02-26-2019, 08:51 PM
kagerus
and in my dreams, i kissed your lips a thousand times
Each step towards the beach is agony.
Blood from the puncture wounds in my hind cannon trail tellingly behind me, dirtying the pure white sand below with its crimson droplets. The sight of it upon retrospection makes me glad that the foal I glimpse a moment ago struck out before me, such that he or she might not be subject to the gore of my fateful injury. The child's life will inevitably be full of misery and disgust, but that I might avoid initiating that cycle of pain presents a small thread of hope to which I desperately cling.
We can make it.
Fuck. Ironically, I trip just as I decide on this hope, resulting in my hind leg pressing to the earth to catch my falling weight. Pain shoots from the marrow of my bone into each of my nerves; though I manage to keep my footing, what was left of my clear headedness disappears. Panthera growls next to me, trying to warn me of something in the baritone of her vocal chords as my fractured psyche fails to interpret her telepathic communications. Bleary-eyed and close to vomiting, I cast my eyes in the direction which my familiar indicates.
A veritable fortress of sand seems to float not far off on the horizon, obscuring the arcane structures which had evidently stood there moments before. For a moment I admire the billowing brown cloud.
Eerily, I become aware of a bead of sweat as it slides from the top of my skull to the bottom of my jaw; for a moment, my entire self exists solely in that droplet, as excluded from this reality as death is from life.
Salt.
Water.
Fear.
Sandstorm.
SANDSTORM!
At last I re-enter my corporeal form, the combined chaos of Panthera screaming in my mind, the angrily crashing waves not far off, and the rapidly approaching wall of sand leaving me hyperventilating and chalk full of adrenaline. Despite the agony of my cannon bone I leap toward the open beach, only now noticing that I have fallen behind from the rest of the pack; distantly I glimpse their four figures, already rooting amongst the pale granules, though for what I can only guess. Sobbing as my tongue tastes the air becoming dusty, I force myself to gallop towards the beach.
Though my skin is only punctured, I suspect far worse damage as the pain of weight bearing strikes deep into my gut and into the bone itself. A hairline fracture, I suspect - easy to fix in a dream, but what surrounds me now presents much more of a nightmare than anything sweet or simple.
By the time I stumble to a halt beside the others, the sandstorm hits.
Panthera! I call silently as her tawny figure disappears completely in the onslaught. Momentarily, however, I forget completely about my familiar, utterly disposed of any semblance of functionality as my lungs entrap mouthfuls of sands along their mucosal linings. The sensation of coughing without being able to hear the sound of the wracking bellows above the din of the sandstorm is otherworldly, an eldritch kind of hell where my pain is invisible even to myself. Stumbling blindly, I find my way to the oceanside, and collapse there with a frightening immediacy.
When I dip my nose into the water, all I feel is sludge; mud; silt. Any hopes of clearing my mouth of sand disappear, and I recognize even in my pain-altered state that to dream myself clean water and fresh air now would almost certainly result in my death as my corporeal form suffocates in the dust. Dimly, I feel the pain of my leg, though it is nothing now in comparison to the ache and cry of my lungs.
Kagerus, I hear distantly; a voice. Its character is indecipherable. Logically it ought to be Panthera but in my delusional state, I imagine it to be Solace.Kagerus, please stand up. A belly-ached moan slips silently from my mouth, a mouth which now rests hopelessly against the silt. Let me die, I think back, eyes and eyelashes crusted with sand and the like. The blackness closes in around me as the storm piles its debris overtop my prostrate figure. Let me sleep.
Beneath the weight of the rapidly accumulating muck atop my skull, the loose sand below it gives way - and before I can lift my head in response, something cool and smooth presses softly against my skin. Where it touches, a calmness radiates. Spreading slowly throughout my pain-addled body, the acute consciousness of psychic awareness rouses me from my stupor. A purification, of my lungs and (infinitely more importantly) of this land.
My head lifts and my eyes find the smooth shape of the curled, opalescent moon snail shell. In a heartbeat it would once again be hidden by the billowing sand, but I gingerly lip it into my mouth before that can happen. Tucked safely between my teeth and my cheek, the lunar magicks of this shell remind me that the final chapter of Beqanna's story has yet to be written.
(Life is ever unfolding, developing, and progressing. In the ancient spirals of the shell are these laws written; and with them come gifts of psychic awareness, purification, and peace. Beqanna would need these gifts sorely, when the time came to heal).
Within seconds, I am upright, facing the brutality of the island's wrath though my pain levels have far from lessened. The shell resting safely in my mouth reminds me that all is not lost, and that each step will bring me closer to completing the story which has already been written by the fates. My teeth grind together, sand gritting between them. I will find the other shells - I will do my part.
The journey down the coastline is slow and made slower by the inextricable mixing of sand and water. In places the storm-produced mud replicates the smoothness of a seashell, causing my hope to rise and fall with the crash of the distant, tumultuous ocean waves. With a dire rarity, water from these self same waves finds its way to my mouth - and though it is a relief to rid the soft pink membranes therein of sand, I must fight with all my strength not to swallow the salty sea water which would surely kill me faster than any sandstorm.
Minutes later, another stray wave laps at my muzzle. As I desperately slurp up its trickle of relatively clear water amidst the destruction of the storm, something clinks against my teeth, and it is not the moon snail shell which I have carefully kept at the back of my jaw. Shocked, I nearly drop the thing - but just as it falls, I click my mouth shut, catching the shell against the back of my front teeth whilst allowing the rest of the water to flow away. Whatever the thing is, whatever its shape or meaning, it has been given to me by the gods for a reason; and that reason fuels me, lends my agonized body the strength to live for my principles, even to the death: to fight for what I believe in, even if it kills me. My eyes flash a righteous gold, no longer obscured by the sand.
(A fighting conch, small but sturdy; its many prongs present a scrappy appearance, its burnished edges lending it the air of an underdog. True to its name, the magick imbued in this shell lends its bearer the will to defend that which they believe in; to fight for what matters most; and to stand up in the name of their principles. Beqanna would need this drive to fight back against the onslaught of the plague; the resiliency of the shell would remind Her of the resiliency of her people. A reminder of what once was, and of what would be again, after the final battle).
Clarity and a revived need to finish this quest fill me with a suddenness I could not have anticipated, but which I eagerly welcome. With my ears pinned against the howl of sand, I raise my head and look through painfully squinted eyes for a sign of any of the other horses who had come here with me - but the figure which emerges from the claws of the storm is not equine at all. She, too, has felt the spirit of the fighting conch fill her soul with the energy required to defeat this storm; she, too, has come to see the light.
Panthera.
She stalks to me as though weighed down by the ocean itself, but she comes nonetheless. Her tawny hide no longer bears the telltale prints of the leopard, and her eyes blend too perfectly with the sand that covers her heavy pelt. At first I can only express my joy to her in wordless telepathy, my head bending to press against hers as the storm swirls around us, threatening to put an end to our gratitude. Pressed there and with a searing cough, I realize that it is too late, now, to find a third shell; I will have to teleport us out of here and call the mission failed, else sacrifice our bodies to the murderous nature of the storm. Part of fighting means fighting to stay alive; means fighting, and bringing what one can to the table instead of admitting defeat. The Faeries will make use of two shells, even if the third is sorely missed.
We tried, I keen to Panthera, falling to my knees as sleep tugs at my consciousness, insisting that now be the time we depart, reminding me ceaselessly of the sand as it lines my lungs and threatens to dab out my life once and for all.
We tried.
--
From this far, the stars, too, look like grains of sand.
The dreamers float as a celestial entity of their own through the cosmic dust. What remains of their worldly psyches fails to resemble what one might call consciousness, though there exists an undeniable energy surrounding their nameless star. Their radiance presents a beauty unmatched from afar, but from within the core of their own making, a heat of unimaginable degrees tears at the very fibers of their beings.
After all, the stars may glimmer, but up close, they burn.
--
With a gasp (followed by heavy, painful coughs which shake me to my core) we awaken on the mountain top, standing in shambles side by side. It is only a moment before my fragmented mind forgets the celestial dream and remembers, desperately, that I hold precious items in my maw. Trembling, I bend my aching neck and set the shells at my obsidian hooves, reminders of that which has already come to pass during Beqanna's slow return to health.
I blink, pained, at the sight of the two beautiful shells; but as I look away, Panthera zips her head to the pile and drops something vaguely ellipsoidal in shape, and decidedly ugly in color.
And oyster shell, unopened; that which casts spells of good fortune, and banishment. Its lips remain sealed, failing to reveal whether it holds a pearl in its gut - but I do not need to see it, to know that form its depths, something beautiful shall undeniably be born.
(As good fortune settled on Beqanna's shoulders, the plague quaked; the dawn of its final banishment drew near, and it hadn't anything more to fight against the awesome powers of its motherland. Brandishing the pearl of the oyster on a ring set in moon gold and conch rose, Beqanna pointed the plague towards eternal damnation; and yet, those afflicted by the contagion remained, healed. After all, the oyster's greatest message is this: to take one's irritants, and to make them into something beautiful. Something whole).
Looking up, I submit myself to the game of waiting, exhausted beyond reason but not trusting myself to fall back to sleep. The stars call strongly, and I mustn't give in to their siren-like summons. Luckily, the now-dull pain in my cannon bone aids me in this conquest as I await the finale of what has come to be the four most important quests of all time, throbbing incessantly through the night. Leaning against Panthera and looking ahead to where the others and the faeries shall soon join me atop this mountain, I wait.
(Unbeknownst to the dreamers and the stars, a fourth shell burrows secretly into the moon snail shell. Nearly parasitic but simultaneously unavoidable, the worm snail shell stuck stubbornly to where it had lodged itself long ago in the inner spirals of the moon snail shell long ago. Crude and ugly, the brown twists of its ragged edges spun the tail of life, a cycle as constant as that of the tides; fitting, that it would find itself in this moon snail shell, in one destined to remedy this land of a terrible sickness. Despite its secretive ways, the worm snail shell whispered forgotten truths to its mother Beqanna from where it lay, burrowed; a reminder:
That all is not lost; that life, and death, shall continue; and that in the end, beauty pervades all else).
Blood from the puncture wounds in my hind cannon trail tellingly behind me, dirtying the pure white sand below with its crimson droplets. The sight of it upon retrospection makes me glad that the foal I glimpse a moment ago struck out before me, such that he or she might not be subject to the gore of my fateful injury. The child's life will inevitably be full of misery and disgust, but that I might avoid initiating that cycle of pain presents a small thread of hope to which I desperately cling.
We can make it.
Fuck. Ironically, I trip just as I decide on this hope, resulting in my hind leg pressing to the earth to catch my falling weight. Pain shoots from the marrow of my bone into each of my nerves; though I manage to keep my footing, what was left of my clear headedness disappears. Panthera growls next to me, trying to warn me of something in the baritone of her vocal chords as my fractured psyche fails to interpret her telepathic communications. Bleary-eyed and close to vomiting, I cast my eyes in the direction which my familiar indicates.
A veritable fortress of sand seems to float not far off on the horizon, obscuring the arcane structures which had evidently stood there moments before. For a moment I admire the billowing brown cloud.
Eerily, I become aware of a bead of sweat as it slides from the top of my skull to the bottom of my jaw; for a moment, my entire self exists solely in that droplet, as excluded from this reality as death is from life.
Salt.
Water.
Fear.
Sandstorm.
SANDSTORM!
At last I re-enter my corporeal form, the combined chaos of Panthera screaming in my mind, the angrily crashing waves not far off, and the rapidly approaching wall of sand leaving me hyperventilating and chalk full of adrenaline. Despite the agony of my cannon bone I leap toward the open beach, only now noticing that I have fallen behind from the rest of the pack; distantly I glimpse their four figures, already rooting amongst the pale granules, though for what I can only guess. Sobbing as my tongue tastes the air becoming dusty, I force myself to gallop towards the beach.
Though my skin is only punctured, I suspect far worse damage as the pain of weight bearing strikes deep into my gut and into the bone itself. A hairline fracture, I suspect - easy to fix in a dream, but what surrounds me now presents much more of a nightmare than anything sweet or simple.
By the time I stumble to a halt beside the others, the sandstorm hits.
Panthera! I call silently as her tawny figure disappears completely in the onslaught. Momentarily, however, I forget completely about my familiar, utterly disposed of any semblance of functionality as my lungs entrap mouthfuls of sands along their mucosal linings. The sensation of coughing without being able to hear the sound of the wracking bellows above the din of the sandstorm is otherworldly, an eldritch kind of hell where my pain is invisible even to myself. Stumbling blindly, I find my way to the oceanside, and collapse there with a frightening immediacy.
When I dip my nose into the water, all I feel is sludge; mud; silt. Any hopes of clearing my mouth of sand disappear, and I recognize even in my pain-altered state that to dream myself clean water and fresh air now would almost certainly result in my death as my corporeal form suffocates in the dust. Dimly, I feel the pain of my leg, though it is nothing now in comparison to the ache and cry of my lungs.
Kagerus, I hear distantly; a voice. Its character is indecipherable. Logically it ought to be Panthera but in my delusional state, I imagine it to be Solace.Kagerus, please stand up. A belly-ached moan slips silently from my mouth, a mouth which now rests hopelessly against the silt. Let me die, I think back, eyes and eyelashes crusted with sand and the like. The blackness closes in around me as the storm piles its debris overtop my prostrate figure. Let me sleep.
Beneath the weight of the rapidly accumulating muck atop my skull, the loose sand below it gives way - and before I can lift my head in response, something cool and smooth presses softly against my skin. Where it touches, a calmness radiates. Spreading slowly throughout my pain-addled body, the acute consciousness of psychic awareness rouses me from my stupor. A purification, of my lungs and (infinitely more importantly) of this land.
My head lifts and my eyes find the smooth shape of the curled, opalescent moon snail shell. In a heartbeat it would once again be hidden by the billowing sand, but I gingerly lip it into my mouth before that can happen. Tucked safely between my teeth and my cheek, the lunar magicks of this shell remind me that the final chapter of Beqanna's story has yet to be written.
(Life is ever unfolding, developing, and progressing. In the ancient spirals of the shell are these laws written; and with them come gifts of psychic awareness, purification, and peace. Beqanna would need these gifts sorely, when the time came to heal).
Within seconds, I am upright, facing the brutality of the island's wrath though my pain levels have far from lessened. The shell resting safely in my mouth reminds me that all is not lost, and that each step will bring me closer to completing the story which has already been written by the fates. My teeth grind together, sand gritting between them. I will find the other shells - I will do my part.
The journey down the coastline is slow and made slower by the inextricable mixing of sand and water. In places the storm-produced mud replicates the smoothness of a seashell, causing my hope to rise and fall with the crash of the distant, tumultuous ocean waves. With a dire rarity, water from these self same waves finds its way to my mouth - and though it is a relief to rid the soft pink membranes therein of sand, I must fight with all my strength not to swallow the salty sea water which would surely kill me faster than any sandstorm.
Minutes later, another stray wave laps at my muzzle. As I desperately slurp up its trickle of relatively clear water amidst the destruction of the storm, something clinks against my teeth, and it is not the moon snail shell which I have carefully kept at the back of my jaw. Shocked, I nearly drop the thing - but just as it falls, I click my mouth shut, catching the shell against the back of my front teeth whilst allowing the rest of the water to flow away. Whatever the thing is, whatever its shape or meaning, it has been given to me by the gods for a reason; and that reason fuels me, lends my agonized body the strength to live for my principles, even to the death: to fight for what I believe in, even if it kills me. My eyes flash a righteous gold, no longer obscured by the sand.
(A fighting conch, small but sturdy; its many prongs present a scrappy appearance, its burnished edges lending it the air of an underdog. True to its name, the magick imbued in this shell lends its bearer the will to defend that which they believe in; to fight for what matters most; and to stand up in the name of their principles. Beqanna would need this drive to fight back against the onslaught of the plague; the resiliency of the shell would remind Her of the resiliency of her people. A reminder of what once was, and of what would be again, after the final battle).
Clarity and a revived need to finish this quest fill me with a suddenness I could not have anticipated, but which I eagerly welcome. With my ears pinned against the howl of sand, I raise my head and look through painfully squinted eyes for a sign of any of the other horses who had come here with me - but the figure which emerges from the claws of the storm is not equine at all. She, too, has felt the spirit of the fighting conch fill her soul with the energy required to defeat this storm; she, too, has come to see the light.
Panthera.
She stalks to me as though weighed down by the ocean itself, but she comes nonetheless. Her tawny hide no longer bears the telltale prints of the leopard, and her eyes blend too perfectly with the sand that covers her heavy pelt. At first I can only express my joy to her in wordless telepathy, my head bending to press against hers as the storm swirls around us, threatening to put an end to our gratitude. Pressed there and with a searing cough, I realize that it is too late, now, to find a third shell; I will have to teleport us out of here and call the mission failed, else sacrifice our bodies to the murderous nature of the storm. Part of fighting means fighting to stay alive; means fighting, and bringing what one can to the table instead of admitting defeat. The Faeries will make use of two shells, even if the third is sorely missed.
We tried, I keen to Panthera, falling to my knees as sleep tugs at my consciousness, insisting that now be the time we depart, reminding me ceaselessly of the sand as it lines my lungs and threatens to dab out my life once and for all.
We tried.
--
From this far, the stars, too, look like grains of sand.
The dreamers float as a celestial entity of their own through the cosmic dust. What remains of their worldly psyches fails to resemble what one might call consciousness, though there exists an undeniable energy surrounding their nameless star. Their radiance presents a beauty unmatched from afar, but from within the core of their own making, a heat of unimaginable degrees tears at the very fibers of their beings.
After all, the stars may glimmer, but up close, they burn.
--
With a gasp (followed by heavy, painful coughs which shake me to my core) we awaken on the mountain top, standing in shambles side by side. It is only a moment before my fragmented mind forgets the celestial dream and remembers, desperately, that I hold precious items in my maw. Trembling, I bend my aching neck and set the shells at my obsidian hooves, reminders of that which has already come to pass during Beqanna's slow return to health.
I blink, pained, at the sight of the two beautiful shells; but as I look away, Panthera zips her head to the pile and drops something vaguely ellipsoidal in shape, and decidedly ugly in color.
And oyster shell, unopened; that which casts spells of good fortune, and banishment. Its lips remain sealed, failing to reveal whether it holds a pearl in its gut - but I do not need to see it, to know that form its depths, something beautiful shall undeniably be born.
(As good fortune settled on Beqanna's shoulders, the plague quaked; the dawn of its final banishment drew near, and it hadn't anything more to fight against the awesome powers of its motherland. Brandishing the pearl of the oyster on a ring set in moon gold and conch rose, Beqanna pointed the plague towards eternal damnation; and yet, those afflicted by the contagion remained, healed. After all, the oyster's greatest message is this: to take one's irritants, and to make them into something beautiful. Something whole).
Looking up, I submit myself to the game of waiting, exhausted beyond reason but not trusting myself to fall back to sleep. The stars call strongly, and I mustn't give in to their siren-like summons. Luckily, the now-dull pain in my cannon bone aids me in this conquest as I await the finale of what has come to be the four most important quests of all time, throbbing incessantly through the night. Leaning against Panthera and looking ahead to where the others and the faeries shall soon join me atop this mountain, I wait.
(Unbeknownst to the dreamers and the stars, a fourth shell burrows secretly into the moon snail shell. Nearly parasitic but simultaneously unavoidable, the worm snail shell stuck stubbornly to where it had lodged itself long ago in the inner spirals of the moon snail shell long ago. Crude and ugly, the brown twists of its ragged edges spun the tail of life, a cycle as constant as that of the tides; fitting, that it would find itself in this moon snail shell, in one destined to remedy this land of a terrible sickness. Despite its secretive ways, the worm snail shell whispered forgotten truths to its mother Beqanna from where it lay, burrowed; a reminder:
That all is not lost; that life, and death, shall continue; and that in the end, beauty pervades all else).
![[Image: kag]](https://78.media.tumblr.com/2e8039018ce4dff6112c167ec23e886a/tumblr_p72zjit7wC1s5a0qvo1_100.png)
dreamweaver