i'd burn here if that's what it takes [leliana]

[Cress]

cRess

like a house on fire we're up in flames; i'd burn here if that's what it takes
Cress worries desperately for her daughter, and she prays every single day that the girl is safe. She knows that Dawn’s childhood friend (Sunny, she has always called him) had convinced her bear to join Hyaline, where he and all of his friends lived, and she has heard through rumors that most of Hyaline’s members had relocated to Silver Cove when the plague struck. Hopefully Dawn was among them, staying in a land that was safe and plague-free.

With her own sickness looming over her head, she had been loath to seek out her daughter. Safeland or not, she didn’t want to risk her precious youngster getting ill. Of course, she is old enough to make her own decisions in life... but the golden woman still hopes that she chose to be safe.

Even though the genie has healed the plague from her veins, she still can’t bring herself to set out looking for her child. What if there are still lingering traces of illness, and she unwittingly infects Dawn? The woman has lived through a lot so far in life, but that would not be something she’d be able to live with. So she has avoided looking for her girl, desperately hoping and praying that she stays safe while mostly keeping within the borders of the island.

She hasn’t been as actively involved in the Resort’s affairs as she feels she should be, and she can't help but feel guilty. She had spoken with Tiphon and Leliana when they all first arrived to the safeland, vowing to help create a safe haven where the infected could come to heal... but what she done, really? She had tried to help the heavily pregnant, dying mare when she had appeared on the beach, and certainly her healing ability had helped some, but her powers simply aren’t strong enough to cure the plague itself. Other than that, she has been resting; letting her tired body heal from burning through so much of her energy day in and day out.

The fading summer sun has her lathered into a deep bronze as she walks along the continuous shoreline of the island, her hooves splashing gently in the warm water. Fall is looming over their heads and soon the weather will cool, bringing cold winds that they will all feel in the bones. Being so far north, she wonders if the island will be covered in snow come the turn of winter, and she can’t help but smile. She has a fire in her soul that cannot be quenched with the cold, and she welcomes the coming weather with an embrace.

For the ice will come and Beqanna will keep turning. Even in her darkest hours she remembers that.

@leliana

[leliana]

Leliana

baby, when I'm in your arms, I can make honest sense of love and war's alarms

Leliana has done her best to split her time amongst the different places she can call home. For the most part, that has meant being with her girls and Vulgaris in Tampa, but she travels back and forth to the Island and even makes her way elsewhere when she feels the need calling on her. Still, she has not been able to devote her full attention to the island the way she had wanted to—hasn’t been able to support Tiphon in his mission enough and hasn’t been there enough for Cress and she feels a crushing guilt because of it. An unsettling pain that she wasn't doing enough. That she wasn’t enough for them.

It presses down her spine as she lands on the edges of the Island, the wind and the sea having left her crimson mane messy and damp, clinging to the elegant curve of her neck. Her health has begun to flood back into her, and it shows. She is filling out again, the harsh angles of the past months softening, her coat regaining its customary gloss so that the dapples once again show prominently. She still coughs, especially when she sleeps, and blood will sometimes stain her lips, but it is less frequently now.

Sometimes, she goes entire days without a single cough.

After months of exhaustion and then disease, it is enough.

When she sees the familiar shape of Cress walking along the shoreline, her heart leaps in her throat, her hazel eyes brightening as she kicks off. Her dragon wings unfurl, skimming her along the water, the edges of it lapping up to catch her hooves. When she nears the other, she touches ground, landing gracefully before she collides into the mare’s side. She closes her eyes as she embraces the other healer, breathing in the familiar scent and feeling the guilty both settle and rise in her throat. “Cress,” the name is soft on her tongue and she pulls back so that she can look her friend in the eye. “It’s been too long, my friend.”

but there's something primal underneath and it drives this nothingness I seek

@[Cress]