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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]  I can feel your heart hanging in the air
    #1
    I am Heaven sent, don't you dare forget

    There is no denying his rags to riches story.

    From an unwanted child in the den to a prized prodigy under Aela’s watchful tutelage. She is not the only one molding him, the dark Prince had started spending more time with him as well recently although he isn’t sure why. He’s not sure what to make of the gold and onyx Fae. When he does something wrong with his fire (how does he know so much about flames when he had never seen the scaled man conjure his own?) his comments can cut to the quick of him and yet there are times when he thinks he can see pride somewhere in those smoldering eyes whenever he corrects his mistakes. He has enough sense to be able to tell behind that hard exterior that something is off. Obscene had never asked him before to not use his powers but had recently requested to not call on his ghostly souls when he was around. Not asked really. More of a demand. The colt had merely nodded solemnly, not having the courage to explain to the red-eyed stallion that they didn’t always listen. He wonders what has changed but keeps his mouth shut.

    It is tonight that he finds out why.

    She had come to him unbidden on a unforgivingly cold night, the stars and moon hiding behind dark clouds. Luckily Obscene is nowhere to be found when the soul gently wakes him. She is the youngest ghost he has seen so far and he wonders about her death as there are no visible signs on her transparent body. Not like the mare coated in her own silvery blood. She is gray and gold but it is her eyes that make him pause, that give him a sudden sense of understanding. He knows those eyes. She offers her name and he protectively keeps it for himself, having a strange sense of wisdom in hiding what he knows from the rest of the world.

    She is a kind thing he discovers. Kind and curious. So he begins to show her the life she had left behind, the life she had never gotten a chance to know. He is explaining the concept of snow (a fresh layer had recently fallen over the blooming hills) when he hears hoof steps behind him. The face he finds when he turns around is a familiar one and for a moment the spirit is forgotten as he steps close to Aela and bumps her muzzle with his own in warm greeting, nuzzling the only mother he has ever truly had. And then he pulls back, sheepish, remembering the transparent girl behind him. He glances down, unsure if Aela can see her or not, as he says softly. “Please don’t tell him.”

    fyr


    @Aela
    #2

    Aela and Obscene still meet to talk about the Pampas.

    Though their conversations are no longer as enlivening as they once were, they mull over ideas and Aela mentions the new arrivals. The beautiful Aloy - a green-eyed beauty who should fit in nicely with other ethereal creatures, like herself and Enoch. Wherewolf seems to be playing some kind of perverse game with his mother, having her trapped in the body of a child. Sickle remains in the Pampas and for now, it still seems like the best option.

    Skandar prowls through their Flower Country, taking a shape usually more unexplained than the last. (It makes her smile, the thought that he could pretend to be a Pampas butterfly and then with a flutter of lovely wings, become something far more lethal.) Islay doesn't fight against the terms of her imprisonment and in a rare moment, the two-toned female had even shown Aela a little of the way that she could craft starlight, and warp darkness.

    Their Pampas was thriving.

    And then there was Fyr, who had continued to thrive alongside the Flower Court since Aela had brought him back from the Den. Obscene had seemed to keep his space from the boy, but every so often, the Seneschal would glimpse the pair talking or walking through the flowers. Her initial worry that Fyr would take a liking to the nectar that Obscene could heavily favor at times started to fade, learning that the little buckskin was more likely to burn the petals than drink from them.

    There is more to the spotted colt than his flames (like his mother), but Aela can never see the souls that he summons. She knows they exist though, having the wisps of shadows linger near her adopted son. She assumes that Obscene knows this as well, and something in her freezes when Fyr asks that she not tell him. The palomino fights the ice in her breast and gives her boy a reassuring touch on his shoulder as his molten eyes look to the ground.

    (We never apologize.)

    "It can be our little secret," Aela says, smiling in hopes to put Fyr at ease. There is nothing but empty air around them, the chill blowing in on the wind and through the now-frozen fields. But just because Aela sees nothing doesn't mean that it is so. She nudges her son again, "What are they saying today?"

    @Fyr

    They doused your soul in water,
    but the flames raged higher.
    And they called you devil's daughter,
    such a pretty liar.

    #3
    I am Heaven sent, don't you dare forget

    He is soothed instantly by her reassuring gaze and he brightens visibly beneath it. There was nothing he loved more than to see the pleased look in her eyes when he did something right and so he always strived to at least be the best kind of terrible when it came to her. Whatever form or figure that may be. She asks about his friends and he smiles at her, relieved. Aela had never been anything but supportive when it came to his strange talents and oddities. When he had told her of the mottled colt in the midnight playground who had burned beneath his flames with no pain (how he had not apologized), she had seemed delighted by the story.

    Still, he is constantly torn between the natural pleasure his powers give him to the rather righteous moral code that seemed ingrained into the fiber of his being. This constant awareness of a devil and an angel on each shoulder, each pushing him a little further into confusion. Part of him feels badly for keeping a secret from the Prince who he felt slightly fond for.  His dark presence was reassuring to the young colt, a red-eyed shadow that watched over him from a steady distance. There is a relief though in sharing with Aela the weight of his secrets. “She’s young, like me. She wants to see the world.” He says quietly, throwing his brilliant moon eyes towards the filly behind him that looked curiously back at mother and son.

    “She misses her mom and brother.” And here he throws a guilty look at Aela again. “And she misses the Prince.” He gazes back at his new soul friend with a furrowed brow and a slight frown. “I wish I could help them.” He states quietly, a wish he had longed for since he had first started seeing souls of the haunted. What was the point in being able to see them or talk to them when nobody else could? He wasn’t sure but yearned to discover the "why", to see if he ever could get to the knowledge of a souls purpose. As if catching his thoughts, the ghostly filly drifts towards him carrying one of the few frozen blooms that remained between transparent teeth. It floats towards him and soon finds itself tangled in his lengthening forelock. A token of faith and hope.

    fyr


    @Aela
    #4

    Aela no longer lingers in the inbetween.

    Things either are or they aren't.

    This is what her son still seems to struggle with, and as his golden mother tries to settle his unruly mane like she tries to settle his unruly emotions, Aela tries to think of the best way to help him. Her son will not grow up weak. He will not grow up wanting. This world will learn to yield to him or burn for it.

    It's the other world that gives her a pause of concern, because she is unsure how to master both.

    But they are worries for another time. She listens as Fyr describes his newest companion, a girl who had died before she had ever breathed. (A pity, perhaps. Or a blessing, given that so many would live only to have their hearts and throats ripped out.) This child is young, like her son. She had wanted to see the world that she was never given the chance to see.

    A departed soul would have been normally been given little thought with Aela, but she's captured her young son's attention and is worth atleast that much.

    There is more she misses. A brother, and her mother. The mention of Obscene surprises her, but Aela manages to conceal it beneath the tender expression she reserves for Fyr. An expression she manages to keep even as a frozen flower floats forward on the Pampas wind, urged on it seemed by the summoning magic of her son. The Seneschal moves away slightly, allowing the ghost the room to place her gift in his dark forelock.

    "Help them how?" Aela asks the child, not necessarily interested in the reasoning but rather Fyr's want. "You give them a voice in a place where they otherwise aren't heard." She tries to cajoling him, wanting him to see his gift for the powerful ability it was. But perhaps he was right, she thinks.

    What if he could do more than merely summon souls?

    What if he could command them?

    They doused your soul in water,
    but the flames raged higher.
    And they called you devil's daughter,
    such a pretty liar.



    @Fyr mother of the year right here
    #5
    I am Heaven sent, don't you dare forget

    He has grown fond of the way Aela smooths the unruly strands of his wildfire mane, has found a peace in affection that seems to tame some of that defiant darkness in him. He can feel the way his mother thinks sometimes through the movements she presses against his neck. He can tell when she worries but he is quiet in case that worries her more. Aela is always an avid listener and she allows him the telling of the girls story as well as his own frustrations at his limitations. She makes space for his ghostly friend and he smiles at his mother, always relieved when she looked at him with pride for the things he could do unlike the dam who had birthed him.

    She asks him how he would want to help and he merely shrugs his small shoulder. “I don’t know. I don’t mind them but sometimes…” He hesitates as he looks back up at her. “Some of them scare me, Mom.” He admits quietly, thinking of the ones he tries to avoid. Stares-too-much. The bloody mare. A few others didn’t even have a name and the worst of all of them was simply a thing he called Terror for that was exactly what it was.

    “But she’s nice.” He says quietly, gesturing with his muzzle to where grass moved by itself and a few pebbles skitter across the earth. Mr. Silence had also been surprisingly helpful, having a fascination with fire himself. The soul would take a branch and fling it while the foal aimed and set it aflame. A fun trick. And perhaps useful some day. “And maybe the Prince wouldn’t be so sad if he could see her.” He says uncertainly, unable to fully deny his intuition.  “Oh.” He suddenly exclaims. “I met a stallion that looked a lot like me." He looks up at her with excitement in his moonlit eyes. "He said he would help me with my powers."

    Of the starlit girl in the meadow he keeps as a selfish secret to himself. Not wanting to share her with anyone else just yet.

    fyr


    @Aela
    Angel
    #6

    Eventually, Fyr would come across something to be afraid of.

    It was part of coming of age. He is still younger than she would have liked; there were still lessons she had to teach him. But he was a powerful child and that meant there would be consequences that came from those gifts. The loss of his innocence would eventually come, and as she listened to the sad story of the dead girl, Aela suspected that his had started before she came into his life.

    She stands over him, and her neck covers his in a protective stance. It will do nothing against the monsters that she can't see — nor do very little against others like her Mad Magician brother —  but it gives her some peace to be close to him now.

    "Don't let them scare you," Aela tells her son, glancing to the open space where his newest playmate supposedly lingered. "You are the one summoning them," she continues on, trying to instill some confidence in Fyr. "And don't be afraid to remind them that you can send them back to wherever they came from." That particular skill might take some more harnessing, but Aela didn't doubt that he could learn it. He'd been an apt pupil from the beginning, just as she thought.

    Aela suppresses the urge to tell the young buckskin that Obscene was never apparently happy about anything - he had one of the most powerful territories with some of the most gifted horses in Beqanna - and yet, she still caught him glancing towards Loess with an expression that looked like misery.

    Her thoughts don't dwell on the Prince long, and she looks sharply down at the boy when he mentions meeting a stallion that looked like him. That had offered to help teach him how to use his powers and suspicion comes creeping Aela's slender spine while it colors her careful expression.

    "What did he want in return?"

    They doused your soul in water,
    but the flames raged higher.
    And they called you devil's daughter,
    such a pretty liar.



    @Fyr
    #7
    I am Heaven sent, don't you dare forget

    Innocence is a foreign concept to the jaguar dappled colt. Perhaps there had been a brief moment of it, when he had taken his first breath of fresh air and freedom from the womb. Only to lose it when flames and objects spun around him and the moniker of “terrible” was placed heavily on his small shoulders. If Aela had not found him, his path may have been a darker, lonelier, one. One that held no sense of family, friends, or home. Instead, he learns how to control his powers instead of them controlling him. Now he knew Liesma, Sickle, and BoneBone. Now he had the Pampas and the sooted field of flowers that was his own. That darkness is still part of him, would perhaps always rest beside his bones, but there was so much light too.

    Aela’s words are a soothing balm on his insecurities. She always seems to know so much and the young colt is certain that she must be the wisest horse he’s ever met. Like her notions of “terrible” and the reminder to never apologize for who he was, he tucks away this piece of confidence as well. Nodding, he looks back up at her with his bright yellow eyes. “I’ll remember Mother.” He straightens himself, holding his head high as he obediently and politely takes her lesson to heart. “I’ll keep practicing.” Even when it’s scary, he thinks.

    She says nothing about the Prince and so he doesn’t speak further on it, picking up a small thread of tension when it comes to his mother and the black and gold stallion. Instead, he tells her of the golden man in the dark forest and he can’t help but wonder what she is thinking. Sometimes he can’t always tell. He frowns slightly at her question, tilting his head up at her. “I don’t think he wants anything….” He pauses, considering the memories he has of the future him. “His name is Firion.” He hesitates again, uncertain about revealing his true thoughts on the matter. Yet Aela had never shot him down or discouraged his questions or curiosity before and so he mumbles slightly as he glances away. “I think he might be me… Like a future me.”

    fyr


    @Aela
    #8

    "Can I tell you a secret?" his mother asks him.

    Aela still lingers over him, and though she keeps watch over the empty spaces surrounding them, her chest brushes against the side of the buckskin colt. The stance she takes over him is protective, and though she knows that one day he will have to learn to fight his own battles, that day hasn't come yet.

    She would turn the Pampas to nothing but ash, if one were to harm him while Fyr was still so young.

    The palomino arches her neck, and then moves it to smooth out his golden coat. She can sense his tension where it concerns Obscene and she gently pushes out a small feeling of comfort, just in case. It would seem her boy wouldn't have them at odds, and she smiles softly at the thought. Skandar would have no qualms about murdering the Pampas Prince, but the tenderness that Fyr feels for the onyx-and-gold stallion placates Aela enough that she'll continue to let him live while her son feels this way.

    "It's why I practice against the best I can find," she reveals to the young colt. "Because what can the weak do for us?" The Untraited - or those with smaller Magicks - have never done anything for Aela (besides providing small amusement). In a world that measures by the power they wield, they have no use in her Pampas.

    "So keep practicing against the best you can find, and it will always show you where you stand."

    Eventually, she thinks gently into his mind, you will be better than them.

    Who this Firion is still doesn't settle with her. Why does a strange stallion take interest in a young colt? Unless...

    "Or he could be your father," Aela says, still standing protectively over Fyr.

    They doused your soul in water,
    but the flames raged higher.
    And they called you devil's daughter,
    such a pretty liar.



    @Fyr
    #9
    I am Heaven sent, don't you dare forget

    There is nothing he wouldn’t do for her. If anyone ever tried to hurt her, he would call every dark soul he could upon them. He would set the world ablaze if it meant seeing that pride shining in her sky blue eyes. He is still so young, so impressionable, that he doesn’t realize that love can sometimes be toxic. He doesn’t know that one day, the ones he has come to care for (possibly love in other ways) might go against each other. The spotted colt is still ignorant to much of the world despite his own small tastes of its cruelty.

    He still has much to learn.

    A sense of comfort floods through him and he leans against her chest, burying himself into her soft golden coat and inhaling the soothing scent of wildflowers and smoke that he has come to recognize as hers. She tells him her secret and he nods against her, understanding that a task had been laid before him. The thought floats gently against his mind, not unlike the dark stirrings that bad souls use against him to feed his uncertainty, and he pulls away from her briefly to look up at her. “Where do I find the best of the best? I do not want to be weak.” He says with a slight frown, realizing he didn’t want to be weak as much as he didn’t want to be bad. It doesn't occur to him that Aela would look down on the beautiful magic of Liesma and her stars, would look at her as lesser than he. That in a world of powerful magic, he was something that could be reckoned with. 

    None of that matters much though with what Aela says next. He is unsure of what to say, can’t deny the thought had crossed his mind before but he had smothered it into the darkness with the rest of his doubts. “Maybe.” He whispers, still holding on to his denial because he didn’t want to feel bad things. Plus, he liked Firion. Despite the strange and unusual things he could do that would make others run and scream, he found peace in the older stallions darkness. Different but recognizable to his own. “Maybe your right.” He finally says, looking back to his mother with open uncertainty. “I like him Mom. I want to get to know him. He can do terrible things too, the kind that others don't understand.” What he really wants to say is “I don’t want to chase him away.” He had been abandoned once before, the thought of it happening again is far too painful. It is easier to pretend that Firion is something else if it means he gets to know him, if it means keeping him in his life.

    fyr


    @Aela
    #10

    It had surprised Aela, the profound feeling of love that Fyr inspired. That emotion had always been the one she had been most careful of, the one she almost always refused to project or replicate; it was a strong emotion, but it was volatile as well. For every situation that she might wield in her favor, there was always the risk that it would backfire and implode everything she was working towards.

    Love, she knew, was intricately tied to hate.

    But the feeling that blossoms in her slender chest is genuine, and the emotion that radiates back to her is as well. She smoothes the dark mane of the young colt, and basks in his baby scent of burning flowers and lost souls. "Start with whoever you can find," Aela councils her son, "and even if they show you your own weaknesses, at least you know where to start." Fyr doesn't want to appear weak, but the golden Seneschal decides to show him how she had once been. It's a short memory: it is a young palomino filly, trembling against the spotted side of her dam.

    Aela hadn't even been able to speak then.

    She has traveled quite the path since those days, and the Seneschal doesn't doubt that Fyr will grow to become something greater than he is now.

    "Just be careful where it regards him, Fyr." She sighs, and her flaxen tail brushes against her striped legs. She could feel the boy's uncertainty where it regarded this strange stallion - and the way it increases when Aela had mentioned the possibility of him being his sire - and that was good. The colt had been left at the Den, and Aela felt that any man who couldn't concern himself with his trysts would hardly concern himself with the outcome of them.

    Like Obscene, who had seemed surprised to have not one but two children.

    "And know that the things you can do are your own."

    @Fyr

    They doused your soul in water,
    but the flames raged higher.
    And they called you devil's daughter,
    such a pretty liar.



    @Fyr




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