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  • 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


    all my fragile strength is gone - Nayl
    #1
    djinni

    Beneath her feet, the grey sand feels familiar – comfortable.

    It is easy to forget that for the past four years she’s lived beneath the forest, her steps cushioned by eons of fallen leaves rather than grainy sand. Here, standing beside the sea, it’s even easier. The wind plays with the dark strands of her mane as the waves stretch ever closer toward her hooves. Out to sea, a bevy of dolphins leap above the steely winter waves.

    Djinni doesn’t join them. She is no sleek grey swimmer anymore – her sides are wide with child. Too wide, really, but she remembers the birth of her younger twin siblings and in unconcerned. There are other, worse things to concern herself with these days.

    Ivar is away from Sylva more often than he is there, and Djinni knows it is only a matter of time before he stops returning at all. That is the natural way of things – for children to grow up and find their own way. The grullo mare does long for the days when he was a little boy at her side, but she is equally proud of the young man that he is becoming. Like his father, yes, but like himself even more.

    She will do her best to make sure that the children she carries now will only be themselves.

    Though the beach is empty in this pre-dawn hour, Djinni knows that it will not be so for long. She had appeared here between one cresting wave and the next, so the odds of a patrol finding her are slim. She’s not looking for a patrol though – she is looking for @[Nayl].

    all my fragile strength is gone
    D J I N N I
    genie | rose gold tobiano dun | trickster
    #2
    I am not afraid... I was born to do this.
    The beach has become her weakness, almost. It croons to her now in a way the Jungle once had. It isn’t the cliff or the sand dunes that attract her to its bosom, but the lull of the waves. There is a peacefulness that enables her to meditate on most days when Isobell is wandering and exploring the miles of expansive scenery Nerine has to offer.

    But there is something different following the current today. Nayl blinks slowly and when her eyes open again she sees Djinni in the crash of the waves, the water rising and falling at her sides. She doesn’t move from her place, not to reach Nayl on the cliffside, and so the Queen descends down to her. The path isn’t too far away and she meticulously winds down it until the rocks soften into sand and the cliff she had proudly stood upon becomes a reaching wall behind her. A brief glance is spared back over her shoulder to see the caves that are often frequented by other members, but today the beach is barren.

    There is only the two of them.

    ”Djinni,” she says as she looms like a cloud toward the shore, stopping when the water laps at her hooves. ”Long time no see, my friend.” And she smiles, because she is one of the few who can trigger a response like this from the iron-fisted Queen. She inches further into the tide, watching as the foam slithers around her legs. It roars ahead where the waves rise, but hisses as it recedes from the sand. Nayl listens closely to the world around her before training her fiery eyes back on the genie, stopping as the water kisses her elbows. ”Do you come with plans, ideas, or friendly conversation?” Her voice is light and curious, her gaze bright underneath the sun.


    queen of nerine
    daughter of covet & myrina
    #3
    The autumn wind blows the dark strands of her hair, whipping them into a tangled mess and brining them with salty spray. Already the salt on her lips has her longing for water; but the thirst is a familiar one. It reminds her of the desert and the perpetual search for water, of the hot yellow sun that seems so very far away from this watery grey sky.

    Closer here than in the woods, she must admit to herself.

    The rest of Beqanna finally matches the forest of Sylva, but Djinni has paid it little mind. The turning of seasons – the quick spring and blink of a summer – they don’t seem to have passed at all. Her children are older; Lochwood and Starlin go adventuring for hours and Ivar has not been home in weeks. They’ll not need her for much longer, she knows.

    It is a bittersweet feeling; pride and longing and sadness all rolled into one.

    She has little time to linger on it; the sound of hooves on sand reach her ears even over the crash of the waves. It is Nayl, as she had known it would be. The smile she gives in return is slow but genuine, and she replies: “Too long” with an uncharacteristic note of sincerity in her soft voice.

    “I’m ready to come home,” she admits, her answer to Nayl’s question falling into none of the categories that the queen had listed.
    D J I N N I
    genie | rose gold tobiano dun | trickster
    #4
    I am not afraid... I was born to do this.
    What she hears is not at all what she expected. Had it not been for her quick restraint, Nayl’s mouth would have hung agape in a look of confusion. Alas, her lips remains pursed into a thin line, her autumn eyes curtained by her unruly forelock. A silence is held steadily between them for a few long seconds until Nayl can actually bring herself to shatter it like glass. ”I’m shocked,” she says over the murmur of the tide, her gaze flickering between it and Djinni. At some point she expected the genie to be prepared to resign, however, it seems so soon (but it has been years). Both of them will one day step down, but is it already time?

    ”Why?” She can’t help but wonder, the question slipping past her tongue before she can reel it back in and consider an alternative response. ”Has Stillwater done something?” For a heartbeat she had almost forgotten about him and the fire that he stirs in the pit of her stomach. It’s uncomfortable to say his name after so long of a self-induced silence and avoidance. An unsteadiness seeps through her muscles and forces her to shift, but she masks it easily enough as she steps out from where the sand has sunken in.

    Her reign was so strong with a great deal of help from Djinni, but it’s all slipping now. Is this expected? She draws in a slow, concentrated breath as she weighs the situation and considers other recent happenings. ”What will happen to Sylva when you step down?” There is no if, only when. Nayl would never force her friend to stay on the throne, not if she no longer craves its power and comfort. ”And what shall we do with Hyaline? They will grow weary of being a sunkingdom, but they are children.” And suddenly Nayl envisions her reign drawing to a screeching halt.



    queen of nerine
    daughter of covet & myrina
    #5
    It’s been nearly five years since she’d left the shore for the woods. The time seems to have gone quickly, and she can almost pretend that it hasn’t passed at all. Almost. Then she catches a glimpse of her children – her youngest children. She was a mother! Before the world had changed, Djinni had known what she wanted. She had an eternity to do anything she ever desired. She had never wanted children.

    And now she has three. (Four really, if you count little Rhysand, and Djinni is truly fond of the piebald colt).

    How the world has changed.

    The expression that crosses Nayl’s face is not unexpected, but it does not make seeing it any easier. Djinni knows that Nayl’s title of the Iron Queen is not an undeserved one, but she also knows that it is not entirely accurate. Nayl is not invincible, though she would very much like the outside world to believe it. They’d find her all the more terrifying if they knew the truth, Djinni thinks with a wry smile that does not quite mesh with the topic at hand. If Beqanna knew the lengths that Nayl would go to for damaged pride, they’d whisper the name Nerine with appropriate reverence.

    It’s something that Djinni has always liked about the other mare; she has never been able to accurately predict what it is that Nayl will say or do. It brightens a relationship that Djinni would otherwise find dull, as she eventually finds most of her companions.

    Never in a thousand years would she have suspected that Nayl would jump to Stillwater as an explanation for Djinni’s announcement. Nayl knows the truth about the two of them – or at least more of the truth than anyone other than Djinni and Stillwater knows. Even if the Nerinian queen were to suspect that their publicly-undefined relationship had ended, did she really think that Djinni would come back to Nerine for that?

    If something had happened between them (something terrible and worth giving up a throne for), she’d had simply sent him back. He’d always liked the caves better here anyway. He probably liked Nayl more too, truth be told, and if that meant she wouldn’t wake up drained of blood and pregnant a third time, maybe it would have been for the best.

    That is not what had happened though – that is not the why – and so she simply shakes her head with eyes looking out to sea.

    She laughs suddenly at the mention of Hyaline.

    Djinni often forgets how young Nayl is, and how little she knows. It’s easy to do, as a head is full of many things after three-quarters of a century. Child rulers become adult rulers. Former child rulers never want to let go of their thrones; that is a proven fact. Their royal children or grandchildren might rebel and disdain power, but any head that wears a monarch’s crown as a child will be loathe to ever let it go. It had taken death to wrest away power from the horses in her lineage; Djinni is both proof and witness to problems just like the one that Nayl is fretting over.

    “Who said I was just going to step down?” asks the glass-eyed mare. Until now, the uncharacteristic sincerity that she displayed had not wavered. Now, for a brief moment at least, there is a spark in her eye. “Surely I could come back in a manner that would be more helpful to Nerine than just to turn tail and retreat?” Djinni doesn’t offer any suggestions as to exactly what type of ‘manner’ she refers to, but she does wish the knowledge of their conversation drowned out by the crashing waves and shrieking gulls.

    ooc: so this post basically ran away with me sorry D:
    D J I N N I
    genie | rose gold tobiano dun | trickster
    #6
    I am not afraid... I was born to do this.
    Nayl’s mind is reeling.

    Djinni misses Nerine, wanting to return to its shores and leave behind the life she has developed in Sylva. That would be the end of her subkingdoms as Amet retracts from his original plans.

    Everything is crumbling in her hands.

    It’s difficult to mask her thoughtful expression as her eyes dart from the waves to Djinni’s face while weighing the situation. She cannot – will not – deprive her own friend of her wants for selfish greed. But her hold on Beqanna is slipping like sand.

    She could not have expected to hold it forever.

    A final glance finds Djinni’s face. Her weight shifts from one side to the other as the wind kisses her skin and tousles her locks. What she says, she considers meticulously. ”Come home, Djinni.” In reality, the iron queen does in fact miss her friend. Although her presence is common here in Nerine, it was never quite the same as when her daily life occupied the shoreline. ”Bring yourself and all those in Sylva to Nerine then,” she pauses to sweep her tail idly across her hocks, ”and help me decide what to do with Amet and Hyaline.”



    queen of nerine
    daughter of covet & myrina
    #7
    Djinni does not need to be asked twice.

    Yet for a moment she lingers, her hard green eyes fading to a soft brown as she watches emotion flicker across Nayl’s face. The Iron Queen is not flawless, but that is part of why Djinni loves her friendship. There is always something behind the mask that the piebald mare presents to the world, and Djinni is simultaneously amused by the performance and intrigued by the actress.

    Nayl mentions Hyaline again, and Djinni tilts her head thoughtfully.

    While she had given neither messenger any reaction other than utter confidence in her own prowess, Djinni had not ignored the threat in the news provided by Karaugh and Ouija. While she is entirely unconcerned for her own safety and that of those close to her, there are some limits to her power. She’s been discovering more of them lately, but she can surely attribute that to more frequent boundary testing.

    Better to not spread herself too thin, she’d decided. Better to keep an eye on a single realm.

    If the chance to give the darkness a tangible location was also on the table…well. That would surely be a coincidence. If they’d stayed in the Taiga, Djinni would have watched it there. Now, without a home, nowhere on the map of Beqanna is safe. She’d rather have darkness grow from a source she can pinpoint.

    It’s always easier to kill something if you can find its root.

    These thoughts – and many others – flicker through her mind as she waits for Nayl to return her attention from the sea. When she finally does meet those golden eyes with her own, she does so with a friendly twist to her dark mouth.

    “I’ll be back before you know it,” she tells the smoky black mare. Reaching forward, the grullo presses her cheek to Nayl’s affectionately. The genie vanishes before she even pulls away, and for a brief moment a pile of golden sand sits atop the grey before it disappears as well.
    D J I N N I
    genie | rose gold tobiano dun | trickster




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