03-10-2020, 12:16 AM
<div id="beryl"><style type="text/css">.beryl_container {background: #76635E; width: 500px;border: 1px solid #F9ECD5; color: #F9ECD5; font: 14px 'Times New Roman', serif; padding: 15px;text-align: justify;box-shadow: inset 0 0 0px 0px #000;}.beryl_name {text-align: center; color: #DEDDDE; font: 26px 'Times New Roman', serif; padding-top: 10px;padding-right: 10px;}.beryl_quote {text-align: center; font-style: italic; color: #F9ECD5}</style><center><div class="beryl_container"><I>Nothing.</I>
It's what she wants to say, what she would say, if she had had time.
No time.
Beryl as soon thinks the word "nothing" as finds herself surrounded by it, the patchwork mare's words fading away into the dream. Blank, white, nothing extends in all directions into an indeterminable distance. Like in the realm of shadows, the young lion is uncertain of the ground underfoot, there is nothing to differentiate it from anything else, but unlike that place, there are no rotating tunnels of eyes, no dead-leaf whispers in her ears. For a moment, panic rises as it so often does and she flinches back into herself, frightened, confused, alone. She wants her mother, Leilan, Halcyon, she wants her friendly Shades, even the ones with the scowling, scolding, voices that tell her <I>No.</I> Beryl remembers them and knows she has never been alone before, truly, absolutely, alone, and she buries her face under wide paws, eyes shut tight against the unbeatable whiteness. What is she supposed to do with this?
The darkness behind her eyelids is soothing, and there is some irony that she, bright, golden, child, finds comfort and friendship in that familiar dark place. She finds ideas, too. Dark eyes fly open, tail twitching with agitation and her whiskered mouth parts into a snarl, lips wrinkled and drawn back so that long canine teeth glint in the whiteness that surrounds. The lioness retches, abdomen heaving, vomiting shadows into the paper-white void, dark shadows that spill wetly and endlessly from the lightless cavern of her own body and give depth to the empty world. She retches until she no longer can, until she turns herself inside-out, and when she finally stops, there are no more claws, no more fangs, Beryl is equine again, long and lithe and cat-like, and the glittering galaxy on her shoulder throws shifting light into the darkness. Shadows and starlight extend to the sky above in waves, fill the blank world with darkness and stars and an undulating wave of light that resembles the aurora borealis rippling high above her burned Isle, but she does not fill the earth with snow. On grey hooves the youth begins to walk forward and as she does, a dark forest springs up around her, shadowy trees and dappled light that litters the ground like leaves.
She is Night and she is Day, and she can build worlds.
Even here, danger comes, and the shadows swirl thick around her like a second skin, like armor that presses against her cool as water pooling in the shade, keeping her safe even as fire blossoms in her forest like red creeper vines in autumn. When the dragon roars above her, she does not take herself to his back this time but gathers the darkness into his likeness, a giant beast with yellow eyes, and they wrestle in the sky, one roaring and flaming, one silent and opaque. When the light of flame threatens to lick at the shadow-beast it breaks apart into a thousand ravens that descend upon the Dragon King's eyes, that peck holes in his wings, until with a furious bellowing, the he spits fire across them all and they die in the light of his flame without a sound.
Though there is blood on his wings and his face, he trumpets victoriously above her burning forest and Beryl tips her head slightly to one side as it follows his arc through the skies.
<I>Grow</I>, she thinks, "Come to me," she says, "Isn't it terrible to be locked away in there with that fire?"
His flight ends abruptly in an explosion of darkness. The shadows within his body mutiny against the tyranny of his flame, they split his skin and stream like ink from his mouth, his feet, his belly, to swarm at her feet, still warm. The Reptile is dead before he hits the ground - no shadow left with his great hulking heft cracked wide open to the world - and she barely blinks at the thunder of his collision with the earth. There will, some day, be forces greater than dragons but she does not know them, too callow, too protected. This, perhaps, is what she needs from the mysterious tobiano. Her grey muzzle brushes gently against the feathery shadows clinging to her legs, and then she lifts her head back to peer curiously into the flickering, burning forest.
<I>But where has she gone?</I>
<div class="beryl_name">Beryl</div><div class="beryl_quote">Litotes x Mehendi</div></div></center>
It's what she wants to say, what she would say, if she had had time.
No time.
Beryl as soon thinks the word "nothing" as finds herself surrounded by it, the patchwork mare's words fading away into the dream. Blank, white, nothing extends in all directions into an indeterminable distance. Like in the realm of shadows, the young lion is uncertain of the ground underfoot, there is nothing to differentiate it from anything else, but unlike that place, there are no rotating tunnels of eyes, no dead-leaf whispers in her ears. For a moment, panic rises as it so often does and she flinches back into herself, frightened, confused, alone. She wants her mother, Leilan, Halcyon, she wants her friendly Shades, even the ones with the scowling, scolding, voices that tell her <I>No.</I> Beryl remembers them and knows she has never been alone before, truly, absolutely, alone, and she buries her face under wide paws, eyes shut tight against the unbeatable whiteness. What is she supposed to do with this?
The darkness behind her eyelids is soothing, and there is some irony that she, bright, golden, child, finds comfort and friendship in that familiar dark place. She finds ideas, too. Dark eyes fly open, tail twitching with agitation and her whiskered mouth parts into a snarl, lips wrinkled and drawn back so that long canine teeth glint in the whiteness that surrounds. The lioness retches, abdomen heaving, vomiting shadows into the paper-white void, dark shadows that spill wetly and endlessly from the lightless cavern of her own body and give depth to the empty world. She retches until she no longer can, until she turns herself inside-out, and when she finally stops, there are no more claws, no more fangs, Beryl is equine again, long and lithe and cat-like, and the glittering galaxy on her shoulder throws shifting light into the darkness. Shadows and starlight extend to the sky above in waves, fill the blank world with darkness and stars and an undulating wave of light that resembles the aurora borealis rippling high above her burned Isle, but she does not fill the earth with snow. On grey hooves the youth begins to walk forward and as she does, a dark forest springs up around her, shadowy trees and dappled light that litters the ground like leaves.
She is Night and she is Day, and she can build worlds.
Even here, danger comes, and the shadows swirl thick around her like a second skin, like armor that presses against her cool as water pooling in the shade, keeping her safe even as fire blossoms in her forest like red creeper vines in autumn. When the dragon roars above her, she does not take herself to his back this time but gathers the darkness into his likeness, a giant beast with yellow eyes, and they wrestle in the sky, one roaring and flaming, one silent and opaque. When the light of flame threatens to lick at the shadow-beast it breaks apart into a thousand ravens that descend upon the Dragon King's eyes, that peck holes in his wings, until with a furious bellowing, the he spits fire across them all and they die in the light of his flame without a sound.
Though there is blood on his wings and his face, he trumpets victoriously above her burning forest and Beryl tips her head slightly to one side as it follows his arc through the skies.
<I>Grow</I>, she thinks, "Come to me," she says, "Isn't it terrible to be locked away in there with that fire?"
His flight ends abruptly in an explosion of darkness. The shadows within his body mutiny against the tyranny of his flame, they split his skin and stream like ink from his mouth, his feet, his belly, to swarm at her feet, still warm. The Reptile is dead before he hits the ground - no shadow left with his great hulking heft cracked wide open to the world - and she barely blinks at the thunder of his collision with the earth. There will, some day, be forces greater than dragons but she does not know them, too callow, too protected. This, perhaps, is what she needs from the mysterious tobiano. Her grey muzzle brushes gently against the feathery shadows clinging to her legs, and then she lifts her head back to peer curiously into the flickering, burning forest.
<I>But where has she gone?</I>
<div class="beryl_name">Beryl</div><div class="beryl_quote">Litotes x Mehendi</div></div></center>