[open] the uncharted soul; any

[Baelfire]

When he steps out of his past and into his future, it is because he has been banished. Not just from the dynasty into which he was born, but from all the earth, air, magic, and even the pantheon he had worshipped and served.
Banished, exiled, removed, severed.
It is the sum of all his deeds, a consequence well earned. He should grieve… but this is almost the easiest part, after everything, failure feels like relief. There should be relief; it’s only by virtue of his blood that he still lives at all. Blood that is now mundane, irrelevant.

Baelfire. He is cut from smoke and storm: tall, muscular, yet rangy. His frame was clearly designed for power and bulk, but Baelfire carries only lean muscle in its stead. His iron-blue pelt is smothered in shadows that melt across his shoulders and hips. Black bleeds from the points of his frame, steely eyes and the whip-thin stripe between them standing out against his dark face.

On this unfamiliar ground, under this strange sky, there are no eyes that know him, no gods he has failed, no inheritance, no legacy. Only this place, with its feral magic, poised to judge him based on nothing but what he chooses to become.

Baelfire breathes deep, and the air tastes different. Lighter, cleaner, as though there were something amiss in other atmospheres, something he suffered to have in his lungs without ever knowing. Storm-grey eyes narrowing on the horizon, he snatches the flawed notion that springs into his mind with greedy conviction. Perhaps he was never made for the world he left behind. That world that asked too much and to which all he gave was never enough. Perhaps he has been cast out, banished for his failures, by gods, and kin, laws, and magics that were wrong for him.

He gives the idea its head, lets it roll through him, and solidify. Here, it will be different.
A twitch, a shiver, travels over his soot-smeared shoulders. Doubt already racing in, he damns the self-awareness that constantly snaps at his heels, reminding him of his patterns and mistakes when all he wants is to try again. Baelfire sneers at himself and tries to cast the thoughts away with a single abrupt jerk of his head.

Purpose, he must find it before anything else takes root in his mind and heart. Released from all old bonds, he must open himself to a new cause at once. He can feel fate unfurling before him, fragile as smoke, waiting for something, or someone, to give it form. Despite his belief that he is not a creature of superstition, when Baelfire’s gaze snags on a stranger not far off he is certain that there is something of destiny or fate in the presence. It is here he is meant to find the purpose. Collecting himself, he calls a greeting out across the space between himself and the stranger, “A moment? Can you tell me where we are?”

[Alicent]

Alicent is, to put it plainly, bored.

There were times when she wondered if perhaps Beqanna was too quiet, too tame for someone like her, but both her parents swore that the land was not always like this. They had stories of kingdoms teeming with life, of entire landscapes leveling and rearranging, of strange occurrences and unexplained magic. She was skeptical, given that she had been born during a lull disguised as peace. She wonders if perhaps she doesn’t want peace; not destruction, of course, she isn’t at all like that, but at least a little bit of chaos?

Regardless, something keeps her here, and it is not just her family.
There is a part of her that wants to be here if Beqanna ever returned to a version of her former self, to bear witness to what this land can create.

Today she is in the meadow, alone as she so often is. Separating herself from her twin was something that had been difficult when she was younger, and she remembers how reluctant she had been to do so. He was the only thing she really knew in this world, her constant companion, and truly her only friend. It was like severing a limb, and she feels the phantom pain of his absence but she does not let it draw her back. Somehow she knows that finding herself is something that can only happen if she is alone.

Thankfully she is actually not alone for long, because when a voice sounds off in the air, she realizes the question is being directed at her.

From where she is standing she angles her head in the stranger’s direction, sunlight glinting off the twist of a seafoam-green horn and the gold that has threaded its way through her auburn mane. She does not exactly look like a creature that should be standing in a meadow — not with her glistening scales of frost or the seashells that are tangled into the mess of her mane and tail, and the small pastel flowers nestled between them. But she is not designed for the sea in quite the same way as her mother, and so on land is where she is forced to stay. “You’re in the meadow,” she tells him at first, before realizing a native of this land likely wouldn’t ask the question in such a way, and so she adds on, “in Beqanna.”

alicent.

@Baelfire