"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
10-06-2020, 04:00 PM (This post was last modified: 10-06-2020, 04:01 PM by Moonlet.)
Summer; when the days are long and hot, and the flies swarm like the plague. One by one, they take turns alighting upon her skin until she shakes them off or slaps them with the black hairs of her tail. Still they come, and try to crawl into her nostrils and ears until she dislodges them with shakes and snorts.
Moonlet has tried all manner of keeping them at bay - mud baths, less fly-friendly climates, long soaks in rivers. The flies still find her, attempting to feast off her and deposit their larval eggs behind as if she’ll play host to a new generation of the pesky insects. Not her though!
The only thing she hasn’t tried is rolling around in shit. But she’s made the usual observation that flies love shit and seem to flock to it. So that rules that idea out, not to mention it just seems gross to coat one’s self so thoroughly in excrement that it wards off all chances of having friends.
Not that Moonlet strives to have friends. She seems content enough to be adrift in this world without them, and without family. Nothing to anchor her to any one place and she doesn’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Lonely perhaps, but not bad. It gives her a certain freedom denied to others.
It’s that freedom that she’s exercising when she comes across the black mare and her son. His antics are boyish and peg him as thus, as does his scent. Moonlet is smart enough not to come too close - this is a mother and her child, but she acknowledges the mare with a smiling nod.
“Hello there, enjoying the summer?”
Sometimes, the girl doesn’t quite know what to say so she makes banal small talk. Her query is genuine though as she pauses near them, free of flies for once as the summer minutes tick by towards evening and that period of day cooling down.
Blasphemare remembers the flies, even though it has been such a long time since they have bothered her. She remembers how miserable summers used to be, with the flies biting at her skin in places where her black fur was thin and sparse. Ever since she obtained magic, however, she could shield against them. She simply manipulates the density of her skin so they can’t bite her. That didn’t, however, stop them from trying, which was annoying. Sometimes she would whoosh them off with a burst of wind about her body, other times, she simply uses her tail, conserving on energy. After all, the sun beats down on them during the hottest part of the day, and there aren’t exactly a lot of shadows to use shadow magic.
She could move to a more shaded area, but she had learned long ago that to put herself at her weakest state would give her the opportunity to strengthen her knowledge about her magical gifts, because there might come a time when she needed to use those abilities. Take for instance the battlegrounds in Beqanna. Right now, as I write, there is an Alliance going on. Blasphemare knew of it, and had passed by the battlegrounds for a time to observe. Those lands were barren and the sun beat down relentlessly upon the backs of the fighters.
Aqorix stands beneath her tail right now. Blasphemare extended the courtesy of protection to him, as well, utilizing the tiny little shadow he leaves on the ground to do so. Thought he does not just stand there. He dances in place, weaving from side to side and then prancing in place, while also making little jumps and hops. It would have been quite annoying, except that those pesky emotions were still missing, so instead, she stands there protectively swatting flies from her playing child, of which is the only thing she has had any kind of semblance of emotions for in nearly a year.
She felt the other approach long before she spoke. Still, Blasphemare doesn’t move to look at her until she spoke. "Would that I could,” she says in return. "Unfortunately, Carnage’s quest has left me incapable of enjoying much of anything.” In fact, she hadn’t even enjoyed motherhood as she had in the past.
She could feel the annoyance rising off the mare, like an unpleasant odor in the air, and her red eyes tell her it is the flies that bother her. "Would you like me to fix that problem? The flies, I mean”
10-26-2020, 09:12 PM (This post was last modified: 10-26-2020, 09:15 PM by Moonlet.)
It probably sounded so stupid to ask if they were enjoying the summer. Sometimes, she thought she did well enough with conversations and other times, like now, are just questionable moments for her. But she smiles on, blithely and highly intent on ignoring the flies that come to find her but seem to curiously leave the black mare alone. Well, more so as they seem to like Moonlet quite a bit.
Moonlet though, is unaware of Carnage and the Alliance, of warriors and quests, and the like. Such news doesn’t have much of an effect on her. She roams as she pleases, subject to only her whims and those of the world around but it usually just passes her by. Oddly, she’s okay with that and lacking any motivation to make something of herself because the few interactions she has had, have been more interesting than anything else.
This one seems like it will be the same as the colt plays beneath the shelter of his mother’s tail and the mare answers her. The answer, while satisfying is also confusing and seems rather bland like the mare lacks much feeling. It’s just a simple observation but felt like she was giving the same amount of concern to what she said as she would the flies that followed after Moonlet. She focuses on the answer that has piqued her curiosity —
“Who is Carnage? And that seems a terrible fate to result from a quest! Quests should be successes that end in riches of some sort for the victor,” she blathers on, not even knowing what a true quest in Beqanna was like even though she was born here. Quests had never been a topic of conversation between her mother and her. Same about this Carnage-fellow. Moonlet was eager to learn though, it showed in the tilt of her ears towards the mare and the shine in her eyes.
“You can do that, fix the problem with the flies?” Now she’s in awe because that must mean the mare is some type of magical creature and it is rare to encounter those. At least she thinks so. It might be more commonplace for others to know magicians but this is the first one that Moonlet has met. Golly though, to be rid of the flies! Even for a little while would just be about as good as finding the last yummy apple before the season ends!
[b[“Nice to meet you Blasphemare, I’m Moonlet.” [/b]she responds in kind, still smiling. “Sorry, I’ve never been a big fan of flies. I don’t think any of us really are. I suppose they serve of some importance somewhere in the grand scheme of things but…” then she trails off, caught by the antics of the little colt and she laughs.
“He’s adorable!”
It’s always nice to compliment a child to his mother.
Blasphemare was old, old enough to not care about what others thought of her and what she might say. Sure, there were times that she said something that could easily be construed as silly or stupid, but she did not care. Well, not that she even could if she wanted to, now. So to her, the question of whether they were enjoying summer didn’t really phase her, she didn’t think it stupid or silly, and in fact, saw it for what it was: an attempt at making conversation, just as anyone might do when they asked about the weather.
Normally, Blasphemare would not have been interested in such affairs as the Alliance or quests. What could she possibly want from either? She already has magic, the ultimate prize in the Alliance, and nothing any silly quest could give her could compare. So in that respect, her and Moonlet were alike. The only reason she had participated in Carnage’s quest was because she was bored and Carnage was an old member of Beqanna, like herself. Normally, however, she was much like Moonlet, in that she wandered free of any ties and connections, and enjoyed the few interactions she might have.
Though Blasphemare could not muster up any kind of emotions herself, she could read the emotions of the other mare, and they spoke of curiosity. Far be it for the old mare to not satisfy that curiosity. “Carnage is a fairly foul creature probably as old as Beqanna itself.” Her voice is just as bland as before, and though she speaks ill of the stallion, she knows that she is still fond of him—enough to bear his children. “He left others to do his dirty work in discovering what lay on the other side of this dimension. We came out scarred and with something stolen from us.” At this, she motions to the scars across her black figure, barely visible, but still there.
Then the attention turned to the flies, and the other seemed eager for them to be gone. “I can rid you of them temporarily, but only as long as you are around me.” With that, she conjures up her magic, utilizing the other mare’s shadow to do so, and changes the density of her skin so that the flies could not bite her.
“I doubt anyone was ever a big fan of the flies, except the flies themselves and the parasites that might feed off the flies.” She would have laughed, if she could feel emotion, but once again, that was something that eluded her. When Moonlet shifts her attention to the colt, Blasphemare glances back at him. He is the one thing she has felt some semblance of emotion for. Perhaps it was a sign that her emotions were returning, or perhaps that bond between a mother and her child was something that could not be broken. Either way, she nods in response. “He is adorable.” Normally, she would have said this with a smile and a kind of pride in her voice, but the sentiment was all she could muster. “This is Aqorix.”
At that, the foal stops dancing behind her and peers out shyly from between his mother’s legs, the star on his forehead glimmering. Blasphemare steps aside so that he is no longer hidden behind her, which doesn’t exactly make the foal more comfortable. He looks from her to Moonlet and back again, wondering what he should do. “Hi,” is all he says.
