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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


    the vows of ruin - star
    #1
    Some time had passed since he’d crossed paths with anyone.

    He’d resolved to believe that that was a good thing, maybe even the best thing possible.  It had given him the opportunity to settle into what he was, without the influence of his sister or other scattered acquaintances.  Not that Nerve hadn’t enjoyed the time spent with Mazikeen and Spirit, or the early years spent with his sister - he’d grown then too somewhat, he thinks.  But these past few years have been different in their solitude, and he’d used his time to explore his abilities - learning to seamlessly change and meld from one whim to the next and discovering even stranger things not seen on a typical day.

    The ripples on the pond are hypnotic, and he’s nearly drawn to sleep as he watches them fan and grow.  Not in the mood for sleep however, he wades into the chilly, practically opaque, green waters, content for a moment to let the cold rouse him from his near-plunge into the dream world. But his contentment is short-lived, and suddenly bored of being chin deep in the stagnant pond, he finds the pulling desire to glide, and his body answers with a transformation into a large, white swan.

    His thoughts began to mirror the lazy strokes he swam across the reflective surface, moving back and forth and back and forth between Quietude, their mother, and his friends.  Nerve wondered what they’ve been up - who they’ve met, what they’ve seen, what they’ve felt.  Had they improved their abilities like he had?

    Tucking his beak neatly behind a wing, he sighed, unable to get away from the one question he didn’t want to consider, but unable to stop it from coalescing all the same - did they miss him like he missed them?
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    #2

    He had no more luck than the day before in finding Popinjay. Why any horse would want to leave the Pampas is beyond him. The fields thrive with wildflowers for most of the year and even when winter draws a frigid wind across Beqanna, the Brilliant Pampas is one of the few places that seems (at least to Avocet) to not feel the full brunt of that chill. There is plenty to eat, for grass-eaters and those like his sister that prefer a meal that gives chase. A small colony of shifters had taken up residence there as well but Avo hadn't minded.

    It was a curious thing, to watch a horse shed his skin for another. It had often made him wonder if the changes were voluntary or not. Did they prefer one form over the other?

    (Avocet was the son of a shifter but such abilities had evaded him and his sister. The adolescent was as plain as his coat was bay.)

    His searching for Popinjay had taken most of his day, as it took most of his days. Avocet had hunted through every flower field in the Pampas. He had gone beyond the borders and after finding no sign of his mother beneath the brightly-hued leaves of Sylva or the re-blooming Loess, the almost two-year-old turned to the Common Lands. Lacking the skills of a tracker or the benefit of a gift like wings (or a second skin), his search was turning out to be a pointless one. It had occurred him to that his mother hadn't wanted to be found. Manikin reminded him often enough that their dam was prone to erratic mood shifts and that they had often been the target of her irritation. They were better off without her, she had said.

    The bay colt believed her... for the most part.
    There were just some parts - some pieces of his memories - that didn't quite add up. He had come to stop at the edge of a pristine lake and staring down at his sullen reflection, he sighed.

    Ahead of him, a rather majestic had tucked its head beneath its wing for a rest. The bird most likely wouldn't listen to him either but Avocet sighed again, despondent sounding and lamented with the feathered creature: "It must be nice to just fly away from your problems."

    @[Nerve] bare with me, lol. this is his first interaction with somebody who is not his sister

    Reply
    #3
    At some point Nerve had drifted off to sleep.  Probably not for long though, or at least it hadn’t felt like it to him.  Things had barely tapered off darkness  before a voice nearby pulled him back from the precipice of slumber.  No matter really, he thought, raising his slender neck to glimpse the speaker; he spent most of his free time sleeping anyway.  Actually, it would be a nice change of pace to speak to someone other than himself for the afternoon.

       “What makes you think I can fly?”, the changeling asked, tipping a black jeweled eye in the direction of the muddy bank.  Nerve glided closer to where the colt stood, stopping at the midpoint of where the water’s bottom began its ascent from deepest point to shallowest reach.  “Or that I have any problems?”   Of course he was just messing with the adolescent bay, we all had our problems, both horse and bird alike.  Just maybe not on the same spectrum of difficulties.

    The shifter considered staying white and feathered and as close elegant as he would ever know, but he thought the better of it.  “Name’s Nerve,” he said as he morphed into his original, insignificant shape of a black stallion with violet eyes. Clearly something had been bothering his newfound companion, and it wouldn’t much be kind to keep antagonizing.  Not when his own loneliness still weighed heavily on his own mind.

    “Guessing you got some problems you’d like to fly away from then?”


    @[Avocet]
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    #4

    The feathered creature in front of him is rather graceful. There is a certain elegance in the arc of its neck, a primness in the neat way that it has tucked away its pale feathers. It almost surprises Avocet that the creature pays him any mind; it surprises him, even more, when it speaks.

    Was there no truth to the natural order in Beqanna?

    If he were a more ill-tempered colt, he might have scowled. But Avocet merely blinks and watches the winged animal through slightly-narrowed eyes. "So are you an illusion?" he asks the shifter. Manikin would be delighted by this discovery and her cackling laughter prickles at the back of his mind, one of his few unaltered memories.

    He casts a curious honey-brown eye down to study the swan as it swims closer.

    "A bird that can't fly might consider that a problem," Avocet muses. But then this isn't a bird, as his new companion had stated. He is Nerve, or so he claims to be. The bay isn't really sure how the shifters claim names; Popinjay was a wild mare but once shifted into her thunderbird shape, she became absolutely feral. A lightning storm wrapped in dark feathers and talons.

    Nerve's other shape is rather simple. For Avocet, it becomes a bridging point - the potential for future camaraderie.

    "Avocet," he offers to black stallion. He sees no point in hiding his problem, a dilemma that he could use help solving. Two minds might be better than one and Avo was intrigued to pick at the brain of someone who could shift into another perspective. "I think I'm looking for one," he says uneasily, tilting his head as the other horse approached the bank. "I'm searching for Carnage."

    @[Nerve] bro talk

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    #5
    An illusion?  Nerve takes a pause to consider the colt’s question, wondering what kind of things he must have seen or experienced to ask such a thing.  Sure, he himself had seen some of the oddities and strange magics that Beqanna apparently liked to gather and dish out, but not really something so strictly deceptive or mental.  Quietude had her sound thing where she could make any noise and amplify or silence it on a whim, but still, he supposed that was more physical than any kind of mind game that existed.

    Maybe he’d know more about these things if Mom had decided to stick around and actually teach them something useful.

    “Nice to officially make your acquaintance, Avocet,” the black stallion replied, then offered a nonchalant grin, “And to answer your initial question, no, not quite as dazzling as illusion.  Just your run-of-the-mill, multi-thing shapeshifter.”   ‘Thing’ was the best word he could come up, all things considered, having actually put some thought behind it not that long ago.  Back when he had accidentally poofed himself into a rock and was stuck like that for a day or so, give or take.  What other ‘things’ he might be able to turn into, he had no idea yet.  That little pesky fear of getting stuck again had kept him from trying some more.

    “You’re searching for carnage?,” he says finally, now standing atop dry land where he turned a wary, suddenly concerned and apprehensive glance at Avocet.  He took a step backward. “Like...gore and destruction?”   Man, what kind of person was he conversing with that was actually searching for that kind of negative and scary thing?  This kid looked innocent enough, never would have thought that the dark stuff was his type. 

     Or maybe… “Or is that a name?”  He really hoped it was a name.


    @[Avocet]
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    #6

    "Well multi-thing shifter," Avocet jokes back, "nice to make your acquaintance."

    He grins a little - boyish and lopsided - before it stifled a little. It never had really bothered Avo that he had been born trait-less. (Though he supposed it bothered Popinjay, just one more thing to add to her list of things that Avocet was lacking.) He had often wondered if his father was that way, a plain brown horse swimming in a sea of wild colors that were the horses of Beqanna.

    It's something that he thinks in his manipulated memories that could see Popinjay doing. That his father was some poor innocent taken aback by his mother and her iridescent black wings, blazed with red. She had probably come upon him like a summer storm suddenly takes a blue sky and the poor bloke had probably never recovered.

    Avocet even manages to wonder why his mother had children if she had planned on dumping them at the very first opportunity.

    "Yes," the bay stallion says in a way that implies he is still teasing his new companion. It was an odd thought, that one hadn't heard of Carnage and he decides not to continue the joke. "He's a magician," Avocet starts to explain. "Or maybe a God." He shrugs his shoulders like it matters little to him.

    (And it doesn't because, in his manipulated memories, Manikin has made him believe that if there is anyone capable of defeating Carnage, it would be Avocet.)

    He broaches a sidelong glance at the other stallion, "Not a very auspicious sounding name though, is it?"

    @[Nerve]

    gramma lee says this post is optimistic and friendly

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