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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


    [mature]  Desolation comes upon the sky // Brunhild
    #1
    Nerine became more stifling with every passing day. Against all odds, the arrival of more family members discouraged the matriarch from her usual position as second-in-command; perhaps not directly because of their blood relation, but because each of them could lay claim to her person without a second thought. While admittedly devoted to her role in the kingdom and in her family (for now, anyway), every passing day brought on more and more deviance in the once-Khaleesi’s behaviours.

    She’d fallen in love with another man and birthed him a daughter, only to realize that she had used his friendship as a bandaid for the gaping wound which stretched across the sensitive tissues of her heart.

    She’d allowed Nerine to fall into shambles at the turn of the year, watching as everyone failed to find guidance and thus dissolved into the insanity brought on by the onslaught of the contagion.

    She’d failed not only as a wife, but as an Amazonian, too; but her question, these days, is whether a woman can be a wife without a husband, and whether a woman can be an Amazon without a jungle.

    Deviance grew potent in her veins; she needed an out.

    Without Blue by her side to care for, and conveniently without one of the many creatures who, as I said, could lay claim to her (Leilan, Sarkis, Breckin, Brennen, Eurwen, Nalia, Ardashir, and the list goes on), she struck out to find just that. Initially, she gave no thought to identifying just what this out might look like; but on the other hand, why should she give a damn?

    Whatever she was looking for would find her, be it today or tomorrow or on the eve of her second death. She didn’t care; she just wanted to breathe.

    When she halted, she quietly took a moment to ground herself, head slowly pivoting atop the vertebrae of her neck. She’d just skirted the Loessian border, she decided, and had landed up directly north of the ocean. Yearning to see it, though she couldn’t fathom why, the mutilated creature crept out of the shade of the forest, and sunk her hooves deftly into the grey-sand beach she found opposite it.
    [Image: scorch2.png]
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    #2
    our demons are all around us and they don't come from hell
    every single one of them reminds us of ourselves


    Brunhild doesn’t know what she is without the comfort of the jungle and the vines.

    She is Rodrik’s, she knows that to her core, but is it enough? Is she enough? She feels like the pieces of her have been flung far and wide and the heart of her now rests wherever Beqanna has laid the lands of old to rest. She floats along now, as insubstantial as her body when it floated along the shadows. She feels fuzzy on the edges, lost—the whole of this world taking on a fuzzy, dreamlike quality.

    She returns to Beqanna, although it feels as if in a dream.

    She walks along the lands she doesn’t recognize and pays no mind to their borders. She has been born and raised in kingdoms, taught their rules since the first breath of air, but she can’t be bothered to adhere to them today. She is a relic, she thinks. A totem of a time long past. What should those alive today care about a ghost passing through the borders? Why should they care about an Amazonian Queen of old?

    Her wanderings take her far, her scarred body moving quietly until she reaches the forest, the shadows of it bringing an exhale to her lips. But it is the next sight that clenches her heart in her chest.

    At the familiar shape of Scorch, Brunhild’s breath catches in her throat, something like adrenaline slamming into her chest. It feels like home. It feels like a memory. It feels like a breath of life as it slips across her lips. She moves forward in a daze, her heavy-lidded eyes dark and bruised, the shadows playing along the harsh edges of her face. “Scorch,” her throaty voice wraps around the syllable, lets it rest there as she draws up to her side, feeling the space between them. “It’s been so long.”

    IMAGE © CANDID-CROCODILES


    @[Scorch]
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    #3

    WATCH THE FLAMES CLIMB HIGH INTO THE NIGHT

    She was Hestoni's, too. It should have been enough for her, too. But in the absence of that which gave rise to her character, nothing felt enough; as anxious pressure in her chest gradually built over the lonesome years, she found herself itching for ways to get off. Abandoning her duties as Matriarch. Fucking a man who wasn't her husband, and bearing his child. Cutting ties with her children. Wondering, always wondering, what desertion might taste like upon her ancient tongue now that the ugly red X of shame would no longer mar her skin.

    The red flower and green vine yet sat upon her chest, perched, ironic in its existence. She'd been naive to tattoo it there some years earlier, when her devotion to the ancient ways yet guided her actions and morals; the Amazons fell long ago, and she ought to have seen that for what it was. Her attempts are revival, or at least continuation, were but wastes of her time. She felt as though she was trying to fill a hole with dirt, but even as she shoveled some in, it never made a sound to indicate its meeting the bottom.

    These days, she stands more at the bottom of the hole she has dug trying to fill the first one than atop level ground.

    Why should they care about an Amazonian Queen of old?

    The sound and smell of the ocean conceal the arrival of the eldritch one. Should it have pleased her, Brunhild could have taken in the sight of her successor, and then turned and disappeared back into the shadows that Rodrik spun for her. Still, the moment her hooves hit the grey-sand beach, a chill ran through Scorch, a ripple of white twilight glimmering across her tellingly.

    Scorch.

    The sparks of light turned to darkness, peeling away from her flesh and falling, dissolving into the sand. The dragon's eyes, set upon the sea, flashed a dangerous steel colour; the pinkness of her flesh faded. It's been so long. She turned her head, eyes like razors upon the flesh of the other. Wordlessness bewitched her as she stared; the tightness in her chest increased, making its demands perfectly clear. Apart, the two once-queens presented no threat; together, they created a concoction of sharp edges and cold flames.

    "What are you doing here?" The words came quietly, as if her intention were to speak below the volume of the nearby sea. She studied the bruised eyes set atop her predecessor's face, wondered of her time spent in the Beyond, wondered just how easily she existed in that place, free of care or worry or of self. Flickering, the memory of Brunhild's goodbye to her on the day of her death came, unbidden. Somehow, this meeting felt like the opposite of that; and yet, utterly the same.

    She laughed. The sound rang cold. There was irony, here; its onslaught struck her to her core. "Why now?"

    Scorch

    Once Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle

    [Image: scorch2.png]
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    #4
    our demons are all around us and they don't come from hell
    every single one of them reminds us of ourselves


    Scorch has long since been engraved into Brunhild’s dark and wandering heart. She is part of her—a sister, her successor, a woman who looked her in the eye and somehow saw within the shadows. She feels an ease standing next to her even as her nerves are drawn taut, even as instinct rattles in her veins and the heavy premonition of what is to come blows like smoke across her back. It winds her tight even as she relaxes, the juxtaposition of the two emotions at war and conflicting even as she finds stability.

    “Does it matter what I’m doing here?” her smoke voice rises to meet the dragon woman’s and she feels the space between them like a physical thing—a barrier, a wall. Is she no longer to be accepted as a fellow sister? She has never doubted herself before, not truly, but the shame of her weakness at the end of her reign has haunted her. She had spun apart beneath her injuries. She had barely held it together long enough to announce the change of crowns. And when it had been done, when she had forfeit it, she had been lost to the shadows.

    Her body had spun apart in the darkness, pulled thin.

    It had taken months to pull herself back together.

    Months of breaking and agony and healing. Months of rebuilding.

    And when the kingdom’s magic had finally dripped from her, when her body had been forced back together again, it had been too late. She was no longer Queen. She was barely herself.

    So in the shadows, in the belly of the jungle, she had stayed.

    Brunhild doesn’t waver beneath Scorch’s gaze, doesn’t falter or crumble. She stands strong, holding the mare’s studying look. “I am here now. For however long this is to last.” It still feels like a dream, the fog of the forest slowly crawling around her shoulders as her precious shadows used to do.

    “Would you send me away if I don’t have answers?”

    Her breath plumes in front of her, steady as she has always been.

    And yet—and yet—she wonders at the way it threatens to catch in her throat.

    IMAGE © CANDID-CROCODILES


    @[Scorch]
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    #5

    WATCH THE FLAMES CLIMB HIGH INTO THE NIGHT

    Does it matter what I'm doing here? Scorch's nostrils flared, a silent but undeniable yes spoken into the space between them as the waves crashed into the shore not far off. Yes it mattered. It mattered because the space between them felt at once like a mountain and like a vacuum, an impossibility of one sort combined with one of another. Two infinities, dragging endlessly in both directions. Scorch ground her teeth. Yes it mattered.

    Brunhild, though, faltered not beneath the heavy, cool gaze of her successor. Her own eyes portrayed a strange concoction of emotions that Scorch could not feasibly decipher - the intensity of their depths cause her stomach to clench, to clench as it once had so many decades ago the day that her best friend had dissolved into shadow. The mare's muscles tightened spasmodically, desperately attempting to convince their host that she ought to turn away, to process these ancient feelings of confusion and excitement and pain in some sort of privacy.

    After all, she hadn't had that privacy the first time, instead having been forced to step forward and to address her Sisters - not as a fellow sister, but as their Khaleesi. Scorch remembered the way Lagertha had spat in her face, had barely toed the line; but more than this, Scorch remembered the sinking weight in her chest when she realized that her predecessor would not return for the duration of her reign - nor even the duration of her life.

    Perhaps this meeting, in what may as well have been both of their second lives, was what made their skin crawl.

    I am here now. For however long this is to last. The words sounded like an invitation, one laced with opioids and tranquilizers - drugged. The space between them gradually became tangible, a mixture of light and darkness coming together to occupy the air that each mare felt so poignantly.

    Would you send me away if I don't have answers?

    Scorch considered this, the twilight barrier visibly flickering, flinching away from the subtly manipulative words. The sober part of the mare wanted to smile, to rejoice, to embrace Brunhild without hesitation; to welcome back a long lost sister, a virtual ghost. But the intoxicated whole of her knew better than to expect her presence to be anything but temporary - to  be anything but here, and now, with her. Her, and no one else.

    The twilight parted, moving quickly to encircle the mares, effectively destroying the outside world in favour for only one another.

    "Yesterday, I might have," Scorch muttered, ears flicking back as the hue of her eyes changed from their pragmatic steel to a wanting blood-red; a thirsty, heavy burgundy. She took a step closer. "And tomorrow, I would do the same." Another step, and she felt the weight of the world upon her shoulders with a twisted sort of ecstasy. "But today -" and here, with no space left between them, Scorch relinquished her reservations, reaching out to slowly caress the scarred length of Brunhild's beautiful face. "Today, I will not turn you away, old friend."

    The twilight around them shifted like a living thing; and if they were to tune in, they would realized that it thrummed to the beat of their collective heart.

    Scorch

    Once Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle



    "@[brunhild]" this is what she insisted on saying, i hope it's okay.
    [Image: scorch2.png]
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    #6
    our demons are all around us and they don't come from hell
    every single one of them reminds us of ourselves


    Brunhild has never been one to be carried away with emotion.

    She has never been one to flicker between extremes, to fall prey to the leaching desires of the heart or to feel her throat fill with the saltwater of need. She has not been flirtatious or wanton; instead, she turned her mind to war and to the Amazons and to being what they needed. She was steady and even-keeled and maybe a better Khaleesi for it, but not a better friend or a better lover. It left her selfish, often.

    It left her alone, too.

    Despite this, she has managed to find the love of Rodrik, her scarred heart somehow accepted by the devilish once-King of the Chamber—and she does not regret it. She does not regret the weakness that he has opened up in her. The way that she finds herself hungering for the time spent by his side the same way that she has so many times hungered for the feel of the sword in her hand, the blood heavy on her tongue.

    But none of that changes the strange, dreamlike hunger that stirs in her now. None of it changes the way that her heavy-lidded eyes grow hazy and her tongue thick as she looks at Scorch. She doesn’t flinch beneath Scorch’s words or even grow resentful of the implication. She just nods her head.

    “I understand.”

    And she did.

    But she also doesn’t deny the growing tightness in her belly and the curiosity that darkens her eyes as she feels Scorch finally reach for her. She angles her head to lean into the touch and then takes a step closer, the two war-scarred bodies falling into the gravity of the moment. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t think that Scorch needed nor wanted it. Instead her lets her teeth find the mare’s jaw, letting it linger there before trailing down the curve of it. The darkness presses in on all sides of them and she breathes it in.

    For a second, her tongue catches the flesh, tasting the brine of the Amazonian, and it settles like a drug into her system. She closes her eyes, feeling a rare hitch of breath in her throat.

    And she doesn’t resist the waves of it flood through her.

    She simply gives herself over to the strength that can be found in surrender.

    IMAGE © CANDID-CROCODILES


    @[Scorch]
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    #7

    WATCH THE FLAMES CLIMB HIGH INTO THE NIGHT

    She understood, as Scorch knew she would. Brunhild the stoic, Brunhild the calm - how could a mare renowned for her strength and dignity of character be anything but understanding, as she was bluntly told that her random appearance would only go unquestioned now, in the present? The answer lied deep within the eyes of the scar-laden mare, somewhere far beyond the depths that Scorch could ever hope to sink her teeth into. After all, they only had today - today, and an agreement to ask no questions.

    Answers are hard to come by, beneath those guidelines.

    Thus, with the breath of a woman she had always loved heavy against the naked skin of her mutilated figure, Scorch relinquished her reservations. The angle of the other's head into the weight of her cascading touch felt all at once like the brush of a lover's mouth across her spine, reaching, wanting, needing; Scorch chose not to question that strange intoxicated interpretation of reality, instead pinning her ears and audibly growling a low note as Brunhild's teeth found their way to her jaw. A raw kind of need for power and for powerlessness pressed insistently upon Scorch's consciousness, wriggling its way past her feeble walls until it took a seat at the helm of her being and began controlling anything and everything. For tonight, nothing existed outside of their twilight bubble; and certainly, the sounds of their love making would be caught within its grasp, too.

    All at once and seemingly in slow motion, the women's bodies collided. Their tryst was not sex in a sense that others might understand it, but if others were to feel the ways they felt as their mouths found their mark on one another, perhaps they, too, would call it sex. It seemed almost predestined in a funny kind of way, in a way that left Scorch's lovemaking hot and needy, with her cries both guttural and needy in a way that only Brunhild could find sexy that night. Of course, the two had needed each other like this for far longer than either were wont to admit; when their eyes met sometimes, Scorch found herself uncannily reminded of the day that her predecessor shifted into pure shadow, her stomach churning uneasily at the way Brunhild's eyes reflected that same kind of chaotic need and energy now.

    If she only knew the potency of her own chaotic energy, then maybe she would be less unsettled.

    For some time, the sound of their union echoes poetically against the twisting border of their bubble, making each of them grin a little manically to hear the sounds of their fucking the way an outsider might. And indeed, at times, it was quiet, too - mouth on mouth, head tilted back in silent orgasm due to the fingers of the other burying themselves in the other's silken warmth. They were both scarred, yes, and not pretty in the usual sense; but they found a type of rhythm and a type of beauty as they flipped back and forth over top of one another, consuming each other's flesh with the voraciousness of any blood-starved carnivor.

    At long last, however, they each find their way to the inevitable conclusion.

    Wrapped snuggly in Brunhild's arms, her head draped over the sweaty curve of the warrior's pulsating chest, Scorch found herself scooching closer and wishing that they would not have to wake up from this dream and face reality. Already an alarming black pit of fear opened its gaping mouth in the center of the woman's being, not waiting even a moment to make threats about all the things that Scorch loved in life. And truth be told, she didn't even try to fight it; she knew, as she lay clutching the naked figure of a woman she thought of as a mentor, that she had fucked up her own fate, and far worse than she ever had before.

    She decided not to let that stop her from murmuring these next words, quietly, with an unanticipated softness and girlishness.

    "I love you, @[brunhild]... And I'm going to miss you, when you leave."

    Scorch

    Once Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle



    ""
    [Image: scorch2.png]
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    #8
    our demons are all around us and they don't come from hell
    every single one of them reminds us of ourselves


    She doesn’t know what she expected when she walks up to Scorch—what liquid pull she had felt in her belly, drawing her further down the path of madness and need. She doesn’t know and she finds that she cannot bring herself to ask more questions. She cannot tear it further or pull it apart or try to make sense from something that is inherently designed to not be understood—to be felt, not consumed by the mind.

    Instead she becomes the shadows she had once been. She becomes nothing but a living flame of need and want, feeling that strange rush of it all, a heady feeling of rightness in the way that their bodies come together. It is like a battle, like a war cry, and she finds that she knows her Amazonian’s sister better than she might have ever guessed. They bloom together, bodies erupting and then pulling inward in implosion, as Brunhild’s chest heaves, her lungs dragging air, her vision blurry and mind dizzy with the fireworks of pure feeling within her.

    “Scorch,” she murmurs once into the mare’s neck, feeling a tightening in her belly, the taste of the mare thick on her lips. “Scorch,” again, this time wrapped into a growl that becomes a purr and then a moan.

    When it is over, when they are slick with it, she presses a kiss into the mare’s neck and closes her eyes, feeling a thrill of adrenaline through her—a feeling that lives outside of guilt or repercussion. “I will always be with you,” she finally says softly, her voice husky. “I will always be part of you.” She knows better than any how intertwined two souls can become—and when those souls are rooted in the jungle, the bond lives outside of time and space itself. In the morning, they will split apart and live their own lives—they will love their men and follow their paths, but that does not change this moment now, trapped and suspended eternal.

    IMAGE © CANDID-CROCODILES


    @[Scorch]
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