"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
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there... dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before... Loving with a love that was more than love - Edgar Allen Poe
She’s looking for the genie. The mare had been the Mage of Nerine before Hestia arrived, and the black witch isn’t one to strip rank unless it is necessary. What does need to happen, however, is for her to meet the highest ranked official in her land. It would be quite embarrassing should she have a diplomatic meeting, and not know the horses that hold her most prominent positions. She’s made her way around most of the coast with no luck and is about to head up to the grasslands. When she spots what she knows to be the mare in question. As soon as she is about to make her way over a figure swoops in from the sky. A very familiar figure.
Walter didn’t seem like someone who would just dive out of the sky for anyone. So, she slows her steps, not wanting to interrupt should this be a moment inappropriate for her to walk in on. The way he runs to her, the way that he poetically greets her. Hestia is all to familiar with this, and it tugs at a fresh memory. It stings, having to watch someone else’s happiness, when her own brokenness is so freshly re-created. Her head jerks back in surprise, was this the feeling Pollock had felt on seeing her? Was it so intense for the golden beast that he had to kill her? Once more she finds herself understanding the monster she had hated so passionately. Hestia finds it disgusting that she can sympathize. She finds it disturbing that she knows this feeling. It doesn’t take long for her to turn away from them. Giving them the privacy, they deserve. A sad smile lingers on her face as she turns to leave them to the peace that she wished had been granted to her so long ago.
She travels up the jagged path, and along the edge of the cliff, until there is no chance of her seeing the two of them together. There is no reason for her to relive every single memory of her lover doing the same for her. Instead she looks to the caves, those caves that had helped to heal her a little. Heal her in a way Fennick couldn’t reopen, even when granted that last visit. She still wars within herself, she wants to move on so badly. Only way she knows is to throw up the walls that he had tore down. If she does that, how can she be a good leader? Her lips thin as she looks down at the land she now lays claim to. How to find balance? Maybe finding someone to replace Fennick would help? Walter could have no idea in how large of a role he played in keeping her from cutting the world off. If they had not had that talk… if they had not shared what they had, seeing Fennick the other evening would have been to much for her.
She would have come back here ready to tear the world apart. She would have become the same terrifying monster that Pollock had been to her. An internal battle of self-loathing and anger take place inside her soul. Should I? So lost in thought she doesn’t realize that she has spoken out loud. Wondering if she should forgive herself, forgive Pollock, forgive Fennick… they all played a role in getting her here. Should she forgive any of them? could she find room to forgive? It’s the first time that foreign word had ever flickered across her mind, but then this year is full of firsts for her. And if there was anything they had done for her, it was putting her on this throne. She would have never been there to help begin this kingdom, nor would she have ever even thought about coming back to this kingdom should Fennick and her be together still be together. Change is hard, and she knows change is knocking on her door. It won’t be so polite next time should she ignore it.
The summer sun glints off the waves, and Djinni half-closes her dark eyes, shielding them from the brightness with long lashes. She considers swimming out to the horizon, but as the sea wind whips up the cliffs and circles back down, it brings with it something new. The grullo mare glances up, but there is no one visible from the sea shore.
Still, someone is there, someone that perhaps she has been putting off greeting.
Djinni had taken the place that Nayl had made for her, and had held it for young Isobell. But the princess has left for warmer waters and Nayl rules only the little stretch of shoreline where she spends her time with the dragon. Now there is Hestia, first an oddity and now a queen.
The dun mare appears beside the dark one, but she still looks out at the sea rather than the other mare. The glittering sand of her arrival fades before it reaches the ground, leaving the golden rings in her ears as her only adornment. She is small, unthreatening, but as she turns to meet Hestia’s gaze with her sea green eyes, there is an ethereal beauty to her features. Too stunning to be believable; Djinni has always enjoyed that.
”You’re planning on being queen longer than you were Peacekeeper, I assume?”
Her tone is pleasant, but there is no denying the sharpness of her words or the spear behind her question. The others have all left them - Lagertha, Naga,Vakarian, Jocelin - but Djinni remains. She remains, and she remembers. Remembers how very short the reign of Nerine’s first queen and her absent advisors had been. Hestia at least has returned, Djinni admits to herself, she has not forsaken them for quite so long as the panther queen and the armored amazon.
Hestia’s knows of Djinni, knows that she had been a part of the Deserts for sometime before the world went to shit. Beyond that though, they are strangers. Part of her wonders if the genie has been avoiding her, as she didn’t see her at the meeting, nor did she have much luck in tracking her down to become acquainted with Nerine’s mage. Nerine seems to be having trouble keeping a ruler and keeping structure in its land since the first day it was created. They are quiet, standing together for a bit of time not doing much of anything other than looking to the sea. Hestia wondering what it is that makes the mare cold towards her. Or if she has just become accustomed to the poking, prodding, and general fuzzy behavior most have developed towards her in the time since she announced her ascension. Whatever the case Djinni breaks the silence, and her words hold a tone meant to dissect Hestia.
The black mare can’t help but laugh, what a relief, someone who isn’t afraid to tell her how it is. She’s been waiting for this question. She thought it would come up in the meeting, thought that the general agreement would be that she isn’t fit since she had previously slipped into the shadows. Thought that someone would say something, start a riot or witch hunt, anything really that would tell her that they still had no wish of her help. Yet here she stands, uncontested, and while it’s a relief, she’s spent so much time having to claw her way around for general respect or acknowledgement, that it has been almost stressful having no one try to tear her down.
The laughter makes her sides hurt, she can’t help it, she is not trying to offend Djinni in the least, its just so much better when they don’t just bow and lay all you ask for at your feet. She’d left her mothers side for just that reason, spent so much time wandering trying to escape the name that if used, would have made her life full of clouds and rainbows. She’d set out to make her own name, and here she is, and she’s done just that. So has she earned the bowing? Sure, but she also knows her mistakes, and still enjoys it when someone points them out every once in in a while. I think I’ve already succeeded at that, her words are wry and full of humor when she turns her emerald eyes to look at the mare beside her. She’s flashy, and maybe she does this to impress, but Hestia has seen to much for her to have an assumption on how another horse is supposed to look.
Are you able to catch me up on all that has happened since? The black mare wonders if Djinni could possibly have any room to judge? Why hadn’t she gone and tried to reestablish the Deserts? Wasn’t that her original home? Without knowing the full extent of her history, Hestia doesn’t try to point any fingers. She knows she was wrong for leaving the scared group of mares, even if they had so adamantly made it clear that she was only welcome because the queen remembered her.
Though Hestia does wonder, if Djinni had been such a large part of the Nerine all this time then why is it laying lifeless below their feet? But she says nothing. She knows the feeling of abandonment, knows the sharp sting it leaves when someone deems you no longer worthy. She may have done this to Nerine. It may not justify those actions, but the Amazonian women had done so to her first. She remembers the day the spy caste had been disassembled, she’d been on a mission at the time, and when she returned to report, the new queen had snubbed her nose. Deemed Hestia not a sister and refused to acknowledge her service to the Jungle, even as she still had the flower and tattoos. The girl had tried to remove them from Hestia’s body that day, vehement in her hatred of all who’d ‘left’ the Jungle. Her’s would not come off though, to engrained in the sisterhood, her blood refused to be parted from its home. Queen for a mother, queen for a sister, fifty years of service. The child couldn’t take that from her. Still she refused to allow Hestia into a different rank, the rest of the women followed their queens lead forgetting about the caste so freshly decimated, and her along with it. Thus Hestia understands Djinni’s bitterness over the leaders abandoning the group.
The black mare says nothing other to acknowledge her mistake, and hopefully communicate to Djinni that yes, this time is going to be different. Her green eyes look into the genies waiting for her to decide if Hestia has done enough in these few months to warrant a chance to make things right. To right the past and bring this new generation out of the squabbles and bitterness that festered so long in the Jungle that it made those sisters unable to decide anything for themselves.
HESTIA
The devil whispered in my ear, “you’ll never survive the storm” I whispered back, “I am the storm”
While she had been raised there in the shade of the saguaros, the desert has not been Djinni’s home since she was a child. A childhood that is five lifetimes gone, far beyond the reach of any mortal memory. She has never served a kingdom; the idea of putting a land above herself still remains utterly alien. From time to time she’d toyed with settling down, but it was in a pine-heavy northern kingdom, and she would not have stayed for the landscape.
The empty sand, the echoing caves, the way the sisterhood has fallen silent without Nayl’s iron rule? Does she think Djinni gives a damn about any of that?
Does the think having been tucked beside a certain golden side makes her omniscient? Does she think age alone makes one wise? Does she doubt - even for a moment - that Djinni would not leave her for the sharks solely for her own amusement? Djinni cares less for the welfare of the kingdom of Nerine than she does for the cloud of gnats that she’s just flicked away with her golden tail.
She has returned here time and again for the sake of those bright lives that called it home. Nay, Isobell, her own daughter, and Walter. They are what binds her to this place (for all she finds the beauty of the land forever breathtaking).
It is a vast overstatement then, to say that Hestia knows anything of Djinni. She thinks she does not know the full extent of Djinni’s history? No - she knows nothing of Djinni’s history at all, especially given that she has never shared the truth of her birth land with a single soul.
These thoughts - these and many more - flicker in the depths of her sea green eyes while she waits for the queen to reply.
Hestia’s laughter is a pleasant surprise; it reminds the dun mare of Nayl.
She acknowledges the truth of the mare’s first statement with a dip of her head and the faintest hit of a smile at the corners of her dark mouth.
”You’ve exceeded expectations,” replies the genie, and while the words remain sharp, the force behind them is infinitely less.
Hestia asks if Djinni is able to catch her up on the history that she has missed. Briefly, she considers being literal - yes, she’s able to but that doesn’t necessarily mean she is willing - but chooses not to.
”Naga disappeared not long after you did. Nayl challenged her for the throne, and Naga abdicated in the midst of battle. For a while, Nayl ruled an empire, but with time she chose to let the subkingdoms become responsible in their own right. She stepped down to allow her daughter to rule, but Isobell didn’t stay for long. She’s somewhere out in the sea, last I knew.” Out in the sea with her son, Djinni doesn’t say, raising her only grandson in the depths of the ocean.
”Nayl did not make me Nerine’s mage for my undying loyalty to the cause of sisterhood,” she says to Hestia. It is best that she not start her reign entirely buoyed by false impressions and faulty intelligence, ”She did so because she knew that I could defend this place easier than any army, were I so inclined.”
If the Fourth Queen of Nerine would inspire such an inclination remains to be seen, but Hestia has shown a spark of promise. Djinni has always been fondest of those most willing to speak their minds and laugh at their own folly.
Still, she knows the those that are fond of kingdoms always do best on sturdy ground, and she supposes there is no harm in reassuring Hestia that she has no immediate intentions of forsaking the granite shores.
”I imagine I’ll be inclined so long as Starlin and Walter call Nerine home.”
For once the rumors are not correct. Dear Hestia, what would you have given to know the truth? That Djinni had only been a child? To know that your information had been one of those tales designed to deceive? The black mare has no way of knowing that Djinni cares nothing for this place, at least not yet. For the accusation in her words suggests something else entirely. Why would Hestia’s actions matter to Djinni if the genie cared nothing for the land? What motivation would Djinni have for calling her out on the bumble that had occurred at the beginning of Nerine, if it’s not love of Nerine and her inhabitants? The inhabitants and the land are one after all. The kingdom of Nerine is the residents. The land would just be that, land, without its residents. Just as without the land the residents would not be Nerine. They cannot be separated. Sure, the residents could move to a different land, but then they wouldn’t be Nerine now would it? Just as Nerinian’s are not the Jungle, and the Amazons is not Nerine.
What does she truly make of the golden man? Could she even answer that if asked? For one night they had just been... Could Djinni see and understand the small girl curled up and broken in the darkest corner of her soul? Could she see the small fragile fragments of her heart she clings to for life? She had continued living for many different reasons through the passage of time, those morphed with each turn of the world. Family, kingdom, lover, children. Then she was lost without a reason, resigned to the fast approach of her death. The kingdom gave her a gift, a chance to make up for all the wasted years. This did not change the brokenness, it didn’t steal away the aloneness. The bitterness and hate that was beginning to fester. The kingdom gave her a chance to make up for what she’d not. It was not the reason to continue living, just the reason to finally come to a place in her life where death might bring peace.
Gentle Walter had done that, sparked her reason to live once more that is. They’d been forced together; the rain had sequestered them so that she was obligated to touch someone. It could have been anyone next to her, could have been Djinni, but it hadn’t. It had been Walter. In his gentle ways he pinned her down, compelling her to open up, secrets flooding out of her that she’d not dared to utter to herself. Could Djinni understand how the gift of that night had saved her? Could she know the following day she saw her own lover, the man that in a moment destroyed her reasons for believing in the ability of betterment. He had for a moment destroyed her hope, her love, her grasp on those bloody fragments slipped and she was ready to make the world suffer. She saw Pollock in herself and enjoyed it. For a moment, she thought of becoming all that she hated… dreaded. But it couldn’t completely consume her. Because of Walter. The little girl was strong enough to crawl from her corner, she reached to touch Hestia, for a moment her innocent self connected with her on a level they had not connected on for many decades. And once again she had felt that darkness raise its ugly head on seeing a set of lovers for the first time since her own sordid affair. She smiled for the conquering of that darkness, knowing that her soul is still intact, something she was fearing wasn’t the case anymore. She’d feared that monster, and it hurts to know that it exists inside herself, thus the sadness.
But it can’t overpower, because Walter had given the innocent girl something to grasp other than those gritty fragments she’d clinged to all her life. Not love, not a blazing passion, not some idol, or other idealized and tangible thing. Just something, many things it could be called; but to define it would be to limit and confine it. Then it becomes tangible, something breakable, something that can be tainted or changed. If it becomes something more than something the world could reach it and shatter it as the world does with the rest of her cherished objects… She doesn’t want to meet that woman, the one that has nothing left. So, does she believe it makes her omniscient? No, but she does believe that Walter gave her something beyond her acknowledged small capability of understanding.
Does Hestia trust Djinni? Absolutely not, she will never trust anyone in her life. Though she might enjoy the sharks, maybe they could end her existence? Like a cockroach she seemingly can’t bring death to enter her door. He comes knocking time and again, catching her in the most unexpected situations, yet he slams the door on her just before she can follow him into oblivion every time. Not age, but experience, listening, and observing creates wisdom, age just creates a wealth of it. It’s funny how a land can snare. It will claim all the hearts it can, and then claim more through those hearts it owns. Its reach can become infinite through this. As long as one creature finds room in their heart for the land, others will follow, and the land will continue to live. Even if they despise the land itself. She was able to number herself amongst those. To cold, to wet, to quiet, to bland, animals that should not be called such. But land snares. Always it reaches for more.
But oh, it’s so pleasant, so refreshing, to make a mistake. Being perfect is never fascinating or fun. It’s dry, drab, and predictable. She loves making mistakes, making mischief, and she’s not been allowed to do so in so long. She wryly smiles back, and here I thought that my reputation for the whimsical might have given this stretch of time a little more shock factor. The old hag can’t decide if she is proud of her accomplishments these last months, or if she is dismayed that a kingdom has locked her to itself so soon after her recent escape of the fetters of her lover. Pathetic. She didn’t even realize that she had been suffocating under the manacles of mate and motherhood, until seeing him again.
She tries to not show it, but revulsion can’t be helped on hearing of how easily Naga gave in. That is not the filly/mare of the Amazons that Hestia knew. And just as Fennick lost her, so does Naga and Lagertha in this moment. At least Hestia has a very good reason for leaving, her children. She still listens for any news on them, ever gazing into the distance hoping that one day on that horizon they may be spotted finding their way home. She shakes out her mane clearing her head before looking back to Djinni, the flickering of the phoenix flame in her pupils. Every time she thinks of them it blazes making her skin to tight, and her desire to find them fuels it. The remnants of the darkness that woke in her that day on Nerine’s shore could be seen in her demeanor. Slightly harder, a little colder. Someday, in the meantime she has a kingdom that needs her full attention.
She doesn’t know what she would do without these women. These women that are familiar with time, the old world, and the new world. She nods in acknowledgement of the others pointed statement. She didn’t expect Scorch, she didn’t expect Heartfire, she didn’t expect DJinni, she thought she had been on her own in a kingdom of foals. She’d been scared. Now with each passing day she sees the hidden strength coming out, just waiting to be tapped and formed and used. Let me know should you’re standing ever change. She won’t ask for more than they are willing to give. The black mare hopes for and so far has received, brutal candor from those she has met.
She looks out the ocean once more, contemplating. What would it take to find them? How involved do you wish to be here, while you stay? She expects totally loyalty from the residents, but from the immortals among them, loyalty doesn’t even cross her mind. Immortals can’t be shackled to one place. Too much happens, time passes, shifts, and changes. She already knows that while she plans on fulfilling her role as queen for as long as she can; she will not be queen forever, even should she live that long. You just can’t ask that of immortals.
HESTIA
The devil whispered in my ear, you’ll never survive the storm I whispered back, I am the storm
Djinni notes the mare’s reactions to her tale, the way Hestia takes in the individual pieces of the story. Her revulsion at Naga’s submission is perhaps her favorite, though the genie also enjoys the fire in the black mare’s eyes. That is new; that is a spark she had not had those years ago when she had tried to convince a group of women that there was some need to sacrifice their bodies for the cause of Sisterhood.
Djinni approves.
She’s always been fond of the elements.
The Queen’s choice of words brings quirk to the mare’s dark mouth, and Djinni remains quiet rather than voluntarily pin herself down. ”I’ll do diplomatic chores, if you need them." She offers, ”Greet newcomers, kingdom visits, and the like." The words sound strange, but she remembers Walter. He’d said us and she has no intention of infringing on his happiness.
She nods to the woman, she’s got an idea. Something that she’s been mulling over, and now with a few more coming into Nerine, she thinks maybe this would be perfect timing to bring up the possibility to her mage. What do you think of leading a particular branch with…. Exceptional talents? She doesn’t want to say anything just yet. These are sensitive matters after all and ANYONE could be listening.
But there is so much to do. So much she must get done. Think it over, perhaps you could set up an alliance with Ischia while you think on the prospect? she doesn’t think Djinni is stupid, thinks that most likely the mare understands what it is she is suggesting. What other branch could the possibly need? A ghost of a smile crosses her face when as she looks to the other while saying these things.
She takes note that the mare didn’t respond, ah well, it was worth a try. Can’t blame a queen for attempting right? Hestia waits until she sees some hint of recognition or understanding flit across the Genies face before nodding to her. Until we meet again. Thank you for this. It was… enlightening. The twitch doesn’t leave her lips as she walks away from the cliffs edge heading to greet yet more residents who arrive at the borders either of their own volition or brought back by the people already faithful to their little niche of a coast. Think on it Djinni, we could do so much together. There is so much power being wasted here. Why let it rot away?
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