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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]  Desolation Comes Upon the Sky
    #1

    WATCH THE FLAMES CLIMB HIGH INTO THE NIGHT

    Tonight felt no different than the others. Twilight cloaked the mare's decaying skin with the skill of a long trained servant, obedient to the last; where once she stood with pride she often feels naked, now. In the midst of the trauma she caused, Scorch became evermore the victim with each passing night, playing a sad reel of memories in the eye of her mind as though it could summon up the ghosts of her past. Or rather, the ghost of her past self.

    The Jungle. Him. Their children. She saw it all with the clarity only hindsight provides. And how poetic for her to recite the poems of her broken heart to herself every night, as though the sound and the rhythm of her laments might undo herself. Her past self. Might take back what she broken and make it whole again.

    The poems always ended when she felt that pang of disloyal love in her chest for the man who now lay nightly with her grandson. The confusion settled in. The juxtaposition of commitment to a beloved husband and the unrequited love of the man she fell in love with in secret far earlier than she'd ever admitted caused chaos in the mind of the once-great soul. And in her breast, too, lay the agony of immortality.

    And with an undying soul comes an undying hope. Even hopelessness could not lay claim to her life the way it might to others and in this way, could not lay claim to her at all.

    Not forever, anyways.

    So she came, nakedness hidden, shame worn upon her chest in such a way that only the ones she loved would perceive it. Yet though she came, no guarantee replied to her cry for the drink out of the cup of memory. Indeed, she painted herself the fool just by way of her being there.

    In the meadow.

    Where he rescued her so long ago.

    Where she failed to tell him of her love for another, lying to herself that the aching feeling in her chest arose from the death of her unmother.

    Where their lives together began -- and, as sure as the sun rises and sets, where it ended.

    Scorch

    Once Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle



    ""

    @[Hestoni] she got an idea and wouldn't let go, I HOPE THAT'S OKAY. No pressure to reply... she could stand a while longer of self-inflicted emotional torment. :| hehe.
    @[Brennen] tagging you for honourable mentions.

    Also hope no one minds me doing some in-the-past story telling... it felt like it could be true and that's enough for El Scorcho and I.
    [Image: scorch2.png]
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    #2
    The sun rises and the sun sets and he continues to be a red pinprick of blood and bone upon a world that spins tirelessly. He walks with no destination in mind and he breathes without purpose. He is a phantom of the creature he once was; he is both hardened and softened by the battle of Grief. The wounds she had created have scabbed over long ago, and now they are rough, gloomy scars upon the paper-thin surface of his heart. And things do not work as efficiently when they have been damaged beyond repair — when an unfaithful hand took the loving knife of their marriage and used it to carve out his trust for her.

    So he wanders like the ghost he is, with a heart who’s rhythm has been more apt to follow the songs of gray disinterest and distant grief.

    He doesn’t often visit the places that haunt his dreams. He sees the Meadow (her flame-and-rage reflection in the creek that dances at their feet) and Nerine (the snow melting around her while her flames flare, the snow around him splattered with blood from his knee and tears from his heart) and the Jungle (her emotional eyes looking deep into his soul while the deep green of their wild home darkens behind her like a portrait’s background) enough already from within the wonderlands of his mind. He doesn’t care to see them with present-day eyes, to slice open the scars that have healed and invite the sharp ache of betrayal into his chest once more.

    But something — fate or the arrow of Cupid or the meddling hand of Beqanna itself — tempts him toward the Meadow and, with a heavy sigh, he places his feet on that dusty trail.

    The darkness is cool on his russet skin and it soothes away the day’s aching. Yet not even the night could control the heat that burns inside him when he sees her swathed in the shadows. Does he still love her? He had told her, those many years ago when they had last spoken, that he would always love her. And he does; it is hidden in a locked chest so deep within the scarred remains of his heart that he wonders if he could even dig it out. Does he want to? Does he dare lift the edge-worn treasure from its final resting place and restore it to its rightful place on his sleeve, where she might again drive her knife into its tattered remains?

    He keeps it hidden, for now, drawing his lips together in a stiff line as if such firmness might harden the tissue that binds his love for her within the deepest pieces of him. For a moment he sways in place, tossed between remaining a phantom or carving a dagger into his chest to see if he truly still bleeds.

    And while he has felt empty for a long time, he feels the cavity within his ribcage flutter.

    He steps forward, first slowly and then faster, and his long strides eat up the ground between them much quicker than he had anticipated. When he reaches her, he finds himself unable (or unwilling?) to say anything. The silk of neglected memories and the rough wool of the ragged years between them have left him choked, pressed against the wall by their metaphorical hands. So he stands before her, brown eyes unfeeling and foreign, the line of his mouth a barrier to whatever weapons she may have prepared to strike the weary remains of his heart.

    @[Scorch]
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    #3

    WATCH THE FLAMES CLIMB HIGH INTO THE NIGHT

    Did he still love her?

    The question ravaged her mind with a renewed vengeance when she set her eyes upon him, there.

    Him. Russet as the scabbed blood of the heart she punctured with her the faithless blades of her own making. Tall, broad, as he stood always next to her, through the hell of it and well into the heaven of it, from her early fall from grace to her rise to power, from her life to her death and back again. Everywhere, everywhere he existed in the grainy playback of her meager existence on this plane: everywhere, consuming, providing, he existed as a cycle whose prowess surpassed even that of the indomitable seasons, of the rise and fall of kingdoms, worlds, galaxies, to the very ends of the universe itself.

    At least, this grandeur preceded all other notions (especially those of logic) when she came face to face with the reality of him. In the drowning riptide of his calloused gaze Scorch found herself romanticizing the everything he meant to her as though to write one last poem on the scars of his heart might somehow provide them with that happy ending they once shared, in grace and peace. As though the chisel of her love might etch the last pebble of his resolve into something resembling beautiful.

    She shuddered.

    In that moment she allowed the shadows to twist away from her, to admit even to themselves the revulsion that filled them at being called to her closeness. And as the last lick of twilight made its exist Scorch did not dare to pick up the defense of the flames, remembering how it burst into being that day in the snow as his knees bled having run to her, as she stood useless with the blood of another growing inside her womb, blood for blood in the most unsatisfying of ways, remembering that day, yes, when her flames burst into being with her admittance of her infidelity.

    The flames, too, spat at the notion of her.

    Scorch.

    Scorch, who once could claim to be loved by him: by Hestoni.

    He alone who could hope to find her in the veil of her twilight, eyes adapted to the ways of her magic after years of marriage.

    He alone who could break her into pieces just by way of his approach.

    So, she asked herself again:

    Did he still love her?

    A memory answered yes and she felt gravity upend itself as the true nature of her agonized query revealed itself.

    Could he ever love her again?

    She choked on the words which stumbled out of her mouth like the thirsty towards water, for want of having the decency to at least pretend not to love him, for want of protecting his heart from the wrath of her love, for want of loving him, still.

    "Il mio titano"

    Scorch

    Once Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle



    "@[Hestoni]"
    [Image: scorch2.png]
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