 The air here is dry, and it pulls the moisture from Celina’s tongue. The wind blows yellow dust into her seagreen eyes and scaled nostrils until she hacks and coughs, her eyes watering. She’d shaken her dark mane into her face halfway across the flat plain and it does passably well as a shield.
Why would anyone want to live here?
By the time she reaches the canyons that she is sure must be where the residents of this wasteland live, Celina is parched. Her long jaw is open, panting heavily even in the cold winter air. She raises her head to try and catch the scent of water, and the motion shakes some of the dust from her dark mane and causes her to cough again. Why would Dad choose to come here, of all places? Had he been truthful when he told her where he was going, or had he been attempting to throw her off? Celina hopes for the first, if only so this stomp through the dry lands of Pangea was not a trip wasted.
She could have flown in and landed here, where the canyons finally block the wind, but she had not wanted to seem at all suspicious. So instead she’d walked across the border, a pale figure that is impossible to miss in the noon-lit wasteland.
Closing her eyes and holding her breath, the mare shakes as much of the dust as she can from her body and wings. Some remains, a tawny film on her otherwise white wings, muting the navy and sky blue bars at her shoulders and making the iridescent pattern of her stripes even more difficult to see. With the wind gone, the fireflies emerge from their hiding place in her mane and begin to circle her as she strides deeper into Pangea.
“Hello?” She calls out as she goes, the sound of her voice strange in these echoing canyons. “Is there somewhere a body might get a drink around here? I’m parched!”
@[lilliana]
celina
i'm that bad type, make-your-mama-sad type
make-your-girlfriend-mad type, might-seduce-your-dad type
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05-17-2020, 09:18 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-17-2020, 09:28 PM by lilliana.)
The only benefit to hiding in the canyons that Draco had driven her to is that her red coat lends her some camouflage in this desert kingdom. The copper mare often takes to hiding in the shadowed crevasses and gorges in Pangea - making her grateful that she hadn’t been born pale or golden like so many of her bloodline. Though the chasms in the ground would do nothing to silence her thoughts (or the panic in them - how many times did they and her heart flee to Taiga), they helped keep Lilliana out of sight.
(Out of sight, out of mind.)
Most of her days pass like this. The slender mare will find a new one once dusk falls, making sure to do all of her traveling before the resident.. creatures start their night-stalking. The days in Pangea, though, despite the winter season still swelter with heat during the daylight hours and by dusk, Lilliana has to find water. Today, the winds blow in a different direction and the dust that coats Pangea lines her throat as well.
There will be no waiting until sunset to sneak away from her hideaway.
The Taigan mare slips from one of those dark chasms and emerges into blindingly-bright daylight that almost sends her reeling back into the familiar darkness. When her blue eyes adjust to the noon sun, Lilliana makes sure to move quickly (as fast as her current state will allow her too, anyways) and swiftly like the river she is searching for.
It’s a bright, clean scent that carries downwind and another, "@[Celina]?”
The copper mare, revealed first by her voice and then her auburn frame, emerges from beneath a copse of dead Acacia trees, disbelief coloring her features. What was she doing here?
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind
Finding the red woman here is unexpected, so much so that Celina briefly forgets about her search for water. Though she knows that Nashua’s mother disappeared, it has never occurred to the young mare to give the incident much thought. She had assumed that her father had tired of the red woman and done away with her. She’s hesitated to tell her brother this, though not out of fear for his reaction, but rather because she had thought it their father’s place to do so. If Wolfbane was not going to give the boy the chance to prove himself by betraying his mother the way he’d done for Celina, the least he could do was tell Nashua why.
When she recognizes Lilliana, Celina realizes that Nash will have that chance after all, and she smiles as she trots nearer to the Taigan mare. “You are not dead!” She says delightedly. Some of the sheen is gone from the woman’s coat, her healthy sleekness being sapped by this desert land, Celina does not doubt. But other parts of her are growing, and the woman’s seafoam green eyes flick back along the mare’s barrel. Yet Lilliana does not smell like her father. This is not right, and the happy expression rapidly crumbles as her eyes move from Lilliana’s belly to her blue eyes.
“I hope that is my father’s.” Her tone and words are casual, despite the way they are mangled by her many teeth. “Because I would hate to tell Nashua that his mother is never coming back.” She would actually be delighted to do so, and the smile that returns to her face is a clear indicator of that. It is not a happy smile, and perhaps a baring of her teeth is a more truthful way to describe it. The idea of having such good news to tell Wolfbane when she finally finds him overshadows some of the disappointment in not finding him here.
@[lilliana]
celina
i'm that bad type, make-your-mama-sad type
make-your-girlfriend-mad type, might-seduce-your-dad type
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05-18-2020, 06:26 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-18-2020, 06:29 PM by lilliana.)
There is something about the way that Celina says not dead that makes her shiver. Not dead? Her use of the words - the eerily bright way she says it - unnerves the Taigan. The almost-white filly says this like a pleasant fact; like spring returning after a particularly hard winter or the waxing of the moon after the night sky has been dark for too long.
The younger mare almost sings it as she approaches. Until her green eyes drop to the swell of her copper sides and brusquely, Lilliana shifts her weight from one hip to another (as if that might hide her current condition), away from Celina’s prying eyes. "No,” she murmurs hesitantly, "I’m quite alive.”
Whatever earlier glee shining on her face vanishes and leaves all the sharp angles of her teeth glinting in the noon sun instead. There isn’t anything unkind on the younger girl’s face, not at first.
What the pale girl insinuates makes the thin line of her mouth press firmly downward before flatly retorting, "Do you?”
When the smile returns to Celina’s slim face adorned with all those serrated and jagged teeth, there is nothing of her earlier (haunting) luster. There is nothing warm for Lilliana to find. It is her oldest baby boy that has found something there instead and Lilli hates herself for all the warped parallels she finds. She had loved her brothers and sisters - how could she tell her own child to stay away from theirs?
(Lilliana had encouraged space, telling Nash that Celina probably preferred her solitude and silence. Nashua had always grinned and shook his head, telling her a story about herding minnows in the shallows for his sharp-toothed sister or explaining how once his wings grew big and strong enough, he planned on getting actual stars for her.)
"It doesn’t have to be like that,” and the red mare takes a defensive step back as her tail swishes, "you could tell Nashua that his Mother is fine. You could tell both my boys that I’m coming back. And soon.”
The how and why haven’t been figured out yet (and are they important, really?); all Lilliana knows is that no child of hers will be born in this forsaken place.
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind
Celina does not care that Lilliana is hesitant, and perhaps uncomfortable. But when the red mare’s dusty lips pull into a thin line, a defiant expression paired with a spoken retort, Celina does find that interesting. Does she hope that the child growing within the copper mare is her sibling?
She does like Nashua, and having another sibling for her own is appealing.
But if it is not a sibling, then shouldn’t it die? She does not think that her father would be happy to find Lilliana growing wide with someone else’s child. She has been working hard to ensure that Nash will be their father’s second favorite. Would having to kill his mother lower Nashua’s reputation in Wolfbane’s eyes?
So she answers truthfully to the perhaps rhetorical question: “I do.” It is not concern for the woman that makes her say it, but it is unlikely Lilliana would ever mistake it for that. Celina is not sure what tales her brother has told his mother, but she does like that the mare moves away as Celina draws closer. Is she afraid, Celina wonders? She hopes, really, and takes a step closer, and then another. Lilliana offers an alternative to the tale Celina might tell Nashua. She mentions the other boy too, but Celina is most interested in what it is that Lilliana wants them to be told.
“Will you be leaving soon?” She asks curiously, still inching closer with each small step. Celina is growing more curious. How far will Lilliana back away? What will happen when she is up against the canyon wall behind her? How much would the Pangeans let her get away with when it came to the proper treatment of their captive? “No one back in Taiga even cares that you’re gone,” she tells the flame-marked mare, her manner almost regretful, as though she does not wish to be the bearer of ill news. “Neverwhere is gone – probably dead. Nashua is excited you’re gone and there are no more rules. I think Izora Lethia and Ruthless are going to have siblings for Nash and me in the spring, too.” Celina peppers in a few lies on the fly, recalling what little she knows.
”So really it’s very exciting in Taiga now that you’re gone, and I don’t want to ruin the boys’ fun by telling him a lie that’ll hurt their feelings.” She shrugs, a casual ‘I’m sure you understand’ sort of motion, and takes another step closer. Her seagreen eyes are focused intently, her pale head tilting this way and that in curiosity. “I’m sure you understand, right?”
@[lilliana]
celina
i'm that bad type, make-your-mama-sad type
make-your-girlfriend-mad type, might-seduce-your-dad type
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05-21-2020, 06:20 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-28-2020, 10:04 AM by lilliana.)
I do.
Lilliana fights the urge of feeling her dark mouth curl into a scowl. She resists that (temptingly) brilliant flare of anger that wants to disappoint Celina by telling her that the child she carries does not belong to her shape-shifting sire. Oh, the words come so close; they burn at the tip of her tongue and the copper mare has to swallow the barb down where it smolders in her lungs instead.
It brings her back to an improbable position - an almost perfect mirror image of the canyon wall that Celina has Lilliana backing towards.
What happens if her child is born dark and constellation-marked instead of golden and striped? It’s not something she intends to find out. Her child is just that - as Nash and Yan are - hers. But the rhetorical question that Celina answers forces her to consider something; if Wolfbane comes lurking again as he had with Nashua and Yanhua, what then? If the child isn’t golden and striped, Lilliana thinks she sees the answer to that question reflecting back at her from the green eyes of her pale approacher.
That terror is about to catch her until a sound comes trickling to a slender auburn ear.
A river that runs nearby - that water that Celina had been searching for in this dusty wasteland - ripples laughter as it bleeds out of Pangea like a vein. Play along, the current giggles. Lilliana has spent years trying to prove Underworld wrong - that she is not the pretty little fool he had once accused her of being - and she wonders if that might actually help her now. She needs to get out of Pangea and she has no intention of crossing paths with Wolfbane. So what if the river is carrying an answer?
The red mare trembles because the sharp-toothed girl is too close and looks down, diverting her blue-eyed gaze to the dry ground instead of the encroaching Celina. "Of course it’s his,” she seethes - low and angry. States it like a begrudging fact that she accepts.
Lilliana shakes harder and harder (though she keeps to herself that she has already seen Ruth - who is the chestnut mare without her secrets?) and the mention of Neverwhere makes her head abruptly turn away from the pale girl in an attempt to hide her wince, like the words of her missing friend inflicted physical harm. (They do - her barrel tightens from a cramp that comes low from her stomach, a moment of searing pain that she dulls with her light.)
When the cramp lessens, the red mare glares to Celina who prettily shrugs her shoulders like it hardly matters to her. Why should it? Why should it matter to Celina at all?
Recalling (and recoiling from) the way that the iridescent girl had come lurking in with the Taigan fog one morning not long after her striped sire arrived, Lilliana quietly asks: "I take it you’re looking for your father?” Finding Celina here only fuels her desire to get out of Pangea. Maybe, she could make it matter. "I’d take you to him,” a bold lie from what was once such a bold girl comes out as a casual shrug, "but I’m stuck here.”
She wants out and gone from this canyon country and Lilliana thinks she sees her chance. They could slip out of Pangea together and then the copper mare could slip away from @[Celina] to.. well, she'd figured that part of the plan out when it came.
Play along, the river gurgles a reminder in the distance.
"I’m sure you understand.”
LILLIANA if i ever get to heaven
i've got a long list of questions
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind
The chestnut mare’s begrudging admission elicits a satisfied nod. Good, another sibling.
“I hope it’s a girl,” Celina tells Lilliana, and this time when her seafoam eyes turn to the other’s broad belly there is satisfaction there. Tenderness even, at the thought of a little glowing one like Nashua. Wolfbane had not let her meet Nashua and Yanhua until they were old enough to wander away from their mother. This time, Celina thinks, she will find them younger.
Elio thinks she cannot disobey their father?
If that were true, would she plan this?
No, Celina thinks with satisfaction, she would not.
The satisfaction grows with the way that Lilliana trembles, the fear that Celina can nearly taste as her half-open mouth hovers a breath above the mare’s soft copper skin. When Lilliana speaks, her voice is quiet but stronger than Celina would expect. Something is not right. Why is she not more afraid? Is Celina not as frightening as her father? Perhaps Celina should have hurt her already? The timing of her torture has never been quite right. It is one of her weaknesses, her father has said, something she needs to work on.
Celina doubts herself, just as Lilliana tells her that she knows where Wolfbane is.
She frowns.
I’m sure you understand, she says, though Celina doesn’t. The relief of having found her father – or at least a way to find him – does not come with the relief that Celina had imagined? Why, she wonders, does she not want to find him? Her head shakes, a vain effort to rid herself of these troublesome thoughts. Thinking too much isn’t good for her, she remembers, it is better to listen and obey.
But how can she, if she does not know what the command is? Does her father want him to find her? Is he hiding from her? Surely not, not with how well she had done during their maiming of Elio! No, he would not hide from her. Not when he relies on her news, on her reports of how her mother and siblings far, how the kingdoms shift and change. He wouldn’t trust his hiding place to this flat-toothed mare, not even if she is the mother of his second-best child. He wouldn’t.
“You’re lying,” she says slowly, with realization and anger rising equally quickly on her dusty face. Celina cannot let her know how close she had almost come to falling for the ruse, how near she had been to accepting the word of a woman that was as much of a snake as her own mother. “You think I’m a fool?!”
Heedless of the damage it might cause to the unborn sibling that Celina is already fond of, she lunges forward, her wide mouth snapping and slashing at the mare she’s backed against the canyon wall. Her white wings flare out as she remembers to ‘use everything she has to her advantage’, an effort to keep Lilliana from fleeing.
@[lilliana]
celina
i'm that bad type, make-your-mama-sad type
make-your-girlfriend-mad type, might-seduce-your-dad type
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05-23-2020, 10:04 PM
(This post was last modified: 05-28-2020, 10:04 AM by lilliana.)
Lilliana takes another step back and says nothing. She doesn’t say anything about what she wants or wishes or hopes for this child. Hope is a foolish, dangerous thing. She stays silent and grows more uncomfortable the closer that Celina comes, something that is shown in the way her skin shakes. Like she tries to hold herself so tightly together that her body physically resents it, like there is only so much more fracturing it can take.
(There is only so much more that she can take.)
Her mind moves oddly slow. She watches the frown on Celina's face, watches the way that she takes her lie and turns it over in mind. It makes her stop a few steps short of the canyon wall to her back and Lilliana wonders if she might actually be believed. Could it really be that simple?
Could it really be so simple that Celina believes her and the predatory mare accompanies her past the Pangean border? Having those sharp teeth turned towards the creatures that patrol the perimeters would certainly be in her favor. Lilliana’s luck is questionable at best and her own abilities feel limited but the day she asked Ghaul to go North had made her realize something; she might consider herself lacking in her own magical abilities but there was power to be found in aligning with others more ‘powerful’ than herself.
She needs Celina and her sharp-teeth pointed away from her, not at her.
The pale mare comes lunging forward when the lie fails. That alliance she had been trying to breach crashes against her copper skin in voracious anger. Even if Lilliana hadn’t been so advanced in her pregnancy, Celina is quick and sure-footed. Her movements are precise and speak of a skill that is both primal and yer practiced. The pegasus has years of practice where Lilliana had always skirted around her sparring lessons.
A flash of searing pain. That bright, awful smell of copper.
The copper mare knows enough to protect her throat as she lowers her chin. Her eyes search frantically behind Celina as if there is a simple answer behind her - a way out. If she could get around her, she could hide again among the Acacia trees. She could find the canyons again. For a fleeting moment, she thinks she could even run.
"No!” Lilliana thinks out loud. She doesn’t trust the wind in her stride. Not anymore.
The Taigan’s shoulder that faces Celina has a deep gash and the blood already pools. It has already started a steady trickle down towards her elbow. Looking angrily at the younger mare, she seethes. (Desperation makes her narrow her eyes, pin her ears.) "I need to get to the River,” Lilliana says through clenched teeth. A painful grimace shadows across her face - a rippling pain through her that is not the girls’ doing.
Let Celina make what she wanted about that statement; her flared wings keep Lilliana pinned between her and the rock wall that she has pressed her other shoulder against. Another contraction makes her wince and harshly stamp a hind hoof in an attempt to release the painful tension building in her stomach like a coming storm.
LILLIANA if i ever get to heaven
i've got a long list of questions
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind
The blood that seeps from Lilliana’s shoulder is a brighter red even than the chestnut mare. It smells like training days, like the battle with Elio, like the burnt man in the river. It excites her in a primal way she is not even consciously aware of, a constant current of adrenaline, a predator stalking wounded prey. There is naked excitement in her bright sea eyes, and her mouth curls up (revealing more now-crimson teeth) in a grin as the pregnant mare cries out.
And yet…
Celina hesitates just before biting at Lilliana a second time, one hoof half-raised and the wrist of her left wing half-flexed. Lilliana isn’t fighting back. She is doing exactly as Celina wants, yet it does not feel as good as the striped creature had expected. There is no thrill of success, no pride over landing a blow. It was an impressive feat when she could lay hoof or tooth on her father, and Elio was no longer the weak child she’d once sparred with. They gave as good as they got, and the memories of those conflicts cause a glowing sort of heat in her blood. It’s a heat that is absent now, even though the blood that she slowly licks from one canine is just as sweet as she remembers.
Celina begins to frown at the mare she has pinned against the canyon wall. Then she feints, her head darting forward and back again as if to bite at Lilliana’s neck, and the frown grows deeper.
“I need to get to the River”, the chestnut says with a grimace. Celina knows little of childbirth, and does not recognize the signs of its impending arrival in the woman in front of her. Instead, she snarls at the woman who has insulted her and now refuses to engage her in a fight. Lilliana acts no different than the redwoods that Celina’s father had set her at; attacking her is as thrilling as attacking a tree. It might strengthen her bone and deepen muscle memory, but it is also not fun. Not as fun as a real fight, anyway. Elio hadn’t wanted to fight at first either, Celina remembers. He’d needed to be prodded into it, taunted until he finally struck back. But what does she know of Lilliana’s weaknesses, the points best to apply pressure?
“It’s not as fun when you won’t fight back.”She tells the blue-eyed mare. Her tone is disappointed, and her vicious face is perturbed as she stares at Lilliana. Why does she just cower? Celina briefly wonders if it might be the babe within her belly, but surely pregnancy does not quash one’s desire for a good skirmish. Someone would have told her, if that were true. Celina is equally sure that Lilliana can’t possibly think that she would hurt the child. She’d gone for the shoulder on purpose, after all, and her well-honed skills are more than accurate enough to limit damage to the front half of the chestnut’s body once Lilliana finally lets the fight begin.
If she ever does.
@[lilliana]
celina
i'm that bad type, make-your-mama-sad type
make-your-girlfriend-mad type, might-seduce-your-dad type
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05-28-2020, 09:53 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-28-2020, 09:55 AM by lilliana.)
Lilliana is looking down at the angry, open gash on her shoulder as the blood runs down her leg. It blemishes her fire-marking and the visual of crimson red and blazing gold coming together is a stirring one. The chestnut mare is still grimacing as another contraction rolls through her and there is nothing that could be described as sweet or soft - not right now.
When her blue eyes furiously crash with the sea-foam green of Celina’s, they are glittering with hostility and resentment.
The half-flexed wing prevents an outright attempt to toss caution to the wind and flee. When the pale mare rushes her elongated jaw towards Lilliana’s neck, the last half-step she is afforded is taken and the red mare jerks her head up and away, revealing that vital throat she had just tried to protect. Her head only lowers when @[Celina] starts talking. She looks like a petulant weanling - a foal who has been snapped away from their mother when they are past nursing.
"Fun?” the chestnut seethes, "Are you such a child that you need to be entertained?” Lilliana provokes, finding that she has little sympathy left in this moment.
There is another painful sensation wracking its way through her and she has little time to consider Celina. With her sky blue eyes burning bright, she thinks that the winged mare is welcome to Pangea if she wants it. She is welcome to this wasteland and its monsters (except Draco - Lilliana would never wish him on anyone). If the unnerving instinct she feels that Celina is here because her father is, well, Beqanna politics be damned.
If Ghaul wants to raze Taiga, if Draco can summon the energy for retaliation - she will deal with those hurdles when they come. She isn’t staying in Pangea.
The copper mare reaches out with her slender neck and the teeth that had begun to bare snap towards Celina, warning her to step back. Her red ears have flattened into a mane that is no longer as lustrous as it once was and it hangs more than curls. Glaring at the sharp-toothed woman, she feels as trapped in her mind as she does against this wall. "It’s not a girl,” she goads with a biting tone. It’s laced with doubt, though, and Celina should question everything Lilliana has said.
The River is singing again - trickling, laughing, ushering? - but her veins are white-lighting with rage. The only thing she hears is the winds of fury roaring in her ears.
Lilliana snakes her head once more, taking a blatant step forward as her bared teeth attempt to bite the first piece of skin it can find.
LILLIANA if i ever get to heaven
i've got a long list of questions
but it's all in the past, love
it's all gone with the wind
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