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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


    where our broken hearts were born; birthing
    #1

    I don't know what I'm supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you

    This pregnancy is different.

    Before, with both Adna and Sabbath, she had been overjoyed because, even when Vulgaris had driven them away, they had been children created in love—children rooted in that feeling. And, for both children, when it had come time for them to be born, Vulgaris had been there. The first time, when Adna had been brought into the world in a moment so soft and sweet. Sabbath had been more difficult. Leliana had been sick and weak and it had been too early, too cold—but he had still been there. He had pressed kisses into her neck and whispered reassurances and eventually their daughters had arrived and they had been whole.

    But this is different.

    Because this had not begun with love. This had begun with violence and an empty kind of passion that had left Leliana hollowed out completely. This had begun with touches that had bruised and teeth that had sunk into flesh, leaving marks that still mar her wing but left significantly larger scars on her heart.

    Leliana has been alone much of her pregnancy, unable to face others, unable to do anything but try to keep herself alive for her daughter, for this beautiful life nestled in her belly. She loves her. Of course she does. Despite the roots of her life, despite the shadow that taints it, Leliana feels nothing but a heartwrenching adoration for what she is sure is another daughter. It is the last of him, she thinks. It is her final piece of Vulgaris and even if he left it to her with violence, she can’t bring herself to do anything but love it.

    When the time comes, when the familiar pains hit, she slips away to the river. She doesn’t know where else to go—where else feels safe. So she finds a spot by the roaring rapids and sinks to her knees, lets her body find the familiar rhythms. It is not as serene as Adna’s birth. Not as exhausting as Sabbath’s.

    But this is the first time tears touch her cheeks.

    The first time that she is alone.

    Thankfully, her healing has been restored with her strength, and although she has barely been eating, she is strong enough to ease the birthing process. She heals herself as it happens, heals her daughter, and when Malca finally slips onto the ground, Leliana can only exhale slowly. When she turns to take in the tiny bundle of black fur, love grips her heart. This is the first daughter to look truly like her. Her coat not covered in scales and the tiny wings perched on her shoulders. There is nothing serpentine in her.

    But when she opens her eyes, when Leliana sees the milk in one, she fights back a gasp.

    Fights back the immediate guilt.

    This was her fault.

    If only she had taken better care of herself. If only she had been enough and Vulgaris was here. If only she had been a better mother—if only. She smothers the feelings, quickly locks it away with shame, and begins to clean her daughter off. When she realizes that this is the first time Vulgaris has not been here to ask her what she’d like to name the child, she bites back the tears. Instead, she presses a kiss to her daughter’s forehead, trembling slightly as she urges her to her feet. “Malca,” she says softly, her voice calm despite the storms that rage inside of her breast. “My beautiful and darling Malca.”

    [Image: avatar-1975.gif]
    the heaviness in my heart belongs to gravity
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    #2
    cRess
    like a house on fire we're up in flames; i'd burn here if that's what it takes

    Cress considers herself blessed that all three of her children had been born in good circumstances; other women are not so lucky, she knows.  

    Flamebrand was her first, borne from a fiery passion so strong it had threatened to burn the already smoldering Valley. Flamevein had covered her in fire and she had burned brighter than a million suns. He had taught her to be better, stronger; he had fed her own fire in return. Not long after Flamebrand came Rhaenyra, her beautiful, horned daughter. She was born when the world shifted, leaving everything changed and broken. The girl’s father had never returned after that, and Cress can only assume that he died when Beqanna decided it had had enough.

    Dawn is her most recent child, and she feels Ledger’s absence like a knife drawn across her throat. The two of them had never loved each other—they were both broken and lonely, and they had bonded over their shared experiences in Carnage’s hell. They had thought that they could create something beautiful together, something whole and unbroken, and Dawn is the result of that. Her beautiful, powerful bear cub who will one day do great things for others. Dawn is so kind, so thoughtful. She will be good.

    She had, of course, noticed Leliana’s recent pregnancy, though the mare had tried so hard to keep it to herself. She had been drawn and sad the last time Cress had seen her and while she knows it must be because of Vulgaris, she has not pressed the issue with the other winged woman. From all she has learned of the stallion since meeting her dear friend, she is certainly not his biggest fan, and the less she knows, the better (if she knew the truth, oh gods help us).  

    She does not find Leliana intentionally—she had headed in the direction of the common lands to find those that needed healing, to give them strength and direct them to the Resort. It is the gasps and moans that draw her towards the laboring mare, though she does it slowly as to not frighten her. Leliana. When the woman comes into view, Cress stops, watching her as she encourages the girl to stand. She can see the guilt that is written into Leliana’s movements and the expression she is trying to hide, and Cress frowns as she moves into view.  

    The filly’s milky eye is easy to spot, and Cress fixes her friend with a hard glare. If she had ears still, they would have been pinned ever so slightly. Instead, her gaze softens and she presses her nose to Leliana’s neck in a comforting manner. “She’s perfect, my friend,” she tells her. “She’ll never miss what she’s never had. You’ve done well.”

    Looking fondly down at the filly—what she would give to have another, one day—she smiles, brown eyes warm. “If you want to talk about what happened, I’m always here. I would lend you an ear, but it seems they’ve run off on me again.”

    @[leliana]

    infected.
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    #3
    i'd break the back of love for you.
    She recognizes her so easily, the crying girl with the crooked smile. She tries to hold her heart in one piece but it just keeps shattering in her tired hands. How much longer will she insist on this chokehold? Khuma sighs as she slinks closer to her acquaintance. Her ears swivel forward to catch those forlorn words when they come tumbling out. Malca. Her niece. The serpent woman looks down at the newborn baby and sighs slowly from her nose. Children deserved better than this life.

    Khuma gently bumps her nose against the other’s cheek and stands so their shoulders occasionally kiss whenever they inhale. “She’s a pretty little thing, Leliana. People will think her pitiable with that eye but that’s just how she’ll lure them in,”she mumbles softly before lowering her head to reach the baby’s level. Her face is kind like her mother’s and for a moment Khuma envies her. Anadil had been so beautiful but she inherited most of her father’s features – the stern eyes, the always frowning lips. She had wanted that whimsical laugh her mother had whenever she faked it (and she always faked it).

    She is more barbed wire and broken up cement than all that. But there is a piece of her that wants to protect Leliana, wants to cradle her close and exact revenge on her brother. Maybe making him suffer would soothe the ache in her soul as well. Khuma leans over and begins to gently pluck and pull at the tangles in Leli’s mane. Salvage has been insistent on letting his locks go uncombed, proudly telling his mother that it made him ruggedly handsome.

    You don’t smell like your lover. If he’s strayed too far I could always bring him to heel for you, she offers with a fleeting glance at the those kind eyes. Khuma briefly glances at the stranger but says nothing. Strangers are a thing to avoid in times like these, she thinks to herself. It is only the budding love she has for the winged mother that keeps her here for now.
    khuma.
    @[leliana]
    sorry i finished this right as i saw cress replied so i just kind of shoved in a mention of her. DDD:
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    #4
    There is a place that exists outside of this one.

    Those who have been there before (and they all have, once) cannot say what it is like; the words don’t exist to describe it — not the sighs, or sounds, or smells, or feelings — and, even if they did, once those who have been there (and they all have, once) have left they don’t remember having been there at all. This is for its own protection, because if they remembered the utopia they would miss the quiet peacefulness — if they remembered, they would want the feeling of never wanting — if they remembered, they would ruin it.

    It’s on this tranquil, far away plane of existence — a land where souls choose souls — that she first finds Vulgaris and Leliana. She had seen them in her mind like a prophecy, and she had known without ever knowing them that she would be born of their blood, and spun of their flesh; a patchwork quilt made from pieces of each of them, good and bad. She chose them then for what they were — violent tenderness, passion, regret. She chose them.

    And at first there is nothing

    Nothing, but blackness with warm, fleshy undertones. Nothing, but the searing need to come undone. For eleven months she had been a refugee in this nothingness, evicted from that unknown utopia, and wrapping herself so tightly in this space that she had found it impossible after a time to distinguish it from her; a tangle of parts with no definitive owner.

    At first it feels like coming apart at the seams.

    Like threads stretching and ripping, weaving out and in and out and in; reversing. She has never known gravity, but she feels it now. It sucks at the pile of flesh and bones that are her own as though it means to pull her into something else entirely. It does. She has never known pressure before, but here it is all around her. It comes in waves, and she is shipwrecked. She goes where the tide brings her, and where it brings her is to a heap of shivering skin along the shore of a violent river. She has never known sound like this, disorienting, assaulting, alive — but she knows it now.

    She is alive with feeling. Her eyes blink open. Her heart hammers into a thunderous existence.

    Malca.

    It’s the first voice she will ever hear, and her heart quiets at the forgotten familiarity she finds waiting between those two syllables. There is a set of lips pressed now against her forehead as though they are doors meant to shield her from the wickedness that waits to creep in from all around the outsides of this wonderful, loud, wretched moment.

    Cold, and wet, and sticky with vernix she rises to meet this voice — her mother, her maker, her destiny. Her choice.

    She is a tangle of new, quaking limbs, swaying dangerously as she stumbles forwards suddenly propelled by a ravenish, rumbling belly and the smell of milk. She feels her skin meet skin again, and even though everything about these moments is loud and cacophonous she is utterly soothed. She is leaning too far to the left though, her centre of gravity thrown off by the lack of vision on her right, and missing her target again and again as she searches for food. Minutes pass this way until her nose finds the teat at last, and with the first gentle pull the sickly sweet warmth of milk meets her greedy tongue. She is devoured by starvation (watch as her laughable tail wags furiously with her efforts), and the feeling is so raw it hurts.

    My beautiful and darling, Malca.

    There are no words that come from her now as she sloppily guzzles the fruits of her labour, even as the others come to congregate around the newly bonded pair. She has never needed anything so much.

    Time passes though she knows nothing of it, and when at last she pulls away to meet these bodies in their eyes they will see her finally for what she is — unearthly pretty, with round, oversize eyes (one is like black glass, and the other with a swirl of white that cuts through the dark of her iris like a galaxy might) and delicate lips emphasized now by the spotting of milk dotted just across the tops of them, behind which a razor sharp set of carnivorous teeth lay in wait. A set of downy wings are folded in along her sides that in one moment resemble her mothers and in the next, a violent, vibrant shift changes them to the green leaves of the oak tree they rest now beneath.

    She is born to the rattle of an anxious heart, beside the violence of the river rapids.
    She is born to a jilted mother, and a wild father, and from the throes of a savage passion.

    But she chose them.

    She is the last of him, perhaps.

    And so, Malca she becomes.
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    #5

    I don't know what I'm supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you

    She had thought she was alone.

    One by one they come, these friends, these loved ones, these protectors (and still, there is more in the shadows, just out of reach, watching over her). It is overwhelming and she wants to shatter beneath her gratitude for their presence. She is so grateful that she doesn’t wilt underneath Cress’ hard stare, doesn’t break with guilt at her friend thinking she was somehow ashamed of her daughter—she wasn’t. She could never feel anything but an outpouring of love. “Of course she’s perfect,” she whispers quietly, watching as her daughter finds her feet and down her side. There is the familiar pull as she finds the milk.

    It is a nostalgic feeling, a flood of warmth in her chest, and she closes her eyes against it, lets the strange sensation of motherhood once again wrap her in its embrace. When Khuma comes up her side, plucking at her mane and soothing her, she leans slightly away—wishing that she could accept the physical attention as easily as she once might have. She feels instant shame for the movement. Still, at her reassurances, she just nods. Swallowing back the guilt that she has somehow brought harm to her child and instead just focusing on how glad she is that she is whole and breathing and healthy. That she is alive.

    She laughs lightly at Cress' joke but grows somber at Khuma’s offer to find Vulgaris. Her head swims slightly and she feels the wound prick on her wing. It has healed, of natural time instead of her own intervention, and the scar remains. It still feels like it just happened though. It still feels as if his weight was still pressing on her spine, as if his fangs were still sinking into that fleshy joint. She shudders and then shakes her head, exhaustion finding her way into her features once more, bruising her eyes.

    “No, that’s okay,” her voice is quiet, and she isn’t sure if she should say more—if she should divulge what has happened. But she doesn’t want to tell his sister of what has happened, what has transpired between them. It feels like a betrayal and she forces herself to smile. “He’s asked for a little space,” because it is the kindest way that she can think of saying what he truly said, what he truly did. “It’s okay.”

    Of course it’s not but she doesn’t have the heart to think on it more, to slip back into the tide of her numbness. She fights to hold onto this moment, onto this clarity she feels when she looks at her beautiful daughter. She scrambles for it, clutches at it, holds it close to her chest, the flame flickering dangerously.

    “She’s perfect,” she repeats again, watching her daughter’s wings shift. “So perfect.”

    [Image: avatar-1975.gif]
    the heaviness in my heart belongs to gravity
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