12-03-2019, 04:46 PM
<div style="margin: auto;width: 90%;max-width: 750px;background-image: url('https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/7efaec10-5a5c-4b01-be62-a4cf4ae45159/ddj6aki-78215af2-4f40-4420-a85b-ae1f4c743571.jpg/v1/fill/w_1026,h_779,q_70,strp/____leaving_the_water_captivity____by_lesikaulitz__by_tianatots_ddj6aki-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9OTcxIiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvN2VmYWVjMTAtNWE1Yy00YjAxLWJlNjItYTRjZjRhZTQ1MTU5XC9kZGo2YWtpLTc4MjE1YWYyLTRmNDAtNDQyMC1hODViLWFlMWY0Yzc0MzU3MS5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTI4MCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.uBuRRtW8kIlutxjZ_ngT9BguXdU1NJEOSj9A4RWMSFA');background-size: 800px;padding-top: 543px;background-position: 50% -1%;background-repeat: no-repeat;background-color: #171b2d; box-shadow: 0 0 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.9);overflow: hidden;">
<div style="padding: 30px 50px; background: rgba(0,0,0,0.3);font-family: georgia;color: #8d6b6f;font-size: 11px;line-height: 160%;letter-spacing: 1px;text-align: justify;"><div style="color: #b68991;text-align: center;border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(190, 150, 157, 0.4);padding: 10px;padding-top: 0;"><link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Kristi|Rochester|Kreon&display=swap" rel="stylesheet"><font face="Kristi" size="10px">to the lonely sea and sky</font></div>
<br />
<font face="Kreon" size="2px">Doused in the warm embrace of sunlight, Oceane sails upon a drifting summer current in the open skies above her home's tallest mountain, letting her winged shadow fall gently over rocky outcropping, desert cacti, and tropical fern alike. She smiles, the expression more involuntary than not; it's her first Loessian summer, marking an entire revolution around the sun since she'd followed the sunset-hued mare in Beqanna's field. A year since she'd met Blue, and Ruinam, and Castile.<br><br>A year since she'd played the part of the nomad, running and flying tirelessly from the cold-fingered reach of Nau-Aib. And nearly three years since she'd seen that land: her homeland, the birthplace of her dreaded, hidden-away phantasms. It's all but gone from her thoughts. No longer does Oceane wake in the middle of the Loessian night in a cloak of her own sweat, having narrowly escaped Nau-Aib's guards or the king's arithmancer.<br><br>Now, there is only Beqanna, and further, only Loess.<br><br>It's upon the foothills territory that her amber eyes gaze, lovingly sweeping the now-familiar swatch of land in almost the same way a mother would look upon her children. Oceane has grown to love the land that had welcomed her into its safe bosom, and at the same time has nurtured her own desire for continued knowledge of Beqanna under the capable, mismatched gaze of Castile.<br><br>The opaline woman has tried not to make a habit out of searching for the gold-banded Loessian king whilst indulging in airborne solitude but whatever chemistry she feels towards the painted stallion nearly always draws a desire to see him into the corner of her mind, coaxing her molten amber eyes to seek him out whenever she has the free time.<br><br>Today is no different, despite her hesitation to admit it even to herself.<br><br>Loess, it would seem, has other plans; a light fog soon coats the lazy foothills, making the ground, let alone Castile, nearly impossible to see from this height. Intrigue piqued, Oceane slowly drifts nearer to the terra firma. Her decrease in altitude is met with an uptick of eerie foreboding.<br><br>She is not forced to wait long to find out why.<br><br>Quickly overtaken by a denser, colder fog, Oceane fights off a chill that rattles deep in her chest. The eerie, milky blanket forces her interest away to make room for fear and then —<br><br>terror, when the fog becomes so thick she can no longer flap her giant feathered wings. An attempt, no matter how futile it may be, is made to fight off this formless attacker, but Oceane remains within its grasp until it sees fit to unfurl itself; it deposits her the way someone might deposit a rehabilitated animal into the wilderness, effectively releasing her with only enough time to clamp her wings to her sides before her beautiful pearlescent frame is skidding abrasively across the crest of a sand dune.<br><br>She cries out in pain at the impact, but scrambles to her lavender hooves as fast as her tangled limbs let her with determination to not remain prone or defenseless. The way her weight shifts across the sand dunes feels familiar, as does the intensity of the sun upon her back and the way it stings her gilded eyes no matter where she tries to place them.<br><br>Panic grips Oceane as the realization sets in, filling her until she nearly collapses beneath the weight of it. <i>Nau-Aib?</i> She spins in a tight circle, her frantic legs kicking up hot sand as her eyes dart all around her. Nothing but sand, dune after dune, an endless sea of heat and grit and death. The violet woman gasps for air as if she has just surfaced from the depths of the ocean, but the air tastes of sand and offers her no reprieve.<br><br>Nau-Aib.<br><br><i>But how?</i> Surely the magik of the king's arithmancer would leave aural traces in the sand or on her gleaming body, but she lacks the shadowy tendrils of one who'd recently been subjected to the whim of someone else's magik. Forcing another shaky inhale, Oceane reminds herself that even the most talented arithmancer in Nau-Aib couldn't have found her in a place as far away as Beqanna. But even if they could have traced her magikal abilities before, she'd begged a friend - a fellow exile - to rid her of her magik before she'd escaped her homeland.<br><br>These thoughts offer her little solace, considering her current surroundings. But perhaps there is another explanation. Her primal subconscious desire to live reminds her that she cannot simply remain transfixed in the middle of the desert and hope to make it back to Beqanna. Her eyes wander again, this time finding a small glimmer of hope in the distance, beyond dune and valley. An oasis.<br><br>Once she has spotted it, Oceane wastes no time in her pursuit of it. Accustomed to traveling over sand, the pegasi woman finds easy footing in the sediment even despite the ache in her joints from her aforementioned landing. The twinge of pain is soon forgotten, however, as she notices the approach of a silhouette in the distance as she nears the halfway point between nowhere and what is, hopefully, an oasis.<br><br>Had Oceane realized that her belief that she has returned to Nau-Aib and her subsequent panic attack had paired with exhaustion from the heat, she would have recognition this approaching equine for what it truly was: a hallucination. But instead, her heart threatens to still as she crests a sand dune and the approaching stallion does the same, forcing them to come face-to-face, with him standing between Oceane and the oasis.<br><br>The stallion - an arithmancer named Mchawi - is one she recognizes almost immediately by the trademark opalescence granted to those of the king's court. But where she is a pearl, he is an oil spill. He spreads his great obsidian wings wide to block her path, his lip curled into a sneer as he regards her.<br><br><b>"Traitor,"</b> he spits as black tendrils of shadow begin to pour from his eyes and nostrils. They snake towards Oceane who shakes her head, mouth fallen open to deny his allegation but her throat is too dry and her panic is set too deep into her brain. All she can do is try to avoid Mchawi's tendrils of magik but to run back into the desert will lead inevitably to death.<br><br>And so she sprints for him, her head lowered to her muscled chest with the intention of colliding straight into one of the arithmancer's outstretched wings to damage it. The shadow tendrils reach Oceane before she can reach Mchawi and she expects to fall instantly to the sand in writhing pain the way she had done countless times before —<br><br><i>nothing happens.</i><br><br>That, more than anything - more than the way she runs straight <i>through</i> Mchawi's inky black wing - startles Oceane back into reality. She keeps running, never looking back, shouting into the sky as she gallops and gallops: <font style="color: #e5c9b1;">"You're not real! It's not real!"</font> she continues to yell as her eyes collide with the oasis, with the truly <i>real</i> oasis, that sits only a hundred yards away now.<br><br>She comes to its shore, so thankful that it is not also an illusion that she drops to her knees in the sand and simply revels in its existence.<br /><br>
<hr>
<center>round 1 | <font style="color: #e5c9b1;">speech</font></font></center></div></div>
<center><b>Loyal to Loess.<br>Assaulted by a hallucination of her past.</b></center>
<div style="padding: 30px 50px; background: rgba(0,0,0,0.3);font-family: georgia;color: #8d6b6f;font-size: 11px;line-height: 160%;letter-spacing: 1px;text-align: justify;"><div style="color: #b68991;text-align: center;border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(190, 150, 157, 0.4);padding: 10px;padding-top: 0;"><link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Kristi|Rochester|Kreon&display=swap" rel="stylesheet"><font face="Kristi" size="10px">to the lonely sea and sky</font></div>
<br />
<font face="Kreon" size="2px">Doused in the warm embrace of sunlight, Oceane sails upon a drifting summer current in the open skies above her home's tallest mountain, letting her winged shadow fall gently over rocky outcropping, desert cacti, and tropical fern alike. She smiles, the expression more involuntary than not; it's her first Loessian summer, marking an entire revolution around the sun since she'd followed the sunset-hued mare in Beqanna's field. A year since she'd met Blue, and Ruinam, and Castile.<br><br>A year since she'd played the part of the nomad, running and flying tirelessly from the cold-fingered reach of Nau-Aib. And nearly three years since she'd seen that land: her homeland, the birthplace of her dreaded, hidden-away phantasms. It's all but gone from her thoughts. No longer does Oceane wake in the middle of the Loessian night in a cloak of her own sweat, having narrowly escaped Nau-Aib's guards or the king's arithmancer.<br><br>Now, there is only Beqanna, and further, only Loess.<br><br>It's upon the foothills territory that her amber eyes gaze, lovingly sweeping the now-familiar swatch of land in almost the same way a mother would look upon her children. Oceane has grown to love the land that had welcomed her into its safe bosom, and at the same time has nurtured her own desire for continued knowledge of Beqanna under the capable, mismatched gaze of Castile.<br><br>The opaline woman has tried not to make a habit out of searching for the gold-banded Loessian king whilst indulging in airborne solitude but whatever chemistry she feels towards the painted stallion nearly always draws a desire to see him into the corner of her mind, coaxing her molten amber eyes to seek him out whenever she has the free time.<br><br>Today is no different, despite her hesitation to admit it even to herself.<br><br>Loess, it would seem, has other plans; a light fog soon coats the lazy foothills, making the ground, let alone Castile, nearly impossible to see from this height. Intrigue piqued, Oceane slowly drifts nearer to the terra firma. Her decrease in altitude is met with an uptick of eerie foreboding.<br><br>She is not forced to wait long to find out why.<br><br>Quickly overtaken by a denser, colder fog, Oceane fights off a chill that rattles deep in her chest. The eerie, milky blanket forces her interest away to make room for fear and then —<br><br>terror, when the fog becomes so thick she can no longer flap her giant feathered wings. An attempt, no matter how futile it may be, is made to fight off this formless attacker, but Oceane remains within its grasp until it sees fit to unfurl itself; it deposits her the way someone might deposit a rehabilitated animal into the wilderness, effectively releasing her with only enough time to clamp her wings to her sides before her beautiful pearlescent frame is skidding abrasively across the crest of a sand dune.<br><br>She cries out in pain at the impact, but scrambles to her lavender hooves as fast as her tangled limbs let her with determination to not remain prone or defenseless. The way her weight shifts across the sand dunes feels familiar, as does the intensity of the sun upon her back and the way it stings her gilded eyes no matter where she tries to place them.<br><br>Panic grips Oceane as the realization sets in, filling her until she nearly collapses beneath the weight of it. <i>Nau-Aib?</i> She spins in a tight circle, her frantic legs kicking up hot sand as her eyes dart all around her. Nothing but sand, dune after dune, an endless sea of heat and grit and death. The violet woman gasps for air as if she has just surfaced from the depths of the ocean, but the air tastes of sand and offers her no reprieve.<br><br>Nau-Aib.<br><br><i>But how?</i> Surely the magik of the king's arithmancer would leave aural traces in the sand or on her gleaming body, but she lacks the shadowy tendrils of one who'd recently been subjected to the whim of someone else's magik. Forcing another shaky inhale, Oceane reminds herself that even the most talented arithmancer in Nau-Aib couldn't have found her in a place as far away as Beqanna. But even if they could have traced her magikal abilities before, she'd begged a friend - a fellow exile - to rid her of her magik before she'd escaped her homeland.<br><br>These thoughts offer her little solace, considering her current surroundings. But perhaps there is another explanation. Her primal subconscious desire to live reminds her that she cannot simply remain transfixed in the middle of the desert and hope to make it back to Beqanna. Her eyes wander again, this time finding a small glimmer of hope in the distance, beyond dune and valley. An oasis.<br><br>Once she has spotted it, Oceane wastes no time in her pursuit of it. Accustomed to traveling over sand, the pegasi woman finds easy footing in the sediment even despite the ache in her joints from her aforementioned landing. The twinge of pain is soon forgotten, however, as she notices the approach of a silhouette in the distance as she nears the halfway point between nowhere and what is, hopefully, an oasis.<br><br>Had Oceane realized that her belief that she has returned to Nau-Aib and her subsequent panic attack had paired with exhaustion from the heat, she would have recognition this approaching equine for what it truly was: a hallucination. But instead, her heart threatens to still as she crests a sand dune and the approaching stallion does the same, forcing them to come face-to-face, with him standing between Oceane and the oasis.<br><br>The stallion - an arithmancer named Mchawi - is one she recognizes almost immediately by the trademark opalescence granted to those of the king's court. But where she is a pearl, he is an oil spill. He spreads his great obsidian wings wide to block her path, his lip curled into a sneer as he regards her.<br><br><b>"Traitor,"</b> he spits as black tendrils of shadow begin to pour from his eyes and nostrils. They snake towards Oceane who shakes her head, mouth fallen open to deny his allegation but her throat is too dry and her panic is set too deep into her brain. All she can do is try to avoid Mchawi's tendrils of magik but to run back into the desert will lead inevitably to death.<br><br>And so she sprints for him, her head lowered to her muscled chest with the intention of colliding straight into one of the arithmancer's outstretched wings to damage it. The shadow tendrils reach Oceane before she can reach Mchawi and she expects to fall instantly to the sand in writhing pain the way she had done countless times before —<br><br><i>nothing happens.</i><br><br>That, more than anything - more than the way she runs straight <i>through</i> Mchawi's inky black wing - startles Oceane back into reality. She keeps running, never looking back, shouting into the sky as she gallops and gallops: <font style="color: #e5c9b1;">"You're not real! It's not real!"</font> she continues to yell as her eyes collide with the oasis, with the truly <i>real</i> oasis, that sits only a hundred yards away now.<br><br>She comes to its shore, so thankful that it is not also an illusion that she drops to her knees in the sand and simply revels in its existence.<br /><br>
<hr>
<center>round 1 | <font style="color: #e5c9b1;">speech</font></font></center></div></div>
<center><b>Loyal to Loess.<br>Assaulted by a hallucination of her past.</b></center>
i must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
and all i ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by
and all i ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by