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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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    i don't eat i just devour, everyone in every hour; leilan
    #1
    The young stallion is a pathetic sight; he could be mistaken for dead. Or the crows thought so at least, as the cautiously observe him from the bare trees. It wouldn't be long before they dared to investigate, hopping closer to taste him, but there is still a tread of life in his young body. It is a thread stretched thin, and it quivers dangerously close to snapping.

    But it is enough to keep his lungs filling weakly, and it is enough to wake him at the sound of a stranger approaching.

    He lifts his dark head, every inch a battle, before shifting his weight to take a semi-upright laying position. Crusted with blood and shivering slightly, his forelegs splay in front of his open chest.

    "Who's there?" he asks, with a voice as ragged as he feels, not knowing his words are hardly words at all.

    Blinking, he shifts his dark head in the direction of the noise, and every muscle in his body contracts. The sharp movement makes it feel as if he is falling and the injured stallion gasps as his head jerks backward. Equilibrium regained, he has time to think of the stranger again, and Firen reaches cautiously with his mind for whoever, or whatever, may be there.


    @[Leilan]
    [Image: Firen-insane.gif]
    Reply
    #2
    You’re uncontrollable
    and we are unlovable
    Wow, he looks like absolute shit.

    It’s the most active thought he’s had this day, so far. He’s so glad he didn’t bring Beryl along today; the thought of the palomino filly finding someone - something so gruesome isn’t exactly comforting. Just look at this pathetic excuse of - oh Fae, he’s alive!

    Leilan had been wandering the northern half of the Isle, having sent Beryl out to see if she could manage on her own by now (it was summer and there wasn’t really a threat for a young lioness in the moment; or so he thought). He certainly wasn’t expecting this - a sad excuse for what’s left of a horse, a wanderer he couldn’t quite pinpoint, but honestly he had not been paying a lot of attention to the southerners of the Isle. Those weren’t usually the ones in need of… help.

    A sigh escapes him and he approaches. Some sort of whine comes out of the broken horse, and the frosted drake chuckles a bit. Still feisty, this one, even if he’s dying.

    Because dying, he is. The pool of blood and the crows might have been an indication, but the big hole that comes into view, right next to or even grazing the heart if he remembers correctly, makes it more than obvious. Bleeding out, rasping through the non-punctured lung, Leilan’s first and most prominent thought is to make it quick and end his suffering.

    Ice Fairy would definitely frown upon that, to say the least.

    A shake of his scaled head, the only really dark part of him, and the scaled stallion strides forwards. ”You look like shit.” Must feel that way. ”Gotta tell you, I’m no healer. But I could try and patch that. Or I can make this end as painless as possible.” He rumbles on, then remembers the pathetic whine from before. He would not understand this young man unless he put his ear to his bloodied lips, and hope for the best.

    Eye roll. Sigh. ”Blink twice if you don’t want to die immediately.”

    After all, he can’t promise that it will work.

    and I don’t want you to think that I care
    I never would, I never
    could again
    Leilan
    no. 7 | ice forged in fire


    @[Firen]
    Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
    |
    Reply
    #3
    It's hard to tell exactly what the looming stranger is trying to communicate when each movement brings a disorienting wave of pain, but through the ringing in his ears, Firen gets the point.

    Blink twice if you don’t want to die immediately.

    He blinks, hard, and flakes of frozen blood fall from his lashes. He didn't want to die, and he had no way to stop that from happening on his own. Trust was the name of the game he was going to have to play, his body reminds him with a violent shudder. He wouldn’t remember most of this day when he tried to look back to it, but at the moment, the memory of the attack is playing on repeat in his mind. In fantastic detail, he observes the creature, the girl, the blinding pain. 

    The girl.

    Everything had happened so fast, he had barley hit the ground before his world went dark. But her face comes to mind again, blue and black and brindled like him, and he wonders if she suffered a similar fate.

    Or worse.

    "The girl," he gasps, trying not to choke as he braces for whatever this stranger is going to do, "is she ok..."


    @[Leilan] sorry this is so short but he's pretty worthless atm!
    [Image: Firen-insane.gif]
    Reply
    #4
    You’re uncontrollable
    and we are unlovable
    The pathetic excuse of a horse before him whispers things that the ice drake could not understand if he had enhanced hearing - but the message about blinking is transferred, and although Leilan might have thought that putting the younger man out of his misery was the easiest and quickest way to help, he guesses everyone clings to that small lifeline of hope.

    Maybe he shouldn’t have asked.

    But he had, and so he has to act. If there’s anything he’s decidedly not, it is a liar, nor will he go back on his word. He remembers the way Jesper once used his Frost Aura to stop a bleeding, although that had been a minor cut in a mock battle.

    Leilan can do Firen one better now.

    He steps closer, letting the icy magic build in his throat - waits a second when the other speaks, but decides it will have to wait - then breathes it straight into the open chest wound.

    Perhaps fire would have better cauterized the male’s wounds, but here where everything is frozen, a layer of ice will clot the blood flow just as well. There’s a small bonus for the cold constricting blood vessels, although Leilan’s own knowledge of bodies reacting to cold is very limited. The scaled roan has no idea if it will hurt - or, if it will hurt more than the wound already does - but at least this should mean the young man no longer bleeds out. It’s something, right? And maybe just about enough to pull through.

    His eyes quickly scan the horizon for another heat source, but when he can’t find one, he has to assume the girl is either too far away or too late to be helped at the same time as this young man, or she has already gone.

    One at a time, he tells himself, and looks down to the boy on the ground, wondering how he’ll take it. He might as well have passed out, in which case he’ll need to be guarded lest he freezes to death after all.

    and I don’t want you to think that I care
    I never would, I never
    could again
    Leilan
    no. 7 | ice forged in fire


    @[Firen]
    Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
    |
    Reply
    #5
    Red eyes wide, firen looks into the widening mouth of his savior-apparent, and in his last moments, he strongly disapproved of this answer to his problem. But he does not have the time or capability to work out a better solution, and without much of a fight he slides into the cold void of unconsciousness

    Days pass and the winter that never left the northern parts of the island begins working its way down the island, every night claiming more territory. But today the mid-morning sun is glaringly bright in the cloudless sky, thawing the frost and frozen earth, reminding the island that it is only autumn in the rest of Beqanna.

    Firen wakes in wolf-form, probably a sign that he was doing better. This form had always felt more natural than his other, he didn't remember learning how to shift. No, his first memories were tumbling with his pup-sister and stalking small prey.

    His brindle coat is dull and shaggy, but still better protection against the chill than his equine coat, and turns his dark back to the sun in a shuffle-scoot without standing.  The sun issue taken care of, he takes stock of his body. He feels like shit, his chest still looks like carrion, and breathing is difficult. But he is awake, and somehow not in a pool of blood. When he finally lifts his head to take in his surroundings his slightly pained yet neutral expression grows wary.

    "Oh, you again."
    [Image: Firen-insane.gif]
    Reply
    #6
    You’re uncontrollable
    and we are unlovable
    There’s plenty of things he could do with his time, but waiting. Only a few hours of it and already Leilan gets bored. He assesses his surroundings: a relatively open space, but the male had managed to crawl behind some rocks for shelter. But if he were to survive out here, he’d need something more.

    And so the draconic stallion sets to work. He’s done it often enough by now to be able to build his ice bricks in the snow - he shapes them roughly with some well-placed kicks and lets snowdrifts and his icy breath freeze them together in the places he needs them fixed. After that, he drags the unconscious (or shall we say hardly alive) stallion away. It’s not the best display to see one horse drag the other by mane and tail, shoving them over ice patches to get him stowed away in the rough shelter, made of ice walls, but hey, he’s not here to make it look pretty, only to make it work. Besides, no-one is watching.

    The scaled roan’s ice walls against a rock seem solid enough. Slowly it gets warmer in the otherwise cramped space, and that’s when Leilan decides to go out and roughly ‘seals’ the igloo with a rock. If the man inside wakes up, well, Leilan supposes he can wait for Leilan’s return or break through the snow. His biggest concern is to tell Beryl where he’s been all afternoon, bury the bloody tracks and find the aforementioned girl - or her leftovers. He’s just not an optimistic guy.

    The latter proves impossible, and so Leilan sets himself to guard the young man in the shelter. He spends days lingering there, scraping for food when he can, and occasionally breaking into the shelter to see if he’s still alive.

    It’s on one of those moments that the younger stallion seems to be awake and roughly speaking. Not a ‘hey’ or a ‘thanks’ but a ‘oh, it’s you’.

    A snort follows. ”Sorry, I’m not the pretty girl you were worried about.”

    and I don’t want you to think that I care
    I never would, I never
    could again
    Leilan
    no. 7 | ice forged in fire


    @[Firen]
    Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
    |
    Reply




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