03-10-2022, 12:27 PM
I'll settle for the ghost of you.
Her apology smothers some of his own worry and softens him. The dial turns down on the voice in his head as he finds the concern in her gaze and feels the need to chase it away. “It’s ok.” He reassures her, as if he hadn’t been bothered at all. The faint smile flickers again across pale lips, his curiosity taking over the uncertainty when she mentions she isn’t from here. His mother had told him that sometimes outsiders found their way in but they could be rare these days.It makes sense now, her fear. Her own hesitance. The jaguar stallion hadn’t realized her wound up he had been as he releases the tension in his muscles that he had subconsciously been holding. Although it feels unnatural to him, he tries to smother his flames as well until only a small flicker of flame can be seen and smoke curls around him in ghostly ribbons. An attempt to put her further at ease.
It seems to work when she offers her name in return. “Welcome to Beqanna, Allaire.” He says with that same faint smile. “I’ve never met an outsider before.” He admits quietly, looking at her now with open inquisitiveness shining in his strange yellow gaze. He wouldn’t have guessed, not with the pretty wings across her back and the shimmering light that follows her. Where had she come from? Why was she here? He has endless questions but he had already overwhelmed her once and so he holds back, for now.
Instead, she asks about Carnage and he looks past her in the direction of the desert that she asks about. “My mother told me the story when I was young. For as long as Beqanna has existed, so has the Dark God. Carnage. The lands use to be different here, a long time ago. Different names for the lands, different kingdoms. Then came something called The Reckoning, it broke the world and remade it into something new. It stole magic from its people, believing them ungrateful. It hurt Carnage too but not enough to steal the God’s magic. It only made him sick and angry. Carnage was furious at what had been taken from him, his old kingdom and his tainted magic. In defiance, he went to the Mountain with his followers and with his power… He created what you see now.”
It surprises him, how much of the history he had retained. Aela had always spoke of the Dark God with such fondness, any tale of Carnage had been his bedtime stories whispered to him as he was lulled to sleep. “He called it Pangea, after a world that once was.” He says thoughtfully and wonders what the Dark God would make of his creation now. Of who ruled it, who lived within it. There was more of course, Pangea had also once fallen underwater like the South. He doesn’t tell her that though, not wanting to overload her. It sparks a thought in his head though. Pangea had risen from the sea. Could the South be saved as well?
Hesitating for a moment, he glances back at the newcomer. “Are you living out here, in the Meadow?”
FYR
@Allaire