• Logout
  • 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]  we made a garden of the love we found
    #1

    Outside of Tephra, autumn is in full swing - the leaves brilliant shades of red, orange, and gold. Out there, Lyali would fit in. She’s scouted the borders of Sylva and wondered at how an entire forest could possibly match her wings and wandered beneath the brilliant red oaks of the meadow. Every wondrous thing she discovered out in the world paled in comparison to her home, though, and at the end of the day her family is where she really fit in.

    Was that cheesy?

    It’s nonetheless her thought as she wakes near them - opening her eyes to see three other white figures nearby - brilliant against the lush greens of their home. On the leaves over their head, the patter of rain begins to change to a louder hum and the murky darkness of dawn does not grow any lighter.

    It encourages the leaf-winged girl to be lazy. This comfortable darkness in this comfortable place with her sisters.

    She lowers her head back to the soft ground only to have several raindrops splash onto her cheek. With a groan, she half-heartedly shifts but cannot fully escape the water without actually moving. If only her water immunity meant that she repelled rainwater. She brings up one of her wings up to cover her head before calling out.

    Sil can you move those leaves so the rain isn’t splashing on me. I don’t feel like moving.” There’s a smile in her voice more than any petulance, a gentle game she’s playing to start the day as her two-toned eyes glitter in the dim light.


    Lyali



    @[silene] @[camellia] @[aestas]
    #2

    Although autumn is not her favored season, Aestas cannot help but love it for Lyali’s sake. She loves traveling outside of the volcanic island and seeing the brilliant collection of colors—the golds and the reds. The explosion of them that signal the change in the air, the something new that is coming.

    Still, she is not upset to live within Tephra mostly. To be cocooned in the near constant summer, with the heat and the humidity. Her thin skin darkening with sweat when she runs, her coat sleek and glossy.

    She is a summer child, after all, and she does not forget it easily.

    Perhaps that is why, when she rises early, when she winds through the jungle to the beach where the sun is barely rising—casting the beach in shadow and golden dawn—it is a pure, unadulterated joy that chases her as she flies across the sand. Until her lungs feel as though they may burst in her very chest.

    Until it feels like she could fly.

    When she returns to the near den of her sisters, she is damp from both exertion and the rain that has begun to fall. It is warm, but she does not deny that she helps it along a little, warming the air around her to keep whatever chill may find her. At the sound of rustling, she turns her head to catch the sight of Lyali shifting, water falling down her head. She had thought to find a spot to curl alongside them, catching a few more hours of sleep, but she cannot help the laugh that escapes her—quick and full-throated.

    “Sil, bring the whole canopy down on her.”

    The words would sound harsh were it not for the sunshine warmth that radiates through them.

    so you should get on board with someone whose course is steadier than mine
    you should get on board with someone whose eyes are on the horizon, not on the skies

    #3
    s i l e n e
    Autumn is fine, but spring is her season.
    Despite the lack of seasons within Tephra’s tropical borders, Silene wanders outside her home enough to see the changes, and the bloom of spring just after the snow melts is her favorite. The spring showers breathe new life into the lands: the blossom of plants and flowers in every color, the birth of animals in every shape and size. She loves her home, but the heat is stifling. Tephra’s closest neighbors, Sylva and Taiga, aren’t much better - eternally autumn and winter - so she travels to the Pampas to get her fill of spring. The land is largely empty of other horses, which is fine by her - aside from her family, she prefers to talk to those who can’t talk back, like the deer and the hares.

    She’s the second to rise this morning as she awakens to find that Aestas is missing. Wandering, she assumes, as the sisters are prone to do. She launches onto her feet, stretching and shaking off the dirt and morning dew. Soon enough, she’s found her favorite breakfast food: berries, from a bush nearby. Berries are the easiest for her beaked mouth to eat.
    It isn’t long before Silene hears the stirring and groaning of Lyali waking up behind her. She spins around, a grin spreading across her face as her sister jokingly complains, when she hears Aestas return.
    Aestas’ laugh is infectious, and Silene can’t help but quietly giggle as she rustles the leaves above Lyali’s head, releasing a quick downpour. “Sorry, Ly,” she says earnestly, immediately guilty after seeing her sister drenched.

    “So, where are we going today?” she asks softly, excitedly, before following with: “And how should we wake Camellia up?”


    @[Lyali] @[aestas] @[camellia]
    #4

    Camellia

    Sleep is her only relief from the heat. She languishes for hours at a time, rarely straying from their den except for in the deepest winter months when the temperature dips to its lowest (still unbearably warm, but cool enough that she can venture out and make the journey to cooler parts of Beqanna to get her fill of winter, to remind herself what it was that she was built for and then always, always making the arduous journey back). 

    But their voices filter in through the haze of her sleep, as they always do. Their voices wake her gently, until she cannot tell her dreams from reality. Until she has to pry one eye open to differentiate what is real and what is imagined. And she is filled with their laughter. It expands to fill all of the space in her chest and she cannot help the smile that steals across her mouth, betraying her.

    She does not lift her head, though. She works, too, to subtly stifle her smile. She steadies her breathing and she is careful not to stir. She will pretend to remain asleep. She will let the sound of their laughter lull her back into her calm and wait to see what plan they come up with for waking her. Will Silene dump water from the canopy on her head, too? What a sweet relief it will be from the stifling heat if she does. Even the rain is too warm. 

    She does not know how convincing her feigned sleep is, but she suspects her sisters will play along with it even if they that they have already woken her. 



    SHE LOVES LIKE SLEEP TO THE FREEZING



    @[Lyali] @[aestas] @[silene]
    #5

    An eye opens and a half-hearted scowl is cast in the direction of Aestas for the rather horrible suggestion - whether or not it is spoken with warmth. This scowl turns into a very undignified shriek when the canopy moves enough to release a short downpour. Lyali launches to her hooves so fast her head spins and she stumbles for a step - her leaf wings flaring out in indignation as she shakes herself dry and, with a little bit of luck, sends some droplets on all of her sisters.

    Anger doesn’t suit Lyali well, and though she’s certainly annoyed, there is a smile on her face when she looks to Silene and answers one of her questions. An easy way of letting the spring-themed sister that there were no hard feelings (at least none that couldn’t be settled by a prank of equal measure). “You should give her the same wet wake up you gave me, of course.” She shakes herself again for good measure, the smile coming a little bit easier now and her wings folded against her sides.

    She pretends to reconsider this suggestion as she steps carefully closer to Camellia. Lyali regards the sleeping girl, wondering if she is just faking it, and turns back to the others with a grin and a laugh laced through her whispered words. “She might melt but it could be worth the risk.”

    Lyali



    @[aestas]
    #6

    There’s an ease living here amongst her sisters like this. Something of an understanding between them that can only come from having spent their entire lives together. They know one another intimately, know the ins and outs—the things that make them tick, that make them happy, that make them sad. It’s a bond that Aestas knows could never be broken, that could never even be compromised. More so even than the love that they have for and with their parents or their other siblings. Theirs was something different still.

    So she doesn’t feel bad when she gets an annoyed look from her sisters and she just grins again, shaking of the faint water that splashes onto her. Curious, she looks closer to her sleeping wintery sister, eyes narrowing a little as she tries to discern whether she was actually asleep or just feigning it. Unsure, but feeling somewhat charitable, she reaches for the heat around them again, but this time, she draws it away from Camelia, leaving the air around her colder than it had been just moments before. It wasn’t in her nature to make things cool, but she gladly takes the heat toward herself, wrapping herself in it.

    It would provide at least some relief, she thinks.

    Not prompting her sister to wake again, she looks back to her other sisters with her grin not budging from her fine face. “I think the real question is what we should do once she does wake up,” she casts a glance toward the ocean behind them before looking back. “Do we want to swim today?” she asks with a laugh, knowing that not all of them were as keen on the idea as she was, “Or perhaps travel to somewhere new!”

    so you should get on board with someone whose course is steadier than mine
    you should get on board with someone whose eyes are on the horizon, not on the skies



    @[silene]




    Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)