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  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


    show me where my armor ends; any
    #1

    make my messes matter, make this chaos count,

    She left when winter came the world turned white.

    For months she had stayed in the Chamber, living among the ghosts that haunted her dreams, dreams that always turned dark and disfigured and ended with her standing beside the pit, peering down. There was a girl standing in the bottom, cloaked with shadow and something wet. She was brown and blue like Victra, and her wings were as mangled as a wind-blown moths’. A brindle stallion stood on the other side of the pit, and he too peered down inside with a chesire smile gleaming against a cruel mouth. It was when he looked up across the way to find her watching, when he pulled her inside and she fell in a tangle of wings too confined to open between narrow dirt walls, that she would wake breathless and wild-eyed until she found the shapes of her family nearby. Eventually, the nightmares subsided, returning only on the days that her wandering had carried her past the pit that still hung open like a hungry mouth. But the dark never faded from her chest, nor that sharpness from the bottoms of those pale, emerald eyes.

    It was only when it became clear that Gendry would not be returning, not now, not for a long while, that she found the courage to leave. It hadn’t been love that held her back, not a lonesome yearning in a broken heart; it was the way her belly had grown in recent weeks, the way it hung solid and heavy beneath her even now as her appetite waned. But when each new day brought no news of the blood-orange stallion, no news of the one who had stolen her back from a brindled stranger who left bruises beneath her skin and shredded the wings against her back, the desire to stay faded altogether. In its place was a warning meant for a different time, yet she could not help but hear it now and heed it. ‘We can’t stay here, he might come back.’ There was a small part of her that was certain Gendry would not have left if he thought she was still in danger (smaller still when she had woke in the morning to find him gone) but the nightmares made her unreasonable, dreams of falling forever inside a dirt grave. Perhaps this was what motherhood felt like, though she couldn’t bring herself to ask either of her parents about this relentless worry clawing at her chest, a need to find a safer place than the one that had betrayed her.

    So she slipped away in the night, bidding her family a quiet farewell, a vague farewell, before skirting pointedly around the edge of the kingdom that housed the pit. It was easy to disappear into the dark, made of night herself with dark brown dapples and deep indigo points. The shadows welcomed her eagerly and she was strangely unafraid when she unfurled those beautiful blue feather wings (wings that Raz had broken and Gendry had healed) and leapt into the sky. She stayed among the constellations until dawn cracked red and orange across a sliver of the sky just beyond the horizon. It was only with the sunlight against her back, pale and gold and watery as it rose another inch in the sky, that she finally landed amongst the white powder burying the field. Despite that she was tired, that she had spent the end of the night flying between open skies and empty mountain peaks, she kept those bright wings erect and unfurled at her withers in an almost arrogant way. They pulled attention away from the suspicious swell of her belly, from the wariness in her eyes that she tried to hide with a sharp confidence she wore like a mask. She could have folded them against her sides to hide herself completely, but doing so made her feel small, it reminded her of what had happened before when she was too slow, too cowed to react at all. So she looks around her once, twice, and even though she pretends it isn’t why she does so, she is quietly relieved to not see even a hint of brindle in the morning shadows around her.

    let every little fracture in me shatter out loud


    1) field posts are horrifying
    2) no chamber, also probably no tundra because i have too many there
    3) kingdoms preferred, but herds could also be fun
    <33
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    #2
    As night faded and day brightened, a small piece lingered. Dungaree stirred once, twice, three times before standing up. He shook his head, getting the snow off of his face. He smaked his lips, trying to get feeling into them. He turned, startled to see a winged mare behind him. He looked to see if anyone else noticed the strange creature.

    "Hello?" he said in a curious, yet cautious voice. He wasn't sure if she had heard him, so he spoke a little louder. "W-well, Good morning! I'm down here, miss." he hoped he said that correctly.

    He was always concerned that he would get missed, like so often happened. He quickly leared to say exactly where he was. Being short isn't easy. Espicially when all the other horses are tall.

    The snow along the ridge of his back started to melt, seeping through his thick fur. He shook again, trying to get the blanket that had settled onto him during the night off. He looked around, assessing the weather. "I'd say it snowed a considerable amount last night! Pardon my lack of manners, miss. I seem to have forgotten to introduce myself."
    He stepped closer and nodded. "My name's Dungaree, but call me what you wish." He smiled, trying to cheer the mare.
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    #3
    She frowns.

    Though, there isn’t much difference here. In this body her little lips are pulled permanently downwards at their corners, as if ever scowling, until she pulls them up deliberately. But there is precious little to smile about  at this moment. She is reaching her limits – real, physical limits. The ones defined by her ribs and her organs and skin. These limits that can be tested and pulled and can endure so very much, but not this. Not for much longer. (Ouch.) It is not in the other soul’s nature to resist itself. They are both more comfortable when they are low down and nimble-quick; the other soul has always been particularly greedy, insisting upon brooding when she cannot be who she was meant to be. 

    But even the rabbit can see the absurdity in this. 

    Even she can only hope for the relief that their mare’s body gives them. Little though it may be, for two foals is crowding enough, at least those two can tangle there in relative harmony with their mother’s form. Here, one is receptive – she mirrors the shift with her own bean-tiny frame – the other? She is resistant. She is different from them.

    Like her father, she must be. And the pup is getting far too big. She presses down, against her sister and into her mother’s side. It is too much.

    She groans, shifting her weight and sitting up. (No.) “No use,” she sighs, quietly. And so she drops to her fours and in a second she is grey-furred and shaggy, round and short, “there,” it is reassuring and pointy all at once. A gentle coo to her cuddled twins and a reproach to the other. “Better?” The smaller body has been sanctuary to her – where she had fled the heat and waters of war; where many times she had outrun raptors and slavering, toothed creatures. In her primal, agouti fur, she can be unseen and ever-so quiet.

    She is safe and in safety, she could find her mother.

    She had expected to achieve that victory much quicker,  it had been as if she could feel the strange string that connected her wrist to her mother's hips. But perhaps it has snapped, or Vineine had shook it loose the day she had failed to bring him into the world alive. Or she had been a silly girl with silly ideas, because Longear has been looking for years.

    Looking. Exhausting. Hoping.

    Until she knotted with Woodrow beneath broad and brilliant skies and she was forced to take nest. She would have to put  that endless pursuit on the sidelines. Her mother, to be fair, would have agreed, full-throated.

    She had followed Vineine here a few times as a girl. Today, she lopes a different path, sun-spotted and grey with snow. She is new to the Gates, sure. But she had learned some kingdomly duty from mother. Years ago, she had found it terribly tedious. She still does, though less tedious than standing in the snow and counting bumps against her protruding belly and wondering where the coyote might be, as hormones chased him through her mind. 

    She comes to them because she sees them first, indigo-pointed and oddly small (she knows about small) and because camaraderie draws her to the bulge of the other mare’s sides. Both of their firsts. Heavy loads. “Hello,” she tries to keep any tedium from her voice, normal sing-song (like her mother’s). “I’m Longear, from the Gates.” But then, the Field is tedium and she is agitated.

    Motherhood, indeed.

    “My heart has joined the Thousand, 
    for my friend stopped running today.”
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