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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


    [private]  when you are younger, you will wish you were older.
    #11

    stars when you shine, you know how i feel
    oh freedom is mine

    Nashua knows the sound of regret. He can hear in Olena's soft voice. Nash knows the sound because he bears the weight of it. It's why the pegasus stands here on a beach instead of daring the waves, instead of flaring his wings and leaping towards the sky. His regret is a weight that keeps him grounded when Nashua has always been bound for the clouds. The salt air brushes past him - brisk and biting cold with the slightest tang of brine - and he decides then that if Olena ever wants help shedding herself of the regret that tremors in her words, he'd like to help her somehow.

    Maybe, he muses, they'll take an adventure one day. He'll race her to the top of Tephra's volcano or perhaps he'll teach how to use the rising heat from the lava flows to soar higher than she has ever imagined. And then, just maybe, the pair will take an adventure beyond the borders of Tephra. One day when Nashua doesn't feel so heavy with grief or blame. One day when Olena has learned that she is a creature meant for the sky just as much as he is.

    One day.

    He turns his blazed face to look down at her, enjoying the way that was she was beginning to shed her shyness. It made Nash smile, so much so that it finally warmed his green eyes and chased away the last of his ghosts that lingered in their corners. "I don't know if I'm much of a dreamer," he admits. That was his mother. That was Yanhua. Nashua was the bold one. Nashua was the brash one. The striped stallion likes standing next to Olena because it reminds him that even if he isn't a dreamer, he is still capable of being gentle. He doesn't always have to go dashing off on some reckless venture.

    The chestnut stallion is capable of moments like this - of staying still; he's been afraid of the silence since Loess. But the buckskin girl and the crashing waves beyond them remind Nash that he's capable of trading stories and remembering. He's reminded that it's okay to grieve and mourn what never was and what never could be. The world would continue to turn and Nashua starts to think he might be alright standing still for a few moments, even if he aches in the quiet.

    "It doesn't matter that they sound nice," he tells her (though maybe it does). Nash knows he is not as elaborate or skillful as other storytellers but what he has always been told is, "what matters is the heart of the story." He studies her, curious to see what would be at the center of the ones she would tell. What she shares with him makes the young stallion look up and trace her blue spots with new eyes. "So you're a lionheart," Nash teases when he finally makes eye contact with her again. "A lioness of Tephra," he continues and reaches out with his maw to bump Olena lightly on her tawny neck.

    Olena shrugs her slender shoulders as he pulls away and Nashua finally grins, his trademark wildfire smile that tugs towards one side of his blazed face. "Mine?" Nash banters back as he arches his dark neck. "Doubtful. But tell you what." He tilts his head, considering something. "Every story you tell me, I'll tell you another." He smiles, "but eventually, someday we're going to run out of those."

    Nash watches her curiously, wanting to catch her reaction. "When that happens, think you'd like to go on an adventure instead?"


    NASHUA

    html by castlegraphics; art by MirrorLands
    [Image: jCdBK6.png]
    #12

    She dreams. Even now, with her dark legs planted on the solid ground, her dreams soar high above her - deep into the atmosphere, past the indigo of the sky she sees each night and beyond the stars that scrape along it. And as she dreams it, she can feel her wings lifting her higher and higher only to realize that her legs are like tree trunks, slow and groaning into the earth, locking her into a prison that seems to have no escape.

    Olena huffs softly, not yet realizing she has leaned far further into his embrace than she ever would have thought comfortable moments ago. Her obsidian wings shuffle idly at her sides, their dark feathers swiping over the deep tawny of her barrel with a shimmering of blue light. “You must be,” she reminds him pointedly, her slender face gesturing to his wind-filled wings. “You have wings.” The buckskin girl smiles sheepishly, tossing her head so that the darkness of her forelock covers the shyness in her indigo eyes.

    A lionheart.

    She cranes her thin neck to look up at him, smiling. “I guess I am,” Olena confesses with a soft roll of her shoulder against his, wrinkling her dark nose as he bumps his muzzle to hers. “I would like to feel it more, I think.” She laughs at this, wondering quietly to herself as to why her lineage marks her and her siblings so well with that lionheart, yet she didn’t quite feel it on the inside. Though, she thinks, perhaps she felt it a little bit more with Nashua standing beside her.

    “Deal.” The idea of dismissing his idea didn’t even cross her mind and the young girl did not hesitate to take him up on such an offer. “I think an adventure is just what would awaken the lioness inside.”

    OLENA
    all the stars go dark





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