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    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


    [open]  cold summers
    #11

    it's a guarantee that he won't forget me.
    my body little, my soul heavy.

    The atmosphere is tense, not cruel but it is clear that the three kingdom dwellers are not particularly fond of one another. Naia, statuesque and dancing an irritated two-step in her mind, tunes out the tossed quips. They are in one ear and out the other, registered but not required information. Truthfully, all of their voices are beginning to grate on her ears: the only indication the slow drooping of her lids as she attempts to drift further away from their lackluster slights.

    I don’t want to go home with a single damn one of you.

    One word - it is one word that snaps her lids back to attention. No, not a just word but a name. Leilan? Her brain jumps from one thought to the next, a tiny imagined version of her leaping over stepping stones at the speed of light.

    “You’re my dad,” the words are choked but still a half-yell, spoken over Leilan as he never seems to stop. Her eyes fall into a glare as she rears her head up, sparing one cold look at Mary and Ivar. How fucking uncomfortable. Naia seethes: if steam could hiss from her ears, it would. The anger cools just as quickly as it boiled over, the lava of her pale brown eyes simmering.

    Leilan ends his rambling and Naia clears her throat: “You are my father.” Her eyes hold steady to his, then stray back to the other crown-holders - this time almost (almost) apologetic.

    A smile stretches across her lips before she addresses them, never quite reaching her near-solemn eyes. “This is . . . awkward.” Her smile becomes tight-lipped in that long pause. “Can one really continue to recruit after a moment like this?” One hoof presses into the malleable grass, an almost imperceptible nervous tick (no matter how coincidental).

    The filly says no more, pursed lips now just pursed and no longer curved. She stares, uncomfortable and close to angry with her father for revealing himself this way.

    Naia


    @[Ivar] @[Leilan] @[Mary]
    Reply
    #12
    The two stallions, who still remained nameless, went at it with eachother. Mary impatiently stood quietly listening, cocking an eye as the roan noted to leave his 'daughters' alone. She can see the resemblance between him and the young mare, but she certainly was not his offspring.

    She did not contest, instead let him continue to talk. Once theyre chatter ended the roan turned to answer the young mares question, noting he resides in the new Icicle Isle. Finally, the roan inteoduces himself as Leilan, a name she engrains to memory.

    The roan did the honor in introducing the other stag as well, Ivar, as he called him. Her gaze flicks quickly to the painted stag before back to Leilan to listen to his question. He inquires her name, instead of a title and a small grin tugged at the corner of her lips.

    You can call me Mary , she announces her name, he notes that he was a failed recruit of her father. It still left her wondering why he had shown up on the beach for her fathers death, were they better friends than he was letting on?

    Her gaze flicks to the mare who speaks up once again, this time she realized what Leilan had said. She was in utter shock, and apparently this was the first she had heard of her father. Well this is awkward she thinks to herself.

    She dips her head to the father daughter pair It was nice to meet you, my offer for Sylva still stands should you change your mind. She says to the mare, her gaze shifts back to Ivar I enjoy my forest kingdom, should you ever find yourself homesick, come for a visit. She gives a flirtacious wink to the stag before departing from the group, the family drama was too much for her.

    @[Leilan] @[naia] @[Ivar]




    Reply
    #13
    Ivar doesn’t know any of Leilan’s daughters, but he has no intentions of making a promise he can’t keep. The kelpie shrugs his shoulders at the ice stallion’s addendum to his offer, knowing from personal experience that dragon women were some of the most delightful. Most of what the other man has to say is uninteresting to Ivar, who doesn’t know those others that Leilan refers to. He doesn’t have time to think much of it, as the blue roan girl interrupts to throw an unexpected accusation at Leilan.

    The image of the roan dragon discovering his child is not one Ivar will ever forget, but he is not so rude to stick around such a delicate conversation. When Mary takes her leave, Ivar does as well. There’s amusement still dancing at the edges of his golden eyes. He doesn’t say anything aloud – he’s not one to press an invitation when surrounded by company – but the kelpie makes the decision then and there that he definitely won’t be making the agreement Leilan had suggested.

    Naia is young now, but Ivar is patient. In the meantime, the brightly colored Sylvan queen seems to have changed her tune, and Ivar gives her an appreciative grin when she invites him to visit. “I’ll take you up on that,” the scaled piebald tells her, that promise one he is clearly more willing to make.

    “I’ll leave you two to this…discovery.” He adds to Leilan and Naia, and while he does turn to leave, he glances back over his shoulder one last time before he makes to disappear into the greenery. He’s no intention of intruding, but nor does he mean to leave the girl in a situation she’d rather escape.

    @[Leilan]
    @[Naia]
    Reply
    #14

    Leilan
    Glaciers melting in the dead of night
    and the superstars sucked into the supermassive
    Silently seething, he notices the utter lack of care for anything Leilan just said, in the kelpie stallion. Ivar’s eyes don’t light up with recognition, in fact he doesn’t even mull over the request. Just ignores it, and deems it unimportant.

    Briskly, as if to try and forget about it, the roan tilts his head to Mary, who finally has given her name, figuring he’d rather talk to her instead. But during his own question for her name, the chestnut roan girl had mentioned something, a thing that took a little longer to click. ”What?” Her emotional tone had made it harder, and while his brain updates him in retrospect with the exact words that accompanied the accusation, she repeats it, much clearer this time. You are my father. Angry - like he would probably be, too.

    As her brown eyes stare at him in accusation (like, how the fuck should he have known about her, or prevent this?), he just stares back almost-emptily. Ears fall flat as colour drains from face (figuratively) and eyes (literally; a whitish look to them instead of the icy blue), his mind racing and practically blocking out whatever Ivar and Mary still had to say while he struggles to understand. A golden-haired roan yearling; perhaps he should have asked. But if that’s true, she looks about nothing like her mother; only in conformation.

    Awkward, she tells them all, and with some blinking, he returns slowly out of his haze. This can’t be real. But it is, it seems. He watches the other two take their leave, which somehow makes it even more awkward, for now he is supposed to say something. He gives a tiny shake of his head, as if trying to wake from a dream, and narrows his eyes at her, looking her over, where’d she suddenly come from then? But he knows, deep down. There’s only so many mares he’d been with that autumn, the fall whereafter he’d died. So many things had happened since then, but since Thalassa knew where he lived, he hadn’t thought that if anything had happened, she would have just left him in the dark about it.

    Apparently she had decided he didn’t need to know. Suddenly angry with someone not present, the scaled stallion starts pacing, as a way to relieve his muscles from the tension that has suddenly built. Indecisive too, because what’s he supposed to do or say now? ”Fuck.” Why did mares have to be the ones to decide not to tell, why wouldn’t they, even? Now she’s hurt both him but also her - their - daughter.

    And he didn’t know shit. He doesn’t even - oh. He stops, looking at the girl. ”Could you at least tell me your name?” They have to start somewhere, at least. He can’t very well be angry with her, because it probably wasn’t Naia’s choice to never go find him.

    He’d never thought Thal to be the type to hide, though. Shit.

    you set my soul alight
    HTML by Vanilla Custard


    @[naia]
    Omg that is more awkward than I ever imagined, lol
    Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
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    Reply
    #15

    it's a guarantee that he won't forget me.
    my body little, my soul heavy.

    As Ivar and Mary take their leave, Naia almost regrets dismissing them. Not so much that she forgets her embarrassment, but enough to make her consider calling out for Ivar when he looks back. Her brown eyes allow one tiny glimmer of desperation before his similar gaze turns away (an offer she will not soon forget).

    When the roan turns back to her newfound father, he is pacing back and forth, obviously worked into some kind of a tizzy. She frowns at him, eyes darkening with a irateness to match his. A huff pushes hot and pissed from clenched teeth and pursed lips. Of course, he will have just as interesting as a reaction as her - they are family, aren’t they? But Naia cannot think of that now; instead, she stares at him with eyes brimming with fire and a chest growing tighter by the second.

    All of her faux fights and bottled up emotion could not prepare her for this. Hot tears spill out of her eyes, frustrated and frightened and like nothing she has felt before.

    Leilan finally stops pacing, asks her name, and for a long while she just stares at him. It is not that she does not want to offer it up, or even that she is supremely pissed - just that she thinks she cannot handle this, her father’s realness - so horribly jarring. Naia existed in a bubble her whole life up until this moment: Thalassa and the nomad lands, even strangers were few and far between.

    A gulp and a sniffle, too loud in the silence between the two, then: “Naia.”

    Her voice is near-cruel, a poor attempt at masking how she wishes she had grown up knowing her father’s embrace. They are strangers, and Naia simply cannot take that: the time and space that spans between them, the memories that could have been. And all for what? Thalassa never told. Leilan was always just Leilan, nice enough but apparently not important enough to for Naia to know. She stamps one furious, dark, depressed hoof into the ground.

    “Thalas- Mom. She never told me why, but she never spoke ill of you . . . if that is what you are so worked up over.”

    Her eyes drift slowly to the earth, resting on Leilan’s much larger hooves. She sighs, eyes half-glazed, preparing to dissociate.

    Naia


    @[Leilan]
    Reply
    #16

    Leilan
    Glaciers melting in the dead of night
    and the superstars sucked into the supermassive
    Thalassa... Thalassa had been the one convinced she was doing him a favour and would help him heal. Perhaps his lack of being healed had convinced her that he would only be damaged more if he knew he’d sired a child by her. Indeed, it would have been another drop to an already spilling bucket, but in the end it wouldn’t have mattered because it was Roseen who’d wholly kicked that bucket over.

    But it was the only reason he could think of why she wouldn’t tell him. A very bad reason indeed. But not one they could change at the moment.

    Right now, the scaled roan can only stare at the girl claiming to be his daughter. Her roan coat and gold mane, are clear indicators that such could be true. Does he want another daughter? Chryseis seemed to only hate him recently, for protecting her against herself (which she didn’t recognize as such). How about this one then, should he get involved at all? She looks tough - ah, but that’s the breaking point then.

    She looks tough, and so she looks like him. This can’t be easy for her. She’s lashing out as a form of protecting herself; something he has done himself a million times before and probably will some more times, still. She stares, almost violently so, but then something seems to break, somewhere. He’s not sure if it’s her or him. Maybe both. But she speaks her name, even if very tensed. He takes that in, then smiles a bit. It sounds lovely, like the sea. Like her mother.

    The girl explains a tiny bit more though. The stallion’s eye colour returns, though slightly more blue than the ice blue he started out with, but she’d have to be keen to notice it (the contrast to the shock-white might be too much to see where it differs from what was before). Besides, she seems lost in her own thoughts.

    Never spoke ill of you, if that’s what you’re worked up about.

    He’s quick to shake his head. No, that’s not it, not entirely. ”I’m surprised... I wonder why she never told me.” Disappointed was the real, proper word here, not surprised, but honestly that was something he’d have to discuss with Thal if he ever met her again. If.

    Naia stares at the ground, and he carefully avoids chewing on his lip because the latter is rather painful with pointy teeth like he had. He feels a need to explain, or just the bit that he knows. It still isn’t much. ”We had a, what’sitcalled. One night fling, I suppose...” Maybe she was embarrassed. He shakes his head. Doesn’t matter. ”What’s done is done. I’m not... angry? if that’s what you think?” Not with her mother, and certainly not with her. Still she looks almost apologetic.

    Concerned now, he looks her over. Everything about her seems to scream how afraid, ashamed, angry, and... lost, yes, definitely lost, she is. To him, at least. Knowing the kind of angry mask he usually puts up himself, that’s something he can see through.

    He starts to reach out to her, stops, wondering. She might scare away or react offendedly. He doesn’t know her well enough for any kind of physical touch. ”I wasn’t lying when I said I wasn’t going to recruit, but no-one would turn you away either.” A rather weak attempt at asking if she wants to visit, he supposes.

    you set my soul alight
    HTML by Vanilla Custard

    @[naia]
    I think her color changed (?) but I’m gonna assume it’s after this thread because I have no way to make him possibly recognize her otherwise, and also because she earlier got mentioned as chestnut roan already
    Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
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