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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


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    like a dream in my arms but I'm wide awake; rae
    #1

    Leander couldn’t be sure of the number of weeks that had passed since he’d crashed upon the mountainside. Time seemed to have warped while he encountered his dead sister Rhy in the world beyond – it was the only explanation for how he had roused as though from a long and peaceful sleep afterward, nestled among wildflowers on a gentle slope overlooking Pangea. Somehow, despite having hurtled headlong against a cliff in the middle of a storm, he had also awoken unharmed. Lee suspected he had Rhy to thank for that. For a while, he lay there with his broad wings tucked about his two-toned body, a distant look in the brown of his eyes.
     
    Then he stood, leaping from the precipice and taking to the skies in search of family – something he had done countless times before.
     
    But Lee soon discovered that not all was as it had been before. Strange occurrences seemed to be following in his wake. While he searched Beqanna’s skies for his niece as Rhy had instructed, he encountered summer storm after summer storm. They came out of nowhere as he flew – cloud would gather and darken until lightning cracked and thunder boomed all about him, seemingly with every beat of his wings. They grew so great and terrible that he was often forced to touch down in defeat, his frustration nearly tangible in the stinging sensation he could feel like pinpricks just beneath his splashed skin. At this rate, he would never find Rae.
     
    As weeks passed and the storms continued to render his efforts useless, his mood only darkened. His niece was somewhere in these lands – in the skies – and here he was, being grounded at every turn. As a child his father had taught him the dangers of flying through storms, pointing out the fact that even the birds took shelter from lightning. Though derived from a separate source of electricity, Riagan himself had scars enough to prove its dangers to his young son.
     
    Unfortunately, today was no different. He was soaring near the borders of the Pampas in appreciation of the clear blue skies surrounding him when it started. He could feel the air changing by the very taste of it on his breath, by the feel of it beneath his speckled wings. He considered alighting right then and there – perhaps he could find Noah and wait out the storm while catching up with her – but as the clouds thickened ominously before him, that same feeling of frustration sizzled beneath his cream-and-white flesh, causing his ears to flatten stubbornly. Lee tossed his head in open defiance of the oncoming storm.

    Suddenly, thunder was crashing all around him – so close as to be deafening – and then he saw it.
    A pair of broad wings sliced through the darkness ahead of him – wings dipped in blue.

     “Hey! Wait!” he cried, though he feared the sound lost in the rumbling thunder. The wind twisted violently, abruptly stealing the air from beneath him so that he veered downward in an uncontrollable spiral, dropping like a stone before he could right himself again. Gritting his teeth, he clambered upward with broad strokes of his wings – thunder loud in his ears – and as he raked the ever-blackening cloud for some sign of her, he called out in near-desperation, “Rae?”


    leander
    take a bullet to the heart just to keep you safe; like a dream in my arms but I'm wide awake

    @[Rae] xD
    #2

    my soul is in the sky

    Rae had been pondering the concept of roots as of late, wondering how a girl who knew only the wildness of the wild could, perhaps, learn to live with something tethering her to the ground. She loved the sky – no, more than love – the sky simply was an extension of her. But wouldn’t it remain so, even if her feet touched the ground more frequently? The war had not gone unnoticed by the daughter of the wind, though she hardly understood it. All she understood was that those that fought loved so fiercely they would die to protect others, to protect the land they called home. The idea baffled her, and her birds were no help, squawking about how stupid horses are.

    “I’m a horse,” she’d retorted at them, though they only laughed and shook their little heads. No, you are large bird, they told her, and it struck her how very right and how very wrong they were all at once. She was a large bird in so many ways, her movements more avian than equine, her only semblance of family the birds in the sky around her. Yet she wanted to be more than a large bird that came and went with the wind and the seasons; she wanted to taste of the earth and drink of connections she only currently dreams of.

    Could she? Perhaps she simply needed to try.

    Today, though, she’d set out to find the thunderbird horse that the birds had been yammering on about. They were rather disgruntled at the constant storms he left in his wake, forcing them to go around. He isn’t all that hard to find. The birds can feel the brewing storm, and besides, they know what to look for. They pass her the message easily enough, and the storm is already raging by the time finds him above some place she thinks may be called Brilliant Pampas. The storm that rages around him is not shocking, but the fact that he calls out to her and not the other way around halts her in her tracks.

    Why was he looking for her? Moreover, how did he know her name?

    Rae has, quite literally, stopped in her tracks. Her wings don’t beat, though she hovers effortlessly, staring at this boy that fights tooth and nail through a storm to get to her. Why? It takes her a moment to realize that she should probably help, and then, wings starting to flap again, the storm clears around them as she uses a magic she hasn’t used in quite some time. Rae manipulates wind as easily as she breathes, but she has always been less inclined to mess with the weather as a whole. Still, she can, though she finds it strangely difficult to clear the storm, a difficultly she doesn’t quite think is from her lack of practice but rather from the source of the storm.

    As soon as she clears the storm, his wings seem to create the beginning of another. It takes constant effort to keep the storm at bay, and finally, though she wants to ask him how he possibly knows her name, instead she simply says, “Can you stop it with the storms?” sounding rather annoyed. The storms certainly wouldn’t kill her, and she didn’t think they’d kill him either, but it made it rather hard to fly and nearly impossible to talk.

    rae

    image


    @[Leander] eeeeeeeee <3 don't you just love her first words ever to him? hahaha
    #3

    As Leander clawed his way upward through the tempest, there was an odd moment where he sensed the storm’s ebbing – not because of the way the wind stilled beneath his wings, nor because of how quickly the black cloud dissipated around him – no, it was something more, something within.

    Though each wingbeat gradually became easier, he could still feel some kind of… resistance. It was like trying to fly against a headwind, despite the becalmed skies. The sensation took little precedence in Lee’s mind, however – not when he had finally gained enough altitude to come face to face with his niece.

    It was, of course, her – there was no mistaking it now that he was looking her in the eye. The family resemblances were glaringly obvious to him, especially with Rhy’s image fresh in his memory. This windborne daughter shared her mother’s striking gaze, though the spark therein was perhaps less literal in this instance. As he continued to stare in open amazement, Leander could swear she also bore Rayelle’s chin.

    “Can you stop it with the storms?” Startling from his reverie and feeling slightly bewildered by what she’d said, Lee cocked his head. “Stop?” he repeated, nearly laughing at the thought. “I wish I could, believe me.” The stallion was still rather taken aback by her presence and as of yet unseeing to the truth, though it lies so clearly before him.

    “You are Rae, aren’t you?” he asked then, treading the faint breeze created by each of their wings as they hovered, suspended together in the sky. He waited a moment for her answer before plunging on. “Rae, my name’s Leander.” He took a breath, adding with what he hoped was a steady smile, “I’m your uncle.” Funny – he should be used to revealing surprise blood relations to others by now, but it still made him feel as unsteady as when he’d been a colt on fledgling wings.


    leander
    take a bullet to the heart just to keep you safe; like a dream in my arms but I'm wide awake

    @[Rae] omg yes hahah, amazing <333 plus lee is so clueless it makes me giggle. so happy right now *giddy dance*
    #4

    my soul is in the sky

    Family. The idea that she might have family here has never crossed her mind. Other than Kry, she has never known family, not really. Draconis had tried, and Rae certainly does not fault her adopted older-sister-turned-mother for the fact that Rae had simply needed to leave. Her parents were dead, magic was ripped from Beqanna, and Rae did not know herself, even at such a young age, without the power of the sky behind her. They were one in the same, and she did not exist as herself without the sky.

    So Rae left, and with her leaving, she gave up any chance of a family that she thought may have existed. Until now.

    I’m your Uncle, he says, and it’s so plainly true that she simply stops flying. The cloud beneath her solidifies, and she lets herself drift down to it, tucking her legs beneath her, entirely uncertain that they will hold her weight now. Her mind reels with the revelation. “Please,” she says, nodding to another cloud that she’s pulled next to hers, solidifying that one as well. There was too much in her brain right now to keep combating the storms that he was creating. He seemed oblivious to the fact that he was even causing them, and for the moment, she wasn’t quite ready to figure out how to control that particular problem. The easier solution, for now, seemed to be to get him to stop flying.

    The resemblance was plain between them, in so many ways nearly identical save for the difference of black versus blue. An Uncle. She’d never even wondered if her mother had siblings. Why wonder about something she couldn’t have dreamed of asking? Who would she have gone to? Draconis knew only Rhy. Rae barely knew anything of her father but his name and his power. In what would would a girl who barely knew her parents dream of having an uncle?

    “How do you know who I am?” she finally asks. She believed him, couldn’t deny the resemblance and the fact that he knew her name seemed like all the proof she needed. Still, it didn’t explain how he knew her name. How could he? Only Draconis would recognize her, and time was a funny thing. It moved differently in different places, and she was younger than she should be. More time had passed here than had in her actual lifespan, and as such, she didn’t think Draconis was around anymore. There are so many more things she wants to say, to ask, but she doesn’t. For the moment, she waits just to find out this.

    rae

    image


    @[Leander]

    Use of mild power playing is allowed; no injuries without permission

    #5

    Lee watched his niece descend effortlessly to the cloud beneath her as though it were an everyday occurrence; and it began dawning on him that perhaps, for her, it was. Even as she gestured for him to do the same next to her, he realized that she must have been the one to call the sudden halt to the storm. Yet while the idea intrigued him, there were other matters at hand that must take precedence over his curiosity regarding her apparent abilities.

    Glancing down with some trepidation, the overo brought himself to a hover above the summoned accumulation and stilled his wings to alight gingerly upon it. If it weren't for the understandably sobering circumstances of their meeting, he might have grinned then - after all, he'd never stood upon a cloud before - but as it was, he simply folded his wings and lowered himself down so that they were once again at eye level.

    He waited in quiet, a kind understanding in his eyes as he watched Rae's mind race. Her expression was measured, but he could almost see the questions she had flicking like shadows just behind her gaze. Finally, she asked, "How do you know who I am?" Shifting a little upon his cloud, Leander reflected on everything that had happened to bring him here to this point. "It's a long story," he admitted.

    Then he began.

    He explained the circumstances of his childhood outside of Beqanna. How he'd grown up without knowing his sisters. How his parents had always intended to return so that they could be a family again. He spoke of Rayelle and Riagan with fondness, feeling the old familiar pang in his chest when he came to their passing. He touched on the years he'd spent searching for their homeland in the hopes of reuniting with his sisters. He told of the elation he'd felt to have finally found Beqanna and described all that led to his meeting Kora, only to learn that Rhy was gone. How he'd gotten sick and nearly died of the plague. How the tension between he and Kora had culminated in his crash upon the Mountain.

    And, finally, how he came to encounter Rhy in the world beyond.

    Leander did his best not to spare any details in the narrative, especially when it came to Rae's mother and their meeting. He could only guess how hungry she must be for answers - for much of his own life, he'd known the same hunger - and so he described it all to her at length. From everything they'd spoken of to the ease he'd felt around her, from the undercurrents of energy she carried to the way she'd talked of her children - and how she'd sounded so proud when she'd finally told him of Rae.

    "She wanted me to find you," he said. His voice faded to a murmur. "She's been watching over you, Rae. She hasn't missed a moment." After a beat, he added, "She loves you." It had been so apparent. Though their time together on this earth had been cut woefully short, the love that Rhy had for her children shone from her eyes, more brightly than any of the electric sparks therein.

    "I know it's a lot," he conceded quietly, "And you've only just met me." Lee paused then, suddenly nervous. The reality was that not everyone was as desirous for familial relationship as he was. Everything that had gone wrong with Kora seemed proof enough of that. Still, if there was even a chance that Rae felt differently than his icy sister did on the subject, he had to go on. "I guess my hope is that we could maybe get to know each other... and that eventually, we could count one another as family." He brought a gentle smile to his mouth as he finished, finally falling silent while the wind ebbed and flowed around them, as though the sky were softly breathing.


    leander
    take a bullet to the heart just to keep you safe; like a dream in my arms but I'm wide awake

    @[Rae]
    #6

    my soul is in the sky

    Flying without the use of her wings, floating along to the next place asleep on a cloud – these were everyday things to her. Things she did without thinking, summoning clouds as naturally as others swat at flies with their tails. But the idea of family, something so natural to anyone else, was a dream she never truly let herself dream. Yet here, before her, is an uncle she’d never known. He is quiet while she finds her voice, waiting for the question she finally manages to voice. It is a miracle they don’t all coming spilling out like a tsunami, drowning them both in the sea of questions that race through her mind and flit across her eyes.

    He begins, and she listens with rapt attention and yet her mind races as well. His story is long and detailed and true. It is so much more than Draconis could ever tell her, so much more than Rae had ever dared hope to know. He tells her of his birth and his life outside of Beqanna. He tells her of her grandparents - grandparents - and an aunt she’d also never known. An aunt, it seems, that didn’t have a good relationship with Rhy or Leander, and she wonders a bit at how anyone could not want the family they are given. Then again, so many don’t understand just what they have. It is far too easy to take for granted the things you simply have. Rae has never had the luxury of simply having family though.

    Then he tells her of her mother. Rhy. Her eyes water as he describes the mother she doesn’t remember but imagines in her mind anyway. Draconis had told her enough to paint the picture, and Rae is sure her picture is close enough though she always thought it was too sparkly, too clean, too perfect. Yet to hear Leander as well, she wonders if that was simply her mother. A bright flash of lightning, dangerous and beautiful and impossible, all bundled into one.

    Rae has never imagined that her mother even knew Rae was still alive, that she could watch from another life, that she could love a child she hadn’t been alive long enough to know. Yet his words strike home, and she’s quiet for a long moment, not trusting herself to speak. He keeps going though, sparing her from having to say anything regarding her mother at all now, and he’s almost nervous as he extends an olive branch that Rae cannot fathom rejecting.

    This morning she’d had only her twin, long lost to some other land where her earthbound brother belonged. Now, suddenly, she had an uncle who wanted to be her uncle, an aunt that might not want a damn thing to do with her but at least she was family (and better yet, family drama, something so impossibly farfetched to a girl with no family at all), and stories of her mother and grandparents and a history she never knew belonged to her.

    A smile curves her lips, her eyes lighting up. “Only,” she begins, with the characteristic wildness of the wind that was her makeup, “if we get those storms of yours under control so we can go flying together.” Her eyes twinkle with mischief, so like her mother in a way she will never know. “What are you, anyway? I’ve never felt anything quite like it.”

    rae

    image


    @[Leander]

    Use of mild power playing is allowed; no injuries without permission

    #7

    He, too, cannot fathom rejecting family. In many ways, he’d always had it better than his sisters – for the most part Leander’s childhood had been a simple and happy one, free of the tension that Kora and Rhy had brought with them from womb to world – and he’d had his parents with him through it all, longer than had either of the twins combined.

    Since coming to Beqanna, he’d gotten the impression that Kora considered him to be a weight; and in his brief encounter with Rhy he’d sensed that she’d had more than enough strength to hold her own from the start. Yet while Rae had never dreamed that family could be an option, Leander had always dreamed that it would be.

    So it was that the breath Lee had been holding came out in a rush of elation at her sparkling eyes and mischievous tone – but he still couldn’t understand why she was saying what she was saying. Once again, denial parted his lips. “But I –” His voice came to an abrupt halt as he recalled Rhy’s cryptic final words. ‘She can teach you what you can do.

    His head tilted and his brow furrowed somewhat comically as the pieces of the puzzle finally began to fall into place. He imagined Rhy was grinning down on the pair of them then, no doubt taking great satisfaction in her brother’s moment of dumbfounded realization. At that thought, Lee’s wry laughter suddenly rang through the air between them.

    “Honestly? I have no idea.” The overo couldn’t fight the broad smile that shone from his expression as he met Rae’s gaze. “This is all new to me.” His tone remained baffled as he thought it over. “The only thing I can think of is that it must run in the family – the electric, I mean.” Again, his voice faded as he considered the thunderstorms that had seemed to follow in his wake all these weeks, evoking the flash and crash of lightning that had never failed to streak those blackened skies.

    “I don’t know if it’s the same as what your mother had, though.” Hurriedly he glanced down at himself, checking that his two-toned skin hadn’t suddenly started to spark as hers did. It hadn’t. His brown eyes lift once more to the blue of her own. Experimentally, he lifted a black-tipped wing and stretched it out towards Rae with a lopsided grin. “Should we test this theory?”


    leander
    take a bullet to the heart just to keep you safe; like a dream in my arms but I'm wide awake

    @[Rae]
    #8

    my soul is in the sky

    For a girl that grew up in the sky, her head has never been in the clouds. Rae is not a dreamer, but a realist, able to deal with the cards handed to her without letting the weight of them crush her. Then again, she has always run from one place to the next, not to escape but to simply live in the only way she could. Such a life was an escape though, never settling, never facing the truth that she had little else than the clouds and the birds and the wind. They were wonderful things, but it was only in coming here – coming home – that she was truly beginning to realize that there might be more to life than the version of it she had been living.

    The absence of her family didn’t hurt, but the presence of her uncle and the knowledge of her family left her heart singing in a way she didn’t know possible. Maybe their lack had hurt, but it had been a hurt she’d carried for so long she’d never recognized the pain for what it was. Something in her lifts though, and the wind tugs at her mane in response, her power simply flowing out in the waves of joy she feels, harmless but so very much a part of her.

    He responds, starting with denial but then he stops and seems to be considering. Then he starts laughing, and she tilts her head not privy to the joke or the cryptic message her mother had left for Lee. He keeps talking though, and she listens, trying to puzzle out just what he might be. It must run in the family,” he says, and at that she grins as lightning cracks across the sky nearby. She was not her mother, and she didn’t wield electricity but she did wield the weather and as such, could at least conjure the lightning that marked their family.

    “It does,” she says, but of course she’s already made her point. She really just couldn’t resist showing off a little though. “You aren’t like my mother though. My brother had the same power, and his felt different than you do. Besides, you conjure whole storms…” she trails off, not entirely sure what he was. “Whatever you are, you make storms when you fly. So let’s figure out exactly what you can do and how you control it.”

    She grins again before taking off from the cloud, heading into the sky. Maybe they’d need an obstacle course or sorts, but for now, she waits for him to join her so they can figure out what’s happening.

    rae

    image


    @[Leander]

    Use of mild power playing is allowed; no injuries without permission





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