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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


    [open]  fluent seamen rig their rudders
    #1

    In the darkness, with the hunting monsters, it proves difficult to make good time heading for the Field. It’s time. Time for a home, for shelter, something to belong to. She’s always just been her mother’s daughter, nothing more. Just the child of an over-protective gentle mother. It’s been four years of that – two of which she spent mostly in the Meadow hiding from the world. Well, seems silly now that her mother thought it was dangerous then when this is what everything has become. Swallowed in black. She’s a beacon shifting through the trees and over the hills, a dim glow lighting her scales, she doesn’t dare brighten it for fear she will become an immediate target. She can hear the agonizing screams that pierce the eerie quiet and echo across the world like its empty. The winter’s chill doesn’t seem to have passed like it should have and it remains cold, which Fen has never loved. The cold is all together undesirable, really. But there’s no time to dwell on that when you’re in actual constant danger and you can’t see much around you.

    At least she has her glow to light her way. Moving across the rolling meadow, the dead grasses brushing her soft underbelly and her hair catching the branches of shrubbery as she passes through. She can smell that she’s arrived at the edge of the Field, a claiming grounds, her mother explained to her once. They come and find you, sometimes more than one and sometimes none at all – they want to take you to their home. Do not trust anyone, Fenwe. Not until they prove it. Her mother always told her. So there she is, a little glowing girl dressed in shiny scales and golden spots against her piebald base. Her hair long and thick, twirling elegantly at its ends as it bounces in a gentle breeze. She’s certainly easy to spot, even with her glow a bit dimmed. Like a little teal ghost standing at edge of the open plain.







    <3 open to anyone, she needs a home



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    #2
    Gale
    this is going to break me clean in two --
    this is going to bring me close to you



    The first time Gale had attempted to make himself glow, he’d accidentally completed his very first successful shift.

    It was into the shape of one of the bioluminescent plankton that illuminate the Ischian waters, and Gale had spent several panicked hours attempting to return to his natural shape.

    He’s not tried it since, but he does think of it often. Never more so than when he runs across another horse with the ability. Today it is a mare on a far-off hill, her bright coloring visible even from this distance. These days, only the very brave or the very desperate are in the Field, and Gale watches from the shadows, curious which this stranger might be.

    He's fairly sure he is the former, though the worry for his home that lurks at the back of his mind often makes him fear he might be both. He’d like to find someone to help keep watch, to ensure that the monsters don’t slip over the water and onto the islands. Rather than ask more of those who live there, he’s instead chosen an alternate path: finding someone in the Field willing to trade a place to sleep and food to eat for responsibility.

    When she remains alone, Gale seizes the opportunity. His sides still feel bare and his head light, the Alliance having taken both his wings and his horns. He’d been able to shift the wings back, but that requires focus that he’d rather put on the darkness around him. So he arrives near the piebald mare as he truly is, a deep and iridescent navy, streaked with cremello markings. His eyes are bright and blue, and he is smiling in a polite – if a cautious – sort  of way.

    “Hey. I’m Gale.”

    @[Fenwe]

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    #3

    She could hear him coming from afar and it confirmed the feeling she had minutes before – she knew she was being watched. It’s a relief though, to have it be four legs with hooves that comes padding her way and not some villainous horse-flesh craving monster. He smelled like warm earth and sea, and it felt like something bright hitting her senses – even among all the darkness.

    Fen makes sure to swing her hips away and face him where he decides to settle, which is a respectable distance in her opinion. He doesn’t close in on her, but she can see the smooth lines of his silhouette lit with a faint teal light as her glow brightens. She looks him over first, tilting her pretty face to one side, “Hello Gale.” she puts her nose forward to sniff in his direction, “My name’s Fen.” she takes in a deep breath. “You live by the sea?” her voice is confident, but soft, rolling from her mouth as smoothly as a calm river current.







    @[Gale]



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    #4
    Gale
    this is going to break me clean in two --
    this is going to bring me close to you



    Despite all that has changed with the darkness, Gale finds that this one thing – this meeting of strangers in the Field – had not. The golden girl he’d met earlier had found the idea amusing, but Gale had not understood why. Preferring things that he understands, he tears his thoughts from the deeply dimpled face to focus on the glowing one ahead of him.

    “Fen,” Gale repeats, nodding his head in appreciation of the name that matches his own in brevity. “I do. In Islandres, just north of Ischia.” He’s learned that directions are often helpful even for those familiar with Beqanna, and that the former name of his home – Island Resort – is better remembered by those unfamiliar with the still-recent change.

    “Have you ever been there?” He asks. If she has, Gale thinks it was before he lived there, and that would make it quite some time indeed. It is easy for him to lose track of the years in his temperate home, with his friends and family as ageless as the brindle stallion.  Nearly a decade, he thinks, and half that since he was last in the Field. He remembers Fenwe, having been lost in his thoughts, and returns his attention to the glowing woman. She would be eye-catching even without emitting light, Gale thinks, with her tricolored coat: teal and snow and gold. Scales too, he realizes now that he looks closer, and wonders briefly what else she might be hiding beneath her unassuming appearance.

    @[Fenwe]

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    #5

    Fenwe tips her head to the opposite side while he talks, watching him daydream brings a faint smile to her glowing lips. His directions are as useful to her as a riddle – the answer is likely there, but she doesn’t have it. She doesn’t say so though. She leaves out that she hasn’t been very far even in the world of sunlight and seasonal shifts. And now that it is dark, dreary and seems to be ever-winter of sorts? Less far than before. So. Nowhere, basically.

    I have not.” she straightens her head, flicking her eyes to a distant roar. It was a chilling sound. Her gaze finds him again. The pale glossy blue of her eyes glowing a few shades brighter than the rest of her. “Are there monsters there?

    Maybe they have not reached the sea coast – or better yet, may it be an island they have not found. Protected – let it be protected, she prays to herself. “I don’t want to be alone anymore.” she blurts. Her voice isn’t pleading, though you would think with such a state that it would be. She doesn’t seem desperate, only matter of fact, as if she’s come to such a conclusion through cold research (which is exactly the case). Perhaps it is because of today’s dangers that she no longer finds it suitable to wander in solitude, or maybe its just time. Either way, she steps forward, closer to him, closer to being away from this field.




    @[Gale]



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    #6
    Gale
    this is going to break me clean in two --
    this is going to bring me close to you



    Though Gale turns away to gesture toward Islandres, he can feel the weight of Fenwe’s gaze on him, and that is eventually what draws him back. She is not frowning as others often frown when Gale disappears into his own thoughts, and instead there is a faint and glowing smile on her teal face. Gale starts to return it, just as the sound of a distant snarl rends the air around them.

    Gale turns too, his ears catching her admission of having never visited Islandres while his electric blue gaze searches through the darkness. He sees nothing, and returns his attention to Fewnwe to find her eyes glow over-bright.

    “They are everywhere,” he tells her, and though his tone is definitive, it is not defeated. “But there are not so many as here. Not so many kinds, either.” He’s theorized that perhaps the saltwater keeps some of them away, or the cold-sea winds. He and Erne have found most of them as they arrived on the black sand beach, but some had managed to scurry into the darkness of the jungle before they could be done away with.

    “Does anyone?” He replies, as though her blurted admission is one he has heard before, and more than in the quiet refrain of his own heart. This is not a time for loneliness and those who make their own way.

    “You’re welcome to come to Islandres,” he tells her, carefully choosing his words, “There are more eyes there, to keep watch.” He might not be those eyes for long, but it would be unkind to leave her here – alone – when she so clearly does not wish to be. She steps closer, and Gale, thinking of his Curse, doesn’t remember to step away politely. Instead, he meets her eyes, and smiles. 

    @[Fenwe]

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    #7

    Her smile threatens to melt away when he states that they are indeed all over. There is no hope of a sanctum – the underworld has backed this world into a corner and there is nowhere to flee. Panic is always in the back of Fen’s mind, but she has an incredibly useful ability to keep it well at bay in most scenarios. Even in these extreme times.

    Her tail slashes nervously, relieved a little to hear that there aren’t as many in his home. Fen’s head tips back to the side, ears opposite of one another, one bent and the other perked. “Ok.” her small voice lets softly into the dark air around them. She sighs under her breath, “Lead the way.” she readies herself to follow him home.





    @[Gale] you can post for her in islandres or not, no biggie, she will find her way there eventually either way XD



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