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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 feel it running through my veins; Tiphon
    #1

    I need that fire just to know that I'm awake

    She feels lost. Not turned around, like the wood had become twisted or the stars are unfamiliar. No, she feels like pieces of herself are missing. Like there is more out there, waiting for her, if only she could find it. But she cannot seem to, no matter how she searches.

    She had searched the world over now, it feels. And somehow she had ended here. She breathes in the air, a scent both familiar and foreign. It tickles at the recesses of her memories, but they remain murky and dark. Stubbornly shrouded, as they have been for so long now.

    She feel as though there should be more, as though she should mean more. As though Joscelin is more than just a name to match face broken face. Someone had told her her name once. She should have remembered them, she thinks, but she never had. It still feels heavy on her tongue, like something is missing. If only.

    Every day those dreaded if only’s tear around her skull, clanging to be loosed.

    She remembers staring at her reflection once, trying to remember even a single piece of the story her face tried to tell. Lines are etched through every piece of her body, fissures that seem to scream at her. To say there is something more here than the surface-deep shattering of her skin.

    And still she cannot remember, after all this time.

    So now she stands, lost and alone, staring into the depths of an ancient forest. She is not sure if there is anything here for her. She is never certain, not in all the places she has been now. But still she keeps trying, a bone-deep stubbornness forcing her ever onwards.

    Joscelin



    @[Tiphon]
    Reply
    #2
    BUT HOW COULD YOU KNOW THE SWEETEST SUFFERING
    OF MOVING ON
    Lost and alone.

    Yes, Tiphon is very much familiar with both. The void from which he was awoken had affected him in both ways. It provided a solitude that he couldn’t escape from until that strange voice stirred him. Somehow, it opened his eyes and guided him toward a faraway light that provided him an escape.

    Ever since leaving, he has still been lost and alone.

    Tiphon, the voice had named him.
    Infection and Starlace are his parents.
    Candle is his twin.
    And Ischia. Somehow, he remembers the island but nothing more.

    What life he may have had prior is lost to him. It would not have been so bad had he not been recognized. To see Wallace’s face, so bitter with an underlying look of hurt, pained him in a way he never anticipated. It meant there had been a life, a history, long forgotten. It made him deeply wonder if he had experienced love or fatherhood. Did he have grandchildren? An entire family and home?

    The possibility stabs a knife into his heart as he meanders through the forest. His eyes, cloaked by his forelock, stare in a thoughtless haze, clouded by his ignorance. There is no end goal of his wanderings, no destination to guide him. Alone, Tiphon loses himself until there is a body suddenly in his path, a girl that stares longingly into the towering forest. A magnetism draws him to her, but he doesn’t quite know why. It could easily just be the sight of something beautiful in a world so destroyed.

    ”Hello,” he begins, his voice husky and thick in his throat. He tries to conceal the febrile symptoms as heat rises through his body. ”A plague,” he looks around them solemnly, ”who would have thought.” Casual small talk with a stranger.

    If only he knew this was his beautiful daughter, a piece of his heart.



    TIPHON
    STARLACE AND INFECTION


    @[Joscelin]
    Reply
    #3

    I need that fire just to know that I'm awake

    She wonders if these woods speak to others in the way that they speak to her. Whispering dark secrets she cannot hope to understand. She should be able to, she thinks. She should know what they are saying. But her ever seeking mind cannot seem to quite fit those pieces together, the broken and jagged edges refusing to mesh. As incomplete as her own skin.

    She is not left alone with her musings for long, however. The subtle crunch of feet over old snow heralds the arrival of another. A man of beautiful ivory and shimmering gold, something faintly ethereal in the quality of his presence. She cannot quite place it, but he feels familiar. Comfortable. As though he is safe in a world so clearly marked by danger.

    (How odd it would be to know though, that his mind is as fractured as hers. That they both seek something they cannot quite grasp.)

    As her attention shifts to him, thoughts corralled against that immeasurable sense of loss and longing, a faint spark of light emanates from her skin, tracing a crack indelibly etched there before flashing out of existence. She doesn’t notice it. Doesn’t realize her skin had once glowed with such wayward glimmers. Her features are still and solemn as she considers him, accepting his greeting as it is. A simple hello to a stranger.

    She frowns faintly at his seemingly trivial comment. To him, perhaps, it is little more than a comment on the weather. But she had not known of plague. “Is there a plague?” she asks, faint concern coloring her voice. “I’m afraid I’ve been rather… absent.”

    As though she had merely taken a casual trip rather than an existential search for her very soul.

    Joscelin

    Reply
    #4
    BUT HOW COULD YOU KNOW THE SWEETEST SUFFERING
    OF MOVING ON
    He sees the light peeking through, tracing a line down her body. Starlight, he tells himself before peering up at the sky and noting how slowly the sun is beginning to set. The sky is smeared with red, orange, and yellow. There, over in the distance, he can see a hint of lavender kissing a cloud as the horizon beckons the sun ever nearer. It holds his attention briefly because he is looking at the girl again, deciding whether he wants to smile or frown. ”You’re like a star wanting to burst free,” his voice is gentle in the silence around them, as though he holds secrets that no one can ever know. His molten eyes are bright, almost as stark as the light she emanates. ”Quite a sight,” he adds, deciding to smile and take a more uplifting route.

    She is a beautiful star, he thought, or she is broken.

    With so much heartbreak and destruction surrounding them, Tiphon attempts to take hold of anything and everything optimistic. It does nothing to shroud himself in a similar darkness that Beqanna now faces. He wants to help heal, not destroy. Little by little, he brings light to strangers’ eyes. It’s the least he can try doing in such turmoil.

    ”Yes,” his confirmation is almost painful to say, like it’s himself hurting with Beqanna – like this plague is eating away at him instead of the trees and soil and grass. The forest is naked, barren. The pines and leaves have all fallen unnaturally, and the bark peels uncomfortably. Gnarled branches reach for them like dead fingers. He offers a sideways glance, but nothing has changed. ”You have to be careful,” little does he know how prominent the contagion is and how he is carrying it in his own body. He advises others to flee, to stay safe, when he himself faces the danger. In front of her, with the infection only just beginning within him, he is simply fatigued. The blood wants to dribble from his nose, but not yet. It will in due time.

    Everything will fall apart in due time.

    Swallowing, he leaks his own magic through him so that the exhaustion can wash away and abandon his muscles. He is fighting the sickness he doesn’t realize he has.

    And he nods empathetically, a lopsided grin lifting a corner of his mouth. ”I have as well,” absent, that is, and like her, he was tossed into the madness. ”I’ve only just arrived, I feel. I’ve heard plague, but I know little more. The absolute cure is out of our hands.” He is limited in what he can do, but he doesn’t yet offer himself to her. She still looks so healthy, untouched by the epidemic. ”I’m Tiphon, and what is your name, starchild?” He more broadly smiles now, picturing her as a beautiful star. How blessed is he to be with her, in this moment, even as the world around them dies.


    TIPHON
    STARLACE AND INFECTION


    @[Joscelin]
    Reply
    #5

    I need that fire just to know that I'm awake

    You’re like a star wanting to burst free.

    For a moment, she stares at him, golden eyes shrouded in confusion. No one had referred to her in such an oddly lovely way before. At least, not in her regrettably brief memory. Perhaps once she had been. Perhaps that is why the cracks trace every line of her body. But still it seems an odd thing to say. At least until she peers at her shattered form, catches a glimpse of muted light.

    The light answers her, a burst of brightness sparking forth in a shower of stray beams. She’d done that before, on accident. But she hadn’t known the light might leak through her skin as it did. Another lost memory, she thinks, wondering if she will ever regain her life. If she will ever know who she once was.

    Hope is so difficult sometimes. Especially days like these, when her persistent scratching at that endless itch seems to not even so much as break the surface.

    “I don’t feel like a star,” she answers after a moment’s hesitation. Too broken, too empty. Stars seem so bright and endless, nothing like she. Only those wayward beams of light that seem to devour everything they touch.

    This talk of plague bothers her, the frown on her lips deepening as she glances around her with newly wary eyes. She cannot recall being ill ever, but the thought of plague stirs a discomfort in her breast, so she knows it cannot be good. Though perhaps it has far more to do with the way the plague has invaded this land, it’s impossible reach and grasping fingers. Dread might sink into one without them ever realizing what the cause could be. “Is it safe, do you think?”

    Her golden gaze (so similar to his, if only they had mirrors) shifts to him, taking in his ephemeral features and genuine smile. He seems so free in his manner, unconcerned by the weightlessness of absent memories. Meanwhile she flounders beneath it, unable to make heads nor tails of her own life.

    He introduces himself then. Tiphon. The name should be familiar, but she accepts it as the introduction of a stranger, tucking the information away (though how safe it could be in her fractured mind, she isn’t sure). He’s kinder than most, and there is comfort in that. A pull that draws her in, keeps her engaged, allowing a faint smile to finally touch her lips. “I’m Joscelin,” she offers when he asks. “Do you live here?”

    Joscelin

    Reply
    #6
    BUT HOW COULD YOU KNOW THE SWEETEST SUFFERING
    OF MOVING ON
    ”You’re beautiful like one!” His voice is exuberant, planting life into Joscelin’s uncertainty as she looks over her shoulder to observe the cracks jaggedly tracing down her body. ”Reality here is keeping you trapped – maybe even warping your memory, like me!” But Tiphon knows he isn’t a star; he is something else, something foreign to the eyes of this Beqanna. There have been others who stare at him as though he doesn’t belong, like he is a transcended ethereal being.

    But then there have been others who perceive him as familiar, as someone who has played a role in Beqanna’s rebirth.

    Like Joscelin, he is lost.

    ”A pleasure to meet you,” if only he realized that this is his daughter, that she is another piece of his soul that he has forgotten in the madness. He would embrace her if he could and reassure her that everything will be okay, but alas, they haven’t met, it seems. They do not recognize each other – not like Wallace recognized him – and so the possibilities are drained from his reeling thoughts so that he may finally answer her questions that rest idle in the space between them. ”No, it isn’t safe,” his voice lowers as though the disease will find them by sound alone rather than by the air they breathe. ”But,” he adds as she wonders where he lives, ”I have a home that is safe from this epidemic. I can take you there, my star, and hopefully keep you safe from this awful plague.” Unfortunately, he has risked his own wellbeing by abandoning its shores to venture the mainland, but his symptoms are suppressed by his own magic swimming through his veins. ”The Island Resort, it is called. Join me. There is a woman there that recognizes me from years ago and a grandson of mine I didn’t know existed. Maybe they can help you, too.”

    Maybe their puzzle pieces can find each other, little by little.


    TIPHON
    STARLACE AND INFECTION


    @[Joscelin]

    Sorry for the wait!
    Reply
    #7

    I need that fire just to know that I'm awake

    You’re beautiful like one!

    A faint smile curves her lips at that. She isn’t, of course, but it is kind of him to say. And if nothing else, she could see that he is very kind. Sometimes she wonders if it is truly reality, or only a terrible nightmare that she will one day awaken from. It feels real though. Far too real. And dread tells her this is not a nightmare she can wake from.

    But perhaps it doesn’t have to be a nightmare. She might never burst free, as he so eloquently suggested, but perhaps her life could have some meaning. Even if she cannot see it at this particular moment. Perhaps he could offer her that.

    The plague is concerning though, she thinks. She has no memory of plague, but she knows the word is not good. Her memories, fractured as they are, had not caused her to lose her language. She remembers words. She knows things can be good or bad, even if she has no memory of such a thing. As though it is more that memory, more than thought. Rather a gut feeling, that tells things she truly ought to know. That much at least, she had not lost. She could still claim instinct, even if she could not claim memory.

    He tells her of his home though, a place safe from plague. She has only his words to go on, but something in her tells her she can trust him. That he would not lead her purposefully astray. She only hopes her instinct is as accurate as it feels.

    “I would like that, I think,” she replies, her brow furrowing faintly. A place safe from plague, but also with others. Others who had helped him. Who could possibly help her too. “Could they heal my mind?”

    Joscelin

    Reply




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