07-24-2023, 01:51 AM
who could ever leave me, darling,
but who could stay?
but who could stay?
She listens as he talks, every now and then a small smile lifting at the corner of her lips, but she waits for him to finish before she says anything. “The kingdoms have changed numerous times over the years. Beqanna rarely stays the same for long, I’ve noticed.” He asks her what she knows of the Dale’s history, and she comes to a stop, turning to face him in the ever darkening twilight, looking at him thoughtfully. “It may be easier if I show you. Though you’ll have to forgive me, my magic is still new,” she says with a quiet laugh, sending up a flurry of golden stardust and strands of silver starlight. Adding in threads of shadow, she uses the light and dark to create moving silhouettes that will accompany her stories.
“The Dale—or as it was originally known, the Forbidden Dale—is one of the kingdoms that has been around since nearly the beginning. But I had lived in Beqanna for several years before I ever came here.” As she talks, the silhouettes begin to take shape; shadows that form the hills of the Dale, backlit by stardust and outlined in silver, and figures of the horses below made up the same—and above them, several stars falling from the sky.
She tells him first the story of what they called ‘The Falling Stars’, when stars fell from the sky and took the shape of rulers, some of them old and thought to be dead, and others entirely new. Each of them took control of a kingdom, and it had been Moselle who had worn the Dale’s crown. She cannot tell him how the Dale had accepted their new ruler—she had been in the Valley, where this event had brought back Carnage; the first link in a chain of events that would leave her life irrevocably changed.
The scene changes to the darkened figures of Moselle and Carnage—she gives him eyes made of wine-red stars, outlining him in silver starlight that is perhaps a little too bright, though she does refrain from painting him with galaxies—showing a fight that ends with Moselle yielding. “Carnage decided to take the Dale from Moselle, but as he was currently king in the Valley, he did not want both thrones. And so he made the Dale a subkingdom of the Valley and gave the Dale throne to me,” she says the last part with a nearly hidden smile, adding in another shadowed-shape, placing a golden halo above its head and stardust wings from its sides.
It would be easy to assume that she thought he chose her because she was stronger or better than the other Valley residents, but she knows that is not true.
He had chosen her because he knew, even then, that she would break herself and lose herself over and over if it meant keeping his attention.
She does not go into all the details of how the Dale eventually became its own kingdom again—that was a story that had become more about her and Carnage rather than the Dale.
Instead, she tells the story of the Catastrophe.
The shadowed shapes of the kingdoms, once eight of them, are demolished and reshaped into only three—Dewdrop Gates, Forbidden Waterfall, and Forsaken Chamber, with the Amazons and Tundra lost. She remembers that Depp, Larva, and Dillan had taken over the Forbidden Waterfall as a kind of council, and though she had drifted in and out, her memories of the combined neutral kingdoms is minimal.
But, as could be predicted, this did not last forever. The land eventually mended itself, and the Amazons and the Tundra rose again, shown by the reshaping of the shadows and starlight. This, as she recalls, is also when the lands all began going by their shortened names, such as the Dale, the Valley, and the Chamber.
It stayed like this for a considerable amount of time, until the Reckoning.
The stardust sweeps across the dark shapes of the lands like a gust of wind, erasing them all entirely. “The Reckoning was, possibly, one of the most widespread changes that have happened here. Everyone's powers were lost, and the lands that we have always known disappeared entirely. Every piece of history, gone, and in their place we were given the new lands: Sylva, Nerine, Taiga, Tephra, Ischia, and Carnage’s creation, Pangea, and then later Loess and Hyaline.”
Again, all of these lands had their own histories—histories that could launch a thousand of their own stories, but instead she focuses only on how they tied into the revival of the Dale, and only briefly touching on how the Brilliant Pampas, Silver Cove, Icicle Isle, and Island Resort were revived as safe havens during the plague.
“Which brings us up to the present, mostly. The past few years have been a strange series of storms and flooding, with the arrival of Baltia and Stratos, and various kingdoms disappearing. And now, with the recent upheaval, we are here,” she finishes with a vague sweeping of stardust around them, gesturing to the land that had now been muted by the darkness of nightfall around them, letting the starlight and stardust slowly dissipate.
“The Dale—or as it was originally known, the Forbidden Dale—is one of the kingdoms that has been around since nearly the beginning. But I had lived in Beqanna for several years before I ever came here.” As she talks, the silhouettes begin to take shape; shadows that form the hills of the Dale, backlit by stardust and outlined in silver, and figures of the horses below made up the same—and above them, several stars falling from the sky.
She tells him first the story of what they called ‘The Falling Stars’, when stars fell from the sky and took the shape of rulers, some of them old and thought to be dead, and others entirely new. Each of them took control of a kingdom, and it had been Moselle who had worn the Dale’s crown. She cannot tell him how the Dale had accepted their new ruler—she had been in the Valley, where this event had brought back Carnage; the first link in a chain of events that would leave her life irrevocably changed.
The scene changes to the darkened figures of Moselle and Carnage—she gives him eyes made of wine-red stars, outlining him in silver starlight that is perhaps a little too bright, though she does refrain from painting him with galaxies—showing a fight that ends with Moselle yielding. “Carnage decided to take the Dale from Moselle, but as he was currently king in the Valley, he did not want both thrones. And so he made the Dale a subkingdom of the Valley and gave the Dale throne to me,” she says the last part with a nearly hidden smile, adding in another shadowed-shape, placing a golden halo above its head and stardust wings from its sides.
It would be easy to assume that she thought he chose her because she was stronger or better than the other Valley residents, but she knows that is not true.
He had chosen her because he knew, even then, that she would break herself and lose herself over and over if it meant keeping his attention.
She does not go into all the details of how the Dale eventually became its own kingdom again—that was a story that had become more about her and Carnage rather than the Dale.
Instead, she tells the story of the Catastrophe.
The shadowed shapes of the kingdoms, once eight of them, are demolished and reshaped into only three—Dewdrop Gates, Forbidden Waterfall, and Forsaken Chamber, with the Amazons and Tundra lost. She remembers that Depp, Larva, and Dillan had taken over the Forbidden Waterfall as a kind of council, and though she had drifted in and out, her memories of the combined neutral kingdoms is minimal.
But, as could be predicted, this did not last forever. The land eventually mended itself, and the Amazons and the Tundra rose again, shown by the reshaping of the shadows and starlight. This, as she recalls, is also when the lands all began going by their shortened names, such as the Dale, the Valley, and the Chamber.
It stayed like this for a considerable amount of time, until the Reckoning.
The stardust sweeps across the dark shapes of the lands like a gust of wind, erasing them all entirely. “The Reckoning was, possibly, one of the most widespread changes that have happened here. Everyone's powers were lost, and the lands that we have always known disappeared entirely. Every piece of history, gone, and in their place we were given the new lands: Sylva, Nerine, Taiga, Tephra, Ischia, and Carnage’s creation, Pangea, and then later Loess and Hyaline.”
Again, all of these lands had their own histories—histories that could launch a thousand of their own stories, but instead she focuses only on how they tied into the revival of the Dale, and only briefly touching on how the Brilliant Pampas, Silver Cove, Icicle Isle, and Island Resort were revived as safe havens during the plague.
“Which brings us up to the present, mostly. The past few years have been a strange series of storms and flooding, with the arrival of Baltia and Stratos, and various kingdoms disappearing. And now, with the recent upheaval, we are here,” she finishes with a vague sweeping of stardust around them, gesturing to the land that had now been muted by the darkness of nightfall around them, letting the starlight and stardust slowly dissipate.
Ryatah
me: yeah this post will be way shorter if I have her 'show' him like the smoke scene in Pocahontas
also me: writes 800+ words of utter nonsense anyway
@assailant