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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]  i'm alright today; Any
    #1
    Ausra

    How many hundreds of lives has she waited for a world like this? It is beautiful in an incredibly foreign way. Some places just speak to the soul. She has been born a thousand times before but never into a body made like this one. Her legs are long and slim, deceptively strong. She has been strong before, but this is a body built for war. Her lungs are a bellows, massive wells into which she can draw this worlds air in order to fuel the locomotion that this body seems to crave. Of all the shapes she has taken over the millennia this is immediately a favorite.


    Perhaps she’ll stick in this one if she manages to earn herself another round.


    As with every other time she comes into consciousness as an adult. Whatever she is, she assumes she is an ordinary one as this is the way it has always been. Sometimes she remains an ordinary whatever-she-is, and other times she doesn’t. That doesn’t affect the outcome, or it hasn’t yet.


    Ausra arrives on the edge of a body of liquid that she finds to be water. Her body responds to the scent of bonded hydrogen and oxygen and she drinks from the stream to satisfy the urge before tentatively crossing through it. Finding that she does not melt or nearly get eaten by anything she can see she splashes up into the marshy grasses on the other side and heads toward the scent of salt. Crossing the isle she comes across a surprising structure and studies it for a long time. There are words, faded, but she cannot read them, only recognizes the shape of a language transcribed on an object that could not have been made by a being like her.


    When the sea laps at her hooves she considers turning away to look for a creature like the one she now is. However, the tide is low and she notices that one might make their way to the not too distant mainland if they swam and moved across the sandbars. Her experiences with oceans make her a little wary, waves and monsters are features of massive bodies of liquid in just about every world she has experienced. Ausra considers that she has only died on her first day twice and decides to risk the crossing.


    Something swims nearby and Ausra keeps clear of it without getting too excited, reaching the mainland easily. This body is versatile. She does look back, blue eyes scanning the water for whatever had drawn close to her beneath the waves but there is no more to see than the sea and the strange island. Satisfied that she has made the right decision in leaving the odd little island she proceeds with what is always her first task: finding another.



    When she does or is rather found herself, her body knows the tongue in which she must address the creature that is like enough to her that they must be the same and she asks (as she has so many times before) “What are we?”



    i've had dreams of you in places i've not seen





    @Any - Recycled, 3rd time's the charm :S
    Reply
    #2

    like an angel but with broken wings

    Something has changed recently, though Renfri isn’t quite sure how.

    It had been like a dam breaking open, the power that flowed through her veins suddenly one morning, and all at once Renfri felt as though she could take on the world if she wanted to. What gifts had been suddenly bestowed upon her as she slept? Her wings are darker and heavier, and the energy that crackles around her halo feels… dangerous. It was never crooked before but now it hangs at a slight tilt, the electric blues only dampened by the darkness of her horn.

    Ugh. Her internal monologue sounds melodramatic and she shakes it off like a fly from her back. She could fly to the Meadow, where her brother had mentioned going, but instead chooses to teleport a few thousand yards at a time. She has never been to the Meadow before - and teleportation is tricky to get right - so she only jumps forward as far as the eye can see, running and bounding in between leaps and reveling in the sensation of blinking out of existence in one spot and reappearing in another. This is one of the new powers, and thus far, one of her favorites.

    It doesn’t take that long to reach the common lands using this method, and Renfri giggles as she pops into existence in the middle of a couples’ serious conversation, earning some startled snorts and angry trumpeting from a stallion as she bounces away. Feeling her energy begin to wane she stops teleporting, pausing to rip up a few mouthfuls of grass before continuing on her way, using her legs now instead of her powers.

    It isn’t long before a lonely overo woman catches her eye and she draws closer to the older mare, so focused on the stranger that she doesn’t notice the tree until she walks right through it, half of her body becoming immaterial to move by unharmed. She acts as though it is not a strange occurrence, though that is one power she has not yet explored, and it most certainly felt odd. She stops before the stranger just in time to hear her question, and Renfri cocks her head curiously to the side, her bright eyes staring deep into the stranger’s.

    “We are nothing,” she tells the woman, wondering if she can evoke a sense of discomfort in the stranger. “Surely you know that? Nothing but insignificant specks in the universe.”

    Renfri



    @[Ausra]
    Reply
    #3
    Ausra


    An answer to her persistent question, asked across a multitude of worlds, is not to be found in this meadow. The being speaking to her is a girl, she determines with this body's instincts-- at least two genders in this race, juvenile forms suggest offspring may grow quickly  but perhaps not with full independence. She will hope to meet younger examples, as this one seems to be on the cusp of adulthood. Making theses cursory notes, the overo considers the word 'speck' and what it might mean to the stranger. Insignificance? Dust? Even in dust there are worlds.

    “Specks? Dear creature, we are universes ourselves. There is such a thing as Nothing but I don't think you have seen it before, and we certainly are not it.”

    A pause, she has tried to develop the skill of not saying more than what will make her seem strange. No small task when one is thrust into an unfamiliar culture without any prior exposure to it. She is perhaps unsuccessful today but this is a place where unexpected behavior appears the norm.

    "You were not nothing before you came to exist and you will not be nothing when you are gone."
    Ausra has been a mother, father, guardian, sibling, elder and mentor many times and there is an ageless authority in her otherwise gentle voice. She is not unsettled, she recognizes the bravado and mischief of youth. The words may serve to correct the child's thinking, to help her recognize her own power as a conscious being, and how incredible it is to have your energy gathered into the form of a living thing. The reply may all the more readily be disregarded as the ignorant chiding of another unaware adult. Ausra knows the dance.

    The children she has raised in other lives have all been unique into themselves, but there seems to be a basic formula for being a juvenile regardless of your world, species, or origins.

    The Traveler abandons her initial question. Others she has asked have given her enough answers to move on to further curiosities. As she speaks she turns her eyes toward the tree the younger being had phased through before they began to speak. Ausra needed to walk around the flora as it appears most every other lifeform on this world did.

    "What are you? Besides a speck, as you say."


    i've had dreams of you in places i've not seen



    @renfri I wrote this on my phone, sorry if anything is weird
    Reply
    #4

    like an angel but with broken wings

    Whatever Renfri had been expecting in response, it certainly wasn’t… that.

    To say the girl is a bit taken aback is an understatement. The overo mare’s confidence in confirming that they are not the specks that Renfri had just implied gives the girl pause, and she realizes that this stranger will not be one that she can easily manipulate. You were not nothing. It rings in her head in a troubling sort of way, and Renfri wonders if her conversational partner has magicks of her own, or just a way of speaking that flips Renfri’s words all back onto herself in a way that leaves her flustered.

    There are a few moments of silence as the two contemplate one another, and then the mare asks another question and Renfri takes a moment to consider herself. A horse, right? A child, correct? A manipulative little thing with powers that she has only just begun to explore. A child with a crooked halo and nearly-black wings that are almost long enough to drag the ground as she walks. She is Renfri, daughter of Tarte and Cirilla, sister to Cross; nothing more, nothing less.

    She wonders which answer the stranger wants.

    “That’s a rather rude question,” she says finally, childish petulance coloring her tone. “But I suppose it is correct to say that anatomically, I am a horse. As are you. Do you not know what a horse is? Because you’re older than me, so I think you’ve been around a bit longer than I have.” Still confused, but a bit more confident now, she continues.

    “Some of us have powers, like wings and teleporting and stuff like that, but others don’t have anything at all. They named me Renfri, which is a warrior name or something.” Finally, the child stops, curiosity stilling her tongue for a moment. “What are you?”

    She thinks it’s only fair, since the stranger had asked her first.

    Renfri



    @Ausra
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