that's the last time i'll compromise - anyone

[Errant]

when my time comes around lay me gently in the cold dark earth Even after all these decades he still sometimes dreams of the desert. Contained entirely in his mind, the golden sand and blue sky swirl together, warmed with heat until they are nothing but energy singing through his bones and forcing him to wake, gasping for breath, in a world comprised entirely of snow and ice. The mornings after those dreams are never pleasant, full of sweat-soaked fur frozen as soon as it was expelled, a leaden mantle upon the shoulders of the stallion. He sees it in the corners of his eyes for hours afterward, little glimpses of turquoise oases and frilly-fringed palms, the sweet give of prickly pear fruit between his lips and the salty tang of his own copper blood from when he fetched the mouthful. Then there are the little flashes of memories that are not his own, of a time before time when there was nothing but matter and energy and the sweet things they cooed to each other in the darkness, of green veins and light energy and a rosebud from which grew a girl with branch limbs and bluegrass skin, of the expression of a thousand different hearts into a single mind and the way in which a life can never revert to what it has never been. There are those who wield magic in Beqanna and bend it to their will, and there are those that serve only as the magic's host. It helps Errant from time to time by making his life easier - and by default its own. His continued, healthy existence is in the magic's own interest. So when his physical heart was shattered by something metaphysical and he was unable to heal, the magic intervened. It took some time of course, because magic cannot fathom the emotional pain of a broken heart, but the intervention did occur (now the stallion's memories of his fire-eyed mate are only hours old instead of years). Most of the arcane skills he has mastered are bits of the magic that are not currently of use to the entity itself: changing his physical shape, the imprint of past contact with others, shifting matter through time and space, strolling through the mind of another physical being. What use are those petty skills when the magic has far greater pursuits? He is pale today, an equine interpretation of the ice flows that cover the northern ocean this time of year. Here are there fine lines crisscross his hide, darker white like the cracks in the ice. Sometimes, if one looks closely, there are swift shadows beneath the white, the black backs of orcas as they prowl the waters in search of wayward seals. Errant’s scars remain despite his other coloration, a dark crown on his hip and snowflakes on his chest and neck, most of which are covered by the dreadlocked strands of his long white mane. The stallion had not chosen this color, but rather had fallen asleep on a hill overlooking the sea and had awoken no longer black. Perhaps Gaea had liked the frozen ocean. The Meadow is warmer than the Tundra but he is not here for physical comfort. There is only so much one can learn within the confines of a kingdom, and Errant has not left the Tundra (save for his visits to Lea) in months. He’s not exactly looking for company, but he has no intention of turning it down were it to find him. e r r a n t no grave can hold my body down i'll crawl home to her

[Lirel]

She'd followed the sunshine for years, watched it rise up with it's tangerine wings, it's paling light, glorious and vivid, she blinded herself everyday and come moonrise, she'd fade into the darkness, her eyes closed, her mind empty. She'd missed Beqanna's sunlit touch, she mostly missed the Tundra, she missed Viento, her grandfather, she missed Starhart, her adopted grandmother. she missed lots of things, but mostly she missed the feeling of the sun on her back, the glorious sunny wings. She never did find her mother, the winged mare, the beautiful creature she was stolen from at birth. Her scarred neck never really healed a great deal, where ivory met ebony, she was disfigured, hard flesh raised and grey, an ugly stain upon such a mottled coat. She was greying now in age, but in mind she was still young, carefree, innocent.

The years had not been kind to her, they had been long and tedious, she'd been alone, she wandered great widths of Beqanna, in search of the winged mare, her pale skin like an angel, her wings the same. She also never found the mare that had done this to her, Viento had told her in a kind, warm tone that it was hr grandmother's doing, that he would have vengeance one day. But Lirel did not acknowledge his words, to Viento, Amnesia was dead. But Lirel was sure she was alive, somewhere, anywhere.

Her years of wandering finally brought her back into an endless circle, back to the meadow where it first began. Her ash hooves slipping easily through the sand, her long monochrome mane grown unkempt and past her knees, she had feathers what she guessed came from her father, a mixture of her mother. She never truly looked at herself anymore than some black and white portrait, left on the wall, dusty and worn. Lirel was a sunlight child, optimistic and bright in a world so grey, but she also was plagued with flashbacks of blood red and black. Her little heart had grown but sadly nothing filled it, except the sun, the sun's loving touch on her cold skin.

Lirel noticed a flaw within the meadow then, a movement, a shift of the grasses, an ivory figure, like a shell, his body gleamed multi-toned, ebony, ivory, grey. She watched him, still walking, a clumsy amble, feet falling in a strangely rhythmic ricochet. Green eyes, daydreams and failed lullabies continued to survey him, unblinking in her scrutiny. Many find her stare hypnotic and unsettling, only when it clicked inside her to finally blink, did she cross his path and inhale his scent. It was famialrity, ice and snow, cold and winter's fragile breath. It was home for a while, the winter wonderland. She felt a chill quiver along her spine, but flicked it out with her tail.

"Hello." the piebald said, her voice a strange lull, like rain in the middle of summer, like blistering heat in the middle of winter. it did not go with her vacant stare and pretty disastrous face. she cocked her head to the side, this action made her mane torrent across her neck in rivulets, revealing scars long healed, but never forgotten. Thick and grey, stark against her black neck. Her ears twisted, bowed atop her poll as she lowered her head, a vague little action, a steal of grass and then back up, she munches, chews in a thoughtful way before staring back at the stallion, mouth full of grass, eyes full of whimsical daydreams, she says nothing of substance, but everything to the innocent mare's mind.

"Are you lost too?" because really, deep down, the piebald mare was one lost feather on the breeze. A butterfly with clipped wings and nowhere to fly, a home on the horizon but no map to get there.
"It all starts to look the same, don't you think?" her eyes trail over the backdrop. new shoots of green finding the trees, the ground, the rivers flowing without ice, but still with quite the chill. Beqanna never changed, in her lifetime of wanderings, or perhaps it was her that stayed the same, her greying coat the only sign of any change.