"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
For decades, Nayl had been elusive to the concept of love and family. It was a foreign thing that she evaded so that she may better focus on her own selfish ambitions. With minimal effort, she achieved so much within a little time, but with the distractions clouding her eyes, she fell.
The empire that she was building has begun to crumble. She should have passed her crown while Beqanna squirmed in her hands, but she had no one. Now, her mind sees herself scavenging for the remnants of her power; she refuses to let it entirely slip through her fingers.
And so she finds the one mare who had shown a fire in her soul, a taste of poison on her tongue. Although it has been a while since their paths crossed, Nayl’s memory still reflects bemusedly at City’s involvement in the gladiator pit. She wanted to face others, to feed her need for battle. Despite the misconduct of ignoring her Queen’s instructions, Nayl could not help but smile at the vigor and incentive.
The sand grumbles underfoot, hissing beneath each footstep until she stops once having found her. ”City,” her voice is ever hardened like iron, steady even as her eyes blaze with the colors of autumn. She half expects her children to be nearby but doesn’t bother to look, keeping her attention funneled on the huntress. ”You will help me in taking charge of the fighters. Each one of us needs to have the skill. Due to low numbers, the concept of individual castes was removed in addition to taking a different stance from the old Amazonian ways. With this change, however, there is stagnation. This, obviously, needs to change.” A brow lifts from underneath her forelock, her shoulders rolling as she struggles to admit her faults (love distracted her, family distracted her). ”Are you up for the challenge?”
The pale mare can hear the granules of wet sand shift under the weight of the Queen’s approach. Her sulfur eyes are hardened on the grayness hanging above the shallow curling waves tumbling toward her feet. She bends the closest freckled ear to the piebald as her name rumbles off of her sharp tongue. City’s gaze finds hers as the request, the suggestion of a demand, so thoughtfully carves from her lips. A question to sum it up, but with the inquiry the gray woman looks back to the toiling sea and the coming gray drizzle floating in.
After some pause, she smirks and still doesn’t meet Nayl’s eyes while she speaks. “Are you, though, Nayl?” The burning yellow of her eyes roll to find the fiery blaze of the Queen’s. For some reason her heart accelerates when she finds herself locked into eye contact, a sweat wants to gather subtly beneath her milky forelock but the chill keeps it away. It is an odd and almost flustering rush of excitement, or nervousness, or something of the mix. It is ignored easily enough and after a brief inhale to calm herself she continues, her stony voice melds with the crashing of saltwater. “If we’re going to build and sustain ourselves as a Beqanna Kingdom should be, then yes, I can rise to such an occasion.” She acts a bit annoyed, but the truth is she’s a bit honored to be the Queen’s last resort. Surely to admit so would never happen, but the feeling is in there somewhere behind the bones of her enemies and cobwebbed emotions.
“We’re in tatters, Queen.” She is softer with this, her eyes still leveled with Nayl’s if she has not looked away by now. “But we can build, recruit and train, as many Queens before you have done.” The rain begins now, swallowing an early morning and making it all one shade of dismal gray with a slick layer of sheen. The winds will pick up soon, the rain’s force will come down heavier and this is what the rust-shouldered mare came for originally. “My first thought is to gather what women we can and whatever captives, gladiators and train them.” She breathes, casting her eyes back to the sea, beads of rain dripping from her long white lashes and down her cheeks to wash away whatever blood trail was left before (from stigmata of the eyes). “The firsts we must train ourselves I suspect – where are Tantalize and Heartfire?” She says this last part low, thinking aloud as she stares into the vast mists that have devoured the horizon and allow only fifty feet or so of rocky sea to be seen.
rushed and filled with all I found more, give me more, give me more
Who wouldn’t get a sudden thrill from lashing back to their superior? To questioning the competency of one that overrules them. Nayl narrows her eyes beneath the unruliness of her forelock, her breaths somehow remaining steady despite the lurch in her gut in wanting to instinctively lash back. ”I am,” she resigns to say, ”thus the reason I never left or haven’t given up like many others.” City had vanished. Despayr had lost herself in the waves. There were a few that took a hiatus from Nerine’s shores, but some are now returning like vultures to a corpse. Alas, Nayl refuses to let her kingdom – her home – wither and burn to dust. It’s why she is standing here swallowing her pride and looking to revive everything she can before the crown slips from her head.
”Some are returning out of the blue,” she reassures City, knowing that not all hope is lost and that Nerine would never be truly abandoned, but it isn’t only their numbers that claw at her. ”Nerine was powerful with two subkingdoms, but I let Djinni come back home and abandon Sylva, and Amet retracted his promises and therefore our hold on Hyaline.” The taut muscles in her shoulders flinch upon remembering their last confrontation and how it brought her blood to a boil. It was to be a kingdom of children, one for Nerine to nurture and feed from in the end, but Amet became greedy and refuses now to release the throne as he reaches the cusp of adulthood. Her head shakes and her jaw clenches as her eyes meet City’s again. ”Then we shall gather them all. I could use some fighting again,” it has been far too long – years – since adrenaline last coursed through her veins on the open plains of the battlegrounds. ”My last fight was when I won Nerine’s throne,” did City know that, or anyone for that matter anymore? It’s already a piece of history, a bedtime story for children about their coastal queen.
”I haven’t seen either of them lately. Last I saw Tantalize she was flirting with Offspring,” with an enemy, she doesn’t say.
11-05-2017, 09:51 AM (This post was last modified: 11-05-2017, 09:53 AM by City.)
City
The air pulls taut when City’s hiss of a voice rolls out and seems to slap her Queen in the face. The pale mare is no stranger to tension, reading it clearly and letting it pass her by. She will not poke the grizzly piebald Queen anymore, respect is something she’s earned at the very least. She levels with Nayl’s cold eyes, her last fight, the words echo and rattle softly in her mind.
“Then the fight continues, Nayl.” She sucks in a breath through wide inky nostrils, looking out onto the ruffled seas of blue laced in white. “I’m here, I’ll be here.” She exhales, “And so I’ll start then, gathering some able bodies where I can.” She ignores the part of Tantalize, but still her lip curls with the thought of Offspring. She’s never liked the lad, even from afar, but remains silent on the matter.
rushed and filled with all I found more, give me more, give me more
Yeah so this can go either way, they can split here and assume City trots off to recruit or steal or whateva - ORRR - they can keep chatting and build a game plan. If they split, City will find her later vice versa <333
