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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


    there's a devil in my brain with a pitchfork and a flame
    #1

    elio

    some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
    and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light

    Nestled beneath an early morning fog, Elio dreams of Loess. Amongst monstera and flowering cacti, Lepis towers, somehow hands taller than Elio can ever dream to be. He gulps, biting his tongue until blood dribbles from between his lips. Somehow, he has disappointed her. It’s clear in the steel of her eyes and the set of her lips. Elio cowers backward, upturned chin quivering shamefully while unable to break her gaze.

    “You should have tried harder,” Lepis says simply, then flicks her gaze behind Elio. “Take him,” she murmurs. A mass of variously marked gold and navy guards surround him. No coherent word is able to leave his lips before he feels so crushed that he can’t breath—

    He gasps—

    Uh!

    Elio’s cry is muffled by surrounding fog. Chilly autumn dew drips, drips, drips irritably into his tousled, sleep-mussed mane. The panic from being awoken by a nightmare allows him to skip drearily blinking and stretching his limbs; instead, Elio lurches upward, joints protesting against such a sudden movement in a damp climate. Four young but still sizable redwoods makeup the back of the pine needle bed Elio had made, and he looks like their ruler with the roguish way he now stands in front of them. Each trunk breaks up the thick mist, giving the appearance of five tendrils of fog coming together to surge around their King.

    King of the Fog suits him, actually.

    So does Taiga, too.


    @[Nashua]
    [Image: elio-by-dozymare-ddo34i6.png]
    Reply
    #2
    NASHUA

    He’s listened (as well as he can anyways). Nashua keeps the adventuring to a minimum - though he tells himself that when he can, once he finally figures his wings out, there isn’t an inch of Beqanna that he plans to miss. There is a whole world out there waiting for him. He can feel it.

    But at this age, he is all awkward angles and at only a few months old, his adventuring days are still far ahead of him.

    Nashua likes to come out by the coastline. The wind that blows in from the ocean is often erratic, strong - not yet broken by the might of Taiga’s guarded woods. He likes to spread his wings out and let the air flow over and under them, to imagine (if only for a moment), what it must truly feel to fly.

    This morning had been somewhat of a useless effort. The air was moist - too chilly for his fledgling wings - and the damp had made it almost impossible for him to practice in a small clearing he had claimed as his own. It didn’t mean that he couldn’t try - his white stockings stained with mud and pine needles clung to the edges of his wings, in his flaxen tail, told a story of a boy trying very hard.

    There had been more falling than flying and he is returning home to his mother and twin brother, very much a tired child with scraped knees.

    Tomorrow, he tells himself. He will try again tomorrow.

    But when he passes a tetrad of Redwoods, instead of there simply being trees, there is a stranger. (Normally, he has to travel outside of Taiga to find them. Imagine his delight when he spies one here!) The winged colt stops and peers curiously at him - at the red and the gold and most importantly, the wings.

    There is a look of admiration as they trace the burning edges of them.

    Nashua looks up, impressed. "Your wings look like fire.”

    A pegasus could light up the skies with wings like that.

    and for every king that died
    they would crown another


    @[elio]
    [Image: jCdBK6.png]
    Reply
    #3

    elio

    some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
    and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light

    “Oh, these?” Elio replies, the warmth of a cozy campfire glowing in his gaze. He turns so that his side faces Nashua just a little more and then stretches until the tip of a feather barely touches the forest floor. The smile that stretches his lips also manages to reach his eyes and here, shrouded by his birthplace’s mist, Elio looks like the sweet-faced and troubled child he was—so opposite the boy before him.

    Nashua’s interruption isn’t expected but it does not entirely come as a surprise. Elio has always known Taiga to be fruitful and laughter-filled, despite the memories his father left behind. The flaxen tangles and boyish eyes look so natural among the pines and the redwoods—Elio thinks, for a bare moment, that he is six months old and this new face is actually just a boy he gets to grow up with. Memories of tossing and bucking over the bouncy soil and memories of stumbling over vicious pine cones shine like a fresh spring sun across his mind.

    Elio is not there, smelling a damp Taigan spring and falling in mud, though.

    And Nashua is certainly not his friend.

    “They’d be cooler if they were actual fire,” Elio finally adds, deciding these intrusive false memories are weird and he was certainly acting strange. At least it was a smooth attempt to make up for it.

    “Have you seen those? Wings of fire? They’re awesome,” this Elio says while stepping closer to Nashua. He holds his wings loosely to his sides and peers down at the boy.

    “I like your gold feathers.”


    @[Nashua]
    [Image: elio-by-dozymare-ddo34i6.png]
    Reply
    #4
    NASHUA

    There is a glow in his gaze that draws the boy in further. It’s like firelight and Nashua comes closer, appreciating the warmth that flickers there. He has yet to encounter a horse that doesn’t feel familiar and this one is no different. There is nothing in his young mind that thinks they aren’t friends. That they won’t be after today.

    So far, much of his short life has gone this way.

    "Yeah,” his smile burns into a grin.

    They aren’t actual fire but Nashua doesn’t feel disappointed. They are still a remarkable set of wings and thinking of his own brother, of his own mother - he knows that some horses aren’t as fortunate as he and Elio are. "They're still pretty cool,” he thinks out loud as his green eyes fall to the outer edges of crimson wings, pretending that they scorch the soil where the young stallion stands.

    It’s a fun thing to imagine.

    "No,” he says with a firm shake of his copper head. "But I’d like too, someday.” Nashua adds. He smiles again and helps close the space between himself and this newcomer to Taiga’s woods. He tilts his head, curious because the way that this stallion speaks sounds as if he has seen them before and it only fuels the wanderlust already flowing in his veins at such a young age.

    "You’ve seen them before? Do they live in Loess with the dragons? Or Tephra, maybe?” There had been some stories about the kingdom to the West and he had even glimpsed the volcano once - on their travels to Ischia. Perhaps the fire-flyers shared kinship with its sleeping giant.

    He loosens his own wings and casts an appraising glance back to the gold that the visitor has just complimented. Suddenly, the things he had been proud of this morning (the way his wings had started to stretch out, how much bigger they had seemed) pale in the comparison of this blazing, golden stallion. Casting a longing glance back at his red wings again, Nashua looks up. "Thanks,” he says - knowing it's the polite thing to do. And then with a boyish grin, he adds: "I like yours the way they are. If you had fire wings, the trees might not like it.”

    and for every king that died
    they would crown another


    @[elio]
    [Image: jCdBK6.png]
    Reply
    #5

    elio

    some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
    and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light

    That eager innocence that Nashua wears in his smile makes Elio’s heart stutter to a stop. He watches, grey gaze so very clear for a normally stormy face, as the boy bares his emotions so openly on his sleeve. Even at his most carefree, Elio can’t recall feeling so certain when he was a boy. Envy, a wretched and green thing, clogs his throat and begs to be coughed up. Elio digs a hoof into the pine needles, faltering on such a vile emotion.

    “Yes,” comes Elio’s relieved exclamation as Nashua continues to speak. He brings back the smile he didn’t realize had faltered. “Yes, a woman in Loess. She looked like a walking flame, with fur to match her wings,” he adds, his tone catering to a child’s imagination. He hadn’t seen her in a while, actually, and for the briefest moment he balks at the idea of taking Nashua all the way to Loess only to offer disappointment. Elio doesn’t have the kind of heart meant to weather the rises and falls of nurturing children.

    But that won’t happen, Elio thinks, then wonders why encountering a child-stranger flusters him more than encountering someone he admires.

    “Thank you,” Elio slowly replies to Nash, straightening his head and ruffling his wings against his sides. He is pleased, but in a strange, distant way—one he tries but fails to figure out in the few seconds he has to think. “Do you . . .” he trails off, eyes slipping from Nash’s to the wing hanging loosely on his stomach. Elio twists to lightly wrap his teeth around an especially bright feather, then lets it float gracefully to the forest floor.

    “Do you want to keep that?” Elio finally finishes, smiling hesitantly. He isn’t sure if it’s the right thing to do, but it seems like a sweet thing; and he thinks that if he were in Nashua’s position, he’d want a random stranger to be kind and weird.

    Hell, I’m being weird.

    As a quick recovery, he adds, “I’m Elio. Do you have a name?”


    @[Nashua]
    [Image: elio-by-dozymare-ddo34i6.png]
    Reply
    #6
    NASHUA

    His eyes widen eagerly with Elio’s admission, his mind contriving an image of a woman of smoke and fire, who as the older stallion describes as a ‘walking flame’. The pair of them might stand beneath the guarded towers of Taiga’s trees but the colt’s imagination has already flown clear across Beqanna, to Loess. He’s never seen such a thing, had never known he wanted to see such a thing but @[elio] has painted it for him.

    It’s an image already being crafted in his young mind, clear as day.

    The young colt takes a few steps closer, wondering if perhaps the pegasus stallion will elaborate more on Loess, more on the fire-woman, more on anything of their outside world. (Taiga is big enough, for now, but there is a calling in him that so wants to know what else is out there. It can be so hard to see behind their walls of mist and evergreen.)

    There is no more talk about that but there is a consolation: a lone red feather that dances from the winged man's side and when Elio motions to grab it, Nashua stands there with bright, hopeful eyes. "Can I?” he asks, though his voice drops to a whisper. There is hesitance in the dunalino’s eyes and there is a gnawing in the back of Nash’s thoughts that remind him that he’s seen it before. He’s seen his Mother look that way a few times - a reluctance he still doesn’t understand.

    It’s enough, though, to make him pause.

    His mind turns and a thought clicks into place. Elio is giving something to him. He should offer something in return.

    "I have a fort,” he attempts with a childish tenor. "It’s a secret though. Mama says Yan and I are the only ones who should know about it.” That does make him apprehensive because this isn’t Yanhua. But maybe, he thinks with a shy smile, they could turn it into something of their own.

    "We could take it there,” he tries again and then a little braver adds, "My name is Nashua. But maybe we could have nicknames.” His eyes linger again on the red wings again, thinking that nicknames and secret forts sound like the kinds of adventures a well-traveled pegasus like Elio would have. "Mama calls me Little Feather,” he does smile good-naturedly at that. Not the most stoic or brave of monikers but he loves to tell her how someday she will have to call him Big Feather when he’s grown. That ever elusive someday.

    His green eyes drop longingly to the red feather on the damp soil before he looks up again, "Maybe you could be… Fire Wing?”


    and for every king that died
    they would crown another


    @[elio]
    [Image: jCdBK6.png]
    Reply
    #7

    elio

    some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
    and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light

    Above the crossed paths of long-lost brothers, the sun begins to bear down warm enough to clear the fog. A chilled breeze passes, rustling the changing leaves of the canopy and tangling Elio’s already mussed forelock. He shakes his head disagreeably as a stray lock covers an eye, one single dapple of morning sun tracing circles across his face.

    “Of course,” Elio states, dropping his lips to a thin, sincere smile and gesturing at the feather with his nose.

    The gears turn in Nashua’s head as Elio’s eyes drift to the markings on the boy’s legs the fog had hidden. Gold, like mine, he muses, then frowns as what should have been an obvious realization hits him: and striped. Nervously, Elio flits his eyes to the surrounding trees, lingering on shadows he cannot pick apart. There, as far as his eyes can strain, he nearly convinces himself a murky, golden equine form awaits.

    Don’t be stupid.

    Nashua is not the first familiarly striped child he has stumbled upon, and he certainly won’t be the last; but no matter how many times he finds a stray piece of his father, that paranoia never grows old. Guilt nags Elio again, for nearly souring a boy’s adventure with something so trivial and unlikely. She forces his hand, that guilt, convincing him he now owes Nashua something better than a feather.

    Elio blinks down at Nash, finally registering the words fort and Mama says. His moment of hesitation might have lasted longer if the look on Nash’s face while offering a nickname wasn’t so endearing. He might have politely declined and winged home to Lepis had the words Fire Wing not been so hopeful.

    And he might have turned tail and run had the guilt over coloring a mere child with his father’s pain been eating him alive.

    “Okay,” Elio starts, hesitantly, then warms up: “Okay!” He dips his head to grab the feather and tangles it just enough to hold in Nashua’s mane

    “Take me to your fort, Little Feather.”


    @[Nashua]
    [Image: elio-by-dozymare-ddo34i6.png]
    Reply
    #8
    NASHUA

    He likes the sincere smile on @[Elio]’s face. It’s easy for him to understand, to read. Nashua looks up at him with a reckless grin, unaware of how it smolders at the edges of his pale face. (Elio might recognize that too if he was looking - the way the wild parts of it haunt through the Taigan fog.)

    Nashua knows that he’s being studied though. He can see the way that the dunalino’s eyes have dropped and regard him, the gold striping that marks him as different from his mother and brother just as his wings do. There is something comforting in finding Elio’s, though. It’s nice to know that there are others out there like him. It only fuels his desire to see them, to find these other flyers and these other horses who are like him. And better, not like him at all.

    Nashua already has a young desire to see Beqanna for all it’s blazing differences, Fire Wing and all.

    There it is again. The start of a frown starts to cloud Nash’s face but it doesn’t take long for him bring it back for Elio. He’ll bring his warmth back out. He’s like a sun, he thinks. He just likes to hide behind the clouds from time to time.

    Not here though. Not with Nash.

    He’s even more thrilled when the stallion places the red feather in pale mane, giving him a burst of color where there was none before.

    Turning his small head to get a better look at it, he admires the way it looks. How much older (he assumes) he must look with it placed there. "I wish I had something to give you,” he looks back up to the elder stallion, suddenly seeking out his grey eyes. His auburn feathers settle restlessly against his sides, "Mine are so small.”

    He likes being Little Feather. He does. But sometimes he wishes he could be big, like Elio, like his Father.

    "This way,” he whispers, lowering his voice in case the woods might hear him. The pegasus colt weaves through the trees, slides beneath a large fern and walks along an older trail. Not many horses frequent this side of the wood, come this way. His sister does though.

    "My sister says the best hunting is done on this side of the forest,” Nashua thinks out loud. That had been another thrilling discovery in these woods, like Elio. He turns his head back, tilting it curiously. He knows not all horses hunt - he certainly doesn’t - but what about his new friend?

    "Have you tried it before, Fire Wing?”

    and for every king that died
    they would crown another
    [Image: jCdBK6.png]
    Reply
    #9

    elio

    some say I should learn to cry but I only learned how to fight
    and I know everything must die but nothing fades like the light

    "I'm happy to just hang out," Elio quips contentedly, "so I don't need something in return. Sometimes gifts are just gifts." He doesn't mean to lecture (and maybe Nashua won't see his words that way); but Elio knows that many times, especially in a place such as Beqanna, that "gifts" come with expectations, and this gift Nashua will never have to do anything to earn.

    The way his face lights up is simply enough.

    Elio is happy to fall into step behind Little Feather, dipping his head low to the ground to appear as if he's being stealthy (there's no way to be stealthy while red and gold in the middle of brown and green). When the pair reaches a large fern, Lio lifts the leaves with his nose to make more room for Nash to squeeze through, then shimmies by while the verdant leaves deposit little dew drops on his coat. For now, he keeps his gaze locked on the leading colt's chestnut and gold frame, wondering why it took him all this time to discover his affinity for children.

    An amused snort leaves Elio's nose when Nash asks about hunting. He is reminded of feral Celina, and wonders just how commonplace carnivorous horses are in Beqanna. He remembers his sister liking this part of Taiga, too, and that brings a smile to his face.

    "No, I eat grass and too many Loessian fruits," Elio answers with a small laugh. "But my sister hunts, too. She mostly likes fish, though this part of Taiga was one of her favorites, too. Do you live in Taiga? I used to live here with my family." If only Elio knew how much the pair have in common. Both raised in Taiga with a (at the very least) strange father named Wolfbane.

    Another smile, warm, unsuspecting, and terribly genuine once again lights up Elio's face.

    "I bet your fort is even better than the one I had growing up."


    @[Nashua]
    [Image: elio-by-dozymare-ddo34i6.png]
    Reply
    #10
    NASHUA

    It’s a different thing than he has been taught. Nashua has been taught that there is always balance - where something is given, something else has to be taken. It’s been explained to him that it is one of the oldest, most sacred laws of their world. It’s a law that has to be abided even by Magic.

    So the fact that Elio just gives him something, that it’s just given with nothing expected.. Well, the boy blinks.

    It’s a new revelation for him but it makes him warm to Elio more. He might not have anything to give now but when he finds something - perhaps a smooth pebble from the beach - Nashua knows he will share it with the gold-and-red stallion. As his smile broadens, he thinks that it’d be nice to do the same thing for him - to give something just for the sake of giving.

    While he leads, he follows Elio’s example and hangs his own head low, lengthens his steps so they might be quieter. It’s an adventure and Nashua’s mind is already creating the obstacles they have face - a bear cowers behind a tree, a coyote who breathes fire leaps from behind a log, bugs who come the sky and swallow stars - and when they’ve all been conquered, Nashua looks back over his shoulder to see that Elio is still there.

    That his new friend is following and he grins, ”You're very brave.”

    The games are all made-up, the villains imaginary. Nashua knows this but Elio has stayed with him through this whole adventure.

    Somewhere between their foes and their destination, the golden stallion tells him about Loess. Tells him about how he has a sister too who hunts. It’s something in common that they have and it makes him wonder, ”Do you have brothers? I have a twin. Yanhua.”

    ”And yea, we live in Taiga. We sometimes go to Nerine but we’ve been here for…,” Nashua pauses to think. A long time. "Ever." He likes the idea of @[elio] living here though - it builds a warmth in his chest that they share this, just like they are sharing travels today. Curious he asks, ”When did you leave?”

    And then his (short) attention is redirected to the point of this adventure. The Fort. Nashua lowers his voice, ”It’s old. It’s covered with moss and leaves but Yan and I like to go there.”

    (Nashua can’t know that his Fort - the one that belongs to him and his brother - belonged to his Mother, once upon a time. A place that Lilliana had scoured the Redwoods for, a place to trade secrets and stories with Elaina.)

    Nashua tilts his head, ”What was your fort like?”

    and for every king that died
    they would crown another
    [Image: jCdBK6.png]
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