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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


    bottom of the deep blue sea; ivar
    #1
    bottom of the deep blue sea
    She will always be able to find him, know his scent, feel him. He can dress up in any sort of frock, play the king, be the lover, sing a troubadour's song but Isobell would always know him.

    They are one in the same, he is her maker, and she is his curse.

    The moonstone and obsidian mare cuts through stone and vegetation alike. She is focused upon the scent of her stallion and intended to find the man amongst a slew of whores. He tended to abide his time nestled between moistened thighs whenever Isobell took it upon herself to chase the moonlight for days, moths, years at a time. She expected no different and in time had learned to accept it was her own doing but she powerless to heed the call of the wild.

    She returns now with a steel to her silver eye, glinting, watching. Crashe and Kaliope (both aged to two) are keeping stride easily. They are both devastatingly beautiful, the boy a sharp black and white like his mother and the girl a of smoke and mirror like Ivar had been so long ago. Crashe leads just ahead of his mother with a handsome head, keen eye and pricked ears as Kali trails at his hip, nudging playfully at the serious young stallion. Isobell has kept them close, away from the havoc, guiding them in the ways of the hunt and survival. The young man is without the kelpie shift but he wields a power far more dangerous. He is an animator.

    Kali had been blesses with the kelpie curse. She was fearless and sometimes reckless in the water, often feeding on the thrill of the hunt rather than for nourishment. She would be a dangerous mare one day with her budding beauty and ravenous hunger. Isobell knows the girl will once day be stronger and more dangerous than she.

    Just at Isobell's shoulder is Lothbrok. He is a strong four year old, a man in his own right, kelpie by birth and just as handsome as Ivar had been when he was young and charming. The young stallion is a spitting image of when I var had first met Isobell, grullo and pale ivory, just as handsome and suave. He minds his siblings closely for his mother, nipping at them occasionally when they grew to wild or loud.

    Mist, Isobell's younger sister, the dragon princess hugs her other side close. She is delicate and wide eyed, the world intimidating and feral to her. Isobell had taken charge of the three year old when she had left Nerine in the absence of her mother, to follow Isobell, sweet and gentle in a world full of splintered words and filmy lies. Isobell had determined that she would guide the young dragon mare till it was time for her to venture out on her own.

    The pewter eyed mare moved across the exposed sandbars with the brood. They twins kick up the sand, tormenting each other relentlessly, as Lothbrok watches over his mother's shoulders carefully. Mist remains quiet and curled at the kelpie mare's hip. The scent of Ivar saturates the land and the pull of her heart exposes him in the thickness of the humid environment. Isobell halts, hesitant, on the edge of the isle. The others follow suit and fall quiet as Isobell scents the air further. She waits, breathing, nostrils wide before calling with a sweet tone, melodic and gentle on the warm winds for the leader of the land. 

    She knows he would answer, he had to.
    Reply
    #2
    The clouds overhead drift slowly, as unhurried as the kelpie below them. Bouyed by the warm tropical waters, the piebald creature drifts in the shallows of the white-sand beaches. With Jhene and Carwyn off to Tephra and Deiti bathing in her pond he has little to occupy him. His hunger is sated (a squid had ventured up from the depths for the last time and he’d enjoyed the crush of it’s keratinous beak between his teeth) and so he does what most apex due with their time: he sleeps.

    It is a taste in the water that rouses him, tickling against his tongue in a way that is almost familiar. Ivar’s golden eyes blink open instantly, and he spins beneath the water to face the current that has brought him the smell of a not-quite-stranger. He cannot identify it and it grows no stronger (such is the fickleness of the sea) and so he stands. On four hooves, the water reaches just to his withers, and the kelpie shakes the tangle of sodden blue mane from his eyes. With flicking ears and darting eyes, he scans the nearby sea and shoreline until he finds them.

    A cluster of black and white, blowing manes and sharp eyes that he recognizes even if half of them are strangers. Somewhere – obscured by the mass of bodies that look like her (like them) is his Isobell.

    He rises from the sea like some mythical leviathan, the saltwater streaming down his jewel-toned scales as he crosses the beach and moves toward them with a single-minded purpose. He can feel her, even at this distance, and he shoulders past the younger horses without a care, determined to find her. Though it has been nearly four years since she had left him, Ivar is unbothered by the passing of time. She’d taken their son and their children (he vaguely realizes this must be them, the twins grown tall and strong), but such is the way of women with wild hearts. She had been unbridled even before he’d turned her; it came as no surprise that she remained as independent with the song of the sea in her veins. A disappointment, perhaps, for a kelpie stallion who wants to keep his possessions nearby, but her refusal to do as she was told has always been part of her allure.

    “It took you long enough to come home,” he tells her, and only now does he look at the others around them. That is surely Lothbrok, no longer a gawky colt but a man grown. And their twins – Crashe and Kalliope – as fine a pair of kelpies as he might have ever hoped to sire. The other girl is a stranger, but she shares a resemblance to Isobell that Ivar suspects must be a relation. Not a daughter, he decides as he grants her a brilliant smile, but perhaps a sister. Were they purple as most of his conquests have been of late, he might have suspected both.

    “But…” He pauses, rolling his shoulders in a magnanimous shrug, “Welcome to Ischia. It’s mine.” His last kingdom had been a landlocked realm too far from the sea. This place though, is surely where he belongs. 

    @[Isobell]
    <3
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    #3
    bottom of the deep blue sea
    She wants to be angry.

    She wants to hold the poise of steel and ice. She wants to deny him satisfaction of relief to see his handsome damned face parting the waves and pushing through grasses to be near her.

    He is different.

    Gold and sapphire, glittering and something damn close to the gods. Isobell catches her breath as her silver eyes latch to the gilded form of the man who had made her, the man who held her hopelessly hostage by the grip of her heart, the man who wants to desperately feel against her skin. Isobell expels a shaky breath as she steadies herself for his nearness (his scent is intoxicating and if makes her body yearn). The twins watch with wide eyes, they had heard of their father since it had been nearly their foalhood upon a secluded island they last saw him (Isobell had stolen them away soon after)/ Lothbrok stands taller than his mother but side steps away so that his father could greet them. The young man snorts softly with his soft grey eyes observing the interaction of his parentage.

    Mist is still at her sister's hip before Isobell shoots her a stern gaze to move away. The young mare takes Lothbrok's side as she trembles slightly in all the exposure to a new world. Isobell returns her attention to Ivar, sighing gently before she closes the gap between them and forcible takes him against her breast, burying her face into the tangle mane and inhaling his scent.

    "I know-" The words are soft, scaled lips quivering slightly, brushing against his skin. There were many things that lay twined in in that long hair that were forging but she is not angry. They have come too far to not accept each other's flaws. Ivar allowed her to be wild, to run away, to pretend she could be without him and she allowed him to act upon his nature and keep his collection of pretties but there was so much more depth to their relationship to their love.

    "-I missed you." The lashes fall over her pewter eyes as she grips him tighter, even if he showed stiffness, she needed this terribly and was willing to expose a rawness of her vulnerability that he coaxed from her. He brought her walls down in a fury that no other could and for this she was helpless within his power.

    Reply
    #4
    I missed you, she says against the arched crest of the kelpie’s neck, soft words whose meaning is solidified in the way Isobell pulls him tightly to her chest. “Of course you did,” He replies against the curve of her ear, quiet enough that only she will hear, each syllable clearly spoken through a smile. When he pulls away it is to look at her with an adoring smile, an expression that has not been shaped by his scaled lips in nearly half a decade. Her absence had been overlong, he realizes in a brief moment of emotional clarity

    More than all the others, Isobell has always been Ivar’s favorite. She would fight him long after reason, full of fury and fire that he has only ever been able to find semblances of since her disappearance. The women of Beqanna are soft and fragile, sustenance that never truly feeds the hunger, pale candles against the blazing wildfire of his dragon-born wife. They are easy prey though, so gentle and willing, so eager to follow a handsome stranger in a dance beneath the waves.

    But none have satisfied him. Not in the way that Isobell can, the way only a woman of his own kind might. Here around them are proof of this: three fine kelpies that she’d borne him, with no struggle to conceive like the rest of his harem, no weak and land-bound daughters. The reminder of this brings a sudden heat to the way he holds her, a firmer hold as his mouth slides down the line of her neck to brush against the scars he had left her.

    A sharp inhale is the only sign of his visceral reaction to the way his serrated teeth brush gently against the long-healed wounds, and then he is drawing back with that same smile that he has only ever found for her.

    “You’re staying?” he asks, but Isobell will know it is a command. The children too, he suspects, they will understand the safety that comes from being near family, near the sea. There is one he is doubtful of, the girl who quivers at Lothbrok’s side. Ivar had looked at her dismissively before, considering her less important than Isobell and his children. This opinion doesn’t change as he licentiously traces the lines of her piebald shape, knowing the direction of his gaze is hidden by the way he holds Isobell to him. Not family, not his (yet), she is of less interest than the parrots that caw in the jungle.

    He does glance toward the greenery for a moment as he pulls away from Isobell, a reasonable area for him to have been observing as he held her, and then takes another step back to meet the kelpie woman’s gaze squarely.

    “You’ve returned at a pivotal moment in Beqanna,” he tells them all, though his golden eyes remain mostly on Isobell. “I intend to make Ischia the ruling kingdom of the west. I can’t help but think Fate might have brought you back to help.” Fate is an omnipotent presence in the life of the kelpie, a being with a fondness for the jewel-toned stallion, a benevolent hand when he was in need of a turn of good luck. Surely it is responsible for the return of a queen to his shore just when he was in most desperate need of one, responsible for the tangible reminder of his virility in the shape of three water-born offspring.

    He’d prefer the children were gone in this particular moment, he thinks as his eyes catch on the downward curve of Isobell’s throat, but with the world opening around him he is certain he will have plenty of opportunities to show Isobell exactly how much he has missed her as well.

    @[Isobell]
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    #5
    bottom of the deep blue sea
    His response is one of playful chiding that Isobell would snap sharply at if any other uttered such a thing but from Ivar, it was the way they wove their webs, intricate and tight. The look upon his beautiful is enough for Isobell to forget the rest of the world temporarily. They exist as man and woman, locked in shy gazes, swallowed in the eyes of the other.

    There is no fury in her eyes despite the scent of water laden consorts, both dead and alive, crawling over hid brilliant skin. Isobell cared only be be tangled up with him in a seabed of kelp in a few hours after the others had settled in. The children were perfectly capable of finding themselves shelter but Mist would have to be looked after for she was still young and vulnerable. Isobell shivers beneath his touch when he brushes the puckered scales part of her withers with his harsh mouth. It had been a source of so much pain, anger, and love. His mouth held her secrets, commanded her love and devotion, the source of her first death and rebirth.

    When the kelpie king snags the skin of her scarring before retreating away so he may gaze upon his dragonborn wife, his look is of genuine happiness. "You're staying?" It is a statement masked by the drawing question. Of course she would stay. She had hardly spent a day in the last few years without Ivar's face floating in the water, his scent upon the breeze, the tug of his heartbeat in her own veins.

    The children have been temporarily forgotten as she is locked onto the changed (but familiar) man. He draws back after observing the brood for consideration then continues to speak. The mre listens closely, her brow furrowed slightly, as Ivar explains. "“I intend to make Ischia the ruling kingdom of the west. I can’t help but think Fate might have brought you back to help.” The dark edges of her pretty mouth tug upward as she nods along with the tip-tap of his tongue with each syllable. "Of course, Ivar-my love-whatever you need." The response is quipped, her tone serious as this matter is rather important. If Ivar wanted to build a vast and powerful kingdom, the former Queen of Nerine would gladly help.

    Isobell turns her eternal face to Mist, Lothbrok and the twins, jutting her chin to signal them to go. "You'll be safe here...go meet the rest of the residents." The command is given but clothed in velvet. Her attention returns to Ivar fro they had much to discuss.
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    #6
    Ivar has never made a secret of his licentious ways, nor does he not flaunt them. Though Isobell will know which women Ivar has taken without his saying a word, the kelpie stallion knows that his tobiano paramour will not let them make her feel any less. The frantic pulse of her heartbeat is a familiar beat to the sapphire scaled creature, and he presses one gold-tipped ears to her neck for just a moment to better hear it.

    When she agrees, as docile as he might have hoped, Ivar pulls away with a grin, pressing a single command of happy into the fragile skin of her throat before he goes.

    “Thank you,” he says as she ushers the children away to meet the other residents of Ischia. There are few of them, Ivar knows, but he prefers it that way. A smaller population is easier to control. There is only Jhene and Carwyn and Deiti, and perhaps that odd lizard he’d seen on the northern isle. It hunts in a way that does not interfere with Ivar’s habits and the kelpie does not begrudge it a small space in his kingdom.

    “They’re almost adults,” Ivar says as he watches them go, the piebald collection of their children. It brings a sense of very primal satisfaction, the knowledge that he – that the two of them – have made such creatures. For a mortal creature, there is little better than this, and he nods decisively, rather proud. Time to find good matches for them, or at least time to start thinking about it, and possibly past time to make sure they know how to keep their violence beneath the water.

    When he looks back to find Isobell seeking his gaze, the golden-eyed kelpie smiles.

    “Come swim with me.” He says, taking a step back toward the surf. “I’ve missed swimming with you.” The kelpie adds, knowing that this is also close as he will ever come to telling Isobell he had missed her, and knowing that she will be able to read beneath that and know what he means.  

    @[Isobell]
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    #7
    bottom of the deep blue sea
    Docile.

    Not a word used often to describe the pied mare and not one she would accept readily but she knows when survival was important and the protection of the children was needed. Ivar had never let her down in that aspect. Sure, he took women to his bed that had long ago angered the kelpie mare to the point of blindness but as her mind aged, grew, matured in her youthful frame, she has come to understand the nature of the aquatic beast and accepted his ways.

    But she would not limit herself to just his company if that should be the understanding.

    She was his first wife, the one to bear strong, smart foals. Her body was what bore kings and queens. She was unreachable in her beauty and her wit. She was a wild animal that allowed the kelpie king to rein her in and control her body from time to time simply because she did allow it. The painted mare nips at the tuft of a gold ear, the press of her lips to his glinting skin as she admires this new body on an old beast.

    The pewter eyed mare allows her gaze to drop away and to follow the forms of their children, Mist following after Lothbrok. A single ear flicks towards her husband as they both look on. She shifts her weight in response to his remark, a soft grunt offered, before he suggests a swim.

    Isobell is suddenly aware of of the way the dirt has crept between the moonstone and obsidian scales. She suddenly feels ancient and it it bothers some. The water calls her name, her heart yearning as her legs act on their own accord to draw her to darkest depths. "Come, husband, make love to me beneath the waves." The command is soft, throaty with her need, but firm. Isobell slides her body along the man's, placing a well marked nibble to his throat, crow hopping and kicking up sand to race him to the water.

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    #8
    He would not begrudge Isobell her own paramours anymore than he had minded Wishbone’s. He would, of course, slaughter any stallion he might find her with as readily as he would drown any colt she bore to another man. The kelpie’s patterns of behavior remain the same whether he rules a tiny island or a chain of them; it is surely some twist of fate he has been allowed to continue on this long. Fate and a healthy dose of caution; he had learned his father’s lessons well.  

    With Isobell watching their children Ivar takes a last moment to look at Mist, and by the time his wife turns back to him the kelpie has decided to find out if her sister will bear him kelpies as well. The idea brings a smile to his scaled lips, one that broadens at Isobell’s firm spoken commands.

    “As you wish, Khaleesi.” The stallion responds, all thoughts but the silver-eyed mare disappearing as his predatory gaze fixes only on her. Hunting season is year round for the kelpie, but it is no longer autumn, and the safety of catch-and-release has ended. When he surges after her toward the sea, it is with the knowledge that she will not rise again above the water until he has drained her of every drop of blood and her lifeless body rises toward the surface.

    Picturing the image causes a primal growl to resonate from his chest, and Ivar reaches a hungry mouth toward her flesh only to have her dart away. He follows a pace behind her, noting that her time in the sea has made her body even stronger than he remembers. Lean muscle quivers beneath thighs that are no longer soft and pliable, and Ivar runs his serrated teeth over them for a moment before diving into the sea.

    The sea swallows him, an embrace that has never failed. The saltwater swallows the jewel-toned kelpie, but he remains visible in the prisitine water, smiling from where he floats, fully shifted. A long, lightly finned tail strokes against the current, as do occasional flicks of his four clawed feet and broad fin-like wings. The mouth that he grins from rests in a too lovely face, one that is not marred by the excessive number of sharp teeth in his long jaw.

    “Come down,” he says, and even if she cannot hear him above the water there is no doubting the invitation in his pointed golden gaze. Isobell will come below the water and give herself to him like a good wife, and he will use her as he sees fit. It’s been weeks since his last kill. With Kylin fled to Ischia he’s been all but starving, but the temptation to kill one of his consorts had not yet been too strong to resist. But Isobell, strong Isobell, she will come back. And for that he will make sure that her death is the most painless thing.

    Unless, of course, she is still the warrior he remembers. The Princess of Nerine had never wanted to submit to Ivar the way she should, and the fight of it has always marked her as special. There were others that he enjoys but they are all soft and submissive. Good mares, but not good kelpies. It’s Isobell he has been waiting for.

    “Come down,” Ivar repeats, and swims further out to sea where the water is deep and crystal clear and the coral reefs begin.

    @[Isobell]
    you wanted a novel right?
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    #9
    @[Isobell] is safe from the plague. For now. (rolled a 6)
    Reply
    #10
    bottom of the deep blue sea
    Khaleesi

    The title vibrates along the length of her painted form and conjures up a smile across her pretty dark lips at the response of the kelpie king's soft tongue. Isobell envisions the curl of that very tongue as it explored various parts of her, prodding for her innocence as well as imperfections. Ivar had always found a way to keep her close by word or body.

    He is a vision of gilded beauty, bold blues where there had not once been. Isobell moved to the water, her body shifting seamlessly into that of her kelpie mare form, all smooth scales and billowing fins. She is an image of glory as the sunlight split and fractured behind her pied body as she gazed down upon her husband beneath the waves. There had been a time when she had been the one gazing upward, eyes rolling and glossy.

    But now a smirk is fixed upon her flawless features.

    "Yes, my king." The purr of her words echo lush and softness but the steel of her eyes bite like glittering silver bullets manufactured to kill the beast beneath heavy moonlight. Isobell pushes deeper, her motions are excessively smooth and practiced, reflecting her mastery of the kelpie nature that she had not bore before. The fins collapse and open like billowing silk against the water's sinful embrace. The moonstone and obsidian mare closes the space between them with ferocity so she closer to him in the midst of a single heartbeat. Isobell collapses around him, swimming over and under, wrapping the length of her fins around him with teeth tugging at the nape of his neck possessively for a second before darting away with a playful grin that curls just a single side of her pretty lips. She laughs now, wild and unhinged, with the ever presence glint of savagery in her womanly gaze, beckoning him to darker waters and darker thoughts.


    @kahzie
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