Damn your love, damn your lies || Fairies

[Astarael]

The mountains stretched themselves endlessly above her. Serving as a reminder of the gods and their power to the masses that lived within it’s shadow. Gazing past her hooves, Astarael drank in the whole of Beqanna as it stretched out below her. Ant like creatures milled about below, tending to their daily affairs. For a moment, the dark bay mare imagined what it might be like to remain elevated among them. So easily squished were they – weak in their normalcy. Astarael pitied them.
 
Like them, she’d heard the stories as a filly. Magical tales of beings that maintained the balance of the land. For a long time, she liked to imagine that the fairies could hear her as she walked along the beach, begging to be more than what she was. If they had been all that they’d been advertised to be, they would have heard her prayers and granted the childish desires of her heart. The smallest of gifts would have been enough. Wings or a horn, even, would have contented her soul.
 
“But you don’t exist, do you?” Her voice echoed in the void, losing itself among the clouds and mist. “I wasted my childhood on the hope that you would hear me and have mercy on me. Instead, I was forced to watch my father produce magical child after magical child. A cruel reality.”
 
Fearless, she stepped closer to the edge, her hooves sending pebbles careening downward. Her green eyes strained to make out any sign that a figure lurked behind the next cloud. Instead, she was greeted by the same emptiness she felt within.
 
She scoffed and rolled her gaze away. “You, the ones to bring upon the reckoning were not even able to give the tiniest of gifts to me. I should have known then that you were nothing more than a story meant to fool children into hopeless dreaming.”
 
Stepping away she shook her head, mad at herself for falling into their trap once again. Climbing up the mountain she hadn’t been sure what she would find, but, as she suspected, there was nothing here but pebbles, snow and icy winds.

OOC: I was approved to have Astarael cursed with Demon mimicry.

[Beqanna Fairy]

"Did you ever think," says a quiet voice from somewhere behind Astarael, "That perhaps the issue lies with you?"

There is nothing there, only a shimmer of movement and a rustling of the winter bare branches.

"That perhaps you were not gifted because you were not worthy of gifts?"

There is the sound of a scuffle, and a chill burst of wind whips down the mountain. A cut-off noise, like someone silenced against their will, and a murmur of many voices too soft to be heard.

"You want to be special?" says a voice, as soft as the first but clearly a different speaker. Despite the harshness of the first voice, there is something more sinister about this second speaker, something darker.

"Be special then, but don't come back if you're unsatisfied."

Astarael feels sharp pains behind her shoulder blades, and a terrible ache on her head. Something - somethings - press against her skin from the inside. Darkness, colored at the edges with blood red, overcomes her vision, and she will wake to find herself at the base of the mountain.

Astarael has been cursed. Demonic horns (your choice of shape and number) will grow from her forehead, and be full sized in six BQ months. Bat-like wings will slowly grow from her shoulders, taking a year to reach a size large enough to bear her weight. She will find out in short order that other horses seem fearful in her presence, a result of the glowing red fear aura that she now possesses.