[open] you had your maps drawn - Printable Version +- Beqanna (https://beqanna.com/forum) +-- Forum: Explore (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: The Common Lands (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=72) +---- Forum: Forest (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=73) +---- Thread: [open] you had your maps drawn (/showthread.php?tid=27038) Pages:
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you had your maps drawn - aletta - 05-28-2020 When the dawn wakes, so does Aletta. RE: you had your maps drawn - Mesec - 06-06-2020
@[aletta] RE: you had your maps drawn - aletta - 06-10-2020 Aletta has been as unmoving as the Mountains of her youth in regards to her habits. RE: you had your maps drawn - Mesec - 06-22-2020
@[aletta] RE: you had your maps drawn - aletta - 06-26-2020 If there is one thing she has learned from wandering, it is that paths cross. we turned our back on ordinary from the start photo credit to charlie---x |
There’s a faint chuckle at her response to his question because it surprises him - somehow he had not been anticipating that answer at all. Although he was new to this land, he found it easy to assume that he was in the minority and anyone he came across would have been living here for some time. Still, he is quick to respond to her question. “Not at all.” The words and the smile that accompany them are all warmth and friendliness. “Wherever we end up, it’s a treat to just have company after travelling on my own for so long.” There’s a note of wistfulness in his tone but he doesn’t dwell on the thoughts for very long - doesn’t seem polite when he actually has company for once. It is not long before his silver eyes look to her again, that easy of his smile still present as he keeps the conversation going - hoping she doesn’t mind. “Are you relatively new to this land as well?” From one assumption to another, Mesec does enjoy making leaps though he does not think this one is a very large one. He supposes she could just not have a very good sense of direction - or be lying about not knowing where the trail leads - but both of those options don’t sit right. For all the handful of moments that he’s known Aletta - but then Mesec always found it easy to trust the best in everyone other than himself. Mesec
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He is a throwback to her youth. Aletta hadn’t been so naive to think that every traveler she would encounter would be friendly but the way he smiles reminds her of the times (and travels) when a stranger was more apt to grin than growl. The reply he gives her echoes something she might have once said.
Aletta had never minded the solitude. If anything, she had learned to appreciate the silence. What a horse couldn’t find in conversation, they might find in nature. There were things that might be missed when otherwise occupied with amiable conversation; morning dew that caught fire with the dawn in spring, frost as it painted the landscape in the air in fall. The enchantment of waterfalls as they sang their cascading song, lovely as any siren. Imperial mountains who refused to budge, who refused to erode against the face of time.
The winged stallion has no qualms where they might end up and Aletta knows she’s found another wayward spirit like herself. Even without wings, the gray mare had been the soaring type. That had always been the thrill for her. Another turn, another trail, another corner - what might be on the other side?
Despite some of the consequences, she has always enjoyed the finding out.
"Where did you come from?” she asks, turning her head towards his briefly as they walk. Her dark eyes study him, weighing him, considering him and genuinely curious. Learning the stories behind the travels was almost as exciting as the traveling itself.
"Yes,” the gray mare counters, "and no.” Aletta pauses for a moment and her eyes sparkle - a depthless mirth dancing - as she peers up to him. ”I was here once before,” she continues as she turns her ahead and resumes walking. "The Reckoning, I think they called it. I came looking for the Jungle - for the Amazons - and found everybody was as lost as I was.”
It had been a disappointment, back then. Aletta had spent her entire youth on the mountaintops dreaming of the day she’d find the Amazons. She had dreams of not only joining them but leading them, turning her name into a blaze of glory that would ring alongside others like Asylum and Twinge. Dreams, she learned, change and what she had found instead was something she’ll always be proud of.
"So I wandered some more until I found what I was looking for.” She slows and smiles then, absent of the teasing. Now she wanders again, the smile says, until she finds what she is looking for. Beyond. Home.
@[Mesec]
It doesn’t feel uncomfortable, this trading of questions as they wander. Perhaps it would be pleasant to walk in silence, but Mesec can’t help but prefer this. He’s curious about so much - about Aletta, about this place, about what he might be able to discover if he stays here - and each moment he learns a little something more. He meets her gaze - when she asks about where had come from. It’s a more complicated answer than he wishes it was, but it never seemed to be in the cards for Mesec to stay in one place for very long. There’s a mingling of sadness and longing in his voice as he replies in his soft voice. “First from a place called Helovia. After that, another called the Rift but I was not there very long. And after that - my family settled somewhere quiet. I never did learn whether it had a name, but it was home.” Mesec watches her for any signs that either of the lands he has mentioned spark any sense of familiarity in her - he doesn’t want to launch into any sort of explanation about either of them if she already knew. He finds himself grinning with her when her eyes dance with her yes and no answer to his own question. It is comforting to know he is not the only one who has bounced around from home to home. “The Reckoning.” He repeats the phrase, feeling the weight of it even without having been here at the time. “I’ll count myself lucky I had not been here for that.” Maybe Beqanna wasn’t quite the reprieve or haven he was looking for, though it would be naive to think he could live anywhere and never experience a disaster of some sort. They always seem to happen, especially where magic is present. He continues a few more steps before asking “Have you found it yet? What you’re looking for?” Mesec
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Aletta has never had cards. It's always been her stars; she has used them as a compass for as long as she can remember. Her mother - the descendant of the Dalean king, Coca-Cola - had crafted stories beneath starlight about the gray king of the Forbidden Dale. Each star was a story, her mother Ashlynn had said. Each one was a twinkling legend waiting to be remembered. As long as a horse remembered those before them, the lessons of their ancestors would be shining above them.
So she followed them to Beqanna where she learned of the Reckoning. She learned about Nerine and a stallion who had taught her to be wary named Stillwater. She learned about the loss of magic from a bone Magician called Violence and Aletta learned to be cautious when it came to her gifted cousins. Power - Magic - was a corrupter and it made her that much prouder that the blood in her veins was red. Almost pure. Surely that made her that much harder to corrupt.
The iron mare of Beyond had been forged on the mountaintops. Carved and chiseled as the years have gone by and she is proud of the granite in her stance. She is proud of the surety she carries between her slender shoulders. "After Beqanna came a string of islands," the gray mare adds after he speaks. "Then Beyond. And then Liridon. Then Beqanna again." Helovia. Rift. The unknown. The infinite realms that exist have always seemed so delightfully endless. Like galaxies that spin and turn in a never-ending universe that even travelers like she and @[Mesec] will never find the end too.
Her brow arches slightly as she glances back to the glowing pegasus, considering that thought. "Home doesn't have to have a name," Aletta says thoughtfully, (unknowingly) softening to her walking companion. "I've found that it's more of a feeling than anything else." Her home has taken many names - Craignair, Paraiso, Murmuring Rivers, the Pass. The connection that all those places had shared was who she had shared them with.
She wonders briefly what would have made him leave the quiet if it was where his family had settled. Had he not wanted to stay with them? The thought makes her frown slightly but it vanishes with another tilt of her head, listening to his remark about the Reckoning. She answers his statement with a grin of her own - smaller but every inch mischievous. "I've heard weanlings call for their milk-mothers with less complaint." Though she teases, she understands to some extent. She isn't entirely uncompassionate, despite her joke.
A few more steps and the grin fades as she considers the corner ahead. As Mesec asks her if she has found what she was looking for. "Not yet," she muses, looking forward. "But I will," she doesn't doubt. "A startalker sent me down this path, so I'll keep walking it until it ends." Turning her attention back to the pegasus and glancing up at him, she wonders: "have you thought about where your wandering might take you in Beqanna?"
It’s comforting, if a little strange, how two (near) strangers could have a similar story - at least in regards to hopping from land to land. Mesec envies Aletta that she could return to the land of her birth, his own had been swallowed up and destroyed. But she has a point too, when she mentions that home is a feeling and he nods in agreement to this statement. Faces flash through his memory, enough of them to be both sad and sweet. A crooked smile appears at her teasing and he unfolds one of his silver-lined wings just enough to nudge her gently with some of the feathers. They navigate the corner in the path before Mesec replies to her question and, unknowingly, answer her un-asked question about why he had left that peaceful place he and his family had made. “None, really. I think I was just going to wander until something or someone caused me to stop. I have an invitation to Loess, wherever that is, so I’ll check that out.” What an odd trip to the designated recruitment land that had been. “My children grew older and restless in the peaceful place we settled in and left to create their own lives - and after the last left, I decided it was time for me to see what else was out there too. So maybe Beqanna only ends up being a stop, I’m not really sure.” Here he smiles, his wings moving a little in a shrug and he’s quiet for a few more steps before he asks in a voice absolutely brimming with youthful curiosity: “What’s a startalker?” Mesec
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