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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]  Sinking soul, there you are - TARGARYEN
    #1

    The light that meets the dark

    Cheri woke up suddenly from her sleep and rose to stretch out her legs. It was late summer in Beqanna, and her parents were making a conjoined effort to chaperone herself and her twin Reynard down from Taiga to the playground in one long trip, so that they could eventually make their long-awaited journey up the mountain. Her father, Pappa Yan, had made the first leg of the journey without Mamma or Rey, to make sure the going was safe and to give gramma Lilli time to come home from Tephra. At first the plan was that he’d go alone, but Cheri begged and begged to go with him, get some time away from Reynard and see the world all on her own, and finally he and Mamma agreed she could go IF she was good.

    So she’d been good. Then the day of their departure had come and her Pappa Yan had gone off to check on Memorie and Borderline, and when he’d come back he’d done some gross stuff like kiss Cheri’s momma and tell her all lovey, “I’ll meet you in the Forest, before the season changes.”

    Cheri had gagged and made Reynard giggle, and then the pair were off on their very first adventure. It was mostly boring, and when they’d finally made it down to the Forest where both were supposed to wait for Mamma Amarine, Cheri found she couldn’t sleep. The trees were too whispery here, and the sky looked too big and open above her head. The light of a big pale moon made it hard to sleep, even though her Pappa was head down and snoring loudly.

    She decided to herself that she’d have a look around - she wouldn’t go far. Just a short enough distance that her body would tire itself out and she’d come back for another good rest before daylight came around again. Just a little distance and - whoops! She finally stopped. Unexpectedly, she’d left the safety of the treeline and there was the River before her, glistening and captivating all at once. Her curiosity overcame the desire to turn around, so she looked down; something dark was just ahead and it made her ears perk in the silence, transfixing her like the statue of little doe too far out of the wood.


    @[Targaryen]
    #2
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    Although he is only two years old, Targaryean’s mind seems much older. His mother has always been a ghost, drifting into and away from consciousness. He visits her every spring and fall to see if she has woken with the changing of seasons but she remains firmly rooted among soil, perhaps shifted a few feet from where he had last found her. His father is a vague memory — the sweet smell of rotting flesh, the warmth of a soft breath across his face, the sight of blood-and-ivory feathers — and Targaryen has never dared to search for him. The independence the boy has gained in his short life has given him street-smarts beyond his years.

    Whether his street-smarts could have protected him from this particular incident is a matter of opinion. Targaryen can remember grazing from a patch of emerald grass settled among thick brambles in the Forest when he heard the noise. It had started as a quiet shuffling, which transitioned into the rustling of fur against undergrowth and the huffing of a large animal. The boy (dressed in shades of pine and the ivory of his father) hadn’t come across a beast of the Forest before, and he was not willing to meet one if he could avoid it.

    So he had scattered from his dinner, winding between branches heavy with summertime leaves to escape. The creature had given chase, as most predators tend to do when their meal is running away. Targaryen felt a nasty sting on his right haunch and twisted his head to catch the looks of his predator just as the ground gave out beneath him. He had known about this particular section of the woodland — where the Forest met the River in an ungracious ledge that fell straight into the deepest section of the winding, rough waters — but the adrenaline and fear of the chase had wiped his mind clear of geography.

    The rest of the story could explain itself nicely; a hidden rock had knocked him unconscious and he had drifted on the currents until they softly deposited him in a quieter section of the river. The boy’s mind returns to him just as Cheri spots his tree-and-cloud figure in the darkness. “Hrrrrghh,” he groans, unaware of the girl watching him or the steady trickle of blood still weaving down his right leg.
    credit to fangs of bearbones.


    @[Cheri]
    #3

    The light that meets the dark

    In Cheri’s safe little world in Taiga, she had never come across predators. There were only the little creatures of the forest that skittered or fluttered by, the occasional buck, and even once she’d seen an elk herd moving north. Papa Yan had been doing his rounds of the redwoods for years, keeping the darkest of enemies at bay and, in Cheri’s mind at least, dispelling them with his golden light and bone-hard horns. Her sire was the guardian of those woods, but here? His light couldn’t reach the pair of younger horses by the river’s edge, and the protection of his horns seemed far away.

    Cheri knew better than to stay, though. Her pale hooves had already twisted and raised themselves to flee, her head turned away from the dark lump of horseflesh down by the quiet banks, and then to her surprise she heard a noise. Targaryen’s soft groaning made her pause; a thrill of terror rooted her to the spot when she should’ve darted off into the Forest. Go, go! She felt her heart thudding in her dark chest, but the stranger... Whatever was lying by the river hadn’t moved.

    She set her hoof down and wished (not for the first time) that she had her twin’s ability to sort-of read emotions. Reynard or Papa Yan would know if the stranger was good or evil.

    Cheri had to go by instinct alone. She thought for a second: perhaps she could get back to Papa quick enough, bring him back here? But the creature by the riverbank hadn’t said or done anything aside from groaning. They were awfully silent and still, as a matter of fact. Awfully silent and still. Cheri turned back and looked closer until the darkness at the edge of her eyes smarted and twisted her vision into blurry shapes, and then with a gulp of confidence she moved forward one stride at a time.

    The closer she came, the more the outline of the other horse became clear until she could see the strange pattern on his coat. Her blanket marking glowed softly, the high socks on all her legs giving off a soft white light that illuminated the mixture of blood flowing from his leg into the river water. Cheri gasped, quietly. He looked mangled and half-alive, whoever he was - soaked through and probably freezing by now. “Oh you... you poor thing, you!” The filly whined, lowering her ears.

    “Please hold on, I’ll go get help.” She whispered, reaching out to comfort him with the gentle touch of her nose against his tree-clouded shoulder. She had intended to go and retrieve Papa Yan, but Cheri never made it a single step. Instead, her markings beamed intensely and then flared out to near-nothingness the moment their skin made contact, and all at once her power awoke with a mighty roar. The little filly went rigid, unable to control or stop the flow of her healing as it poured white-hot into @[Targaryen]’s body, knitting together his flesh and burning out any possible infection. To her surprise she sighed, as if a dam had suddenly broken inside of her, and then she backed away to see the stars spinning and the river tilting up and over her head.

    Cheri stumbled, knelt into the pebbled shore, then blinked against a wave of heavy nodding that shook her head.

    “Wha… wow.” She mumbled dizzily.
    #4
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    At first, he feels nothing. Unconscious has wrapped him in a sweet blanket that protects him from the aches of the world. As if he is still floating in the warmth of his mother’s womb, Targaryen’s awareness is limited to the inner workings of his mind. Distant memories hazily swim past his mind’s eye, yet they are too blurry and vague for him to put a name to them. A flash of pale pink color, the sound of snow falling from a heavy tree branch, the taste of fresh spring grass.

    As the girl approaches, these sensations flutter away. Targaryen is left with a brief moment of panic surrounded by the emptiness of his mind. The quickening of his heart (an instinctual reaction to a stranger and the physical reaction of his panic) stirs his body awake, flooding him with the aches that unconsciousness had sheltered him from. The gash on his leg pulsates in pain, warm with the beginnings of an infection, while the rest of his body burns with a deep ache from battering and the cold of the night.

    Another low groan weakly drifts out of his throat at the throbbing of his body. Her voice is a faint whisper beneath the uncomfortable buzzing he hears and the sound of his own heart beating frantically. The soft touch of her nose is a balm to his skin and soul, and Targaryen clings to her warmth as if he were a man in the sea and she is the lifeboat that will carry him to shore.

    The gentleness of her touch seems to spread across his whole body, sparking pinprickles that burst into flames beneath his pine-and-ivory skin. Targaryen assumes this is what death feels like; he surrenders to the fire that burns along his bones and muscles and veins with mixed feelings. To die so young feels like a tragedy, yet the relief that this warmth grants is too satisfying to reject. He is too young and naive to fully understand what he will miss in life (the laughter of his own children, the wisdom that comes with years, the ability to travel far and decide where you will build your life) and so he allows himself to melt completely into the girl’s touch.

    When his soft brown eyes slide open, he is surprised to find himself wholly alive. At least, he assumes he is alive because a girl kneels dizzily beside him and his surroundings are not what he expects death to look like — a summer evening, lying on the shores of a familiar river with the night sky high above his head. The pains he had felt before have vanished and when Targaryen pulls his head off the ground, he notices that the deep gash in his leg has been stitched together until his muscle and skin is unblemished.

    The sound of the girl’s voice draws Targaryen’s eyes toward her. “Are you okay?” He climbs to his feet, surprised by how easy the motion is despite how poorly he had felt only moments ago. The boy immediately moves to her side, putting a bicolored wing across her young body to provide something for her to lean against. “I think you saved my life,” he admits, his brown eyes scanning her face. Whatever she has done to heal him has made her weak and he quickly inspects her, wondering if his wounds have transferred to her. As if he has forgotten he has already asked (but really because he is concerned), “Are you okay?”
    credit to fangs of bearbones.


    @[Cheri]
    #5

    The light that meets the dark

    Cheri thinks, though she can’t be sure, that something wonderful has happened. Her head is light as a feather, spinning spinning spinning off into the stars and sky where it leaves her body giddy on the shore. Her knees hardly feel the indent of so many stones pressing into her skin; only a tingling sort of sensation remains, like the fuzz of a sleeping limb awakening to life again.

    She is the stranger on the shoreline now, and he the odd voice without a face. Targaryan’s features - once so lovely under the dappled moon - are shapeless and distant as the fog that prowls throughout Taiga. Cheri can hear his voice, but the meaning behind it can’t be serious. She giggles, eyes fluttering against the threat of sleep, and only nods at his question. For her effort she’s granted a blanket of satin; the stallion’s wing arcs above her and her ears flick up at the motion, and then the feathers have blotted out the world for a moment as they cradle her in their soft embrace. Cheri thinks she must be in a dream, a dream where the clouds have come and enveloped her, so her nose takes the liberty of running along their seams and shadowy edges.

    I think you saved my life, He tells her.

    The clouds dim and sharpen; Cheri’s eyes blink steadily and the spinning slows around her. She doesn’t like the way her gut clenches and threatens to flip over itself, or the way she feels hot and in need of fresh air.

    “Yes I - I’m alright.” Cheri frowns, turning her face away from the scrutiny of Targaryen’s interest. Full of bile, she swallows a mouthful of water and steadies the pounding in her head by focusing on the gravel pricking her from underneath, how it doesn’t move and by that fact alone the tiny stones might be able to anchor her to reality as well. “You were so quiet, and you were bleeding…” She murmurs.

    “I only wanted to help.” Cheri explains. A moment passes and then she looks up, afraid of something she can’t explain or even begin to understand - she only knows that she’s afraid, and for some reason the sight of Targaryen’s long face in the shadowy night seems to dispel the unnamed fear. “You’re better now, yes? You won’t die will you?” Cheri cries piteously like the child she is. She won’t have his death if she can keep it at bay, she’ll hound it back to the afterlife where it belongs, again and again if she has to.

    Fate strums her lovely fingers on the harpsichord of Cheri’s past, present, and certain future, all at once assuring the girl of her life’s purpose thanks to this stranger she’d met on the shore. Targaryen’s fiery awakening, her stroke of unusual power, they were connected weren’t they? Her eyes, bright as a summer dream even in the moonlit dark, stray down to the offending leg that would’ve been his undoing and Cheri sucks in a breath at the sight of it fully healed.

    In her heart, she can hear the music thrumming.


    @[Targaryen]
    #6
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    Her tender care for him is surprising and confusing in his young mind. He has never been treated this way before — energy spent to keep him alive, a heart that begins to beat solely for him — and her sudden dedication to him brings a soft, hesitant smile to his pale mouth. Targaryen’s mother had abandoned him when he could finally nibble on grass, retreating to an unspoken region of her mind where he could not follow. He knows where to find her, nestled among soil and spiderwebs and overgrown brush, but it has been a long time since he has seen warmth in her strange glowing eyes.

    He had lost that warmth along with his mother, but he finds it again in the girl. The way her nose brushes against the sensitive inside of his wings makes him wonder if this is what having a sibling feels like. Would there have been these moments of vulnerability if he knew of his brothers and sisters and if they had been closer in age? Targaryen is confident he has siblings — his mother cared for him as if she has cared for many newborns — but their names and faces are lost to him.

    Affection begins to fester within his ribcage, a heat that spreads outward and brightens the soft brown of his eyes. The girl has scared away the isolation that used to cling to his young back, bringing the security of family that he has always longed for. Like Cheri, he cannot deny they must be connected somehow; the awakening of her healing and the coincidence of his clumsiness seem tied by unfathomable forces.

    Targaryen almost laughs as she worriedly wonders about his death. He is wise enough to know that Death will come for the mortals, whether they are ready or not. He has found the scattered remains of a child who wandered too far from their mother before, and although his youthful mind can’t wholly understand life and death, Targaryen is mature enough to know that Death has no heart. “No, I won’t die today.”

    His brown eyes watch as hers drift to his leg, cleanly sewn together under the moon’s glow. The warmth of her little body keeps the bite of the night out of his bones, even warming the parts of him that had been numbed by the bitterness of the water. She smells sweet and rosy (like an unfamiliar home and the tenderness of youth), and Targaryen’s chest rises as he drinks in her scent. “I’m Targaryen,” he quietly exhales, comforted by her presence and the sense of family he has suddenly felt.
    credit to fangs of bearbones.


    @[Cheri]
    #7

    The light that meets the dark

    The stallion - because he is a stallion - isn’t much older than Cheri herself. Comparatively, both are also infantile when it comes to the longevity and lifespans of the immortals who live among Beqanna’s vast herd. But Cheri? Cheri looks up and sees the dark outline of his face contrasted against the night sky and what does she see? Not an immortal and not a horse who’s close to her own age, but a spirit guide. A mythic; a stallion who seems older and wiser than she’ll ever be. She could chase him every day and never catch the tail-end of his two year gap, but for some reason it makes her want to fly toward the sun anyways - if only to feel its warmth burning her dark pelt. She reasoned that if she couldn’t touch the sun, at least she could bask in its glow.

    And like a ray of warm sunshine, Targaryen calms her innate fears. Her breath hitches; Cheri sucks on her lips to keep from sobbing again and blinks her eyes, nodding silently that she understood.

    “I’m Cheri.” She told him, eager to exchange more of herself (as if she hadn’t given enough already. As if she wouldn’t give herself entirely, though she couldn’t possibly understand what something like that meant.) Her little spindle legs unfolded from underneath her, tired already of the pebbled river shore and how it bit into her skin. There was the quiet clatter of stones being displaced, and the scuffling of her hooves as they dug into the sand and pushed her up, but most prominent was the lullaby of the rushing water behind them. Cheri shook out her short tail and studied herself for a moment, contemplative.

    “What happened to you Targaryen?” She asked him, looking up again. “Why were you in the river?”

    She's not sure why she wants to know, because if the answer was volatile it would concern her. Why on earth would he want to fight? And who on this earth would want to fight him? Cheri is still young but she knows - oh she knows - that her heart is light and good, a dangerous thing to be in a place filled with so much evil. She looks up at Targaryen and doesn't see a horse capable of such darkness, but neither does she see herself as a vindicator or dispenser of justice. If his injury was self-sustained from battle it would... well it would downright confuse her. Targaryen's life had been worth saving. She felt weak and parched, wholly numb from the experience of healing him and using her powers for the very first time, but she didn't feel regret over the matter. Cheri hoped (with her ears fluttering) that she had been right to do such a thing, and not wrong for saving a horse who might only do more harm than good.


    @[Targaryen] I stg if i keep misspelling his name you have every right to verbally smack me
    #8
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    Why on earth would he want to fight? It’s an honest question, and it comes with an honest answer. Targaryen isn’t sure he has a bad bone in his body. He was never the child to torment the mindless, little creatures of the woods; he’s seen other boys chase the chipmunks until they skitter up trees, and he’s heard how the boys have laughed at the frightened animals. Their behavior had made him sick, and he hadn’t understood why they found so much joy in terrifying the woodland’s prey. Did it make them feel stronger? Did it give them the sense that they were something more significant than their leggy, awkward selves?

    Targaryen doesn’t know if there will ever be a time in his life when he would fight. Perhaps a family would one day change his mind… If those chipmunk-chasing boys hurt daughters, or if his lover fell beneath the jaws of a predator. Targaryen doesn’t think about these concepts yet; he’s too focused on his two-year-old isolation and the thoughts of his parents to wonder what he will be like in fatherhood.

    Her eyes draw him in, soft and pleading. For a moment, he considers twisting the story. Would it really be so bad to tell her that he heroically fought a cougar to protect a fawn? Targaryen’s chest tightens at the idea of lying, and though no one has taught him that such things are bad, he knows he can’t bring himself to change the truth.

    So he takes a deep breath, releasing the tension from his pine-and-ivory chest, and says, “Something attacked me in the woods, and I ran away from it.” Could he have realistically fought the predator? Probably not; despite his efforts for independence, Targaryen is still growing into adulthood and his muscles would not have sufficiently protected him. But it feels cowardly to have run away, and so he turns his face away from her with shyness flickering in his soft brown eyes. “I ended up falling down a cliff and landed in the river. It dragged me all the way here, and I must’ve hit my head because I don’t remember anything until you saved me.”

    He wants to look back into her pretty face, but nerves keep his eyes tethered to the bitter currents that move just past their feet. “Thank you,” he says, his voice quiet and grateful. He feels somber and awkward, and he wonders if his cowardly story will make her regret what she has done for him. “I, um… I hope you didn’t waste your energy on me.” He pauses, gathering a shaky breath. “I hope you’ll still want to be my friend.”
    credit to fangs of bearbones.


    @[Cheri]
    #9

    The light that meets the dark

    Oh. Oh.

    Then he wasn’t bad at all, was he? Just prone to the whims of nature like they all were, doing his best to live a life unbothered until it became a point to fight or flee. Targaryen had chosen life over certain death which Cheri sees nothing wrong with; she would’ve done the same in that situation, obviously. Still, her small nose cuts across the short distance between their warm bodies, pressing itself to his shoulder as a way to support him. That’s all she knows - the support of loved ones, always a nose or a neck hug away from comfort and love. Targaryen might choose to divert his attentions, but Cheri will stand there and wait patiently all the same. The concept of just how much time had passed between her finding him on the river’s shore ‘til now was lost on her. It could’ve been minutes or it could’ve been hours since.

    “Well, thank you.” Cheri murmured, pulling her mouth away from his sky-dappled skin. He was pensively studying the water and she was happily flicking her ears, bending a hind leg and swatting her flanks with the short strands of her vibrantly green tail. “It wasn’t a waste! Actually, I thought I was plain. My brother and sister are magical, and I always wanted to be like them.” Cheri giggled softly. “Now I guess we know that I am.”

    Quickly, she looked back at the shape of his neck at ease, studied how he held himself and committed the lines of his face to her memory. “So thank you, friend.”

    A friend. Her very first.

    The quiet moment was broken though, scattered by the sound of Cheri’s name being called in a brusque, worried tone. The filly started at once, shying away from the elder stallion by a few steps and turning to look backwards where the dark forest blended into pure shadow. From the void her father appeared, hair glowing brightly and head up, horns pointed at the sky. He looked upset; Cheri lowered her head and ears, ashamed.

    Cheri! He barked, making his way towards them. Embarrassed, the horse in question muttered, “That’s my Pappa - I gotta go.”
    She trotted slowly up the rise of the embankment, struggling to pull herself up the steep incline and through the weeds, and all the while her sire glared down at the water where Targaryen was left alone. He broke the spell and murmured something to his daughter, lowering his head to hear her reply which seemed to placate his sour mood. Yanhua would hear the full story later, but for now he was content to find his daughter unscathed and back at his side. The tall horse turned about, ready to guide his young steed back to their resting place, but at the last moment Cheri turned back to eye Targaryen with a wide smile.

    “Goodbye friend!” She shouted, wagging her tail. “If you ever bump your head again just come to Taiga and I’ll fix you up!”

    Not a moment later she was gone, and the world seemed just a little darker for it.


    @[Targaryen]
    #10
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    Not only is he Cheri’s first friend, but she is Targaryen’s. He is filled with the warmth of their friendship, like a sun-warmed pool of water that washes over him from head to tail. When Cheri mentions her siblings, the boy feels a pang of loneliness, but it fades with the knowledge that she is his friend (and something like a sister, in his mind).

    He nods in response to her appreciation, and he is thankful that his clumsiness has not weakened her in vain. Targaryen feels proud to be the one to unlock her magic, to be the first to awaken that voice from her bones and ask it to help. He is tempted to tell her so, but a voice calls from the shadows just as he is about to speak.

    Turning at the same time as Cheri, the tobiano meets the gaze of the glowing father. He stands out in the darkness, mighty in ways that Targaryen can only dream of being, and the boy swallows a gulp of air down his choked throat. “Oh, um, yeah.” Although they were doing nothing wrong, it makes him uncomfortable to be caught standing so close to the stallion’s daughter, and Targaryen pulls away from Cheri just as she leaves his side. He shuffles his wings awkwardly, trying to gather what politeness he can muster in the face of getting caught, and nods to the stallion as he guides Cheri away.

    Her smile lights up the darkness around them — and the last bits of shadow and cold from within him — and Targaryen smiles back. “Goodbye, Cheri!”
    credit to fangs of bearbones.


    @[Cheri]




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