IT'S NOT POWER THAT MAKES YOU THE STRONGEST
She’s not crazy. That offers some relief, which washes over her when the other mare turns and there is not rejection, but recognition. The grulla mare is almost weak with the relief, feeling it so strongly that she is almost mortal again, rather than this half-magic creature she has been in the new world. The memories are drawn up from the very depths of her heart, things that happened a century ago, dulled by time and nobody to share them with. With one of her first and dearest friends standing here, it’s as if it was yesterday.
Nikkai leans into the embrace that Chasity is offering, understanding well that perhaps her friend needs the reassurance that the grulla mare had no one to offer her when she had stumbled back across the void from death to life. It is not an easy transition, and Chasity does not seem to have the strange new magic thrumming in her veins and giving her a reason to go on. She had only her own strength, and that Nikkai admires. The purpose of the magic had not allowed her to falter in the beginning when faltering seemed like a good idea – so now they can stand together.
“There is very little left,” she says quietly when they draw apart. Some might see it as a nearly brutal honesty, but Chasity would expect nothing less from Nikkai. It is a rare time when she is less than frank, even when the truth is uncomfortable. “The lands have been reshaped, and the Kingdoms are no more. Some common lands remain, and a few herds that seem to have been arbitrarily brought back to be settled.” Nikkai’s birthplace is amongst them, with its rolling fields of flowers, but she knows that is not the land which she should be sharing with Chasity. Still, she hesitates a moment, because the story is so strange.
“When I came back from death, I was not the same. Somehow, I had been gifted with a magic, though it was not mine to keep.” She glances at Chasity, hoping not to find disbelief in her face (that might hurt more than she could stand), and then goes on. “I had to gift it to one of the new Kingdoms. The place is called Tephra, and the people are not my people, not really. But, Chasity…” her breath catches for a moment, her normally cynical eyes soft with some mixture of wonder and hope. “The magic took a familiar form. It’s our waterfall, flowing again in a new age.”
Nikkai leans into the embrace that Chasity is offering, understanding well that perhaps her friend needs the reassurance that the grulla mare had no one to offer her when she had stumbled back across the void from death to life. It is not an easy transition, and Chasity does not seem to have the strange new magic thrumming in her veins and giving her a reason to go on. She had only her own strength, and that Nikkai admires. The purpose of the magic had not allowed her to falter in the beginning when faltering seemed like a good idea – so now they can stand together.
“There is very little left,” she says quietly when they draw apart. Some might see it as a nearly brutal honesty, but Chasity would expect nothing less from Nikkai. It is a rare time when she is less than frank, even when the truth is uncomfortable. “The lands have been reshaped, and the Kingdoms are no more. Some common lands remain, and a few herds that seem to have been arbitrarily brought back to be settled.” Nikkai’s birthplace is amongst them, with its rolling fields of flowers, but she knows that is not the land which she should be sharing with Chasity. Still, she hesitates a moment, because the story is so strange.
“When I came back from death, I was not the same. Somehow, I had been gifted with a magic, though it was not mine to keep.” She glances at Chasity, hoping not to find disbelief in her face (that might hurt more than she could stand), and then goes on. “I had to gift it to one of the new Kingdoms. The place is called Tephra, and the people are not my people, not really. But, Chasity…” her breath catches for a moment, her normally cynical eyes soft with some mixture of wonder and hope. “The magic took a familiar form. It’s our waterfall, flowing again in a new age.”
Nikkai
@[Chasity] (fun story, it’s been something like 137 BQ years since 2006 lmao)