"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
The only things he can remember are the Chamber and Lyanna. Oh, Lyanna, his beautiful, cunning twin. They were basically mirrors of one another, aside from their coloring, twins born of the late and great Tatter and Frostreaver. The two of them had left behind quite the legacy, but the twins had never been able to quite live up to it. He used to be young and reckless, much like his sire in his own youth, angry at the world for no reason other than he could be. He had certainly made no friends in his youth, nothing to carry on for later use in life. He doubts those of Beqanna even remember his name.
He almost prefers it this way. He was ignorant in his youth, blinded by the fact that his parents were once monarchs of a kingdom that they failed many times over. Tatter had thought himself a great king, but he was ignorant, too; blinded by the glory his father had set in front of him at a very young age. Frost was... something else entirely. Never built to rule, but thrust into the spotlight nonetheless before abandoning the crown and her lover, her own half-brother. Malekith and Lyanna were born long after their parents failed as rulers, and the painted stallion was never quite able to get over it as a child.
It turned him bitter and angry, but the struggles of his youth have graciously been left behind him, much like Beqanna herself had been broken down and made anew. Sure, there is something in the stallion that is cruel, scheming, but he isn't a child anymore. He will make his own way in life, of that he is sure.
He does not need his parents' broken legacy. He will build his own.
There one day and gone the next, an intangible presence that she couldn’t quite remember anymore. Even the most recent memories seemed blurred by the haze of decades gone. The girl can’t quite comprehend it, but such is the way of the old beqanna magic.
Starlin has tall and lean on the grey shores of Nerine, a bold pale figure among the mostly mottled crew of the Iron Queen. She towers over her mother these days, but the two share the same large expressive eyes, the same sculpted desert face. Mother’s are sea green, and Starlin’s are a deep blueish grey – the shade of the sea before a storm, her father’s eyes. No longer able to take on her more agile shape, Starlin has taken to running as a horse. The exercise pushes her loss from her mind, far enough that she has time to process without becoming overwhelmed.
The young mare has just finished such a run, and she takes stock of where in the Forest she’d wound up. Her survey of the surrounding land stops when she sees movement. Black and white, like the residents of Nerine, close. Starlin raises her head and calls out in familiar greeting, realizing a moment too late that the stallion is a stranger. Her face flushes, and she briefly considers turning tail and running home. But she is already breathless, and nothing good has ever come from running from things.
“Sorry,” she calls to the unfamiliar stallion, the short distance and fall-silence of the woods around them making it easy to hear the apology in her words. “I thought you were someone I knew.”
As a child he'd been angry, so angry at the world. He had wanted to lash out and make the world burn, as his sire had attempted before him, but he had never had the means to do so. He didn't have the temperament to rule, and he certainly didn't have the personality that would make others want to follow him. He had snapped at the men and women who had come knocking, defying them for all that he was worth, and it had all been for naught. The kingdom had fallen and Malekith had disappeared into the depths.
The Chamber is no more, and as far as Malekith is aware, he holds no interest for the newly formed kingdoms of this Beqanna. He holds no particular attachment to the old world—it had been nothing but cruel to him, after all—but he feels the same for this new world. Surely there is a place he can go, and sow the seeds of his ambition, slight as it is, but for now he is content to wait. He has ideas that could further him in life, but he doesn't feel the need to make any kind of move as of yet. He simply doesn't want to.
He moves nearly silently through the trees of one of the newer common areas, his hooves brushing lightly over the fallen leaves. He pauses as he hears a call echo through the forest, swinging his heavy head towards the whinny, though he knows it can't possibly be for him—the only ones that would remember him are all dead or vanished. His yellow eyes fall upon a pretty young mare, watching her as she freezes and flushes, clearly having just mistaken him for someone she knows. An easy smile spreads across his face as she apologizes, and he takes a few steps towards her, closing the distance between them until just a few yards separates the unlikely pair.
"It's no worry at all," he tells her. "I'd be surprised if you did know me. My name is Malekith. Would you be so kind as to tell me yours?"
This Beqanna is the only one that Starlin has ever known. The tales of the old kingdoms, of the plethora of herdlands, of the days when most horses were naturally colored and without gifts. That is all they are to her, tales, stories that the older generations tell. She knows of his Chamber – mother has told her stories – but doesn’t know to seek the scent of old pine and sweeping cliffs on his piebald coat. The smells might still linger; Beqanna seems to have left some of her residents in a limbo of time and space. Perhaps to him the world of old was only a moment ago, but to Starlin, it was her entire lifetime.
The stallion is handsome, with curious yellow eyes that remind Starlin of the eagles that she has seen only the cliffs. He is monochrome like them too, with stark patches of black and white. No grey though, she muses as she takes a few steps forward to bridge the space between them. She has grey though, so perhaps together they are like the harpy eagle.
“Malekith,” she repeats, the name pleasant and – as he’d suspected – unfamiliar. Perhaps he is from one of the other kingdoms, she muses, out for a walk in the forest.
“I’m Starlin.” She is young and emboldened by his warm smile, which gives her the courage to ask: “Do you prefer to keep to yourself? Is that why you didn’t think I would know you?” The questions seem logical to the grullo filly. “Or…oh.” The pause, a sudden moment of realization. “Were you going somewhere? Did I interrupt you? I’m so sorry.” She looks it too, eyes downcast, her emotions quicksilver.
His sire had always hated the traits that seemed to run rampant across Beqanna; the Chamber was a sanctuary to those who despised their magical counterparts. She had refused to let them cross her borders, and when Malekith's grandsire had been gifted magic from Beqanna herself, the Chamber had thrown him out, threatening to tear herself apart if he were to remain ruler. Malekith's family life had been... less than stellar, but he'd heard the story of his parents' ascent many a time. Those days things were easier—if a kingdom said nonmythicals only, it would strip them of ther powers if they attempted to cross the border. Otherwise, the kingdom would react poorly to them being there.
It was never anything that Malekith himself had to worry about; he had been born as plain, as traitless as both of his parents and the Chamber had welcomed him with open arms. He belonged, he was true to the kingdom, but they had never truly loved him. He was mean and unforgiving, and before long, his entire legacy was forgotten. Tatter had left behind a powerful daughter, borne not out of love—for why would he betray Frost, if not for just a moment of passion?—and she was his entire legacy, her and her wretched children. The trueborn heirs were forgotten and while she forged a path for herself elsewhere, the Chamber had been left to ruin.
Now, the Chamber doesn't even exist. For many of them, the Chamber never even existed at all. All that exists now is this strange world with no familiar faces. The days of pine forests and adventures with his sister are long behind him, though he still clings to the memories as if they were yesterday.
The girl moves closer to him, and his eyes roam her grey-brown body, noting the small white patch across her withers. They are birds of a feather, marked with white patterns, though Malekith's own markings are broader than hers, decorating almost his entire body. Starlin, she names herself, and he smiles again.
"I was never a social butterfly as a child," he says, tipping a hind hoof as he relaxes. "Therefor I never made many friends, at least none that would remember me now." She asks if he was headed somewhere and apologizes, and he moves his head to catch her eyes again. "I was a prince once, but those lands and that title no longer belong to me, or to Beqanna at all. So, no, I wasn't heading anywhere, and I'm not sure I have anywhere to go. I'm just exploring, you could say, and looking for companionship. It's quite lonely, going it alone."
She is so unlike him and how he was as a youth, and he can't help but appreciate her company. Growing up in a classically evil kingdom had done nothing good for him and he had never known niceties before. "You don't have to apologize, by the way," he adds. "I'd rather be here talking with you than wandering in the cold."
Raised by a doting mother, Starlin has never felt unloved. There was emptiness, of course, the heavy silence that followed any inquiry about her father and then, later, her twin. One was gone before her birth, and the second stayed too briefly. Mother has never seemed concerned about their disappearances, but then: Mother is never concerned about anything.
He notes her piebald markings much as she had caught his earlier. That is what had made him seem familiar; almost all of the residents of Nerine are splashed with white: tobiano, overo, splash. Closer, his pattern is unique and not like any she knows, and she enjoys tracing the lines between dark and light with her gaze.
When Malekith answers her question, he does not seem bothered by her rudeness. If anything, he is more gracious than she deserves, which leaves the grullo girl smiling broadly. Never a social butterfly, he explains, and from a time before the Reckoning. It is hard to piece that information together with his appearance; Starlin wonders if he is immortal or simply misplaced by the rift in time and space. She’d like him to be mortal, she decides, if only because he seems otherwise normal. Starlin, the daughter of a genie and a sea monster, is nothing more than the grullo horse she appears to be on the surface. It had not always been so (she can almost see the paws at the end of her leg if she remembers hard enough), but such is the way of fate.
The older stallion continues to speak, telling her that she doesn’t have to apologize. Starlin doubts this, but she does glance up hopefully, flattered by his compliment. She is too naïve to separate creepy from complimentary, and she interprets his comment through her youthful lens.
“You’re probably not going to find many horses out here,” she tells him truthfully, “It gets pretty cold here in the winter. The winds off the sea are cold. Not as cold as Nerine, but there aren’t caves here for shelter either so…” Starlin has been chattering, not unlike the bird that inspired her name, and when she realizes this she finishes with a “It’s not too cold now though. Was it cold where you were from, before? Were you from the Tundra?”
