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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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    [complete]  turn and face the strange; any
    #21


    She is asleep when it finds her.

    Curled sweetly into the earth. Too young even to know of magic, too young to know that she and her sister and their father are not the ordinary ones. Surrounded by glass, she thinks it normal. Thinks her mother the strange one, giggles at her warm, warm skin when she touches her.

    But, aware of it or not, the magic finds her where she is sleeping. Her nose extended in her sister’s direction, breathing so softly that she’s barely breathing at all.

    It finds her and it stirs her awake in the dark. And she gasps when she lifts her weary head and, there in the moonlight, a glass hoof glitters. She has become accustomed to the way she refracts the light, but this is something altogether different. She blinks in surprise while something funny and nervous wraps itself tight around her hammering heart.

    But it is not only the hoof. She turns her head and her heart skitters when she finds the rest of her body glittering, too. Her surprise kicks her fully awake and she murmurs, “Hour,” quiet. The voice shaky. And when her sister does not stir, she whispers her name again. But Hourglass is too lost to her sleep to be roused, so Clementia lays down her weary head and squeezes her eyes closed.

    Just a dream. When she wakes in the morning everything will be as it should be.

    And things are different when she wakes, but not in the way she had hoped. No, the only difference she finds when she wakes is that the sunlight amplifies the glittering even more.
    crack the shutters open wide
    i wanna bathe you in the light of day
    C  L  E  M  E  N  T  I  A



    clementia now has glittering, thank you!!
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    #22
    The midnight air whips around my wings as I fly tonight. The open sky above me aches with a blackness, alleviated only by the pinprick stars which twinkle here, there, and everywhere. The warmth of the season lends this night's flight a joyful and carefree energy, an energy which I exude from my every pore; young as I am yet, not much troubles me in the world.

    Not much, that is, until the dust rolls in.

    How it came to be in such a high altitude I haven't time to wonder as, wracked by coughs, I stagger towards the earth. The nebulescent glow of my wings becomes swallowed as I fall but they do not falter in their attempts to keep me alive. Moments later, I alight upon Tephran soil, my knees jolting with the speed of the impact. Still, an exuberant smile colours my expression, and I reach back to preen my wings. Thank you, I whisper to them. And then, gazing up through the dust, And thank you, to the stars.

    Figuring that I ought to conclude the night's adventures in the wake of the universe's distinct message to me, I turn about on my string-bean legs and trot back to the coconut grove, where mother and mama await me. As I run, the dust that'd brought me down burrows its way into my mane and tail with a seeming consciousness that most other dust lacks. A snort and a shake of my head does little to budge the stuff. Gross!

    Yet, as I nuzzle my way into my mothers' sides, a dozen twinkles begin to form in my mane and tail. Eyelids heavy with sleep, I assume the twinkling to be a dream-related phenomena (those being rather common in my family) and go to sleep. Little do I know that the stars have further impressed themselves on to my body.

    OOC: Indius claims "stars" or "starry points", like "flowers" but instead of flowers it's a dozen or so glowing beads in his mane and tail.
    [Image: indi]
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    #23
    She is fast asleep, curled up against her mother’s warm scales, when the shift comes upon the mountain. She doesn’t awaken just yet but the two older dragons stir, sharing a concerned glance as a strange dust travels across the midnight sky. Clarissa reaches for Ghaul and brushes her muzzle against his for comfort, and soothes her mate back to sleep with a gentle song. The sound of her mother’s voice causes Ciri to stir and she mumbles in her sleep, trying desperately to cling to her dreams.

    Clarissa murmurs something to her as well, and then gasps, fully rousing the girl from her sleep. She blinks against a sudden, startlingly bright light as Clarissa tugs at Ghaul incessantly, who jerks awake with a swiftness that startles the sleepy child. Gar and Phyx are awakened by the sudden movement and noise as well, and when Phyx’s eyes widen, Ciri realizes that something about her has changed. “What’s wrong with me?” Ciri whimpers, staring between her parents as if this could simply be explained away.

    But Clarissa is beaming down at her, her white scales glittering in the sudden light. “Absolutely nothing, my little angel,” she whispers as Frenzy snores loudly in the corner of the nest, undisturbed by all of the commotion. “You are just as perfect as you were before you went to sleep, my darling.”

    Placated and sleepy, Ciri nods her head and closes her eyes again, curling tightly back into her dam. Clarissa, beaming around at her children and her mate, gestures to them all. “Come here, my family, and let me sing you back to sleep.”

    With her parents and her siblings curled around her and keeping her warm, Ciri doesn’t stir again until morning.


    cirilla is claiming a halo <3
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    #24
    I watch him as he stands, my blue-grey eyes bright. He is bold - more than just my confidence aiding him - and I smile proudly.

    There is a distant quake, and the wind picks up.

    I raise my head, breathing deeply. It does not smell like a summer storm. What then, I wonder, glancing back down at Kestrell. Only then do I see the dust, glittering, and the way it seems to be caught up in my newborn’s mane. It reaches me a moment later, intangible, but tasting of magic and the mountain.

    Something changes when it brushes past me, a weight settles - or perhaps lifts? - but after a second breath I feel no different at all.

    “I did see that,” I tell him with a fond smile, stepping closer to touch where his mane glitters. I bend to catch the black feather before it can drift away, and I tuck it between my own feathers for safekeeping. It will join the others, in the nest I had made for myself. And now for Kestrell.

    ooc: lepis is claiming serial immortality Smile
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    #25
    The magic finds her differently than it finds the rest, hidden away as she is with no true shape, no true form, no real tangibility to her little body. She exists only because her mothers know of her, only because Indius can remember being curled beside her in the dark before they ever truly existed.

    It is strange to exist only as a memory, as a concept, but she is grateful for it nonetheless.

    She is asleep when the magic finds her - and if only she knew it were magic that found her, that picked her out of anyone else to give something beautiful to, she would feel such gentle joy! But instead she sleeps through the moment, napping among the soft petals of a giant pink flower, basking in sunlight that is soft and gold and hazy, with clouds that caress her skin in the gentle touch she misses from her mothers so much. She changes, but she is unaware of it even happening.

    When she wakes and yawns, climbing out of her summer nest to stretch languidly and flex those beautiful red and blue wings, she glances down and sees a pair of hooves so delicate and cloven and better suited to the quiet does who dream of shady forests and apples beneath tall trees. But she doesn’t even understand that they are new, that they weren’t already hers. She looks down and feels a flicker of curiosity, and then the quiet of acceptance that of course these little split hooves are hers. What else would they be?

    It is the way of things in the dreamscape, the quiet acceptance of things that, perhaps sometime later when reflected back upon, will make no sense at all. But for now she accepts, and with the sun warm on her face and dandelion seeds the size of head floating past and tickling her skin, she is happy in this make-believe body. This conceptual existence, cloven hooves and all.

    iridian

    we are infinite as the universe we hold inside



    iridian is claiming cloven hooves, thank you! <3
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    #26
    When the dust finds Capulet, he is a ball of shadow curled beneath a clear moon.

    The shimmering line of particles is silvery and ethereal beneath the bright summertime moon. Around the sleeping shadow family crickets hum peacefully and a family of red foxes hunts for a lazy meal. Capulet looks like he belongs there, among the small woodland creatures, not quite the fawn he once was but still so small that his shadows do not make him look intimidating. He dreams peacefully, of a sky with a purple sun and a ground with pink grass and -

    In the distance, an angel.

    She is cloudy and peaceful, a striking mixture of blue, red, and white. Cap watches in awe, swallowing roughly on a suddenly dry throat. Like a cloud, she floats, one little hoof in front of the other. He thinks he has found something mystical in a way unlike the rest of Beqanna. Some secret about growing up his parents didn't tell him about.

    A guardian angel.

    Surely a winged girl as ethereal as the one before him can be nothing other than an angel. And she must mean something, right? Angels don't just appear in dreams for nothing. Capulet imagines she must be here to protect him, courtesy of boyhood naivety and little dash of selfishness.

    Beneath reality's moon, the shadow boy twitches as his heart races. The Mountain's blessed sand spins a circle above his head. A halo appears, the exact blue of the girl's streak of hair, casting dim light upon the boy's shifting edges.


    capulet is claiming a halo! <3
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    #27
    The tall grasses tickled her belly as she marched proudly behind mama.  Drear had no clue where they were going, but that didn't bother her much.  Getting there was typically the more fun part anyhow.

    Today she was pretending the Meadow grass was the northern sea and that every time the wind blew, the waves would churn and crash.  But she wasn’t afraid, because she was a master of the water! 

    She’s about to zoom another circle around her mother when a flash of red brings her to a skidding stop.   It’s a red flower, looking almost glittery in the right light when she titled her head just so.  Gingerly, she dares a sniff.  The scent is lovely but it tickles her nose and there’s not a chance to stop the sneeze that sends the sparkling dust into a plume about her.   Sniffling, she studies it again.

    It was so pretty.
    She wondered if it tasted as pretty as it looked.

    With a muted pluck the girl chomped the flower from its stem, vigorously chewing.  The taste started out as pleasant as she could’ve ever dreamt and, contented, she smiled.  But then something went wrong. Very, very, very wrong.  The sweetness turned bitter and the happy smile of hers soured and shriveled to a frown.

    With as much gusto as she could muster she spat it out, shaking her head hard enough to collapse her rump beneath her and into an awkward sitting position.

    A short distance ahead, Breckin stopped and turned, having realized the tiny foot steps didn't sound as close as they ought to be.   “Drear...?” her voice trails off as her mouth hangs slightly ajar, shooting a baffled look at the wide-eyed Starr of her daughter.   “How did you get all of those flowers in your mane?”



    OOC:  Drear is claiming Flowers please and thank you!
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    #28
    He is a stranger in a strange land.

    He’s come to see Beqanna for himself, from its rolling idyllic hills to its deep canyons and all the spaces in between.  He’s come open and willing to learn, to see but not leave a hoofprint of his own behind, because he does not plan on staying.  Because besides their vastness and majesty, the sunrise lands are known to harbor far darker sights.  And he does not plan on being around long enough to rest his eyes on those. 

    Finian breathes in the fresh scent of early fall as he tracks his gaze upwards towards the Mountain in the distance.  A grin tugs at the corner of his lips, because this is the crowning jewel of the entire place.  It is indeed a marvelous sight with its jagged grey peaks cutting into the blue sky, seemingly piercing the heavens.  Oh, the rumors he’s heard about the great rise!  Surely, less of them true than to be believed by the gossiping masses.  He squares his shoulders and moves in for a closer look, unable to resist the call of the unknown.

    The journey is pleasant but longer than he anticipates.  By the culmination of it, stars have begun to blink into existence far above his head.  The gently rolling hills have become steep inclines this close to the massive mountain, and he must crane his head at a sharp angle to visually take any of it in.  “You sure are a great beauty, aren’t you?”  Finian thinks he’ll circumnavigate the slopes in the morning, take a story back home to tell his children some day of the lovely beast of a mountain he’s finally seen for himself. 

    But first, sleep must come.  Already, his eyes seem to sink with the weight of all his wandering.  Soon, he curls up at the base of the Mountain, his dreams coming quickly after that.  Finian dreams that the Mountain is alive, groaning and rumbling in its own sleep beside him.  He rolls over at one point, his back pressed into the layers of silt and limestone, only to feel the earth rattle against his spine.
     
    In the morning, he yawns and stretches and shakes a layer of dust from his pale coat.  Unbeknownst to him, some of it clings fast regardless, seeping and soaking into his skin.  The stallion is none the wiser – not a first – to the consequences of his visit.  He circles the Mountain, makes his memories, and leaves almost as he had intended.  But the hoofprint he presses into the earth remains behind, becomes different, too.



    ooc: Finian is claiming cloven hooves please!
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    #29
    these have all been updated - please PM or tag me either in this post or in updates if I've missed you!
    [Image: Leah.png]
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