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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


    could i use you as a makeshift gauge - any
    #1
    The kelpie stretches and yawns. Too many too-sharp teeth are visible for the space of an instant, and then Ivar snaps them safely behind the perfect shield. He is invisible, a predator amid unwitting prey, and he takes his time.

    Some he toys with briefly, drawn in by bright eyes and rosy cheeks, but he is looking for something specific. He isn't sure what that is, of course, but he has no doubt he'll find it by nightfall. The cold air is in his favor, bringing anew the scent of autumn to the sapphire and gold kelpie.

    Recently gorged on a pair of slow tuna, the jewel-eyed stallion has the luxury of time, and he glances at each stranger as they pass. The males get a measured stare, neither challenging or submissive, and most are relieved to see the too-quiet creature pass by. The mares he is less subtle with, eyeing with open appreciate the wide array that passes him by.

    Ahead of him, Ivar can see the glint of the sea. Only a few yards down the slope to the rocky beach, and from there he can see Ischia as a faint green line on the horizon. A flicker of movement in the corner of his eye distracts him, and the scaled stallion turns to find the source.

    @[Anybody]
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    #2

    There is no quickness in it, no great speed or agility: no unparalleled dexterity or preternatural ability: the movement is simply that, a movement. A shuffling of dark hooves sliding through the leafy detritus and scratching the packed soil well beneath it, they are dark in color and tangles of hair fall over the ankles in matted and muddy curls. Those bony legs seem impossibly skinny and bone is more visible with the sunken in and tightly pulled skin, even her body seeks that way. Malnourished, sickly, and grotesque: the shell of what could’ve been a horse but for the moment was not. The dark colored fur is spattered by gray and its face is covered in a chimeral way: sheer white on one side and split down the middle. Its man and tail are long and stringy, dark and matted and it shambles in a way that is neither graceful nor beautiful.

    Its movements are simply precise, mechanical, and purposeful. There are no words from it, not yet, just labored breathing and the suggestion of choking: of water in the lungs. From the the nose there is blood, coagulated and blackened, and when fresh it drips down and stains the leaves; but more disturbing is the nature of this nature: this monster. Barnacles have well encased and become growths upon the skin: along the hip and a single back leg. Sea water is coughed up, and there is algae and kelp bound into the hair: it smells of the sea, of the depths, and of the darkness.

    With no fear of him, the beast stops: its head tilted and exposing the pale, eerily blue-green eyes and watching him with little more than an absence of emotions. Yet when it speaks, its voice is feminine and strained: an ancient accent touched its words and made only more notable by the husky and smoky tenor of its very words. “Ah, greetings- iron and sea.” she murmurs, nostrils flaring and her form shuddering as she coughs. “Was there blood on your lips?” more of a purr than intended she stays where she is, stands with a lazy posture and her attentions fixated.

    “It smells like it, the faint cling in the air: in the cold.” and simply as that she notes the fog low on the ground, and the shadows moving about the wild spread trees and dense brush. Musing to herself there is a precious second where she looks away from Ivar and towards the very ocean… towards the moon-touched waves and glimmering water. Her dry lips curve into a smile and the crone chuckles, cacophonous and riddled with disharmony. “Ah, I never too far am I. It's like a song that sings in my head, but, you’re a strange- so what do you care for the ramblings of wandering souls. Do call my Yidhra, if you please.”

    Introductory and cold, the purr and chuckle become sober and she looks to Ivar with a cold regard and a peaked interest in the pattern and color of his skin. “So many lovely features, even in the dark.”  

    Yidhra



    @[Ivar]  >:]  YOU WANTED A POST FROM ME, HERE WE GO.
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    #3
    I V A R
    promising everything i do not mean
     
    There are some things in the depths that Ivar avoids. Deep crevices, too-heavy shadows where the light has never taken hold. The kelpie does not lack courage, but he had ventured close enough in his more impetuous youth; he has no desire to test his mettle against true leviathans.
     
    Despite the dry air around them, something about her reminds Ivar of the sea shadows, and it stills his progress. With one hoof poised to step forward, the piebald creature tilts his head, nostrils flaring as he takes in the barnacled stranger. She is smaller than he’d thought they might be. Smaller and more female and far less frightening than he had thought a leviathan might be.
     
    Perhaps she is not one after all.
     
    “Yes,” he replies to her inquiry, his golden eyes fixed on her, but he doesn’t elaborate beyond this other than to repeat her name and offer his own in return. ”Ivar.”
     
    Skeletal and sea-soaked, the roan mare with her split face is not one he would have passed by, even if not for his suspicions of her nature. He has specific tastes, but he has never pretended they are refined. Ivar enjoys the way feathered wings look splayed on the seafloor, likes the pattern the sunlight makes on already piebald coats. The bony mare is neither of these, but she looks and smells like the embodiment of the sea. It is just a part of the sea that Ivar has skirted around most carefully due to a healthy sense of self-preservation.
     
    She looks like a woman – and he is utterly certain of it on this moonlit autumn November night – and Ivar wonders how it might be to hunt a leviathan.
     
    “Why don’t you come closer?” He asks, as though this is a mundane thing to ask a stranger on a dark night. “And see them for yourself?”

    I know my lies could not make you believe
    in my dark times, baby this is all I could be
    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

     
    @[Yidhra]
    >:]
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    #4

     Brine-rich and itchy she can feels the granules of sand and salt between her fur. The way it digs into her skin and how it crusts the joints and edges of her uninvited parasites. The inhale of air is sudden, strained and riddled with sharp choking sound of water lodged in the very lungs and throat: even the nose. Yidhra is not secretive about coughing, not subtle as she spits the water into leaves and earth: the familiar taste of iron lingering in her mouth. There is a moment where she speaks, where she answers and her accent is different… her voice is different. It sounds like the pitch is changing, more harmonious but still inevitably scratchy and rough. “There were shoals of triggerfish in the reefs, so pretty and gleaming. I saw ones with golden and brown scales, reds… even some simple as yellow and blue. Others too.” the addendum is something that makes her chuckle, but, she enjoys the mismatched color and the pattern of sand and sea that paints him.

    Uneasy, her first step is shaking and wretched: the whole of her body lumbering and it takes a good few steps through the black shadows and mist before she smooths her gait and stops just a bit closer. “Always ramblings, I can never stop. Curse, or blessing- still, a pleasure to meet you Ivar.” she is charming in a way, her head bowed and the curved neck dipping as her forelegs also make a fluid and sweeping motion: the gesture of respect paid to his company. The sound of leaf crunches beneath her hooves and compact earth creates echoes amidst the sparse and yet impenetrable trees. “Are you sure? Closer? Interesting.” she chuckled, darkly; but lacking malice. Instead she moves into a sliver of moonlight that breaks through the blackened canopy- the whole of her body illuminated and exposed.

    More noticeable now is the dark black of her body, the almost oily color of it and how she is peppered by strange gray patterns that seem to have no beginning nor end: only fading of what is and wasn’t. Those jagged bones beneath her skin are more prominent than before and there is an almost impossibly macabre quality to area where fur has been worn down and skin is exposed and riddled with jagged scarring. The same barnacles crusting parts of her body are wretched and she is bleeding over them and well around them: coagulated and thick- altered by the nature of the depths. Her chimerical face is still pretty but hollow and grim, and there is a split second where the blood that drips from her lips is not red… it is blue.

    Matted and thick the kelp tangled and salted mane and tail seems to weight down her body and Yidhra remains in this light: studying Ivar through the shadow and bleak distance between them. Her spine cracks in a way that is audible, and when she settles- truly settles, she rests her weight against a tree and exposes the curves of her rib bones pressing against the skin. For a moment she recognizes the scent of his dinner from before, and part of her wonders at the nature: but she is not foolish, his beautiful features and coloration are to serve the same purpose as a Cheetah’s speed or a Shark’s senses… hunting. For a moment she considers him, and what he may be, recalling to herself the image of walking between bones and undersea vents.

    Rotting whale corpses scattering the seabed and shells that had long gone uninhabited pooled before chasms and dark caves. She remembers the beak and tentacles, the great shimmer scales and teeth: the pressure that pained her and now? It would almost seem a comfort. Yet she cannot guess just yet what this boy is, only know that his skin is the same as her own… a cloak, a veil. So she smiles, softening but still detached and without suggestion of an emotion other than raw intrigue. “You must be native to these lands, far more adjusted than any I’ve met before and had the brief pleasure of a chat with. Such a pretty home, I must say I am envious.” 

    Yidhra

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    #5
    Once he had known a black mare from one of the Otherworlds. Or rather, from the place between here and there, a limbo that the creature has never wanted to experience. He is curious, but having not yet explored his own world to its fullest reaches, Ivar is not yet interested in venturing beyond it.

    He is not sure, even with her rambling, if her admission is that she is new to Beqanna or to life itself. Both seem equally possible to the kelpie, but one is certainly preferable. Silver moonlight does not flatter Yihdra, but the kelpie's golden eyes trace each pale revelation with unbrindled interest.

    Only once had he been still enough to interest a barnacle, a long week spent in a sea that would have been nearly frozen around them if not for the salinity. How long must she have been below the sea to bear such a collection of them? Is this what Kylin might look like if he kept her under long enough?

    The image is a pleasant one, Ivar smiles and reveals too many teeth.

    "This is not my home," he tells her as he takes the step forward he'd first offered Yidrha. "There's too much magic in these woods." Too many memories, as well, but those are trivial for a creature not prone to reminiscence.

    Ivar is hungry because a kelpie is always hungry, even as they gorge themselves, and he takes another step nearer, drawn by that hunger and a growing sense of fascination. "I'm sure the pleasure is ours," says the jewel-toned stallion, though he speaks only for himself.  "I don't think we have anything quite like you here." He adds, because asking a lady what she is has never been a highly recommend flirtation tactic.

    @[Yidhra]
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    #6

    “As I understand it, this whole world is magic: this place and all its reaches. From the tallest tree to the very crushing depths of its waters.” the latter carries a hiss, a strained exhale and something impossibly singsong. “Drenched in power, in life: and its source is unknown. Not a God specifically to empower it, nor a source from it to drawn: simply in on itself, it is magic.” shrugged those sloped shoulders she relaxes and tosses her head as a means to dispatch the forelock and toss it behind a ragged ear. With both eyes exposed the pearly-teal shimmered in the moonlight and she seemed to study Ivar with unfading and continued alertness. 

    Terse, and with not a word said between them that was unneeded: she cherishes this.

    For a moment the silence lingers and those dark lips slowly pull into an almost serpentine grin, the expression while still lacking malevolence now conveyed a sort of mischief: a sense of something that might shatter the illusion of her being, and yet she continues without fear of whatever came. “But it is not yours, my mistake then, such a shame to confuse these things when the truth is: our home speaks to the very roots of our most true nature.” had she the ability a porous tentacle, fleshy and with shifting colors might’ve reached up and slithered across her face: attached to her neck and hidden within the mat of her mane; but she lacks this power, she lacks this form.

    Instead she is forced to endure the weight and itch of the hair, of the scratching on her pestilent flesh and salted fur.

    Teeth, fangs and serrated edges: the predatory glimmer of something carnivorous… she notices, and chuckles darkly. In another time, before her first or second deaths, she might’ve exposed the grim black beak-like fangs and plating in her mouth and the true echo and reverberation of her voice; but this is a different time.

    “Oh, flattery suits your jeweled eyes and sharp teeth.” she states with a cough, with stagnant water freed from her lungs. “You have plenty of me around, after all, I am not the first nor last of my kind… you just have to know where to look.” it’s nothing of a power but with Ivar drawing closer she shifts her weight, steps forward through the light and into the darkness of the Taiga. Shadows fill in the flesh and darken what is grayed, still spotty but black she seems more alive now: filled to muscle and figure; but the obvious still remains.

    Yidhra does not hesitate to slither like a krait towards him, to attempt to press her bony shoulder against his own and slide along his side so that she can round his body and feel the chill of his skin, and he… her own. Not long does she stay mobile, instead she’d settle, close and yet distant: peering out towards the moon touched waves and water, looking to Ivar with a grin. “Once upon a time, I was flesh and blood- born to parents whose wings were blacker than the night. I was without, and so I left, wandering as I pleased until the day I achieved something that no mortal could ever dream of: I saw the truth, transcended. I became something more than flesh, and for my truth I was taken to where the light can not reach.”

    She purrs, and scratches a hoof into the dirt to create a small divide. “There are bones larger than the trees, and places where the great beasts slumber. You just have to step into the black, through the caves and to the deepest reaches. There are so many of me and mine down there; but I am the only one who does not dream, instead I am awake. Tell me Ivar, care to come play.” there is malevolence suddenly in how she grin, how she smiles… and she does not pose it as a question.

    “And do know, if you are so keen to use your teeth: for all the bites you take, I will yet live, and one day I will repay those bites to you.” had she been human the biting of her lip might’ve been sexier, more of a tease; but even then it would’ve been something strange.

    Yidhra however, does not seem to care. 

    Yidhra



    @[Ivar]  <333
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    #7
    I V A R
    promising everything i do not mean
    The kelpie follows her line of logic, but it leaves him battered. For all his childhood lessons, the dark haired creature is not especially given to intellectual pursuits. He doesn’t have to be intelligent, after all: he needs only be strong.

    (There is a reason he had not ruled an especially successful kingdom, unless it is measured by an uncouth metric)

    Though he had paused a distance from her, the piebald kelpie cannot help but inch forward at the sputter of water and the way it glitters on her lips until she steps into shadows. He wants to find it, to see if he might know her part of the oceans, but the more she tells him, the less certain it is a part he might ever want to find. For all his boldness, Ivar has never lacked a sense of self-preservation. Some things, no matter how tempting, will have sour ends. A face flashes before his eyes, soft and unbroken, but he blinks it away until there is just the wraith and the shadows.

    Her skin is cold and Ivar makes no effort to hide the way he presses back against her bony shoulder. To keep himself safe he does not take more than offered, but he is equally diligent to ensure that he does not miss a single touch she allows him. The brightness in her eyes as she looks out at the waves brings him inching closer again; it is only the timing of their breathing that keeps his side from pressing against hers. Even this close she is cold, and there is enough understated malevolence in her not-an-invitation to keep him wary.

    Not prey, he understands, but also something different, something he wants to keep the same way he’d kept the little brown moth and the angel girl.

    The soft show of her teeth is of interest to the stallion, even if the kelpie has abandoned the idea of a true hunt. The piebald has never made any attempt at obscuring his frequent lothario-esque tendencies. So he smiles back when she threatens to repay him bite-for-bite.

    “Do you promise?” He asks with a tilt of his handsome head. He reaches forward slowly, having decided that a mistake with her is unlikely to cost him his life, and presses the soft line of his pointed teeth against the edge of her hip. For a moment Ivar is still, breathing in the dripping scent of her and the too-slow pulse of her cold blood beneath thin skin. And then his teeth snap shut, catching only air before his muzzle is tucked against his neck and he watches the pearlescent shimmer of her eyes for a reaction.


    I know my lies could not make you believe
    in my dark times, baby this is all I could be
    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


    @[Yidhra]
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    #8

     Flesh touches flesh, bone and muscle… what warmth exists on his skin becomes a memory to the icy and unearth cold that has taken over hers. She’d have shuddered at the gentle pressure, at the slightest sensation; but the depths have changed her sensory impulses and instead she indulges it: endures and feels, allows the melding and sliding of figures. 

    There is a moment that she considers this dangerous, that her teeth consider lashing and snapping: pinching the Kelpie’s flesh just for measure and test… but she relents and instead she allows the low rumble of her voice to hang in the air, the heavy sound of vibration and purr. “Never a threat darling,” she muses, her eyes watching and figure relaxed. “Always a promise, especially for you.” the latter of it is sensual without force, a quip and a purr that exist only then.

    His gesture however, provokes a sort of slow turn of her gaze and she notes the touch of his maw and the exploration of her hip bones: of her sunken in figure. Skeletal and straining she notes the hardness, the sharpness and the edges of the teeth. Her ears pressing backwards through the matted and darkened hair and she notes the snap of teeth, of the jaws opened and closed: she watches the fangs cutting through nothing and simply raises a brow at the gesture. 

    Yet with conscious effort she draws herself up, raises her head and almost seems to grow an inch or more; but regardless there is a fullness to her presence in this moment that only becomes more so as she curls her neck and head: as in response there is a cobra-like and quick movement.

    Lashing forward; but not so long as to reach him, she too tests the air and her teeth gnash together in that moment. She lacks the razorsharp break, but, there is something about her jaw movements that are unnatural to an equine and more suitable for something else: the air providing nothing but the clatter of keratin and bone, lacking blood or meat.

    Such is that she withdraws too, remaining as she been, ears forward and neck curved- the height not lost and her muscles more ready to move even with the heaviness of her lungs or the stiffness in her every bone. What sensuality existed remains, but, the underlying nature of the abyssal creature is starting to define itself… more so in the curls of her dark, matted locks and the bizarre spatterings of color. She speaks in the aftermath and chuckles, watery and echoing. “So fun, almost familiar…” 

    Yidhra



    @[Ivar]
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