the fault in our stars

[aletta]

The world is open and vast.

This world is open and vast.

It is not the Mountains. The air here is not as pure as the air she has left behind her. Aletta takes a breath in and feels the corruption layer her lungs. It is a place she never thought to see again and yet here she is, breathing in Beqanna air once again. She had been taught to be weary of Magic - it corrupts, their leaders had said. It breeds entitlement through the generations and spoils the blood.

When there had been no anchor to her soul - before Valerio and their five foals settled into the places the wanderlust had been - she had come to Beqanna. (Twinge, Prague, Asylum. Aletta had learned the names of the former Jungle queens and uttered them like a prayer against a culture that bolstered its sons and denied their daughters.) The Jungle, by the time she arrived, was gone. The names of those Queens almost forgotten, save for a few mares in the North.

She had encountered creatures - recently stripped of their powers and their homes. There had been a black mare that spoke to her of the masterpieces that she could create - bonewalkers that danced by her side. There had been a stallion who lurked in the drowning reflections of the stars, smiled at her and called her Luna. As she scans the open Field, she wonders what came of them. Were they ‘blessed’ to be Immortal?

It brings Aletta to the curious thought of how time passes in Beqanna, if it passes as slowly or quickly in others. She never asked, the first time. Her dark eyes assess the few horses here, studying for signs of differences or even magic. Some are certainly colored as if they are. There are wild, rampant colors bleeding all over this field aside from the casual bay and gold, from the chestnut and silver.

The world feels too low here, as if they are fallen stars. The Heavens too far away. Even the few imposing trees can hardly keep the blue sky above them, as rivaled as it is with those who have come here. The Field. She doesn’t glance skyward but instead stands impassively, watching and letting the day go. The world is vast and open, and she knows, somebody will come. 

its been a while so whoever bears with me while i figure her out, you are a saint

[Scorch]

WATCH THE FLAMES CLIMB HIGH INTO THE NIGHT

Everything ached for too long. With time, even the strictest of the strict self-imposed time-outs had to come to an end. Call her weak-willed (it would be true, though you'd be wasting the label on the least of her will-associated crimes) but as months turned into years and bastard children turned into bastard adults, Scorch found herself itching for something. Anything. Everything.

(But most of all, her husband. Or Brennen? Not Brunhild, though she wonders if she would even try to keep it in her pants if that option made itself available again. What would she gain by practicing celibacy at this rate, anyway? She and Hestoni no longer talked in a way that could support intimacy [yet, anyway] and she'd caught wind of her best friend becoming married to her grandson. A cruel twist of fate! Or rather, a cruel twist of her own doing. But we didn't come all this way to type about previous wrongdoings - this post features forward movement! What, you don't believe me? Well, I had you for a moment there, anyway.)

Everything, it turned out, happened to be in the field. At least her hooves thought so. In the midst of her meager attempts at decision making (to Ischia or to Nerine, to Ischia or to Nerine???), she'd made her way to this godforsaken land by accident. How many times had she set hoof in this charming pasture, so full of hope, bright eyes, and optimism? How many times had she brought a woman home to the Jungle or to Nerine in the name of the Sisterhood?

Enough to have seen the Sisterhood liquidated, anyway.

And besides, it wasn't like she could recruit anyone anywhere now anyway.

Oh, Gods, the mare keened. Am I - hheughch - am I a recruit?

Too late to figure it out now, Scorchy. Besides, you hadn't any better plans.

Deep breath. A step forward.

Forward. The movement sent a lurch of anxiety through the once-Khaleesi, one which reeked of shame and uncertainty. The bull-headed confidence she'd earned from Hestoni's undying love of her hideous self had evaporated alongside their marriage; how could she fave the vulnerability of the open field like this? Homeless, loveless, and as rat-like as she'd ever been. Hairless except for dirty bay patches here and there and covered in the black-pink-grey of decades old burn scars, Scorch more than lived up to her name. And no one knew her name any more - even her legacy had abandoned her by her own making. She felt certain that anyone she met here wouldn't even blink at the stories she'd told to date.

Yet here she stood, heart-in-throat, on the cusp of telling just one more.

A mare caught her dragon's gaze; grey, single-socked, built slight and fine. Even from here she smelled of a-nother land. Something about the notion of being beside another newcomer felt reassuring to Scorch and so, with a deft pick-up of her baroque heels, she trotted to come alongside the other. Little did she know that in doing so, she became acquainted to one whose story resembled her own in more ways than could be chalked up to mere chance.

"Hello," came the rat's brusque voice, low and cracking from the charring it received so long ago. "The name's Scorch." Her pupiless gaze, a caramelized purple at this moment, dropped in a well-mannered greeting. "I don't have a home to offer you, though if I did, I would. Just some companionship for now." And for now, that would have to be enough.

Scorch

Once Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle

Is it even a Scorch post if I don't break the fourth wall?
"@[Lilliana]"

[aletta]

Keav, the startalker, had brought her down from the Mountains.

Not that Aletta had known that, not at first. And if she had known Magic had been at play, well, the silver-white mare might have left the roan with her pelt of constellations to stand alone underneath the cosmos. It might have been a kinder fate than the one that the two of them found that night.

Keav, who mourned Arawn and burned with Bastille, had lost her children to self-indulgence. And Aletta - stoic, distant Aletta - who had told herself that she was content to keep company with the Winds, had lost hers to... what? The silver mare had no interest in losing herself into the embrace of another; Valerio had been her sun and she his moon. There was no bond, save perhaps their children, that could ever rival it.

It already felt like tempting Fate by coming down from the top of the world.

But down she came and the stars turned her eyes past those proud Mountains. Beyond, Keav had murmured one winter night, you have to look Beyond. An message straight from the heavens - cryptic and elusive. Perhaps as much of a voice as the stars - silent, shining things as they are - are able to muster through Magic.

What Beyond meant was still beyond her but the dappled mare had left the only true place she had ever called home - parted with her memories and murmured stalwart goodbyes to the mares who had stayed with her. If the stars told her Beyond, then Beyond she would go.

Horizons and borders blurred together. Lands melded and raged, climbed and fell - canyons cracked the earth, rivers wound through it, mountains rose and valleys dove. The wanderer in her might have once delighted in those sights, reveled in all those unknown places. Travel had been, afterall, Aletta’s first love. There was a once sweetness in seeing something for the first time (before she ever beheld her children). There was a high that came from finding all those secret places their world might otherwise keep hidden. Before Aletta had ever been a lover or a mother or a Regent, she had been a wanderer.

Where Beyond takes her is here - a place she never thought (or wanted) to see again.

There is disdain darkening her almost black eyes as she keeps to herself. The mare is a striking figure - commanding, proud and a bearing that speaks of expectancy. (But what is she waiting for?)

When she looks at Scorch, she isn’t sure if the hairless mare is it. The gray mare has had enough years to remind her to not stare overlong at the lack of a pelt on her but the expression on her face is clear enough - how does a horse lose their hide? The mare trots alongside her and there is something familiar in her noble outline. Baroque, imperial, distinguished. It softens her features - breaks the clouds of disapproval that had been building there - and Aletta gives a firm nod to Scorch’s approach.

Her own voice is low, hoarse from lack of use. "Pah,” the gray mare says. "The only home that could keep me is long gone. I have no use for another.”

Aletta glances out again, watching the few horses gathered and waiting. For a moment, she almost asks why they wait. Redundant. Why not just simply go into the kingdoms? (A reminder of the man in the water gives her pause. Nerine, wasn’t it?) "Aletta,” the former Regent offers by way of greeting. Tilting her head to eye the bald mare (what was the story behind her eyes… were they changing?) "What has you seeking ‘companionship’, Scorch?”

@[Scorch] she's cranky but means well lol
also - so sorry for the wait! <3

[Scorch]

WATCH THE FLAMES CLIMB HIGH INTO THE NIGHT

The dappled figure offered disdain at Scorch's arrival, ears slanted back and eyes slivered. That expression softened, however, as Scorch came alongside her; nods exchanged, they settled into conversation. A quirk of Scorch's ear and a twitch of her lips into a smile reveal her intrigue at the other mare's matching voice: low, hoarse. Unfeminine. Despite her Arabian physique, Scorch began to recognize their similarity just moments into their meeting.

"Hah," she chuckled. "How familiar a story."

Aletta. The name sat well on Scorch's tongue, tasting of years lived, miles traversed, and roses turned thorn. The rose on Scorch's own chest throbbed at the thought. Something about sisterhood. Ignoring the strange sensation, the dragon-eyed mare rolled back her broad shoulders and considered her company's question.

"Loneliness," she offered after a moment, frank as ever. "Disillusionment. Misremembered dreams of grandiosity which both repulse and attract me... And the visceral ache of a being forgotten by those I loved." Hestoni, Brennen, Brunhild, Kagerou, Malka, Hestia, Wishbone, Breckin, the Sisterhood, the Brotherhood, the Old World. So much history to back this thin veneer of resurgence. "Nothing out of the ordinary, I suppose."

At ground level, her ankles ignite into flames. The grass nearby singes and melts into itself, too wet to cause more than smoke. The familiar smell grounds the mare as she continues, head now tilted at Aletta in turn as her own inquiries become verbalized.

"And you? You reek of the beyond and you don't look much better." Though she did nothing to soften her words, something in the purple-gold of her eyes conveyed an intention of friendliness. "Plus, with your disinterest in homes, this is hardly the place for you. People come here to be homed. Hah. I guess that makes us both a little out of place, doesn't it."

Scorch

Once Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle

""

@[Alleta]

[aletta]

The silver mare can feel her brow start to arch at Scorch’s comment. "Is it?” the former Regent counters. And while it is meant to be a play at part of this banter, the question strikes too close to her heart. It isn’t like the wanderer to drop the iron veil she has adopted over the years. The smaller mare clears her throat, "I’m sorry to hear that.”

Aletta looks out onto the Field again, tactfully eyes a few mares huddled together with some weanlings between their shaggy winter coats.

When her dark eyes glance back at her companion, they drop to the tattoo on her chest. She stares at it, trying to remember why something like a marking would nag at the back of her mind as it does. (If only she had paid better attention during those stories - about the reigns of Prague and Asylum and Twinge.)

No matter.

The answer that Aletta is given isn’t what she expected. The first part, perhaps. The pale mare has traveled to enough places, seen enough lands, to know that emptiness within can cast itself out in many ways. It’s part of the reason why she stands here, again. Aletta frowns, "and so you came out here for..?”

She doesn’t mean to be unkind when she asks this but then the gray mare has always been something between a pistol and preacher.

"Do you find any of that here?”

Her refined head jerks back when the fire sparks at the hairless mare’s ankles, burning the grass. Magic. Of course, this mare with a lack of a pelt would have something else instead. It’s been decades since she has last been here and it appears some things don’t change; Beqannians will rise to any occasion to wield their powers, to flaunt them in the face of their simpler cousins.

The frown deepens, "When did you get it back?” The Magic, the flames flickering at her ankles, she means. They had lost their powers the last time she had traveled through this place. They had been stripped of it and for every horse she encountered, that was all they could say - affirmations and oaths that they would get those powers back.

Imagine, some part of her thinks, if a horse actually had to survive on their wits and their hooves alone.

"I reek of Beyond because I am of Beyond,” and now the mare does flash a proud grin. Aletta turns her slender face to glance at @[Scorch], satisfied that if she reeks of Beyond then, "and you stink of Beqanna.”

um i love them?

[Scorch]

WATCH THE FLAMES CLIMB HIGH INTO THE NIGHT

The apology, Scorch ignored. Or at least she made but a mental note of it. Such a blatant expression of empathy from one as stoic as Aletta meant more than her dry tone could let on and Scorch found a private, intimate comfort in that. One that would mention to Aletta in but a few moments, and in response to that, Aletta questioned.

Her motives, her findings.

"Habit is as habit does," Scorch offered without caring to explain further. The history of it all failed to interest her the way it had for so many years prior. Of course, that history felt so familiar while embraced by ghosts (Brunhild, Brennen, Hestoni) but right now, the present made itself her lover. "And if I am talking to you, then I suppose I have."

Aletta startled at the ignition of Scorch's ankles, a sharp movement which caused the baroque mare to toss her head in distaste, too. The frown on her companion's face provoked a jade green hue from her roiling eyes and the question that followed brought speckles of orange.

So she's been here before.

Not all that surprising once she considered it a moment. Most everyone made their way back to Beqanna one day or another -- if the once-dead mare didn't know that, no one did.

Pressed to answer, now, Scorch's expression eased with a sigh and she thought back. "Honestly, I couldn't tell you. Time here is so liquid. Ten years, give or take. Long enough for few to remember that time with much passion. A hellish plague happened since then and right now, hell itself has broke loose, or something like that anyway. I'm not paying much attention."

At Aletta's rebuttal, Scorch laughed - a gutteral but somehow motherly and charming sound. "Poorly scented friends, then," Scorch allowed, cocking a brow as though to ask if Aletta felt the same.

Scorch

Once Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle

""

@[aletta]