• Logout
  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    i've got some damn bad intentions; anyone
    #1
    It had happened again this morning.

    The excitement, the enthusiasm, the very not-Djinni flood of emotions. Every night she falls asleep hoping that she will wake as only herself, and every dawn she is disappointed.

    The emotions fade - as they always do - within a few hours. They are disconcerting while they last and yet she has been unable to pin down their origins. The grullo mare (though she is a dappled rosy grey today) has managed to eliminate the more common potential causes. She is not ready to face the most likely one (that Stillwater had somehow managed to poison her and is slowly driving her insane), so rather than look for a small pond she meanders through the autumn woods.

    Beyond their borders, the cold wind has begun to rip the fall colors from the trees but here they are protected by the ancient canopy and thick trunks. The only wind is a light puff of air that lifts her black mane from her neck and runs a cool finger down her spine. She sees a few other horses as she makes her way through the woods, but they are all occupied in whatever daily pursuits they prefer. Sylva - and this new Beqanna in general - are far less structured than the kingdoms she remembers. It requires less of her and so she enjoys it, but there was something unsettling still, something she can't quite put a finger on.

    Stopping in a sunlit meadow, the grey mare lowers her head to graze. Her appetite has grown lately, easily attributed to the changing of the season. She knows that winter will not be harsh, but her body refuses to accept that, putting on weight quickly in preparation for the cold that will not come.
    D J I N N I
    genie | rose gold tobiano dun | trickster
    Reply
    #2

    so we let our shadows fall away like dust

    She slips easily through the perpetual autumn, flowing like water around the large grey stones and past tree trunks that look weathered and ancient, full of time and secrets and so many stories. But were they really? Or was it just magic made to look convincing, a seamless illusion of age and natural beauty. She had heard the stories of the way these lands used to be, she knew that the changes had been made in recent years – too recent for such an ancient forest. Yet here it was, arching and beautiful, perpetual autumn, perpetual fire.

    Her mind is elsewhere is she wanders, content and musing, and there is a smile on her mouth that traces faintly across her lips and reappears again in the crinkle of the corners of those luminous brown eyes. There is no path she follows, no direction in the murky light that filters between the trees, and so travels as though caught in a current, directed willingly, easily, by the stones and boulder s and tangles of trees.

    When sunlight splashes warm across her face she pauses, momentarily startled, and takes a moment to focus on which part of Sylva she had wandered into. While she has in the past wandered over the border, so lost in thought and in peace that she hadn’t noticed until snow crunched underfoot, once glance upwards at the burning orange leaves of the trees tell her this is not the case today.

    Ahead of her there is a sound, a jingle, and the smile on her mouth deepens as she pushes back into that easy walk. There is a low hill, a hump of earth dressed in green and gold and knee-high grass, and when she climbs to the peak there is slender grey mare standing below on the other side. It takes a moment to recognize her – she wears new skin, after all. A soft grey with even softer dapples, mane that is dark like steel silk, dark like the bellies of storm clouds. But the bangles give her away, and even the slender shape of her ribs and the curve of her hips seems familiar.

    “Djinni?” She asks softly, though even as she descends the hill and draws closer, she is certain. Beneath the new color is a face that is still same and beautiful, elegant in its wildness, and several loops of gleaming metal perch at the edge of a small ear. But she notices something else the closer she comes, something still early, still subtle enough to be hidden by distance, something that weaves an even deeper smile across the pale and pewter of those delicate lips.

    She has seen it in her mother, too, that subtle shift of weight in her belly, the beautiful thickening of an underline, and she recognizes it instantly. So there is no reason to doubt herself when she comes along Djinni’s side and brushes such tender lips against skin that is beautiful and steel and smoother than storm clouds, when she presses that smile against the life that grows within that belly and says, “Djinni!” The exclamation is soft and sweet, those eyes luminous when she eases forward to touch her nose to the curve of a dappled jaw and the hollow beneath it. “You’re expecting,” a pause and she pulls away, settling in close beside her, companionably, “congratulations.”

    There is soft in her expression, easy affection and careful light, and it is warm when her eyes settle against Djinni’s face. “My mother is pregnant, too.” A pause and she ducks her chin sweetly to the curve of that delicate blue chest, hiding a blush or a softness or the hint of an ache at the idea of family. Then, lifting her eyes again, ever soft, ever quiet, “you must be so happy.”

    Luster
    Reply
    #3
    Despite the evaporation of her inexplicable elation, Djinni is as good-natured as always when she hears the sound of approaching hooves, smiling before she even sees who it is. To be this far in to Sylva and not have been accosted by a guard it must be a resident, and she is pleased to see that it is young Luster.

    There's confusion on the girl's blue face, and Djinni laughs softly and sheds her grey cloak to return to her natural pied grullo.

    "Yes, Luster." She says with a toss of her newly frosted mane. "It's still me." From time to time she forgets that others aren't always familiar with her whimsy, but she can't really expect them to be. She had spent a good deal of time hiding her gifts after all, and even now tends to keep most of herself concealed. It is not that she doesn't trust Luster - the girl is sweet and gentle, reminding Djinni greatly of her younger siblings - but rather that old habits die very hard. She's of a mind to do something for the girl (something small, something with no strings, something that Luster wants), and is reaching out to greet her when she is distracted by the turn of Luster's gaze.

    Djinni follows it (as best she can), craning her neck to look at her embarrassingly wide barrel. She has been eating a lot lately, but it's been a while since she's actually looked at herself. A bit of shame flickers across her face, coupled with the embarrassment that her weight gain is so obvious even polite Luster feels she must point it out.

    Djinni has always assumed Luster is much like Karaugh to Stillwater, that the black stallion dallies with them the way that men in power always tend to dally with beautiful women. Luster is a bit young - young enough to quell any interest Djinni might have had - but she cannot blame the man. She is quite lovely, after all, if you liked the perfect, angelic, and underage type. Who what the black horse did in his spare time had never been of any interest to the grullo mare (as long as he takes care of her kingdom responsibilities) and as winter settles into Sylva she has simply refused to think about him long enough to wonder what else he is doing.

    Djinni catches the unsurprising trace of Stillwater on Luster's skin as the girl presses a touch to her belly, but the sensation in her stomach is not something she had expected. An emotional reaction she could have understood (as unexpected as it would be), but the pang is sharp and inexplicable.

    The realization of what the pain had been comes only at Luster's words of congratulations.

    A kick.

    From a child.

    From her child.

    "Goddammit Stillwater." She breathes, barely loud enough for Luster to hear from where she stands companionably beside her. The grullo mare's stomach is trying to crawl out of her throat, her heart is flying; she waivers between exploding where she stands and finding Stillwater and murdering him before she explodes.

    Djinni has not been listening to Luster's kind words, but she forces herself back to the conversation, apologizing for her outburst before she's really had time to read the blue mare's reaction to it.

    "I'm sorry Luster," she says as she reaches out to press a friendly muzzle to the mare's neck, "That's probably not the reaction you were expecting." Djinni tries to smile, but it comes out crooked - sad - instead, and she chatters on. "You'd think a queen and her consort would be happy but...I didn't...I wasn't...we weren't planning on having children."

    Djinni has never wanted children.
    They cry, they are needy, they're terrible conversationalists, and most of them are ugly.

    She's always been careful to wish away the consequences of her dalliances, but she had not. She'd wished away the memory of Stillwater instead, shortly before meeting Luster for the first time those months ago. The window for wishing had passed before she'd remembered, and since then she's done everything she can to push the black stallion from her mind. And for good reason, too; his dark face rises unbidden in an instant, bringing with it the irrational elation from earlier.

    They do say love gives the whole world a rosy tint.
    D J I N N I
    genie | rose gold tobiano dun | trickster
    Reply
    #4

    so we let our shadows fall away like dust

    Her smile softens when Djinni laughs. The dapples fade and the grey darkens until it is the much more familiar steel and white that Luster remembers from before. She had forgotten how she had done this when they stood beneath the stars, wearing chestnut and spots like the nearby deer until that, too, had given way to grullo. She cannot help but reach out and touch the darker skin, pressing pale lips and a quiet smile against the soft arch of Djinni’s neck. “Why do you do that?” She asks, soft and in a voice like silver, her eyes wandering gently over the delicate angles of that beautiful face. “Is it to hide?” It should sound like prying from any other lips, but the worry in her brow and the concern in the quirk of those pale lips are enough to soften it.

    But then their eyes are back and on that belly, on the gentle swell of life beneath her ribs and Luster’s face is bright again. She knows she is too young to think on these things (too young to think on many of the things she has been in the last several weeks, she realizes with a blush) but it is hard to come from parents like Shahrizai and Ilka, from a family like hers, and not wonder (and hope) if one day she might have one of her own. They are too tethered, too bound, too entwined in all things, too content in their closeness for Luster not to have tucked some fragile hope away in that delicate blue chest for herself.

    Goddammit Stillwater.

    Suddenly the world is in slow motion, time is still or moving backwards, sound is hazy and disjointed and nothing seems to make any sense. Stillwater? Even his name makes her heart pound, makes her chest heavy and her belly ache with quiet yearning. Stillwater? But why had Djinni named him, had she heard the echo in Lusters thoughts, read that dangerous flicker of hope where it hid in her chest? Impossible.

    Her eyes are so dark and so uncertain, round with confusion and hurt and a new ache she cannot name when time finally catches up with her and she remembers how to form words against the soft of her tongue. “Stillwater?” It hurts to say it out loud, feels like glass in her chest, in her throat, in her mouth and she is choking on it. I'm sorry Luster, that's probably not the reaction you were expecting. There is a nose against her neck and she thinks she might have flinched away from it because suddenly it is gone and she has drifted a few steps back.

    You'd think a queen and her consort would be happy but...I didn't...I wasn't...we weren't planning on having children.

    It is too much and too fast and too hard to make sense of, and when she takes another step back it is to avoid new words, new secrets, new truths that keep spilling from those steel-dark lips. Stop, she wants to say, please, stop. But the words won’t come and it does not matter anyway because she is starting to understand and somehow this feels worse. “He is your consort.” She finally manages, numb, uncertain, wide-eyed and ruined. Softer, and she does not know why she asks, why she needs to hear it again, why the first knife in her heart was not enough, “He is the father?” Of course he is, of course he is. Djinni had already said we. We, weren’t planning.

    She is suddenly cold, suddenly shivering against the same wind that lifts her mane from her neck in a spider-web of black and silk. Her teeth chatter quietly, it isn’t all that visible from the outside, but she can feel them tapping together at the back of her mouth, a rhythm to match the ache in her chest, the erratic beating of a heart in its death throes. Her eyes are restless and everywhere – everywhere except Djinni’s face, except that swollen belly that now makes Luster ache inside, makes her dark with something that feels like guilt and shame and, worst of all, envy. But there is nowhere else to look, nowhere else to hide, and those dark eyes slip back and against a face of steel and pewter and wild beauty. “Do you love him?” She asks, closing her eyes to shield herself from what the truth will look like, from what it will feel like when it blinds her. But it matters, this matters.

    Because –

    I do. She thinks, she aches, she keeps those eyes glued shut. I must, or why would this hurt so much. But she cannot say it out loud, will not say it to the woman he is paired to, the woman who now carries his child. His family. She flinches again and the pain is exquisite, cold fire in her chest and it is burning everything, catching in her veins until even her blood feels like agony beneath her skin. But she will say nothing, show nothing, because she deserves nothing, because she is selfish and foolish and came between a queen and her consort. She can’t even apologize because she isn’t sorry for loving him, because not loving him would be worse. Is worse.

    She drifts back again, further, always further, and when her eyes open again they are wild with the hurt that thickens in her throat, darkens her eyes with bruises. This time she can’t look at Djinni, can’t stomach the guilt and the hurt and the confusion that twists so violently in her belly. “I think-“, and she tries to be firm, to be more than she is, but her soft voice shatters out from under her and she trips clumsily over words that should be so simple, “I think maybe I should go.”

    Luster
    Reply
    #5
    "Not to hide, no. " She tells Luster. "Just for fun. " For a moment Djinni is sunset orange, then mossy green, but is back to herself long before the girl expresses her congratulations. She's used it to hide a few times, of course, but it's a rare occasion; she prefers to amuse herself (and others) with the parts of her magic that are more parlor trick than danger.

    Caught in her own thoughts, she hears Luster's repetition of the name as a request for clarification. The grey mare nods, her eyes elsewhere. "Yes." She confirms, pressing salt into a wound that she does not even suspect she has opened.

    It's not until Luster flinches away from her friendly embrace that she begins to suspect something is afoot. Djinni pulls back, and there is only worry in her soft green eyes. She cannot fathom what has caused the confusion in the girl's eyes, cannot name the hurt. Surely she knew who Stillwater was; who Djinni was. Their relationship (whatever it is) has never been secret, and while neither is ever affectionate, Stillwater has always been consort-king since the moment Djinni plucked him from the sea and sat him beside her.

    Beqanna is not as it once was, with kings and queens expected to be lovers as well as co-rulers. The grullo mare has enjoyed as many dalliances as she assumes Stillwater has done. As the woman in such a ruling partnership, she knows she must remain childless, but a man always has more freedom. A king could cover a hundred mares and his queen would look on; that is the way it has always been.

    The queen's green gaze flickers to Luster's sides, but they remain as slender as they had been when first they'd met. Djinni had assumed Luster was too young to get a child on, but what if she was not? Had she conceived? Had she lost it - or worse, had Stillwater taken it from her?

    Djinni still wears the scars on her neck; she knows he is not what he seems. She steps toward Luster even as the girl steps away, rage shimmering in her blazing eyes at what she suspects the black stallion might have done. Luster won't see that of course, she'll only see the furious gold of Djinni's approach rather than the concern she has for the wellbeing of the sad blue girl.

    But the Luster speaks again, and Djinni pauses, her head tilted. She does not sound like a woman who has lost a child, Djinni realizes. She sounds like a woman who has finally had the wool pulled away from her eyes.

    Djinni is very still, though the fire of her sparkling eyes continues to blaze: he might not have done that terrible thing but he has clearly done another. She likes Luster, likes her brightness that has suddenly been extinguished. She wants it to come back. But it can't, not for him. Djinni won't let him hurt her anymore, even if she's not sure how he's done it.

    "Yes," she says when Luster asks, and she means it with mercy, means to crush her with the very best intentions so that when she rises (and Djinni so wants her to), she will do so toward things far less dangerous than the black shore stallion. "I do."

    It is for concern over Luster, she thinks of her racing heart; it has naught to do with her own secret finally said aloud.

    "No," she says, "Stay."

    And she wraps small Luster under her own small neck, holding the girl tightly as though she can squeeze the sadness out of her with a tight enough embrace. "He hurt you," she says, unable to feel the jealously that Luster must expect (given her attempt to leave). "I am sorry." She kisses her head softly, as she would a child, does her best to sound reassuring as she tries to remember how deep the tephran volcanoes run. "I will make him sorry too."
    D J I N N I
    genie | rose gold tobiano dun | trickster
    Reply
    #6

    so we let our shadows fall away like dust

    The worry that stares back at her from those soft green eyes only makes the guilt heavier, makes the pain sharper, and she flinches again and turns a shoulder as though to hide from it. “I didn’t know.” She says softly, brokenly, her voice shallower than a whisper and still she cannot bring her eyes to look back and against that steel face. “I didn’t realize.” There is a numbness seeping into her chest now, a distance she crosses where Djinni cannot reach out and touch her, where those words like thrown blades cannot bury themselves in the soft of her heart. It feels safer here, quieter where she is separated from the truths that make her ache like this.

    Her eyes are still elsewhere when Djinni’s attention settles against the blue of Luster’s barrel, when she traces the smooth line of slender rib and the lack of fullness in a stomach that is too young to support life. It is a relief that she does not see it, does not notice or else the heat in her skin would have rivaled the heat of the sun. It is not something she hadn’t already considered, not something she didn’t want. And with him, that deep-water stallion who had traced such quiet kisses across her neck and her face.

    Instead it is only when Djinni charges after her that Luster’s eyes manage to snap back to that beautiful steel face, suddenly sharp in their surprise, dark in their misunderstanding. The emotion is easy enough to trace because Djinni makes no effort to hide it – rage, and it contorts her face, drawing deep slashes of tension like fingers dragged through lines of soot. She thinks the woman must have seen the truth in her heart, somehow, the secrets in her eyes. Must know how Luster has lain with him in the back of his cave and then again beneath his little lake. But then she stops, she pauses, tilts her head at Luster and the rage fades.

    Yes, and at least this is better, somehow, even though it is worse, too, I do. Luster nods once, wordless at first until those treacherous lips find and take shape around a single, smooth word. “Good.” But she is not ready for this blade when it tears into her gut, not ready for the jagged memory it brandishes at its tip. Hey, she had said to him once, brushing her nose against his neck, if you aren’t careful I might start thinking you care.She had been teasing, trying to lighten the weight of their quiet reunion, but he had turned and touched his lips to her nose and answered, so surely, Good. It is a broken word now, with edges too sharp to fit in her mouth – she had tried, and now she bleeds for it.

    She isn’t sure what else Djinni says, if anything, chooses instead to remain as safely distant as she can until suddenly she is against a chest and beneath a neck, reflexively soft in an embrace she can make no sense of until she does hear what Djinni says. He hurt you. It is so unexpected, so absurd, that Luster nearly laughs aloud as she pushes Djinni back and away. But the sound is mangled, her chest is still mangled, and instead the laugh is somewhere between muffled and choking. “Never.” She says, suddenly sharper, suddenly darker when her eyes find and settle firmly against that beautiful steel face. “He never hurt me.” She means in every way, never with his kisses or his teeth, never physically, and even now she is not sure this other pain comes from anywhere but her own treacherous heart.

    “I hurt me.” There is a scowl on her face now, faint, but it draws strange lines of tension across her cheeks. “He never promised me anything, no part of himself, and I never asked,” she pauses and that distance lengthens and shortens, wavers until her eyes are dark and hazy and drifting, “I just chose to love him anyway.” Another pause, this one shorter, and her eyes narrow just slightly with something that looks so much like uncertainty, maybe regret. “But it was my choice, only mine.” Perhaps the kisses hadn’t helped, that definitive good or they way they had slept curled together in the dark. But he had never, never promised her his love. She hadn’t needed him to, she reminds herself now, steeling her heart.

    But there are new words and maybe they are meant to be kind because they come with squeezes and a kiss that is soft on her forehead. I am sorry. And Luster cannot understand why Djinni would ever feel the need to apologize now, here in this ugly, awful moment. I will make him sorry too.

    It must take a moment for Luster to understand the words, several moments after she had first heard them, but when she does she is fire and feral and wild in her worry, in what must be fury but it is so new to her. “You won’t.” She says, sharp eyes and a hard frown, using the broken edges Djinni’s truths had carved into her like a blade. “Don’t.” She doesn’t realize how this wild worry has aged her face, how suddenly she is a woman and not a girl, carved and made beautiful by her intensity. Light and shadow snap and arc across her skin, the emotional manifestation of an anger she is barely containing. “He isn’t like this,” and despite the way her face is sharp and wild and carved from stone, her lips are soft when they touch that dark coat, a coat that was just recently orange then green then steel again, “he isn’t for fun, he is not a whim. That isn’t love, that is need.” She pauses and the intensity softens a little, the light and shadow sinking sleepily against her skin. For a long while she turns her face from the dark mare, hiding her eyes until the pain is less, until the dark is pushed back, until her words are soft like starlight. “If you love him, you protect him,” a pause and her jaw tenses, furious again though she hides it better now, “you won’t ‘make him sorry too’.”

    Luster
    Reply
    #7
    Djinni has always been a good liar.

    It's why she believes herself when she says she doesn't care about the others, about Karaugh and Luster and Charlemagne. She is no fool; Stillwater's lingering scent on the golden mare had made her all the more appetizing. It's why she believes herself when she decides that it was a fluke that taking the magician had made her feel empty.

    So it had been a surprise when she'd so easily given Luster what she has hidden away; Djinni had convinced herself it wasn't true. She'd convinced herself she was not like her mother, yet even now Walter's gentle face is fading from her mind (how Aseret could commiserate!). All she wants is to flee to the terribly damp cave where she can tease a reaction from the black stallion that will make her forget this all.

    But she can't use Stillwater to forget Stillwater, and even as she grapples with that truth the little thing inside her kicks again and she winces as Luster tells her that she 'chose to love him anyway.' The words sting, but she is a liar: they must hurt because she pities the girl, not because she envies her (not because it shreds her inside to think that she is not special, not because the child inside her was an accident and not planned, not because of the truth).

    And she sees it now, sees what he must see in Luster, why he had chosen her. The blue girl is wild and captivating all at once; Luster has no need to bind others to her: anyone would surely throw themselves on to a sword if just to satisfy her. A small part of her wonders if she had been a distraction, if he had only been waiting for the girl's return and occupied himself with Djinni to pass the time.

    No - she is not so good a liar (or possessed of low enough self-esteem) to believe that. There was something, something unnamed, something perhaps one-sided. She'd loved him even as the water was turning red with her blood - and it terrified her.

    Luster presses her, and for a moment Djinni accepts the chastisement, lowers her bright eyes. But then she is back again, saying: "No. No." Her voice is firm, her eyes hard again, hard and brown and she is angry because she is tired of lying, because she has finally admitted she has tricked herself worse than she has ever tricked anyone else. "You do not get to tell me what love is. You are a child. You are a fool." Her voice breaks, and she all but whispers to herself: "We are both fools." I am a fool and a liar.

    "Leave me, Luster." She tells the girl softly as she turns away. There is too much to feel now, too many emotions that she had never bothered with before the Reckoning. Before Stillwater. Her only friend has cautioned her away from him, he has spilled her blood, he stays only because she has chained him, he's now given her the only thing she has never wanted...

    Yet as that very thing kicks at her a third time she knows that she loves it too, just as irrationally as she loves its father. She wants it gone as surely as she wants her freedom back, but she is chained now - by responsibility, by emotion, by the knowledge that she would gladly turn herself inside out and back again for a tiny creature that has never even seen the sun.

    "Leave me." Djinni says again, and hates the brokenness in her bold voice, hates the fear even she can plainly hear.
    D J I N N I
    genie | rose gold tobiano dun | trickster
    Reply




    Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)