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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


    i will not speak of your sin; eyas & gale
    #1
    stifled the choice and the air in my lungs;
    better not to breathe than to breathe a lie
    The soft lapping of peaceful waves is the first thing he is aware of. When his pale eyes flutter open the world is still blurry, a consequence of the grogginess he feels in his head. The grit of sand clings to his right side, still damp from the night’s storm (or maybe because of the tides… Tiercel has never been very ocean-savvy). As he shifts his weight forward to gather himself beneath his navy legs, Tiercel tries to remember how he ended up on the beach.

    A flash of memories dart behind his eyes like minnows in a pond but there are enough to recall why he feels so dazed and why he woke up in an unfamiliar place. Tiercel had been practicing his swimming beneath the shadows of Tephra’s volcano when a random summertime thunderstorm had appeared on the horizon. While he has never been a good swimmer, an idle mind had encouraged him to try out a new skill and he had found some enjoyment in stretching his muscles in new ways. Yet his novelty with the ways of the tides had left him stranded in the channel between the mainland and an island while the storm had approached like a mammoth. The shores of the island had been much closer than Tephra’s and he had almost made it on his own.

    The final stretch of angry waves is the last memory he has of the previous night. When Tiercel stands and gives his body a thorough shakeout, he notices the tip of an underwater rock peeking out of the calm northern ocean. That would explain the dull ache just behind his left ear, where his body has already knit together the gash and left nothing but a pale line of sewn tissue that should fade within the week.

    Tiercel’s cerulean eyes glance over the expanse of the ocean between Tephra and the island as he contemplates crossing to the mainland. His stomach gives an audible growl and the sun soothes the remaining aches from sleeping on a wet beach, so the dunskin turns his attention inland.
    tiercel.


    @[Eyas] @[Gale]
    #2

    And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love

    Not much could’ve woken Eyas from her slumber. She dreams, eyes wide open, and lives vicariously through the tendrils of connections far outside of Islandres. The earth around her cycles on, growing roots and leaves over her steady hooves that never move, save for when Satana comes to visit or Catcher enters her truly-sleeping dreams. She hasn’t flow in months, and hardly feels the need to eat. Instead, she watches her siblings wander. Gale is the most adventurous of them all these days, Narcisus a close second. Her abandoned son concerns her; she’d left him in the den and irony was bringing him right back to her homeland, a living ghoul who’d suck out the flesh of others and would certainly devour her, if they met here. She worries silently about Elios and Kestrell, hopes that their stars align again and that both stallions find themselves in this big world. Marni is long gone  - far beyond where Eyas can see. She wishes her well. Sometimes she wishes she could join her eldest sister.

    But @[Tiercel] is the one who surprises her awake.
    Her third and eldest triplet is the one that washes ashore Islandres and has her dark eyes opening wide, staring out into the dinge of the inner jungle bog with a pop of her mouth.

    Unthinkingly, the little pegasus pulls free from the roots tangled around her hooves and stutters uneasily out from her little covey near the base of the dormant volcano. She knows exactly where he is, wasting no time by walking and instead opening her ill-used wings (which dump dried and crackling leaves in their wake) before pumping them weakly by her sides. It would’ve been faster for her to run, but Eyas had always kept herself malnourished on purpose - part punishment, part depression - and so by the time Tiercel had looked inland he might’ve just been able to make out the teetering sight of her rising above the glossy green canopy to soar down toward the beach where he lay.

    She’s not graceful, but she does land. It takes her a few more strides than usual, and when she finally slows to a halt Eyas is covered in black sand. For a moment there’s a smile covering her dark lips, but then it falters; she remembers their earlier childhood and how Tiercel had struck out on his own long before the chaos of Taiga and their father’s curse. It makes her pause, wary, a few meters away.

    “Tiercel?” She calls out hesitantly. “Are you alright?”

    Grey clouds roll over the hills, bringing darkness from above

    ► Powerplay Me : Powers (any)
    #3
    Gale
    run away with me--
    lost souls and reverie

    running wild and running free


      Gale had not expected to see Eyas until the next full moon, and the sudden awareness of her black-eyed vision startles him. He’d been coasting far above Islandres, the warm summer currents buoying his wide white wings with no effort at all. He’d nearly been drifting off to sleep, warm and relaxed with Erne keeping watch, and the trembling of the shared connection between them results in a sudden sideways drifting that he must flap heavily several times to correct.

    Gale has not disturbed his sister from where she rests. He’s brought her food, though its rarely eaten. He knows she lives, her sides rising and falling, but she does not ever seem to see hm when he stands in front of her, not even when he knows that she is using his own eyes to look back at herself. Gale could have pushed past her defenses, he knows, take away the visions and forced her to stare instead at the consequences of her self-sequestering. But he never has, because he has never forced sight on his family. There were no exceptions to that, not even Tiercel, not even when Gale had been desperate to learn all he could about the family that he had entirely forgotten.

    Magic told him that his brother’s blue eyes were seeing, even if they did not tell him where. Dead eyes felt different, always right beside him, always cold. Tiercel is alive, but he does not want to share his sight with Gale, and so Gale has never taken it.

    Not until this moment, when he shares the unfamiliar buckskin’s eyes for a heartbeat of time, wanting to see Eyas from the perspective of the horse that he could see through her eyes lying on the black beach far below. The moment he does, Gale reels back, the forgotten familiarity of Tiercel tying a sudden knot in the threads of his magic. Gale tugs it back to himself, fully awake now, and descends.

    The iridescent navy pegasus drops faster than the black osprey beside him, aided in descent by his heavier weight. He lands on the beach just as Eyas calls out to their long absent triplet, and stops.

    Warm summer winds tug at the white feathers of his folded wings, drawing attention to the twin ruby lines have appeared since his fight with Mazikeen. Where she’d torn his wing and blood had stained the feathers in an inverse and somewhat crooked V, the feathers had grown back a matching crimson, the Fairies permanent reminder of participation in – and damage done during – the Alliance.

    “You’ve not gone invisible,” he says, as though he picks up a conversation they’d dropped only a few moment before, rather than more seasons than he can count. “Does that mean you’re finally ready to be found? Or have you washed up here on accident? You wouldn't be the first brother to do so, if you did.”

    @[Eyas]
    @[Tiercel]

    #4
    stifled the choice and the air in my lungs;
    better not to breathe than to breathe a lie
    His mouth is watering at the thought of tropical fruits, but the hunger vanishes like fog in the sun at the sight of an uncomfortably familiar shape stumbling to a halt on the beachfront. Tiercel can remember the last time he has seen Eyas’s face — full of vitality and beginning to harden with maturity, her breaths making the closest feathers of the nest quiver gently — and it flashes for a brief moment in his mind’s eye. The sister he sees now looks like life has not been gentle, but there is no pity in his pale eyes. Even from a distance, Tiercel can see spiderwebs and long-dead leaves clinging to her skinny body as though she had crawled out of the grave.

    Eyas says his name and it almost sounds like their mother’s voice. It’s close enough to stoke annoyance to alight within his stomach like burning coals. Tiercel allows the emotion to reach Eyas with enough emphasis that she might feel it and know that it belongs to him. Almost simultaneously, there is a faint tug near the back of his eyes. He might not have even noticed it if he hadn’t been meddling with his own magic, but he recognizes the way the knot tightens between two sets of eyes. “Well, you look like shit.” He doesn’t answer Eyas’s question, mainly because another winged creature is landing on the beach.

    Tiercel can recognize those bright blue eyes anywhere. He’s seen them in his sleep — in dreams and in nightmares — and he’s seen them while he’s awake. Those electric irises have haunted the dunskin since the day he had heard how Tephra’s volcano had engulfed Gale like a hungry monster. Despite his skill with his emotions, Tiercel cannot contain the shock and guilt and relief he feels when he finally stares into his brother’s face after so many years. It’s a heavy mixture that falls across the three of them like a blanket; at first, there is nothing, and then suddenly it is there all at once.

    “Gale.” His tenor voice is a whisper against the sound of the peaceful waves on the black sand. “You’re… You — uh, you’re alive?” Gale talks as though he hasn’t been dead, as though they are in the middle of a game. Tiercel’s ears twist backward and the blanket of emotions is replaced by the bitter taste of confusion. “You can’t be alive. And even if you are, wouldn’t you be burned?” His cerulean eyes methodologically scan Gale’s body, searching for any hint of the damage the volcano would have done.

    Tiercel had heard the words. “Gale fell in the volcano. He’s — he’s dead.” He had seen the grief that shook their mother to the core, the pain that ate away at their father’s soul, the loneliness that consumed Eyas in those weeks following. He had felt the guilt — how terribly he had felt that guilt, like an infection that burned through his veins and destroyed him from the inside out. Tiercel cannot imagine those days and nights spent sweating and dreaming and shouting and feeling were all wasted because Gale is here and alive.

    Eyas had been with him in the thicket of their worst dreams. She had felt the tension between their parents, seen the way Tiercel accepted responsibility for Gale’s death, observed the empty spot in their nest where their brother should have been.

    Burning, boiling, reckless rage spills from Tiercel as he abruptly swivels toward Eyas, his face twisted in an expression of insurmountable pain. “How could you! Is this how you greet your brother?” His navy face jumps toward her, low and powerful like a cobra striking. “You know the regret I carry every day, Eyas. So you play tricks with my eyes to make him appear?!” He feels himself breaking as if the emotions inside him are too much and the pressure will fracture him, separating skin from muscle and leaving him a messy puddle of feelings on the beach. Tiercel charges his sister anyway, his teeth snapping for anything that will release emotions that crush him from within.
    tiercel.

    @[Eyas] @[Gale]
    #5

    And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love

    All this time away and still he hasn’t learned. It seems none of the brood does - except maybe for Gale. “Sweet Gale”, Eyas thought of him. Gale who died and rose again, only to live his life as ‘Blue’, which she thinks has everything to do with how he sees their world and lives in it, among the others who Eyas feels so distant from. Islandres had given them a mild day after the storm that washed her eldest triplet ashore, and the tropical breezes stirred a warm sea behind the two horses conversing along the shore. Tiercel had only grown, in spite as well as build, and were his observation given only by mouth and not with feeling behind the phrase, Eyas might’ve let him revel in it.

    But not when his emotions are so clearly testing hers. Her ears, dipped in ink and tilted forward toward him, suddenly jerk backwards to lay flat against her neck. Eyas lifted her nose and a dark sneer twisted her face. “He should’ve stayed away.” She thought bitterly.

    No matter; the only womb-brother she acknowledged anymore had come and Eyas felt the annoyance drifting away like flotsam over the waves, gone where she cannot feel it hurt anymore, and her head lowered to match the way her mouth drooped into a flat line again. Behind her, Gale looked as healthy as she was sallow. The little pegasus only needed to tilt her head and look with her own eyes to see as much. His wings had changed, but she knew why. For him and him alone she smiled; from him she would never part again. “Sweet Gale.”

    Gale. Tiercel named him accurately, drawing his sister’s attention back toward where he stood. He couldn’t do the name justice, but Eyas understood why - she’d been here before, shocked and in disbelief after so many years of creating a fictional version with her own powers. A phantom brother who never spoke or made a sound, but one who guided her nonetheless when she felt overwhelmed by life’s many problems. She’d never dreamed that he would return to them, and apparently Tiercel never dreamed it either.

    Was it guilt that haunted him? Regret? The feeling of never belonging, of always having to look up at their family? Eyas admittedly hated him as a child, often wishing he’d go away, but when the day finally came she’d hated herself even more for ever wishing such a horrible thing. One day, she told herself, he’ll come home again. She believed that much of a triplet who was still alive, unlike the one who was most certainly dead. Here he was, then; rage poured out from him as brutal and sudden as the storm that’d beat against Islandres' shores last night, and it filled Eyas with such horrid thoughts of violence and disturbed, depraved notions of anger that she could hardly stop herself.

    The whites of her eyes bled out, turning black and oil-slick, and without thinking she let the darkness chained within out for Tiercel to experience. Eyas gave her brother a most foul and rotten smile, then pulled her head back from the snap of his bared teeth before @[Gale] could intercept. She would handle Tiercel herself.

    And he would feel it: her iron will and dark craft had absorbed the body of a dragon, for Beqanna’s sake. This was no plaything to her, no minor parlor trick, but the feeling of her very essence overcoming his own by infernal power. This was possession: a means to dominate one’s foe, to devour their free will and watch them squirm underneath it, if they dared. For his sake, Eyas was less savage than she ought to be - she possessed his limbs and made them deadweight underneath him, robbing him of the ability to move anywhere beyond the lunge he’d taken at her.

    “Don’t presume to lecture me, Tiercel. Be quiet. Listen. If you’d done that in the first place you’d know he was truly here.” She mocked him behind a gaze as dark as a starless night. A horse’s vision had no sound; the fact that Tiercel had heard Gale speak was proof enough of his existence. “Foolish, idiotic. He shouldn’t have come.” She frowned, weakened by her own state of malnourishment and feeling a moment’s worth of control flicker from her grasp. If he fought her strings now, @[Tiercel] could break free - she nearly gave it to him anyways, exhausted as she was.

    She was tired of fighting battles not worth being fought in the first place.

    Grey clouds roll over the hills, bringing darkness from above

    ► Powerplay Me : Powers (any)
    #6
    Gale
    run away with me--
    lost souls and reverie

    running wild and running free


    Gale does not move from where he stands in the sand when Tiercel lunges toward Eyas. He does shift his body toward them, facing them with his head turned left, but it is Erne that drops between his siblings.

    The osprey is large for his kind, six feet of Islandres black wings and sharp yellow eyes. Despite the fact that it was Tiercel who had attacked, the angry hawk faces Eyas, his sharp talons stretching toward her. They snap closed just above the soft skin of her nose, impressive precision even for the predatory bird. He has been practicing with Gale, preparing for the final round of the Alliance. It’s resulted in a nest of three fat offspring too, well-fed by their father’s improved hunting, and with them in mind the bird retreats to the air overhead. He circles Gale a few times, then drops to grip the brindle’s mane where it grows above his striped haunches.

    Gale doesn’t know exactly what happens when Eyas’ black eyes go blacker, but he knows that he does not like it, nor the sour way she acts for a long time afterward. Nor is he pleased with Tiercel though, a lost sibling finally arrived only to attack their sister. It is him that Gale glares at while he finishes closing the distance between them. He lifts on hind leg warningly at Eyas, but does not bother to see if she’d noticed. He doesn’t expect she’ll take heed even if she had.

    “I’m not dead. Gale tells his brother. “We can’t die, you idiot. You all just rushed right ahead and buried me without waiting to see if I’d come back ‘round again like Dad and Pteron always did!” That their eldest brother had inherited Wolfbane’s regenerative healing had been no secret, but the triplets had been young enough that none of them had ever really tested their immortality when Gale had taken his little dip into the lava.

    “So, yeah, sorry that took a while, but that doesn’t mean you can blame Eyas” Here he shifts back toward Eyas, pinning her with his brilliant blue glare: “And you are going to stop doing whatever shit that is with the black eyes. It creeps me out.”

    In an instant, he’s gone from peaceful and nearly asleep to standing between his bickering siblings like he was a yearling again. He’d usually been able to sort things out before their parents or siblings needed to intervene, but that had been when they were children and he won by rights of being the biggest. He’s still the biggest, he realizes, and huffs out an irritated breath at Eyas and the cold fear in the back of his stomach at the sight of her black eyes.

    “Let’s try this again. Did you wash up here on accident or were you looking for something?” Atop his haunches, Erne peers at Tiercel with unflinching scrutiny, his orblike eyes never blinking. After a long moment, he cocks his head and peers out at the horizon. Gale’s blue gaze is far softer, though there is no mistaking the lines of irritation around his navy mouth. Not at Tiercel, who he is elated to see again, but at these circumstances, and at the uncomfortable sensation of knowing that Erne had sized his brother up as though he were an opponent in the Alliance.

    @[Eyas] @[Tiercel]

    #7
    stifled the choice and the air in my lungs;
    better not to breathe than to breathe a lie
    As soon as his mouth closes on nothing but humid air, Tiercel is grateful. Rage is a dangerous creature, one who dares their subject to plot in ways they never would have before. Would he have continued to attack his sister if she had not snatched ahold of his mind and told his legs to stand still? Even with Eyas’s eyes watching him with such a darkness he feels his stomach souring, Tiercel is certain he would have stepped away from her after the snap of his teeth against themselves. He had always wanted to be with them — running across the wind’s current and laughing at the authenticity of their joy for one another — and even now he cannot bring himself to dash away whatever crumbs of love they may still have for him.

    It is the large bird that makes Tiercel want to scramble away. There is a vice-like grip around the mechanics of his body and his muscles give only a twitch while he remains firmly rooted in place. His pale eyes dart to the pieces of Eyas’s face he can see, observing the way they have turned into pools of black water, and he wonders what else she might have in her repertoire. Can this dark magic squeeze his heart until it bursts within his chest, relieving her from his presence? Tiercel has always known of Eyas’s hatred; he had felt her disgust toward him burn in her chest even when they were too young to understand what life or death meant. He wonders if she intends to end him now, and he hastily pulls the rage away from them and pushes into its place within his ribcage.

    They are left with their own feelings, whatever form they may be, and he is left with the brewing, endless tides that cascade against his insides like the forceful waves that had brought him to this shore. His confusion melts whatever anger has remained, softening the cerulean of his eyes. He has never experienced visions before; Tiercel’s knowledge of their limits is minimal at best. But Gale’s explanation makes sense to the navy-and-dun. They all knew of Wolfbane and Pteron’s healing abilities — and Tiercel had learned of his own on that day — but the powers of Gale and Eyas had yet to be discovered.

    Tiercel moves his mouth slowly, hesitant to test the full extent of Eyas’s magic. “I didn’t think I would ever see you again.” It is a sorry excuse for an apology, but he has always been stubborn and his mind is reeling from this unexpected reunion. A thin tendril of remorse might weave into their hearts, but it lasts for only the moment between one sentence and the next. “I visited Loess and met Oceane” — it had been a thoughtless decision, to visit their birth-home, but he does not elaborate on why he was there — “and she told me about our parents. She said I should visit Islandres, but I wasn’t sure why.”

    He hadn’t mustered the energy to travel the currents to visit the island, but it seemed fate had intended for him to be here whether he wanted to or not. “But I did wash up here from the storm,” he admits. “I’ve never been a good swimmer.” Nor a good flyer, he admits to himself, but this is a thought laced with decade-old jealousy. Tiercel turns his eyes toward Eyas, feeling the weight of her magic pulling his legs into the dark sand. “Will you please let me go?” There’s a quiver to his voice, and a smell of worry clings to the humidity around them. He wonders if she will truly let him go, or if her powers are strong enough to end him like he imagines she has dreamed of doing.
    tiercel.


    @[Eyas] @[Gale]
    #8

    And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love

    Would she?

    Eyas could end him, she thinks. If she weren’t so ragged and worn down from the years, and if she wasn’t so depressed. Maybe she could. But would she?

    No. Not Tiercel, even if she’d hated him as a young filly. Never her brother and never her kin. Even Lepis had begged her to do what was necessary that day in Loess and Eyas had turned her own mother down, realizing that the sacrifices she’d already made would come back to haunt her tenfold. She would’ve taken her own life before summoning Carnage to restore Wolfbane’s.

    But for a moment she does feel powerfully enrichened. She tasted that sweet feeling of control and enjoyed the way it simmered under her buckskin pelt, like cold ice that numbs the skin. She would be a liar if she claimed it was solely a reaction to Tiercel’s aggression, though he’d initiated her decision to possess him and encouraged her wrath by implanting those horrible feelings inside her to begin with. Still, Eyas felt the acrid sting of rejection at Erne’s talons so close to her face, and she blinked at Gale in silent pain.

    She - who had accepted and loved him always - she creeped him out?

    Her bondage over Tiercel’s limbs evaporated entirely, and the black pools of dark color in her eyes receded. “You could’ve done it yourself if you tried.” Eyas croaked when her triplet asked. She was empty again, though the trembling signs of her brother’s worry brushed against her consciousness. It was good that he was concerned. He should be.

    She didn’t care for their little reunion anymore. She didn’t care about Tiercel’s travels back to Loess, or his conversation with Oceane. She didn’t care. Whatever ‘this’ might’ve been was already ruined and she wanted no further part in it. “If you ever come looking for me again,” The scrawny mare muttered at Tiercel, turning her back on the two stallions, “I’ll make you regret it.” She warned. The scars of a dragon’s claw that raked ugly, pink marks over her neck proved as such.

    Gale received nothing from his sister. She was too wounded for words and too tired to argue with him. Eyas closed her eyes with a gentle sigh and lowered her head, leaving them to watch her form grow smaller and smaller until it disappeared once more into the warm embrace of Islandre’s dark jungle.

    Grey clouds roll over the hills, bringing darkness from above



    @[Tiercel] @[Gale]
    ► Powerplay Me : Powers (any)
    #9
    Gale
    this is going to break me clean in two --
    this is going to bring me close to you



    “I probably shouldn’t have called her creepy,” Gale says to their sister’s retreating form. He doesn’t expect Tiercel to respond, and he eventually continues after she’s disappeared into the colorful jungle. He turns his brilliantly blue eyes on his male twin, and the even tone of his words make it clear he is not attempting to excuse Eyas’ behavior. “She’s not been well lately.”

    And then Gales sighs, and shakes his cresty neck as though he might rid himself of troubles by physically shaking them away.

    The brindle listens as Tiercel answers his questions, telling a tale of Oceane and Loess. So the opalescent mare had broken the news to them both; it is not a position he envies.

    Though Gale has seen the memories, seen Tiercel choosing not to join the family on their departure for Taiga with eyes he trusts as much as his own, he has always struggled with the idea that his sibling had voluntarily chosen to pull away from the rest of the family. Gale’s first death has erased the majority of his memories of childhood. The fragments that remain were enough for him to recognize his family as the most common faces, and though he’s had to imagine the bonds between them, there’d not been anything to suggest he was not as close to this womb mate as he was to their other.

    “I’m glad you came, even if it was on accident.” The words feel flat, anticlimactic after the tension of his arrival and then Eyas’ departure, and Gale shakes his head a second time. “What’ve you been up to?”

    @[Tiercel]

    #10
    stifled the choice and the air in my lungs;
    better not to breathe than to breathe a lie
    The release of Eyas’s magic on his muscles is relieving, and Tiercel feels himself relax even more while she disappears into the jungle. The triplets have always been full of theatrics, so he cannot expect time to have changed his siblings that much. While he never anticipated seeing Eyas and Gale again, the expectations he did have for such a reunion had included a bristly response from his sister. But to such a level as this?

    Tiercel shakes out his entire body roughly, ridding himself from the lingering stiffness of her magic and the thoughts of what her threat could entail. He reminds himself that he had cut ties with his family, even while sorrow tries to sing a little tune in his chest. Eyas has always loathed him, and it must be for the best that she refuses to see him again. Tiercel has hardly called them family since he left, and he steels himself against any regrets he may have now that he has seen their faces.

    “She never did like me,” the dun says after settling himself better above the shifting weight of the sand. Tiercel’s cerulean eyes turn toward Gale in surprise as his brother speaks. He wasn’t expecting Gale to be happy that he washed up on their shore, but then again, the brindle had never witnessed the aftermath of his alleged death. A disbelieving chuckle leaves his throat, followed by, “I made a mess of everything after we thought you died… You probably wouldn’t be glad to see me if you’d been there.”

    And while the whole of their reunion has been tense, Tiercel finds himself obliging his brother. “Nothing worth describing. I’ve been minding my own business until I visited Loess. I didn’t think I would stay there long, but I might stick around.” He shrugs his navy-marked shoulders, a visible expression of the wandering ways he has adopted lately. Cerulean eyes find the jungle’s scenery again, where Eyas’s trail had cut a dark mark into the greenery. “So, this is where you live? What do you do here?”
    tiercel.


    @[Gale]




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