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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


    [Heartfire & Any] I'm tired, you're angry, and everyone looks blurry
    #1
    Briella
    your eyes are lined in pain, black tears don't hide in rain

    There was fascination in how he moved and one that forced her to watch every step, how the bones stuck through and across the skin: how the slow presence of blood glimmered on his darker form. She could not find reference for it in her small mind, her few memories: and she found herself blinking with wide hazel-green eyes and ears perked up and slightly forward. At his beckoning she follows and yet, her desire to wander also finds its way: periodically darting through brush and briars, and the thick nettles and tangles of ivy. Briella’s wonder is endless, boundless, and so much so that there is moment where she stops because of a strangely colored object on a tree. Earthy in scent and yet musky in a way, she does not recognize the color nor the pattern of the puffballs skin and is almost shocked to find that it is softer and almost fleshy. 

    Timid, yet sure, she allows the weanling teeth to bite into it and finds a strange texture on her tongue- a woody and unknown taste. Content to try again she keeps at it, paused and nibbling away until the sound of Dovev’s footsteps have stopped. Blinking at some touch or remark she looks up with a smile and bits of the fungi still on her nose. Yet there is not a long time between and so she moves on, nipping clover here and there and periodically spitting out plants she dislikes: particularly the tall, rubbery grass that smells of astringent and sharp onions. 

    She dislikes this the most.

    Forest, however, is not a permanent thing and over the course of their steps she watches as grass becomes more present and slowly the trees less so. Ocean and sand too, blend the soil and Briella sees jagged cliffs a distance away: hears the gulls and birds, smells the salt. She jumps, kicks, and charges forward through the wild and tall reaches of the grass- to where she can see the glittering sun atop the waves and to where her body is able to poke over the grass.

    “Water!”  she cries out, a word she know but not one she could elaborate on. The sun is warm, even for autumn, and as they wander deeper into Nerine she rushes to the shores and places where the tide has let out. Rocks create pools and she finds herself stuck nose-deep into the salty water.

    Just as he’d met her, she sputters and snorts- scowls and dislikes the salty taste. “No!”  she states at the tide pool, noting the sudden bizarre reflectiveness of the water and the reflection of herself. She sees her flaxen-blonde hair, the puffy curls and baby soft look: the darker fur on her skin and all the features she was presented.

    Dovev speaks to another, and she does not look immediately, rather she focuses on the moving star and the strange creatures. As the adult keep talking, she nips and sniffs: dunks her head again before turning her head to see the stallion slipping away. Briella worries, frets and fidgets, but more so because she feels a strange weight on her face… the starfish having curled onto her face and begun to remain sitting.

    To Heartfire she wanders, looking up at her quixotically with those deer-like hazel green eyes and the brilliant orange starfish stuck to her face.  “Not-Pell, not-Dovev… hi,” she states, not knowing many words, her tiny ears splaying and swiveling. “Who?” question and curiosity. 



    @[Heartfire] & @[Dovev]  I timed to when he was leaving to go kill Rhonen/help in the mess and had dropped her off with Heart.
    #2
    dovev

    She'd growled at him like her little tummy had growled at her. Dovev nodded in answer, supplying the words for her. "Hungry. You're hungry, baby. We'll getcha somethin." He jerked his chin again, began walking and expected her to follow or else learn quickly that he wouldn't be stopping for her. She'd have to keep up with him and pay enough attention not to get lost. He wouldn't turn back for her knowing someone else, someone better, would find her and take her in. 

    She was not yet completely his.

    Or maybe he wasn't quite so eager to lose his new baby, as she managed to pull him to a stop when she lingered far longer than he felt comfortable with. He huffed sharply, "Briella!" The girl was lost to him, consumed in testing and tasting everything around her. "No, baby, not those." And he came to her, brushed the bits of fungi clinging to her little nose, swept her sweet velvet free of woody debris that soiled her pretty face.

    "There," he smirked down at her, black eyes soft again. "Now, come on. We're almost there."

    The moment she spied the water, she was gone again, jumping and kicking and running forward. He shook his head and followed casually. Nothing would dare touch what was his, so he held no concerns. His attention stayed on her as she wandered to the shore, but his eyes were around them again, always watching.

    Until he noticed Heartfire and he figured now was as good a time as any to make introductions. He hadn't planned on it, but oh well. Would have to eventually if Heartfire was going to be watching her while he was away.

    He grinned at her, so innocent and honestly kinda proud, walking over to her and leaving Briella to catch up when she noticed. He wasn't far. "My Dagger," he purred, stepping right in to brush possessive, affectionate kisses over the blue of her neck. His eyes glittered with mischief as he pulled back, looked at his new baby playing in a little pool of seawater. "This is mine," he claimed loosely, lacking the vigilant grasp it normally would. She wasn't quite his yet, he would see. But for now at least.. She might be.

    "Briella."

    The vision assaulted him then, turned a temporarily soft man into a lethal weapon in an instant. His eyes changed, dark with a wicked glee at the opportunity to finally get his payback, resolute determination set firmly in the line of his body. He looked at Heartfire, and without a word, entrusted her to watch over what was his. Whether he lived to return or not.

    Then he shot across the land at breakneck speed, hauling his armor with practiced ease as his legs bent and stretched and pulled him away so quickly. His last thought before the focus set in, before all he had room for in his mind was Rhonen, was that he hoped he was far enough away before Heartfire saw Briella's starfished face and cursed him for the ever-curious toddler he'd left with her. 

    But with a smirk.

    we're slaves to any semblance of touch

    Lord, we should quit but we love it too much



    hellogoodbyeseeyousoon :|

    #3

    Everything had turned upside down. As hard as she tried to pretend things were perfectly normal, they weren’t. Every reason she had held on to for keeping him at a distance with such stubborn tenacity had shifted and altered in a single night. She couldn’t go back to how things had been before, and for the first time in her life, she isn’t entirely certain how to move forward either.

    And so she had done neither.

    She is moving slowly along the rocky cliff face when she first sees him. Normally she would not hesitate in her approach, but their dynamic had shifted. A shift she is ill-equipped to deal with. And when she spies the child, she halts. She has never been especially good with children. She loves her own and had cared for them to the best of her ability, but it has since been made clear she is not truly made for motherhood, given her son’s death and her daughter’s staunch avoidance of her.

    For a moment, she isn’t entirely certain what to make of the scene before her, and a large part of her simply wishes to turn and leave it behind. To let Dovev deal with it however he would, without her input. But the moment passes when Dovev notices her.

    Memory shivers over her skin when he brushes a gentle, possessive caress over the blue of her neck. She doesn’t withdraw and chide him as she once might have, instead yielding to the touch, a soft breath catching in her throat, briefly distracted from the scene before her. When he withdraws however, her gaze turns wary. There is mischief in his dark eyes, and she is uncertain if she cares for it.

    When he continues, referring to the small filly splashing in the shallows (This is mine, he says), she stiffens. Her gaze sharpens as it jumps to the child. His. Had he actually brought her one of his children? Another lover’s child?

    “You didn’t…” she begins sharply before she is interrupted by the vision. It is not often she is taken by surprise, especially with a thing she so often considers her domain. And it immediately draws suspicion. Dovev, however, appears greatly affected by it, his entire demeanor swiftly changing from mischievous and almost relaxed to hard and deadly in the blink of an eye. With one last look at her, takes off. Her darkly shouted, “Don’t you dare!” is lost in the wind of his absence.

    A furious anger settling into her breast, her gaze jumps to the child. She would follow, but she could not leave the child here unattended. As he well knew. But that did not mean she had to do as he so foolishly bade. She could just as easily find the child’s mother and return her. And tell Dovev exactly how fast he could go to hell if he dared show his face again.

    A quick search however, draws every bit of wind from her sails. Not his child it seems, but rather a lost and wayward orphan. Or near enough.

    What kind of idiotic, foolish notion had gotten into his brain that he’d decided to bring home an orphan child? Her anger gives way to irritation, blue eyes glittering as she wonders what she is supposed to do with this situation. He must know she is not the mothering type.

    But then the young girl, distracted from the pool, seems to realize she is there. As the chestnut filly approaches, a starfish clinging to her face in wayward fashion, Heartfire softens. She could not be angry at a child for events out of her control. As the tiny child peers at her with fawn-like innocence, the blue and white mare sighs, her gaze becoming a bit quizzical.

    “Hello Briella,” she finally offers by way of greeting, her tone oddly hesitant. Very much out of the norm for the typically bold mare. “I’m Heartfire,” she introduces herself before continuing, “and it seems you and I will be spending a little time together.”

    i see your sins
    and i want to set them free

    #4
    Briella
    your eyes are lined in pain, black tears don't hide in rain

     Like any child, she is curious- concerned, and always observant of the very pattern and fabric of that entire world around her: and its people. She blinks here and there, listening to birds and crickets, to the rolling waves not far off, and to the strange sound of hooves in a number she never imagined; but there is no hesitation in her, only bravery and wild intrigue. So much in fact that as she turns, her whole body freezes suddenly: the muscles rigid and her legs locked as she chirps and frets- looks frantically around. 

    “Voice! Familiar… not-Pell!” she states in obvious annoyance, kicking her spidery legs and jumping about in brief frenzy. “Out, out! Carnage… not like.” for a moment her mind drifts to the first time she heard of Carnage, to years ago in Beqanna when the Forsaken Valley was alive and when Expelliarmus ruled beside Vampyric. She recalls the gray body, the dark eyes- all the strange markings of the God-Mage; but most of all she remembers feelings of mistrust and fear, of dark… abyssal black and the sudden silence that drowned out every sense she had. The end, the beyond- whatever name it was: a place of murky and inky blackness and shadows… where time had no meaning or place, and all things seemed frozen as they had been.

    Scared of what she remembers, she whimpers and slowly begins to buckle her tiny legs: sinking into the grass just in front of Heartfire- peering up at the mare from between her owns legs that she seemed to try to hide beneath. “Heartfire,” she murmurs. “Hear?” as if to emphasize a point she flicked a small ear and timidly began to uncurl; but only after she was certain that this awful memory was simply that, and not a reality.

    On her face the Starfish moved but seemed to remain as it was, and Briella was content to ignore the strange suckling sensation and tightness on her face. The wispy and damp blonde forelock spread across her eyes and she wrinkled her nose before tossing about and getting the hair out of those wide hazel-green eyes. With minimal words she tried speaking again, studying Heartfire and all the world she now presented. “Grrrr,” she mocked a growl. “Dovev, run- Rhonen… grrrr?” continuing to pose a strange and broken question to the mare.

    Relenting, however, to her previous state the clicked her weanling teeth and sniffed the ground before chewing on the oceanic grasses and covering plants beneath it. Soured and not at all pleased with the marshy flavor she looked up and shook her head no, the small belly rumbling as she studied the mare and looked sidelong at a other plants. “Valley gone?” she quipped, focusing back on Heartfire and doing her best to suffer the grass for now as she felt a sensation of burning and primal instinct. “Where this?” more questions, more things- more memories.

    Playing in the Valley, drifting with Expelliarmus and Vampyric- other children that the King seemed content to bring in serving as playmates… the warmth of a childhood robbed by darkness and the latter end of her memories perhaps was the fading breath of her own mother: the body no longer moving and the shadow of whoever her father was, walking away.

    Racing, and struggling to suppress the fear she had suddenly of Dovev leaving, she turned and looked- going from Heartfire to where he had run. “Gone…” and almost softly, she whimpered… and stepped closer to the mare: lingering by her side. 



    @[Heartfire] & @[Dovev]   <333
    #5

    She does not particularly care for this feeling, the persistent sensation that things have abruptly tumbled from her control. As though her grasp on the situation had been entirely lost, allowing it to spiral in wild abandon. Until she had stumbled and tripped, finding herself in a relationship she cannot quantify or qualify. Until the cause of her turmoil had added even more by depositing a ward into her lap without word nor warning.

    For perhaps the first time in her life, she is quite at a loss.

    The filly is careless and carefree, dancing from one curiosity to the next with little more than a thought. The abrupt vision however, seems to send the poor girl into a paroxysm, causing her to shout and kick out, as though her fleeting actions would slay the demon in her head. She ends with a whimper, the soft sound bringing Heartfire closer, protectively. Despite all her failings, she has always been protective of those she considers her own. And though she had not actively chosen this, it seems Briella had found her way into the growing circle of those she deems hers.

    The filly whispers her name, and Heartfire drops her muzzle, brushing briefly against the fuzz of her wispy mane as the timid question falls from the girls lips. “I heard,” she answers softly, with surprising gentleness. “You are safe, I promise.”

    The girl may not know her well yet, but she would learn soon enough Heartfire does not make promises lightly. The the blue and white mare, for all her unassuming appearance, is a dangerous woman to cross. No one would harm the child so long as she held her in her care.

    She asks after Dovev then, and Heartfire sighs, lifting her head to peer into the direction the bone-armored stallion had disappeared. Her gaze hardens briefly as she stares into the distance. She would certainly have a few choice words for him when he returned. If he returned. Only a fool would believe Carnage did not have ulterior motives resting behind that mysterious message. And Dovev, the idiot, had run right into it. “Dovev will do what he must,” she finally answers cryptically. Briella would no doubt learn soon enough what kind of man she’d followed home.

    The girl’s comment on the Valley draws her attention back, one brow arching in faint surprise at the question. It seems Briella had become far more than simply lost if she has memories of the Valley. Heartfire had been barely more than a child herself when the kingdom had disappeared. There is a sadness that infuses the child as she draws closer to Heartfire, and even with her hardened edges, she finds herself softening towards the little chestnut.

    The blue mare closes the remaining distance, nose dropping to nuzzle gently between her charge’s small ears. She offers her warmth and support, the only thing she can think to provide in such a moment. “The Valley is gone,” she admits softly, refusing to coat the truth. There is no use to it. Still, she would ensure the girl knows she has a home, if she wishes it (new and strange, perhaps, but a home nonetheless). “You are in Nerine now Briella. And you are welcome to stay with me as long as you wish.”

    Whatever she might lack in maternal instincts, she can make up for in support and protection. She could only hope it would be enough this time.

    i see your sins
    and i want to set them free

    #6
    Briella
    your eyes are lined in pain, black tears don't hide in rain

     Nerine is a name she does not know until it spoke, and even when it is: she does not immediately grasp the expanse and wholeness of it, the true borders of the territory and the history of it. Instead she peers and stares, looks out across the great grasses and the cliffs: to places where trees are full and thick… and to where flowers bloom around brackish springs and pools. It is far from the whole of it; but it’s enough to sate her curiosity of the word and border, for the now. Still pressed against the older mare she feels the breath and touch, the way her wispy forelock is scattered over her face and she focuses on the strange reality that she is now burdened by; the idea of time that suddenly occurs to her, and in such a way that she furrows her tiny brows and cinches her face into confusion and conflict. “Gone…” she murmurs.

    “All gone. Pell, gone…” the phrasing of the name and the meaning of it hits her in a way she has never felt, and a deep sense of grief fills her; but she does not succumb so easily, she’s too young to fully feel this tragedy and a part of her still does not understand. “I see, shadow- dark. Roses, and I walk… hungry.” she begins to speak, trying to mimic words and trying to speak cohesively. “Carnage speak, I run, and dark- no one. Gone, empty. No moon, no sun- no… day?” the last word is a question, but, one posed less of her asking and more so trying to secure the word for ‘time’. “Long walk, alone, Dovev- see first. No hurt… Fairies… grrrr.” another growling, but this time she locks eyes with Heartfire.

    Direct and tilting her head she continues on, trying to elaborate something. “Now Nerine, no Valley. No- ah, big? Small still. No talk.” she wobbles a leg, looking from herself to Heartfire and back- sticking her small head between her forelegs and scratching the Starfish against them. Yet it’s the small word, gentle talk- the interesting color and speckle of grey: all her attentions remain on and with the mare. Such it is that she inhales softly, making a strange childlike babbling sound before formulating new words and new things to speak on. “Carnage speak now, again. In… head. Grrrr, no like, stay out. Bring shadow, scary- no go back.” the idea of the beyond, of the place where time is absent: it frightens her, and so does Carnage.

    Shivering she does not hide the glances around nor the stricken fearful look in her eyes. She mewls and had the not been so tall she might’ve shoved herself well beneath Heartfire if she thought it was safer; but she relents because her legs are long and spindly and she is far too tall for that. Out of words, out of things to question- she goes silent and reaches her nose up at Heartfire: touching the mare’s shoulder with the velveteen nose.  

    #7
    @[Heartfire] and @[Briella] are infected by their player's requests.
    @[Dovev] is already infected.

    Heartfire rolls a 1 and does not express a new trait.
    Briella rolls a 4 and does not express a new trait.
    Dovev rolls a 2 and does not express a new trait.




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