother with Maren after Kalina's pilgrimage and all Aletta could stare at was the empty space where her beloved Brynn should have been when they returned.
He gasps, pulling back from the weeping woman who stares at him with their grandmothers deep eyes.
"@[Minah]?" Tarian intones. And then utters the only word he can manage: "How?"
found me a lover who could play the bass, spend the days dreaming and the nights awake
she brought the sugar and the mint
“And then what did you say, Glam?”
“My darling Sirocco, You’re right, I don't know you. If you did know me, you would know that I would rather tatter your hide to shreds than let it fall to someone outside the Legacy family. I will happily meet you at Rivals Summit. There will be no leniency from me.”
She can remember sitting there eagerly, listening to the story. To tiny, little Minah, there was little that could top that story. (Although Liam’s tall tales perhaps could run a close second.) She thought, she wanted, to be strong like that. Like her Glam.
But it is clear how she sits in the crook of his neck that she is not that strong. She has endured much but it has not made her stronger, only broken, shattered into tiny pieces. She doesn't know, she doesn't know that Tarian is seeing ghosts in her eyes. If she did she would have shut them so quickly, so tightly, to save him from such a burden. But instead they are wide, wide, wide, desperate to catch every inch of her brother’s face. “Maren,” she says. “Orani, she had read in the stars, that you—you were in trouble or something.” She says and shakes her head, it sounds silly now that she is here. “Maren brought me here—to you.”
To you. Gods she has missed her brother. She misses all of them. She had had Maren, in the Donietas. Kildare never even made it to Liridon, he left them first, setting off to find whatever he needed to find. Then Tarian left too, to the drums of war. And Minah’s heart sank. She clung tighter and tighter to Maren, until Maren too started to slip away. Her body had stayed behind, but she kept dreaming of flying and who was Minah to stop her.
“I’ve missed you.”
@ Tarian
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