[mature] alive and burning brighter; any

[Quark]

Screaming like a siren, alive and burning brighter.

Fucking the dragon had been the right choice. Well, not choice, exactly. Choice wasn’t quite the right word for it. Quark had laid eyes on him, and her body had demanded it. They’d fought, tearing across the sky, tearing into one another, nearly tearing one another to pieces, but that had only made it better when she’d finally succumbed to him, finally felt him thrusting into her, filling her in ways no one had in far too goddamn long. When it was over, when they were both sated and covered in their mingled blood, they’d parted without so much as an awkward word of goodbye.

The beauty of the bestial mind, or maybe just the lack of emotional connection muddying things, making everything so damn unnecessarily complicated. She’d never fucked anyone just for the sake of it before, just because she saw him and wanted him and could. Just because it felt damn good, just because her dragon side wanted some goddamn action and didn’t much care who it came from as long as he was strong and scaled, with fire in his eyes and fangs sinking into her skin.

The fact that she didn’t have to worry about consequences didn’t hurt things either. She’d long since made sure she wouldn’t be bearing any more offspring, and even if he was riddled with diseases, she hadn’t met one she couldn’t heal. So fuck it. She flew away and carried on, not thinking anything of him or their delicious little encounter beyond that. Went back to terrorizing some obnoxious simians with shiny weapons that thought they owned the entire world and didn’t much fancy a dragon taking up residence on their precious little mountain, grilling any of the spiky little shits that fancied themselves dragonslayers and swallowing them down.

Until.

She was resting in her cozy little cave one day, curled up on a pile of treasure she’d managed to gather together. Gold and jewels, silver and crystals, all manner of delightful little bits of shiny, when she noticed something amiss. Something present, where nothing should be. Where nothing could be. Mismatched eyes opened wide with surprise, then narrowed as she raised her head and glared down at her belly. The fuck? Baring her teeth in a snarl, she loosened her hold on her flesh and reached inside to scrape the offending parasite out of her, dislodge it and dismiss it and get right back to her lovely little life without the burden of a goddamn child that shouldn’t exist.

And all was well once again. So the little blighter felt like lingering as a creepy little ghost all tucked away in her uterus for a little while. No skin off her magnificent reptilian nose, even if it was a little odd. A strange sort of shuddering under her skin now and again when she noticed its presence, maybe, but--okay but why the shit was it still getting bigger? Took a few months for her to think anything of it, but when she did, she took a closer look.

Well son of a bitch.

One, the little whelp was horse-shaped. Or, well, vaguely horse-shaped, it was still a fetus. No wings in sight, and those legs ended in hooves. Pale, ghostly hooves, but definitely hooves. She poked it, and it twitched, jerking its head toward her touch. God fucking dammit, she was well and truly pregnant. How? And how the fuck was it - he, dammit, the spooky little ghostling was a boy - a horse, anyhow? She’d been a dragon, she’d fucked a dragon, and - ...somehow this was Beqanna’s fault, wasn’t it? No matter how far she damn well went, it always seemed to come back to Beqanna.

Fine.

Grumpy as fuck and snarling all the while, she abandoned her sweet little hoard and her sweet little cave and her delicious herd of domesticated humans, and took to the sky. Beqanna, here I motherfucking come. Of course, when she arrived, she had no idea what to do with herself. There was a reason she left, dammit. Nothing left for her there, no one to keep her there, nowhere that called to her. She could stick around just long enough to get her body back, drop the kid in the den so he could be someone else’s problem, and go back to her goddamn mountain.

But what was a dragon supposed to do with herself in the meantime?

Grumbling a little more, she picked a handy place to land, a river carving across a piece of the continent she hadn’t seen before even from the air. It had been shrouded in heavy mist when she’d left, and now every trace of mist was gone. The giant mountain was a good bit less giant, and a good bit less appealing for the same reason. And fine, maybe she was the tiniest bit curious what the mist had held. So she shrugged and shrank down to a more forest-friendly size and fine, maybe a more Beqanna-friendly shape. Even if it was one she’d come to hate somewhere along the line.

White and yellow splashed across a body thick-set and heavy with muscle, draft heritage written in every line, the breadth of her chest, her ribs, her hips, the weight of her hooves, the thickness of bone in her leg. An unreasonable amount of hair spilled down her neck in an unruly tangle, with a tail to match and feathering heavy on her lower legs. She scanned the world around her with those same mismatched eyes, blue and gold, with pupils no longer slitted. Now they had the long horizontal pupil of a prey beast, though she was no one’s prey. Not anymore.

With an irritable curling of her lips, she noted the change in her abdomen, slight and barely noticeable from the outside, but the ghastly little creature that had somehow managed to take up residence in her uterus was making his presence felt, incorporeal or no. Great. Grumbling and huffing out a sigh, she glanced around the riverbank.

Well.
Fucking now what?

I am the fire.

[Furia]

She watches the dragon in the sky as the ripple of magic slithers across Beqanna. I didn’t come in the end of the world, no, not this time. This time it was just a whisper, something that changed, something falling over the world like a blanket. She could feel the change, the way that the air seemed to be charged and smiled a small smile. All was well again in Beqanna.

Without magic in the air, or the ground, it had felt different. Home, but not home, the same and yet not. It had been so hard to live by herself, to live without her sisters and her family. But she had done it. And now with magic, she knew they would return.

She follows the dragon, her hooves digging into the ground. Her body was heavier than her sisters, following more in the line of their Gran and their Daddy. She kept her face turned up towards the sky until she couldn’t see the dragon in the sky any more. She picked up her pace, careful of the branches and the bramble, ducking her head as she went until the trees thinned and the tall grasses of the river met her.

There, there is was she saw a piece of her heart standing in the grass. Blue and so familiar that she felt her heart give a little tug of happiness. However, she stills briefly at the edge of the trees, close enough to see the look of irritation that Gran flashes to her abdomen and the idea is so ludicrous that she denies it almost immediately.

Except, Gran doesn’t stop looking grumpy. Or scowling at her barrel in that way that Fury remembered Auntie Rys scowling at hers when she was feeling particular agitated by the baby within. Roma had stretched and twisted and turned always. Murmurs from each of them had helped to keep her quiet. Fury remembered laying her head on her Auntie's barrel and telling stories to Roma. She had seen them all do the similar things at one point during that time.

Fury knew how to read the looks her loved ones had, and usually they were banished whenever one of the kids showed up…this time though. This time it was different. She knew it.

She finally gathers herself and walks across the grasses to where her Gran glared at her and smiled a bit. “Hi Gran.” She realizes with a start that somehow she had almost grown just as big as Gran. She wondered how big she was compared to Daddy….A small shake of her head keeps her attention on her Gran, those mismatched silver and green eyes curious and cautious all at once.

[Quark]

Screaming like a siren, alive and burning brighter.

Quark didn’t recognize the approaching mare at first. One, the girl was much bigger than the last time she’d laid eyes on her. And two, she’d never seen one of her bloodline without the great thrumming vibrating clinging bonds that pulled on her heart and her soul like overpowered magnets. She tilted her head and studied the almost-stranger, eyes flashing reptilian again, cool and only idly curious.

“Furia,” she said slowly, as the pattern of her coat and the color of her eyes clicked in the vast reservoir of her memories, distant and stripped of emotion but still clear as crystal exposed to the sun for the first time. “You’re alive.” Calm, matter of fact, as though she was discussing the color of the leaves or the shape of a cloud floating overhead. What else was there to say? Congratulations? Shrugging, Quark turned and picked her way along the riverbank until she could reach the water to get a drink.

Ah, yes, there, excellent. She lowered her head to the water’s surface, drinking deep of the cool, refreshing water. Well that was one thing this place didn’t fuck up, at least, the water was good. Tasted like childhood, with a sweet little aftertaste of the blood of the fallen that had drenched the ground for so long. Newly made or no, that wasn’t something that just vanished into the ether. Especially not if the world had left the Meadow intact; Quark had a fair few memories of bloodshed from that one place alone.

Tasted good.

She raised her head again, taking a deep breath and angling her head to stretch the muscles along her neck, no longer accustomed to this shape--and her gaze fell once again on the spotted girl. “Oh. You’re still here. What?”

I am the fire.

[Furia]

She had lost the warmth. Furia remembers those days of horror briefly. It had only been encompassed by the earth shaking and changing around her. She remembered when Gran’s eyes had been so full of love and kindess and tenderness…well, now they just made Furia’s heart ache for her, for all that she had lost. It made her want to wrap her Gran up in a hug, but she didn’t. She kept her distance, well aware of her Gran’s abilities.

“So are you.” Fury says in return and then follows her when there is nothing else said. She follows her until she realizes that she is being followed and Fury almost smiles, smiles because it’s better than crying. She does neither, staying close enough that she would noticeable but far enough away that she wasn’t intruding on personal space.

Fury settles in for a long time of annoying her Gran until she remembered, until she saw that light in her eyes again. “Have you seen any of the rest alive, Gran?” The hope in her chest threatened to break out, but she smothered it down into nothing more than a little kindling of hope, nothing more than a little light to keep away the dark. “Daddy or Papa? Or Auntie Rys and Uncle Pazuzu?” She steps a little closer, one small half step really. “Lunasol?” She had always just preferred Luna. “Or Halora?” The same with Halo.

“Tycho? Roma?” The names of them all slipping out past lips that hadn’t said their names in so long, it was like stabbing knives her heart every time she did. Fury’s voice quiets just a little. “Grandda?”

[Quark]

Screaming like a siren, alive and burning brighter.

Oh gods. Right, yes, of course the girl wanted to know about the others. She listed their names like she expected each one to have some kind of impact, carry some kind of weight. Hit her in the chest or sink their way under her skin and burrow back into her heart.

Too bad for her it didn’t do the trick. Though it did have an interesting effect on Furia, little flashes of pain in her eyes every time she named one of them, every time she asked for news. A faint flicker of hope warring with hints of quiet despair, yes, very interesting indeed.

“Nope,” Quark said with a careless shrug. “Haven’t seen any of them, not since the last time you saw me. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I saw your father since then, but it was before the world decided to remake itself. Right before, in fact. Last I saw him, Carnage was torturing him.” Which was accurate, technically. She hadn’t actually seen him arrive home, had no idea whether Carnage had followed through on his promise to send him back.

Beqanna’s dark god was a tricky bastard, after all.

“None of the others, though.” Mind, she hadn’t been around much, and certainly hadn’t been looking. But why should she volunteer that information? “No sign of any of your other aunts or uncles or cousins either.” Of course that was bound to have a lesser impact; Furia had barely known the others, had only known of some of them from her parents’ stories. Still. “Nor the other one. Dara. Not so much as a peep.”

I am the fire.