[open] No prayer gonna part my thunder [any]

[Pevensie]

Ohhh god, my head...

She squints, raising her head and glancing around the grassland. Her forehead is burning, as if a lightening bolt is pulsing through every twenty seconds, and twenty seconds doesn't even feel like an exaggeration. How long have I been sleeping? Where the fuck am I? At first everything is a blur, a mesh, but slowly the wisps of reality are starting to knit together and she can form a picture of her emerging world – all at once it begins to look familiar. She's in the field. Glancing about the fauna with their terracotta leaves, she's can piece together the season. She can't remember what time of year she'd fallen asleep.

Presently, her legs begin to shudder into life. They unfold beneath her, gathering their strength and propelling her up. She launches herself with such exuberance that she topples right back over, like a newborn filly faulting at the first. Jesus, what's going on? Dazed and perplexed, she tries again and succeeds, but her legs are teetering on the verge of insecurity. They're damned stiff, thats for sure.  

Am I dead? Is this heaven? How disappointing if it should be so... She turns around, puts her nose against her flank. She's not glowing, she can't feel the warmth of the sun as she did before. The light doesn't wash around her, flood and ebb against her sides. Swinging her head to see her left side, she can't see her tattoo. Neither can she see the scar from when she betrayed the Amazons. They've gone. The big white scar that was once inflicted by magic, that's still there though – how unlucky, that she be left with the most gnarling and grotesque reminder of her past lives.

She is acutely aware of the breaths rattling through her ribcage, the slow expansion and retraction. She isn't dead. Not like she'd know, but this just isn't how she would imagine death. It wouldn't take her to this field so knows so well.

If I've lost all my powers, then how am I still alive? I must still be immortal, or this would be impossible, surely? She ponders the thought, then her memory goes back to recent events (well, recent to her mind only), to the Deserts, to her being Queen. I'm assuming I'm no longer a Queen... Where's my daughter? Where is Hurricane? What has happened to me?

Fervently, she glances around, trying to make out the forms of other horses. This must be how it feels to wake up from a coma, and even the companionship of her worst enemy would suffice in this moment of acute longing. Anything is better than the feeling of panic rising in her chest.

[magnus]

— find what you love and let it kill you —

Magnus had been here from the beginning of the reckoning, and he is still not sure that he has his feet properly underneath him. The land here, although familiar, was also completely alien in so many ways. It was as if the ground continued to shift beneath him, making each day different and challenging in its own ways. He had found himself in a familiar role of leadership, but even that was different. He was as much a stranger to those in his land as they were to him; they did not know him for a child of the jungle or a soldier of the gates. Many had followed Eight, Offspring, or Malis to Tephra and they were left with him.

He would be a fool to pretend that he did not see the disappointment or distrust in his eyes.
He would be an even bigger fool to say that it was not warranted.

Still, it did not deter him. He had faced worse and he was willing to earn their trust in whatever way that he could—he would bleed and sweat for it, if only to make sure that Tephra remained strong and stable and safe. He owed them that much. It was that same desire that drove him to the field this morning, an action that was, like many things nowadays, both completely familiar and strange at the same time.

Magnus, however, was not able to remain completely self-absorbed for long when he saw the mare curled on the ground, panic clearly writ on her eyes. He approached her slowly, his head lowered and eyes soft. he had no way of knowing if she was just waking up or was a complete stranger to the land, but he did know confusion when he saw it—and he saw fear of the unknown even more. “Hello,” he greeted softly, doing his best to keep his voice low and even. “Are you alright? Is there anything I can do to help?”

magnus

[Pevensie]

Panic rising, pulse throbbing, breath catching. Her head starts to swim, she begins to sway slightly. She feels faint, as if her blood is a run away train; hurtling down the tracks, crashing thunderously towards the barrier and all the while the breaks are helplessly screeching. Her body can't cope. It has to cope... I can't go back to sleep.

Blink. Pause. Between fluttering eyelids a figure moves. She tries to stand taller, but like a shed after a hurricane, her supports are on the verge of faulting. She begs her legs to comply, to hold her, to keep her strong.

He Earths her, dispersing the shock and static enough to allow her to focus. Pev lets her honey eyes trace over his frame, take in his features. She doesn't know this stallion, not from the blurred memory of a waterfall, not from the hanging humidity of the jungle, nor the rolling dunes of a desert. He is new, an unknown entity. She wants to reach out her muzzle, to touch his shoulder, feel the texture of his fur against her whiskers. She needs to know he's solid, not one of her mirages. It can't be a dream, you only dream about familiar faces someone once told me.

He speaks. His voice stems some of the panic, brings back an vague inkling of the calm, collected Queen she had once been. She tries to focus on his face, finds comfort in his eyes. It isn't that she finds him handsome, she's far too old to care about all that sort of nonsense, she just finds him curious, as perhaps anyone would find another living creature after solitary confinement. He's living, breathing, real. He's reassuringly real.

Maybe she isn't losing her mind, but she struggles to find her voice. She tries to speak at first, but finds her throat parched, crackling. All unused things will rot and crumble with time. She has become rusty.

“My dear, just your presence is helping more than you could possibly know,” she manages in cracked, muted tones. She tries a smile, tries to pull the wool over his eyes. I'm fine, totally fine... oh god no I'm not. “The last thing I remember... I remember I was in my desert. My daughter was by my side. I don't recall... how I got here. What year is it? Which direction is the deserts'? They'll be wondering where I went. I have no idea what I'm going to tell them,”

She groans, her head still splitting. This poor lad doesn't know what in heavens name he's walked in on, she feels for him, walking over to a crazy lady in a field and getting more than he bargained for.

[magnus]

— find what you love and let it kill you —

It is perhaps a good thing Magnus found her first.

He knows what it is like to wake up from a magically induced slumber—to crawl onto the shores of Beqanna and find her changed. The first time, he had been spit up from a saltwater grave and centuries had passed. All but a few faces were gone. The kingdoms were the same and yet wholly different—what they stood for, no more, who ran them, strangers. The second, he had come back from a magical prison; this time, it had only been a few years, but wars had passed, death had struck. It had been different again.

So he recognizes the symptoms, understands the confusion, and his heart aches for her.

Magnus doesn’t move, he just drops his head slightly, his gaze steady on her own. “The deserts?” he repeats for a second, before the thought connects. Oh. She had been gone much longer than he had originally thought. “I am not sure how to tell you this,” his voice is quiet, and he watches her carefully, trying to note any signs of distress—or, rather, any more signs of distress. It wasn’t as if there was an easy way to tell someone that the land they remembered had been swallowed up and a new one had formed.

“The deserts were flooded quite a long time ago,” he finally offered. “But much has changed since then. This is not the Beqanna you likely remember.” And then, he fell quiet—trying to give her a little time to take in the information. He knew how disorienting it was and he wasn’t about to rush her through the process. If she had questions, he would do his best to answer them. If she wanted to be taken somewhere, he would try his best to get here there. It was the very least that he could do.

magnus