"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
Lillibet has taken to wandering since Beqanna had swallowed the South. She holds onto hope like a life raft, never quite admitting to herself that the worst could have happened - that Link and her parents could have been lost to the depths. That she could be out here alone.
The rest of Beqanna recovers, offering quiet whispers of intrigue at what could remain in place of her once-home. Some have begun to say that there are finned creatures, ones that glow like she does, who live beneath the tumultuous sea in a newly discovered kingdom. Lillibet doesn't care; not yet, at least. All she wants is her twin.
And in her search for him, the young woman - newly grown out of her youthful awkwardness - has happened upon a land the likes of which she'd never seen before.
The midnight sky is inky and cloudless. She steps between stone ruins, navigating slowly by her own light and that of the moon, and inspects her surroundings with bright amber eyes. No one else walks amongst the tombstone sentinels, though she hadn't expected company in the dead of the night. A quiet wind whips through, touseling her ivory mane and bringing with it the scent of the sea.
She frowns before setting her sight to the skies, thinking of the star-wielder she'd met by the river and wondering what it would be like to float through the sky as aimlessly as a cloud.
I do not want to move mountains;
I want the mountains to see me coming
and to crumble.
12-05-2021, 02:53 PM (This post was last modified: 12-07-2021, 05:02 PM by Rezza.)
appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.
Rezza rarely wanders so far from her Queen, but after making sure the Queen was alright, and then her daughter, and dealing with the duties that accompany her title, Rezza could not resist. She needed to see her for herself what had happened in that strange quake. She is no stranger to the earth shaking, for she has lived her life in the midst of war. But there has been no sign of their enemies right now, but rather, a new taste in the water, a different scent. Something had changed.
Rezza follows the unusual scent in the water, navigating the ocean deep until the moonlight breaks through. It is not much light, but still, it is more than Rezza is used to. Her life has been spent in these waters and she knows them well, and so it is not hard to sense the thing that is different. She just doesn't quite know where it might lead her to, what she might find. The water warms as she climbs to the surface, and she finds she is almost afraid to break through. It has been so long since she's even left the sea that she wonders if her legs will remember what to do once they reach land, if she will choke on the taste of dry air.
Her head breaks through the surface and she does choke, though not on the air. No, she chokes because she knows this place and she is not sure she wants to be here, and yet the invisible hands of the dead tug at her. Her feet find the sand and she moves out of the water, her feet taking her places she does not entirely want to be. And yet...how was this here? Where exactly was here? The questions tug at her, though she does not expect to find anyone else at this hour of the night. She'd been too busy before to come earlier, but she could always wait in the sea until morning.
Her eyes spot someone in the distance though, a faint glimmer visible around the moving figure, not unlike Rezza herself. Another Baltian, perhaps? The jellyfish mare, with tentacles still in her mane and tail, weaves her way through the dead. Her cat-like eyes dart back and forth, looking for the place where her brother died. Would she even know it anymore? As she comes closer to the other figure, it becomes clear this other mare is no Baltian, nor is she the enemy of their war.
"Hello," Rezza calls, for she has some amount of manners after more than a century in the life of a diplomat. Someone needed to balance out their Queen and Helice, after all. "I'm Rezza, of Baltia. May I ask...where are you from?" There's something ancient in her voice, and yet for all her years she cannot answer such a simple question. Where exactly was she now? The ruins yes. She knows these ruins. But they were not where they once were...
Bolder had returned to Hyaline, and himself, some time ago. He can't remember exactly how he had gotten from the Mountain back to his home, but for the time being, the young pegasus wasn't eager to ask too many questions or think over much about what had transpired on the quest he had taken. Mazikeen had lost her shifting, Malik had been asked to bring things to the Faeries; when Bolder had finally made his journey up the perilous peak, it hadn't been the Fae or even the Mountain that had beckoned him.
It had been Carnage, the Dark God.
His mind wanders too often around that, and twists into troubling thoughts, so the striped stallion would rather not think about it all for the time-being.
He had been told about the earthquakes, though like he found himself back in Hyaline, he didn't remember them. He had no recollection about the groundshaking, except a few hazy memories of trying to dig through the dark. Of his paws clawing down and down, trying to find the Magic that supposedly channeled through the dirt, rubble, and stone. (And there is where his thoughts turn dark as well. Had that been their fault? Had sinking an entire kingdom been part of Carnage's plan?)
Shaking his moon-marked face, the winged horse coasted over the trees of the Forest. He veered towards the South, following a favorable wind and curious to see if what the recent rumors claimed were true. Loess was supposedly gone, along with the Pampas and Sylva, swallowed by the sea. But its not the scent of the newly-born ocean that nearly smacks him across the face, though, that causes him to drift away from that route. There are shapes illuminated by the full moon, odd specters in the distance (that, in their own way, remind him of the petrified forest in Taiga). It's a short soar from the River and when Bolder lands, he walks very slowly through the odd rock formations.
There is a glimmer - the faint outline of another horse - and Bolder responds with his own glow first. His gold stripes begin to shine as does his crescent blaze; a kind of greeting in his own way, not wanting to startle the other explorer. Another approaches and the shapeshifter moves catches the end of her words. It's only when he draws closer that he notices that she is strange in a way that he has never seen before. Her dark eyes intrigue him for a moment, before he glances towards the young mare, wondering if she recognized the name. "Baltia?" Bolder asks (while giving a quick nod in acknowledgement of Rezza's name), "Forgive me for interrupting, I just -," he looks out towards the shadowy space surrounding them, "I've never seen this before."
"I'm Bolder," he quickly tacks on (remembering some semblance of manners), and turns his attention back on the pair, "Of Hyaline."
t is quiet.
There is nothing but the long sums night shadows and the sound of wind.
There is a moment, thin as a web, in which Elliana inhales the warm air and thinks silence is the loveliest thing she has ever heard. It washes over her like a sermon, all long shadows written out in inky blackness, and breezes that whisper in chorus. Even her steps slow and move as if it's red silk beneath her hooves instead of grass and rock and dirt. Lights wander above her head in wild colors formed of patterns that she can never hope to understand. Elliana wanders with them, her thoughts as feral and free as the landscape of lights. And while she's lost the world is lost with her.
And suddenly the quiet is not so beautiful. She is lonely, she realizes. There is a hole in her that nothing can ever fill. Elli knows that she should look inward, towards the beast in her belly that's rattling like chains around her legs. There's ice all around her, but there is only winter in her chest where wonder should be. All her blood feels like festering wine, too sweet and ruined to do her any good now.
She is suddenly craving and wanting and aching for something.
There is a memory here, buried so deep Elliana thinks she can feel the shudder of it tearing through her bones like the earthquake she once felt. It is the type of deep ache that sparked lines of poetry on a writer’s tongue. And maybe, she's feeling like the sea is crashing against the shoreline of her bones. Maybe she wants to drown so that she won't remember everything that she does.
Her body glows bright, the long white foreleg and the crescent moon that sits on her shoulder. Glows as if in response to those other who resemble to moon and the ocean lit with starlight. Elliana has always known there were secrets to be found in the starlight and she wonders what ones she might find here.
She wants this to be it, to be something and tilts dark lips upwards as she approaches. Beneath her lips her teeth are gnashing, aching and begging to pull at something (at anything). “It is comforting to know I am not the only one wandering in the night,” she greets the trio. “This place—are any of you familiar with it?” She asks only because the earth below her feet is screaming with memories.
And she thinks this place had never been silent like she had thought—only holding its breath.
Lillibet's gaze collides with a faint shimmering in the distance when finally her gaze returns to earth. For all the time she'd stared at the stars above, they hadn't given her an answer. They hadn't told her how to solve any of this, nor had they offered guidance in search of her family. Not that she had expected them to - but it does leave her wondering if the star-wielder from the river could whisper her secrets to them before shooing their light back into the sky.
The young woman almost mistakes the approaching purple shimmer for that exact star-wielder, if only for a moment. When her own glow and the moon above add to the lumocity of the delicately purple woman, Lillibet knows she has never walked the expanse of Beqanna before. There is something odd about her movements. Something ancient.
And beneath the gaze of the woman's strange obsidian eyes, the ethereal girl feels discomfort. Baltia. So distracted by the name, by the concrete proof that there lies an underwater kingdom in place of where her home had been, Lillibet hardly realizes they've been joined by another until he speaks. She turns to look at him, trying her hardest to keep her face indifferent though the clenching of her jaw betrays her, as she flicks an ear in his direction.
For just a moment, her amber eyes linger on the glow of his moon.
Bolder.
“Lillibet,” she tells them both, “of Sylva.” Sylva, which no longer exists. At least not above the surface of the water. She wonders as she turns back to the Baltian woman, “Did our golden trees fall into your sea?” Did remnants of her home exist beneath the sea, destined to become silt? Or had the dark god shattered the south into innumerable molecules during the earthquake, only to whisk them away on a breeze.
A softer voice joins them and it, too, is attached to a gentle glow. Innocent comraderie seeps from the chocolate palomino woman and, despite Lillibet's best hopes, her grasp on her own indignance loosens and she takes a moment to breathe. “No,” she finally finds her words as she shakes her ivory head at the woman, “and I thought I had explored the whole of Beqanna.”
When her attention returns to Rezza, her gaze is less biting. “How did you get here?”
I do not want to move mountains;
I want the mountains to see me coming
and to crumble.
12-09-2021, 08:06 PM (This post was last modified: 12-09-2021, 08:08 PM by Rezza.)
appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.
There are two, and then there are three, as they are quickly joined by another. He is younger, still growing into himself, and she wonders what age he actually is. There are many who do not live nearly so long as those in Baltia, and she wonders if this group is like that. Do they live centuries without the aid of magic, as Baltians do? Or was this boy truly young, a few years at most? She cannot say, but of course, she doesn't even know where she is. Well, not entirely.
She knows the ground on which her feet stand, but it has never been here before. How did it get here? Where was here? Those were the questions she needed to answer, though whether or not these horses could tell her, she hadn’t a clue. First though, she must be pleasant, a proper diplomat, someone they would feel comfortable talking to. Though she doesn’t need her mind reading to see that the mare she had approached is not particularly happy, which would likely make this conversation all the more interesting.
”Golden trees?” she asks, hardly needing to feign confusion at this moment. She has no idea that this mare’s home had sunk into the sea, after all. ”Not in Baltia. Our home is untouched besides an earthquake. Did something happen to your home?” She could certainly look in the sea for golden trees, though she would need some direction on where to look. Baltia was hardly the whole sea, after all.
Her attention turns to the boy, Bolder, and she gives him a pleasant smile, about to answer when yet another joins them. Both the colt and the mare, who gave no name, ask about this place. ”I know it,” she says, and there is something sad in her voice as she says the words. Despite being tempted, she does not check the ground to see if the land is still stained red. ”As for how I got here, I swam,” and now there is a bit more of a playful grin on her face at the joke. “But I do not know where here is, or how my home suddenly became connected to it. Perhaps you can tell me about where we are, and in exchange, I can tell you about these ruins and Baltia?”
01-17-2022, 06:39 PM (This post was last modified: 01-31-2022, 10:22 AM by Kyra.)
Bolder looks first to Lillibet, unable to ignore the gold stripes that look so similar to his own. His silver eyes linger there a moment too long, before he remembers that he is not an eagle or a wolf, some other shape that might afford anonymity. He looks sharply up to spy the tightness of her clenched jaw, and he can’t help but wonder if her reaction is because of something that he has done.
She is Lillibet of Sylva, a land gone.
Perhaps that is the reason for her temperament, and nothing to do with him at all.
The young pegasus adjusts his auburn wings carefully, and then turns his moon-marked face towards the other mare. The one from Baltia, a land that he has never heard of. The arrival of Elliana - a mare that he is familiar with - causes him to glance a moment too long again, before Bolder turns his attention back to Rezza. He is eager for news, for something that he might bring back to Mazikeen.
”This is Beqanna,” Bolder states, glancing once to Lillibet of Sylva before turning his slate-colored stare back to the pale Baltian. ”The Earth shook because of the Dark God,” he goes on to explain, though he omits his own involvement. ”Strange magic happened, and then -,” he stops at the thought of the South. It hadn’t been his home nor had he strong ties to the place.
Not like the girl from Sylva who had lost her home.
It doesn't feel like his story to tell.
Instead, he catches on to the name of what Rezza has mentioned.
appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.
The colt is the most talkative of the bunch and so her focus falls on him. She is not here for social hour and in this moment, she doubts anyone else is either. Certainly they cannot be offended by this fact. Well, they can, but she doesn’t actually care if they are because it would be ridiculous. The world has just been flipped upside down and so now is not the time for making friends.
With her focus largely on Bolder, she finds that she does not miss his looks which linger too long on both mares. Why she cannot tell, for sadly his thoughts give her very little except that he is familiar with Eliana and that…he seems to be concerned that Lillibet is familiar with him. Rezza could tell him that Lillibet’s thoughts are far from Bolder, but she doesn’t, because her skill is far more useful when no one knows that she has it.
Bolder is the one to answer, mentioning a Dark God to which she cocks her head slightly. What he doesn’t mention is his own involvement, which suddenly makes him far more interesting to Rezza, though she doesn’t show it. ”Dark God?” she asks, the question apparent enough. The rest of the story doesn’t come from Bolder, though by now she can piece it together even without her mind reading. Her eyes glance to Lillibet who had mentioned golden trees falling into the sea, making it clear that the story has basically told itself. ”And then some of your land fell into the sea?” she asks, her voice soft and empathetic. Her home may have moved, but at least it was intact.
”What they are Ruins of is the wrong question,” she says to Bolder, her strange (to them, she imagines) eyes turning back to him. “The real question is what they are ruins from. We call it the Great War for it has plagued Baltia for centuries upon centuries. Far longer than I have been alive, so I do not even know its beginning. An enemy we have never managed to escape and a war without end. Though perhaps with us now here, there will be peace.” After all, she has seen no sign of their enemies. Surely if they were plunged into this world as well they would have shown themselves already. She is almost afraid to hope that such a thing might be possible.
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