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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]  Sometimes I'm free, sometimes I'm mystery [Roselin, Gulliver]
    #1

    I got extra feelings

    How quickly winter was approaching.
    Yanhua had only to lie and wait, live and love in the spare time given to him post-battle. After a few weeks had passed, the lingering guilt he’d associated with the fight against Leilan had waned. Yan had told himself time and time again: all was fair in love and war. He could either accept what he’d done and learn from the mistake, or wallow in self-pity and miss out on the more beautiful things in life.

    And lately, there was too much beauty to ignore. He and Borderline slept together nearly every night, save the times he was bound to walk Taiga’s borders as he’d always done, and even then Borderline preferred to accompany him. Yanhua never minded. He enjoyed the company and secretly hoped that the quiet would fade soon enough as well, broken apart again by the sound of childish laughter that had since been absent in Taiga. Often, he was plagued by the worries surrounding Izora’s quiet disappearance and that of her foals as well, but those concerns would take a backseat whenever Borderline drew his attention back to the present.

    Taiga was a large territory, Beqanna even larger. Lethy could be anywhere by now and Yanhua had simply been left to assume that she’d broken away from the redwoods post-Pangea’s attack, like so many others had. Maybe one day soon she’d return; Yanhua, meanwhile, had plenty enough to do.

    He’d woken early that morning, invigorated by an early night’s sleep, and kissed Borderline on her sweet forehead before heading out toward the River for a little reconnaissance. He would be back before it got too dark. For some reason he was itching to see the mountain range far east, the blue-and-purple capped peaks of Hyaline’s tallest range that rose up into the sky on the other side of wide, rushing rapids. Something about their grandeur enthralled him: like Tephra’s volcano, Yanhua longed to explore their peaks for himself someday.

    Until then, appreciating them from afar would have to do.

    He found himself situated on the overgrown banks of the headwaters, where the treeline ended abruptly and the earth sloped in a drastic way toward the swift-moving water. The mist rising off the water mingled with that of Taiga’s fog, and it clung to his chestnut fur and beaded itself like translucent gems over his whiskers and hairy goat’s beard. Yanhua sighed, fully embracing the peace that was unexpectedly broken moments later. Too good to last anyway, Yanhua sighed to himself again and turned, looking for the source of such a ruckus - unsurprised when the culprit showed itself to be none other than his little half-sibling, Roselin.

    “Well well, if it isn’t princess Rosy herself, come to grace me with her presence.” Yan joked lightly, not at all put off by this change in plans.
    PERSONALITY | HISTORY | REFERENCES


    @[Roselin] starting this one out in the north but he'll follow her anywhere Big Grin If I need to change anything, let me know!
    @[gulliver]
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    #2
    Roselin hadn't forgotten about the last time she had gotten lost.

    While that ordeal had turned out for the better - she had met Wu and learned that there was a special kind of Magic that could heal the land - the silver-black filly hadn't forgotten about what happened when she eventually found her way back to Taiga. Oren had come across her first and his blue eyes had been full of questions that he didn't hesitate to ask. 'I was trying to find you,' she had told her twin, agonizing over the lost hours that she had been missing.

    Had they been worried?

    Lilliana had been. That much was obvious to Rosey while her copper mother had straightened out her short pale mane and brushed the white forelock out of her eyes. 'Mama,' she had said, 'Mama, I'm so sorry. I was playing and I went too far and somehow I ended up in the Common Lands.' The flame-marked mare had sighed gently and then told Roselin that it was alright, that she was home and she was safe. That was all that mattered.

    So if that was all that mattered, why had she seen (and felt) the edges of an Echo? (Roselin can't see memories the way her mother or some of her siblings can but she has been the recipient of enough of them to know when they come and what they are; they are like ripples on the top of a calm pond.) The memory had been the gray mare that she had so often seen from Lilliana's memories - from the stories that she loved to share and color with the faces of family members Roselin had never met - but the refined face that looked down at her was stern, the lines hard. Like there was nowhere to move from that stare.

    ('Lilliana,' the silver Regent had said. 'I can't protect you out there. It's not-,' and then the memory had promptly ended.)

    She had asked her mother what the memory was, why the mare - her grandmother, Aletta - had looked so serious. And so it had been explained to the former Regent's granddaughter that she and her cousin, Elena, along with her other siblings and cousins had been kept safely hidden away. Rosey's brow had furrowed as she peered up at her dam and Lilliana elaborated with stories about how it had been in Murmuring Rivers. "We traded secrets with tulips," she had said and lowered her head to fix a stray tendril that had fallen out of place along Roselin's neck as an autumn breeze blew past the pair. "And we raced the wind." Lilli pressed a kiss to the hidden star on her daughter's forehead and smiled when she pulled away. "And if we were very lucky, we got to watch the sunflowers follow the sun."

    Roselin hadn't forgotten about getting lost and so when she remembers her only venture outside the North she remembers sunflowers. The idea blooms in her young mind - golden and glowing - and the thought brings along another. It had taken her some time to find him but when she emerges from the Taigan underbrush, Rosey had finally found him. The adoration on her face speaks for itself but the young filly teases back, "if I was a princess, you'd be a knight." She says with a modest smile.

    (The only girl in a family of brothers has taught her to be a little bolder than she might have otherwise been.)

    But if Yanhua was a knight, it meant that he needed an adventure. So Roselin proposed one to her goat-horned sibling: she wanted to bring flowers back to Taiga. As they left the North behind them, Rosey found herself drawing closer to Yanhua and asking him what he thought about this type of flower and that one. She wanted to know which ones were his favorites. And then she had giggled when she had told him, "maybe we could weave flowers around your horns and some on Oren's spikes. Or Nashua's wings." Though the idea of leaving home had originally left her nervous, her brother's steady conversation and his calming presence left her feeling at ease when they had finally come to the River.

    The sound of rushing water made the small filly come to a stop and suddenly look uncertain. "Yanhua," she said quietly. She glanced down the edge of the bank and upon only seeing river reeds whispered, "I don't see any flowers."

    ROSELIN
    html by castlegraphics; art by Calcifer


    @[gulliver] @[Yanhua] likewise!
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