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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]  Roam the streets 'til dawn - Any
    #1

    The light that meets the dark

    Cheri felt like an idiot the second she stepped through the faeries' veil, when only two seconds before she’d put on a brave smile and offered herself up to the culling like some fantasy hero. Come to find out, she was not the hero-type. She was the type who clenched her cheeks together when she came across to the other side and was immediately engulfed in darkness, then immediately engulfed. The kind of character who plummeted screaming to their death while their insignificantly short lives flashed before their eyes.

    Kind of pathetic, actually. Her last thoughts had been: this is it this is how I die I’m going to die no no n—. Which, looking back on them after blinking awake a few moments later on the beach, was not a very comforting sort of realization to have when you only have seconds left to live. Neither was waking up and being confused about how that was possible, looking around to see that the darkness still persisted, and then slowly coming to the realization that you weren’t actually alive… in a sense.

    Cheri was a ghost. One of many who’d failed the quest and were slowly coming to their senses on the Beach around her. With a little effort she picked herself up out of the sand, in shock at the rapid descent of the happy vessel they’d all boarded less than hours ago, and tried to puzzle out what had happened. Her thoughts, however, felt too fuzzy around the edges. If she could feel anything at all she suspected that her head should be pounding, or at least scattered in a million tiny pieces all over the shoreline, but surprisingly Cheri hadn’t even gotten scratched.

    “Hm.” She murmured, the word echoing as if it were far away.

    Well… what now? Having lived such a very short, very centered life meant there was really only one place her spirit could go to find repose, so the weightless filly ducked her flimsy head and floated off before Memorie, Lilli, or any other horse might try to stop her.

    For the first time since the Eclipse, fear didn’t follow Cheri. Only the wispy, suspended ribbons of her tail fanned out behind the lonely pegasus, and she stopped to wistfully peer out across the glen of the Meadow when she passed by. The world was silent, but for once she could enjoy it all to herself. She hovered on; past the babbling River where the shadow creatures clicked and scurried around on the shore. Cheri saw them everywhere now that she wasn’t a possible quarry, and it amazed her just how naïve she’d been in her little bubble.

    Their world was overrun by them and so was Taiga, try as the northerners had to keep the monsters at bay. As Cheri floated through a solid tree trunk she could sense them lumbering in the dark: great beastly things with humped backs and wide mouths that made unpleasant sounds. Another year of non-intervention and she doubted her family would make it, talented or not. There was a limitation to their powers, and these creature’s hunger to devour all of life itself seemed infinite.

    She turned her head away in sadness, half-believing that perhaps that was their fate: to persist and live as ghosts in a dying, soon-to-be-dead world. With a shudder at the thought, Cheri haunted the edges of the dying forest and wondered instead what that meant for her mother, Amarine, who had chosen differently. “Be safe.” The spectral horse wished, closing her eyes, and like some apparition from a dream she drifted through the night-black woods in search of any living soul who might give her peace.


    Moody thread, anyone?
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    #2

    one lives in hope of becoming a memory

    It seemed to happen in half a heartbeat. One moment, we were all there, lined up to enter the Afterlife, bent on being heroes, and the next, we were being thrown through some wild ride, plummeting through darkness (not that I hadn’t gotten used to that by now) until we hit the Beach. It was disorienting. It was confusing. And the whole time, up until we hit that Beach, all I could think was this isn’t right.

    There was a moment that I just stood there, blinking, probably looking stupid, trying to get my thoughts back to where they needed to be. What had I been doing? Hadn’t I been going somewhere? When it hits me, I gasp. The quest! We were supposed to be saving the world (how cliché)! I get the distinct feeling that we had failed somehow. I don’t know how, but we did. The world is still blanketed in shadow, but I know that we are not in the Afterlife. We are not where we were meant to be.

    That is when I look around. It is not hard to see the dark shapes around me against the shockingly white Beach. Though something is wrong. Something is very wrong. They are all…ghosts. I look down, and I jump in shock to find that I am as well. Oh no! Oh no! Oh no, oh no, oh no! I think. Shock runs through me–or at least I think it does, because I don’t have a physical body anymore.

    I look up to find where Lilliana and @[Cheri] had gone to hopefully find comfort in them somehow. I could see Cheri disappearing into the shadows, her vastly dulled glow useless against the distance that she puts between us. I feel like calling out to her, but I sense that she needs to lick her wounds, emotionally speaking. So I let her go. Instead, my eyes search for Lilliana. She is there, but there is another problem. She is there, but she isn’t. Only her body remained, cold and…lifeless.

    It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, but I found myself standing there, shocked and unable to move, staring at the figure that had once been my grandmother.

    And then suddenly, suddenly all I wanted was my family. “Cheri!” I shout, running after her. By now, however, she had put enough distance between us that she wouldn’t have heard me. Unaware of the others around me who are also getting their bearings, figuring out what happened (or as much of it as they could), and finding their ways home, I launch myself off the Beach, racing in a direction I hoped would take me home.

    Had my legs been solid, I probably would have tripped a dozen times before I ran out of breath and had to slow my headlong rush for home (and I’m sorely disappointed that even in this incorporeal state, I still have to catch my breath and rest my legs). But when I stop, I can just barely sense the emotional residue of the filly who had been this way before me. This bolsters me slightly, and I continue on my way, walking and running as best as I could until I reached the Taigan woods.

    Here, Cheri’s emotional residue is slightly stronger. I force my tired legs into a run again. When I find her, I am glad for the incorporeal state that we share, because if we had been solid, I would have run right into her. As it were, I run right through her before I manage to stop. Then I throw myself around, a panicked and frantic look on my ghostly features. “Cheri!” I gasp, “Gramma Lilli…” I have to pull in sharp breaths between my words, but this time I pause for a moment, the words stuck in my throat, like a very uncomfortable lump, before finally spitting them out. “She’s dead!”

    Image by Calcifer
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    #3

    The light that meets the dark

    One ghost to another, Cheri wasn’t ready to experience the sensation of having another phantom run right through her insubstantial floaty form, but is any horse really ready to A) Be a ghost in the first place or B) have to be tethered to the “living” world with other spirits just like them? No; the answer is most definitely no, so Cheri hoped that her half-sibling Memorie would forgive her initial reaction to being run-through, since it wasn’t taken with an ounce of decorum.

    “Oh gross, Memorie.” Cheri sighed, but her lack of enthusiasm over their current predicament was put aside in light of her sister’s troubled energy. If Cheri’s hackles could’ve stood up, they would’ve, but as it was she lifted her ghostly ears and peered through the translucent wisps of her floating her hair at Mem, concern knotting her expression into a twisted frown.

    Dead? But weren’t they all?

    Cheri pursed her mouth to say as much but stopped herself, contemplating the situation and what Memorie was telling her. Lilli had gone on the quest with them, chosen the exact same path as them and Cheri was certain a few hours ago that she’d seen her body on the shoreline, just like Memorie’s. Was she absolutely certain, though? Her frown deepened. She’d come back to Taiga, and here was Mem as well… yet Gramma Lilli was nowhere to be seen.

    Gramma Lilli is dead. As in, really dead instead of just partitally like they were. “Thunderstrokes.” Cheri cursed quietly, feeling her throat catch. The words repeated themselves in her head: Lilli is dead, Lilli is dead, Lilli is dead, and her father was gone with Borderline, and her mother was still in the clutches of a deep magic, and Reave… “@[Reynard].” Cheri squeaked out, wishing that her twin would appear out of the dark like Memorie had. @[Targaryen], her heart whispered from the clutches of her fluttering chest.

    She felt like a beaver’s dam near bursting, but her eyes caught sight of Memorie and the way her sister looked so breathlessly shattered, and Cheri knew that she had no other option except to hold the cracking edges of her heart together if she wanted to see any of the horses she loved again. Be strong, Cheri told herself and swallowed, for your family. For Lilli’s honor.

    “Oh Mem.” Her sister whispered in an airy voice, wishing more than anything that they could hold one another. She tried anyways, and floated nearer to her ghostly sibling with her neck outstretched. “Maybe… maybe this is part of the challenge.” Cheri fumbled for a strand of golden hope. “Maybe we failed and Gramma Lilli succeeded in making it across. We were told so many times that magic has a price…” She clamped her teeth together to keep her voice from breaking.


    @[Memorie]
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    #4

    one lives in hope of becoming a memory

    Had I been in any state to care about anything other than what I’d sought her out for, I might have been grossed out by our incorporeal bodies passing through one another, too, but as luck would have it, there are other things, more pressing matters, on my mind as I whirl around to face my sister. I barely take stock of her expression or sentiments before I drop the dreaded words into the stillness that separates us. They taste sour leaving my lips, which makes me want to wretch. They even feel dirty, like I should wash my mouth out. It is the sound of them, though, that truly makes me shudder. A twinge of guilt and fear and abject horror slides through my veins like poison as the sound of them fills the air around us.

    Then there is a moment of silence, a moment where I could see the gears churning in Cheri’s eyes, her thoughts roiling and turbulent, and there is a touch of disbelief there, as well. I want to scream at her, to tell her it is real, that gramma Lilli is gone and not coming back from the Mountain as we had, but I bite my tongue. I had learned long ago that it is better to give others a moment to their thoughts before making impulsive decisions. That moment pays off, as I watch her expression turn from disbelief to realization, and then she drops our brother’s name from her lips, and I can tell her heart has broken, just as mine had when I’d seen the old mare lying there on the Beach, lifeless, unlike the others she was surrounded by.

    I feel her heart breaking, as well. I can see it in the memory she casts off. But I can also see her resolve. It forms at the corners of her eyes, then resolutely situates itself across the rest of her features. I can see it in her memories as she thinks of the rest of the herd. Half of me wants to share in this resolve, but the other half of me is still broken, remembering that night on the Taigan beach, playing with Leonidas while gramma Lilli and mother talked about more adult things that they hadn’t realized I was listening in on while I played.

    I square my hooves beneath me, though, and lift my head to look at my sister. She brings her incorporeal figure close to mine, and I can feel the breath of her body brush against the breath of my own. It is a minor comfort, but a comfort nonetheless. As she speaks, a sigh lifts itself from my intangible lips. There was a brief moment of guilt that rises within me at her words, at the reminder that we had failed. There are bigger problems in Beqanna, still. The darkness still reigned supreme in the aftermath of our failed quest. Amarine, however, had not been on the Beach when @[Cheri] and I had left, so perhaps there was hope yet. With that thought, I try to put my own faith into my sister’s words. “Yes. Let us hope that she succeeded where we had failed,” I breathe. Unfortunately, this resolve does little to stem the agony leaking from my broken heart like blood from a wound, so I stand there for a moment, trying to wrap my head around the whole ordeal.

    Image by Calcifer
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    #5

    The light that meets the dark

    Memorie was disconsolate. Her sister’s attempt at a hug was acceptable, but Cheri knew it was altogether useless. What good was hugging when they were still left stranded in the dark? Taiga was as dank a place as any in Beqanna by now, Cheri could see that much. Withering trees and crackling ferns, the few that remained. That was the home she and Mem had returned to.

    Her ears were drawn with a flick of movement towards the sound of Memorie’s voice, and Cheri felt all the force of that word: failure. Every syllable was as heavy as a stone. Her head hung low, Cheri remembered the night of the quest when Amarine had tried to slip away peacefully. Her mother had seemed to understand something Cheri didn’t, or couldn’t, and she recalled the way her dam had slipped effortlessly into the shadows as Cheri fumbled to keep up. “I should’ve never gone after her.” The defeated mare knew.

    Now Amarine was missing and her daughters were ghosts.

    “Missing.” Cheri thought, feeling the silence grow between herself and Memorie. Missing was not dead, but it could become that. Amarine was still an unknown variable given up to the magic of Beqanna; the horses who’d gathered at the foot of that infinitely mysterious mountain had all been warned of consequences for trying to help. Her mother, the King of the North, even Reave… they were all just missing. But if they never came back?

    Shuddering, Cheri pressed her waif-like body against Memories without a second thought. The moment looked grim, admittedly. Both were orphans living under the light of an endless Eclipse, heartbroken and unsure if their loved ones would ever return through the long night. They had each other in the present and that was it. The one mare’s wings blended into her sister’s, and Cheri — distracted from her panic in a moment of clarity — marveled at the idea that up until now, she and Memorie had never been closer. Before this very instant it would’ve been physically impossible, but not so anymore. They were as one… closer than she and Rey had been in their mother’s womb.

    “Mem?” Cheri’s voice shattered the quiet. “I’m so glad you’re here.”


    @[Memorie]
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