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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


    let me whisper in your ear, star pony
    #1
    throw me in the water, don’t think about the splash i will create
    leave me at the altar, knowing all the things you just escaped

    He thinks he can see it sometimes.
    The solid thing at the root of the shimmer he sees in them.

    And where he once thought it was their soul, he now thinks it must be their heart. Their want. Their desire. But he has not yet worked out what it means that he can see it. That he can sense it so deeply that he can almost taste it.

    He looks to them as he passes, peering past their faces to the thing at the center of them. He can feel some new flicker. Like he’d felt in the river when Sleaze had told him he loved the quiet and he had gone so still that he’d scarcely needed to draw breathe. He could be quiet and he’d said as much.

    But he does not know how to interrogate it quite yet. He is young still and naive. The magic is not meant for him now. It is meant for someone older, someone who understands love. So he gives up and moves quiet through the forest, the space around him softly illuminated by the stars on his skin. The curling galaxies.

    He encounters no one here. It is quiet and still in the underbrush and he comes to rest there in the darkness, breathing softly. He is alone here with his heartbeat.

    isakov
    Reply
    #2

    Who would Tarian love, if he had?

    It shimmers before him. Standing in the belly of the undergrowth is someone and the winged stallion thinks his eyes are playing tricks on him.  The silhouette had been smaller, hadn't it? He had been so sure that moments before a boy had been there. Not old enough for broad shoulders. Not enough time to grow into his frame yet. He could have sworn that his vision had alluded to a boy, not to her.

    And yet when he catches a glimpse of her, it catches in his throat (like it always had).

    Tarian's restraint has always been a (one of many) point of pride with him. But all it takes is the shift before him when the colt becomes something he isn't and suddenly, the almost-white pegasus becomes a boy himself again. He returns to his youth when a girl who wouldn't love him brought forth a volcano in his chest: something that simmered and smoldered until the unhappiness eventually erupted.

    The lights play across the angles of her face and something is wrong. The stallion takes a powerful stride forward - taking full accountability of the ground that he walks on - and then stops because he looks up. Even though they stand beneath the covering of a forest, there are no stars. When his blue eyes flash upon the shape that changes - that alters when the realization comes that this could not be (not) his Orani who danced and dreamed beneath starlight - he accuses the specter.

    Tarian has never had a claim to Orani but neither does this stranger. That he has borrowed her somehow, that he has taken her and crafted her into something else infuriates him. "What are you?" he asks with a voice that deepens with accusation. Tarian speaks what he knows as the edges of his dark lips curl into a sneer with the truth. "You are not her."

    Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength
    which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.



    @[isakov]
    Reply
    #3
    throw me in the water, don’t think about the splash i will create
    leave me at the altar, knowing all the things you just escaped

    He is oblivious there in the dark.
    Oblivious to the way the stranger looks at him. Oblivious to what he sees when he does. Oblivious to what has spawned the anger with which the winged stallion addresses him when he finally approaches.

    And Isakov looks up at the older stallion then, caught thoroughly off-guard by his ire. He casts a glance around into the darkness that surrounds them, as if the stallion is addressing someone else. Someone else he had not seen lurking in the shadow.

    But it is just the two of them there and the stranger is asking what he is rather than who he is, which feels strange. A much harder question to answer, the boy realizes, and blinks those golden eyes in thought. There had been something in the asking, though, that left him feeling like the question was mostly rhetorical.

    It is confusion, more than fear, that the boy regards the older stallion with. His head, all painted in galaxies, tilted as he studies the expression. He does not know what he has done to deserve this vitriol, this pointed sneer.

    I am Isakov,” he says, though it comes out sounding like a question. Because of course he is Isakov. Of course he is no one else. Of course he is not her. “I do not recall claiming to be anyone else.

    isakov
    Reply
    #4

    He can see the confusion on the child (is that even what he is or has he borrowed this face, too?) The boy is looking up at him and the dark deepens the lines on Tarian’s normally stoic face. If there had been more fear, it might have caused the silver pegasus to react differently.

    While studying the colt, he thinks how many times he has seen the variation of this emotion on so many faces, in so many places. The way that he looks up to him - like Tarian would have addressed anyone else in this dark copse of forest, like his sure-footed steps would have been intended for anyone other than this pretender! - oddly tempers his anger.

    Tarian schools himself into impassivity. Physically, he is bigger than the galaxy-marked colt. His gray wings ruffle at his sides and they fall into a position of attention, ready to be unfurled if the former Knight should have need of them. The colt is clearly confused; however (there is always a however with him; always a word of caution with Tarian) it has happened before to him.

    Somebody who feigns unknowing. Somebody who uses the emotion to try and wipe away the doubt that had been something there at all.  His blue eyes study the galaxies that should be in the sky and find themselves instead on the lean shoulders of Isakov.

    "Are you of the stars, Isakov?” Tarian asks and there is no uncertainty when he says the boy’s name. There should be no doubt in a name. He doesn’t offer his own yet, because he asks (accuses): "Because you borrowed the shine of one and you are not her.”

    Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength
    which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.



    @[isakov]
    Reply
    #5
    throw me in the water, don’t think about the splash i will create
    leave me at the altar, knowing all the things you just escaped

    He is perhaps most troubled by the stallion’s trouble. How perturbed he is there in the half-dark of the forest, the sunlight pale in comparison to the light his galaxies throw into the space between them. He does not shrink, though there might be some impulse in him to do so. He is emboldened, maybe, by the knowledge that he can make himself nothing at all should the stallion decide to go after him with teeth or hooves.

    Still, he does not know what he has done to deserve his wrath. So oblivious, in fact, that he wouldn’t even know how to ask.

    He could slink off into the dark, he knows, but it would do him little good if the stallion decided to trail him, demanding answers that Isakov does not have. Or, rather, does not know that he has. He would not be hard to track, he knows, not with the way the stars on his hide demand to be seen in the dark.

    He draws in a breath, prepared to answer the stallion’s question before he is cut short. This is his first glimmer of irritation. Such a foreign feeling for a creature built around love. (Not from love, no, but around it).

    He tilts his head and wars against his impulse to allow himself to be a child. To yelp back that the stallion must have gone mad with age. Instead, he peers up at the older stallion with those pale gold eyes and releases the breath he had not realized he’d been holding.

    I am of the stars,” he answers, his tone remarkably even given the thunderstorm brewing in his chest, “and I told you already that I never claimed to be anyone else. I’m afraid your anger is misdirected.

    isakov



    @[Tarian]
    Reply
    #6

    As far as Tarian is concerned, daylight has fallen eons away from them. This boy - this Isakov - was someone he wasn't and the gray pegasus wants to know how.

    (And perhaps some distant star in his mind is asking why.)

    For each step he takes closer to the constellation-cloaked child, he sheds away his own years. So goes the years spent in an eternally starlit cove, a beach by the sea where the sun never learned to stray, in one step. So goes the years in Liridon as a soldier, honing the skills that might have once helped him commandeer a kingdom, as an officer instead in another. So goes those few, sweet days with Orani who seemed to neither mind nor notice that he no longer had a crown waiting for his noble brow (but that has always been Tarian's problem; he had been the Heir, the Hope, the Shield since birth. With the trappings out a title, who the hell was he? Just... trapped?) in the next.

    Angry. He is just... angry.

    He keeps feeling like he has been robbed of something. The shimmer or the sheen (or a trick of fickle starlight), whatever it had been, had cracked something in Tarian's usually impassive demeanor. Cradling the last of his restraint, he recognizes the emotion: vulnerability. It hadn't been her. He'd known the moment after that first agonized heartbeat - in the echo that came after in the shadows - that it wasn't her. He had learned all those years ago that there was no point in chasing stars; they fell.

    They burnt, they blazed, they streaked across the sky in a moment of brilliance and then, oh and then-
    they are gone.

    (Such is the fate of some stars, Orani had once told him.)

    There is a moment where Tarian gives him a hard stare. He eyes the gold flecks shining up at him, watches the way that the youth doesn't seem to crumble or falter with the weight of his anger. The boy just claims to be who he is, that he has never been anything but Isakov and there is no (mischievous) gleam of stardust shining in his eyes.

    He was just @[isakov].

    Just as he was, "Tarian," he finally offers by way of gruff apology (it is the closest that the child will get and perhaps he didn't care to know the name of the gray pegasus. He hadn't asked but when had he given the boy a chance?). "I was tricked by a star, once."

    Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength
    which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.

    Reply
    #7
    throw me in the water, don’t think about the splash i will create
    leave me at the altar, knowing all the things you just escaped

    He is young, Isakov, but he speaks as if he’s much older. As if his words alone can make him appear older. Never mind that he still has the lean body of a yearling. Gangly and coltish. It doesn’t matter that his voice does not shake in the face of this older stallion’s anger, because he is still just a boy and this is something he cannot hide.

    And, as a boy, he cannot imagine the lifetimes this stallion has lived. He cannot imagine the years shed or the memories he carries with him. He does not know love, unrequited or otherwise. His magic, the magic that had provoked the stallion in the first place, is rooted in love, but the boy does not understand it. Neither the magic nor love.

    So, he is a boy who stands and tries to pretend he is not a boy. He stands and he does not shrink. He watches, the eyes a pale gold, as the older stallion seems, too, to shed his anger. Or, at least, he shifts his anger someplace else. He does not wield it against the boy who is just a boy and never claimed to be anything else.

    He offers his name and Isakov nods. He offers his name and something that might have been an explanation. But Isakov is not sure. There are so many things he does not understand.

    He tilts his head and feels some defensive pang ricochet in his narrow chest. He is of the stars and he cannot decide if what Tarian said had sounded like an accusation. Not lobbed at him, but at the stars he loves. (Not as much as he loves the water, no, but he loves the stars all the same).

    I have never known the stars to be cruel,” he muses and blinks those pale gold eyes. “How did it trick you?


    isakov



    @[Tarian]
    Reply
    #8

    Tarian isn't sure what it is about the boy that makes him seem older than he is. All the awkward angles are there. A too-lean frame, a higher hip, limbs that still need to be grown into. Everything (physically) about Isakov very obviously proclaims that he is a boy, barely a yearling. Adolescence curves his cheeks and there is none of the weariness that Tarian had become accustomed to seeing in his comrades (and perhaps that why he thinks he sees glimpses of innocence shining through the youth's golden eyes).

    A soldier's life is rarely a happy one. (They are not meant for long ones.) But it has meant that the gray pegasus has learned to make quick judgments, swift decisions that could potentially save or claim lives.  The older stallion has always been quick with his irritation. Lines that wrinkle the corners of his blue eyes can attest to that. Anger is an emotion for later; anger has always been an emotion for after.

    He'd been quick to anger with Isakov but the boy earns merit for withstanding it (not that he needs it, the pegasus thinks). The boy, he thinks again and then corrects himself. This is Isakov; this is @[isakov] of the stars and he seems to have some of their celestial fortitude for enduring. A timeless quality that lends to his appearance, which helps make him seem older than just a child.

    I have never known the stars to be cruel. Those words are the ones to finally make the edges of Tarian's dark mouth lift. He snorts quietly, wondering how to explain Orani and her existence on this plane of living. "I don't think she was intentionally cruel," the taller stallion says, pulling his pale wings up around while continuing to study the shadowed adolescent. "But the stars, if they come to care, claim to do so differently." At least, the one he had known had.

    How does he explain the girl he had known? How does he explain that Orani's laughter was far brighter than any starshine? That he would have gone to any corner, of any galaxy, if she had asked it of him? That he would have conquered worlds and moved heavens for her?

    How does he explain that the girl (the star) asked him to let her go?

    Isakov claims that he has never known the stars to be cruel. And Tarian finds himself hoping that the boy never learns to accuse them of it.

    "How did you come to know them?" the former soldier asks, "or have you always carried them with you?"

    Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength
    which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.

    image credit to footybandit
    Reply
    #9
    throw me in the water, don’t think about the splash i will create
    leave me at the altar, knowing all the things you just escaped

    He wonders if there is a point to being cruel if it is not intentional. He thinks that, if you are to be cruel, you should be certain about your reasons. You should own cruelty, as you own all other things.

    He will grow to be cruel, Isakov. He will grow to be cold, unflinching. There will be no accident about it. He will learn the things they love and he will use these things against them. He will yearn for love and, when love is not provided to him, he will make it so. He will know his cruelty, he will know its reasons. He will own it the same way he will own his loneliness, his desperate want to be loved. And he will not realize that manipulated love is empty until much later.

    But for now, he is not cruel. He is just a boy, swallowing his confusion in the face of someone much older. He thinks of the stars, or whatever star it was that had tricked him, and how they might care differently. He is too young to know anything about the multitude of ways that feelings can be misconstrued, so he just nods. Like he understands.

    Like he has seen it firsthand in the way that his mother loves the glass stallion who had taken Isakov in as his own. (He has, of course, but he does not know what it means).

    He shifts his weight. Turns his fine head to study the galaxies splashed across his hip. The stars winking back at him, the soft glowing nebula edges. He draws in a smooth breath and shifts his focus back to Tarian’s face. “They have always been with me,” he says. “I got them from my mother.

    He rolls his narrow shoulders in a kind of shrug. “How did she trick you?” he asks then, perhaps curious about love and all of its forms. “Your star,” he clarifies.

    isakov



    @[Tarian]
    Reply
    #10

    The boy nods like he understands but Tarian thinks he doesn't. How can he? How can he even begin to have an understanding of the cosmos and the constellations? His life has barely begun. It is a blink to them, if that. If they have taken any notice of this star-marked child at all.

    But they have, he thinks as his blue eyes flick over the dark parts of Isakov's coat again. They have taken notice and it would appear that they would claim him as one of their own. This child who is of the stars and yet some part of Tarian can't grasp that the yearling fully understands what he is claiming. It's his uncle, the gray pegasus thinks. He spent far too long within that twilight cove listening to his bay uncle speak of wonders and miracles. When he should have found some band of warriors (or even renegades, it didn't matter much when he first arrived in Liridon).

    He should have been something - drilling, sparring, preparing.
    And instead, he tucked himself away with Jay and listened to him speak about the ways the heavens moved. How their patterns in the sky could be reflected in the changes on the Earth below - for all the ways that stars moved from season to season, they could bring tidings of change or war, of prosperity or peace. One only needed to look, said Jay. And Tarian had nearly scoffed. Don't you remember her? He had wanted to ask. Don't you remember Orani and the way she would flit from dream to dream, like a bee traveled from flower to flower? What about her mother, Keav? And Arawn? Do you not remember all the ways they moved on this Earth and across the sky because they were stars and they did as they pleased, stars mingling with the dreams of mortals?

    There had been no patterns there.
    There had been nothing to glean from the stars that Tarian had known about futures or prophecies or mysteries that might be revealed. (But this is why his Uncle was a Shaman and Tarian was a soldier; Tarian had always trusted more in what he could see than what he could feel.)

    It's perhaps because he is still thinking of his uncle that makes him more melancholy. His somber nature gives way to softer contemplation. "I thought that stars might be like us," the stallion says. "Maybe the lives they led above us might not be so different from the ones we lead here." She had proven him wrong. He had hoped that, "I thought that a star might stay."

    "Do you know about gravity, Isakov?" Tarian warns. "Do you know about all the ways it can pull apart?" His gaze turns darker, sharper as he studies the boy. "It called her back. And that was why I knew-," he stops himself. They both know that @[isakov] is not Orani.

    "You looked like her," Tarian says, straining but finally admitting what he had first seen in those shadows where the shade of a boy had stood.

    Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength
    which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are.

    image credit to footybandit
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