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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]  watch your heart move slowly from your hands
    #1



    Although Agetta could remember that a few days ago she had been heartbroken, she could not remember why - so she assumes it must not have been all that important. The feelings are hazy and distant, almost like someone else had been telling her a story. And maybe that’s all it was, someone else’s heartbreak affecting her. She thinks she's always been rather prone to letting the stories of others affect her a little too much.

    Or perhaps she had seen a baby bird that had fallen out of a tree and been abandoned, or it had been the remains of someone unfortunate enough not to escape the creatures in the darkness.

    It is gone now, whatever it was. What she knows is that when dawn breaks out on this late autumn day and reveals a thin layer of snow, she smiles for the beauty of it. Smiles knowing this is the first winter her young granddaughters will get to experience, their first chance at seeing snow.

    She thinks about going to find Beyza and the girls again but for now, she decides to just wander on this early morning - keeping her dark eyes open for new friends. Her pale body brushes snow off of the long grass as she moves through it and for once in her long life there is nothing terribly important bogging down her mind. There are worries, like whether Holler and her other children are doing okay in this moment, but she just makes a note to find them when she can and thinks nothing more of it for now. In fact, the only thought that lingers is that the dark clouds on the horizon suggest there will be more snow coming in soon.

    we are made of starstuff

    artwork by yoricade
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    #2
    kensley
    i swore the days were over of courting empty dreams
    Still he wanders, even with a place to call home.
    Because the only thing he inherited from his father was that itching restlessness.

    It is the Meadow he returns to without fail.
    Alive. With a heart beating in his chest and breath festering in his lungs.
    And something else, too.

    The fog does not love him like it had loved the son. It tangles itself in his hair. It haunts him like so many other things. He does not try to bend it to his will because he understands that it does not truly belong to him. It follows him but it is not his. 

    Just as the heart is not his.
    (It is, but it does not feel it anymore. It aches after so many years of laying waste in the cage of his ribs. Useless. Still. Silent. Frozen.)
    Just as the lungs are not his.
    (They are, but they too had spent so many years atrophying.)

    And there is something else, too. Something beyond the fog that draws its spiny fingers through the tangles of his mane. (He can hear them as he passes by, their thoughts seeping into the mud of his mind without invitation no matter how he tries to push them out.)

    He draws in a shuddering breath and the ribs smart with decay, even still. Certainly the bones had splintered, dead, rotting. How terribly it had hurt to be put back together, to be reanimated. How horribly frightening it had been.

    He wanders and the knees cry out in protest now but there is some small joy to be found in this because he is alive again. He is real and the pain is a reminder of all the things he has done wrong.

    A flash of white catches his eye in this brilliant light and he remembers a meeting of ghosts so long ago, the soft kindness of friends and he smiles just barely as he makes his way toward her. “Agetta,” he calls out to her, the warmth returned to his voice. It had been missing the last time he’d seen her. “It’s good to see you.” And he means it this time. 

     
    i worshipped at the altar of losing everything



    @[Agetta]
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    #3



    It is startling to hear her name from an unfamiliar voice, for her idle thoughts about the weather to be interrupted and to turn and see a face that she does not recognize. Her smile is slow, though her answer is automatic - a little too automatic, almost like it was rehearsed (or like it had been planted in her mind for situations like this, a script for her mind to use when it could not access the memories it needed). “Hello, it’s good to see you too.”

    After all, it would not be polite to tell someone you don’t know who they are - right? Besides, she thinks that maybe it will come to her after a little bit of time. Though her body does not look terribly old, she is rather ancient and she supposes things are bound to slip through the cracks. Perhaps this is someone she knew from the Gates? Many of those memories have become hazy with the stretch of years, she cannot easily recall the faces of the mares who had raised and trained her, or the generations that came after as she lingered on the sidelines.

    She feels incredibly guilty that something as much as an entire stallion, especially one followed by what she imagines is a distinctive fog, could have slipped out of her mind but if there is a kind way to say that out loud she cannot think of it.

    He seems pleasant enough though, and Agetta does enjoy having company after so many years on her own, so her smile is not forced as she continues. Her voice now is more natural as she moves into an easy topic that does not require a magical script. “It’s good to have the sun back, isn’t it?”

    we are made of starstuff

    artwork by yoricade
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    #4
    kensley
    i swore the days were over of courting empty dreams
    It is not a gift, his ability to hear them without their knowing it.
    It is not a gift in the way it makes his chest burn with shame, his throat ache with guilt. Their thoughts are not his to know, these private things meant only for them.
    (And these are especially painful, aren’t they? To hear her greet him like an old friend, knowing that she does not know who he is. But can he blame her? He had been someone entirely different the first time their paths had crossed and the last time, too.)

    His smile softens. Not with disappointment, no, but with a kind of understanding as he studies her. His old friend. Perhaps the only one he’d thought he had left. And he wonders what it was that took the memory from her. Was it magic or was it simply time?

    You don’t remember me,” he says but there is no accusation in his tone. He says it kindly, head tilted as he studies her. So much has changed since the last time he saw her, he thinks, and he’d been eager to share these things with her when he’d first laid eyes on her. (And maybe there is some inkling of disappointment burrowed in the valleys between his ribs as he realizes that he will not be able to have this conversation with his friend, but this is not her fault and he does not blame her.) 

    We were friends once, you and I,” he explains, smiling softly still. “You helped me when I wasn’t willing to help myself.” He swallows, draws in a long breath and then turns his attention to the light pooling around them. He nods, distracted. 

    It is,” he agrees. He thinks of Anaxarete, their son. “I was never very fond of the dark.” 

     
    i worshipped at the altar of losing everything



    @[Agetta]
    Reply
    #5



    Guilt floods Agetta with renewed vigor despite the kindness in the stranger’s voice when he calls her out so accurately. She wishes she had done a better job at hiding the fact that she did not know him, though she cannot know that her own thoughts betrayed her. She wishes too that she knew who this was, wishes she had memories of their friendship.

    It sounds like something she would do, to help someone like that, but it no memories surface and it makes her guilt churn a little more.

    “I’m so sorry.” Though they are useless words, she does mean them. She’s incredibly sorry to hear that she’s forgotten a friend. And she does not know how she’s mirroring the conversation she had with someone who had forgotten her. Nor does she know that this stranger, this nameless friend, is handling the situation far better than she had when she had been in his position. Agetta can't think of any excuses to give, because she cannot think of any. Is there ever an excuse for forgetting a friend?

    She had brought up the subject of the light returning, but her blue gaze remains on his face and she does not reply to his comment about the dark. A concerned frown darkening her features as she asks quietly, hung up on the past tense he had used about their relationship.  “Why aren’t we friends anymore?”

    Clearly she had forgotten him somewhere, so maybe she had just proved to be a poor friend after all.

    we are made of starstuff

    artwork by yoricade


    @[kensley]
    Reply
    #6
    kensley
    i swore the days were over of courting empty dreams
    They had been friends once. He does not need to read her thoughts to know that the apology is coming. He shakes his head, smiling gently before she can even get the words out.

    Don’t be sorry,” he says and he means it, just as she had meant it.

    He does not know what has happened. He does not know what has taken the memory of him from her but he knows that it is not her fault. 

    He had tried to save her from any potential embarrassment by shifting the conversation to the return of the light, but he is so acutely aware of the weight of her gaze on his face. She does not look away from him, not even when he shifts his own focus to the horizon and remembers the years he spent watching the colors change. Not sleeping. Just watching. The dead did not require sleep, after all. 

    And then the darkness had come and nothing ever changed until he had changed. The darkness came and his son might have been responsible but it didn’t matter when the darkness gave him his pulse back.

    He swallows in response to her question and draws his gaze back to her face, aware that the answer is much simpler than she might fear it to be.

    Is a friendship still a friendship if only one part of it remembers?” he asks and then smiles patiently, head tilted as he comes to an answer for his own question. “I guess I don’t see why it can’t be.” And then he rolls a shoulder in a kind of shrug. “We’re still friends, then. I’m your friend Kensley.” 

     
    i worshipped at the altar of losing everything



    @[Agetta]
    Reply
    #7



    He tells her not to be sorry, but of course she is. It settles deep inside of her heart and though she appreciates his kindness in trying to alleviate the guilt, or her embarrassment.

    Her frown deepens at the first part of his response, already grieving for the loss of this friendship that she only just discovered that she had. But relief causes a smile when he continues, and she is glad to hear that there had not been some large falling out - that it had just been time, and her poor memory. And that both of those things are easily forgiven.

    And it is always good to discover a friend, even one she had forgotten. So her dark eyes dance a little when she can genuinely say again now “Well it’s nice to see you again then, Kensley.” And though his name rolls from her tongue with ease, like she has said it before she is sure that this is the first time. She considers asking him more questions about their friendship, like how they met - if she seems the same now, since she’s clearly changed if she’s committing such sins as these - but she decides to let it drop. It might be a little too awkward to get him to describe past encounters to someone who he believed had been there.

    Agetta belatedly shifts back to the other topic, the route he had offered so she didn’t dig herself into a deeper hole. “What is it about the dark you don’t like?” As if there weren't dozens of perfectly logical reasons, as if Agetta herself didn't sometimes wonder about whether the shadows housed something they shouldn't.


    we are made of starstuff

    artwork by yoricade


    @[kensley]
    [Image: Agetta-by-Star-smaller.png]
    Reply
    #8
    kensley
    i swore the days were over of courting empty dreams
    It is a kind sentiment but he knows that’s all it is.
    Still, he smiles. (Even if it is the same sad smile he has always worn. Something worn down in the eyes, something dark and brittle.)

    He does not know how to rebuild a friendship but he supposes this is as good a place as any to start. 

    There is no use in telling her that Anaxarete had helped him, just as Agetta had insisted she would. Or that it had not been as permanent as he had hoped. He cannot tell her how different it is to be alive again after being something else for so long. (He had been that something else the first time their paths had crossed and every time after that. Until now. And his friend Agetta would have delighted to see him living again, wouldn’t she? But this new Agetta does not know the difference.) 

    He draws in a breath (how beautiful it is to do such a thing, even still, even now! Even if the lungs still ache sometimes) at her question, shifts his weight. The dark things had spared them. Or, rather, the dark things had been kind to them. The dark things had brought him back to life. The dark things had gifted him with the magic that the son had held so dear, hadn’t they? The fog. 

    Perhaps it is only because she does not remember that he feels comfortable telling the truth.
    I think my son was responsible for it,” he admits and exhales a shuddering sigh. He shakes his head and does not know how to look at her, his friend, when he says. “Even with the sun returned, I do not know how to confront the idea of being ashamed of my son.” 

     
    i worshipped at the altar of losing everything



    @[Agetta]
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    #9



    The Agetta that came before would have been able to understand Kensley's answer better, would have remembered the boy that Atrox had forced her to carry and that Anaxarete had twisted from her until he became unrecognizable. This Agetta, who has had her memories altered so much she exists in an entirely different reality, does not even know that son of hers exists - nor the one that she shares with that shadow-mare.

    She doesn’t remember what it is like to look into the eyes of someone you created and hate them, even just a little bit, for what they’ve become.

    It is easy for her to move until she can touch his shoulder in a comforting gesture, offering him a sad smile when her dark eyes return to his face. “I do not know how you would confront that either. Whenever one of my children disappoint me, I assume it is because I disappointed them.” One thing remains consistent in Agetta’s realities - her love of being a mother and her absolute inability to excel at it for long. “And it is often hard for me to accept that sometimes, it is not my fault.” She doesn’t know if this is part of what is bothering Kensley but the words are kind, forgiving. As are the ones that come next. “My daughter told me she thought she was responsible for it, the darkness.” Something else she has in common with this friend she's forgotten, her smile holding nothing but sadness. Even though she's sure Beyza also came to regret whatever part she had played.

    we are made of starstuff

    artwork by yoricade


    @kensley
    [Image: Agetta-by-Star-smaller.png]
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