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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]  I will walk the plank, not a tear in my eye; Lannister
    #1

    Even at night, the memory of breathing remains. She’s not entirely certain why. Skeletons do not need breath, just as they do not need food and water and the other things that mark one as alive. But as she stands on a stone at the head of the crashing waterfall, her ribs expand. As though her body wants nothing more than to remember that she will live once again.

    The endless night should have cured her of it, but it had not. She had been endlessly grateful for the death that claims her in darkness when the monsters had come. They had no interest in bones, and she had been kept safe when others had not.

    Her chest aches at the thought. Though she has no heart in the cavity of her ribs, she can still feel the squeeze of it. It had been awful to know others suffered for a thing they could not control.

    Shifting, Azure shakes her head, the grinning skull clattering as she tries to clear the memories. Lifting the glowing bone, she peers at the distant horizon. Faint streaks of pink and orange are beginning to break that distant line, a foretelling of the sunrise to come. Her empty ribs expand, as though she had drawn in a deep breath. She hadn’t of course, but she could pretend.

    Lifting the slender bones of her wings, she spreads the skeletal appendages briefly before settling them once more with a clack of bone against bone. Without flesh and feather, she could not fly. She had once been foolish enough to try though. A faint laugh escapes her at the memory. She had tumbled ignominiously to the bottom of the small hill she had attempted to leap from, skeleton jangling loudly for anyone to hear. Fortunately for her, without flesh, she had not bruised.

    She could still call the wolf and run, or perhaps the fish and swim. But as she stares at the spray of the waterfall below her, she knows she will not. Instead she draws her head up and watches the horizon. And she waits for the distant sunrise to release her from her skeletal cage.

    Azure


    you take the shape of everything I'm drawn to



    @lannister
    Reply
    #2
    you used to tell me we'd turn into something
    oh, you said life was much better than this
    Once there had been a time when Lannister pined for Beqanna, for all the life that he did not get to experience. He peered down from the clouds, jumping skillfully from dream to dream, molding and creating lovely things for his favorite strangers. He lingered amongst his favorite minds, casting their favorite memories in gentle sunsets and sunrises while he lurked from the shadows—always watching and never experiencing.

    Was there ever truly a time he wasn’t angry? He is useless in this world, save for the sharp curve of his gleaming horn—he is useless.

    He cannot remember such softness now. Where Lan once wielded gentility, now he waits until night to sling shadows and build monsters. He is a thing of pain, a creature of anger, welded in the hottest pits of fury’s hearths. Aching with it, seething with it, burning with it: he is but smoke and ash, choking and noxious. He might pity those that encounter him if he was aware of the carnage he now left in his wake.

    There was only one night he was left vulnerable, met with the soft blackness of a sweet doe. Were he to meet the living skeleton then, he might quiver with fear. Instead, sweating and exhilarated after a night of taking his anger out on any that he could find, he finds her existence fascinating. Perhaps fuel for more nightmares, though she carries a peacefulness he finds quite opposite her physical body.

    “Lovely dawn,” Lannister growls, black tail swinging back and forth against his hocks. He settles at Azure’s side, maroon head dipping in greeting as he watches her from the corner of his eye. “Lannister,” he adds, almost as if forcing himself to be polite. “You are?” follows quickly, back to the rough, demanding hum.

    lannister


    @Azure
    Reply
    #3

    She is never quite sure how she is able to do the things living creatures take for granted. Movement and speech and sight. Magic, she supposes. A magic as strange as the one that allows her to take the form of so many creatures. But she can do all those things still, strange as it is.

    Her hollow eyes follow him as he draws alongside her, curiosity piqued by this bold stranger who does not seem to find her skeletal form unsightly. She would have smiled at him if she had lips to form one. As it is, her grin is wide and permanent, stretched across her bony jaw. His gruff tone should unsettle her, but it does not. Instead it is almost comforting, in a way. But then, her father is often gruff, so it feels as familiar as the gentleness of her mother.

    “Yes,” she agrees softly, her melodic voice at odds with the gruesome visage it drifts from. Her skull shifts, the empty sockets betray nothing of the gaze that drifts over the riotous colors of the sky. “They usually are, but today seems particularly lovely.”

    As the first sliver of sun breaks the distant horizon, the skeleton shudders beneath it. Then, as though a veil has been lifted, flesh builds upon bone until her body becomes fully fleshed and whole once more. The pale feathers of wings rustle as she settles them more comfortably against her sides, the blooms curling through her dark locks releasing a subtle perfume.

    Drawing her gaze to the man beside her, she offers him a smile. A true one this time, and not the macabre grin of her bare skull. “I’m Azure,” she finally offers in return, the kindness in her green eyes contrasting so sharply with the anger in his. Next to him, in the wholeness of her form, she is such a small, soft thing, yet there is no fear in her gaze. “Do you often watch the dawn with strangers Lannister?”

    Azure


    you take the shape of everything I'm drawn to



    @lannister
    Reply
    #4
    you used to tell me we'd turn into something
    oh, you said life was much better than this
    Lovely voice to match a lovely dawn, Lannister thinks, watching Azure out of the corner of his eye. An easy smile spreads across his lips, one so opposite to the terrors he wields when the sky slips into the twilight gauze of evening’s gown. He is just as inviting as the changing sky, he tells himself, mimicking the warmth his father once showed him.

    “If they are always almost as lovely as this, then I need to wake up earlier,” he muses with a rough, tumbling laugh. Lan turns to peer at Azure fully, his gaze only betraying an emotion (surprise) when the woman’s body begins to knit itself around the bones she carries so gracefully. He sucks in an awed breath, one eyebrow arching as he continues to be hypnotized by her transformation.

    “You do that every morning?” he quips, then turns away, not terribly keen on expressing so much emotion.

    Lannister stares out at the slowly brightening sky, taking in all the hues of red and orange and peach. He longs for the stars already, stormy eyes reflecting both the brilliant sun and a simmer of frustration. But he doesn’t reveal that darkness in his tone, his words—no, he masters his otherness with a genuine yawn that he turns into something more human as it sputters out on a chuckle.

    “This is my first time watching a sunrise, actually,” he murmurs, turning back to Azure with a lively smile. It’s not a lie. Lannister doesn’t consider the sunrises real in the dream realm, and he certainly didn’t make himself known to the strangers there.

    “Do you, Azure?”

    lannister



    @Azure
    Reply
    #5

    She knows she is a strange thing, even in a world filled with the strange. She knows it, but she refuses to flinch beneath it. It would not change who she is or what she had been born into. Her father hates the bones - the curse he has passed on to so many of his children. Azure does not however. Hating it would be like hating what makes her who she is, and she has not yet learned how to do that.

    She may be a woman fully grown, but there is a naivety that still lingers around the soft lines of her face. She has lived a sheltered life - a gift from her parents. Even the darkness had not been enough to erase that from her. The monsters had been gruesome and terrible, but everyone she loves had made it through intact.

    The wolf-marked mare does not even realize how truly blessed she is.

    So Azure smiles at this stranger, kindness in her eyes and trust in her open features. “Yes,” she replies, agreeing with his assertion on waking up earlier. A faint, happy sound hums from her throat as she shifts her gaze back to the exploding colors. After a moment, she sighs softly, her contentment threaded through that gentle exhale. “I rarely miss them.”

    You do that every morning? he asks, drawing Azure’s faintly surprised gaze back to him. It occurs to her she almost never has witnesses to her transformation. Not this one, at least. There is something almost private in that. An intimacy she hadn’t realized he now shares with her until this moment. Nodding faintly, she eyes him, something curious, almost pleasant swelling inside her chest.

    He startles a brief, shy laugh from her with his admission that this is his first sunrise. How could he possibly have never seen a sunrise before?

    “Truly?” she asks, unable to keep a note of incredulity from creeping in. She considers him for a moment, relaxing unconsciously beneath his smile. She returns it, unable to keep herself from responding in kind. “Then I am glad to have shared it with you.”

    But then he asks if she shares her sunrises with strangers often, and a faintly embarrassed heat tingles across her chest. She ducks her gaze, not certain why that simple question had felt so probing. “No,” she replies quickly, because it is true. Only her family. And only because they understand what it is like. “You are the first.”

    Azure


    you take the shape of everything I'm drawn to



    @lannister
    Reply
    #6
    you used to tell me we'd turn into something
    oh, you said life was much better than this
    Perhaps it is arrogance that allows Lannister to immediately assume Azure is enjoying his company. He mastered parts of this strange world quickly, after all. He’s as pleasant as all the rest, despite the rumbling growl in his voice that he cannot seem to tame. A last remnant of the defensive wall he puts around the scared little boy shivering in his chest. He won’t look vulnerable, no; so he presents that roguishness immediately.

    Lan eyes the calico woman as she nods an answer to his question. A smile spreads his lips at the confirmation. He murmurs, “Another lovely thing to admire.” A small, gracious dip of his head follows and then he turns back to the rapidly changing sky. He wonders what other secrets this pretty stranger might harbor.

    And if he might draw them out in her dreams, plaster them across the realm in any way that he pleases.

    “Truly,” the daydreamer answers, voice just above a whisper. He isn’t sure if the quiet reverence in his voice is genuine or feigned, but he smiles nonetheless. Something begins to slowly, subtly twist in his chest—a screw loosening on the hinge of the steel door tightly locked around his heart. Lannister has no idea what might escape if that door were to fall open, but he is too distracted by this new experience to notice it happening.

    “Would you do it again?” Lan asks after a moment of silence, voice rumbling and soft. He glances at her from the corner of his eye, wondering if he’s been as pleasant as he was sure of minutes ago.

    lannister

    Reply
    #7

    If he had asked for her secrets, she would have told him without thought or artifice that she has none. Which is true, in many ways, but perhaps not entirely. She does not keep secrets on purpose. Has never sought to hide the most sensitive parts of herself. But as with nearly any living creature, she is not yet aware of all the secrets she harbors in her slim breast.

    Whether he would find those secrets enthralling or not however is an entirely different story.

    When she peers at him, her emerald gaze liquid and soft, she does not see arrogance or defensiveness masked by gruffness. Instead she sees a man who had shared something intimate with her. A man who had treated her glaring differences with kindness and acceptance. A man who could be a friend. The smile she gives him is genuine and bright, her enamored delight shining from it as clearly as the sun even now cresting the distant horizon.

    “You are very kind, Lannister.” Her voice is soft, a faint chord of shyness threading through the words. She is unaccustomed to such complimentary words, and they cause pleasure to swell with heady warmth inside her chest. Her wings shift unconsciously, pale feathers whispering against her skin.

    He is looking at the sky, so she too shifts her gaze to the burgeoning day. Or tries to, at least. She cannot seem to prevent her eyes from straying in his direction.

    Then he asks if she would do it again, and she doesn’t try to stop herself from looking at him. A small, thoughtful frown pulls briefly at her lips before it is erased by a throaty laugh. “I am enjoying myself, so I suppose I would.” She should leave it at that, but it seems she cannot. “I would much rather do it with you though.”

    Azure


    you take the shape of everything I'm drawn to



    @lannister
    Reply




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