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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'm trying to pick myself up piece by piece, Leilan
    #1
    little do you know how I'm breaking while you fall asleep,
    little do you know I'm still haunted by the memories,
    little do you know I'm trying to pick myself up piece by piece


    She had never known it was possible for a heart to break in half, but she is learning.

    The pain that splits across her chest is intolerable. It feels like fire, and drowning, all at once, and she isn’t sure what she’s supposed to do with it. She had gone from being nearly void of all emotion, to whatever turmoil this is – a tempest of confusion and hurt, of shame and humiliation. She could still smell the blue stallion, his scent clinging to her like a sickening cloak. She could still feel his teeth against her skin, could still hear the gravel-tone of his voice against her neck. She doesn’t think any of that will ever go away; her nightmares have taken on a new shape, a new face, and she almost misses the content of her old ones. At least that, she had been able to run from. At least in those ones, she had outran her demons, instead of being caught, every single time.

    She could have handled the shame after her encounter with Tunnel, possibly. She could have picked up the broken pieces, and maybe put something back together. But whatever she had been precariously still grasping onto had been cruelly yanked from her, like barbed wire through the hands. Ether’s eyes haunt her memories, the ache in his voice an echo in her mind that refuses to go away. He hadn’t even given her the chance to explain, before pulling his shadows around him, and taking him to a place that she could never follow – not uninvited. She had no way of telling him that he had it wrong; so completely, terribly wrong, and it was crushing her.

    She had looked for him, or tried to. But just as she had avoided him when she didn’t want to be found, he was able to do the same to her. It was weeks before she finally gave up, and before she finally accepted that she cannot bear the weight of this alone.

    Without even thinking twice, she goes to Nerine.

    The cold winter winds are especially biting on the coast, and her black coat pulls taut over her once-lithe frame, though her barrel is now obviously swollen with the child inside of her. The child she had not asked for, at all, but that she hoped against hope that she would love all the same. There is a part of her – a part that is larger than she would care to admit – that is terrified she will only see Tunnel’s face whenever she looks at it, but she tries to not think about that; not right now, anyway. Now, her somber brown eyes are scanning the rocky expanse of the land before her, searching for the first face that had ever been familiar to her in this wild, untamed land she had washed up on.

    ”Leilan,” She says his name once she sees him, having no way of knowing it was pure luck to find him here, and that he would normally be found in Icicle Isle. With the space closing between them, she comes alongside of him, brushing her muzzle lightly against his scaled shoulder. Something about his scent – perhaps that it is familiar, and that she knows he is nothing to be feared – triggers the emotion to well in her chest again, tight and asphyxiating, and her voice is hardly above an aching whisper as she says, ”I’m so glad I found you.”


    BRISEIS
    underneath it all I'm held captive by the hole inside,
    I've been holding back for the fear that you might change your mind


    @[Leilan]

    also @[Heartfire] if she wants to use her magic eyes so she can tell Ether he's a dummy D:
    #2

    Leilan
    Glaciers melting in the dead of night
    and the superstars sucked into the supermassive
    Parenting sucks - it comes with self-loathing and not understanding how a perfect child still manages to grow up into something too similar to yourself; comes with sacrifices nobody warned you about to make. Briseis had carried his firstborn daughter, but the girl had been unintended - and he'd told her so. Hard. Because the only thing left to do was break the bond so completely, she would never again want to return to the home he'd ruined.

    Of course, what he'd said wasn't entirely true, since he'd drawn Chryseis perhaps a picture of a mindless you woman. Had the dark mare resisted anything about his touch, embrace, he probably wouldn't have. But that's all too late now. And he won't regret cutting his daughter out however much it pains him; if that means she is happier, then so be it.

    His sticking around in Nerine today has nothing, or everything, to do with it. He's not quite sure, and he doesn't want to think about it.

    But then Briseis shows up; wholly round and pregnant (huh, would you look at that), but wholly devastated and broken. She's near him before he can blink more than twice, a reminder of the painful fact of Chryseis - but everything about her is wrong, so wrong. Her voice grows thick within a heartbeat, her eyes won't shine but with tears, and above all she looks even worse than when he'd first found her.

    Casting every other thought aside, he stares at her a moment. "What's wrong?"

    you set my soul alight
    HTML by Vanilla Custard
    Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
    |
    #3
    little do you know how I'm breaking while you fall asleep,
    little do you know I'm still haunted by the memories,
    little do you know I'm trying to pick myself up piece by piece

    She has never been good at expressing herself. Preferring to close herself off, to withdraw inside of herself where no one else can see her. It was usually easy. She was so used to processing emotions on a different level than most, and being able to bury things – or even forget them completely. She has been in Beqanna for years now, and her memories from her previous home were still lost in the abyss of her mind. The closest she had ever come to remembering them, was in her nightmares, and now, her nightmares were different – they were real. They were inescapable.

    They were real enough that it all threatened to spill over; no matter how hard she tried to keep it all inside, it was still going to overflow, at some point. When she stands alongside of him, now, the effort that it takes to not dissolve into pieces is enough to make her tremble. Her jaw tightens, to the point that her teeth begin to ache, and she turns her eyes away from him when he asks her what’s wrong. There is a lingering hesitation before she can answer, as she struggles to compose herself – making sure her voice sounds steadier, that maybe that sorrow isn’t so evident when she speaks. ”Everything.” For a moment, her eyes close, forcing the tears away, still stubbornly refusing to let any fall.

    She wants to tell him, just so that she can tell someone. She is tired of bearing this alone, and a part of her foolishly thinks that maybe the burden will be lighter if she says it out loud. But everytime she thinks about it, everytime the word rape drifts into her mind, it dies long before it can ever make it to her tongue. In the back of her mind, she wonders where Chryseis is – it wasn’t like her daughter to not greet her as soon as she arrived, but then again, she was also almost three years old. This also isn’t particularly a conversation she wants her daughter to be apart of, and so she doesn’t even ask. She lets the gold-blazed face of her daughter disappear from her mind, and sadly, right now, it isn’t difficult. Tunnel’s face is all she sees, whenever her mind begins to slip from her.

    Her eyes finally look to his again, somber and anguished, before she slowly, softly (hardly above a whisper, painfully quiet) says, ”I was in the forest….alone. And I should have left, as soon as I realized something wasn’t right, but I didn’t. And he...he wouldn’t let me go.” She can feel her voice beginning to break, her pulse once again beginning to race, the familiar flight instinct trying to take hold again, before she finishes tremulously. ”Not until the next morning.”

    There is another pause, all the thoughts and memories weighing on her, as her eyes drift towards the shadows of the trees; always looking, always hoping, that those familiar golden eyes will appear. ”And Ether doesn’t understand.”

    BRISEIS
    underneath it all I'm held captive by the hole inside,
    I've been holding back for the fear that you might change your mind


    @[Leilan]
    #4

    Leilan
    Glaciers melting in the dead of night
    and the superstars sucked into the supermassive
    It’s a surprise, this whole thing. Weird even. To think that Briseis had no other place to go, that of all the people in the world she could have (should have) picked, she chose to search for him - a one-time, no-good (fake) lover. One who, admittedly, could hardly handle the fact they had a daughter together.

    Strange as it may be that of all people it is Briseis and he now standing here, it’s not an unknown situation for him. She has that look, one he recognizes now. Of a mare lost and invaded, the broken one. But thank heavens, Chryseis’ stubbornness isn’t solely his own. There’s something in her that wants to talk, wants to look for help, and wants to never ever let this happen again - the same thing that doesn’t allow her to cry when she says that everything is wrong.

    He can do nothing but wait. Looking her over, he doesn’t have to wonder what happened too long - a forest, alone, and a male figure not wanting to let her go. He blinks at her but she doesn’t really see it, he thinks - preoccupied with what she is trying to make clear. Puzzled, he listens to her last sentence, not until the next morning, which then finalizes the slowly dawning suspicions. This new child of hers wasn’t wanted.

    Her eyes drift away then, looking at the shadows but not in the scared way Sarkis always does. Hopeful - how strange... Ether doesn’t understand. Who’s E... hmm. Why is the name vaguely familiar? Maybe she’s introduced him or Chryseis had mentioned him. It’s not that important right now - what’s important is Briseis’ mind being sound. And safe.

    He wraps his neck around hers - loosely enough, he hopes - and frowns at the trees behind her, processing. This must be so hard for her, but if she trusts this Ether... or his misunderstanding had to do with the way she told it, like now. ”Did you tell him?”

    you set my soul alight
    HTML by Vanilla Custard
    Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
    |
    #5
    little do you know how I'm breaking while you fall asleep,
    little do you know I'm still haunted by the memories,
    little do you know I'm trying to pick myself up piece by piece

    She doesn’t flinch from him, when he drapes his neck over hers. Her newfound fear is not rooted in him, but it certainly existed now when she looked at faces she didn’t know – she didn’t know what they were capable of, didn’t know what they had done in the past. She had always been cautious of strangers, but not entirely fearful. It was peculiar, and perhaps a little fascinating, how a single moment – a single stretch of time – can completely alter the rest of your life. With Leilan, it had given her Chryseis – perhaps the best thing that has ever happened to her, even though it had been by accident. With Ether, their single night had unfurled all the emotions she usually kept locked away, alighting her usually black and white world with color. But Tunnel...Tunnel had managed to strip it all away.

    In a single moment, a single stretch of time.

    There is no conscious reason for why she comes to Leilan. The still almost-feral girl had not learned how to develop relationships – not even friendships. The closest thing she had to that was Leilan, and even Breckin – who admittedly, would have likely understood the situation better. But she wasn’t here, and Briseis, still fumbling through her efforts of trying to be normal and trying to be like them, doesn’t know how to pick and choose her audience for her troubles.

    He asks about Ether, and it makes her heart drop. The sound of his name rises her last memory of him, of him pulling the shadows around him until he disappeared. ”I...I wanted to. But he misunderstood.” When she laughs, it’s a short, strangled sound, watery from the tears that haven’t fallen but instead lay trapped in her throat. ”I do that a lot, though. It was my fault. He left before I could explain.”

    She pauses, and even though it is a silent and heavy pause, her somber eyes lift to his as she admits quietly, ”I don’t know why I’m burdening you with all of this. I’m sorry.”

    BRISEIS
    underneath it all I'm held captive by the hole inside,
    I've been holding back for the fear that you might change your mind


    @[Leilan]
    #6

    Leilan
    Glaciers melting in the dead of night
    and the superstars sucked into the supermassive
    There is nothing much to do. There is nothing much to say.

    There is hardly anything he can do for her at this point. She had wondered, gotten lost, and found herself in a place she would not like to be. A place that housed a monster, and nobody could have known he was there. Her tendency to walk around alone and be drawn to the shadows, a place where she was usually hiding in on her own, had cost her this time.

    It had cost her a part of her life, to give life to another small being, and a part of her now-shattered soul. But it’s the latter that could be healed. Slowly, carefully mended. One piece after the other.

    He’s one aspect, then. Not a fitting piece, but he can be glue. Heck, he knows how to stick around, it shouldn’t be a problem for him. If only he remembered Ether’s name some more. Ether sounds like her friend. Or boyfriend. He hadn’t really paid a lot of attention to Briseis lately, thinking she would be in the Cove, but here she was, and she had been wandering and met a boy in Nerine who was nice to her.

    Like he was, but only it seemed that it would last longer with this Ether. As it should - as was the normal way.

    The mare seems to flinch when he asks about this guy. He misunderstood, she says. She grows bitter with the thought, says it’s her own fault and that he left. There, the scaled stallion shakes his head, loosening his grip on the black mare in the process. It’s not her fault that the man had misunderstood, if she had tried to explain - he’d left before she could say more, which was Ether’s own fault.

    But the dragon stallion doesn’t get much chance to say this to her, because she apologizes for even being there. Leilan bumps his nose against her head, yet another light shake of his head following in denial of what she tells him. ”I do.” Simply put, the other anchors she had in life had been absent. Ether left. Chryseis left. Breckin wasn’t the first she had found today.

    ”Let’s go find your Ether.” he proposes then. Though not in a tone that would really accept a no, to be honest. But really, he’d drag the guy over to Briseis by his mane if he had to.

    you set my soul alight
    HTML by Vanilla Custard

    @[Briseis]
    Two things I know I can make: pretty kids, and people mad.
    |




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