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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]  and sweet you roll, any
    #1
    She likes the happiness the best.
    The soft, sudden way it swells and bursts in her throat, skates across the surface of her tongue and emerges as laughter.

    She likes the way it pulses at the center of her like a second heart.
    How fiercely it glows, how brightly it burns, when her mother kisses her downy head.

    She is a strange thing, she’s heard them say it. Mama and papa, wrapped around one another when they thought she was sleeping, murmuring about her spotted sides and her funny feet and the little nubs that had emerged from the tender plain of her forehead that would someday turn into antlers (at least that’s what mama said and Dear had never had any reason to doubt her mama). She is strange, they’d said, but then she could hear the happiness in their voices when they’d said that she is perfect, too.

    She is small and the legs are thin as spindles as she emerges from the forest. From a distance, she looks like any other freshly born fawn. Deep red and spotted, blinking imploringly into the sunlight, thrumming with delight. Upon closer inspection, though, it is easy to see that she is no ordinary fawn at all. No, there is something in her face that is distinctly equine.

    Her heart beats fast as a hummingbird’s as she ventures a few steps further, leaving her mama and papa behind. Mama tells her not to go too far and Dear knows that she won’t. She won’t go too far, she’ll go just far enough.

    So, she teeters into the meadow, grinning madly. The birds sing, swinging just low enough for her to study their fat red bellies, and she laughs long with them. She is young and so impossibly small and she doesn’t know any better when she ambles, concentrating hard on where she puts her cloven feet, up to the nearest solitary creature and grins up at them. “Hello!” she cries, giddy.
    careful, child, light the fuse and get away 'cause happiness throws a shower of sparks
    Dear,
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    #2

    One day Catnip had wandered away from her mother and never found her again. It was an accident, really. The little green filly truly thought that she was only a few yards from her mother, but then a few yards grew with each new beautiful flower she found and . . . well, Beqanna is large. Magic may help them but neither creature possesses the power to find the other, and most magicians in the land would rather eat a small child than help her.

    So, the child stumbles. She grows steadier everyday, and the magic she does not know she possesses supplement her diet. She wills herself to live, and so the plants change themselves into the nutrients she needs to be alive. Catnip stumbles and stumbles but everyday she grows steadier, stronger, happier. Happy to be raised by her flowers and her trees and her leaves. They caress her cheeks and sing her to sleep. The tragedy that should define her life, that should make her bitter, only makes her better.

    Catnip curls beneath a warm springtime sun to take a nap. The swishing noise of an approaching creature forces her to raise her head, and she blinks bleary yellow eyes at the little girl giddily approaching her. Cat struggles to her hooves and attempts to blink the fog from her gaze, but can only manage a cute, friendly smile.

    “Hi,” Catnip replies, peering down at the tiny and deerlike filly before her. “Where did you come from?” The mossy filly can’t help herself—someone as happy as her must know the secret to their existences. Maybe she can go where Dear came from; and as her mother’s memory fades, she wonders if the questions that form in her mind might be answered.




    @[dear]
    Reply
    #3
    She is perhaps the most beautiful thing the girl has ever seen.
    And Dear feels an immediate stab of guilt when the green girl rises to her feet.
    She hadn’t meant to startle her, really. But she’d seen her from the edge of the meadow and had not been able to stop herself from approaching.

    They are roughly the same age, Dear can tell it in the way that they are both unsteady on their new legs, but the green girl towers over her in a way that Dear will have no choice but to get used to. She will always be smaller, thinner, more deer than horse. She grins up at the green girl, blinking boldly in the face of her beauty before she teeters forward and presses her nose against the girl’s shoulder. As if she does not trust her to be made of flesh and bone. She is, though, and this delights Dear.

    Where did she come from? She staggers backwards, swaying on her feet as she comes to a stop less than a foot away. Still too close, perhaps, but she likes it here. She glances over her shoulder to the edge of the meadow where she knows her mama must be watching. “There!” she says and giggles because she can see her mama’s outline in the shadows. Silly mama. She shakes her head and shifts her focus back to the green girl. “My mama is there,” she whispers it like a secret, wrinkling her baby nose in amusement.

    She opens her mouth to ask the girl where she came from, too but finds her attention arrested by another stranger. He is larger, older, white and green. Her eyes widen and her grin grows. “Look!” she cries, gesturing wildly to the stranger. “Look, he’s green like you!” She stamps her little feet in excitement.

    Hey!” she calls, “hey, you!” The stranger turns to face her and it is then that Dear notices the vines snaking their way through his mane. This compounds her excitement. “Come here, please!” she says and the stranger obliges. She turns then to the green girl, her eyes ablaze with wonder. The slightly older boy stops a short distance away and smiles good-naturedly, glancing between the two girls.

    Hi!” Dear chirps, thrumming with delight. “My name is Dear and this is my friend…,” she pauses then, glancing at the green girl, realizing that she had not gotten her name.
    careful, child, light the fuse and get away 'cause happiness throws a shower of sparks
    Dear,


    @[catnip]
    Reply
    #4

    You darling thing, Mama had whispered into her fuzzy, lilac mane. Catnip, was her next whisper, after days of deliberating what she should call her. Catnip had been a placeholder, an endearing call to her callous father and her mother’s power—but Clove soon found that her daughter’s bubbly, unmatched personality fit perfectly with such a childish name. With a shrug of her shoulders, Clove figured Catnip could go by Cat if she ever felt shame, and anyway—teaching her to grow actual catnip was too funny to resist the name.

    Dear’s soft, dainty nose against Cat’s shoulder sends a smile shooting up her lips. Roses begin to curl pleasantly up her legs, twisting gently as if even they are delighted by such sweet company.

    There! Dear cries and Cat flits bright yellow eyes to find the woman in charge of her new friend. She briefly wonders if she could be in charge of her, too—if she could tell her why she is the way she is and will she wander back to her mother? The mother whose eyes she cannot remember? But that leaves her head as quickly as it came, for the green and white of a stranger wanders close to the pair.

    “My name is Catnip,” the brilliant green filly offers with a big smile. She moves her gaze from Dear and then to the boy, tilting her head a little at how familiar he looks. Being as small and overwhelmed as she is, she can hardly remember her siblings (especially older ones), but Gulliver certainly looks familiar.

    “I know you,” Cat states decidedly, then giggles and turns back to Dear. “I know him! But I don’t know his name.”



    @[dear] hi i figured since they're siblings they might have seen each other? probably? who knows
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