"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
She’s not sure what brings her to the forest today.
Once she’d finished her morning rounds of the Jungle’s borders, her feet had kept moving, taking her far beyond her kingdom, and out into the lands beyond. Perhaps it’s curiosity that drives her forward - despite having lived in Beqanna for all of her life, she hasn’t explored much beyond her home kingdom.
Whatever it is though, it drives her onward until she reaches a cool, quiet wood, with great trees reach high to block out the weak autumn sunlight.
She shivers in the shade - the climate here is far cooler than at home - but she slows to a walk, brown eyes peering about in open curiosity. It’s a different kind of wood than she’s used to. At home the kingdom is full of heat and crawling vines and the screeching of Jungle creatures. She often has to use her abilities to even manage to move through the thick foliage. But here it’s peaceful, with far thinner underbrush and only the occasional bird call reaching her ears.
She moves slowly through the trees, letting her mind wander. It flits from thought to not-so-important thought, and she relishes in the time to do well, nothing. So often these days she has no time to relax.
She’s rounding a particularly thick oak when the sound of a snapping twig catches her ear. Her brown eyes narrow and caste about, and her dark ears prick to attention, but she can seen no one. “Hello? Is someone there?” She reaches for her ability and pulls carbon from the earth, covering herself in a thin armour, just in case. She doesn’t think that there’s anyone or anything out to harm her, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious.
She stretched, the bones in her neck cracking and creaking as the flesh tore away from the vines and the thorns that grew tangled among the woods there. She groaned. It was as if the world around her was waking up, and for the first time in an age, she was feeling the blood in her body pounding in her ears. They flicked around her head, and as she drew herself through the brambles, she continued to groan, the cracking of age and an era gone by passes by her, as the flashings of history bring her up to current events. She is overwhelmed by it all as her body is restored to life—movement through her ligaments and atrophy slinking away as the lactic acid once again slid through her muscles, bringing life back to that which was once little more than dead.
She said her Hail Marys as she moved forward, her pale green eyes being shadowed by the tangled mess of hair and mess that had grown and tangled into the foliage around her for all these years. Stepping forward, she pulled her body--bleeding and coming apart at the seams from where the thorns had pulled on her flesh—through the brambles of paths that were by now overgrown. She snorted, a loud obnoxious sound that signaled of her impatience with the world around her. It did not matter that it had all moved on without her. She knew this land. She knew them all. It was as invested into her soul as she was into the trees—she was one with them. And she knew them all. Whether they were coming, going, dead, alive, or yet to come, she knew them all.
This was the blessing and curse of magic. She was never just she. She was them. She was them all, and as her blood spilled on the ground in sacrifice to the Church and all that was Holy, she looked back to see that the paths she was so familiar with had once again opened up, bending around her, pulling away and going before her, preparing the path for her just as Mary’s Son had gone on his way to Golgotha. She crossed her heart and bowed her head, her tail drawing away from the last bits of vine and twig as she steps out into the open--the open sores on her body knitting themselves scars with the help of her blessed blood.
She was old now. There was no denying that.
But she was eternal, and there was no denying that either.
There is an earsplitting creak, a rending of tree and earth and … something else. Lexa’s eyes widen in her carbon mask and cast quickly from side to side, trying to find the source of the unnatural sound. She backs up until a solid oak is at her rump, shielding her back.
And then something moves.
A grey mare pushes through the undergrowth, shedding brambles and earth like a second skin. Lexa winces as thorns tear at the fragile skin, sending blood trickling down the pale coat, but the mare does not seem to notice. And before she has time to ask the mare if she’s quite alright, the wounds start to heal before her very eyes, hair and flesh knitting together to form thin, pale scars.
She stays frozen, for a moment, holding her carbon armour in a tight embrace.
There’s something about this mare that just … screams power. Ancient power, from ages long, long past. Lexa has a feeling that her carbon armour will do very little here.
She lets the carbon bonds dissolve, and her armour dissolves into a black rain upon the earth beneath her, revealing her speckled coat and golden hoof. She stays where she is though, backed up against the old oak, for all the good that it will do her.
She would laugh, if she knew of their connection. If she knew that, eons ago, this mare had given birth to a son by the name of Ewan. And that that son had been the progenitor of a long line of horses, leading all the way down to her.
But she doesn’t know of course. Ewan is ancient, ancient history. Her family’s stories only go back so far as her great-grandmother Lea, and even those are few and far between. And there is nothing in this present moment to connect this mare to even Lea, so the thought of family does not cross her mind (except perhaps, to think briefly that Larken would laugh to see her so cautious).
So instead she takes one, cautious step forward, brown eyes attempting to seek out the mare’s own. And for lack of anything better to say she asks, “are you alright?”
now don’t you understand…that I’m never changing who I am?
Once upon a time—
There was a girl who had forgotten herself. She was forever pulling at her rosary and counting her prayers as if they were magic miracles that were a one way street from heaven to herself. She used to believe that if she was holy enough, that if she asked God for something, she would get it like an everlasting wishing well. So she continued to count those beads, and wished upon the stars.
And then she became a power-hungry king-slut.
She was delivered power wrapped in a box tide with a beautiful ribbon, and she wore it like a badge of honor. She had birthed kings and queens, and she had had the children of kings. Reagan had turned her tail to the right ones—always the right ones, for she counted them up like the beads she clutched to her heart every day, as if they were prayers from heaven. Who does not love screwing kings?—and she had earned herself a place under the Sun, working with the politicians and learning how the world around her worked.
But she never forgot her prayers, her power, or her miracles.
Her body, covered with the numerous scars of previous moments and memories, and now bisected with the healed wounds from the thorns which had enveloped and embraced her for God knows how many years, was old. It was older than old. It was older than dirt. Her pale green eyes, partially obscured by the rat’s nest of her lichen-twinged hair (tinted green) moved with her head as they peered around to look around at the rest of her body, her darker points fading into the thick shadows cast by the denseness of the trees. But as her body faded into obscurity, her scars became brighter in contrast against her skin. She smiled, nosing the white scars down by her hocks as she flipped her greenish tail and took off towards the forest’s exit.
The pathway continued to widen for her, bending nature to her will as she moved the trees and the vegetation out of the way, reminding the land of what it had used to look like an age ago. With no more than the buckle of the right muscle, they moved this way and that, going before the magician with a stroke of power that spoke of something ancient, and powerful. And yet, she was still no more than the little girl using her powers and prayers like a genie in a bottle… and she really only wanted to be rubbed the right way.
From somewhere to her left—we aren’t entirely sure, Reggie really isn’t paying attention—she hears the sound of a woman. Shifting her weight, Reagan spins her back half around to directly face her. Hearing the shifting of the metallic substance around her, Reagan wuffed—widened her nostrils and took in the decided scent of carbon…odd—and tossed her head back to reveal her face to the stranger. She was a dalmation-popcorn mare thing, and Reggie tilted her head to take her in fully. Blinking slowly, she took her in, examining her name, and her history. A Queen, this one? This is what these lands had to cough up for the queens of old? Her chest rose with a quiet laughter as she nosed the ground, before wrapping her tail around her, summoning the leaves of the trees away from their homes around her, creating a facemask, a breastplate, a mantle, a helmet, and thigh guards. She giggles slightly, like her little girl of old, takes in Lexa’s wide expression, and smiles from behind her leaf armor.
“See? I can do it too! As to my countenance, it couldn’t be finer. What do you think, Lexa? Do the leaves suit me?”
Lexa hasn’t had quite the illustrious history that Reagan has. In fact, Lexa’s only been around for eleven years - a respectable amount of time in the average horses’ life, but in comparison to Reagan? Piddle.
She’s grown and lived in the Jungle, battled with her sister, fought and killed in a war against the Chamber, fought to protect the Deserts against a raid, risen to queen at the age of nine, adopted a child … and that’s it. That’s as far as her claim to fame extends.
She hasn’t lived near long enough to treat with kingdoms and their rulers, to seduce kings, and to give birth to a long, long line of descendants that often sit on Beqannian thrones. Perhaps someday she will reach the great age that her unknown ancestress has reached - she has her father’s immortality after all - but if one were to ask her, to truly press her, she would not wish for it. She can guess what such a long life would cost her, the losses she would face, the rises and falls she would witness, and not wish to witness. If she were to wish for anything in that regard, she would wish for a long reign with power and glory for the Jungle … and to go out fighting, in a blaze of glory, as her mother did.
If she were to truly consider the cost of immortality, she would truly have more appreciation for her mother’s death. For the simple way she fought and died for her kingdom, going up in a literal blaze of smoke and ash.
But she doesn’t consider it, not yet. She’s only eleven after all, still quite young by the standards of most Beqannians. Too young to consider what a future of watching all of her loved ones die will be like.
And even if she were to consider it, what would it benefit? She cannot chose her own end - only live in the moment. Who knows what fate will have in store for her, years down the road?
And, in this particular moment, she’s watching the ancient magician with something akin to wonder in her eyes. The mare laughs, a sound that implies a joke Lexa has somehow missed, and Lexa watches, wide-eyed, as the trees reach out with grasping fingers to cover the mare in an amour of leaf and twig. As she watches, she can’t help but wonder what those old eyes have seen, and what other powers might be lurking beneath the surface. Magic. She can feel it in her very bones.
She blinks when the mare mentions her name, though somehow, she’s not surprised. “Yes, quite fitting I think.” It will not protect her from much, but Lexa very much doubts this mare needs armour for protection. “I feel that you have me at a disadvantage. What’s your name?”
