Beqanna - Taiga

but only you have shown me how to love being alive, ether

Fri, 10 Jun 2022 21:53:29 +0000

i need you like a heart needs a beat
but it’s nothing new --

Their home was often quiet, and at first she did not notice the hush as it began to settle. The fog that snaked its way through the trees was not a cause for alarm, and Briseis did not slow her pace as she made her way to the heart of Taiga. For as long as they have been here she and Ether have always called the darkest parts of the forest home—a place where the shadows were abundant, and few others had interest in exploring. Here, the redwoods grew so thick that the moonlight never touched them, and even the sun struggled to make its way beyond the networking of limbs that criss-crossed over top of one another. She had grown accustomed to the dark, even if she had not been born for it; her heart and soul belonged to a part of it now, belonged to him.

She expected the fog to begin to thin the closer she got to their home, for the trees and the shadows to overpower the silvery mist, but instead it only seemed to thicken.

Fear begins to prickle along her spine, and in the eerie hush that settles she swears she can hear her own heartbeat begin to echo off the trees. The sense that something is wrong stirs an age-old desire to flee, her bones and muscles calling back to a time when she would run until her legs ached and lungs nearly bled, as if she could ever outrun her nightmares.

But she thinks of him and she stills, and somewhere over the fearful pounding of her heart she reminds herself that she is not alone, and she just needs to find him.

“Ether?” his name is a tentative whisper, searching for a shadow that might produce a familiar pair of glowing yellow eyes, but everywhere she looks there is only the ever-thickening mist. Willing the panic that she can feel swelling in her chest to steady, she continues forward with cautious steps, calling out Ether’s name into the hazy dark.

-- briseis.

beware the fog

Mon, 06 Jun 2022 01:51:20 +0000

The moon is full when the fog changes in Taiga. It is a gradual shift, slow like the turning of the tides, and if it weren’t for the bright moonlight it may not have even been noticeable until dawn. The animals living among the trees notice first and a hush falls over the forest - eerie silence stretching as the entire land waits for what is coming.

But that held breath is not released - the tension only continues to grow.

There is no loud bang, no crash of waves or flash of lightning. The earth does not swallow this northern land. There is no event that could inspire relief in it being over. The fog simply continues to roll in, thicker and thicker, until it is so dense that you can only see a foot in front of you. Everything in Taiga is swallowed in grey, and it only eases at the borders - dissipating into soft wisps by the River, Nerine, and the Forest. In the very heart of Taiga, there is no visibility at all.

Gradually the animals begin to move and make noises again but everything is subdued. Care must be taken when travelling the forest now, trees appear so suddenly they are difficult to avoid while walking - faster gaits are inadvisable.

***

Taiga is now constantly enclosed in fog so thick that visibility in it is only about a foot. It eases towards the borders of the land and gets denser towards the heart of it. The animals that live in Taiga are quieter than normal and may be behaving erratically.

Be our guest

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 22:25:06 +0000

Somewhere near the kingdom of Baltia, if you happen to be standing along the shoreline, a small (very harmless) army of brightly colored frogs begin making their way out of the water. Some are orange and blue, others pink and purple, some sparkle like glitter. They ribbit and croak and…sing?.... as they hop along their way. How they know where to go is entirely uncertain, but they disperse, each in the direction of their targeted land. They seem to be dragging a small package of sorts held together by seaweed.

As they reach their destination, they begin to sing. Or at least, something akin to singing. The tune is not lovely and there’s some croaking involved, but the words are intelligible. You can almost forgive the frogs for being off key for the sheer fact that they can speak at all.

We invite you to our feast,
beneath the briny deep,
to celebrate new friends and new beginnings,
and to share a meal.

We bring with us a treat,
breath beneath the waves.
Take one or five,
there are plenty for all.

The frogs finish their song and stay put. Though their voices carry well, they know that their job is to deliver the message a few times before hopping home. In addition, they will wait for someone to collect the kelp package, for they are well trained frogs. Inside that package are many small, round plants that are clearly the “treat” for breathing underwater.

***

Everyone in Beqanna is cordially invited to a feast in Baltia for the duration of April. Throughout this month your character can breathe underwater and may visit the kingdom as much as they like. You may have individual threads or just participate in the main feast (coming soon). Have fun!

Activity Check [March 2022]

Fri, 25 Mar 2022 21:41:35 +0000

We have a new ranks table! Huge thank you to Neamrel for updating our old Pampas code with something fresh <3

Please let me know if you need to be added to the board!!

i do not want to move mountains

Sun, 13 Mar 2022 22:39:06 +0000

Lillibet

Lillibet aims for the shortest path to her wasteland home, through the four corners that connect Nerine, Hyaline, Taiga, and the sea. Of the three territories, Taiga is the easiest to identify as she navigates. Its massive redwoods guide her southeast. It’s her intention to journey straight home, but there’s something about the eerie oversized forest that causes her to linger as she begins to pass it by. Her glow illuminates the unnaturally wide trunks of Taiga’s silent sentinels, drawing her attention to them and to the haze that sits beyond the treeline. Curiosity piqued, the gold-striped woman slows her pace to a tentative halt as she considers her next move.

It doesn’t take her long to decide, and she’s soon weaving in and out of the massive trees at a leisurely walk toward Pangea, no matter how circumvential. Her hooves crunch against the shallow snow and the carpet of dried, brittle pine needles beneath the ivory blanket, bringing sound to the otherwise silent forest. In the distance, the haze that sits low to the forest floor is disturbed. It moves in waves, parting in large swirls until the vaguely familiar frame of a palomino mare. Lillibet pauses her wandering, acutely aware of the invisible border upon which she straddles, before nodding her glowing ivory head to the approaching woman.

As she nears, Lillibet realizes it’s the same palomino she’d come across in the field as she’d welcomed Lanore into Beqanna. “Hello again,” she greets with pricked ears, struck again with that same feeling of recognition. It rests in the back of her mind, unreachable, just beyond her grasp. Annoyance flares in Lillibet and her nostrils flare for a quick moment before a forced smile is thrust across her lips. “I never got your name before, in the field. I am Lillibet, and I feel like I should know you from somewhere..” Her golden eyes watch the palomino woman, falling silent to allow for introductions.

I do not want to move mountains;
I want the mountains to see me coming
and to crumble.

RAYOFLIGHT

Switch the stripper for a wife, been moving lightspeed

Tue, 08 Mar 2022 01:13:07 +0000

Don't look back, nothing left to see
I can feel you though, wake me from this dreamin

It’s easy to find her when one knows where to look.

It won’t be in the heart of the forest or even the outskirts that border the newest oceanfront property. He knows he will find her near Nerine, close to her brother. He has every intention of meeting with Reave (if the bone-clad stallion doesn’t beat him to the punch first) but it’s not the North’s newest King that he wants today.

The rain has been unrelenting since winter had come and the gold glint that adorns his handsome features is somehow not lost beneath the shag of his seasonal coat. Another perk of being Fae, one of many. The sky above is gray and melancholy and he halts when he spots her in the distance, a golden sun that shines from the clouds.

The Dark Prince pauses for a moment, halting some distance from her as his crimson gaze watches her carefully.

So much had changed.

Once, he would have moved mountains for Aela. He would have set a viper to the throats of all those she despised and plotted against, if she had asked him to. She hadn’t. Instead she had broken his heart. Funny enough, he hadn’t hated her for it. Not the way he should have. It makes sense now of course, she couldn’t truly break what hadn’t belonged to her in the first place. It had hurt though, back then. When he hadn’t known better.

Aela was beautiful in so many ways. Her deceitfulness, her manipulation, her hunger for chaos. Works of art. He could still appreciate that about her too amongst the many mysteries that still evaded him when it comes to what makes Arla... Aela. If she told him now how she had once plotted to kill him, he would have simply laughed. Amused. It wouldn’t surprise him in the least nor would he be foolish to think she wouldn’t still consider it now if it might benefit her.

He knows she wouldn’t be foolish either. That surely she is aware that he wouldn’t hesitate to curl his scales around her neck if she threatened that which he cared most for. No matter the fondness he still has for her, ex-lover and friend, he would not think twice in destroying her if her plans shifted against his mate. Against him.

What does elude him is why she agreed to this to begin with. Why she agreed, suggested even, on coming here. Why she didn’t just throw her lot in with Reave entirely, the two would make a powerful pair. It’s what brings him out into the drizzle looking for her, to get to the heart of her intentions. A conversation in private, without Cheri.

“Aela.” His low baritone calling to her, breaking through the gentle patter of rain as his broad frame moves closer towards her. Dark red eyes finding the familiar hue of blue, curious as to what he might find there.

obscene

you wouldn't be the first renegade to need somebody, voracious

Mon, 07 Mar 2022 20:05:49 +0000

BUT I HOPE I NEVER LOSE THE BRUISES THAT YOU LEFT BEHIND

When he had agreed to follow her to Taiga she had been surprised by the warmth that flooded through her. She hadn’t realized how much of her hope was hanging on that invitation, that for him to deny her would have been far more disappointing than she would ever let on. She had thought that by burying her wants and desires that it meant she did not have to feel them, that she could pretend they didn’t exist. But in that moment that hung, suspended, as she waited to hear his answer, she realized that it would have broken something inside of her all the same.

She had smiled at him, a true smile, and said, “I’ll explain it to you once we get there.”

They enter from the south, the forest that flanks it gradually giving way to trees so tall that even when she cranes her neck back she cannot see the tops of them. But they do not go towards the heart of the land. Instead, she veers west, following a familiar path that leads to a now unfamiliar coast. She has already been here, once, to look at the new border — at the sea that now separates Taiga and Tephra. She stops at the edge, where water now lapped at an unnatural shore, and she turns her antlered head as Voro comes alongside her.

“There was a time when Tephra and Taiga bordered each other. Before the earthquake that caused the sea to rise.” Without thinking she steps closer to him, and this time when his wings brush against her sides she does not move away. The feeling of any part of him touching her threatens to fog her mind, to make her lose interest in the story she is trying to tell, and it is around a steadily increasing heartbeat that she continues. “When I was born, everything was on fire. My mother lived in Tephra at the time, when war broke out between them and Loess. Loess had dragons and those that could bend shadows, and after they set Tephra on fire they shuttered away the sun until everything was dark.” She pauses to look at him, a small smile twisted on her lips. “That’s what I remember about being born—shadow and smoke. And having to learn to run before I ever figured out how to walk.”

With a twist of her head she looks behind her, at the army of redwood trees. “After that, Taiga was like a second home. I spent just as much time there as I did Tephra. It always seemed to suit me a bit more than Tephra did, yet I never stayed.” Here, a small frown shadows her face, having never really considered the why’s of that—why she never stayed, why nothing ever really felt like home. Her vibrant eyes turn back to him, and she wonders again at the feeling that blossoms in her chest when she looks at him, when she tries to speak around it. “We could stay, if you wanted. Or we can keep looking.”

A I S L Y N

The Kill List | Obscene

Fri, 04 Mar 2022 00:46:48 +0000

I see us written in the Stars

The mountain of responsibility before them looked unconquerable to the untrained eye. It was a vast and arduous task they’d set themselves to. There were years to be made up, alliances lost that must be regained, numbers diminished that needed restoring; not to mention the absence of the loved ones still felt by all three parties.

Obscene, Cheri, and Aela were up to the challenge.

Were it any other horse, the idea might be unfathomable. To rebuild an Empire from the ground up was total insanity, but then again none of the three characters involved in this scheme had ever been considered steady-minded. They were driven, powerful, and most importantly immortal: each one complimenting the other to make a deadly and formidable team. An unlikely team, sure … but still a team.

True to their convictions, the first move on the chessboard had been made. There wasn’t any opposition to their takeover yet, (Cheri suspected there wouldn’t be) and the trio had made quite an entrance back into the world of politics during Obscene’s takeover, but now the time for dramatic action was done. A more steady plan needed to be made and followed through, which is exactly what brought Cheri to the Fae Prince’s side that evening.

Still warm from the afterglow of their encounter by the River, Ob’s mistress had kept close to the black and gold stallion. Aela, never one to be tied down to any one thing or place, was probably off on another adventure of importance. It was no secret that her love for the redwoods and their impermeable mists went only as far as necessity demanded.

“Does it feel good to have a title back?” Cheri wanted to know, joining him as she often did during twilight hours. For him she had the faintest of smiles, almost demure but certainly teasing. She pressed her mouth against his skin and let it linger there, happily.

In her thoughts were many things, Obsidio being the most pressing. She wanted desperately to ask if there was any news, any word from Aela or someone he’d come across about the colt. She knew he must be constantly chewing at the worry, even if it wasn’t so obvious to others. Obscene had always been a master at concealing his plans, his feelings.

That didn’t mean they didn’t exist.

All the truth that I can tell

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 19:45:04 +0000

Bardot

I know what sin is

Losing Tantalize had been hard. Being unable to locate her brother and watching his home crash into the sea had been tough. Then Tunnel disappeared as well as Molech and everyone else she had come to know in this place. And as dark and tortured as they had all been, as cruel and unkind as they could sometimes be… Her heart had broken a little, missing them all.

Of course she never said this outright. For all intensive purposes, she seemed much the same. The jungle flowers still clung to her raven mane and a spiraled smoky horn jutted from her soft brow, a gentle smile was easy to find her lips and just as easy to change into a suggestive grin or ferocious snarl, but the gold of her eyes always seemed tarnished. Sad. There was only so many times she could stand by the river alone before she gave up, she could only wait by the bank so long before defeat wrapped its arms around her and led her away.

To the redwoods she returns but they, too, are quiet. So very hushed. She becomes aware that since Yan’s absence they had been taken over by another but she never sees who this new leader is. Instead she becomes a guardian herself, a spirit of the woods that flits between them without guidance or purpose. Merely existing and trying to keep the small flame of her hope alive. Maybe one day they will all come back. She had found her mother after all those years she reminds herself. Then she remembers that Tantalize is dead and just because there had been a small sense of family for a moment, gone in a single breath, it didn’t mean she would ever find it again.

The fog parts as she moves through it, gliding easily past tall trunks and overgrown mushrooms towards the granite beach. Ferns graze across her suede backside, caressing the pale markings that still remained from her last encounter with the blue beast she tried not to think about. Reaching her destination, hooves sink into the silvery sands as she halts and looks out in the direction of Nerine. Her mother had lived there once, where the last of the Amazons had tried to survive. It hadn’t been a sisterhood in a long time but she remembers that the jaguar mare had spoken of the place with fondness.

Biting at her lower lip, she tilts her horn in its direction, considering. Maybe it was time to try something new again. That was one thing she had always been good at, picking up the pieces and starting over. Besides, she was growing tired of being a ghost in the mist.

They may call me a sinner, but I am at peace with myself;

html © dante.

Reposting because I CAN <3

I am the one thing in life I can control

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 18:24:53 +0000

Don't look back, nothing left to see
I can feel you though, wake me from this dreamin

With the two most unexpected supporters at his side, they move through the territory with purpose eating at each of their steps. He strides through the Taiga now as if it is already his, wildflowers spreading wherever his hooves land. And it is his, as far as he is concerned. It will never be the Pampas, it is nothing close to the dusky canyons of Loess. It is not the volcano of his birthland. None of them really want to be here but yet… Here they are.

Between the three of them, they can easily breathe new life into a dying land.
After all, it had been done before.

There is nothing but his schooled features of indifference and casual disdain flashing in the eyes of red as he takes the lead, forcing the two mares behind him as if that’s their proper place with the force of his stride and a cool glance of reminding. Aela had always wanted him to be more and Cheri (whatever her reasoning) had encouraged this. This is the monster of their creation and he’s no longer wary of the challenge.

Besides, he had always looked so damn good in a crown.
Taiga’s will do.

For now.

obscene

I'm a sucker for girls that are bad for me

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 22:05:32 +0000

Don't look back, nothing left to see
I can feel you though, wake me from this dreamin

He could have stayed on that riverbank with her forever, hidden away from the real world and all it’s problems. With no land or kingdom of their own, no weight of responsibility, what would it matter if they simply disappeared again? Except he had made a promise. And his son was hopefully still out there somewhere along with Fyr and everyone else that had gone missing. So begrudgingly, after dragging their hooves a little longer, they finally head towards the redwoods of Cheri’s birth.

He has never been here and so it is the jeweled mare he follows who knows these lands better then he ever will. The tall trees that grow like giants had always sounded like a fairytale but he sees for himself, now, that the stories hadn’t been exaggerated. His red gaze seems to travel further and further upwards until they seem to reach into the clouds themselves. He pauses in his sauntering to get a better look and in doing so, catches a faint scent that instantly has him scanning the misty woods. A familiar scent of jungle flowers. It’s gone as quickly as it comes and he wastes no time in falling into step beside the once Loessian Queen again, a muscle jumping in his taunt jaw as he grinds his teeth. A cruel joke his mind must be playing on him, feeding off the small reserve of hope that’s left.

There is a thought of reaching for Cheri, of burying his muzzle beneath the silky layers of green and rainstorms, until his thoughts had traveled elsewhere. It’s not one he acts on although the temptation is still there. Instead, he throws her an infamous smirk (as if he had been thinking of illicit activities on a certain muddy bank instead of his lost sister) and by the time they are thoroughly in the territory his expression has become the usual one of indifference. He did have a reputation that proceeded him after all.

“Any sign of Aela yet?” He eventually asks, studying an overgrown mushroom of electrifying colors and wondering what eating one would be like. It wouldn’t surprise him if the golden mare hadn’t arrived yet, knowing there was no love lost for her when it came to this place. A hatred that he could fully understand, his own resentment towards a certain volcanic kingdom still stirring beneath his star adorned breast. As for Cheri, and here he can’t help but glance at her again out of the corner of a crimson iris, this had been a place she had loved. A place of bittersweet memories. This must be difficult for her too. He thinks of asking her about it, if it bothers her being here, but then thinks better of that as well. When and if she wanted to confide in him, she would. He would not force her hand, in this or anything. Not anymore.

obscene

these memories hit me like a freight train

Wed, 09 Feb 2022 17:16:37 +0000

What good are our gifts if not used for others?

That had been one of the last things Lilliana had said to him. They had been at odds during their last conversation. She had reappeared, unharmed and very much alive despite the fact that she had been gone for months, that there had been rumors of her death. It had been a long, hard conversation for Nashua. He learned that she had spent the time in the Common Lands searching for her oldest friend, Neverwhere. They had come back from the Afterlife together and become separated during the crossing into this life.

She had been looking for her friend and learned through Neverwhere’s son why she was nowhere to be found. Wherewolf had told her that the dappled mare was in Tephra, in the place that wild rumors were spreading out like wildfire from of a Cursed creature. It wasn’t a coincidence, Lilliana had said. There was no way that the rumors surrounding Tephra and Neverwhere’s disappearance could be coincidental. They could, Nash had argued back. Or it could be a trap, he had gone on to say. It could be any number of horrible things and none of it had deterred his mother.

There had been no changing her mind, and even worse, she had been determined to go alone.

Why? It was foolish and reckless. Nash had tried to suggest that they wait, or that they should go to Leilan for help. When both of those suggestions had failed to convince her, Lilliana’s eldest son then claimed that he would go with her. If she was so insistent to go face down the Curse, then he would go with her. And that was when the former Guardian of Taiga had turned her refined face to him, only to give it a soft shake in refusal. Her blue eyes had lingered on the lines that creased his furrowed brow; they were the lines of age beginning to show and his Immortal mother had shaken her head again gently.

What good are our gifts, if not used for others? she had said.

So then his mother had gone to Tephra, and Nashua had respected her wishes by letting her go alone.

And then she hadn’t returned.

It was just one more thing that haunted him as Nashua wandered through Taiga. His auburn wings glinted in the limited sunlight that streamed down through the thick canopy, and the pegasus continued to move deeper through the towering forest. There would be no flying, not where he was going. This part of the wood barely allowed enough room for a single horse to travel, let alone one with wings. Shifting them so that he could make his way through a pair of young Silvergreens, his green eyes landed on the spot that he was intent on finding: a copse of spiraling trees that had once been a favorite hiding spot for he and Yanhua.

A secret that he had once shared to Elio - back when Nashua had called the red-and-gold stallion Firewing - and to Celina, the sister that had taught him how to fly.

His children had played here as foals. It was easy to recall the twins and their thrill as they discovered this place. The triplets had their own adventures here as well, and even the youngest, Wylder, learned to spread his fledgling wings on the nearby granite boulder that jutted from the rough Taigan ground. So many memories here, and remembering each one brought on an equal measure of pride and pain, of what had once been and never would be again, of wondering what now, that he was no longer King of the North, that his children were grown, now that so much had changed?

here is a very ramble-y starter

i saw the stars and didnt ask why

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 02:00:35 +0000

He soars over the waters of the North. Nashua makes the same journey he has time and time again. He crosses the ocean towards Nerine, coasting over the granite and proud stony countenance of his brother’s land. He continues to fly, and tilts his auburn-colored wings up towards the sun. Nashua considers for a moment what it might be like to soar above the clouds, to fly so high that he loses track of where the sky begins and the earth ends.

Will it make any difference when he lands?

For what he is about to tell Noel?

What will his world look like after he has told her that he has intentionally turned it upside down?

Nashua continues to fly, heading towards the familiar horizon of Taiga. The trees below him stand as proud as they ever had, and even a few of the silvergreen that had been the result of Yanhua and Amarine break through through the deep emerald tree canopy. So much has changed over the years, and yet there are still traces of the past reaching towards the clouds. The thought of them makes his stomach lurch, because it makes him think of Noel and in his mind, Nash replays his most treasured moments of the life they have shared over the years. Daring the wild wind blowing off the ocean from Nerine. The moment he had found in her in Nerine with Elegance and Luminesce resting in the heather behind her. The triplets - Saffron, Bolder, Bravely - and the way that she had surprised him with their existence.

The way that she had stood beside him in Hyaline, when he had been ready to risk the entirety of the North to bring their (then) youngest son home.

His throat tightens when he finally lands in Taiga, not far from the border of Nerine, and Nashua calls out for Noel as he always has.

you used to be such a lion

Tue, 02 Nov 2021 01:18:44 +0000

I knew her for a little ghost
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high—higher than most—
And the green gate was locked.

There is a legend, told in the scriptures of constellations, that the end begins in a rain so bright, so furiously full of flame, that nothing after the sight of it will ever be considered beautiful. The legend is told to the new-gods and the newborn stars. It is brewed into the ambrosia upon which galaxies feast. Battlefields are so thick with an echo of it that a million armies cannot dim the way it turns itself not into language but into dragon form, and snake form, and shark form.

She is running, but she does not feel it.

Her hooves are carving moons into the frozen earth.

Running from the end, from the beginning, from something.

Her mother? Or at least thoughts of her.

She was Elena’s crutch when she needed one. She was the one Elena coddled. She was the one she loved, because she was—is—the first, and because she had a special kinship with Elena’s soul-brother, Po, just as much as she did… if not more. She had gone out of her way to accept Nicnevin into the family when Elena brought her home, and she was the one who, when she needed her most, abandoned the empathetic queen because she could no longer hold her up, not when she was just as bruised and lonely and tired.

So, understandably, Elliana tries not to think about her mother
The worst part is that Elena is getting better, and she’ll never know.

Elliana and Lilliana have more in common than just a name and blood relationship. They both walked into Redwoods and found that the tighter the trees around you, the greater amount of freedom you felt. She slows her running only when she reaches the Taiga. Sometimes, to her, the entire world feels like a garden in a low-fog and a sickle moon. The night is no longer young; the moon hanging nearly full high in the skies above the slumbering land. A silver ornament amongst the backdrop of the beautiful shadows; the inky black and subtle indigo the most lovely between every bright, shining star.

She doesn't find her, to find her would suggest she had been looking, and she hadn't been—not for her. But there she is all the same.

Suddenly, she doesn't know what to say. She tilts her head to peer at the red-haired woman. The dusk streams through the canopy in long beams of light, emphasizing the stillness that surrounds them. The world holds its breath- or is that just Elli?

There is a moment in which her heart seems to hold its breath.

And with a patience she did not know she possessed, she waits.

And moment by moment, the stars gleam brighter.

"Speaking."

☾ | ℂ

picture colored by star <3

come down sweet reverence

Mon, 04 Oct 2021 02:28:09 +0000

Time, ultimately, above all else, was the thing that tore her family apart. Her brother staying under that water far too long, her mother lost in her depression for such a length of time, as if she were under the water with James, that when she came up for air everyone was already gone. Tired of wait for a woman to save herself, a women who didn't want to save herself. She wishes she would stayed and waited at the water’s edge, just to speak to her mother one more time. The things that go unsaid are often the things that eat at you—whether because you didn't get to have your say, or because the other person never got to hear you and really wanted to.

When she first left Novus, she dreamed for months that Po would come and find her. No matter how he had forsaken she and her mom, she still dreamed her guardian angel would come for her. She had been waiting for some time, all the while she has been watching, that crumbling god in her toppled cathedral, as life holds its breath. She travels now through Beqanna, bouncing back forth between the Pampas and Nerine, her feet dancing as she tried to decide just where the let the wings round her ankles land.

And for all the times she has crossed over its borders, Elliana has never stopped amongst the giant trees of the Taiga. Until today, as she travels north to Nerine and its guardian.

Elliana smiles at him when he finds her, a pleasant, contradictory smile to her current mood. “You caught me.”

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