09-02-2016, 12:43 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-02-2016, 01:33 PM by Kreios.)
Kreios wakes slowly, reaching out half-awake for Ygritte beside him. But she is not beside him. He stretches further but she is absent, and he slowly blinks his eyes open, wondering what had roused the salmon-pointed mare so early. He is usually the first to wake; perhaps one of the children had needed something in the night.
But as the world comes into focus around him, he realizes that something else is wrong. Ygritte is not beside him, but nor is their kingdom around him. This place is unfamiliar, and he can feel his hair standing on end. Something isn’t right. Snorting sharply, the spotted stallion races forward, galloping haphazardly over unfamiliar ground. He is reckless, but he needs to find his family.
“Ygritte!” He calls, “Raene!” They do not answer, but around him are other horses still stumbling to wakefulness. For a moment he sees a half-remembered face, a colt that is now a stallion wearing his mother’s stripes, but Kreios has no time. “Marlyn! Zai!” He runs, down the mountain and into the Meadow, shouting for his family all the way. It is only when he stops, his breath misting in the chilly spring air, does he realizes that something else has changed.
His paws are paws no longer, but rather hooves, and try as he might he cannot change them back. He can also feel the cool wind, something he has not noticed in sometime, and there is a somewhat painful itching on both of his shoulder blades. He looks back, craning his neck to see what the source of the pain is, but sees only two lumps beneath his skin. They are what Mother’s wings looked like when she first grew them, he thinks. But why is he growing wings?! And why can he not shift to his wildcat self?
He hears a familiar voice in the distance, and turns to it.
@[Ygritte]
Neoma didn't know exactly what had happened. One minute, she was in the Falls kingdom, grazing peacefully in the meadow before heading out to look over the southern border while Jedi was off with his student, Sunfall, in the northern area.
The next, everything, even time itself, seemed to have changed. When Neoma's senses came back, and the world became clear once again, nothing was like it should've seemed. It was all just so different; she felt out of place, but she'd felt that way when she'd first arrived here not long before what it was that happened... happened.
Speaking of, what exactly had happened? Since Neoma hadn't been in Beqanna as long as other members of the Falls, she didn't have her senses tied yet. Unlike Raxa, unknown to Neoma, who had been able to sense the kingdom's change seconds before it happened, the blue roan mare was completely out of the loop. In a sense, she felt lost; she didn't know why, how, when, or whatever, only that Beqanna's lands had changed.
Why had it done that? Could it have been something the horses did? Could it have anything to do with the raid that happened a number of moons back?
Neoma's gut instincts told her the answer to that was yes.
The mare looked around the meadow she'd found herself in when she woke up. Rather, she'd woken up on the side of a mountain, and had made her way down carefully, but even doing that, she hardly remembered it. It was more like her own sense had been sucked out of her body while she made her way down the mountain, and only when she reached the meadow did she finally seem to come back to it all.
Neoma's fear kicked in; where were the other members of the Falls? If that kingdom even existed anymore, anyways. The blue roan mare cantered around, looking for familiar faces, spotting one in the distance. The familiar chestnut spotted coat of the falls king.
"Kreios!" she shouted, galloping toward the (ex-) monarch. She dipped her head as she approached him, "Are you all right?"
“Da!” He shouts. “Da!”
Zai races across the Meadow toward his father, and only stops when he collides with the taller horse. He is too big, and the impact will probably knock Kreios back a few feet, but Zai cannot help but feel like a child. He wishes he were small enough to be protected, and not the leggy weanling that he is. He’ll be Da’s height soon, with Mama’s leanness, but he quakes against his father’s side. He rubs against the strange protrusions on his father’s shoulder blades and pulls back in confusion.
He’s too worried to ask about them, and instead simply asks.
“Where’s Mama? Where’s the Falls? Why are we here?” The bay colt wants his father to have answers for him; he has always had the answers before, and Zai cannot fathom why this might be different.
The air in his lungs is forced out in one "Oof" as his nearly grown son collides with his side. Kreios steps away, shaking his head, but he almost immediately moves back, wrapping the bay and white colt with his neck before checking him over for injuries. He appears unharmed and Kreios does not have much time to worry, distracted as he is by the sound of his name.
It is not Ygritte, Raene, or Marlyn, but Kreios is still glad to see a familiar face.
"Neoma," he says, stretching out his muzzle in greeting even as he looks her over to ascertain her health. She looks unharmed, and judging from her question her line of thought was the same as his.
"I'm fine," he tells her, "And you?" They need to find the others, he knows. They need to gather together and decide what to do next.
He had feared this, had feared that Beqanna would rain her wrath upon them, and he had been right. Yet somehow, despite the fact that he is lost and most of his family is still missing, he does not feel afraid. He feels prepared, despite the lack of the offensive traits he had come to rely on. This is the body that he was born with (albeit with a healed tongue), and this is the body that he will live with.
Neoma nodded, "I'm fine; I was not caught in any of the catastrophe that struck before the kingdoms changed."
She briefly looked at the grown horse that had collided with Kreios; one of his own offspring, no doubt. Speaking of offspring...
Where were his other children? And his queen?
"Has Ygritte not found her way to you yet? I worry for our other friends as well... Jedi, Nitika, Anahi, her foals, Archam... Should we split up, try to find the rest of them?"
"Yes," He replies, "Let's split up."
"Zai, go to the Forest. See if you can find anyone from the kingdom. I'll stay here at the base of the mountain and see if anyone else comes down. Neoma, can you go to the Meadow?" He realizes partway through the giving of directions, that he is not a king anymore. He has no authority over anyone but himself. Well, he amends his own thinking, perhaps over Zai. They boy is clearly not ready to be alone yet. Still, the giving of commands comes naturally.
He waits to see what her response is - or if she will buck his orders and go where he pleases. He suspects that they are both interested in the same thing - in making sure that their friends and families are alright. They can sort out authority and leadership later, once they know that everyone is safe and accounted for.
"We can meet back here tomorrow at noon, and bring those that we have found." He cannot afford to dally, he finally decides, it is most important they they find everyone.
Zai nods his agreement, and begins to head south to the Forest, hoping that with the shift in magic there has also been a shift in the amount of predators in Beqanna.
Even if Kreios didn't consider himself a king anymore, Neoma would still willingly listen to him. She had a great deal of respect for the former monarch, and it showed in the fact she would support him as a king, whether that title existed or not.
When he gave his orders, Neoma nodded, dipping her head in acknowledgement before heading deeper into the meadow to see whom from the now-extinct kingdom of the Falls she could find.
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