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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


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    [private]  this fire inside me; aela
    #1
    H
    er mother had told her stories of the days before the eclipse (and before her birth). Islas had pulled her daughter close in the darkness and whispered tales of sunlight and color and warmth. Better than that, the pale mare had told her daughter about the stars, how the pinpricks of their light would emit a soft glow on the earth, how she could hear whispers from the galaxies. Kamaria hadn’t been able to picture it then; although she was young and fierce in the world already, the darkness pressed on her with a terrible viciousness.

    When the sun came, she had rejoiced. The starry girl had felt a weight lift on her as soon as the eclipse ended, her lungs feeling fuller and her head feeling clearer. But when night fell again, Kamaria had truly thrived. She was born for the night, for the moon and stars, for their glow on her pale head. She is the daughter of a fallen star, and when she hears the hum of the galaxy, she feels like she is home.

    The cavern she calls home has been feeling more crowded lately. It had been comfortable when it was just her and Islas, and then her father had come home. Kamaria had eventually gotten used to his presence, though she would often be annoyed when he had nightmares about wherever he was during the eclipse (she hadn’t asked him yet, and neither had he told her). And just when Kamaria was used to him, her mother had disappeared for a few days and returned with two newborns.

    Isaure and Tiernen are still young, and Kamaria considers herself too mature to spend very much time with them. There is a whole world beyond Loess and their little cave, so the girl tells her father she’s going to visit the Pampas and then follows a trail toward the fields before it’s too late. She leaves home at dusk, so the world is quiet by the time she reaches the border.

    It’s a clear summer night, and the moon is full and bright in the sky. Kamaria pulls some starlight from the sky as she walks, and she twists it into a fox that jumps through the tall grasses. It leaves a glowing trail behind it, and the girl’s own soft glow absorbs the fox’s as she wanders behind it.
    credit to nat of adoxography.


    @[Aela]
    #2

    YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS

    She had fought her way through the Eclipse.

    Aela won't consider herself some battle-hardened warrior or Amazonian of old Beqanna. But the monsters had come and it had given the Seneschal a chance to sharpen her skills further, to learn exactly how deep her abilities went. When the shadow creatures bared too many teeth or too sharp claws - the slender mare who had neither - learned that she was capable of something more insidious.

    They could shift and twist their tortured souls into different things but the palomino had always been a quick study (it was one of the things her grandmother Heartfire had praised her for). It didn't take Aela long to learn that each time they approached, they rose like a tide with emotions churning with them. She had learned to use the very things that seemed to draw them in as a shield; the palomino shoved feelings such as fear, despair, and anguish at them.

    Most of the beasts usually fled after they realized that Aela wouldn't relent in her emotional assault.

    And for the ones that remained, Aela had come to enjoy dissecting them emotion by emotion. Tearing them apart until they were nothing but hazy whispers haunting the dark, bare echoes of the souls that they had been.

    It's a skill that hasn't left her yet. Each evening, Aela (out of instinct and habit) feels the world around her. She is rarely caught by surprise and even though the Pampas has an idyllic setting, the striped mare refuses to let her guard down. On a night that the moon is full and sings with brightness, the palomino has drifted towards the northern edge of the territory. On one side of the horizon, Sylva glows in a blaze of colors that it never sheds, regardless of the season. Taiga looms in the distance - hovering too close for her liking - and so the young mare looks towards Loess instead.

    The Seneschal wonders briefly if the recent trip with the Pampas Prince to meet the Southern Queen has sprouted any discontent. Her pale lips quirk in the shape of a smile, distracted by the thought. Until a glowing trail distracts her from them and the golden woman moves in the direction of the illuminated trail. One of Obscene's fae creatures?

    No, she realizes. A girl, a child.

    "You're out late," she softly calls to the youth and then calls upon her light to softly shine in the presence of the other. Aela smiles like a beacon but she draws those emotions close, keeps them ready in case this child turns out to be something more.

    Because who better to know that things aren't always as they appear than Aela?



    @[Kamaria]
    #3
    K
    amaria thinks her mother was too protective during the eclipse, and she attributes this to her unfortunate delay in exploration. Islas had told her the story about her father’s disappearance, but hearing how the darkness had taken him away did little to console the girl’s anger. She’d been weary under the weight of the eclipse, of course, but her fatigue didn’t take her zeal for trouble.

    Even as she wanders through the Pampas, the star-girl feels herself grow warm with frustration toward Islas. Her mother kept her chained to Loess and that little cavern for too long, in her opinion. Even with danger looming in every shadow, Kamaria sees her mother’s protectiveness as cowardice, as a tool that was used to chain her to her childhood. And she couldn’t have done much about it, except explore the edges where Loess and Hyaline bled together, where she’d met the pale boy who seemed like he was about to fall apart.

    Although she’d been hoping to meet someone who she explored Hyaline, Kamaria hadn’t expected to find anyone in the Pampas. The sound of a voice makes one navy-tipped ear tip toward the stranger, and the girl’s stone-freckled face soon follows. The starlight fox bounding through the tall grass dances back in an instant, running to twist around the stranger’s legs. It leaves a trail of soft blue light behind it, like a wreath of a hundred star’s kisses at the mare’s feet.

    The strange smiles brightly but Kamaria’s lips remain pulled tight in her characteristically unfazed expression. Her dark eyes shine among the dumortierite stones that glitter in the light from her stars, though it’s almost impossible to see if there’s any emotion to be found in them. “The night’s just getting started,” she says across the space between them. Kamaria drifts forward on long, slender legs until she’s close enough to touch the stranger. “If it’s so late for you, then why are you out?”
    credit to nat of adoxography.


    @Aela
    #4

    YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS

    Such a curiosity, this child.

    Aela's muted blue gaze doesn't know where to look as the filly approaches. Her stars shimmer against her perlino silhouette and their light glints off the azure stones that freckle her young face. The youth is bold; there is no hesitance in her step as she moves forward to greet the Seneschal who lifts her blazed head in quiet approval. She holds little regard for anyone who might cower in the dark and the palomino wouldn't waste her time with those who conjured imaginary fears in the shadows.

    Not when there were things much more fearsome in reality.

    The girl's frustration clings to her - so thick that it might as well be Taigan fog - and the striped Seneschal tilts her head curiously towards her new companion. Aela was well acquainted with it; it had accompanied all through her younger years in the Northern Forest when she had longed to break free. But for reasons she hadn't understood, they (she and her milk-mother, Kota) had been forced to stay.

    Her gift is an intrusive one and while Aela has worked tirelessly to be as deft as she can with her skills, the Pampas' mare refrains for the moment. She can imagine that paired with the adolescent's age, it most likely has something to do with the growing need for independence. And she certainly doesn't need any magic to smell acrid, dusty Loess on the girl's hide.

    There is a slight furrow on her lovely brow but the golden woman hides it beneath her flaxen forelock. But the girl speaks - just as forward with her voice as she had been with her stride - and Aela holds off on the idea of allowing the filly to become target practice for Skandar. She's always appreciated spirit, especially when a horse has a reason to be, as this jewel-touched starchild does.

    "I prefer the dark," Aela confides softly to the child. Her glowing stripes begin to dim; there was no need for her light when the younger traveler has starlight glittering around her heels. "Our eyes so often lie to us," she says and looks down to the unusual fox weaving between the perlino's legs. If the girl doesn't understand what Aela implies, she elaborates with an emotion: an awareness, the feeling of being watched that longs to prickle against her skin.



    @Kamaria




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