anyone;

[Shiya]

For your love I'd give my last breath Why does this feel so familiar and yet strange at the same time? This loneliness that is sweeping across her and elevating the beat of her heart. Anxiety is swimming through her mind as her reptilian eyes peer nervously across the kingdom. For the last few years she has relied on him - only him - and has pressed herself into his warm body when the nights were cool. He wants her to venture out, however, and to create a life for herself because she has always been too afraid to. Eight provided her a sanctuary, a home, that she can always feel secure in so why does she still feel so alone and afraid? A trembling breath is drawn in as she takes a slow, hesitant step forward. The sunlight dapples across her body giving a sheen to her onyx scales when she moves. Voices in the distance reach her but she doesn't find the source. From afar Shiya observes the crowds that have gathered inside the Valley's formidable walls of mountains. There are families here. There is love and devotion and power. It tries to draw her into its midst but she is too meek and too quiet. She only knows what Eight has twisted into her mind: compassion, laughter, companionship. Shiya lacks the passion of a warrior that both her parents possessed (she barely knew her mother and never met father). Vulgaris, too, was strong and he fueled her, but even his name has dissipated with the use of Pazuzu and Eight's magic. Her mind is nearly a blank slate. She hasn't lived enough to figure herself out or change. What hurt and pain had weighed her down once has evaporated, leaving her knowing only the present: Eight and the Valley and Meadow. Was having her mind cleared a curse or a blessing? Unaware of what has transpired in the deep corridors of her thoughts has left Shiya to know joy in a far greater emphasis than most others. Despite the anxiety that is swallowing her now as an outsider, her heart knows only happiness. Shiya larva and dillan's lost little girl

[Cerva]

the game is not played alone.

life has a hopeful undertone.

Although the Valley is known for its witchcraft and murder and blazing fire, there is an underlying current of softness that is rarely shown. It is only revealed to those who live in the Valley; that gentle stream bubbling with strange love. Perhaps, in all those years where wars have sprung up, the true purpose behind the Valley’s violent retaliation is simply their fierceness to protect their loved ones.

In any case, Cerva sees the gentleness behind the sharp walls better than most. Many of Beqanna only sees the harsh thirst for blood of the Valley, only the death-splattered books of their history, only the chaotic swirl of traits which could all inflict destruction upon their victims. But she sees the crooning of a warrior mother to her young child, the hard-earned brotherhood between the kingdom members, the gentle sway of kindness between trees which hear only anger and blood.

She is a doe among a pack of hungry wolves and perhaps that is how she sees their kindness.

It is rare that she finds another light-hearted soul in such a dark place and yet when she spots the mare stepping into the sunlight her lips stretch into a barely-concealed smile. She doesn’t yet remove her mask (a mask covered in the blood of ‘enemies’ and smelling strongly of wolf and cued with the sounds of snapping jaws) as Cerva steps up, but her heart tingles with the prospect of someone like her living in someplace like this.

“Hi.” Her voice is soft at the beginning of it, but with a sharp quip at the end as if she must remember to be harsh. “I’m Cerva. Who are you?”

cerva

eight & noori