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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]  let the sky fall - anyone
    #1

    h e l o i s e

    Heloise hated her subconscious. She’d intended to leave Beqanna behind her, to never return to the lands of her birth.  There had been nothing for her in Beqanna. No family that gave a single fuck, no reason to stick around. But apparently there were side effects of spending so much time living as a bird.

    Her wings literally brought her back here one day like some misguided sense of migration.  Birds were genetically programmed to return home, and apparently she’d inherited this particular proclivity.  Much to her chagrin.

    She knew where she was as soon as she crossed the border.  The lands looked different - gone were the unmistakable landmarks and the kingdoms that she was familiar with. But she knew, undeniably, that this place was home.  At least the gnawing sense of needing to return churned in her belly.  For the journey, Heloise had used the form of a migratory seabird to conserve her energy, but as she grew nearer to inhabited lands she shifted into one of her preferred forms - a common kingfisher.
    She liked the kingfisher because they were small, nondescript, and territorial. Which meant that other kingfishers usually would leave her the fuck alone.

    The kingfisher-mare landed on the lowest branch of a bare tree.  She stared at the ground below, trying to will herself into shifting back.  But it's been such a long time since she’d inhabited her birth form, she found herself more than a little reluctant.  She was stalling, and she knew it.

    So with a final sigh, she leapt from the branch and in an explosion of limbs and feathers and fur and just a little bit of crunching she made her way back into her body.  There she stood, on four solid equine legs, panting somewhat from the strangeness of being full-size again.  When it came to shifting into birds - Heloise was an expert - but shifitng into her own body?  The avian mare always brought remnants with her. Perhaps it was laziness, perhaps it was her not so subtle attempt to cling to the very best parts of her.  She honestly didn’t care either way.  But the turquoise feathers and the kingfisher wings were a comfort.  She pulled the teal wings tighter to her sides against the bitter winter air and turned - wondering what bullshit adventure her homeland had in store for her.

     

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    #2
    one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing
    one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling
    one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide

    If Adna could, she would have flung herself from this land years ago and never came back.

    She would have gladly taken to the skies and never looked back—never thought twice (this part is untrue, and she knows it). But she is not a bird. She is a viper and she is earthbound. She is belly-first and tied to the mud and the dust and the land that will always anchor her. So although she has left Loess and the poison on her tongue, she has not left Beqanna—and, in a strange way, it is for the best.

    After all, if she had left, she would not have Gospel.

    She would not have met Beth.

    Even if she is not sure whether or not the latter is a good thing or not.

    But whether she thinks it or not, she cannot change the fact that she is here now and is firmly rooted, whether or not she thinks she should be. She walks through the meadow, quiet and subdued for once, when she sees the creature leap from the tree and turn equine in a flash of feather. Her serpentine eyes widen just a little and she pauses, a scaled leg lifted and then firmly planted back on the earth.

    For a second, she remains that way—contemplative and curious—before she angles herself back toward the area where the mare now stands. The wind bites but she has long known that the cold does not bother her and she bites back the ache in her bones. When she is close enough to hear the other, she just stops. She watches her with sage green eyes calm, her fanged mouth closed into just a shadow of a smile.

    “It’s cold today,” she muses, her fine head angling before she rolls a shoulder.

    “Do you not have somewhere more comfortable to roost?”

    ADNA
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    #3

    h e l o i s e

    Heloise was still somewhat disoriented when the mare approached.  She was familiarizing herself with this body, shifting her weight between her four legs and adjusting to the limitations of equine vision. Both her ears and her gaze snaps forward as the reptile mare speaks.  The simple, innocuous words light a fire in the avian mare - one that’s been smoldering ever since she realized where her wings were bringing her.

    “Well, aren’t you perceptive!”  She bites, slightly perturbed at how her breath was visible as she spoke.  Heloise wasn’t one to mince words, and an array of responses crawled up her throat but she did her best to swallow them back. Self control had never been one of her strong suits. It was part of the reason that she’d decided to abandon Beqanna in her youth.  She had no connection to her family - she’d been an experiment of sorts.  Neither successful or a failure, she’d bee cast aside all the same.  The avian mare gritted her teeth before responding to her reptilian counterpart.

    “Trust me, I have plenty of better places to be,” she said, in a huff. She was more angry at the whole ass situation than at anything, but she didn’t particularly want to waste her breath explaining the situation. Her demons were no one’s business but her own.  Heloise was always quick to deflect with her sharp tongue than have to, you know, deal with things.  She still felt compelled to say something more, however.

    “But you can only live as a bird for so long until you’re overwhelmed with the need to migrate home, apparently,” she added, with a dramatic roll of her eyes. “So here I am!” she said with mock enthusiasm wrapped up in a snuggly blanket of sarcasm.  She extended her blue wings wide to really sell the enthusiasm before the cold wind had her snapping to her sides just as quickly.

    She took the ensuing moment to drag her gaze away from the scaled mare. The meadow looked as she remembered it, having spent the early days of her childhood in the area. But Beqanna had changed in a way she couldn’t understand.

    “What the hell happened to this place anyway?” she asked, offhandedly, assuming that the reptile-mare would know what she was talking about.

     

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    @[adna]
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