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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


    [open]  i leave you my dust and dry bones
    #1

    Still she dreams of them - sometimes bitter, but sometimes sweet - her mother and father. Years have turned like pages in a book and all traces of her youth have weathered and yellowed with them. Yet the story remains. Almost every night she sees them - sunny memories of her trips between the Falls and the Gates to spend time with her mother or father. Every morning she wakes and she remembers the loneliness she had set aside the night before.

    She had been of little use as a kingdom member. After magic had stolen her father from before her eyes she had been too preoccupied with finding him to be of any use to the Gates. And then, when her mother lept from the Falls, she had been too broken, too bitter. Straia had taken her in for a time, but Osyva was useless as a fighter during the war. So, she spent the majority of her time tucked within the pines of the Chamber as the world turned to ruin around her - helpless.

    She has always been helpless.

    Tonight the dream is much the same. A kiss from her mother as Osyva sets on her way back to her father’s home in Heaven’s Gates. But there is a scent that infiltrates her dreamland and skews the memory - something putrid and foul. She turns for one last glance at her mother, but what she sees is not the beautiful golden mare, but a sickly, hairless figure collapsing to the ground.

    “Mother!” she exclaims, or tries, but her voice does not make it past her chest. The realization that she can’t yell causes panic, and so she tries again! “Mother! Please!” she tries to scream, but her voice is caught somewhere between reality and her nightmare. Tears stream down her cheeks as she fights to move - fights to break the sleep paralysis. “Mother.” she manages to whisper in defeat as the figure dissipates wholly.

    She opens her eyes, but the pit in her chest remains. Her throat hurts from the strain of trying to scream in her sleep, and her cheeks are wetted with tears. She takes a shaky breath and realizes the scent is still there. The pines of the Chamber are gone away - replaced with a barren Meadow. There is blood splattered at her feet, she realizes, taking a step away.

    Reply
    #2
    it's a lonely road, I know,
    and nothing ever stands between a bullet and your soul;


    He often lays low, observing from the outskirts but not typically venturing out. He has done so more often as of late, but still, it has been sporadic — perhaps once in the last several months, and only recently to satiate the pit of lust that had settled inside of him. He grew tired of their monotonous lives, their trivial troubles. It was always the same; the same tired story, strewn across the pages of everyone’s book, but everyone acting as though it was their first time reading it. Occasionally, he could pretend to listen, could force himself through the niceties of conversation to remain an almost contributing member of society.

    It was almost always just an act.

    The few that struck his interest could only hold it for so long, and he found that he preferred the quiet of his own mind instead of their constant stream of thoughts. Tonight is no different, as he picks his way through a deserted area of the meadow. He preferred this part of it, away from the throngs, where the only sound was the breeze as it rustled the grasses and the night-song of insects and owls that swooped from the moonlit sky. Their voices cannot reach him hear, not by his ears or by his mind.

    He is content to be on his own, that is, until he hears a sound. A strangled sound, muffled and strained, and deftly his vision shifts; he searches through the cool blues and purples of the landscape, until it settles upon her trembling mass of oranges and reds and yellows, nearly hidden by the meadow grasses. He stands, a calculating tilt of his head, knowing he could easily slip away, perhaps not unnoticed, but likely unbothered.

    Instead, he moves forward, his bright blue coat appearing oddly swarthy in the dark of the night. There is no malice in his intentions, but the lines of his face are hard and stoic, the flat tone of his voice shattering the silence as he says simply, ”You seem upset.” The curtness of his statement is not lost on him, although he does nothing to remedy it. The fact that he even approached was a miracle; he’s not sure if he’s actually concerned, or just bored, but either way he’s here now.

    R A E D
    [Image: Raed.jpg]
    (click for full size)
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    #3

    She is not sure if it is the sight of blood or the smell of decaying flesh, but she feels the blood rushing from her head as she attempts to move and she feels as if she might faint. Memories stir from the war, and in her mind she sees the glow of flames illuminating the blood soaked ground. She sees the Mother Tree a lifeless stump. She hears to clash of magic in the sky - the roar of of destruction. And then the mist that lulled her into deep, warm slumber.

    She blinks hard, as if to close her eyes on her saturnine mind. His voice cuts through the evening shadow and Osyva is torn from the past and back into the present.

    “You seem upset.” he says - a figure of deep blue amidst the darkness of the night. She blinks away the bleariness of the last salty tear and dips her head shyly, warmth rushing to her cheeks.

    “It was just a dream.” she says, unable to hide the disgust in her voice. But it is not contempt for this stanger, but for letting herself get caught in her sadness. She has always felt the need to hide her feelings from others, bury them down in the depths of the forest where no one else could see her weakness. He - he has caught her naked.

    Her sadness is self-inflicted - a choice to hide herself away in isolation - to let her memories cripple her and eat her away. There are others who have suffered so much worse than the loss of their parents - than being a witness to war.

    Useless, helpless Osyva.

    With a sniff she regains her composure, looking up at him with a face nearly as stoic as his own. But, he isn’t fooled, is he? And neither is she.

    “I am Osyva.” she says with a half-hearted smile.

    Poor, sad Osyva.



    @[Raed]
    Reply
    #4
    it's a lonely road, I know,
    and nothing ever stands between a bullet and your soul;


    He doesn’t invade her mind as he stands before her, his eyes sweeping across her golden face. She was a pretty little thing, even with the tears that cut paths down her cheeks. Even though he is tempted to simply reach in and see why there is such anguish in her eyes, he doesn’t. He rarely used his gift for prying, unless agitation during the encounter provoked him to do so, and he needed fuel for his fire. But he had nothing to gain by spying on her thoughts, and he didn’t do things just for the sake of being cruel or invasive.

    ”Sounds like more than a simple dream,” he says, his voice having quelled some of its previous steelines, replacing it with something more cordial. He was not malevolent by nature, and it was difficult to be so impassive as she struggled to draw back her tears. Soundlessly, he moves to position himself alongside of her, his blue skin inches from her aurelian own, though they do not touch; not yet.

    ”Osyva,” he repeats her name, and even on his cold and awkward tongue it still felt elegant. ”My name is Raed.” With an angled dip of his head, his cerulean muzzle brushes just lightly along the top of her neck – he never had been very good at resisting the temptation of flesh when laid before him, especially not one as soft and fair as she. Much of his lust had been satisfied at the beginning of autumn, and so there was nothing clandestine about the way his lips whisper across her skin. But he does nothing further, withdrawing, not wishing to startle her, and instead he asks, ”Why are you alone?”

    R A E D



    @[Osyva]
    [Image: Raed.jpg]
    (click for full size)
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    #5

    If he would sift through her mind he would find the wounds she kept digging at - the ones that she picked and picked until they were deeper than they should have been. He’d see the damage she has wrought on herself - how she won’t allow herself to heal or move on. He would see that this is all her fault - that her wasted life was her own doing.

    It has been so long since she has been in the company of another - and certainly a long time since she has been in the company of someone at all amicable. The inhabitant of the Chamber had been a surly, cold bunch. They fended for themselves and certainly didn’t care too much about one another's feelings. Osyva found that to be quite alright. She didn’t have to answer to herself or anyone about her past. She just had to stay out of the way.

    So when Raed pushes further, Osyva is unsure how to react. “Sounds like more than a simple dream.” And he is right. It is. It is a lifetime of living in the past. It is a lifetime she sometimes wishes she could forget, because all that was good is now gone. But, she cannot admit that. Instead she looks to the ground again.

    Then he says her name, and she looks up through the curtain of her pale forelock. It is strange to hear another speak it after so long - stranger to hear it on a kind tongue.

    “It is nice to meet you, Raed.” She says, raising her head to regard him fully. He blends almost wholly into the moonless night - shades of blue against the twinkling of a starlit sky. The chill of the night trails its fingers against her tear streaked cheeks, leaving salt behind.

    The warmth of his body next to hers is somehow soothing. And the brush of his lips across her neck startles a soft glow from beneath her skin (light that had been absorbed earlier escaping into the night). Her eyes widen in surprise as the glow dissipates almost as quickly as it had appeared.

    “What was that?” she asks, thinking that the glow must have been something Raed had done and not her own magic manifesting after years of dormancy. Osyva gently brushes her lips against the crook of his neck in return, her heart pounding loud in her ears, but the glow does not return. She does not know this, but the night weakens her. She draws away, somewhat perplexed.

    “Why are you alone?” he asks gently, and she doesn’t know the answer. For a moment she lets the silence weigh heavy between them before she says “I’ve been alone a long time, I think.” Her voice is as soft as dawn - a touch of warmth against the horizon. But there is sadness too. She has never been able to quite shake it. “Something doesn’t seem right here.” She says, motioning to the blood stained ground. “Do you know what has happened?” she asks, wondering if the Chamber has suffered the same blight that seems to be here. And what of the Falls and the Gates?



    @[Raed] <3
    Reply
    #6
    it's a lonely road, I know,
    and nothing ever stands between a bullet and your soul;


    She doesn’t elaborate on her dream, and he does not press the matter any further, does not delve into her mind. He would have been amused, however, to know she found him amicable. She was likely the first. Not that he was cruel, by any means, but his hospitality typically never extended beyond a single autumn night. He wasn’t trying to get anything out of her, however – also another first. He was still watching her, silently with his shadowed eyes, wondering at the fact that she is one of the few where he is curious of the thoughts inside of her head, and yet he still can’t bring himself to look.

    Something about her keeps him from wanting to invade her space – mentally, not physically, since he has not drawn away from her. When his touch elicits a soft glow from beneath her skin, he does not recoil, but instead he tips his head to the side in curiosity. Her alarm at her own power brings an amused upturn of his lips, the flatness of his eyes finding depth for a brief moment as he answers her surprised query, ”I don’t know you, you tell me. You’re the one that did it.” There is a new pitch to his usually too level voice, his lips still quirked in a smile. She touches his neck, and his head lowers in response, his lips coming to rest briefly at the base of her poll.

    He accepts her answer in silence, although apart of him would not admit that he was a little pleased that she was genuinely alone – that no one was missing her. His interest in her was strange even for him, and he hasn’t thought yet of why that might be. She gestures though to the ground below, dark and stained, and he doesn’t completely have an answer for her. ”Beqanna is different now. The old lands do not exist, and instead there are entirely new ones.” And then, for the first time, a whisper of concern flits across his eyes, as he glances down at her, adding carefully, ”There is also a plague. The meadow isn’t safe. Almost nowhere is.”

    R A E D


    @[Osyva]

    He has a crush on her if that's not obvious :|
    [Image: Raed.jpg]
    (click for full size)
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    #7

    There is so much all at once that she cannot possibly process. He smiles and the depth of his eyes fascinate her. She cannot help but smile in return, though she is undoubtedly concerned. She has never glowed in response to the touch of another. In fact, since her father’s disappearance, she has feared magic… deeply. But, his smile distracts her, and though the glow beneath her flesh does not return, heat rises to her cheeks as she catches herself staring a little too long into those secretive eyes.

    “I didn’t know I could do that?” she says with a sheepish laugh, and there is a lightness in her voice now that she’d all but drowned long ago.

    Perhaps, in any other circumstances she would have lost herself in his touch as it lingers against her flesh even after he has pulled away. Osyva, as mature in body as she may be, has never known intimacy in the slightest.

    But the conversation is steered to the bloodied ground all too soon. Raed tells her of the new lands, and her face furrows.

    Magic.

    Oh, how it takes and takes.

    And then he tells her of the plague. Osyva cannot help it. She buries her face into the warmth of his neck - throwing all niceties to the wind to feel the heat of this stranger as if he might console her.



    @[Raed] <3
    Reply
    #8
    it's a lonely road, I know,
    and nothing ever stands between a bullet and your soul;


    He had not expected his words to stir such a response from her, and when she presses into him it causes his skin to burn – a heat that he has to force to die away, for he recognizes that the closeness is out of a desire for consolation, and not want. He was, at his core, decent and kind, even if it was buried beneath layers of grit and something that solitude has hardened. But he softens himself, for her. His blue lips find her poll again, caressing briefly against her skin, his voice low as he says, ”I didn’t mean to upset you.”

    There are few that he has come across that knew the Beqanna that he had been born into, but judging by her reaction, she was one of them. He had looked for the Chamber, when he had first come back, but it was apparent that everything was gone. The new lands had been long since established by the time he got here; they already had their own histories written across them, by generations that he did not know. It was why he had remained on the outskirts, having little interest in blending with the strangers that crawled across the lands.

    But something about her stirred something in him. Something protective, something that made him want to pull her close and shield her from what was happening. His cerulean nose brushes against her cheek, the words leaving his mouth slowly, as though he was testing them before he said them, ”I can find you someplace safe to go. There are a few safelands.” A pause, then, as he adds wryly, his mouth still lingering near her skin. ”They aren’t like what we knew before, but they’ll do.”

    R A E D


    @[Osyva]
    [Image: Raed.jpg]
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