• 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


    Under the old oak tree [Mirage/Any]
    #6

    As two strangers literally blown together against the storm, they are rather well-matched.

    Each grain of sand feels like a needle as the wind makes missiles of them against his legs. He pays them little mind. Her response to his droll observation made among the clouds peaks his interest. So, he is no longer the only one who doesn’t take himself too seriously in Nerine. The land is chalk full of wannabe warrior women without a fight to their name, but who still pretend they are living in the Jungle’s glory days. In Walter’s admittedly meaningless opinion, it has long felt like an experiment gone wrong. But no one else seems to share his philosophy, so on he goes alone mocking them behind their raised noses, the irritable bastard. The dark mare in front of him laughs after her own response, which makes him smile. He will be glad to have an ally in his isolated corner of skepticism.

    Her answer also gives him insight into her life thus far. She talks like someone’s who has lived a long life, and her freely given remark about her expanse of time confirms it. It isn’t often Walter gets to meet someone as old as he is. She’ll remember the old Beqanna (he wonders if the pines of the Chamber have brushed her dark sides, if the baking Desert sand has slid under her feet). He wonders, too, which version she prefers? This one, or that one? But the surprised look on her face when she turns around blanks him of that question and any others that would have come next. Who has he reminded her of? He takes a thoughtful step back to give her space but she’s already moving past him. Apparently, he’s forgiven in the face of the storm that bears down on them. Hestia makes her way into the cave - finally! - and he does not hesitate to follow.

    She slips into the opening of the shelter like a shadow. He, however, is not so graceful. The pegasus has to squeeze his large wings as tightly to his sides as he can just to fit in the entrance (he is sure he pulls a muscle in doing so). Then, there is the rather delightful proposition of turning around while trying, and failing, not to barge into his companion. She shrinks back against the wall like he is actually the person he reminds her of, though it could be that she just doesn’t want to get anymore wet from him than she already is. The water streams off of his feathers and he suppresses the urge to shake them. Finally, the stallion is facing the mouth of the cave, further away from the entrance than Hestia. It is a tight fit, but they manage.

    He laughs at her question. “Oh yes. The height - the pinnacle, even - of comfort.” And really, it is not so terrible. Walter, too, had once been averse to the touch of others. It is hard to image now, as he presses impossibly close to the black mare, but the Reckoning had utterly changed him. Stripped of his empathy, the selfish man had to suss out conversations and relationships on his own, without his supernatural talent. He is finally the empath he thought he had always been. But it doesn’t stop him from testing the woman next to him now. He reaches for her in a familiar and old way, wondering what emotions might lay under her pessimistic shield. Hmmm, he thinks to himself, then tries another tactic. “So, you are old then?” He doesn’t try to look apologetic as he says it. “Why did you come to Nerine? Where did you live before it happened?” No one has to say what “it” is. The change to end all changes, the event that ripped the land clean apart, as unsympathetic as he had just been. “I was from the meadow, mostly. But when I was a young boy – physically, not mentally mind you – I grew up in the Chamber. I still dream about that piney wench, stupid as that is now.”  

     

    Walter

    you should come back home



    @[Hestia]


    Messages In This Thread
    Under the old oak tree [Mirage/Any] - by Hestia - 11-19-2017, 04:34 AM
    RE: Under the old oak tree [Mirage/Any] - by Walter - 01-30-2018, 07:13 PM



    Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)