Beqanna - Ischia

Be our guest

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 22:31:04 +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!

can't float in an ocean that's already been drained

Sat, 05 Feb 2022 23:56:42 +0000

Gale
started under neon lights, then it all got dark
i only know how to go too far

Gale lays in the shallow sea and overhead, the cerulean sky is shining. The soft white clouds that skim across the blue surface are blurred and refracted by the water, and his equine eyes take a moment to adjust to the saline. It is a beautiful summer day in the world above the water, with a gentle breeze frothing the peaks of the low waves.

When he’d been pulled beneath the waves last night, the brindle stallion had not expected to return. At least, not like he has, not waking and feeling completely himself. He had been sure that the Curse (writhing and cackling at Gale’s terror in being drowned) would break free and consume him, a pattern that has been repeated now for the better part of a decade.

Instead, Gale is free.
(He does not look too closely at the place within him where it dwells, because there are enough oily shadows at the edges of his vision. He knows those shadows, knows how they grow thicker and darker, knows they will eventually swallow him.)
For now.

The tide recedes as the morning turns to afternoon, and overhead schools of fish drift silently by and gulls wing their way through the sky

The navy stallion does not recognize the shape he has taken but appreciates the way it is suited for the water with dark eyes, gills, and no useless ears. He is waiting for the shadows to overtake him, yet the only darkness that comes is in the slowly clouding sky. Rain will fall this afternoon, promises those clouds, and Gale weighs the benefits of remaining beneath the water for the storm.

In the end its the lightning that draws him out, tugging at a part of himself that he does not recognize. It is not a Cursed part but rather something entirely his own, and it feels as odd as though he’d grown a fifth leg. No, he thinks, it feels more as if the lightning is a limb he’d always had and only just now discovered.

Gale rises wearing the shape of an iridescent navy Baltian, with a snow white spinal fin that runs from atop his earless poll to the tip of his white frilled shark tail and hind fins. The bottom of the white clouds have begun to turn blue grey, and Gale’s brilliant blue eyes seek the lightning that blows in with clouds darker still. The winds that carry them ruffle his mane, which as it dries turns once more to the horse hair he was born with.

By the time the tide is out entirely he is nothing more than a blue and gold stallion, standing on one of the outer shoals of the Ischian archipelago. His long white mane flutters in the wind as it dries, and Gale tastes salt when he licks his parched lips. He is desperately thirsty and waits with his attention focused on the sky, heedless to anything else around him.

Falling into the quicksand of my troubled mind

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 17:11:17 +0000

Spring was here and Kestrell was pretty damned determined to spend the rest of it far away, on Ischia’s outer isle. The little circlet of land and tangled jungle was situated right between the volcanic Kingdom and her lesser territories, making it the ideal bachelor’s getaway during foaling season.

No worries, The large drake pegasus sighed and sank deeper into a freshwater pool, just some sand, sun, and the occasional Kelpie.

Closing his eyes, a small grin flickered across his mouth at the thought. The last time he’d encountered one of those water scum it’d tried dragging him by the neck into the ocean. It had nearly succeeded, too, were it not for a stroke of luck and a well-aimed kick at the thing. Kestrell came out of that situation bloody but mostly unharmed, and he hoped the sea monster had learned a valuable lesson.

Pegasi were not very easy to drown.

The stallion flicked his ears around, nonchalantly. The chittering of parrots mixed well with the heavy, almost oppressive humidity, and after a moment or two of listening to them babble on, his thoughts began to drift.

He wondered what Tinkaara was doing these days. The little half-zebra nightmare was probably running around Beqanna right now, giving some unlucky bastard an earful. Pinko, his best mate and a magical oddity, had most likely slipped off the continent entirely. Dek had followed him all the way to Tephra, which had surprised Kestrell since he’d been the quiet one of the group, but in the end it’d been nice having some company.

All in all, it’d been a mostly successful season of raiding small herds.

Kestrell spread his wings to prop himself up and breathed deeply, content. Next season, he thought, we should try to catch some larger fish.

Brennen

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 20:55:08 +0000

Nihlus' joints ached and cracked as he stretched that morning. They, more often than not, keep him here these days -- they being his aging joints, here being the island Heim off the shores of Ischia, the island which he has now called home for close to a decade. Three children grew up here in the warm embrace of family and have since embarked on adventures of their own, elsewhere and beyond even the wildest of Nih's guesses.

Had you asked him in his youth if he could feel the ache of missing someone in his breast as the skies feel the weight of gravity restraining them from the void of space, he would have scoffed, at best. Mocked you, at worst. As far as relations went during that time in his life, he did away with such trivial thing as mothers, faux-fathers, or siblings. In their place stood the cold and vast iciness of the unforgiveable Tundra. The brotherhood that came with could come or go for all the Nihlus cared -- in the beginning, anyway.

But his youth had fled him, slowly at first and now at a pace which frightened him daily. The fear worsened during the periods of Brennen's absences, expected absences which they communicate about to the best of their abilities, to be sure, but absences nonetheless. And today happened to be a morning of absence. With no children to keep him company nor a partner to love him into feeling young again, Nihlus faced the feelings deep in his chest which he ignored as a youth and which have therefore grown nigh-unconquerable in their greatness.

Before he even began his morning meal, Nihlus began to cry. The tears slipped from his glowing blue eyes and fell unto the shade-cooled sands of Heim's heart.

Will I live to see my grandchildren? Will I live to see my partner? What will happen when I am gone? Will I be forgotten by those who claimed to love me, will my name be erased from the consciousness of the living? How can I live knowing that I will die, knowing that my powers will not be able to help me from that place which I survived once, that grey and desolate beach of the afterlife? Who will greet me there except the other pitiful mortals? Who --

A sudden wave of something disrupted the rambling of his mind. A sensation that passed through each particle of his being with a gentle urgency, like a hand lifted to awaken with great care. Nihlus inhaled, sharp and alive as he it had not been before.

"Brennen!" He called, disoriented but with a heart sailing far above the tumultuous waves of existentialism below. Brennen had materialized somewhere on Beqanna, had returned, and had sent out -- whether intentionally or incidentally -- a pulse of his magical vitality.

And so, running full-tilt toward the beach with his aching joints long forgotten, Nihlus calls with the high-spiritedness of any love-struck yearling:

"Brennen!"

as if a glass could contain the sea

Sun, 19 Sep 2021 18:02:11 +0000

The springtime sun is bright and brilliant as it shines down upon Ischia, a cloudless blue sky accompanying the warm rays. The waters of the ocean are calm as the crystal clear waves gently lap against the pristine white sand, the tide slowly ebbing away and revealing many shallow tidepools dotting the shoreline. In the bordering jungle, gentle squawks of paradise birds echoing through the canopy. Amongst the glittering sand and softly swaying palm trees, a young girl is standing perfectly still inside one of these pools, her pale blue nose so near to the water that her shivering breath causes ripples across the otherwise still water.

Silvered fish trapped within the now luke-warm water nibble gently at her fetlocks, tiny little minnows whose scales glitter in the sun with each twist and turn. But it is not the fish that has drawn the winged girl to this particular tide pool - her steel grey eyes are focused on the jeweled hermit crab that shuffles quietly beneath her gaze. The crab’s shell reflects a bold ruby red in her eyes, its shell glittering and beautiful in the sun. She has seen these creatures before, but none with such a beautiful shell and Ciroc has become enraptured. She had been studying it for nearly an hour now, following it and trying not to lose track of it, wanting to find more. She wanted to find a blue one to show her sister.

A loud splash draws her attention and Ciroc lifts her head swiftly, the light blue blaze paling in comparison to the deep cerulean of the rest of her face. She snorts softly, narrowing her eyes as she peers out across the line of the horizon. Her sister had mentioned mermaids that live in the reefs, ones with lovely songs and beautiful faces but with sharp, menacing teeth. Ciroc presses her lips together firmly, wondering if there was any truth in her sister’s story or if Sundari only meant to tease her. The winged girl’s face turns thoughtful and then she gasps, remembering the ruby red hermit crab she had been following.

When she glances down it is gone from where it had been and with a whirlwind of movement, Ciroc searches the pale sand for the jewel-encrusted crab. When the glinting of scarlet catches her eyes lengths away, she gathers her legs beneath her and leaps from one tide pool to the next, splashing loudly through each one until she is caught up with the crab, her pale blue nose nearly touching its beautiful shell as it scrabbles across the sand with quickly shuffling feet.

c i r o c

open to any!
and also ? <3

keep a light on in my soul

Mon, 13 Sep 2021 23:30:18 +0000

let my shadows prove the sunshine

It did not take long for Tephra to become something he had never imagined it could be - a place of horror, a chaotic descent into what Svedka had tried so terribly to forget. It felt as though the earth had swallowed him again, digesting him in the void of blackness that he once slumbered and nearly immediately - without any hesitation or thought - the two-toned stallion knew it was time to leave.

He never found it possible to be linked closely to something so physical, like a kingdom. Even though there was no heartache to leave what is his homeland behind, there is no pause in his step, no uncertainty in the swiftness in which he had gone searching for his children and their mothers. The light of his armor led them away from the disastrous darkness that seems to now envelope the once peaceful volcanic land, guiding them through the glowering channel pass that allows them access to the nearby island of Ischia.

Svedka had searched for Warden and Wishbone, but the nightmares were too torrential for him to reside there a moment longer. He only had hope that perhaps his siblings would escape the clutches of the shadowy magician who had easily overtaken their home. Warden had been gone long before Gale had ever set foot inside the peninsula and though Svedka never worries, he finds the bitter taste of it growing in the back of his throat.

“I’ve always loved Ischia,” he murmurs to the dampness of Vastra’s tawny coat, attempting to smooth the sharpness of her taut muscles beneath her supple skin. He already knew she wouldn’t have been a fan of the swim and sweeps the pink of his warm lips across her slender sloping neck, already expecting the cautious growl that would slither from her half-smirked lips. The girls, however, found the lukewarm water and the swim through the pass riveting - it gave them a chance to practice their immense shifting abilities, albeit choppy and unrefined.

Ciroc had made landfall as a young harp seal, rivetingly white with cascading sky blue sweeping across the pup’s thick skin. Upon reaching the fine, white sand of Ischia, however, the filly took her natural shape - a young blue mare with outspread wings, grateful for land without nightmares and new scenery to explore. With a toss of her head upward and a decided snort, she leaps into the jungle. Squawks of startled parrots echo the air, accompanied by the twinkling sound of Ciroc’s laughter.

Svedka smiles, finding that it is no mystery that he favors his daughters, especially when their happiness reminds him so much of his own. The light he had used to lead them out of the dark of Tephra is no longer needed in the enchanting isle of Ischia and it dims sullenly, his bright blue gaze shifting to Vastra as they are left alone for a moment wading in the tidepools. “Thank you,” he tells her genuinely, knowing that she hadn’t needed to come with him - they are not promised to each other and could come and go as they pleased, as they have done for years.

As always, though, he rather liked knowing exactly where to find her.

svedka

something has changed within me

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 02:06:59 +0000

The sun has gone dark again.

Moira runs through a black world, her hooves impossibly loud in her ears. When she leaps for the sea it has gone thick and murky, and feels oily in her throat. A monster rises for her from the depths, reaching for her with toothy jaws, and she screams.

The sound emerges as a stream of bubbles, and Moira wakes with a start.

It had been a dream. Just a dream.
But her heart is still racing, and her gills flutter rapidly.

There will be no more sleep tonight, so she rises to the surface of the inlet and peers up at the pre-dawn sky. Stars still linger in the west, but the Tephran volcano is already silhouetted by the pale clouds that promise sunrise. She drifts slowly toward the shore, and when she reaches the shallows transforms into a creature more suited for land - long legged and lithe.

For a while she wanders the main island, her seagreen eyes slowly losing their haunted look. Nightmares have become more frequent of late, but only when she sleeps in the waters nearest Tephra. Weary after a long evening of swimming though, the young nereid had forgotten to be cautious, and it takes her some time to shake off the dream entirely.

By the time she does, dawn has turned the sky from grey to pink, with an orange glow along the edges that remind her of coral. Moira smiles, and turns her head curiously toward the sound of hooves even as she calls out a greeting.

activity check

Mon, 06 Sep 2021 19:51:52 +0000

or at least a "who's here even if you're not posting right now" check so I can update the board!

something so precious about this

Mon, 06 Sep 2021 01:58:29 +0000

Beyza

Beyza had once had ambitions, but they were greater than ruling - greater than life itself. They would have consumed her if she had let them. And then she had stepped away, cut out that festering part of her heart. Without it, she would have been content to spend the rest of her days in peace. Letting someone else deal with politics and whatever else came along with the territory.

It was so far out of her mind she wasn’t even sure what it involved... if anything at all.

But she had not seen any others for a while and if nothing else - she was sure she could help keep this place as peaceful as it had been for her and her daughters.

She wanders slowly across the islands today, tracing the now-familiar pathways and beaches. There is pressure in the world of Beqanna, the constant push and pull of ambitious minds. Beyza knows she may not be able to avoid it forever, but at least she can have this place. She can keep it safe until someone else more ambitious comes along. At least, depending on what those ambitious might be.

Beyza's claiming the empty leader spot!

tell me if somehow, some of it remains

Mon, 23 Aug 2021 23:40:13 +0000

Beyza

It feels good, standing on the edge of the continent and looking at a place that has become home. Ischia had not been chosen for any reason greater than the fact that it was far away from Pangea but it had become something more to Beyza since then.

It was nice, if rather ordinary, to discover that she enjoyed having a home. Surely that meant Pangea hadn’t actually been all that special. Surely she would feel the same rage if this place was ever threatened. But then, she had loved those canyons for their unease and volatility and she loves the islands for their peace. The two simply cannot be compared.

In the late afternoon sun, Beyza navigates the sand bars that will bring her to the island. She could fly but she enjoys this walk, where the water is shallow. As she moves, she uses her magic for the simple pleasure of causing the sunlight to sparkle around her white frame, trailing behind her in the shapes of fish and dolphins swimming through the air.

Beyza suspects she had enjoyed such displays more than her daughters whenever she tried to entertain them with it.

Her mind drifts to them as she emerges onto the sand, checking (discreetly) that they are alright before becoming distracted by an unknown scent - her white eyes drifting across the landscape to see what might have changed.

a tropical trip for the polar bear just because

eleven minutes away; any

Sun, 22 Aug 2021 00:21:33 +0000

The felis marus kitten that she’d found on the beach during the Darkness is now a fully grown cat. He is the lord of the little stretch of beach that Moira considers home, and he announces this to her by butting his head firmly against hers. The nereid groans, and rolls over, and for a few minutes the catfish is contented by playing with the resulting bubbles that float toward the surface.

But then he is back at it again, and with a groan the purple-finned mare resigns herself to being awake. Absentmindedly she strokes the tomcat with ripples of water, and he purrs happily. Overhead, she sees the shadow of the kingfisher that is her constant companion, and knows that he is searching for breakfast.

She breaks the surface and climbs onto the beach, heading toward one of the inland groves where she knows there is good grazing and ripe fruit. She almost turns toward her mother’s beach, but muscle memory is stopped by the reminder that Aquaria is still with family.

Moira had gone as well, but she’s home now, and finds that she has missed Ischia more than she’d expected. She finds herself on a path she’s taken only a few times before, the winding trail toward the central waterfall of the big island. When she reaches the pool at the base, Moira takes a moment to appreciate the view. The cascades of mist hide the distant rocky base, and there is something nearly magical about it.

The nereid steps into water but does not fully shift, instead enjoying the way the water feels against her hooved legs and closing her seafoam eyes in delight at the perfect temperature of the water as it splashes against her sides.

you're not alone, I'm standing right beside you

Tue, 17 Aug 2021 21:32:46 +0000

“Ischia.” She’d told Garbage with a smile, and then the two of them had set out. It wasn’t too difficult for Agetta to keep up a companionable amount of conversation - centred mostly on Beyza and the strange but talented triplet granddaughters that Agetta was fond of visiting.

Beyza could sense her mother’s arrival and waited where the sandbar path connected Ischia to the mainland. The islands had become quiet but this suited her. Soon her daughters would be old enough to venture out, create lives and mistakes of their own. Perhaps she would follow, or perhaps she had rooted herself here in the soft sand and would be content to no longer play a part in how the world was shaped. Her magic would continue to be used for idle entertainment instead of life and death.

But today will not be an idle or entertaining day, it would seem. It is a shock to see the figure next to Agetta when they arrive in the late afternoon. Although Beyza had not met Garbage, from her venture into the white mare’s mind she knew him. Knew that the loss of him had been the final stone that shattered Agetta’s heart that had been fracturing for a century.

What was it that he had told her - you are nothing to me?

And now they arrive together, Agetta friendly and smiling. Of course, she would be helping him, even without the memories of their life together. Agetta would probably help each and every one of the men that Beyza had cut from her mind if they had shown up, blissfully unaware of the damage they had caused her that she assumed was her own shortcomings and not theirs.

It takes only a short time to get Beyza caught up to speed and the magician spends those moments trying to sort out which was the better option. To refuse and allow Garbage and Agetta to live in relative peace, troubled by their lack of memories but without the weight of their lives. Or to knock over the first stone that would surely start a landslide.

If she refused, would they still find a way back to each other anyway? Caught in each other's gravitational pull without even knowing it.

Agetta stands next to Garbage on the sunlit beach, offering him an encouraging smile while Beyza asks quietly “Are you sure?”

we are made of starstuff

artwork by yoricade

I can feel the paradise before my world implodes | acionna

Sun, 04 Jul 2021 00:52:42 +0000

The water is so warm here.

Malik laughs in delight, which turns into a whistle before he dives back down beneath the waters as a young bottlenose dolphin.

Though the jungles of his homeland do not ever grow cool, the winter winds do gust hard, and the heated steam that keeps the kingdom tropical sometimes blows away. But it’s not like that here. It’s just warm in a way that suggests it’s always warm, and that seems very nice.

Will be here, he wonders? There had been other islands but this one is the largest, with the widest beach where he is sure he will be spotted. Having come to the shallows, the dolphin becomes Malik again.

A lanky almost-yearling, the boy’s black coat stands out on the white beach. The late afternoon sun is shining through the clouds of a thunderstorm that appears to have just passed, and a rainbow arches in the sky overhead.

Malik has not been raised to believe in Signs, but surely the bright arch across the sky is good luck of some sort, and he smiles. Will someone come find him, he wonders? OR should he go look for them? Wishbone’s words come back to him - we shouldn’t walk in until someone greets us - and his hooves remain still.

i only know how to go too far

Sun, 27 Jun 2021 02:01:36 +0000

With the last days of autumn starting to fade into winter, Aela knows that it is safe to return to the Pampas.

She can return to scheming and her dreaming. They can continue to keep building those plans that they had started. Has there been any further progress in Loess, she wonders? If they were lucky, they wouldn't have to deal with Sylva again for some time. That lot could contend with themselves, Aela considering them a cesspool of chaos (and the kind that could ruin her own auspicious plans).

But it leaves other places across Beqanna open. Her mind has considered figuring how to get the Tephran volcano to erupt. There are always the islands to consider as well. Islandres is quiet, she knows. But if it is quiet, she knows that it means there is likely nobody to upset there. An empty island does her plan little good. But what about the other? Ischia. It was supposedly home to nereids, rumored to be beautiful creatures. Lovelier than her?

The palomino rolls her slender shoulders and doubts it, but Aela decides it is worth investigating.

It takes her some time to reach it, realizing that the only way to travel there was by a sandbar. She had to wait a day, and time her arrival with the parting tide. When the low-lying pathway was revealed, the gold-striped mare had followed it towards a tropical paradise that Aela found (surprisingly) appealing. She almost hated to imagine all the ways that she could ruin it.

Turning her elegant face to the side, she spied a rather... unusual creature near her. "I'm looking for the Dame," Aela explains kindly, as if she was here on some kind of diplomatic mission. Her smile warms slightly as she studies his antennae and the multitude of legs that he had. Did he scuttle like the crabs she had seen on her way here or did he just struggle in a delightful twist of too many limbs?

What had Carnage created here?

horrible aela, as promised

The blue in an ocean of grey // Any

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 22:32:50 +0000

I'll be almost to the ocean when you open your eyes

She was rubbing against the rough palm bark, groaning at the pressure on her skin but couldn't bring herself to stop. Not when She itched as though there were a thousand ants crawling beneath her scales, biting mercilessly. She itched and burned and no amount of scratching seemed to alleviate it for long.

Moaning in discomfort, she threw herself into the sand and began to roll. The heat helped a bit, soothing the irritation for a moment. It was a brief enough solution. Wherever the sand didn't touch continued to ache. Her head pushed through the white grains, the rubbing and rubbing until she thought she might be starting to feel just a bit better.

White sand clung to her face, disguised the pearl flake scales falling to the shore. More sand, fewer scales, until she rose gasping and tired. She felt sick, honestly, her skin still buzzing with irritation, her head ringing with the effort of warding the pain away.

With a longing glance, she considered the waves lapping not so far away. A few steps and she'd be able to fall into the cool water. Anxiety held her back. She couldn't sleep in the water, not anymore. She worried too much that some violent shadow would emerge from the reef and finish the job that had been begun at the end of the eclipse. There was no rest to be found beneath the waves.

So she resigned herself to the beach, and the shade of a palm grove. Hot and sore, the seamare did her best to doze, absently rubbing her neck against the nearest trunk as she did. Sleep was a long time coming.

Aquaria