• Logout
  • 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


    [open]  i'm alright today; any
    #1
    Ausra

     How many hundreds of lives has she waited for a world like this? It is beautiful in an incredibly foreign way. Some places just speak to the soul. She has been born a thousand times before but never into a body made like this one. Her legs are long and slim, deceptively strong. She has been strong before, but this is a body built for war. Her lungs are a bellows, massive wells into which she can draw this worlds air in order to fuel the locomotion that this body seems to crave. Of all the shapes she has taken over the millennia this is immediately a favorite. 

    Perhaps she’ll stick in this one if she manages to earn herself another round. 

    As with every other time she comes into consciousness as an adult. Whatever she is, she assumes she is an ordinary one as this is the way it has always been. Sometimes she remains an ordinary whatever-she-is, and other times she doesn’t. That doesn’t effect the outcome, or it hasn’t yet. 

    Ausra arrives on the edge of a body of liquid that she finds to be water. Her body responds to the scent of bonded hydrogen and oxygen and she drinks from the river to satisfy the urge before tentatively crossing through it. Finding that she does not melt or nearly get eaten by anything she can see she splashes up into the marshy grasses on the other side and heads toward the scent of salt. 

    When the sea laps at her hooves she considers turning away to look for a creature like the one she now is. However the tide is low and she notices that one might make their way out to a not too distant island if they swam and moved across the sandbars. Her experiences with oceans make her a little wary, waves and monsters are features of massive bodies of liquid in just about every world she has experienced. Ausra considers that she has only died on her first day twice and decides to risk the crossing. 

    Something swims nearby and Ausra keeps clear of it without getting too excited, reaching the island easily. This body is versatile. She does look back, blue eyes scanning the water for whatever had drawn close to her beneath the waves but there is no more to see than sea and the mainland. Climbing the beach she comes across a surprising structure and studies it for a long time. There are words, faded, but she cannot read them, only recognizes the shape of a language transcribed on an object that could not have been made by a being like her. Leaving this for a later more thorough inspection she proceeds with what is always her first task. Finding another.

    When she does, or is rather found herself, her body knows the tongue in which she must address the creature that is like enough to her that they must be the same and she asks (as she has so many times before) “What are we?”
     

    i've had dreams of you in places i've not seen

     @Any
    Reply
    #2

    To Luster the water is a beautiful relief, the memory of those that live below a bright spot in the dark mess of memories cluttered at the edges of her lonely thoughts. She comes to the ocean as often as she can, could spend hours waiting for a glimpse of the man who calls such deep-waters home. A man with skin as smooth and dark as the molten stones in Tephra, with eyes her favorite shade of blue - the color of deep, dark, secret places.

    It’s been years since she’s seen him, so many years that even the wounds they had drawn together across her heart have lost their edges, lost their bite, and it is easier to look back and miss him without clutching the jagged pieces of a broken heart in the palms of bleeding hands.

    Other wounds, similar wounds, have not yet healed.
    She is a beast who does not learn from her mistakes, who loves with a heart so broken it must only be capable of harm by now.

    She watches someone make their way toward the Island, a smudge of bay and white cutting through the white-capped waves of a windy oceanscape. At this distance they remind her of a leaf trapped on the waters surface, blown her direction by the will of the air kicking up across the open way. She is not left to wonder long what their intent is as the shape grows larger the closer it comes.

    There is a prickle of unease inside her chest where once there would only have been soft friendliness. It was all too recently that the Island came under attack and the people were subject to the whim of a dragon who would rather take than talk. So she makes her way down to the shore with some wariness hidden in the backs of such soft brown eyes. But she watches this woman as she takes in the architecture of the beach - the sand and stone, the trees and the strange wooden caves now falling apart with too much passed time, and she finds that some of the unease fades.

    She is only soft and curious, only herself when the mare turns to find her and she thinks she can see something special knit into the soul of this woman, something that is hidden everywhere but for the wisdom in those beautiful eyes. “Strangers,” she says by way of answer, not comprehending the true intent of the question, “though, hopefully not for long. Welcome to Island Resort, my name is Luster.” A pause, a smile that slips out onto her lips without her permission. “What can I call you?”

    — Luster —
    so we let our shadows fall away like dust ;
    Reply
    #3
    Ausra

     The Other does not understand the question. Ausra blinks at her, taking in the dusky blue-grey of her coat and wonders what variations she might encounter in this species, and how much it matters. The new body processes the other’s scent and body language automatically. Ausra has noticed that alarm comes easy to her. Smells or sounds, even sensations of unease trigger a cascade of reactions that were surprising at first. These creatures are tense, spirited, reactive. She does not find anything alarming about the other.

    A female. Like her. Ausra is always something like female if it is possible. It’s a mystery as to what decides that but she’s not complaining. She’s been variations of things of course, not every world or form offers up as many or as few as two or three options in this department.

    ”Island Resort…” She murmurs, and her mind picks at meanings for those words, extrapolating what she can but not speaking all the ideas she rapidly assembles and files away. There are many questions she would like to ask but it seems that in this culture introductions are made without too much ceremony or delay and she gives a pleased little shake of her head before reaching for the sounds that make up her name. It’s a name that always looks the same on the inside, an anchor she can cling to when the succession of lives becomes overwhelming or even maddening. In this tongue it has has a full and pleasant sound that she is surprised by, her right ear flicking to pull the two syllables out of the air when says. “Ausra. I am called Ausra.”

    “Luster… it may be very strange of me to ask… but what are we? What are we called? Sometimes asking this question can get her into a bit of trouble, when she comes across as mad or too unlike the other members of the population she has infiltrated. Ausra mirrors the other mare’s smile, an expression that seems to be friendly. She hopes that this first contact she has made with not be too unnerved.

     

    i've had dreams of you in places i've not seen



    @[Luster]
    Reply




    Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)