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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


    we're not meant to stay forever; any
    #1






    Agnieszka



    Once upon a time there had been a girl splashed in black who lived beside a river. There was magic in the girl’s veins.  She had command of the waters and the earth. The air would crackle with her fury and the sky would brighten with her joy. She was plain and full bodied, but her eyes were amethyst and she was loved.

    One day everything went wrong and the girl was destroyed and there was nothing left of her at all.

    Almost nothing.

    Part of what remained, small and dark with rage and sorrow, was walled off. Imprisoned.

    Amnesia protected the rest of her, but the wounds and blood and fear drove her far away from the wreckage of her home beside the river.

    She arrived in her new home and was healed by a Djinn, nearly seduced and drowned by a sea monster, lost on a quest, made mistress and mother, and all the while the inky creature locked in her mind writhed and pushed against its bounds. Then the terror of war weakened its prison.

    The woman had almost made herself into a new whole, and the tendrils of her past pushing free spun her into madness that came and went like the tide.

    Once upon a time there was a Witch and she had come apart instead of dying.

    ___

    Water eddies around her limbs, whirlpools and froth spinning across the surface when she drags her thighs deeper into the cold clear pond. Silt blooms around her storm clouded body and ripples drift outward to break against the reeds. When she finds herself standing in the center of the misshapen body of water she proceeds no further.
    “Pond. You are dull.”
    This pronouncement comes in a voice low and velvet.
    “It is a pond.” Here the voice is just a bit higher, more earnest, but so similar that one might not notice any difference at all.
    A shake of the head. “Very well, but this water feels only wet.”

    “Yes…” A purr, all parts agreeing.

    Eyes of amethyst lift away from the light brown clouds beneath the surface and Agnieszka tilts her head ever so slightly as the dark thing settles down and leaves her alone in the pond, in her mind, and she forgets that it had even been there with her at all.

    This is the first time she has been so near what could be considered civilization in a very long time, and she finds herself staring at the strangers beyond her pond with direct and curious looks just anxious enough not to be rude, a twinge in her scarred brow.

    an unequaled gift for disaster





    @Any - she deserves to be a main so come love her
    Reply
    #2
    T U M U L T
    He feels out of place here, though perhaps that is because the storm-cloud gray of him clashes so vibrantly against the summer-blue of the sky. He is shades of gray with wings like bruised clouds that bleed rain from the tips of them, a dark mark against the green of the grass and the yellow of the sun, the water-color of flowers scattered across the landscape.

    A blot of depression against a joyous world, and his skin itches with the self-conscious anxiety he has never quite been able to shake.

    He finds himself wondering again why he was here.

    He looks up at the sky again, cloudless and blue, and the very idea of trying to use his wings in such weather inspires a phantom fatigue in his bones. It would be impossible to leave now, to have the strength to get back through whatever mysterious barrier he had broken to end up here.

    With a sigh he turns his gray eyes from the sky to his surroundings, looking beyond those that drifted nearby. He does not mean to but his gaze catches briefly with hers, and there is a constricting feeling in his chest. He has never been good at small talk or conversation, but he has not spoken to a single soul since arriving here and it was beginning to wear on him—a foreboding feeling that told him if he didn’t do it now, he would never do it at all.

    He walks towards her, his steps unhurried but purposeful. The golden sun glints off the water that drips from the clouds of his wings, and his thick, wind-knotted mane drapes along the various grays of his cloud-colored neck. While he is everything a storm would look like should it ever decide to manifest itself into a physical shape, the uncertainty in his eyes is clear. When he stops it is not even at the edge of the pond that she stands in, but instead still several paces away from it. She is colored in shades of gray, too, except for the almost shocking amethyst of her eyes.

    He should have said hello, or some other form of normal greeting, but instead he asks her, “Where are we?”
    CAN YOU TELL ME, WILL I BREAK OR WILL I BEND?


    @[Agnieszka]
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    #3






    Agnieszka



    Sunlight bears down on the solid mare’s watercolor stained back, contrasting the cool water lapping at her belly as she stares into all these disinterested faces. The sound of large hooves slowly drawing near over the dusty earth collects Agnieszka’s attention and she angles her head toward a winged stallion. He smells like water, and perhaps the charged air beneath a thunderhead. Her caged companion shifts, like a cat recrossing its paws, but stays put away.

    Where are we?

    Had she asked Stillwater or Djinni that same question? She cannot remember if she even spoke back then, only what it was to be confused, quivering and bloody somewhere near here. Violet eyes drift away from the stallion and try to pick out the place where the three of them had met. Even though she is mostly alone in her head right now the recollection is imperfect, clouded by the trauma and the years and changes in between. “It’s called Beqanna, and this is a Meadow or a Field. All the creativity in names was spent elsewhere.” Eszka is not usually so wry and is left uncomfortable from having made the weak joke.

    He may know this is Beqanna and be hoping for a more specific answer but she can’t explain that she didn’t steer herself here or into this mucky pool. It is a feature of her mental state that she does not have to question the blank places or wonder what happened, she just exists in these vignettes and is shattered enough to think that they are what life is. It is what her few memories look like after all, bits and pieces of preserved emotions.

    “Where did you come from?” She’s been asked that before herself, by someone she loved (her ever-present companion snorts, annoyed, but Eszka registers it only as old doubts). Biting her tongue to keep from adding Do you remember?, she moves steadily toward the edge of the misshapen pond and then skirts along the reeds toward the open shore nearest the stallion. Water runs down her limbs and droplets gather and fall from her chest... and so the two of them stand there dripping.

    an unequaled gift for disaster





    @[Tumult]
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    #4
    T U M U L T
    Beqanna, she says, and his face creases into a nearly invisible frown. He has never heard of a place by this name, which means he must have traveled further than he had initially thought. He was familiar with the lands that surrounded his birthplace, but only vaguely so. Paying attention and storing information had never been much of his strong-suit, and he decides to assume he simply forgot, perhaps having deemed the place unimportant, or too far away to be concerned with.

    “Ah,” he answers her with a nod, appreciative of her explanation, and then his lips quirk into a smile. “I like names that explain what they are. No guesswork or surprises that way.” He wonders what the other lands must be like, or what they are named, but he does not ask. Something tells him that she does not live in any of them; she looks too at home in this body of water, as if she sprang from it and has lived here since, simply waiting for lost and confused strangers to happen by.

    “I’m not from here,” is all he says at first. He is not from here, that is true, but his tongue no longer seems to be able to remember the name of where he was from. He reaches for it, searches through the clouds and haze of his memories, but returns empty handed. He must be more tired than he realized, and he tries to quell the panic that he can feel roiling within his ribs. His memory has never failed him before, and while he has been able to brush off being unable to recall how he got here, or exactly when he had crossed the threshold that landed him here; being unable to remember the place of his birth was for more unnerving.

    He clears his throat, hoping that she will not see the confusion that flickers like a storm in his gray eyes. “The name is unimportant,” he says, before hastily adding, “but my name is Tumult.”
    CAN YOU TELL ME, WILL I BREAK OR WILL I BEND?


    @[Agnieszka]
    Reply
    #5






    Agnieszka



    “You have a good point.” There are more than a few named locations on this continent that will disappoint his preference, unfortunately but she will leave that for the storm-clouded stallion to discover himself.

    “Agnieszka.” She provides her own name in turn and then watches him for a beat before supplying the abbreviated version gently. ”Some call me Eszka.” There is magic stitched into his genes, sometimes she feels as though she can smell this on others, more specifically if there is water involved in their gift, but it could just be a superstition of hers. The point is that he fits here even if it’s not the place of his origin.  Still Eszka feels a connection with him for their mutual foreignness. “I am not from here either, but it is not a bad place. There are worse.” Worse places or perhaps just worse moments. All the dead ends roads Beqanna has set her down. At least most of them didn’t end in fire, pain, and death. Where will this one go? How long will she be awake in a sun-soaked moment with a young stallion named Tumult?

    Her poltergeist gets bored, rises and drifts into the tobiano mare as far as its prison will allow. There’s only a subtle change in the way the scarred body holds itself, and there is a restrained power, grace and preternatural strength in its carriage. The dark thing has only a few heartbeats to hold sway, just long enough to step up onto the bank and join the stallion, her amethyst eyes swallowing him up. It is a look like the sun gives, unwavering, blowing back the shadows. A breath, a twitch and shiver across Eszka’s grey clouded pelt. Her focus shifts, turning inward and vague before returning to Tumult as though surprised by his--no her-- new proximity to him.. “I must have drifted… what were you saying?” With her body returned to the possession of this dominant self her shape is relaxed, natural and calm once again.

    If there is shame in not remembering one’s past she should be stapled to the earth by it.

    an unequaled gift for disaster




    @[Tumult]
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