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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


    walking on sunshine; nashua
    #1
    Pollen fell asleep in the forest, nestled deep in a bed of smushed grass. She slept and dreamt and did not stir until the sunlight hit her eyelids and she blinked herself awake in a matter of moments. Even her bees began to stir, crawling from the hive-home they’d made in her aster-bedecked mane. Honeycombs and purple blooms in the pale froth of hair that tumbled down her neck; she looked like some meadow-nymph that had wandered astray.

    She stood and stretched and smiled at the trees. Clearly an odd girl but aren’t those always the best kind? The fringe-type folk that don’t quite seem to fit in. Pollen kind of likes the forest, and her bees were divided on it - some liked the prospect of the trees and others preferred the more open spaces. Their debates buzzed on in the background as she continued to look around. 

    There happened to be a little sun-dappled path off to the side that she noticed. It looked inviting and charming, as only those kinds of paths can look. Quaint, might be more apt and of course, she decided to take it. Those are the kinds of paths that lure curious girls like her into deep dark forests that fill themselves up with spiderwebs and howls. Not that Pollen was afraid at all.

    Golden and slim, a train of bees trailing after her, she skittered down that path like a wild hare until noticing that the trees began to change all around her. Her progress slowed as she looked up in awe, staring and sometimes tripping over exposed roots. The trees had grown more massive and towering, redwoods she guessed. Mist crept around their bases and lent the air an eeriness that still did not manage to scare her.

    If anything, she remained awed, certain the palpitations in her heart came from anticipation and excitement rather than fear and foreboding. Even her bees seemed more hushed than usual, opting to crawl back up under her hair or cling to the golden fur of her back in a line. It never occurred to her that she was trespassing, had crossed some invisible boundary designating this as something separate from the common lands.

    Somehow, she had bypassed the hilly regions and stuck to this old enchanting path that kept her tucked up in the trees. Such mishaps were rarely given consideration; this place seemed to possess a magic all its own that was part of and independent from its denizens and she was not exempt from that. Not as she felt an unseen pull towards this place, creeping forth in hushed reverence with a gaze that was nearly rapturous in its worship of the trees until she tripped again —

    “Ow!” Pollen muttered, grumbling unintelligibly just a little as she craned her head down to eye her foreleg. This was the third time she’d managed to go down on her knee and it’ll likely bruise or swell from all this carelessness and abuse. She takes to herself in consternation, jolting a few bees into flight from her back with her uncharacteristic fit of anger. Pollen knew they’d be back, not that they had gone far to begin with. 

    The bees sort of just hovered in front of her face, providing just the distraction she needed as she blew a friendly snort out at them and the bees caught the updraft of air with their wings and buzzed happily back at her. It left her standing there beneath the giant redwoods with a big grin on her face.

    @[Nashua] ❤️
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    #2
    He is still hurting from his flight to the Isle but he’s still grinning from that, too.

    There is a part of Nashua - some madcap part of him - that is still glowing from that trip. He had made it to the Isle and back in one day. The trip had a spontaneous one but the Winds had cooperated! (As if they had planned it all along - as if the Winds and his Aunt Elaina had been in some quiet conspiracy with each other.) They had bolstered and boosted the boy as he careened on swift, summer breezes. There had been updrafts from the open ocean that taught him to arc his wings a certain way, lulls that made him flap them harder until he could comfortably coast again.

    Nashua had arrived on Leilan’s shores tired and spent but shining and animated. The trip back had been filled with thrills in its own way, too. He had been so exhausted and the Taigan coastline had looked much closer when the growing stallion had been standing on the glassy, gleaming shore of Icicle Isle. It was only when the late afternoon wind started to rest with the rest of Beqanna that Nashua realized making the trip back might not have been one of his more brilliant ideas.

    (But then, Nash has never claimed to be a genius. Charming, at times, yes. Polite, certainly. Anything more than that and he happily handed the adjective over to Yanhua.)

    There had been a loud, audible thud that made the Taigan ground (even with all its pine needles) protest when he haphazardly landed. One auburn wing had been higher than the other and the opening above the Redwoods wasn’t quite as large as he initially thought. Nashua had to bring his wings closer and the branches caught the edges of them as he came down.

    The growing pegasus is still mastering the grace of the landing, now that he’s learned the bluster of it.

    Huffing and nursing his own scrapes and bruises, Nashua cuts and weaves through the trees until an auburn ear catches an unfamiliar sound in the Northern forest. Was that… buzzing? He comes to stand-still and listens, trying to discern the source of the noise. He’s heard something similar to it before when a hive had fallen in another corner of the Redwoods and this sounds… close to the sound but his green eyes struggle to find the swarm in the dappling sunlight and dancing fog.

    He finds her instead.

    Not a colony of bees but a girl.

    Intrigued, Nashua comes closer until he can see the hive and the filly are one and the same. She stands like a lost piece of dayglow beneath Taiga’s imperial trees but there is something reckless in the grin she wears and it fires the daredevil in his. "You aren’t lost, are you?” He calls to the wildflower, teasing her as he strides confidently ahead. He hoped she wasn’t. To him, she looked like she was perfectly at home beneath these branches.


    nashua
    and the days you defend will turn to gold
    html by castlegraphics; art by KHARTHIAN


    @[Pollen]
    [Image: jCdBK6.png]
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