[open] someday i'll find the strength

[rannoch]

When the world had changed, Rannoch had been young enough to change with it. The loss of day had been startling, but he’d only known it a short while and most days were already filled with things that were new and different. To a wide-eyed boy with his mother to keep him safe, evernight had just been one more new thing.

This world felt strange to him, like he couldn’t quite find his footing in a place where morning woke him from deep slumbers, where chittering beasts did not hunt those who could not defend themselves. He didn’t need to be so migrant to find food either, and for once his belly was always full. All the trees that had withered and the leaves that had fallen away and turned to dust crushed underfoot now blossomed with more shades of green than he could have ever imagined existed.

He is both ancient, carved by the dark and by horror and by the loss of a mother who had disappeared into the night when he was too young to be alone, and brand new. New beneath a sun who travelled the same path across the sky every day. New beneath stars that he was only just realizing held secret shapes and patterns and so many names to learn. New to the birds that had returned to the trees, to the wildlife that now travelled the same forest paths as him.

New, especially, to his own reflection.

He is even larger than he remembers his mother having been, and the tusks that curve from the corners of his dark mouth are as bright as bone. There is so much hair it might’ve made him laugh as he realized, looking around, that most had less. But that too is a reminder of his lost mother, of his own peculiarity and the way it tends to be so isolating. He has found no one like him. There is thick fur all along his body, dense and warm, though it seems heaviest along the crest of his neck and down the front of his chest, heavy too at the bottoms of his feathered legs. Frost clings like a kind of tangible winter, cobwebbed into the longest tufts of his fur. It is most obvious against the darker brown and tawny, nearly invisible in the places where he is white.

But his favorite part of his reflection is none of that at all. It is the shade of his quiet eyes, a blue so clear they might be glacial, might be glass. Might be two pieces of the healed day sky trapped inside the ring of his irises. The frost giant smiles, forgetting that when he dips his head lower to study that shade of blue, his tusks will shatter the reflection into a hundred trembling shards of uncertainty. When it does he blinks, frowns, and then turns away from the water with an old ache in his chest that he’s forgotten to forget. It rises up in him unwelcome, poking at ancient wounds inside a chest made hollow with neglect.

Night will be better, it always is.

RANNOCH

equus mammuthus
son of furious and extinct

no chaos stuff, please <3

[thrum]

When the world had changed, Thrum had been too small to know much. The darkness shrouded everything, and she had no reason to leave the safety and comfort of one of her fathers (certainly not Carnage). She was cared for, as well as any Beqanna babe could be. Pothos had made sure the two tiny babes came to no harm, but he certainly did not reach out with caress and comfort. And when father finally got bored, she had Fletch beside her (visual her opposite, but their powers alike). She had heard the screech of things in the night, she saw their glistening eyes and heard their salivating mouths - but she had been untouchable (as any child believes themselves to be).

The sunrise of Beqanna had been almost a shock - daylight finally breaking and the land changing along with it. So long was the incredible darkness, and the creatures that came with it - and so the need to be tucked away in safety had also faded. Pothos had long ago decided he was done being a ‘father’ (in whatever capacity he had been). Fletch had left (to where, she did not know), and she was alone - more alone than the stretch of darkness had ever made her feel. She figures, at least, she is old enough now - she could navigate these lands just fine. She needed no man - no fathers, no brother - she was perfectly fine all by her own.

She is small, and young, and seems to have been born from the sunrise rather than the dark and horror - awash in pale pink, with a perfect white heart placed on her rump. She was not new to how she looked - she had only to look at Fletch and see her opposite, white with a pale pink arrow on his own hind. Her powers were not new, as she had seen her father wield them so many times (in fact, that was how Fletch and she were created). So young, and already she felt as if there was little else to learn in life (the naivety of children can be so foolish).

And yet, there will always be something new, as she will learn just now.

She meanders along through the trees, following the steady gurgle of the river. It is a cool spring day, the wind whispering through the woods, but the sun is warm on her skin. She has no other plans, and nothing better to do - and so she steps into the rivers and follows it along its winding path, her petite hooves picking over wet rock and  avoiding the small fish that dart through her legs. She watches them, the way they slide through the water - and unlike her, they are so sure and steady about where they are going. So she follows along, for they must have a destination in mind, perhaps they will lead her to someplace less boring, something a little more meaningful.

She moves like this for quite some time, nose to the water, eyes intent on their shining scales. And then, they stop, darting into the crevices of rock and river bed. Her head jerks up- as she knows as best as anyone that had lived through the dark, that listening to the creatures of the land is the best way to stay alive. And there before her is quite possibly the most peculiar (and slightly terrifying) thing she’s seen so far in her short life.

“May I help you?” Her voice carries a hint of authority, and almost as if this creature was the one who had come across her, disrupting her day. She knew that to be afraid would show weakness, that she must dominate over this fantastical being before it had the chance to do the same to her. She steps from the river bed (better footing should she need to bolt - although she couldn’t picture this thing running quite fast). It seemed sidetracked, lost in its own thoughts (did it have thoughts? Was it sentient?) - so she cleared her throat and spoke again. “Excuse me! I said can I help you!” This time, there may have been a slightly shrill taste of panic in her mouth.

kicked back with the wrong angel to fuck with

carved my charm into your arms

@[rannoch]

[Elliana]

kissed my penny and threw it in
prayed to keep my soul

S

he closes her eyes, feels the soft flow of the wind through her hair, skimming over her body like a lover's hands, tugging at her ankles and her face and her neck like the tide, and she knows, more than she has ever known anything, that it had been time to move on. That she was right, that her and Leo both were, that her mother's ghost had been. It was time. Terrastella, Khiyaal, neither could manage to hold Elliana where she stood.

She is still the same Elliana, she likes to think, even if it is not true, cannot be true, not after everything she has seen, done, lived through. She is still quiet, in the ways she speaks, her movements. But move past that quiet little girl and her love of a boy who was born from the ocean and destined to return there, move past everything that has been slowly killing her over the course of her life, all that loneliness and fear that she would never dare show or accept, all those things bunched into the entity that is Elliana as she moves, ghostlike, through the cradling arms of the trees and to the sound of a running river. An image, a sound that makes her ache in places that she had almost forgotten about, existing only because she wont let them go anywhere, burning because she hasn't the strength to smother such a flame.

There is another fire, an ambitious flame that has been ignited without any real purpose. It burns now, not a wildfire, but a gentle, glowing candle in the infinite darkness that sits in waiting within Elliana’s chest, waiting to bleed out.

Elliana has found purchase beside the moving water once more. She follows it, like so many have before her (mother, godmother, cousins she does not know). It leads her to them. There is no hesitance in Elliana as she strides wraithlike towards him and her, the strange creature (or at least, she would think him strange if not so strange herself) and the girl with a marking, same as her own, but lacking the same placement. Hello, she says, and her brows crease and her lips purse before they drop into a frown, right to the bottom of the uncanny valley.

She stands there, staring at them, waiting (for something), with a complacency that hurts.

@[Rannoch] @[Thrum] elliana speaks

elliana
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Sorry, I had to, Rannoch is amazing!