[open] this fire inside me; anyone

[Kamaria]

S he stands bathed in the gentle blue light that has been present with her since the eclipse. She is not alone — a host of tiny stars float in the salt-tinged air around her, the ocean’s song whispers against her ears, and a four-pronged stag crafted of stardust grazes alongside her. The darkness of the night laps against the edges of her glow, but it makes the night peaceful rather than frightening. She cannot think of a time she has been truly afraid. Kamaria had felt no fear when her mother’s haunted eyes had caught the way the shadows lurked during the eclipse and they had raced home. When she began to explore beyond her parents’ reach, she felt bravery and curiosity. She had not worried when Loess’s red clay drowned and the familiar trails of her home became the ocean’s floor. She has always had something to surround her, always some way to protect herself from the dangers of this world. The wind blows off the sea toward her, pushing navy-streaked tendrils of her forelock against the dumortierite freckles on her cheeks before they caress the curve of her neck. The stag’s head lifts from among the yellowing, dried grass and turns toward the darkness. One navy-dipped ear twisting is the only indication that there’s someone (or something) lingering just outside the cool blue of her glow.

credit to nat of adoxography.

[Malik]

At first Malik thinks that the distant glow might be the moon, rising above the horizon. But when he glances up, he sees that the moon is instead a thin crescent almost directly overhead. He moves forward cautiously, his steps steady but slow, and he pauses now and then to scent the air with a nose that has shifted from equine to something more sensitive.

Though the black stallion emits his own glow, the blue light that shimmers above his black-striped hide hardly illuminates the sand that he walks on. It serves only to create the outline of a horse as he approaches, visible long before the rest of his black hide. The light of his cracked left horn casts just enough light to illuminate his white snip with its glowing blue-white core, and to ruin much of his night vision.

The white mare is marked in a shade of iridescent blue that Malik recognizes without ever having seen her before, saying to him as surely as if they’d spoken aloud that she is some relation. It is the same blue that he’d seen most of his first childhood, and avoided for a good part of his second. He’s no idea who she is, or how distant their shared blood might be, but he thinks of how long it has been since he has seen some of his family, and that pulls him nearer when he might otherwise have passed by.

“Hello,” he says, when he is close enough to talk, just near enough that the glow of her stars casts the faintest of shadows behind him, a long-limbed creature reaching toward the sea. She does not look like Bolder, Malik sees, so perhaps she is from some other branch. His mother had told him that he has nearly as many uncles as he has stripes, so he supposes most anything is possible.

“I’m Malik.”

@Kamaria

[Kamaria]

S he does not know much about her father’s family. He had been gone for the majority of her childhood, absent during the formative months when she might’ve listened to the history of her existence. By the time he came home, Kamaria was in her rebellious year — no amount of words could have gotten past the wall of anger she formed in the face of her father returning. Despite Tiercel’s attempts, the star-girl would not listen to the stories of his past, of his many siblings, of her grandparents. Perhaps if she had listened, she would have recognized the faint shimmer of his markings as a sign of kinship. Her delicate head turns in his direction when he speaks. Navy blue eyes study what parts of his face she can see. The stag disintegrates into stardust that hangs in the air for a moment before reforming into a replica of Malik’s face. There are differences between reality and the starlight version, but it is only because the softer bends of his face are hidden in the shadows. The stars are perfect at imitating his eyes, which reflect back his expression of controlled curiosity and judgment. “Malik.” She tests his name on her lips before giving her own. “I’m Kamaria.” The muscles around her eyelids tighten as she carefully studies the cracked glowing horn. Slowly the starlight crafting Malik’s face shifts, sharpening the accuracy of the horn. With a soft sigh, she urges the starlight on his replicated horn to pulse brighter. “What happened?”

credit to nat of adoxography.

@ Malik

[Malik]

Malik knows the names of his uncles. Of some of them, anyway, the ones that Mazikeen had told him of, and the ones that Bolder remembered. There were many of them, many more than there were aunts, of that he is sure. IF asked to remember now, he’d only be able to recall half of those he’d known. The family that matters to him is the family in Hyaline.

And the one blue sister that he cannot find, the one whose brindle stripes are the same iridescent blue that adorn this pale stranger’s skin.

His gaze turns to the place the starlight creature (her Companion, he seems to have wrongly assumed) had been standing. Instead, he finds his own face looking back at him. His expression remains curious, and beyond a startled blink of his mismatched eyes, the black horse gives no indication of surprise at this replica of himself.

Magic - his own and that of others - is as much a part of Malik’s world as the earth beneath his hooves, and while he’s never seen a trick quite like this one, he finds the novelty intriguing, and turns his gaze back to reassess the bejeweled mare as she says his name rather than offering her own. He waits, noting that her eyes have strayed to his horns. For a moment, he considers shifting some small parts of his face, just enough that her replica will be off, but decides against it just as she asks the Question.

“A storm.” He answers. “Nearly everything’s gone. No one seems to know why.”


@Kamaria