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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]  lately you've been on my mind
    #1
    ISRAFEL
    It had been a few years since Israfel had come home to live in Nerine, to live with Reave, but it didn’t feel like a long time. Her days were filled with sunshine instead of shadows - with standing on the cliffs and watching the weather move across the ocean. Even the changing of the Beqanna landscape did not faze her here. Nerine was still whole and safe and that was all that mattered.

    She is wandering around those cliffs this morning, the spring sunshine sending shafts through the clouds that glint on her golden coat.

    She is close enough to see the beach below, and knows there are caves down there - but she hasn’t been in them since that first day. Sometimes, when she spots those golden birds circling in the sky she remembers how long it had been before she stopped feeling like blood was coating her.

    Israfel hasn’t even used that ability since that day either - finding no desire to walk around disintegrating rocks or trees.

    Nothing but seagulls are swooping through the air now and the golden mare turns her attention away from the ocean - hoping, as she does every day, to see a glimpse of a bone-armoured stallion walking around his kingdom.


    @Reave
    #2

    i am the mace, the map, the fall and the high

    If Reave were a better kind of man, he would be more constant. Would be a presence one could count on, that one could find without even trying. But he is none of those things. But he is too restless. Too… incomplete. And so, though he always returns eventually, he is gone nearly as much as he is present. Always searching for something more.

    Just like the day they had met.

    He thinks of her at times. How could he not? She had fascinated him then, and she still does now, though perhaps in a different way. She had stayed when she could have just as easily left, and he had often wondered why. She must know by now he is nearly as fickle as the breeze blowing in off the ocean.

    But just like that breeze, he always returns. At times gentle, at others a tempest, but there nonetheless.

    The sun is glinting off the ocean as he strolls idly along the crumbling edges of the cliffs, as though daring them to break away beneath his feet. When the light catches on something brighter, his gaze is drawn inexorably in that direction. He finds her standing there in the distance, back to the ocean as the sun gleams lovingly across her golden skin. She would have been blinding if he could not so easily adjust his vision against the pain.

    A grin stretches across his lips as he turns in her direction. He had brought her from the shadows, and he often wonders that she had never tried to return. But now, as then, he sees her and knows she was never made to be hidden.

    “Aren’t you a vision?” he offers by way of greeting as he nears, blue eyes glinting with an almost sinful light. Lips curling at the corners, he cants his head before asking, “Have you given up the shadows entirely then?”

    reave


    @Israfel
    #3
    ISRAFEL
    Israfel does not mind the stretches of time she is left on her own - not when that first moment where her golden eyes spot her beloved friend always inspires such a thrill in her heart. Things are meant to exist in flux - this she knows well enough. Reave does not come to see her every day, just as the rain does not fall on the vegetation that craves it every day. Everything, even that one thing you are waiting for, is temporary.

    And Israfel doesn’t know better than to simply enjoy what she gets - it is enough for her, because it still feels like more than what she had once she grew too old to follow her mother everywhere. In those days when she flitted through shadows in the forest, invisible and waiting for life to begin.

    Her golden smile is warm as she greets the one who had drawn her out of those shadows. She isn’t bashful at the compliment, because she believes it because it is Reave that is saying it. “No more shadows.” She confirms with a shake of her head. “I like the light.” She looks briefly up to the sky, closing her eyes against the glare of the sun but still delighting in the warmth of it.

    Even its brilliance can't hold her attention for long, as she looks back to Reave - the shine in her eyes a related, if far more subdued, version of the glint she can sometimes spy in his. “And what I find in it.”

    And then, because she is eager to hear anything he might tell her - she asks “What have you been up to lately?”


    @Reave
    #4

    i am the mace, the map, the fall and the high

    Though the day would undoubtedly come that she would not thank him for it, she had managed to steal a place in his fickle heart. If she asked, he would admit to it as easily as he admits to so many things, but it never even occurred to him to offer it first. Of course, it is a dubious honor, given the inconstant nature of it. She had not yet stolen the whole of it, nor is she the only to live there.

    Yet, perhaps for them, it is enough. Or perhaps he is as delusional as he sometimes feels. With the past and future vying constantly inside his mind, it becomes increasingly probable.

    “The light certainly loves you in return,” Reave murmurs as she lifts her head toward the sun, rakish grin tilting his lips. When her head drops once more, gaze falling to him with a familiar gleam, that dangerous smirk only deepens. Taking a step closer, he teases, “Consider me officially charmed.”

    A twinkle of amusement lights his eyes when the question falls from her lips. Instead of replying immediately, he eyes her curiously, something almost like hunger lingering in the depths of his blue eyes. “Making a nuisance of myself,” he finally offers after the silence has stretched just a fraction too long. Grin widening with his humor, he banters, “It might be a bit conceited to admit, but I understand I have quite a talent for it.”

    reave


    @Israfel
    #5
    ISRAFEL
    Reave saying that he is charmed, that the light loves her, and that step closer makes it feel like the sun has somehow managed to increase in its brilliance. The warmth of it spreads across her skin and radiates in the expression she sends back to him - pleased to have had such an effect.

    The answer to her question surprises her. “A nuisance?” Israfel repeats with disbelief. She had seen the glint in Reave’s eyes, knows he has a penchant for mischief. But a nuisance? Her thoughts on that are summed up in the next word she utters, as she takes a step - brushing her golden nose against some chestnut skin not obscured by bone.  “Never.”

    Not to her, anyway.

    The contact is brief, though she’s still shining bright with her smile when she pulls back - adding “Though I’m not surprised to learn that if you were being a nuisance, you’d be good at it.” To her, Reave seemed like someone who could accomplish anything he wished - even if it was bothering someone else. “Where have you been stirring up trouble?” She asks then, curious where he wanders. There’s a large world out there, so much she has yet to see, but the inspiration to leave Nerine, even for a trip, has not yet come over her.

    She likes being here, where she can be found and seen.


    @Reave
    #6

    i am the mace, the map, the fall and the high

    Her touch is warm where it presses against his. Such a simple, light brush across sensitive skin bare of bone, yet nothing about it feels simple at all. It’s a lovely moment - as lovely as the disbelief in her tone and staunch defense of him - yet boor that he is, Reave doesn’t press into it. One of the many paths branch forth fizzling into nothing.

    In another life, he might have been a poet, but in this, he is no softer than the sharp edges of his armored flesh.

    “Your belief in me is heartwarming, but misplaced, I assure you,” he replies candidly with a chuckle. He pauses a moment when she asks where it was he had been stirring up trouble. When they had first met, he had been as young as she, but so much more world-weary. Now he is even more so, while she has retained so much of the beautiful naivete that had first drawn him to her. A naivete he could so easily shatter. And if that occurred, where would that leave them? Would he still be drawn to her if she did not possess something he never has?

    “Hyaline,” he finally replies, his grin slipping. Though the familiar glint does not leave his eye, it shifts into something more chilling. Then, just as quickly as it had fled, the smile is back on his lips as he clarifies with a shrug,  “They have something I want.”

    reave


    @Israfel




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