[open] only so far that new money goes

[Tarian]

She laughs. Tarian, who could normally be seen wearing a stern expression, wears a bemused one instead. He considers the dun monarch with a speculative gaze but he adds nothing more. There is nothing more for the gray pegasus to add. He's never been to the North; he has only heard that there are remnants of a once-proud kingdom lost somewhere between the stone cliffs and mighty pine trees. There are even whispers of a Dragon King there and Tarian knows better than to deal with the fire-breathers.

(Cazador had left a permanent scar on his golden grandsire. It's kept the silver stallion wary of them. And good riddance, he thinks. He's kept his distance from the scaled ones and so he wears no scars as Valerio had.)

The day is hot but the water lapping past his fetlocks is cool. It had been sweet and despite the sweltering heat that grows, his thirst has been quenched and his throat clears. It no longer feels as if Loess' sand is coating it. It allows his voice to be steady when he answers he answers the inquiring Lepis. "I am," he states. Tarian considers something a moment - as if something is weighing on his mind - and as he collects his dripping wings to his sides, he decides to reply: "I was raised up a soldier." He explains (and its mostly the truth; after his first birthday, it had been important for them all to learn how to defend themselves. What had happened in Windskeep could have happened to Paraiso.)

"I spent my first years in training under my father, a knight."  He isn't sure if Beqanna has such things anymore. Orders had been hard to find and the one he joined in Liridon had only brought him disappointment. "And the years since then have been traveling the lands Beyond."

Tarian could be more eloquent. He could flare his court manners as easily as he could flare out his proud wings. As he considers the Queen before him, he doubts she would find much use for them (and the forthright manner with which she speaks makes him admire her for it. Tarian has learned to have little patience or use for courtiers. Lepis is as direct as the sunlight that has started to beat down on their backs. He offers a brief but equally direct synopsis of what he might offer the Kingdom to the South (after already elaborating that there was nothing for him in the North). He had also heard that the kingdom to the West was a land of leisure and the only thing waiting for him there would be pasture and growing soft. To the East? There were Devils supposedly lurking (and while it does intrigue him, Tarian would rather not dwell among them).

He cuts straight to the point (more like the sword than his name-sake, the Shield) but in the calming waters around them, Tarian even manages a joke. "Is there use here for an ex-Knight with no manners?"

Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength
which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.

[Lepis]

l e p i s

gave me the blues and then purple pink skies

He affirms that he seeks a home, but for a long time that is all he says. He takes careful time to fold his dripping wings to his sides. She does not look away, so when he admits to being reared as a warrior, Lepis has already found the marks of that in the scars on his cloud-colored hide.

A knight, she thinks, someone with training and skill. Someone capable of defending a kingdom. Loess is in desperate need of those, and the wings that he holds behind his smoothly muscled shoulders suggest that he will have an easy time of escaping the inevitable fire. The details he provides after serve only to illuminate his ability, and Lepis finds herself wondering why Fate has placed such an interesting man in Loess. (She quickly dismisses the possibility that the ancestors are involved. They’d touched her too recently.)

He logic is sound, the queen thinks, Loess does seem the best place in Beqanna for a man of his talents and ambition.

“I’m not sure we’ve ever had a knight in Loess.” She tells him. “But perhaps if Oceane can teach you some manners, we might make use of you in the guard.” She says this lightly, imagining the Queen of the South attempting to impart Tarian with the same lessons she had given Kestrell and Altum. The image amuses her, and Lepis smiles.

“My son, Kestrell, is nearly old enough to start training. Perhaps you might assess what he already knows, and tell the both of us where I have been remiss in my early lessons.” Lepis is no warrior, but in the absence of one she has taught Kestrell what she can remember. She is quite sure the boy shows promise, but only time will tell.

Lepis steps out of the pool and begins to walk farther down the narrow canyon. That she expects Tarian to follow her lead seems clear, for as they walk she tells him of Loess and its founding, of her mother’s ascension and then her father’s rule. With an impressive amount of neutrality, she speaks of the childhood betrothal that had given Arthas control of Loess, and how he bequeathed it to Wolfbane, who entrusted it to Vulgaris, who passed it in turn to Castile again. A listing of kings, she finds herself thinking, though only under queens has the South been an Empire. 

The path she has led them down seems to end in shadowed wall, but Lepis does not stop. The thick yellow and green leaves that climb the red canyon form a living wall to a deep stone overhang. Pressing through the vines and leaves, Lepis breathes a quiet sigh of relief at the suddenly cooler temperature here in the shaded cavern. The leaves the cover the opening filter the light, changing the red of the world to a hazy lime.

“Would you tell me about the Beyond?” She asks, lulled by the coolness and still satisfied by her long drink. “I’ve been once, to a place that was an infinite meadow, but I have heard of other places.”


@[Tarian]

n | l

[Tarian]

It had been an odd concept for Tarian to understand at first, this world without Knights. It'd been explained to him from such a young age that he hailed from a family that spanned generations in Paraiso, so far back that no horse could recall when Legado had claimed the ancient valley, only that he had. The time had been lost to mortal memory and the golden stallion claimed immortality through the minds of his descendants, shining through the blue eyes of ones like Tarian, so many generations later.

Now when @[Lepis] says she doesn't think there has ever been a Knight in Loess before (and who better to know? Who better to learn from than the Monarch who claims to have known this kingdom since her birth?), the concept is no longer foreign. Tarian had scrapped and brawled through his youth. He'd gone looking for fights, looking for battles because he'd been too young for the one that mattered. He'd been hardly more than a boy when the Magic swallowed his home. And with it, so had gone the Knights and the chivalry and the code of honor that Tarian had known.

He stands and though the expression on his face remains stoic, the gray stallion lets slip, "If your Lady can teach me manners, perhaps I can bring some polish to Loess' guard." The dun pegasus has found her smile as it comes to keep Tarian's often-absent humor company. "And if your son should be amenable," Tarian nods slightly, "I'd be willing to impart what I know." (He'd just leave it to her - and her son - to decide if there was anything remiss in that education). As they walk out of the shallow water and down a path, Lepis takes the time to explain some of the history surrounding them. While they trek between the canyon walls and through Loess, she tells him about the reigns of Arthas and Castile and Wolfbane. Names that don't hold much meaning to him but then he doubted that the names of Ichiro or Valerio or Yoshiro had meant anything to her, either.

Eventually, the trail ends with shade. An overhang of stone draped with roots and leaves. He's grateful to be out of the sun and away from the rising heat of the day and so Tarian settles beneath the cover easily enough. He even relaxes slightly, a softening that starts between his shoulders before it reaches his gaze. "What would you like to know?" Tarian asks, turning his head to better look at the smaller mare. He assumes she knows but, "There are many places in the Beyond." The gray stallion starts where it is easiest; what he knows, the land that he was born in. He tells her that it was an ancient valley where legend claimed the sun had been born (and he even manages to laugh at this because he knows he lacks the eloquence of his storytelling grandmother or the mysticism of his shaman uncle, there is too much practicality in Tarian to believe what he speaks) and that was why the horses born there were so often shades of gold. He tells her of Liridon and the cove that he took up residence while there, a place that was eternally watched and guarded by starlight (and he tries not to think of Orani).

There are horses, like Tarian, that don't feel the pull of wanderlust and so when Lepis says she has only been once to Beyond, he thinks he understands that once might have been enough.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength
which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.