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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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    [open]  look to the western sky
    #1
    Moira decides to swim home to Ischia. She follows the coastline south, keeping very close to the shore. To her left are the seagrass meadows that grow in the calm and shallow waters along the Pampas. They are a stark contrast to the arching red sandstone she has just left behind. She’s paused at the mouth of the river, and lifted her head above the water in an effort to determine her location.

    Stretching ahead of her is another meadow, one that lies beneath the open sky rather than the brackish water in which she floats

    It looks very inviting, and Moira’s stomach rumbles.

    She can’t recall her last meal, but she was sure it had been a very long time ago. Moira wades into the shallows, and as her hindquarters rise above the water they transform from a single fin to a pair of long dark legs. Like her front legs, they are marked with gold and blue-violet, the same jewel-like shades that color her fin-like mane and tail.

    The young nereid keeps most of her aquatic form, intending only to graze for a moment, and then be on her way. The fading light of the setting sun catches on something sparkling, and Moira raises her head as she swallows. She frowns, and cranes her head a bit higher, then climbs a nearby rise to be sure.

    Yes, that’s definitely the sea over there, and farther south is more of the Pampas peninsula. It would be a far shorter journey to swim up the river and cross the grasslands on foot. She might even make it back to Tephra by nightfall. Moira knows nothing at all about the residents of this place, but surely they wouldn’t begrudge her a brief swim and crossing through?

    Elated at the idea of being home sooner than she’d planned, Moira quickly finishes eating and returns to the water. She climbs out again at the edge of one of the largest fields of wildflowers, and begins to make her way across, heading toward the distant sea as the light slowly fades around her.
    #2
    He's been watching; silent, invisible, frowning. Wherewolf does not particularly care about the plans Obscene and Aela have made together - he does not care for plans at all, leading a life that is more aimless and spur of the moment - but there are rare times when their desires and his own come together.

    Wherewolf supposes that he will always be willing to make at least a small effort if there's an opportunity to ruin someone's day. He isn't sure exactly where that comes from; his mother had a similar bent, but he never met his father to know. The circumstances of his birth would imply that the cursed stallion felt much the same way. With these thoughts in mind, he lets go of the invisibility, enjoying the way the air goes wobbly for a breath, like a heat shimmer, before he becomes visible again just ahead of her path, dark and faintly mottled wings lifted away from his body in the faintest hint of warning.

    "You shouldn't be here."

    Her assumption that the Pampaians would not begrudge her passing was only partly correct. It was the part that involved leaving again which was wrong.

    "The Pampas is not as safe to cross alone as it used to be."
    Image by Stardae


    @Moira
    #3
    The air in front of her shimmers, and Moira stops abruptly, her dark ears flicking forward curiously even as she eyes it with suspicion. When the strangeness in the air becomes instead a stallion, his feathered wings partially flared, she gasps in surprise.

    “That’s a neat trick,” she says with a laugh that sounds - somehow - like flowing water, and only after the word fall from her lisp does she really see the expression on his face, and better grasp the meaning behind his words.

    “Oh,” she says softly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

    Not all lands are as free with their borders as Ischia is. Moira has been told this before, but she has so rarely left her homeland that it hadn’t even occurred to her today. She has made an error, she knows, but the sea-eyed stallion doesn’t act as though her mistake cannot be rectified.

    “Perhaps you could escort me the rest of the way to the sea?” She asks hopefully, grateful more than ever for her practice at above-water speaking. Her voice is no longer as shrill as it had once been, though it does at time draw others inexplicably close. “Then I won’t be alone, and perhaps you could tell me what is so frightening about your flowers.”

    She smiles up at him, using her very most charming smile. She’s rarely denied anything when she does.

    @Wherewolf
    #4
    Wherewolf stands dark and glowering as the girl flusters through realizing what he has said, and it is only when she asks him to escort her that the hard lines of his face soften at all. Not a lot, and not because he has forgiven her supposed error, but because it's exactly what he was hoping she would do. He also cannot deny that there is a strange charm to her voice and her smile that tugs at him, but the loose control she keeps of that magic, combined with his misanthropic nature, leaves him well in control of himself. When he tucks his dark wings back against his glittering sides and steps toward her, it is because he always intended to do it.

    Mostly.

    Probably.

    He supposes that it doesn't really matter. The Pampaian Lord bristles at her side, still thorny, still blocking her direct route to water, and he gestures at it, the glittering, not-too-distant sea.

    "The Elkear are rutting," he explains, his clipped Nerinian accent struggling with the creatures' name, "they've made the land between here and the Western Sea impassable."

    This is partly true. The Elkear are rutting, and the fire-breathing creatures are certainly dangerous at the best of times, let alone when hormones fuel them into their skull-splitting wrestling matches, but the chances of running into one are no greater in this part of the Pampas than anywhere else. The danger is, in fact, completely ubiquitous.

    "The Northern trail is longer but bends outside their breeding ground."

    More importantly, it will take them nearly through the heart of the Pampas where someone willing to put more effort into such things can try to abduct the girl. He steps forward, tipping his head back slightly to see if she will follow, and knows he should say something more to fill the space between them no matter how badly he'd prefer to not.

    "You are from one of the Islands?"

    Perhaps she already knows some of their captives. That will be comforting for her during her stay.
    Image by Stardae


    @Moira
    #5
    At her smile, the stranger’s wings fold in, and he moves closer. Moira is sure that his face had softened, just a small bit. Had she imagined that? No, she thinks, she had not. Nor had she missed the way he remains between her and the water, a corporeal barrier between the siren and the sea.

    It makes her feel trapped.
    It makes her wonder how far behind her the river had been.

    Moira does not like the feeling at all, nor the way it makes her throat tighten even as she listens to his proposed route and reasoning. Her expression remains polite, but she does glance now then over his dappled back and the brown wings, to where the ocean glitters.

    When Wherewolf steps forward to show her the Northern trail, she feels the ocean racing across the space he’d left behind, the sensation of it rushing over the young nereid like the tide. She sidesteps, moving to the pegasus’ far side so she is nearest the sea even as she moves close to take position beside him.

    “From Ischia,” she confirms with a nod, looking north as though she might see the place on the far horizon. There’s only wildflowers though, blooming bright and beautiful even this time of year (I have forgotten the time of year so I hope it’s not winter).

    “I’ve never seen an Elkear.” She tells him. She has no idea what an elkear even is. What Moira does know is that even if they’re the Pampian version of a jaguar, she is more eager to get to the ocean than she is to avoid meeting one.

    So although she does at first follow alongside, her steps eventually slow until she comes to a stop. She glances back over her shoulder to where the shortest path is about to disappear behind a rolling hill of orange and blue flowers. Is it truly dangerous to go that way, she wonders?

    Surely the stranger, being a native to these lands, would know? Perhaps, she reasons, he was just being overprotective, thinking that small Moira could not defend herself. Happy with this solution that keeps her new acquaintance in a positive light, Moira decides that she will make her way through the impassable lands, and also perhaps prove to this stranger that appearance isn’t everything.

    “I think I’ll go back that way.” She says, pointing her dark muzzle toward the west. She is hesitant about seeming rude, so she smiles again, and her nerves manifest in her voice when she says: “Would you like to come with me?” and accidentally enchants the words more than she means to.

    @Wherewolf
    #6
    "They are giant, antlered, chimeras," he explains, turning his head to follow her as she dances away from his direction, "the color of dragonflame, and the madder they are, the hotter the fire they spit."

    He remembers when the dragons came, outmatching the Nerinians who fought desperately against them; he remembers the red and black of flame and smoke boiling in the air. He had done nothing to help and, remained invisible and silent as the invaders burned their way north and broken Brennan's shield. Should he feel guilty? He doesn't. It was not his war.

    "And they're pretty mad right now, even Steve avoids them this time of year."

    Wherewolf shrugs at her insistence as if to imply that it is not his problem if she wants to be barbecued. It would not be worth it to him, but for a moment he does find himself considering accompanying her at her request. He has never been deeply rooted in the Pampas, no more than he was in Nerine, really, a place he stayed long enough to imply otherwise, but to which he carried no loyalty. His loyalties, if he has any, are kept close at hand, not extending even to the duplicates he creates. It gives the enchantment in her voice a significant foothold, but the wall it is climbing is his anger and his bitterness and his desire to be left to sulk in peace. There is also the matter of his mother's body, left to gather flies beneath an ombu tree just to the east.

    Would they let him bring her bones to Ischia, he wonders, smiling suddenly and broadly at the finned girl.

    "Ischia, you say?" He flicks his ears as through to break off the draw of her voice, "Our Seneschal stole away an Ischian boy who she's been keeping as a pet, perhaps you'd like me to bring him a message myself? Maybe you have news of his grandmother, Aquaria?"
    Image by Stardae


    @Moira
    #7
    Giant. Antlered. Chimeras. They seem more foreboding with each adjective. Moira’s attention is on the sea, and then as Wherewolf describes their color her green eyes turn back to him. Fire is not something she is familiar with, but she has heard of dragons.

    Her guide does not seem especially concerned though, but she supposes that comes of giving them a large berth, and is the reason he wants to take her on the northern trail.

    Well, she supposes, surely it wouldn’t be terrible to see more of the Pampas? She’s nearly convinced herself to carry on when the stallion speaks again. The nereid’s thoughtful expression turns to surprise, and then concern. She has little skill at hiding her emotions, especially not when confronted with such news.

    An Ischian boy? Being kept as a pet?
    They have one of her uncles?

    Moira feels an uncomfortable churning in her belly, one that she recognizes as apprehension. It is accompanied by a shiver down her spine, and a cold curl of fear. Is this what Beyza had meant when she’d said there might be dangers outside of Ischia?

    Moira is uncertain, pulled in two directions. She desperately wants to run, to turn tail and dash across the field of flowers toward the sea. But should she stay? Should she try to rescue someone she isn’t even sure she would recognize?

    She takes a step back, shaking her head.

    Then another step, and a third, and then she turns and runs toward the sea, never once looking back to see if she is being pursued.

    Later, safe in Ischia, she will realize she had not seen a single elkear on her rapid flight across the wildflowers.




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