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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


    weep like willows || any
    #1
    Sophist

    Life, especially in Beqanna, is often either tremendously chaotic or pleasantly bucolic.

    For Sophist, his story begins somewhere in the middle of these circumstances.

    Ismet, having birthed her son at night and gazed upon his blighted form, had abandoned him after a few brief hours together. She had helped him stand, nursed him from her own rotting body, and once the colt had fallen asleep near sunrise after an hour or two of romping around the forest clearing, she quietly abandoned him. The bumbling little colt with his tattered skin and silvery bones, one small eye socket exposed in the light of the moon and hair shedding in patches, only reminded the mare of herself.

    She hadn’t been aware of his handsome daylight form with his rich plum coat and gleaming white locks; she had only left him as he dozed beneath the curtain of a willow true, only pausing once to glance back at him to reassure herself that this was the right choice. He was going to have a hard enough life as it were - he didn’t need an equally appalling mother to remind him of whatever hardships he is yet to endure. Ismet never had been confident enough to learn hope to cope with her curse and she (mistakenly) presumes that Sophist will inherit the same apathy and timidity.

    Upon waking alone, Sophist is confused by Ismet’s absence. Her scent is muddled by the morning dew and potent spring flower perfumes; his still-sharpening senses are too feeble to pick his mother’s trail out of the heady medley. He spends a few moments scanning the small open area with a muffled sort of confusion balled up in his chest, but he does not instantly try to find her. She had been fairly quiet and gruff with him earlier and even at such an early age, he could understand that she was a more solitary creature.

    It would take some time yet for the realization that he had been orphaned to set in.

    For now, he kicks his forelegs out in preparation to stand but stops short when he catches sight of the vibrant fur that has overtaken his previously bony legs. The sight of his mother had essentially cemented the notion in his mind that all horses were nothing but bone and exposed muscle, raggedy flesh and vacant, murky eyes. That’s certainly how his own body had appeared under the glow of moonlight, but now…? Now a healthy coat of intense violet has overtaken him.

    After taking several moments to consider this odd transformation, he eventually stands and shakes himself free of any floral debris he had picked up during his slumber. The colt noses his way through the curtain of willow fronds and blinks in the sunlight, ears swiveling now to catch the various sounds of the forest around him. Birds sing gleefully, wind combs gently through the fresh green leaves overhead, and faintly, somewhere nearby, he can just pick out the sound of running water.

    He makes his way plaintively toward the latter, tripping slightly once or twice over the underbrush, and clears the treeline at the shore of a narrow stretch of the larger river that runs through the area. However, he lingers there for now, just at the edge of the forest, studying the river and appraising his surroundings. Although the clear, flowing water is terribly inviting to his dry mouth, something urges him not to fully leave the comfort of the trees at his back just yet. 
     

    walking with the devil's convoy, black smoke upon my tracks




    ...such word vomit @_@ nevermind my rambling pls
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    #2
    Racked by palsy-like tremors, shortness of breath, nosebleeds and a cough that rattles her bones; the sabino is not fit for much. She exists; drifting through the forest like a thin plagued wraith with an angel’s pale soft wings. Shroud is anything but an angel - full of sin and proud of it! So she haunts the forest, looking for bones and places of rot whenever she is not by her master’s blue side. 

    Tunnel.
    His name is benediction and blight on her tongue, both as she savors the dark flavor of such a name as his. She rolls it around in her mouth like a stone, heavy and dirty and never more loved (or loved less!) for the earthy gritty richness of it. How she enjoyed defying him! Just to have him punish her and keep her tethered to his side, as he had from the day he’d found her lurking in the big bad woods all by her baby-lonesome.

    Shroud is in that same defiant but delirious state of plague and boredom. She needs something but cannot guess at what will shake her from these doldrums. So, thinned by sickness and trailing pale feathers that have fallen out of her unkempt wings, she wanders. Wanders up and down the woods, taking this trail then that with no rhyme or reason to the decisions that she makes.

    Somehow she ends up trailing a stream that gurgles musically but the music is lost on her. She’s not deaf, just can’t appreciate the charms of clean water and demure breezes sailing by that ruffle her hair and feathers. Shroud doesn’t even appreciate the rich and verdant green that springs up around them through grass, fern, and leaf. Flowers have never been her forte unless they’re poisonous and likely to harm unsuspecting animals.

    So the forest-green is unnoticed, of it is - she gives a resigned huff then a snort of disgust and looks for the buzz of flies and the smell of decay that might signal some predator’s kill. Or she’ll find the work of old age - a thing gone to sleep, never to awaken or see another morning because their time has come and gone. Give her the claw marks in flesh and dirt, the signs of a fight, and the brilliant artistic spray of blood. Yes, give her that!

    But that’s not what the forest gives her.
    The forest parts before into a peaceful glade full of sunshine, birds chirping and chipmunks scurrying by. It looks like a scene straight out of a 1940’s Disney movie and it sickens her; it’s too saccharine and good, both things that she is not. There stands Shroud with her mouth pinched into a spittle-flecked frown before she shivers the wings away from her side and they become insubstantial, like air.

    She flaps them to what she thinks is gale-force, causing the bird-chirps to cut off and the chipmunks to go into hiding. Leaves and twigs fly around and the grass is bent by the force of her small manipulative might. Then the moment passes, or more likely falters as blood leaks from her nostrils and her sabino sides heave from exertion. She has effectively slain the peace of the glade but exhausted herself beyond mention too.

    Shroud pants, sweats, and trembles. Each step she takes is agonizing as she turns back to the stream and follows it to the parent-river that runs past the trees. She’s not the only one that doesn’t rush right to it; there’s a door nearby, hanging back against the tree line and shadows. Of course she approves of his decision, or fear. She can’t be too sure which it is, and decides it doesn’t matter as she drinks in his rich plum color and pale cloud-like hair.

    How beautiful. In the way that he’s the color of a bruise and cobwebs, and she likes that about him. Then Shroud does something that surprises even her - she approaches him. “All alone?” as she states the obvious, but waits out his answer and reaction. Something about him is tantalizing and she can’t resist his newness in a way that Shroud - barely a mare - has never shown an interest in babies before. That must make him special.

    @[Sophist] ❤️
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