"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
12-30-2016, 01:28 PM (This post was last modified: 01-01-2017, 08:26 PM by Brennen.)
the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love
great clouds rolling over the hills
and if you close your eyes, does it almost feel
like nothing's changed at all?
He likes to think of it as babysitting. As he keeps an eye on the two young mares (they’re not really children anymore per se) out and about in the Meadow, he likes to think that their mother will come back to find them, and that he is just babysitting. But of course, his granddaughter has been nowhere to be found for nearly three years. And, well, to be honest…maybe he is the better parental figure for Cassady and Carwyn than Kellyn is.
But maybe he misses his granddaughter, too, like he misses so many of their missing family. Of course, neither of the girls is like Kellyn. Carey's is more like himself, while Cassady...well she’s his family, his blood to protect, but she reminds him uncomfortable of his son’s lover Elite. And in a time when they’re all being punished for being petty, greedy, capricious, jealous, warlike creatures, maybe a young person who reminds anyone of Elite isn’t a good idea.
They’ve gone off on their own for a while, and he is alone, pondering his own losses. Lovers and magic and homes alike, he has been reduced to nothing but the few family members he can draw back to himself. He is ripe for a new cause and a new people, but not quite mentally prepared for one. Not when he still holds the loss of the Tundra so close to his heart.
12-30-2016, 03:09 PM (This post was last modified: 01-03-2017, 02:29 PM by kahzie.)
djinni
It’s nice to be herself again.
She is more careful with her shifting than she has been before, slipping into the river with a splash of what is surely the tail of fish-shifting Raene and emerging in a puff of golden sand a dozen miles away wearing the sleek physique and grullo hide that she most prefers. The preference is new, developed since the Reckoning. Being forced to wear it for so long has rubbed off on her; some part of her likes to call it her default setting.
This time she’s appeared in the shadows at the edge of the Meadow, and as she looks around at the gathered crowd, she decides that she’d like to fit in. The magic is slowly seeping back into Beqanna, coloring the residents and adding long-missing accoutrements. Her golden bangles and rings appear as her changes to an indigo-to-violet ombre and white pattern on her svelte frame. She’d abandons natural color entirely, though the placement of her patterns mimic those of a typical medicine hat tovero. Tucked against her back are the violet wings of a dragon, tipped in gold, and she wears a pair of elegant golden dama gazelle horns on her head.
She lowers her head to the frozen ground for a moment, and then steps out of the shadowy woods and into the Meadow. She’s not looking for anyone in particular, and so she stops beside the first horse she sees, a bay stallion who looks – oddly – grounded. “Hello.” She says, her voice surprisingly rough for such a small figure. “I’m Djinni.”
current appearance: natural build – slim indigo-to-violet ombre and white tovero violet dragon wings golden dama gazelle horns
01-01-2017, 09:10 PM (This post was last modified: 01-01-2017, 09:11 PM by Brennen.)
the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love
great clouds rolling over the hills
and if you close your eyes, does it almost feel
like nothing's changed at all?
They are mostly still reeling from the absence of magic, and so many of the forms milling about the Meadow are unusually drab. Oh, they’ve always had their mix of natural and unnatural but one gets a sense of who is not used to being normal – she has the sense, can see the unease about him, as he can pick out some amongst those he watches that just aren’t right. The sound of an approach brings his head around from staring absently into the distance, instead focusing his hazel eyes onto the mare who greets him.
He isn’t prone to jealously, or at least he wasn’t before, but when his head-to-hoof examination of her settles briefly on the dragon wings folded gracefully at her sides before he returns his gaze to her face. The skin at his withers twitches, nearly out of his control, as he instinctively wants to shuffle and resettle his own inky black wings. Something hot and unpleasant flares in his gut but Brennen forces a smile instead, filing away the other details about her physical appearance in his warrior brain and keeping his eyes from lingering on the wings. “Brennen,” he offers his name in response, and then tilts his head just slightly before proffering further response.
“Formerly of the Tundra, though I suppose that is no longer an appropriate greeting in this brave new world.” The bay shifts, still uncomfortable spending so much time on the solid ground even these many months later, and can’t help but give the mare an ironic half-smile, a short chuckle; “You seem to have recovered rather better than I.”
The conversation they are having is not dissimilar to those they all had in those early days of the Reckoning. The horses of Beqanna bonded through their mutual loss, and the groups split into were not blurred by dark, light, and neutral. Instead they were family, or friends, even strangers who had happened to be smiling. Perhaps that is what Beqanna had wanted them to learn: that they are not so different.
Perhaps this reckoning had not been about magic at all.
That is not to say that Djinni had not sought out her djinn as soon as she was able, finding it finally in a damp little cave by the sea.
“I used to be just Djinni,” she says with a smile and a shake of her head, “though now sometimes I add that I’m from Nerine.”
He brings up recovery, and her expression is pleased: so she hadn’t been wrong about him missing something. “What did you lose?” She asks curiously, and then chuckles. “Or rather, what was taken from you?”
current appearance: natural build – slim indigo-to-violet ombre and white tovero violet dragon wings golden dama gazelle horns
the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love
great clouds rolling over the hills
and if you close your eyes, does it almost feel
like nothing's changed at all?
Early on, he had no one and nothing, and so when he gained people and places of importance, he clung to them with intense loyalty. His family. His Tundra. He hasn’t committed himself yet to a new home, two years later and counting. He’d explored the new territories briefly, marking their existence in his long, wandering walks, and her mention of Nerine brings a thought of sand, a flash of water. But he hadn’t lingered in any of them, because none of them had reminded him of home.
A part of him knows he will eventually have to settle somewhere, but he is still holding out hope for a place that at least is cold enough to foster memories of his Tundra. The control of ice may be his least favorite magic, but he still misses doing it. Having it. Not as much as some other things. He’s been quiet just a moment shy of too long, so he forces himself to focus.
“Ah…I’m immortal. Still got that, as far as I can tell, I mean if not I think I’d have died instantly when the magics went away.” Brennen chuckles at that, though perhaps it’s more irony than humor. “Some sort of consolation prize. I had wings, I think I miss those the most.” Honey-brown eyes flick back to her wings, and perhaps his jealously is obvious. “And bone-bending, and ice manipulation.” They roll off his tongue as inconsequential, an afterthought, but memories of each flash though his mind, darkening his eyes. Bone armies and ice walls and times the world wants him to forget.
It’s hard, though, to forget being a warrior, to forget the protective instincts that drove most of those actions. “How about you – is flying your only talent?” The tone is forcedly light, with a hint of a drawl, and the formerly “rude” question seems all too apt in today’s Beqanna.
01-05-2017, 08:54 AM (This post was last modified: 01-05-2017, 08:54 AM by Djinni.)
djinni
He says he was immortal, and the quiet way he watches the world makes sense; there are only so many skills a horse can master in a single lifetime – it seems only right that he has had several. The wings too, explain why he’d semed off balance. A lifetime of holding an extra weight will leave one unsteady when that weight is suddenly absent.
He saves the ice manipulation for last, and a soft smile appears on the mare’s violet face as he says it. “You must miss the Tundra,” she says, Brennen’s loss of his home striking some sentimental chord in her sandy heart. Djinni has always found the lamentations of the Amazons over the loss of their jungle rather childish. They had a lovely home and chose to mourn a land lost beneath the sea rather than enjoy it. Perhaps time has softened her (unlikely, she’s younger than Brennen but not by much – time has had plenty of time to soften her before this moment) or perhaps the specificity of his magic seems to resound more heavily. There is nowhere she cannot be herself, but how hard it must be to live in a world so different from home.
He asks if wings are her only talent, and she shakes her head, clearly pleased, but not as ready to list her skills so readily as the bay stallion.
“Not at all,”she replies with a smile. She had seen the flicker of jealousy as he eyed her own wings, and while she is calculating she is not completely cold. “Do you wish you had your wings back?”
current appearance: natural build – slim indigo-to-violet ombre and white tovero violet dragon wings golden dama gazelle horns
the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love
great clouds rolling over the hills
and if you close your eyes, does it almost feel
like nothing's changed at all?
It’s strange, to find someone who so easily puts a finger on his pulse, who can identify the root cause of the darker emotions lurking behind his eyes and not be confused by the veneer of polite charm he usually carries over it. “I do,” momentary solemnity lies heavily on his mind, swirled in thoughts of snow and Brothers. The men of the Tundra have not reclaimed a land, and he knows that it is likely they won’t, unless someone steps up to make it happen. And Brennen, usually content to lead the Army and watch his Kings from afar, is not sure he is that stallion. “The faeries have created many beautiful lands for us to live in, but nothing quite like my Tundra.” To him, it seems the fae had been rather more partial to warm and green climates, at least so far.
Djinni smiles at his question, and he can’t help but smile back at her, pleased to be having a friendly interaction with someone who isn’t fifty years younger than him and also somehow related. Since the Reckoning, and without a home, his life has been rather devoid of responsible adult conversation. He is used to getting most of his social interaction from either his Brothers, or occasionally antagonizing the Amazon women for fun. Though he is starting to reconsider his need for a home – perhaps he should bite the bullet and find one. Give himself something to do.
She doesn’t offer any information on her other traits, but that only makes him chuckle, thinking about the air of mystery that accompanies so many magic users. Brennen has never been that way, mostly because he earned his magics in battle, and uses them in battle, and has never even thought about trying to hide them. Intimidation in the form of a magical general wouldn’t work well if no one knew what he could do. He embraces the jealousy as a new thing, inevitable, and glances at her wings again before he answers, on a sigh that doesn’t erase the half-smile. “I do wish I had my wings back. I haven’t ever been grounded this long.”
Djinni knows that some of the Tundra had clung to each other, but she had not been interested enough in them to keep close tabs. They might have ended up anywhere; she wouldn’t know. Perhaps the bonds of brotherhood had been weakened by allowing women into their mix. Perhaps the same thing will happen to the sisterhood.
She doubts it.
Brennen doesn’t press for an answer to his question, and Djinni smiles. She’s always enjoyed playing the enigma, and is glad that he lets her continue to do so. He admits to missing his wings, and Djinni’s smile grows a little broader. There is a faint hiss – the sound of sand slipping down a dune – and Brennen’s wings are returned to him.
“Were they always that large?” She asks curiously, eyeing the long black feathers. They seem huge, but those must be the ones he’d been wishing for: there aren’t many ways that magic can go wrong.
“Perhaps you could use them to learn more about the new lands.” She suggests with a nonchalant tilt of her head. “Though I do think Nerine is the best of them, if you could put aside your brotherly dislike of the Amazons.” At that she smiles, a teasing tone in her gravelly voice.
current appearance: natural build – slim indigo-to-violet ombre and white tovero violet dragon wings golden dama gazelle horns
the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love
great clouds rolling over the hills
and if you close your eyes, does it almost feel
like nothing's changed at all?
His eyes are on her – invested in the conversation, for once, and he watches her smile go broader – and then there is a sound, a pressure, and a relief. If one who had never had wings had been suddenly granted them, he imagines they would feel uncomfortable, heavy, unpleasant; but Brennen had been born with his wings and the weight is right. Immediately, almost reflexively, he spreads them, gives a little flick, and then settles the inky black feathers neatly into place at his sides, where they cover nearly his entire body and trail in length to the ground behind him.
Brennen doesn’t have to look at them – he can feel them, and see the dark color out of the corner of his gaze, which is focused on her. He’s seen a lot – but surprise and gratitude can startle even the most insistently stoic. “Uh…yes. Always been a bit oversized,” he answers the question without thinking, still reeling. But the gratitude flows hard on the heels of his words, a warm rush of affection for this stranger. He doesn’t know her motives (though he’s sure she has some) but at this point he could care less. With his wing, he is nearly whole again. “Thank you.” Two words, simply words, but a blind and deaf person could see the depth of the truth in his gaze, hear it in the words.
He will continue to strive to be worthy of earning his other magics back, because he values them, but this is what he needed to exist.
“Perhaps I shall,” he responds, forcing his tone back into lightness and the emotions back into the bone-and-ice cage at the back of his mind. Finding his rhythm, his faint drawl of laughter, he chuckles at her last words. “I have always held most of the sisters in positions of respect just below my own brothers,” And, well, some of them rather higher though he is loathe to admit it. “And I will claim I have never started any quarrels with any of your sisters.” Or, he won’t admit to that either. And really, who could tell? Some relationships are just built on friendly (and sometimes not-so-friendly) friction. Scorch comes immediately to his mind.
He spreads them even as she asks her question, and she knows the answer even before he gives it. Those are most certainly what he had wanted. They’re far larger than anything Djinni has worn (at least at her current size) but somehow they seem to suit the bay stallion more than a more elegant pair might.
He thanks her, and the words are far more genuine than most she hears, even though her gift-giving is fairly frequent. Perhaps it is because she is sought out for favors, and so the gratitude is more satisfaction of a completed transaction. Not Brennen though; he hadn’t really even known what he was wishing for.
The bay stallion says he’s never started any quarrels with the sisterhood, and she smiles because they both know what that really means. “I doubt anyone would admit to that,” she replies, “though I’m fairly certain Nerine doesn’t plan on starting quarrels with anyone.” No one in Beqanna seems poised to bicker; they are all still adjusting. It’s been nearly a year and a half, and they’re still learning about this new place, and about each other.
current appearance: natural build – slim indigo-to-violet ombre and white tovero violet dragon wings golden dama gazelle horns
