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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


    [private]  a place made for all of us. together.
    #1

    The last few months had been a new kind of torture for Agetta, and it was one of her own making. This was a situation she had never been in before, had never imagined that she would be in, and there she was - growing sides and no clue who the father of her child was. At least it was a small comfort to know that it was just between two.

    And now she knew that however awful she had felt throughout the pregnancy, the next steps were going to be even worse. She was torn, every step of what had happened further cleaving her heart into two pieces. She did not regret what was budding with Garbage, the way her heart raced when he touched her - the secrets she knew about him and the one she shared in kind. Did not regret the actions that had led to this predicament - though they were mingled with shame.

    But whatever had happened, this first step (she hoped) would not be awful - and it was the easiest of them all. Before she brought Mazikeen to Ryatah, the girl needed to meet her father.

    It proves a little tricky to find him, but finally on the border of the lush spring forest she sees him. Still she has no name to call him, refusing to use what his mother had called him and uncertain whether ‘dear’ and ‘darling’ are appropriate nicknames, so she does not greet him with her voice - but by touch. She moves towards him without hesitation, her heart thundering in her chest and her mind softly screaming to stop digging herself into a deeper hole. But she believes it to be too late already, because his scent and his eyes spread a warmth through her she craves to feel again and again. So she attempts to brush her muzzle against his, then against his cheek, her voice a soft murmur against his skin. “How are you?” She asks first, because she truly wants to know.

    And then, when she feels the gentle, but persistent, bump against her hind leg that tells her someone else has arrived. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” She steps back, revealing the white filly with ink-black markings. The filly with eyes that blaze with a fierce and curious orange fire as she looks up at the black and white pair. “This is Mazikeen.” And Agetta’s eyes, as well as that of the filly’s, are focused on Garbage - and she does not realize until she speaks again how much she fears his reaction. She knows only a sliver of his story, but what she knows is that his experience with family is complicated (to say the least).

    She speaks softly, as though that will help alleviate the weight of these two words from them both. “Our daughter.”

    Agetta


    @[garbage]
    Reply
    #2
    Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
    With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
    And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane;



    He thinks her gone, and he does not blame her for such things.
    He is used to this pattern, of brief moments with others who leave and do not return. He is used to abandonment; it is familiar in a horrible way. It’s not that he doesn’t fight it, that he doesn’t ache and wonder and hope that this time it will be different, he will do or say or
    be different, and they will stay. But he does not expect it.
    She is too kind – he knows that about her. Her forgiveness was the loveliest thing about her (and oh, there are many lovely things). He hopes, selfish, that if anything makes their paths cross again, it will be that kindness. That he will look at her and she will not look away, because of it.

    But when he sees her, when she approaches him with no hesitation, touching him – he does not wonder or hope for anything outside of this moment. He touches her back, brushing his dark muzzle against her pale cheek.
    “Better now,” he says, and that is the truth.
    And then – and then she moves, and there is a girl at her side, and he breaths in, sharp. It’s not that he hadn’t wondered – nature finds its way – but he had not thought overmuch of it, certainly had not imagined how their features might look, comingled on girl, who is a lovely mix of them.
    She has his eyes. He is sorry, for this.
    “Oh,” he says, “Mazikeen.”
    He says the name carefully. It is strange and beautiful. He smiles at their child – at the both of them – though there is a part of him that is unsure, nervous. He has fathered a handful of children, has even borne one himself, but save for Sleaze, he had never been invited into their lives overmuch. Not that he blames their mothers for this choice.
    “How are you, Mazikeen?” he asks, looking at her with a mix of awe and fear. He glances back at Agetta, smiles, and murmurs to her.
    “Thank you.”



    Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
    I never saw a brute I hated so;
    He must be wicked to deserve such pain.


    Reply
    #3

    Her heart glows with his words, skin tingling where he touches after his dark muzzle is gone. It is odd, to be falling in love again. She thinks that is what this is - but it’s been so long she wonders if she’s getting it wrong. Her love for Plume was just a fact, something she has carried with her for centuries, but this? To feel something new when she did not think new was possible for her any longer.

    Agetta likes that he has only known her after. That she has only known him in one of her lives. It feels simpler - though the situation is really anything but simple.

    When he does not run, does not scorn her or the girl they made together, Agetta relaxes. She tries not to think about what he sees when he looks into Mazikeen’s eyes, whether or not they are just a reminder of things he wishes he could forget,  But she will not ask. She wants this to be the first chapter in a new life. Whatever that means.

    Because when Agetta looks at the matching sets of orange eyes, she just sees life. She sees the start of a new family, if they'll have her. Blood already ties them, of course, but she selfishly wants to keep them both for as long as she can.

    So no, it is not in her to regret this family or the circumstances that created it. There are other concerns, of course, but they slide so easily out of her reach as she shifts to stand with him so that they face their daughter. She touches him again - unable to resist. An encouragement and a thank you of her own.

    Though young, the black and white filly does not show any shyness and stands proudly on her own - the fire in her orange eyes blazing with curiosity. “Good. Bored.” She corrects with vibrant exaggeration. “I want to go explore.” She looks to Agetta on instinct for approval and permission, but Agetta grins and turns to her attention to the stallion by her side. Her voice is gentle and considerate when she speaks - as though by tone alone she can let him know that she will not hold it against him if he were to refuse. “Perhaps your dad would like to join us?”

    She knows Mazikeen will adventure off on her own before long - and perhaps once she does there is more she should say, more she should ask.

    But now those fire eyes look back to him, a slight tilt to her small black-marked face. “Dad?” When Mazikeen repeats the word, it’s not questioning the title or his relation to her - it’s an invitation.


    Agetta
    Reply
    #4
    Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
    With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
    And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane;



    He is, historically, not good with families.
    His own parentage, of course, a mess (he’d never met his father, and his mother only twice). Cancer had spoken of family, as he’d magicked Garbage’s body into something capable of bearing children, but then he’d left, lit off with a new lover. Tabytha had showed off their twins -frail things, made of glass – and then they had left them on the shores of the beach, gone to drown together.
    (A measure that was only temporary, turns out – dead and then he wasn’t, then he was back.)
    It frightens him. He knows all this history, of course, and Agetta does not, save for pieces of it (still enough for him to have expected her to leave her, and yet -).
    But he can hope. God help him, he can hope.
    He can hope it will be different, that this time – this time! – maybe he can be a good man, a good father.
    (He’s so sorry she has his eyes.)

    He tries not to dwell on the rising tide of his failures, instead looks at her. At them. He smiles as Mazikeen speaks, bold and easy. His smile widens at the question and his nods, already affirming before he speaks.
    “I would love to,” he says, “lead the way, Mazikeen.”
    Maybe this time, it could be different.


    Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
    I never saw a brute I hated so;
    He must be wicked to deserve such pain.


    Reply
    #5

    She feels a flush of warmth at his smile, at his acceptance of the plan - it’s a small thing but it means the world that he cares enough to accept the invitation. “I call her Maze for short.” She whispers to him as she joins his side and they begin to walk.

    As Agetta expected, once they begin moving their daughter gets bored of sticking beside her parents and veers off. Though young, Agetta had noticed a wanderers soul in the filly - but she always came back.

    Which didn’t completely calm her worries, but it was convenient, as Agetta matched her stride with the stallion beside her. “I hope you don’t mind that I already named her.” She doesn’t even think to hate this sense of doubt, it is such a constant part of her now. Who would she be if she did not spend every moment of her life fretting about one thing or another. “I wasn’t sure…” She trails off for a moment, hesitation before resolving to just be up front about what she is feeling. “I wasn’t sure if you’d want to be involved. You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.” Agetta stops herself from saying that she has raised plenty of children on her own - that is hardly something she should brag about since so many of them grew up to hate her (or were kidnapped, or burned, or brainwashed…).

    She also does not mention how much she wants him to be involved, how not-ready she is to let him go from her life, out of fear of influencing his response.

    Agetta


    @[garbage]
    Reply
    #6
    Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
    With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
    And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane;



    “Maze,” he repeats with a smile, “I like it.”
    He thinks of mazes, then, twists and turns. Things complicated, but solvable. As they move, he thinks of puzzles. It’s a puzzle, why she has returned, for all her knowledge of his sins. She has told him he is worthy of forgiveness, but she doesn’t know the other things. All these chains he drags behind him.
    But he tries to shoo these thoughts from his mind, because now is not the time for him to play confessor. Now, he is simply a father, walking with his daughter and his…whatever she is. Walking with Agetta.

    The next piece she brings up cautiously, and he almost laughs, though the laugh would be a strange, choked things. He thinks again of the children he has not known, the ones he was not given the chance to know, and the ones he willingly left. He was only close to one, the child borne from his not-womb, and he’d left that boy too, hadn’t he? Left him in their meadow with no explanation, because Garbage could not find the words for an explanation, could not shape them in a way that he was willing to admit to himself.
    “Of course I do,” he says, “I’m just glad you don’t regret it.”
    He spoke wrong, he realizes, and fumbles to correct it.
    “That I’m the father, I mean. Not her. Of course you can’t regret Maze.”
    He barely knows her, but he sees she is bright, and quick, and he hopes to god she will fare better than he.
    “I don’t have a good track record, as a father,” he says, “I didn’t meet, or barely knew, most of my children.”
    (Or left them on the shore, as he walked off to die. God, the selfishness of it!)
    “I raised one myself. A boy. He turned out well.”
    Or, he had when Garbage last saw him. Years and years ago.
    He wonders if he’s digging a grave, confessing this. Yes, I want to be involved, but I am a mess.
    Wouldn’t be the first time.
    “Does she have other family around?” he asks then, trying, perhaps desperately, to claw his way out of the hole he’s dug.


    Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
    I never saw a brute I hated so;
    He must be wicked to deserve such pain.




    @[Agetta]
    Reply
    #7

    A soft smile warms her dark eyes when he fumbles to correct words that she had not thought to take offense to - and she is quick to reach out to touch him with her muzzle. “I don’t regret that you are the father, not even a little.” She says it because she thinks he needs to hear the words, hear the confirmation, and because it is true. Agetta regrets the fact that she will hurt others by her actions but she does not regret the actions themselves and she hopes she can at least sooth away that fear.

    Maybe it should worry her, his admission about his history as a father, but it doesn’t. How can she judge him for his own track record as a parent when he already is so better than so many of the other stallions she has had foals by, and when her own record hardly shines? The worst of her transgressions have been robbed from her, lost as part of her payment for returning to the world of living, but there are plenty more sins that eat through her heart like worms in an apple.

    Besides, in his admissions he says that the one son that he helped raise turned out well (or, at least, this is what Agetta takes from his talk). So she does not feel worried at all. It is so easy for her to believe her sins are greater than his - that if there was anyone in this pairing to worry about as a parent it should be her. “What’s the name of your son, the one you raised?” She asks quietly, requesting just another sliver of his past that she can hold close to her heart.

    When he asks about whether Maze has any other family, she falters - nearly even trips as she continues to walk - but recovers quickly and offers a smile. “She does. She has a pair of sisters just about a year older than her, Beyza and Caledonia.” But Agetta doesn’t explain that neither of the twins knows that Mazikeen exists, that she hasn’t figured out how to introduce the beautiful filly they made together into the family she made with someone else.

    So instead of delving into that just yet (even as she tells herself it is selfish to keep avoiding the truth) she reflects further past her pale angelic twins. “The rest of my children are no longer around.” She lapses into thought for a moment, feeling the familiar weight of her shame settle onto her back. “I failed so many of them, and so much time has passed. I don’t even know whether they’re still alive. So many years slipped by and I lost track of them. Maybe I was  missed, or maybe they were better off for me not being around."

    She sucks in a deep inhale as Mazikeen darts a little further away, noisily pouncing through the shrubs and undoubtedly chasing some poor creature.

    Agetta finds her hope again at the end of that breath, and it's reflected in the warm gaze that finds him again. “Together we’ll do better.” She’s already sure Mazikeen will be a rather independent foal, and she can’t complain - maybe both Agetta and Garbage need an easy win right now.

    Agetta


    @[garbage]
    Reply
    #8
    Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
    With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
    And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane;



    He is relived, at her words, exhales a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Not that he had expected cruelty, exactly – it does not seem within her nature to be cruel – but there could have something, a pause, or a twist of phrase that he could have read into. But instead, she simply affirms him. It’s almost disconcerting, because he is still so unused to such kindness, he is still so surprised that she is here, letting him meet their daughter, touching him.
    Like it’s all some dream he will wake from.
    She asks then of his son, and he hesitates, unsure of what, or how much, to say. He stumbles forward, in words and movement both.
    “Sleaze,” he says. A linage of terrible names – the child of Cancer and Garbage, what else could he have been named but something ugly, something to sum up the transactional relationship between the magician who had saved – and then abandoned – him?
    “His…father left, and we were alone. Outside of Beqanna. It was just the two of us, for years.”
    The two of them, praying in a meadow. Sleaze’s knees had gone raw from it. What had become of him? Garbage should have tried harder, to find him. Maybe he’s still alive. Maybe he’s okay. Maybe.

    He’s glad, though, that there are others. That there’s a support system for Maze, when –
    if, he insists to himself, if - he fails her. He listens to the rest of her words, feels a new kinship he had not expected – the ache of lost children.
    “It’s hard,” he says, “to keep them close.”
    As if he hadn’t left Sleaze, with no word. As if he hadn’t left Contagion and Adaline on the shores of the beach.
    As if he’d tried.
    It will be different, he thinks, with her.
    As if he hasn’t thought this a hundred times.
    “Yes,” he says, “we’ll do better.”


    Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
    I never saw a brute I hated so;
    He must be wicked to deserve such pain.




    @[Agetta]
    Reply
    #9

    When he says the name of his son, Agetta thinks it’s a joke for a moment - but doesn’t laugh. She just listens. It’s a story she knows well enough, being left behind with a foal to raise without a father. If she’s surprised that he had a child with another stallion she doesn’t show it - she knows the workings of Beqanna (even if she does not know that one of her own children has two mothers and no father).

    She can sympathize, though. “I raised most of my foals on my own as well. Many of them… they weren’t created out of anything close to love and their fathers did not stick around.” She can’t bring herself to admit this failing of hers in any more of a direct manner, the secret she’s kept about how often she had failed to escape or fight off someone who had come to take something she was unwilling to give. The guilt she feels when she thinks about more than a few of her children, knowing they were created from hate and knowing she never could quite get over that beginning.

    Agetta loves all of her children deeply, but she favours the ones that do not remind her of how often she has failed.

    Did she let the others slip away from her, she wonders. Putting space between herself and her sins?

    She finds a smile again when he agrees about how they'll do better this time and she inhales deeply, as though a cleansing breath will wash away all the dark thoughts. Agetta reaches out to nudge Garbage gently on his sleek neck when she speaks again. “I think though, if we’re to have any more foals, we’ll decide on some cheerier names together.” It’s a gentle way to tease him about the trend that has started in his family - and belated she is startled at how easy it is to think of a future where they are together. Where a larger family is a possibility for them. Guilt floods her and she looks away, off to where Mazikeen has paused to watch a squirrel chittering in a tree.

    Agetta keeps delaying the day when she will have to confront the truth that she is in love with two different stallions - neither of which she has been completely honest with. Will she leave Garbage and go find Plume to snuggle beneath his wing? She’s not quite so bold as that, so she’ll continue to avoid both the thoughts and the confrontations.

    Agetta


    @[garbage]
    Reply
    #10
    Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
    With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
    And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane;



    Sleaze had been created in a sort of love – Cancer had loved him, even if it was a misguided kind of love. Garbage had been a stand-in, a representation of another who Cancer could not have – the magician had not told him this, or at least not so explicitly, but Garbage had known, and had not particularly minded. He did not think, then, that anyone would love him for him, so he was content to masquerade as someone else.
    He had not loved the magician, exactly – he had been too broken, his wounds too raw.
    And what of the children who came out of love?
    He had not been good to them. Not malicious, certainly, but not present – their mothers had left, by then, had not chosen to have him in his life. Not that he had persisted. He knows so few of them, and it bothers him more now, as he looks at Maze, wondering how much he missed, or what’s become of them.

    He smiles at her words, nods in agreement.
    “I can’t say it’s been my strong suit,” he says. His own name was bequeathed to him in such vitriol, and he had not fully realized the horror of it for years.
    The thought, though, of more children – ones with pleasant names – sends a tingle through him. He’s shocked, maybe, that she’s thought of this, envisioned some future where there are more children, purposeful ones. That Maze was not some gorgeous mistake.
    He is not used to being spoken of in future tense. He is so used to moments, ones he clings to like a drowning man, because they are gone and he is, understandably, forgotten.
    “I think I’d like more,” he says, then amends, “with you. Someday. If I can prove myself with Maze.”


    Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
    I never saw a brute I hated so;
    He must be wicked to deserve such pain.




    @{Agetta] also lmfao poor garbage doens't know what this breeding season hath wrought....love these timelines
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