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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


    i've got some damn bad intentions - anyone
    #1
    For the longest time, she has been nothings.

    A speck of dust, a sunbeam, a grain of sand.

    That last one had been the end of it; there are too many emotions tied to the gritty bits of stone and shell around her.

    Djinni appears on the coast in a shimmer of golden sand. It disappears before it reaches the ground, and leaves behind a grullo mare that is all but non-descript. The minimally marked tobiano had left the golden bracelets in Sylva, but there are still loops of gold in her twitching, black-tipped ears. 

    There is also something ethereal in her manner, a sense of hidden power despite her small frame. 

    She has been the Mage of Nerine for what - a decade now?

    The title is nice; Djinni has alway enjoyed titles. They're not unlike the brilliant colors, wings, and horns she often wears. Decorations; she has always been fond of decorations.

    That cannot be said today, when she reappears in Nerine for the first time in six months. Her memories of that time are fractured; it is difficult to think in the form of sunlight. 

    Still, there is something that she remembers. It is why she had left, and why she has returned. Self-flagellation seems to be another of her talents, for she keeps to the eastern shore as she wanders beside the sea. She knows what it is in the north, who wanders the cliffs above the rougher  sea.
    #2

    The northern slopes that drop sharply into the sea are wild and dangerous.

    He’s not sure why he chooses to live on them, because he is neither wild nor dangerous.  But it is where he spends most of his time now.  It is also where he spent the last four years of dutiful solitude.  He’s circling around the slopes now, their watchful protector of nothing.  He does battle, but it is with the errant trade-winds that whistle over the scrub land and toss him to and fro, rather than a breathing, physical threat.  White, wide wings quake with the effort of keeping himself aloft.  The alternative is a quick grave beneath the sea that roils and churns under his grey, dangling hooves.  The trial of staying alive fuels him in a way that it never has before.  And then he realizes why he chooses the north.  It is like her, not him: wild and dangerous and breath-taking and challenging.  

    He is fighting her – fighting for her – in a way that she’ll never see.

    Walter has never felt more alive than he has in Nerine.  Lean, tough muscles have developed under his gold pelt that had never been there before.  When he flexes them, they respond smoothly and instantaneously.  On thought, he’s gliding towards land again.  The tinny light of a cloudy day makes weird shapes of the kingdom below.  It all runs together, hills and dunes, into an undulating and undefined grey mass.  Still, he would know the way on instinct if need be.  To his right, the land seems to fold into itself as a crescent that sweeps into the ocean.  He keeps with the shoreline, his path similarly curved as he heads south.  There is a compass within him now, too, that has grown sharper in his time here.  He uses it to find the populated stretch of the sandy place when the storms roll in and the hard rain falls.  Sheltering caves poke into the southern cliffs, wide and dry enough to hold the residents.  Smiling, he remembers his recent time in one with Hestia.  The dark woman had given him both her story and her warmth - one of which has left him, while the other remains firmly lodged in his thoughts.

    He’s looking for her now as he glides effortlessly over the crashing break.  His shadow races underneath of him over various terrains as it leaps from water to sand to scrub grass.   The sound of the surf becomes hushed and then almost muted as he moves so far inland away from it.  The stallion wonders how Hestia is settling in to Nerine the second time around.  It will never be the Chamber, (or the Jungle, or the Deserts, or the Valley – as they agreed) and he is ever-glad.  He is a different man here, and he thinks maybe she will be different, too.  As Beqanna changes, so must its people.

    A flash of gold is a blip on his radar.

    Djinni.  He is grounded.  He doesn’t remember telling his wings to let the air fall from under them, doesn’t remember touching down, roughly, and running to her side.  But he’s there, suddenly, and she is too.  “You are a vision,” he tells her, taking in the whole of her before pressing forward into her space without hesitation.  Because it never matters how long they are separated.  Time is irrelevant when it comes to them.  He meets her like the northern shore she is, crashing into her wildness as the sea does.  He is her stalwart knight, and she is his adventure in the flesh.  And she is home.

     

    Walter

    son of Liefde & Ellen



    @[Djinni]
    #3
    "I don't deserve you," she says into the silk of his feathers.

    It is easy to touch him, so easy that it almost seems as if their time of not touching had never happened. But it had - she recalls it so clearly. There were years in the desert, in the chamber, in the meadow and the common grounds. One brief meeting and then another, year after year, decade after decade. They circled each other like magnets; each time she came closer he would pull away. She had been grateful for that too.

    Djinni had never struggled before Walter.

    Everything came - no, still comes - easily to her. She wishes and it is so, anything in the blink of an eye.

    Walter is the only thing she hadn't wished for (there were times of course, when she was so very tempted). Yet here is is, warm and solid and waiting for her. When she inhales, he tastes of salt and wind, of the cold granite cliffs of Nerine.

    This place is like nothing in their old world. It is soothing in a way the grey mare could never have imagined. The sea is ever-changing, from winter grey to summer green, a compliment to the mottled greys of the granite cliffs. A good home, she knows, made all the better by who she shares it with.

    She pulls away only to meet his gaze, but she presses her muzzle to his golden cheek for moment first.

    "Have I missed anything?"
    #4

    “True,” he replies agreeably, his face still nestled into the slope of her shoulder. Pinkish gold hair falls over his eyes and tickles the top of his head. “I hardly deserve myself.” When he speaks so close to her like this, he can hear the thrum of his own voice reverberating against her skin. Every word is like an enchantment meant to make his heart beat faster, to allow him to feel every minute pulling and shifting of her muscles. It is sensual in ways that are, not new to him, but far too rare. He doesn’t want to pull away. He wants to speak every word he knows (and oh, there are so many) sidled against her. He wants to create new words if only to say them and feel them - to create new languages, even.

    Because he, too, remembers when this was an impossibility.

    Those terrible but wonderful times when they chanced upon each other had been touchless affairs. Sure, they had had their adventures and conversations deeper than the soil they stood on. They had had their respective pasts and shared pasts and ghosts they resurrected (he: the Chamber and its’ daughters, she: her parents and family). It was enough for a long time, to talk and not touch. It was enough to keep them interested in each other, to keep them waiting for the next opportunity to see each other again.

    Walter’s emotions – his own and those of others that felt like his own, anyway – were volatile things. Had always been. They were a physical barrier that kept him at a distance from everyone he met. Imagine experiencing a happiness so great it burned like the sun. Imagine staring down a spiraling black hole of grief, of wanting to leap in and end it, because another’s hurt was so deep. Walter never had to imagine or put himself in another’s place – he lived it, breathed it. And it kept him away. It made him cold as stone and as easily moved.

    Thank god for the Reckoning, eh?

    He loses her now, but it’s only long enough for her to pull back. She’s there again quickly, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. “Besides me?” He asks as she does it. The corners of his honey-yellow eyes crinkle with warmth for being so close to her and for his own joke (mostly for her, probably). The stallion finally takes a regretful step back. Because she has missed a lot, and as hesitant as he is to break the moment, she clearly wants to be filled in. “We’ve a new queen, Hestia. She is exactly what all those Jungle fanatics seem to expect of a leader. I think she will be brilliant.” It’s bizarre for him to talk about kingdom matters with anything more than a single grain of passion, but he does. Something is different about him now. Idly, he wonders if Djinni will notice. “Will you stay and help us?” Us. Who the hell is he these days?

    He stretches his wings out to their full length, shaking a kink out before settling them against his sides again. It is obvious he is physically different, too, filled out by ropy muscles that run under his golden hide. Vainly, these he hopes the mage notices. Maybe that’s why she’s never sought him out in the Fall. Procreation has never motivated Walter. Showing his love to Djinni has, but again, another Fall is passing them without her obvious want. He tells himself it is his fault for being so closed off for so long. He’s lost his chance at that, she’ll find others if she hasn’t already. Looking at her bathed in the soft light of a sunless day, it’s impossible to imagine she hasn’t. Impossible to believe someone like her keeps coming back to someone like him.

     

    Walter

    son of Liefde & Ellen



    @[Djinni]
    #5
    Djinni laughs into his golden side when he speaks, and her eyes are bright when they separate. He has always been the somber one. Something has changed, and Djinni finds that she quite prefers it, this laughing and smiling Walter against the stoic he had once been.

    Its more than the attitude though; she is not blind. Decades of familiarity (even without touch) make the physical changes all the more obvious. Walter has never been anything less than handsome, but to someone that shifts shapes as frequently as she shifts moods the outer appearances have never mattered.

    They matter even less now, knowing as she does that true beauty rests far below the sea.

    The golden stallion is handsome instead, and she is not immune to the thrill of appreciation as he flexes his wings. Still, she is momentarily distracted by his words, and her brown eyes flick back to his as he asks if she will stay.

    ”Us?" She repeats with a bright laugh. ”Us?"

    The genie is suddenly beside him, her rose gold body tucked beneath his wing, her side pressed against his

    ”Who are you, and what have you done with my Walter?" she asks as she pulls playfully at his white mane.




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